VALERY IN LOVE
On the night of 4-5 October, 1892, in Genoa, Paul Valéry swore that never would he love anyone, at least not like that, the first time in Montpellier, when he was just a lad turning eighteen, and fell under the bewitchment of a "gracieuse Montpelliéraine". Madame de Rovira was a Catalan widow, 37 years old. Valery called her 'la petite comtesse", though she was really a baroness. When he saw her for the first time, in the summer of 1889, it was like falling in love with the Sylvie of Gerard de Nerval or the Châteaubriand's sylph suddenly reincarnated in Madame de Rovira. Totally spellbound and desperate, he asked his friend Pierre Louys for advice. Louys, despite being as young as Valéry, was already an erotomaniac, taking photos of all his lovers in the nude with his Kodak. However, the virgin Valéry rather loved the "chimeric", the "imaginary" of the woman, not her tangible voluptuousness. This infatuation was a disaster for his emotional a...