Heir to Mallarmé and the symbolists, and godfather to the modernists, Paul Valéry stands with Rilke and Eliot as a bridge between the tradition of the nineteenth century and the novelty of the twentieth. His reputation as a poet rests on three slim volumes published within only ten years. These poems, though, are inseparable from another, much vaster intellectual and artistic enterprise: his notebooks. The Idea of Perfection shows both sides of Paul Valéry: the craftsman of sublimely refined verse and the fervent investigator of the limits of human intellect and expression. This edition intersperses his major collections of poetry-Album of Early Verse, The Young Fate, and Charms-with incisive passages from the notebooks and closes with his final work, the moving prose poem The Angel. Masterfully translated by Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody, The Idea of Perfection breathes new life into poems that are among the most beautiful in the French language and the most influential of the twentieth century. Book jacket.