ABSTRACT
Paul Valéry was the most self-conscious of artists. The creative or form-making power of the mind, the virtu formativa, was his central theme all his life. Much of his critical and philosophical prose is devoted to it, from 'The Method of Leonardo' onward. Even his poems may often be read as poems about poem-making. The legend of Amphion, who first received the lyre from Apollo, and through the formative power of music became the father of the arts, inspired Valéry in his youth with its operatic possibilities, as he explains in his illuminating lecture on the libretto he finally wrote. Valéry's preface to Semiramis explains his intentions in that work: he was dreaming, as usual, of a theater-poem in which all the elements would be strictly unified, as in a lyric; but he ruefully foresaw that the conceptions of collaborating performers, designers, and musicians would have to be taken into account.
