Dancing - Thinking - Paperback

An embroidery on a conference by Paul Val?ry ...

In 1936, Paul Val?ry gave a lecture on Dance at the Universit? des Annales. He took the opportunity to pick up the reflection thread begun with Introduction ? la m?thode de L?onard de Vinci (1894) a youthful book that he nevertheless cared enough to publish again in 1919 with a new preface. This line of research, opened in 1894, and which aimed to elucidate the processes of intellectual creation, was more or less pursued in an underground way by Val?ry throughout his life until the Cours de Po?tique that he gave at the Coll?ge de France from the end of 1937 until his death in 1945.

He comes to consider the process of artistic creation itself as the true work of art.

"All the arts are very varied forms of action and are analyzed in terms of action. [...] you can then conceive of the creation of a work of art, a work of painting and sculpture, as a work of art itself. The material object which is shaped under the fingers of the artist being then nothing more than the pretext, the stage accessory, the subject of the ballet." - Paul Val?ry, Philosophie de la danse - P 38

But we will see that Val?ry's thought leads us to conclusions of an even broader scope...