REVIEW: “‘Monsieur Teste’: All in His Head,” Wall Street Journal
by Diane Mehta, Wall Street Journal
“He breaks your spirit with a word,” says Émilie, the wife of the title character of “Monsieur Teste” (a play on tête, or head, in French). He is a man who is all intellect and who divides the world into things that are possible and impossible. The young poet Paul Valéry published the novella in 1896, at a time of intense artistic innovation. Only a few years earlier, Valéry had fallen in with the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé and his circle, and was influenced by the great poet’s restless syntax and unconventional language.
“Monsieur Teste” follows its hero on a fully interior quest, driven by the logic of the system he is developing to figure out how his mind operates. The book is composed of nine sections that resemble a cohesive story, but as it unfolds, the paragraphs that are neatly scripted with scenes and dialogue begin to loosen and the text begins to break up. The effect is that of chunks of icebergs floating on the page, surrounded by white space. What are we to make of this? Is it a parody of intellectuals trying to live a life of the mind, or is this the life of the mind itself?