“Among writers,” writes Valery, “I see no one who stands above Bossuet…”[1] Who is Bossuet? I pretend I know who Valery is, as I read with joy and appreciation: Bossuet was sure of his words, strong in this, and bold in that. Valery moreover writes:

Bossuet says what he wants to say. He is essentially calculating, as are all those who are called classic. He proceeds by construction, while we proceed by accident; he gambles on the expectations he creates, while the moderns gamble on surprise. He sets out powerfully from silence, little by little grows animated, swells, rises, arranges his sentence, which is sometimes built up into an arch supported by lateral propositions marvelously arrayed around the nucleus, and which reveals itself and brushes aside its incidentals that are surmounted in order, at last, to reach the climax and to come back to earth again, after prodigies of subordination and equilibrium, to a definite termination and to the complete resolution of its strength.[2]

The fact that we proceed by accident catches my imagination. Yes, yes, I affirm with joy and comprehension. By accident we affirm, we all affirm, we arch high, we dream vertiginously of the classics, we equilibrate, we tumble… And the classics, the calculating classics, follow us into the abyss of definite termination. By accident, of course.

To Julia Trilling

Footnotes

1. Valery, P., “On Bossuet,” pp. 206-207 in Selected Writings, New York: New Directions, 1950, p. 206.

2. Loc. cit.