BORGES, Jorge Luis. Valery es simbolo de Europa y de su delicado crepuscolo; Whitman, de la manana en America.c. 1945. One densely-written folio sheet. Holograph manuscript of this essay originally published in Sur, number 132, 10/1945, pp..30-32 as an obituary essay for the proto-modernist, Paul Valéry, a literary hero to Borges in much the same way he was to T.S. Eliot. Condition: a little minor creasing. SIGNED BORGES HOLOGRAPH OBITUARY FOR ONE HIS FAVORED AUTHORS, PAUL VALERY. Herein, Borges compares, or rather dissociates, the poetry of Valéry from that of Whitman, only to find one unifying thread: that "their work is less precious as poetry than as a symbol of an exemplary poet." Borges closes this highly lyric and poignant eulogy of the great French poet by defining him as "a man who, in a century that adores the chaotic idols of blood, of the Earth and of passions, always preferred the lucid pleasures of thought and the secret adventures of order." Borges' admiration for Valery was quite understandable.They both believed in the transformative possibilities in the written word, of the text as canvas or matrix for infinite worlds. Valery put this succinctly: "A painter should not paint what he sees but what should be seen." Valéry is mentioned twice in the bibliography of Pierre Menard which accompanies the great masterpiece "Pierre Menard auctor del Quixote." Valéry was, in fact, something of a literary model for the extraordinary Menard, a modern author who seemed not much more than an erudite dabbler until the creation of a chapter and a few fragments of Don Quixote made apparent the profundity of his genius, which turned, like a Moebius strip on the past of letters. More than a dozen corrections and additions, three of the latter being entire sentences. Signed by Borges at the close.