Abstract

In his Cahiers , Valéry says that writing two of his major dialogues, Eupalinos and L’âme et la danse , was an antidote to his ravaging mood: literature and spirituality are the remedy generated by a necessary and not eliminable evil, particularly the one that shows itself as ‘rage’ in love. The essay investigates thoroughly this contradictory logic and focuses on the problem of sensitiveness in Valéry’s work, pointing out a twofold presence of the ‘body’. Preserving these two presences, the writing incessantly tries to make up “une fureur intelligente et expérimentale” and to give a new form, without deleting it, to sensitiveness’ acute pain