richard stamleman on francis ponge

8/6/2019 Richard Stamleman on Francis Ponge

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Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

University of Oklahoma

From Muteness to Speech: The Drama of Expression in Francis Ponge's PoetryAuthor(s): Richard StamelmanSource: Books Abroad, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 688-694Published by: Board of Regents of the University of OklahomaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40128153 .Accessed: 03/03/2011 22:02

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688 BOOKSABROADFP: Instead of being lyricalabout mechanicalthings! You know ... it is rather com-plicated, and it is too long for me to go into it at the moment, but I had initiallythought of placing in exergue to my "Prelude du savon" a little red frame with"Fasten your seatbelts"[said in English]. You see? That's it. That is because it issomething you read at the moment of take-off,or when the weather is turbulent.Andthis something that is read at a moment when there is nothing to be seen on the out-side, since you are traveling inside clouds,or when you are taking off, or landing. Atthat moment, one reads.Well, I had thought that was what had to be placed there,and then I found it to be slightly too surrealistic, lightly too dada,too calligrammaticand I am now against using means that are a little too visible. Things have got tobe in the text and not expressedin too visible a manner.

BarnardCollege, ColumbiaUniversity

From Muteness to Speech: The Dramaof Expression in Francis Ponge's PoetryBy RICHARDSTAMELMAN

U expression est pour moi la seule ressource.La rage jroide de Vexpression.1For twenty-three years,from 1942until 1965,Francis Ponge kept a voluminous dos-sierof detailednotes describingthe unique qualitiesof a very common and unsingularobject: soap. Like the "Barrington'slemonflavoured soap" which Leopold Bloombuys early in James Joyce'sUlysses2and which he carries with him as he wandersthrough Dublin, so that it bears silent witness to his activities,his encountersand hisexperiences,so Ponge'snotes on soapaccompaniedhim whereverhe traveled,especial-ly during the war years when real soap was unavailable in France. Over the courseof the yearshe constantlyreturned to these notes, as, over the course of Bloomsday,Leopold's thoughts keep returning to the soap resting in his pocket.

Ponge began the soap-dossieras a way of fulfilling his need and desire for soap.By describingthe absent and unobtainableobject and by keeping it at the center ofhis preoccupations,Ponge was able to manufacture a form of the very object helacked.As a poet, or as a "technicien . . du langage" ("Texte sur Pelectricite,"Lyres,p. 149), as he prefersto call himself, finding the word "poet"too lofty an appellation,Ponge createda text composedof observations,descriptions, ottings and notes, whichmade the objectof his desireas real and as easy to placebetween his fingers as if he infact did have a bar of soap within reach. By means of language and through the pro-


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STAMELMAN 689cess or act of writing, by which words and sounds deploy themselves on a blank pieceof paper,anew kind of object,a text, is created,and this text, entitled Le savon, posses-ses a structure,a style, a sense of proportion,and a manner of acting similar to thoseof the soap. "IIne s'agit pas," writes Ponge, "de 'rendre,'de 'representedle mondephysique, si vous voulez, mais de presenter dans le monde verbal quelque chosed'homologue.. . ." (Entretiens,p. 48.) The act of writing enablesPonge to substitute atext-object "ce dossier avon, ce savon-dossier"(Le savon, p. 12) for a real object,the soap itself. But the use of the word "substitute" s misleading because the move-ment from the object-in-the- orld, the bar of soap, to the object-that-is-the-poem,hetext, is more than the substitution of one thing for another. Rather, Ponge's poemsdramatize the radical transformationof the object of the poet's desire and his con-templation, the objet-chose,I will call it, into a different and original form, namelya text, an ob et-description.This conversion is initiated, mediated and accomplished through the operationof language, and, in particular, he languageof description.3All things, Ponge believes,yearn to expressthemselves,and they mutely await the coming of the word so thatthey may reveal the hidden depths of their being. The word penetratesthrough thetough skins and the closed surfacesof things, opening up a vast space and animatinga dormant,microscopicworld of unrevealedqualities which define the essential indi-vidualityof the objectand its fundamental difference from all other things that existor will ever exist. The word gives breath to the object, causing it to vibrate and itssounds to reverberatewithin the newly uncovered interior landscape: "II faut dusouffle,"writes Ponge, "pourfaire vibrer dans chaque chose sa corde sensible"{Mai-herbe,p. 310) Expressionhas begun, and since "Tout n'estque paroles"("Des raisonsd'ecrire,"PPC, p. 163), the possibilitiesfor expressionin the world are inexhaustible:... a proposdes choses es plus simples l est possiblede faire des discours nfinisentierementomposesde declarationsnedites,enfin... a proposde n'importequoinon seulement out n'estpas dit, maisa peu prestout restea dire. ("Introductionau galet,"PPC,p. 173.)

