Things in Recent French Literature

Author(s): J. Robert Loy

Source: PMLA, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Mar., 1956), pp. 27-41
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/460189
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THINGS

IN

RECENT

FRENCH

By J. Robert

LITERATURE

Loy

Crains dans le mur aveugle, un regard qui t'epie

A la matiere meme un verbe est attache?Nerval
0 ressources infiniesde Pepaisseur des choses rendues par les ressources infiniesde
l'epaisseur semantique des mots!?Ponge
THE SECOND
world war, journalistic critics and generalizing
SINCE
cultural pundits have been pointing out to us that serious French
literature is headed, on the one hand, toward an eventually sterile period
of realistic despair, and, on the other, toward an intensification of difficult writing characterized by a kind of supreme indifference to audience
on the part of the creator. Examples to prove their point are not lacking.
There would seem to be, however, at least one other trend in recent
French writing which, although owing something, perhaps, in the way of
formation or occasion for reaction to the two types mentioned, falls not
at all into such categories. For lack of a better name, and in order to
avoid painful jargon, this literature might best be called a literature of
Things.
The Things would include all that is inanimate matter, natural or
man-made, the crude stone as well as the objet d'art, as well as, thanks
to a comfortable anthropocentrism, those growing and living plants and
animals not endowed with a rational mind and the faculty of speech.1
At the outset, let it be clear that this use of the word Things does not
include the usual background, or descriptive, or secondary use of things
so common in the novel from the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Thus, we are not concerned here with the historical and descriptive
backdrop of the Romantics (Hugo's sewers in Les Miserables), or with
the documentary display of wares in the Naturalists (Zola's meats and
vegetables in Le Ventre de Paris), or the long studies of things which
are, in another way, so important a part of Proust's world. We are,
metaphysically and stylistically, worlds away from the special objectivesubjective vision of Flaubert which Georges Poulet calls his pensee
circulaire.2 To the exclusion of persons and ideas, the inanimate object
becomes the literary subject; it is the persons, if any, the ideas and the
emotions that form the descriptive background, if and when it exists.
1 Thus, therealmofanimalliterature(Colette,medievalfabliaux,etc.) does not

properly
forthe motivationof such writing,its charmand attraction,
fall underobject-literature,
lie in the fantasyof animalsplayingmen.
2 "La Pens6e circulairede Flaubert" in NNRF, xxxi (1955), 30-52, as well as Poulet's
pointof departurein ErichAuerbach,Mimesis (Princeton,1953), pp. 482-491.
27

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28

"Things"

in Recent French Literature

This study, then, proposes to review, tentatively, what seems to be one

of the more important recent literary manifestations, and to suggest that
the Things themselves have either directly or indirectly influenced the
means of expression.
It must be seen from the start that French literature in the past
century has spoken little of Things per se. The Romantics were too
fond of their own emotional status to consider the inanimate object save
in a very secondary manner as the repository for or catalyst of their own
feelings. The Parnassians used Things as a means toward achieving a
cold, plastic picture of beauty, but they were less interested in the things

themselves than in the static effect of the work conjured up by them.

The Symbolists, almost by definition, were interested in what lay behind
the Thing and came close to rehabilitating it. But their very insistence
on the suggestiveness, the subtlety, the hermetic quality of symbolic
expression prevented them from calling a spade a spade. The giants like
Mallarme and Valery are equally far from the Thing as object. Mallarme
wilfully laboring after the difHcult, delighting in the obfuscation of ideas
and forms, was not a friend of Things; the flower "absente de tous bouquets" is not that peculiarly organized collection of matter which one

can pluck, handle and admire. Valery's concern with Monsieur Teste
and the processes of intellectual effort is not immediately involved with
the shape, substance, and texture of objects. The Impressionists, the
for a moment to be
the Symbolists?seem
Cubists, the Surrealists?like
on the track of Things. But surrealism was a revolution and primarily
an intellectual revolution; one does not make a revolution against
Things.3 Searching for a new and more honest mode of communication
in which the Thing was to play a major role, surrealism failed in its
incapability to communicate from things up, rather than from the
intellect down. Those closest to Things from symbolism to surrealism
were also those most concerned with style and expression. Sensing the
importance of objects, yet too much in revolt against traditional com?

munication, exceedingly distrustful of words, they ended by retreating

into a difHcult, over-refined and elliptical world of the mind where
Things existed, to be sure, but only oneirocritically and hazily, far removed from the world of matter.
For the Things which interest us here are of solid matter. They have
name and substance and extension. And although they possess secondary
symbolic and oneiric attributes, they must still look and sound and feel
like the material objects they are when communication between writer
and reader is first made. This kind of Thing, roughly speaking, makes
8 Rene*Crevel,however,comes many times
in his general
veryclose to object-writing
and repeatedplea fora returnto the world as it is. See particularlythe conclusionsof
Le Clavecinde Diderot(Paris: EditionsSurr&distes,1932), pp. 62-63, 128-129.

