Tal qual

The merits of literature, painting, music, and the arts in general within a society increasingly dominated by "science"; the dignity of the verses; the dubious opposition between classics and moderns; the successes and weaknesses of religions; the behavior of sensible people in the face of the stupidity of the majority; nature and the limits of human thought... By means of brief annotations -often only by means of ingenious aphorisms-, Valéry invites us in this book to a party for the intellect, a luminous state of the question of our civilization, of the evolution or intellectual retreat of mankind, and chiefly of the role of literature in the formation of the spirit of persons.