Everything in the world of Ponge is envisioned as an act of expression that isconstantly in progress.In a sense, there are no acts that are not also essentiallyactsof language. The careful,microscopicobservationof a thing by the poet, the detailedscrutinyof its "qualit.es ifferentielles,"he naivete and love with which he approachesthe object,the intrusion by the poet's mind into the intimacy of the object's interiorlandscape,the generositywith which he surrendershis own being to its attraction, hetotal engagement of his mind and consciousnesswith the geography of the object-all these acts, which for Ponge constitute contemplation, occur through languageand during the operationby which the text is written. Contemplation is inseparablefrom writing:. . . il ne s'agit vraimentpas de contemplationa proprementparlerdans mamethode,mais d'une contemplationellementactive,ou la nominations'eflectueaussitot,d'uneoperation,a plumea la main .... ("Tentativeorale,"Methodes,p.260.)

For Ponge contemplationis nominative.It is not a passivemental act of medita-tion, but, rather,a truly creativeact where the naming of a thing signals the birth ofthat thing. The act by which the poet sees an object,as if for the first time and with


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690 BOOKS ABROADthe wonder, joy and excitement of the first man on earth, and the act by which henames and describes that object are contemporaneous.It is what Ponge calls "leregard-de-telle-sorte-qu'on-le-parle""Les Facons du regard,"PPC, p. 120). And thesetting for this "regard," he place where it happens, is the blank page of paper. Itis here that the object is reborn as text, or more precisely,that the ob et-choseis con-verted into the objet-description.Out of muteness comes speech and out of passivityand petrificationcomes an actively moving object.The act of speech,which the object-in-the-worldacquires,heralds its projectioninto being; as Ponge remarks:

Bois de pins, sortez de la mort, de la non-remarque, e la non-conscience! . .Surgissez,bois de pins, surgissezdans la parole.L'on ne vous connait pas.Donnez votreformule.("Le Carnetdu boisde pins,"TP, pp. 338-39.)The transformationof objet-chose nto objet-description onstitutes the drama of