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/. Robert Loy

29

its most recent appearance in French literature after 1930, with a noticeable concentration of frequency and clarity following the second world
war. One can as yet speak of no movement; indeed, the individual treatment given by each artist to his stock of Things seems to preclude the
possibility of a movement. Some of the writers were formerly surrealists
as seems natural when one considers that Apollinaire, at the threshold
of surrealism, had on occasion written of such material objects. All of
them have lived through the confusion common to the twentieth century,
and the moral and philosophic readjustment in France after the second
war. They come now to Things in varying degrees of directness and
immediacy. It is our conviction that they come to them as a new point
of departure for both literature and general world outlook, out of the
crisis of meaning in letters and out of the realm of absurdity and despair
in philosophy.
A discussion of this new direction falls naturally into two broad compartments: the meaning behind Things, or the reason for the attraction
they hold for writers; the accompanying changes in means of literary
communication in a literature surfeited with words and basically distrustful of them. In the literature at the center of this discussion, the
latter problem has become secondary to the first in point of logical process
if not in point of importance; a change of attitudes toward verbal ex?
pression is slowly growing out of a change in general philosophic view-

point.
In considering the philosophic implication of Things, two very different climates of thought and feeling are to be distinguished. These
two kinds of writers might most rapidly be summed up as those who use
Things as a prerequisite to more primary concerns, and those for whom
the Thing is the primary concern, motivation, center, and final achievement of their writing. In the first group, Sartre and Camus suggest them?
selves immediately. The unforgettable passage in La Nausee, that
existentialist literary primer, suffices as an example of the role played
by things in Sartre: "La racine du maronnier s'enfoncait dans la terre,
juste au-dessous de mon banc. Je ne me rappelais plus que c'etait une
racine. Les mots s'etaient evanouis et avec eux, la signification des choses,
leurs modes d'emploi, les faibles reperes que les hommes ont traces a leur
surface. . . . Le mot d'absurdite nait a present sous ma plume; tout a,
l'heure, au jardin, je ne l'ai pas trouve, mais je ne le cherchais pas non plus,
je n'en avais pas besoin: je pensais sans mots, sur les choses, avec les
choses."4 It can be said that the gnarled root is no more than a symbol,
most certainly not rare in literature. Symbol it is, to be sure, and yet it is
also a Thing and essentially a Thing. Other similar scenes from Sartre's
1La Nausee (Paris: Gallimard,1938),
pp. 161-163.

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30

"Things"

in Recent French Literature

later novels in the Chemins de la liberte series could be found. The sun
and microbe provide the same sort of basis for the realization of absurdity
in Camus. And except for a basic difference in conclusions, one might cite
the interfering mosquito net at the beginning of La Condition humaine
and the line of trees in Malraux' Noyers de VAUenburg.
The basic frustration is the same as that involved in the classic humorous example of the runaway collar button. Things can be notoriously
unsympathetic to anthropomorphic design.5 The physical universe is
adamant, and nothing is to be gained by human reasoning, cajolery, and
menace. The easiest way out of a bad situation is, perhaps, to install
into the Thing a personality and superior design of its own, and thus at
least save one's human dignity. This solution the early Greeks understood well. For Sartre, Camus, and, in a less conclusive way, Malraux,
these crucial encounters with objects spell out the basic absurdity of
all that such existence suggests in the way of
human existence?with

a universe of inanimate
logic, reason, culture, and social organization?in
was
in
no
alien
when he chose
material
Camus
way
annexing
objects.
the Sisyphus myth with its perverse rock as the title for his philosophic
essay. From this confrontation with Things, however, Camus and the
existentialists do not continue as far, from a point of view of literature,
as writers of the second group whose interest in Things is essential. For
Sartre, the absurdity leads to "engagement" with little insistence on the
secondary problem of literary expression. For Camus, the absurd diverts
us from primary literary considerations to the realm of social ideas. For
Malraux, the same absurdity has led along several trails to his present
if the basic frustration of the Thing's impact on
concern with Art?as
human nature could lead finally only back to the Thing, this time the
object created and impressed with man's will. In his predilection for the
plastic arts, Malraux seems little interested in the problem of words.
In the poetry of Henri Michaux, one comes closer to the development:
Things-absurdity-experiment in expression. That Michaux is struck with
the absurdity of existence there can be little doubt, but that this ab?
surdity should be represented primarily by Things is not so clear. There
seems to be equally an inherent distrust with particulars of human nature.
or uncooperative?as
Nor does Michaux accept Things?cooperative
his
central theme. Nevertheless, his attempt at conveying his own sort of
nausea fits into this survey. His richness of invention is immediately an
indication of his basic direction. Since words no longer suffice to suggest
his immense disgust with the state of the world, nor yet to project what
he would do with such a state of affairs, he invents Things which become

6 Cf. Ernst Cassirer,An Essay on Man (New York: Doubleday), p. 103,forthe mythic
characterof things.They have lost their"objectiveor
or what he calls the physiognomic
cosmological"value but not their"anthropologicalvalue."

