Abstract: This analysis of certain aspects of Valéry’s argumentation aims at illustrating some of his strategies as well as traps for the translator. According to Léon Brunschvicg, Valéry is an artistic Poincaré for his models are both the mathematician and the artist. The reader-translator of his Notebooks (a true laboratory of the mind) needs to look carefully at the framework and the functioning of words, with their strengths and weaknesses constantly at play in a given context.