expression in Ponge's work. How this occurs, the process by which language con-verts an object-in-the- orld into a text, is one of Ponge's major preoccupationsandthe subject,either implicit or explicit, of most of his poems and writings. He is thescientistof the phenomenonof expression,seeking answers to questionsabouthow theexpression unctions,what changesoccurwhen it is under way, and what effectsresultfrom its operation. The conversion of objet-choseto objet-description s studied byPonge as if it were a physicalphenomenon akin to the change from a gas to a liquidstate, and, in fact, this analogy is not farfetched,for in La Seine (TP, pp. 537-39)Ponge develops a notion that equates the three states of matter (solid, liquid, gas)with three statesof expression (object, word, mind). As cold can change water to ice,so the adventof words, the act of writing, can change one object,the objet-chose, ntoanother, the objet-description.The title of one of Ponge's most beautiful "proemes"aptly expressesthis conversion: "De la modificationdes choses par la parole" {PPC,pp. 122-23).Words modify things, and a Ponge text simultaneouslydramatizes and activatesthis modification.At once, it convertsthe objet-chose nto the objet-description nd atthe same time describes the very processof conversion that is taking place. Pongeis like a magician who performs tricks of appearanceand disappearancewherebythings are transformedinto other things, while, at the very moment of the trick,calling his spectators'attention to the way in which the trick has been performed.The process of conversion is as important as the conversion itself. This explainsPonge's insistence that his texts should function more than they should mean ("Lemurmure,"Methodes, p. 201). They function as catalystsin an act of descriptionbywhich a real object becomes a text. Ponge's work on "la Seine," for example, is atonce the descriptionof a river, a cours d'eau, and that of a text, a discours,with allthe multiple parallels that exist between the two. The poet's acts of contemplation,descriptionand writing, which are essentially he sameact,"ferontde la Seine ce livre,"writes Ponge (TP, p. 541). They literallymake the river, the objet-chose, nto a book,an objet-description, nd at the same time dramatize the transformationof which theyare the cause. The art of descriptionas used by Ponge is not a technique of static,fixed representationby which exterior realities or things are expressed categoricallyonce and for all. On the contrary, t is a process,an act, that literallymoves the objectinto being.


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STAMELMAN 691Ponge's poetic texts dramatize the struggle for verbalization of an ob et-chose,while being, in their own right, a "verbalisationen acte" (Entretiens, p. 97). Thestory of the quest of the ob et-chosefor expressionoccurs at the same moment thatthe objet-description,he text, is unfolding. What interestsPonge above all is the act

by which expressionis taking place. He is more preoccupiedwith the processof ex-pressionthan with the products or creations it generates, more concerned with themaking of the text than with the text itself, as he explains to Philippe Sollers

. . . maisil ne s'agit pastellementde dire,au sens 'd'avoirdit,' il s'agitde dire ausens transitifdu 'dire,' c'est-a-dire e parler dans le moment present,commehomme,commeanimal,dans e momentpresent, t demontrer omment es chosesse font dans le momentmeme, de creerla communicationdirecte,non par larecitationd'un produitfini, mais par l'exempled'une operationen acte, d'uneparole (et done d'unepensee)a l'etatnaissant. Entretiens,p. 99.)An indication of Ponge's commitment to process at the expense of product isevident in the provisionaland incomplete nature of his writings. His texts show akind of "'tremblementde certitude'" (Malherbe, p. 143) in the discursive and expan-sive way they have of moving forward. They generate a certitude which, because itis in the process of being formulated, trembles with indecision and reverberates

tenuously. Ponge's preoccupation with process testifies to what Sollers calls his"volonti d'inachevementperpetuel" (Entretiens, p. 19). What Ponge has written isnever allowed to petrify into a definite form, and in this respecthe would appeartoshare Sartre'shorrorof the en soi and to do battleagainst it by attemptingto make ofeach of his texts a pour soi, something still susceptibleto modification. Ponge's loveof processexplains, perhaps,why he is continuouslyrewriting his texts, adding bitsand pieces to them, beginning them anew, incorporating new variants into textsalreadyin progress,repeatinghis expressionsover and over again in different genres(sometimes in poetry, sometimes in prose) in different typographies (sometimes inroman characters,sometimes in capitals, sometimes in italics) and in different ar-rangements.4The perpetualrectificationthat Ponge sees as essential to his work ofdescription-definitionundoes the fixity and the characterof en-soi which all objects,that are in a mute and unanimated state before the advent of language, possess. Itis in this need for process,perhaps,that Ponge reveals an existentialistpenchant. Inan absurdworld acts alone give meaning, and in Ponge's world the act of contempla-tion qua nomination qua description qua writing affords the only meaning in anotherwisemeaninglessuniverse.For Ponge the act of writing is an existential act.