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J. Robert Loy

31

words, or words which become

Things. "Ayant conscience de mon inmoins en moins et tres peu des autres
de
justice," says Michaux, "j'ecris
hommes. Si les cailloux et la nature m'entendaient, je n'oserais plus
parler. . . . Heureusement, ils n'en savent rien et je n'ai pas a en tenir
compte."6 But Michaux, by the very inventiveness of his word-things,
is not honest with the material world as it exists and, as in the text
quoted above, would seem to indicate only a direction toward the Thing,
with, at once, distrust and nostalgia for such direct inspiration.
There is such an incipient direction in Raymond Queneau. In one
work he comes close to combining an intoxication with Things and a
special mode of expression. It is his Petite Cosmogonie portative, a kind
of modern De Rerum Natura ("ou Lucrece voisine avec Jarry," says
Jean Rostand).7 However bitter the Cosmogonie about man's role in
existence, however frequent the strong expressions, when, at the end of
the third canto after an enumeration of mineral elements, he concludes:
"Le poeme jaillit d'un coin de cette terre," one can see in Queneau a
potential movement toward the kind of writing under discussion. His
predilection for experimental styles and expression are, however, far
from the cold description of Things to be seen later.
Supervielle, Prevert,8 and Rene Crevel (and perhaps others) would
eventually merit mention in any exhaustive analysis of writers who
show tendencies rather than clear steps in the new direction. But "revenons a nos moutons." The clearest example, the most cogent apologist,
as it were, is Francis Ponge. The very title of his most widely read
collection tells much?Le
Parti pris des Choses. "Le parti pris des choses,
les Sapates, sont de la litterature-type de l'apres revolution." In the
Parti pris collection of 1942 (and most of the poems were written before,
starting in 1928), Ponge very simply and forthrightly describes inanimate

objects. "Et puis donc, aussi bien qu'il est de nature de l'homme d' elever
la voix au milieu de la foule des choses silencieuses, qu'il le fasse du
moins parfois a leur propos."9 The world itself is no less absurd for
Ponge than for Camus; he is no less aware of the crisis of communication
and words than Paulhan:
Bien entendu le monde est absurde! Bien entendu, la non-significationdu monde!
Mais qu'y a-t-il la de tragique?
J'6terai volontiers a Tabsurde son coefficientde tragique.

6 Passages (Paris: Gallimard,

1950), p. 30.
7 "Raymond
Queneau et la Cosmogonie,"Critique,xlix (1951), 489.
8 Despite the reservationsof GeorgesBataille, "De
l'age de pierrea Jacques PreVert,"
Critique,iii-iv (1946), 195-214. There are clearlymany textsof thesepoets whichdo not
lend themselvesto our analysis;thatis whyI speak of tendency.I am convinced,however,
that the poets are basicallyintentupon communicating
and that theytrustlanguageas a
medium.
9 Protmes(Paris:
Gallimard,1948), pp. 208, 130.

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32

"Things"

in Recent French Literature

. . . celui [the theme] de Tinndelite des moyens d'expression, celui de l'impossibilite pour rhomme non seulement de s'exprimer mais d'exprimer n'importe quoi.
(pp. 146, 166)
his predilection for Things; thus, his descriptive songs of the
is not necessarily any meaning in the Things; there is the
There
pebble.
of
seizing their material being in words. "Si j'ai choisi de
possibility
la
de
coccinelle
c'est par degout des idees. . . . C'est parce qu'elles
parler
ne me viennent pas a bonheur, mais a malheur" (p. 146). Hence a
literature of rain, orange-crates, cigarettes, bread, flre, water, meat, and
Hence,

stones. One thinks immediately of the Cubists, and with good reason
where Braque is concerned.10 Yet there is a difference. All of the Cubists
were not essentially interested in Things; sometimes their collage of

disparate objects only "used" the objects to point up the disjointedness

of existence. One thinks also of the medieval lapidary and bestiary and
with some justiflcation. But there is a difference; this descriptive catalogue pretends to be no learned work, no encyclopedia of knowledge.
It pretends only to "talk about" the inanimate object since so much
talk of the intellectual and human process would seem to have brought
us to a blank wall: "Eh bien! Pierre, galet, poussiere, occasion de sentiments si communs quoique si contradictoires, je ne te juge pas si rapidement, car je desire te juger a ta valeur: et tu me serviras, et tu serviras
des lors aux hommes a bien d'autres expressions, tu leur fourniras pour
leurs discussions entre eux ou avec eux-memes bien d'autres arguments;
meme, si j'ai assez de talent, tu les armeras de quelques nouveaux
proverbes ou lieux communs: voila toute mon ambition" (p. 142). Thus,
for Ponge, the object is not end in itself, for such process could only
lead eventually to literary sterility. And yet the object is the starting
place: for new thinking (disgust with traditional ideas), and for new
forms of expression (new proverbs and new commonplaces),
in short,
for a new literature in a world whose absurdity has been pointed out with
such frequency. "Oui, le parti pris nait a Pextremite d'une philosophie
de la non-signification du monde (et de l'inndelite des moyens d'ex?
(p. 171).
Things constitute a vital sounding-board for the poetry of Guillevic,
yet one senses in this indignant crusader for a more human society that
pression"

10It was Ponge who wrotethe introduction

fora folioof Braque reproductions(Paris:
A. Skira, 1947) whichhe calls "Braque, le reconciliateur."The introductory
essay gives
a clear indicationof the sympathyof Ponge, writerof things,forBraque, the painterof
them. "J'ai dit que la seule raisonet justificationde Part ?tait une imperieusenecessite
d'expression.Non pour troubler,mais pour rassurer.J'ai dit que la seule facon de nous
?tait de nous enfoncerdans notrediff?rence,?del'exprimera
exprimerauthentiquement
traversune matieretraiteesans vergogne,non a partirde nous-memesmais a partirdu
monde?et donc des objets les plus familiers...."

