The Graveyard by the Sea (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Paul Valéry
- First Published: 1922
- Type of Work: Meditation
- Genres: Poetry, Meditation
- Subjects: Philosophy or philosophers, Death or dying, Sea or seafaring life, Sheep, Life and death, Time, Tombs or graves, Cemeteries, Shepherds
The Poem
“The Graveyard by the Sea,” written in 1920, is Paul Valéry’s best-known poem. It consists of twenty-four stanzas of six lines each. The poet returns in imagination to the cemetery of Sète, a city on a cliff above the Mediterranean, where he was born and where he dreamed as a youth among the tombs of his ancestors. He imagines himself sitting on a tombstone at noon and contemplating the white sails on the calm sea, which he describes as doves pecking on a roof, while he wrestles with the problems of life and death, of being and nonbeing, and thinks about the...
[The entire page is 1508 words long]
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