Biography

Though his earliest publications date from his mid-twenties, Valéry did not become a full-time writer until 1920, when the man for whom he worked as private secretary, a former chief executive of the Havas news agency, Edouard Lebey, died of Parkinson's disease. Until then, Valéry had, briefly, earned his living at the Ministry of War before assuming the relatively flexible post as assistant to the increasingly impaired Lebey, a job he held for some twenty years.

Oscar-winning Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki's 2013 film The Wind Rises and the Japanese novel of the same name (on which the film was partially based) take their title from Valéry's verse "Le vent se lève... il faut tenter de vivre !" ("The wind rises... We must try to live!") in the poem "Le Cimetière marin" (The Graveyard by the Sea). The same quote is used in the closing sentences of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel The Wanting Seed.

In 1900, he married Jeannine Gobillard, a friend of Stéphane Mallarmé's family, who was also a niece of the painter Berthe Morisot. The wedding was a double ceremony in which the bride's cousin, Berthe Morisot's daughter, Julie Manet, married the painter Ernest Rouart. Valéry and Gobillard had three children: Claude, Agathe and François.

Valéry was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 12 different years.

Valéry died in Paris in July 1945. He is buried in the cemetery of his native town, Sète, the same cemetery celebrated in his famous poem Le Cimetière marin.