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/. Robert Loy

33

the object begins by being an excuse for talking of men, and that the
secondary step of humanism as seen by Ponge already preconditions
the poet's vision of the external thing. Nonetheless, there are striking
passages of word still-life. In "Veillee" a cascading series of objects, in
"Le Maitre" the solitary presence of a pine tree serve to spell out, first,
the real world of man's hope, then the measure of his blindness. Yet in
the same collection, in "Tyrannie,"
the "Mais toi tu savais / T'apdes
choses"
clear
indication
that Ponge's direction Thingprocher
gives
Man has become here Man-thing. The stark object painting in "Taureau"
and particularly in the glass-jug-and-paper
of "Filets"?"Oui,
c'est
vous qui menez" gives ample proof that Guillevic has, nonetheless, understood the message of Things.
Although poetry has seemed to yield the richest example in Ponge,
Things are not entirely absent from recent prose writing. The Irish
writer in French, Samuel Beckett, writes in a style, and creates an

atmosphere of indifference, which lean heavily on objects. Their importance throughout Molloy is striking. But the long episode of the "pebbles to suck on" which troubles Molloy for several pages is such a
pointed example that the reader wonders if Molloy is sensitive to anything except inanimate things in his strange world. This suspicion is
borne out by many passages of Malone meuri and VInnommable, The
whole motivation for Beckett's writing, which shows none of the optimism of a Ponge, seems precisely a need to talk, and to talk about Things.
He ends the last novel {VInnommable)
saying: "II faut dire des mots,
tant qu'il y en a, il faut les dire jusqu'a ce qu'ils me trouvent." And until
the words find the me, one suspects that the author is condemned to talk
of Things. The complete absence of human action and motivation, the
theatrical stagnancy of En attendant Godot where objects assume such

importance have no more immediate explanation.11

There is strong suggestion of similar direction in two other prose
writers. The protagonists of Jean Cayrol (Je vivrai Vamour des autres)?
particularly in the first two volumes of the three-volume novel?seem
somehow to exist only among the objects they see. Armand, in Les
Premiers Jours, is rarely more than an automaton passing noiselessly
through the Paris railroad station, the family-style restaurant, the
Monoprix stores. Indeed, existence for him is somewhat like the garishly
lit counters of the Monoprix where he can quietly observe a multitude of

11"J'en Sais,"
says Beckettin Molloy,"ce que savent les mots et les choses mortes,et
ca faitune jolie petitesomme,avec un commencement,
un milieuet une fin,commedans
les phrasesbien batieset dans la longuesonatedes cadavres." For different
explanationsof
the phenomenon,Beckett,see GeorgesBataille, "Le Silence de Molloy," Critique,xlviii
(1951), 387-396; and Edith Kern, "Drama Strippedfor Inaction," YFS, xrv (1955),
41: "It is not man's relationshipto theworldofthingsthatcountsforBeckett."

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34

"Things"

in Recent French Literature

detached, and awaiting the moment when they become

objects?cold,
his toothpaste and his knife. Cayrol suggests that the human being is far
from the motivating force of his life; he passes through a forest of objects
in quite different fashion and with completely
much as Baudelaire,
opposed metaphysic, passed through his forest of symbols. The most
recent prose writer is Alain Robbe-Grillet (Les Gommes, "Trois Visions
reflechies").12 He limits even more stringently than Ponge his literary
world; it can best be described as visual. The mute objects, the Things
come to life under his detached eye and seem to possess the only real
existence in the work. Unlike Ponge, however, he concentrates upon
objects for stylistic and psychological reasons almost wholly within the
human realm. Yet it is more than a little difncult to reconcile his shadowy
persons with the crystal-clear Things. The reader is more certain of the
objective description, as he finishes Les Gommes, than he is of the people
involved. As Roland Barthes points out in a study of Robbe-Grillet,13
the very description of the objects is the life of the literature. Whereas,
says Barthes, classic description was a prospect of the unchanging Thing,
Robbe-Grillet's
description becomes a project of seizing the object in
its changing state. That visual observation presupposes and encourages
no secondary approach: the texture, the touch of the object is unimportant and unreliable; the mood, the interpretation of the observer
is never known. Thus with Robbe-Grillet there is a reaffirmation of the
point made above?the
Thing or object of this new literature has not
yet become, will perhaps never become, a symbol, an allegory.14 RobbeGrillet remarked about Beckett's play En attendant Godot, using the
words of Heidegger: "La condition de l'homme, c'est d'etre la."15 Just
so Barthes is right in saying of Robbe-Grillet's own objects that they
are there, and so it can be said of Ponge and Beckett that the author has
only stated that his objects "are there" and are not something else or
the explanation of something else, or hiding behind something else.
This rapid survey of recent French literature has, it is hoped, pointed
up an interest in Things and a mistrust of literary expression which, in
varying degree, characterize a part of modern French writing. If the
12Les Gommes(Paris: Editions de
Minuit, 1953); "Trois Visions r6fl6chies,"
NNRF,
xvi (1954), 614H523.Robbe-Grillet'slatest work,reviewedin NNRF, xxxi (1955), 105112,by Maurice Blanchot,is Le Voyeur(Paris: Editionsde Minuit,1955).
13In
lxxxvi-lxxxvii (1954), 581-591.
Critiquey
14See the
perceptivearticleof Rene"Micha, "Une nouvelle LittSratureall6gorique,"
NNRF, xvi (1954), 696-706,wherehe groupsRene*Daumal, JulienGracq,Noel Devaulx,
and others(e.g., Beckett?and wronglyso, I think)as writersinfluencedby the "open universe" of Kafka and absurdity(therefore
somewhatlike the writersdiscussedhere) who
identifythemselveswith the objects of theirnovels by way of allegory.What Micha is
discussingis not object-literature.
18Cited in articleby Barthes,
Critique,lxxxvi-lxxxvii (1954).

