2011 年 62 巻 1 号 p. 1-12
The aim of this paper is to investigate Paul Valery's criticism of description in literature and to clarify his ideal of poetry. Description is a technique to represent an object visually. Though an author chooses arbitrarily what he/she describes, he/she expects his/her reader to abstain the self and to obey him/her. Valery criticized this passiveness of reader and dominance of author. For Valery both reader and author have productive roles and they are completely separated two systems just like a producer and a consumer in a market economy. Through an act of reading, a reader finds abilities of his/her body which were unknown to himself/herself. This focusing on a reader's body is an ideal effect of poetry for Valery. While description involves a false reality, a pure poetry explores a reality of body. A work is not a messenger of feelings or thoughts of an author but a machine to make a reader's body act. A comparison with Breton's solution will make points of Valery's discussion more clear.