1 h 13 minAudiobook3 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when a poem makes thought as vivid as the sea, a serpent, or footsteps in a quiet room?
In Charms, Paul Valéry brings sound and thought into close conversation. This collection of lyrical poems explores beauty, silence, and the inner life through exact forms. Its French title, Charmes, means both spells and songs: a fitting invitation to poetry that asks you to feel and think at once.
The Graveyard by the Sea places you above the Mediterranean, where the sea, a cemetery, and the will to live meet. Dawn follows a mind gathering its first thoughts. Sketch of a Serpent lets the proud, clever snake of Eden speak, while The Footsteps draws feeling into a small, quiet scene of love.
What you’ll discover
- A mind at dawn Follow consciousness as it wakes from darkness and senses its energy before the day begins.
- The sea and life Enter a hilltop cemetery above the Mediterranean, where thought meets the will to live.
- A serpent speaks Meet Eden’s proud, clever snake, bored with the perfection of the sun and garden.
- Love in small scenes Discover how quiet footsteps give a short love poem its intimate focus.
- Sound with exact shape Savour regular lines, patterned rhymes, and balanced stanzas that reward slow, repeated reading.
Who will love it
You will enjoy it if you love poems about the mind, myth, the sea and the body, and if you like to hear verse read aloud and savor its images.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Poems that begin with a mind waking
- Nature and myth give the mind a voice
- Narcissus turns love into a study of the self
- Short poems of desire, sleep and prophecy
- The sea and the serpent
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Charms
by Paul Valéry · 1922
A tree, a serpent, a youth at a pool and a cemetery above the sea fill one poet's charged, musical verse.
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In short
What does a mind hear when it wakes, looks into a pool, or stands at noon above a sea of graves? Charms is a collection of poems by Paul Valéry, the French poet.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Poems that begin with a mind waking
Valéry opens the collection with Dawn, a poem about a mind coming out of sleep. The speaker rises, greets the ideas that worked in the dark like spiders, and then breaks their web to search for the sources of song in the senses.
The poem sets the pattern for the book. Thought and feeling are not enemies here, and each poem watches the mind at work on the world. Hope appears as a swimmer feeling the depth beneath her.
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What is Charms by Paul Valéry about?
It is a collection of poems about the mind, beauty, desire, time and death. Its pieces use myth, nature and the sea, from Narcissus at his pool to the Marine Cemetery.
What is The Marine Cemetery about?
A speaker sits above a graveyard by the sea at noon and thinks about death, change and time. The poem ends with a rising wind that calls him back to life.
Who is Narcissus in Valéry's poem?
He is the youth of Greek myth who falls in love with his reflection. Valéry makes him a thinker, exploring self-love, the pool and the echo that answers him.
The author
Paul Valéry
1871–1945 · French poet and essayist
Paul Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. He was born in Sète, France, in 1871 and moved to Paris in 1894. He published the poem La Jeune Parque in 1917 and the poetry collection Charmes in 1922. He also wrote Monsieur Teste. He died in Paris in 1945.
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