The Graveyard by the Sea is a meditative poem by French poet Paul Valéry. The poem was inspired by the cemetery in his birthplace, Sète, where his parents were buried. Valéry considered the poem one of his finest meldings of lyric beauty with philosophical observation.

While the poem indicates that there is a profound sense of order in the universe, the order is not solely based on the mind’s logical apprehension of it. Thematically, the work is the poet’s reflection on the human condition—particularly mortality. The speaker is wandering among the tombstones in the cemetery while looking out over the ocean beside which the graveyard is located.

One of the strongest images in the poem is of the undulations of the sea that are offset by the stillness of the cemetery, in which the lifeless remains of once active human beings rest. The speaker philosophizes that the dead also remind the living of the permanence of certain things in the world—like the sun and the sky—that continue regardless of the relative shortness of human existence.

This realization gives the speaker renewed hope that even if an individual life is but a temporary occurrence in the greater scheme of the universe, human beings have the ability to view existence objectively and can take some consolation from their part in the overall cycle of existence.

From a psychological perspective, the vicissitudes of instinct are offset by the conscious personality that tends, by virtue of memory, to remain stable even though the conditions within which an individual finds him- or herself are subject to constant change. The poet conveys this sense of permanence by emphasizing the various cycles of the world: day and night, the ebb and flow of the tides, and the process of birth and death.

Even if an individual seems insignificant in the grander scheme of things, each life is an important contribution to the continuity of the human life cycle.

Categories: British Literature, French Literature, Literature

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