Paul Valery

Abrupt Changes in a Selfsame Thing


Sometimes our attention is strangely and abruptly arrested by an idea, a recollection, a corner of some piece of furniture.  All at once, it seems as though we were seeing something for the first time that we have seen a thousand times; or we perceive the coming of age--the puberty of an impression.

An idea in its sudden force seems more real; and yet we have thought of it many times before, and even close-up, even with deliberation;--but this time it is, as it were, tangible.  This face looks at me.  In the same way it often happens that we understand something only long afterwards: an intention, a text, a person,--oneself.  We discover the significance of a look addressed to us twenty years ago by someone now dead; and the meaning of a phrase; and the beauty of a line of poetry we have known by heart since childhood.



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