This is an informal collection of essays and speeches on the writers who in one way or another counted for Valery in the shaping of his mind or in his affections and interests: Descartes, Voltaire, Stendhal, Goethe, Villon, Nietzsche, Pascal, Proust, Huysmans, Pierre Louys, Nerval, Rilke, Bergson, and others. The volume presents, in an appendix, th