Zilberberg with Valéry

Abstract

The poet-philosopher Paul Valéry has been present with constancy and frequency in the works of Claude Zilberberg. Zilberberg with Valéry, not Zilberberg and or about Valéry, but with ―an intellectual and passionate solidarity never betrayed. This paper proposes an exhaustive analysis of more or less two hundred quotations of Valéry in the complete works of Zilberberg. More important still than the details of these analyses is the reconstruction of the foundational philosophy of Valéry as ground and source of Zilberberg’s semiotic thought during the thirty years of his research life. Valéry’s thought with its incredible coherence comes back in its totality in the intuitions and concepts of tensive semiotics as it was created by Claude Zilberberg. This foundational philosophy can be considered to be the flesh of Zilberberg’s writings. If Hjelmslev is the method, Valéry is the flesh, if Hjelmslev is the form, Valéry is the substance. From Valéry to Zilberberg, the transmission has been fusional, even empathic: the meaning of the notions remains strictly identical (“expectation, surprise, event, generation, suddenness”) as well as the argumentative pulsing. This has been in fact a pure and total transmission.