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/. Robert Loy

35

objects seemed secondary and acted only as philosophic catalysts in

Sartre and Camus, if they seemed fragmentary or tendentious in some of
the writers discussed, they have reached their fullest expression in the
writers last discussed, and most particularly in Ponge. One looks for
some explanation as to why and how they have invaded literary thinking.
It is the basic hypothesis of this study that these instances, far from
being isolated cases, indicate a peculiar contemporary state of mind. What
these authors are talking about is a Ding an sich without the spiritual
overtones of a Rilke. Much more than objects may, of course, be hidden
behind and suggested by this return to Things, but thus far one is still
very much in the realm of the material.
explanatory hypothesis which arises from the very physical
of
objects is at once the most immediate and satisfactory. Things
analysis
are matter, and, most men would agree, simply matter. One must then
suppose that such object orientation in literature represents a basically
materialistic conception of the universe, however disastrous for poetry
The

such a conclusion might at first appear.16 But there are materialisms and
materialisms, and for the past two centuries it has become increasingly
important to distinguish among them.

The kind of materialism involved is, it would seem, the Epicurean or

Lucretian17 variety which played an important role in European thought
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is a renewal and reestimate of a timeless point of view. Our writers start again from the fact
of material stufl in the world, its relation to man, and somehow hope to
detach conclusions other than those current at present. There is no conviction, no credo involved. The new direction is a humanist counterpart
of empiricism in the natural sciences, with this difference: the wealth of
myth remains and constitutes a twin process of investigation along with
rational or objective denomination of Things. If it yields nothing startling, it must nevertheless be seen as a serious experiment to which, for
some writers, the only alternative would seem to be literary stagnation
and philosophic nihilism.
For Sartre and Camus,
of the basic absurdity of
sphere and proposals of
shows that the absurdity

the adamant object served for the realization

existence. From there, a return to the human
solution and alleviation. Ponge very clearly
is a foregone conclusion, the anterior step to

16Cf.Ponge at the conclusionof his shortpamphletNotehdtive

d la gloirede Groethuysen
(Lyon: Les EcrivainsrSunis,1951): "Mais c'est bien a partird'ici, mon Grceth,si comme
je le pense,la Matiereest Tuniqueprovidencede Pesprit...."
17Cf.Ponge,"Texte surl'61ectricit6"
in NNRFt xxxi (1955), 14; "Et puis je relisLucrece
et je me dis qu'on n'a jamais rien6critde plus beau, que riende ce qu'il a avancS, dans
aucun ordre,ne me paralt avoir ?t? sSrieusement
d&nenti,mais au contraireplutdt confirmeV^

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36

uThings"

in Recent French Literature

longer to prove a certain status but rather to

returning to Things?no
solicit clarification and improvement of the status. The world is absurd,
therefore Things are, and are important and vital to men. "Seule la
litterature (et seule dans la litterature celle de description?par
opposition a celle d'explication?:
parti pris des choses, dictionnaire phenomenologique, cosmogonie) permet de jouer le grand jeu; de refaire le
monde, a tous les sens du mot refaire, grace au caractere a la fois concret
et abstrait, interieur et exterieur du Verbe, grace a son epaisseur semantique."18 Ponge's long-range aim is, of course, humanist: "C'est a un
homme simple que nous tendons," he says in "Notes premieres de Thomme." But that humanism is more remote for Ponge than for Sartre, and
the progression toward it must be made in the close company of Things.
For in objects lies precisely the potential clue to existence?material
at
first, human eventually?which
Ponge hopes to uncover.

Thus it is Ponge who most clearly sketches the potential of the object
in relation to man. His experiment is another attempt at a tabula rasa,
but this time an humble attempt which does not pretend to explain the
all in an all-embracing structure. It hopefully assigns to itself the rea very physical and objective19 way?with
communion of man?in
the
him.
which
surround
It
suffices
to
talk:
"II
faut
le
siThings
parler:

lence ... est ce qu'il y a de plus dangereux au monde."20 One human

attribute follows the poet from the beginning of his descriptive experi?
ment?the word. As Gaston Bachelard puts it: "Toute connaissance de
l'intimite des choses est immediatement un poeme."21 There is no need
for the poet to feel inferior in the face of the world, says Ponge, for it is in

