VALÉRY (Paul). The Young Park. Paris: Nouvelle Revue Française, 1917. - In-4, half parchment at the bradel, smooth spine, gilt head, untrimmed, cover preserved (binding from the second half of the 20th century). First edition of one of the major works of 20th century French poetry. "After twenty years of silence, Paul Valéry published in 1917 a very long poem, La Jeune Parque, which immediately brought him fame. ...] To flesh out his old poems, he thought of adding to them a piece by some forty Alexandrians. When the war came, to alleviate his anguish, he imposed on himself the most rigorous prosodic constraints. From this gigantic effort - Paul Valéry covered no less than eight hundred pages of sketches to give the five hundred verses of La Jeune Parque their final form - was born the work in which "extreme sensuality, extreme intellectuality, extreme musicality" merge in a harmony rarely equalled" (Paul Valéry, Exposition du centenaire, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, 1971, page 49). He was responding to the wishes of two of his friends, André Gide, the dedicatee of the collection, and Gaston Gallimard. Edition at 600 copies; this one is one of the 575 on Arches laid paper, very well preserved.