Paul Valéry (1871–1945) is one of the most multifaceted figures in the culture of the twentieth century: poet, essayist, thinker, playwright, but most importantly, a seeker of keys to French and world culture, a master of the most complex ciphers and decryptions in which mathematics found itself the key to poetry, and dance the key to philosophy. The Russian reader became acquainted with the texts of this author thanks to the long-standing collection “Paul Valéry on Art,” prepared by V. Kozov. In this edition, for the first time, Valery is so fully revealed as a thinker and philosopher of European culture, which he perceived as a single whole, as a stronghold of the entire Western and world civilization. Compiler and translator M. Taimanova carefully selected the author’s texts so that “carefully developed feelings, thoughts, impulses would turn into food for the mind and soul.” The book includes memoirs, dialogues, reflections on the method, literary, metaphysical and cultural-historical essays, aphorisms and fragments of the famous “Notebooks”. Most of the texts included in the book in Russian are published for the first time.