In 1927 poet Paul Valéry delivered his discours de réception, or initial speech, to the Académie Française after being elected two years earlier to fill the seat of Anatole France, who had died in October 1924. Remembering and resenting the fact that, in 1875, as an editorial reader for the third series of the famous poetry anthologies entitled Le Parnasse contemporain, France had excluded Stéphane Mallarmé's hermetic but very beautiful L'Après-midi d'un faune (1876; translated, 1956), Valéry, while following the convention according to which the new academician pays homage to his predecessor, damned France with somewhat ambiguous, if not faint, praise, suggesting in particular that his grace, clarity, and ease of style disguised superficiality of content; moreover, while affecting to speak of him, Valéry avoided all mention of his name. In 1924, on the occasion of...