A collection of Valéry’s essays and speeches on a wide range of philosophers, novelists, and poets Masters and Friends is a collection of Paul Valéry’s essays and speeches on writers who shaped his mind, interests, and affections: Descartes, Voltaire, Stendhal, Goethe, Villon, Nietzsche, Pascal, Proust, Huysmans, Pierre Louÿs, Nerval, Rilke, Bergson, and others. The volume also includes an appendix of Valéry’s private comments on these writers in his Notebooks. The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, the first collected edition of the writer in English, features new translations, the original French on facing pages for poetic works, and editorial notes.