Prove you're still the same person you thought you were.

Reading note

Monsieur Teste

by Paul Valéry — read in November 2025

Dense book, full of meanings. Fragmented, assembled from writings, letters, and notes from different times and contexts. This character, Monsieur Teste, is a patafysical opposite: he masters reason, while material action remains foreign to him. Towards the end, the demon's question: prove you're still the same person you believed yourself to be.

The description of the train journey that inevitably leads to modern literature is wonderful.

His patafysical opposite naturally leads to La patafisica è l’arte del vedere.