18Protmes,p. 180.
19Sartre,despite his study of Ponge (UBomme et les Choses,Paris:
Seghers,1947),
wouldfindfaultwiththeuse ofthewordas wellas withthesubsequentdiscussionofpassing
fromdenominationof thingsto comprehension
of man, as he makes clear in an attack on
la subjectivite*
materialistmethod."Mais une foisqu'il a supprime'
au profitde l'objet, au
lieu de se voir chose parmiles choses,ballotte*
par les ressacsde l'universphysique,il se
faitregardobjectifet prStendcontemplerla naturetelle qu'elle est absolument.II y a un
la qualite"passivede l'objet regarde"
et tant6t
jeu de motsurPobjectivit6,qui tant6tsignifie
la valeur absolue d'un regarddSpouille"des faiblessessubjectives.Ainsi le matSrialiste,
et s'Stantassimile*
a la pure vSrite*
ayant d6pass6toute subjectivite*
objective,se promene
dans un monded'objets habite*
par des hommes-objets"(SituationsIII, Paris: Gallimard,
1949,p. 141). For an excellentpresentationof Ponge as seen by Sartre,see RobertChampigny,FR, xxv (1952), 254-261.
20Protmes,p. 162.
21GastonBachelard,La Terreetlesrdveries
du repos(Paris: Corti,1948),p. 11. The valuable and unique studiesofBachelardincludeUAir etles songes,UEau etles r&ves,
La Terre
et les r&oeries
de la volonU,and La Psychanalysedu jeu. Althoughwrittenfroma special
point of view, Bachelard's studies are extremelyilluminatingon the whole problemof
In thetextquoted,dependingupon themeaninggivento "connaissance,"
object-literature.
Bachelard suggestsequally egocentricpoetryand object-poetry.

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/. Robert Loy

37

his power "metalogiquement

de le refaire [the world]." To which Jean
in
a
review
of
Tortel,
Ponge's collection Protmes adds a valuable comon
both
the
mentary
philosophic and the rhetorical aspects of Ponge's
work: "Si la parole peut refaire le monde, c'est la preuve que l'homme
peut, dans une certaine mesure, etre le plus fort?et celle aussi que le
monde peut a bon droit etre considere par le poete comme reel, dans le
sens qu'admet le savant, et faire Pobjet d'experiences verbales du m&me
ordre que l'experience scientifique. II y aurait donc, a l'interieur de

Pceuvre de Ponge une tentative pour reunir en une?non

pas pour faire
deux
methodes
l'une
de
l'autre?les
d'investigation."22
grandes
dependre
Thus Ponge is not afraid of words, nor basically distrustful of them:
"...
parce que les mots, fait bizarre, interessent les poetes plus encore
(c'est sensible) que les faiseurs de dictionnaires. Et peut-etre parce que
tout le passe de la sensibilite et de la connaissance m'y semble inclus."23
His, at first, enigmatic "issue unique; parler contre les paroles" can
only, in the context of all his poetry, mean a poetic determination to use
words in order to destroy their tyranny, to put a limit to the silent and
hermetic, to recreate Things (at first, and until the poet regains his
confidence and moves forward to human models)24 by conjuring them
in words. Thus he will begin again to know the physical universe from
which the poet springs and to reestablish the poet's tool of language as
respectable and trustworthy in a literary world long in revolt against
that tool.
The direct connection of the metaphysical overtones of Things with
literature and the realm of poetic creation and expression becomes clearer,
and is not as tenuous as it might have seemed at first. For since the arwas true of the symtist's basic problem is one of communication?as
bolists and surrealists in their struggle with words and signs, so for the
new materialism an immediate problem of expression or rhetoric imposes
itself; "c'est quand nous nous enfoncons, nous aussi, dans notre matiere:
les sons significatifs," says Ponge.25 It is Jean Paulhan (Les Fleurs de
Tarbes, Le Decryptement, A Demain la poesie)y despite his occasional
propensity toward errantry and an overworked epigrammatic style,
who has best summed up in recent times the status of rhetoric from the
critic's point of view. It seems clear that Paulhan is encouraging an end
to verbal distrust and endless discussions about commonplaces,
the
meaning of meaning and the bankruptcy of organized literary expression.
22Cahiersdu Sud, ccvc (1949), 481.
23Ponge, "Texte sur l'&ectriciteV'p. 9.
24Cf. Protmes,p. 161: "J'ai choisialors le
partiprisdes choses. . . . Mais je ne vais pas
en resterla . . . c'est l'Homme qui est le but (Homme enfindevenucentaure,a forcede se
chevaucherlui-meme)."
25Ponge, "Texte sur l'&ectriciteV'p. 15.

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38

"Things"

in Recent French Literature

What he (and in general the NNRF reflects similar interests) is underwriting is a return to what might be called classicism for lack of a better
term.26 Again it is Ponge who furnishes corroboration that such is the
inherent implication of a return to the material object as model and
theme. "Rhetorique par objet (c'est a dire par poeme). La forme meme
du poeme est en quelque sorte determinee par son sujet."27 Tortel sees
this clearly in the conclusion of his article of Proemes: "Comment . . .
n'y pas voir [in Ponge's decision to talk against words] la definition,
comme cristalisee, d'un art, d'un eflort: l'art volonte, le defi classiques.