Only a poeticsof process,as is found in Ponge's writings, a poetics that will con-tinually revise texts and place them in a state of active becoming, can hope to guidethe transformationof ob et-choseinto objet-description-, s Ponge writes:

En revenir oujours l'objet ui-meme,a ce qu'ila de brut,de different:diffe-rent en particulier e ce que j'ai deja (a ce moment)ecritde lui.Que mon travailsoit celui d'unerectification ontinuellede mon expression(sans soucia prioride la forme de cette expression)en faveurde l'objetbrut("Bergesde la Loire,"TP, p. 257.)

As Ponge suggests,a returnto the "objetbrut" s in order,especiallyif the dramaof expression s to be understood.For not only is Ponge concernedwith the act or theprocessby which the ob et-chose is converted to the objet-description,he is acutely


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692 BOOKS ABROADsensitive to the gestures, the motions, the acrobatics,and above all to the feelings ofthe ob et-choseas it journeys from the world of the res to the world of the text. Adramaof expression,in which joy, jubilation, ecstasy,enthusiasm,exhilaration,pain,sadness,and death play a part, unfolds around the movement toward speech of theob et-chose, its subsequent disappearance,and the resulting formation of the ob et-description.The scenario for this drama takes the following general form in suchpoems as he savon, La Seine (TP), "L'orange" PPC), and "Le lezard" (Pieces), toname but a few. The objectlies imprisonedin its silence until awakened by a word,which whets the object'sappetite for expression.Verbalizationbegins, and the objectinitiates its struggleand drive for expression,a quest that finally culminatesin the joyand jubilationof expression,but at the same time in the disappearanceof the object,which is transformed nto a new form, the text. As the ob et-choseslowly disappears,its words construct a new object. Language invades and fills the forming, growingvoid left by the self-exhaustingob et-chosein proportionto and in rhythm with itsdisappearance.Thus, the act of self-expression by the ob et-chose is an act of self-sacrifice.In order to create a presence, the object must destine itself to absence. Itliterally ex-presses tself, squeezing its inner being outward, by means of language,toward depletion. And yet this dramatic act of projective self-expressionand self-extinction reverberateswith joy, for the object has succeededin ecstatically revealingthe intimacy of its uniqueness.5This drama of expression,which is both dramatizedin Ponge's poems as well as activatedand accomplished by them, lies at the heart ofhis notion concerning the roles played by poet, object and language in artistic crea-tion: the poet and the object die so that the text may come to life:La deuxiemepersonne,quanta moi, enfin,c'estevidemment, i vousvoulez,pouraller tresvite, la chose,l'objetqui provoque e desir et qui, lui aussi,meurt, . . .dansToperation ui consistea fairenaitre e texte.Done, il y a morta la fois del'auteur t mortde l'objetdu desir,mettonsde la chose,du pre-texte,du referent,pourque puissenaitre e texte. (Entretiens,p. 171.)

The emphatic verbalization of the ob et-choseand its dramaticdisappearance snowhere better expressed by Ponge than in Le savon. The drama of soap centersaround the transformation hat occurs when soap,inert, stone-like,mute and sufferingfrom a painful reticenceas it sits in a soapdish, suddenlycomes to life in water,whereit begins to lead "une existence dissolue" (p. 25), expressing itself with jubilating,effervescentsuds. Touched by water the soap changes state; it becomes a "pierreba-varde" (p. 35); it froths and foams; "le savon ecume, jubile" (p. 26). The soap hasmuch to sayand does so by generouslygiving of itself, communicatingbubbles,lather,suds and scents, in sum its being, its "soapness," o the water. But this gift of self,this joyful volubility, this expressivenessexhaust the soap. When taken from thewater it has almost disappeared,so greatly reduced is it in size and so formless inshape.The soap "'a fait la vie'" (p. 104). The drama of the soap, which is also thedramaof expression, s reflected n the conflictexperienced by the soap between mute-ness, and therefore self-preservation for forgotten, the soap becomes hard, crackedand dry on the one hand, and expressionwith its consequent self-depletion,on theother.An interesting aspectof Le savon, aside from Ponge's desire to expresshis sub-


