“Monsieur Teste is a monster, and is meant to be—an awesome, wholly individualized machine—yet in a sense he is also the sort of inhuman being Valéry aimed to become himself: a Narcissus of the best kind, a scientific observer of consciousness, a man untroubled by inroads of worldly trivia, who vacations in his head the way a Platonist finds his Florida in the realm of Forms.” —William Gass Paul Valéry’s Monsieur Teste, an enigmatic exploration of the nature of consciousness and language, is on sale today in a stunning new translation by Charlotte Mandell.