(Nous y revoila donc!)"28 Ponge himself says simply, continuing a remark

quoted above: "C'est a un homme simple que nous tendons. Blanc et
classicisme."29
simple. Nouveau
If one passes to considerations other than vocabulary and style,
the use of the word classic finds equal justification. For whatever name
one assigns to all the poetry from Baudelaire forward, it is essentially
romantic if one sees, as one must, the individual at the center of the
poetic creation. Indeed we have been nurtured so long on poetry as the

expression?very
personal and intimate?of the individual at grips with
his own particular world, that the idea of calling upon the indifferent
atoms?as
Lucretius did?for
the stuff of poetry seems strange and
alien to us. Rimbaud, Mallarme, and Valery30 were all concerned, in
their own way, with rising above the trite and stagnant of the so-called
world of reality. Surrealism has no other goal. And yet, in various ways,
they all worked from the particular and idiosyncratic of the individual
poet toward a more inclusive truth which assumed mystic and cosmic
26That the termbegs manya questionand is
I
capable ofarousingmuchdisagreement,
am quite aware. By classic,it seemsto me,one mustnecessarilysuggest"moretendencies
in one directionthanin another,"just as by "romantic"one does notnicelydelimita metaphysic,a theme,and a style.Thus, myusage here approximatesthe scientificmannerof
on a slidingscale. G. E. Clancier,Panoramacritiquede Rimdelineatingacidity-alkalinity
baud au surrealisme(Paris: Seghers,1953) would disagreebecause "on ne peut pourtant
pas parlerde classicismea proposd'une poesie qui s'eleve en un tempstragique,au milieu
d'un mondeen ruines. . . et qui doituserd'un langagequi ne peut plus,depuislongtemps,
etrele lieu commundes pensSesou des sentiments
d'une societecoherente."Thus Clancier,
too intenton a purelysociologicalinterpretation
of classic tendencies,misses the whole
noveltyand interestof Ponge's experiment.
27My CreativeMethod(a workof
Ponge I have not seen), cited in Ponge's UAraignee
(Paris: Aubier, 1952) in the introductionto the poem writtenby Georges Garampon,
"F.P. ou la r&olutionhumaine." Garamponis himselfclose to Ponge, e.g., "Poemes en
langue morte"in Esprit,x (1951), 498-500.
28Cahiersdu Sud, ccvc.
29Protmes, 205.
p.
30For Ponge on
Mallarmg,see Protmes,pp. 63-56: on Val6ry,p. 163. Rimbaud is mentionedfrequently
in Ponge's works,e.g., "II faut travaillera partirde la d&ouverte faite
d'une nouvelle rh6torique)."My Creative
par Rimbaud et Lautr6amont(de la ngcessite*
Method,vide supra.

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J. Robert Loy

39

proportions, hoping that an initiated few readers could follow them

eventually and complete the poetic communication. Here is where the
object-literature differs vitally. The poet, concentrating on the world
of material objects at the start?even
if this be simply an exercise in
rhetoric?can
from
that
outer, inanimate, material docuprogress only
mentation to humanity in general and finally to the individual himself.
Through all this literature there is a pervading sense of loneliness, a
feeling of isolation not only from other men (which is not new) but from
one's own personality, and from the exterior world.31 Yet the writers
have made little attempt at identification of the human poet with the
object; Ponge's poem, VAraignee, is a first step in this direction.32 The
Things stand of themselves and by themselves; the artists are but eyes
with words.
Clearly this new poet hopes eventually to arrive at some personal
awareness of his cosmic position, but this will come as an end result, not
as a beginning. The new understanding of the world remains, however,
the reason for the literary work; one does not write a poem voluntarily,
one studies objects in the hope that the result will be a poem. If it must

eventually be called non-poetry, that matters little.33 The writer of

Things is not classic in the generally accepted sense of the seventeenth
century, for he starts past human nature with objects, whereas the classic
writers had made a fetish of the second step, or nature (as they called it)
which was in essence historical human nature coaxed into the confines
of a particular social organization. Yet he is consciously or unconsciously
in revolt against romanticism under all its changing cloaks. If the
terminology is misleading, one must find some other term. There would
be no new direction without romanticism,34 there could be no return to
objects without the surrealists who in many ways almost achieved this
direction themselves, and would have, had they managed to limit their
"revolution" and step out of their Freudian selves.35

31Thereis no
suggestionhere,however,that the Pascalian situationof the humanbeing
has influencedthesewriters.On the contrary,most of them,like Ponge, are anti-Pascal.
Cf. Protmes,p. 208. See also the articleof GeorgesMounin,"L'Anti-Pascal,ou la poesieet
les vacances?Francis Ponge," Critique,xxxvn (1949), 493-500, despite its overworked
political conclusion.
32In this
poem, Ponge is at once the spider and the poet describingthe spider.In the
essay by GeorgesGarampon,Garampon'sfinalwordforthe attemptPonge
introductory
makes to synthesizethe object and the poet is "sympathy.""L'ceuvre de FrancisPonge
proceded'un principede sympathie."
33Cf. Ponge,La
Rage de Vexpression
(Lausanne: Mermod,1952),p. 12.
34What Roland Barthes
says {Critique,lxxxvi-lxxxvii, 587) of Robbe-Grilletapplies
to thiswholediscussion:"En somme,les opeYationsdescriptivesde Robbe-Grilletpeuvent
se r6sumerainsi: detruireBaudelaire sous un recoursderisoirea Lamartine,et du meme
coup, cela va sans dire,detruireLamartine."
86As
Monnerot,La PoSsie moderneet le sacrS (Paris: Gallimard,1945), p. 145, puts it:

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40

"Things"

in Recent French Literature

revolution had aimed chiefly at fixed forms and the empty

of
rhetoric, but he had been careful not to include syntax?
elegance
a
la
rhetorique, et paix a la syntaxe." The surrealists, in their
"guerre
search for the honest revolutionized literature, had declared war on
both. This was, of course, a great risk if not indeed impossible, for lan?
guage needs some frame?if not generally accepted, at least capable of
communication and ultimate acceptance.
The new writers are still in
revolt against the world as it is, but they are conscious of the need for
communication. That communication seems to start with the naming
of material objects. The rest?all
the wealth of the subconscious and
come later, after the communication of description has
mythic?must
been established.36 Iri speaking of Sartre, Bachelard calls attention to
this naming. "II semble que les innommables, des qu'elles sont retenues
par Pinconscient, cherchent sans fin un nom. D'avoir nomme un instant
ventre ce qui etait banquette, cela a suffi pour faire sortir de Pinconscient
des bouffees d'affectivite."37 But the Sartre passage of which Bachelard
speaks has already drawn on a secondary form of naming, the symbol.
The writer of objects?seemingly
fearful of the jump from object to
symbol?prefers for the moment to call a spade a spade, a banquette a
banquette, and a stone a stone. Picon, speaking of new directions in
poetry without mentioning the Things in that poetry, sums up well the
difference: "Cette poesie est au lyrisme et au symbolisme ce que le recit de
reportage est au roman d'imagination. Passage de la psychologie a la
metaphysique, de Pimagination au reportage pour le roman; du lyrisme
au realisme ou a la mythologie pour le poeme, c'est toujours le meme
passage: celui du subjectif a Pobjectif. . . . II ne s'agit plus d'annexer le
reel a la poesie, mais d'annexer la poesie au reel."38
Hugo's

It would be helpful to be able to attach some identifiable name to the

direction. Descriptionism? Reism?39 But terms are, at best, confusing

"Us [the surrealists]ont accepte que l'inconscientfut quelque chose d'homogene,alors

qu'une proprietetoute nggativele definit."
36Cf. in Ponge, "Texte sur
l'electricit6,"the recurringand perhaps overdonephrase
"Est-ce clair?Je croisque c'est clair."
37La Terreetles reveries
du repos,p. 169.
38Panoramade la nouvelle
UtUrature
franqaise(Paris: Le Point du jour, 1951), p. 151.
39Reismis the termchosen Yvan Goll fora manifestoon
by
poetry.Firstin his Masque
de cendre(1945) and later in the Manifestoof Reism,he seems veryclose to the kind of
directiontowardsThings underdiscussion."Surgie du Verbe seul, la po6sie restedans le
domainede la rh6torique,de la grammaire,de Partificecr6epar l'hommelui-m6me.'Au
commencement
6taitle Verbe?'Le r&stediraplut6t:'A la fin6taitle Verbe,'apresunelongue
et patientemStamorphosequi dans le poete ou l'artiste,transforme
l'objet en Verbe, en
ceuvred'art." The termas used here,and as I understandit,mustnot be confusedwiththe
much-discussedriification,
which,althoughsharingperhaps some commonpoints of insistenceon materialismwith our discussionof Things, is a much strongerand broader
concept with psychologicaland political overtones,and lacks the humanisrawe have

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J. Robert Loy

41

and there is no movement. There is a trend, unless this survey has

jumped too quickly to conclusions, a trend which this study, in no way,
holds to be unique or undeniably dominant. And there is a new kind
of writer who has subjected the "homme revolte" to the talker and
artisan in words. Here is how Ponge puts it: "Je ne peux m'expliquer
rien au monde que d'une seule facon: par le desespoir. Dans ce monde
que je ne comprends pas, dont je ne peux rien admettre, ou je ne peux
rien admettre, ou je ne peux rien desirer . . . , je suis oblige a une certaine
tenue. . . . Je ne rebonderai jamais que dans la pose du revolutionnaire

ou du poete."40
It would seem that the poet had won out, not because the revolte
was unnecessary in his training, but because the revolution had led to an
impasse of fear, distrust, and isolation. It would be a mistake to call
the new direction popular,41 but it would be equally wrong not to see
that it is interested in communicating. The poetic world of the individual
mind in isolation becomes eventually sterile. "L'esprit,"
says Ponge,
"dont on peut dire qu'il s'abime d'abord aux choses (qui ne sont que
riens) dans leur contemplation, renait par la nomination de leurs qualit6s
telles que lorsqu'au lieu de lui ce sont elles qui les proposent."42 The
with Things is the fond, the naming of their qualities
reacquaintance
is the forme which aims to make the written word respectable. Ponge's
outcry in Proemes makes his mission clear: "Le Verbe est Dieu! Je suis
le Verbe! II n'y a que le Verbe!" The representatives of the new trend
encourage a tentative, but fundamental and significant, change in the
aphorism of Saint John. "In the beginning was the Thing, and the
Word was in Things, and the Word was with Man"?and
therein lies
perhaps a hopeful, at least a refreshing direction for literature.
University

of Vermont

Burlington
attemptedto read into a literaturelike Ponge's. Cf. the article by Joseph Gabel, "La
R&fication,"Esprit,x (1951), 459-482.
40Protmes,pp. 105-107.
41It wouldbe equallya mistaketo equate themovementwith
politicalsentiment.Ponge,
in his mostrecent"Texte surFSlectriciteY'
p. 17, wheremorethana littlepreciositybegins
to show through,says: "Les architectes,commeles poetes,sont des artistes.En tant que
tels, ils voientles choses dans FSternite'
plus que dans le temporel.Pratiquement,ils se
d?fientde la mode.Jeparledes meilleursd'entreeux."
42Proemes,p. 117.

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