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STAMELMAN 693ject in "un style savonneux, moussant, ecumeux" (p. 27) 6 is the way in which thestory of the soap'sacquisitionof speech becomes a metaphor by which Ponge showshow Le savon text is formed. The poem's "theme,"as expressedhesitantly in theopening pages of the book, is compared to the shy, dormant soap lying in its dish.The exuberantvariationsand digressions of the text are said to resemble the frothand foam generated by the soap in water (p. 32). The soap is shown to act like aword because it possessesthe properties,gestures and movements of language.7 InLe savon,soapand word enacta dramaof expression hat is common to them both.The fundamental subject of Ponge's texts concerns the making of the text, theprocessof expression by which an objet-chose,recently born to language, expressesitself and thus gives birth to a text, an objet-description.Although one could say thata Ponge text, like Le savon,presentsan allegoryabout poetic creationand the genesisof poems, this would be misleading,for there is no reference n Ponge's texts, as therewould be in an allegory, to a reality existing outside of the text and for which thetext would be a symbolicrepresentation. n Ponge's poetry the text refersto itself andto itself alone. If referenceis indeed made to something, it is only to the dramaof theob et-chose' death and the consequentbirth of the ob et-description,and that dramaexists nowhere but in and through the words of the poem, not the poem as a finishedproductbut as a process.The only thing the text "represents"s its own surging intobeing through language, its own act of expression.Ultimately, the text signifies itself.Ponge seeswriting,

non commela transcription,elon un code conventionnel,de quelque idee (ex-terieureou anterieure),mais a la verite comme un orgasme:comme l'orgasmed'une etre, ou disonsd'une structure,deja conventionnellepar elle-meme,bienentendu maisqui doit,pour s'accomplir,e donner,avecjubilation, ommetelleren un mot, se signifierelle-meme. Le savion,p. 127.)The joy, jubilation, ecstasy and pleasure of self-expression,this is what Pongemeans by his notion of an ecriture-orgasme. n ecstasy, an objet-choseexpresses its

being and then expires; and out of this ecstasy surges the objet-description, he text,whose only purpose,accordingto Ponge, is to "donner a jouir"("My creativemethod,"Methodes, p. 22), to give enjoyment to man and to remind him of "le bonheur devivre"(Malherbe,p.29l):

For the wandererdoesn'tbringfromthe mountain lopea handfulof earthto thevalley,untellable arth,but only some word he haswon, a pureword,the yellowand bluegentian.Arewe, perhaps,herejust for saying:House,Bridge,Fountain,Gate,Jug,Olivetree,Window, possibly:Pillar,Tower? . . . but for saying,re-member,oh, for suchsayingas never the thingsthemselveshopedso intensely obe. Is not the secretpurposeof this sly earth, n urging a pair of lovers,just tomake everything eap with ecstasy n them?8

WesleyanUniversity1 Le parti pris des choses, p. 205. In this articlethe following abbreviated itles will be used to referto Ponge's works: Entretiens(Entretiensde FrancisPonge avec PhilippeSollers,Paris; Gallimard/Seuil,1970); Lyres (Le grand recueil. I. Lyres, Paris,

Gallimard, 1961); Malherbe (Pour un Malherbe,Paris,Gallimard,1965); Methodes(Methodes,Coll."Idees,"Paris,Gallimard,1961); PPC (Le partipris

des choses, suivi de Proemes.Coll. "Poesie,"Paris,Gallimard, 1942, 1948); Pieces (Pieces, Coll."Poesie," Paris, Gallimard, 1962); Le savon (Lesavon, Paris, Gallimard, 1967); and TP (Tomepremier,Paris,Gallimard, 1965).2 New York, The ModernLibrary,1961, pp. 85,672.


