Valéry claimed that photography performed the same service for writing, by
exposing the “illusory” claim of language to “convey the idea of a visual object
with any degree of precision.” But writers should not fear that photography
“might ultimately restrict the importance of the art of writing and act as its
substitute,” Valéry says in “The Centenary of Photography” (1929). If
photography “discourages us from describing,” he argues,we are thus reminded of
the limits of language and are advised, as writers, to put our tools to a use
more befitting their true nature. A literature would purify itself if it left to
other modes of expression and production the tasks which they can perform far
more effectively, and devoted itself to ends it alone can accomplish … one of
which [is] the perfecting of language that constructs or expounds abstract
thought, the other exploring all the variety of poetic patterns and resonances.