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694 BOOKSABROAD3 For Ponge descriptionand the act of describingconstitute a means for figuring the being and for

generatingthe being-thereness f an object.His goalis at once to describeand define the object:Ne pourrait-on maginer une sorte d'ecrits (nou-veaux) qui, se situant a peu pres entre lcs deuxgenres (definition et description), emprunteraientau premierson infaillibilite,son indubitabilite,sabrievete aussi, au second son respect de l'aspectsensoriel des choses. ("My creative method,"Methodes,pp. 11-12)4 It is also true that Ponge's repetitions enablehim to re-contemplatean object and to describe itfrom a new point of view, like someone who, intrying to extract a root from the ground, contin-uously changes the position from which he grabs

hold of the object.Each repriseis an attempt at are-expression. See "L'oeillet,"TP, p. 303.)5 This blissful moment is lyrically evoked byPonge as follows:Voyez-vous, le moment beni, le moment heu-reux, et par consequentle moment de la verite,c'est lorsque la verite jouit (pardonnez-moi).C'est le moment ou l'objet jubile, si je puis dire,sort de lui-meme ses qualites; le moment ou seproduit une espece de floculation: la parole, le

bonheur d'expression. ("Tentative orale," Me-thodes,p. 264.)6 Since for Ponge the form of a poem is in someway determinedby its subject ("My creativemeth-od," Methodes, p. 37), many of his texts exhibitstructures,styles of writing and syntacticalformswhich resemblethe qualitiesof the objectbeing de-scribedby those texts. See, for example, the descrip-tion of a forest in spring, which is expressed in"une espece de printemps de paroles" ("Tentativeorale," Methodes, p. 257), and the portrait of awasp presented n a lurching, zig-zag, and piquantmanner ("La guepe," TP, p. 270).7 This kind of self-consciouscommentary s quitesimilarto the analogybetweenword and thing thatPonge makes in his poem "Le lezard" (Pieces, pp.

84-88). Here a skillful convergenceoccursbetweenthe lizardand its name.Pongeachievesa remarkableidentificationbetweenthe white stone wall in whosecracks the lizard dwells, when he is not jumpingout to devour flies, and the white page of paperfrom the interior of which gray thoughts (on thesubject of a lizard, perhaps) dart out to swallowwords that have alighted onto the surface.8 RainerMariaRilke. Duino Elegies. J. B. Leish-man and Stephen Spender, trs. New York, W. W.Norton and Company, 1967, p. 75.

The Making of the Art WorkBy BETH ARCHER BROMBERT"Lepre est une des chosesdu monde les plus difficiles" 228)} Yet, this is preciselythetask Ponge set for himself and laboredover from 1960to 1964: to speak, to tell, toexplain,to extoll thatexpanseof green prepared or us by nature.Few writershave lefta recordof themselves in the processof creation,and even fewer a record in whichthe totalityof the fragmentsconstitutesa genre of its own: "la fabrique," he making,the becoming of the art work, the concretizationof an unfolding future; and con-versely, the ruin- the Greek temple, the Norman abbey- assumes a characterof itsown, not merely as the part of a former whole, but as the monument of a perpetualpast. This eternal becoming or eternal returning the processby which the materialobject evolves into a word object2- is as central to Ponge's work as is nature, for itmirrorsthe cyclic regeneration, he continuous presentand continuous past of natureand the WORD. The sixty-four pages of La fabrique du pre (which Ponge recentlytold me representonly a third of the total document) allow us to follow from con-ception to maturity the four-yeargestation which producedLe pre. They also revealthis singular process of poetic evolution which bestows on the finished work thesubstanceof the past and the possibilityof future avatarsas connotationschange, inmuch the same way as any naturalobjectcontinuesto mutate. "Le pre est l'emulation

richard stamleman on francis ponge

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