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From Muteness to Speech: The Drama of Expression in Francis Ponge's Poetry

Author(s): Richard Stamelman
Source: Books Abroad, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 688-694
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40128153 .
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688 BOOKS ABROAD
FP: Instead of being lyrical about mechanical things! You know ... it is rather com-
plicated, and it is too long for me to go into it at the moment, but I had initially
thought 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 is
something you read at the moment of take-off, or when the weather is turbulent. And
this 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. At
that 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,slightly too dada, too calligrammatic
and I am now against using means that are a little too visible. Things have got to
be in the text and not expressed in too visible a manner.

Barnard College, ColumbiaUniversity

From Muteness to Speech: The Drama

of Expression in Francis Ponge's Poetry

By RICHARD STAMELMAN

U expression est pour moi la seule ressource.

La rage jroide de Vexpression.1

For twenty-three years, from 1942 until 1965, Francis Ponge kept a voluminous dos-
sier of detailed notes describingthe unique qualities of a very common and unsingular
object: soap. Like the "Barrington's lemonflavoured soap" which Leopold Bloom
buys early in James Joyce's Ulysses2 and which he carries with him as he wanders
through Dublin, so that it bears silent witness to his activities, his encounters and his
experiences,so Ponge's notes on soap accompaniedhim wherever he traveled,especial-
ly during the war years when real soap was unavailable in France. Over the course
of the years he constantly returned 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 describing the absent and unobtainable object and by keeping it at the center of
his preoccupations, Ponge was able to manufacture a form of the very object he
lacked. As a poet, or as a "technicien . . . du langage" ("Texte sur Pelectricite,"Lyres,
p. 149), as he prefers to call himself, finding the word "poet"too lofty an appellation,
Ponge created a text composed of observations,descriptions,jottings and notes, which
made the object of his desire as real and as easy to place between his fingers as if he in
fact did have a bar of soap within reach. By means of language and through the pro-
 STAMELMAN 689
cess or act of writing, by which words and sounds deploy themselves on a blank piece
of 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 those
of the soap. "II ne s'agit pas," writes Ponge, "de 'rendre,' de 'represented le monde
physique, si vous voulez, mais de presenter dans le monde verbal quelque chose
d'homologue. . . ." (Entretiens, p. 48.) The act of writing enables Ponge to substitutea
-
text-object- "ce dossiersavon, ce savon-dossier"(Le savon, p. 12) for a real object,
the soap itself. But the use of the word "substitute"is misleading because the move-
ment from the object-in-the-world, the bar of soap, to the object-that-is-the-poem,the
text, is more than the substitution of one thing for another. Rather, Ponge's poems
dramatize the radical transformation of the object of the poet's desire and his con-
templation, the objet-chose,I will call it, into a different and original form, namely
a text, an objet-description.
This conversion is initiated, mediated and accomplished through the operation
of language, and, in particular,the language of description.3All things, Ponge believes,
yearn to express themselves, and they mutely await the coming of the word so that
they may reveal the hidden depths of their being. The word penetrates through the
tough skins and the closed surfaces of things, opening up a vast space and animating
a dormant, microscopicworld of unrevealed qualities which define the essential indi-
viduality of the object and its fundamental difference from all other things that exist
or will ever exist. The word gives breath to the object, causing it to vibrate and its
sounds to reverberate within the newly uncovered interior landscape: "II faut du
souffle,"writes Ponge, "pour faire vibrer dans chaque chose sa corde sensible" {Mai-
herbe, p. 310) . Expressionhas begun, and since "Tout n'est que paroles"("Des raisons
d'ecrire,"PPC, p. 163), the possibilitiesfor expression in the world are inexhaustible:
... a proposdes chosesles plus simplesil est possiblede faire des discoursinfinis
entierementcomposesde declarationsinedites,enfin ... a proposde n'importequoi
non seulementtout n'estpas dit, mais a peu pres tout reste a dire. ("Introduction
au galet,"PPC, p. 173.)
Everything in the world of Ponge is envisioned as an act of expression that is
constantly in progress. In a sense, there are no acts that are not also essentially acts
of language. The careful, microscopicobservationof a thing by the poet, the detailed
scrutiny of its "qualit.esdifferentielles,"the naivete and love with which he approaches
the object, the intrusion by the poet's mind into the intimacy of the object's interior
landscape,the generosity with which he surrendershis own being to its attraction,the
total engagement of his mind and consciousness with the geography of the object-
all these acts, which for Ponge constitute contemplation, occur through language
and during the operation by which the text is written. Contemplation is inseparable
from writing :
. . . il ne s'agit vraimentpas de contemplationa proprementparler dans ma
methode,mais d'une contemplationtellementactive, ou la nominations'eflectue
aussitot,d'uneoperation,la plume a la main .... ("Tentativeorale,"Methodes,p.
260.)
For Ponge contemplation is nominative. It is not a passive mental act of medita-
tion, but, rather, a truly creative act where the naming of a thing signals the birth of
that thing. The act by which the poet sees an object, as if for the first time and with
690 BOOKS ABROAD
the wonder, joy and excitement of the first man on earth, and the act by which he
names and describes that object are contemporaneous. It is what Ponge calls "le
regard-de-telle-sorte-qu'on-le-parle" ("Les Facons du regard," PPC, p. 120). And the
setting for this "regard," the place where it happens, is the blank page of paper. It
is here that the object is reborn as text, or more precisely, that the objet-chose is con-
verted into the objet-description.Out of muteness comes speech and out of passivity
and petrificationcomes an actively moving object. The act of speech, which the object-
in-the-world acquires, heralds its projection into being; as Ponge remarks:
Bois de pins, sortez de la mort, de la non-remarque,de la non-conscience!. . .
Surgissez,bois de pins, surgissez dans la parole. L'on ne vous connait pas.-
Donnez votre formule.("Le Carnetdu bois de pins," TP, pp. 338-39.)
The transformationof objet-choseinto objet-descriptionconstitutes the drama of
expression in Ponge's work. How this occurs, the process by which language con-
verts an object-in-the-world into a text, is one of Ponge's major preoccupationsand
the subject, either implicit or explicit, of most of his poems and writings. He is the
scientistof the phenomenon of expression,seeking answers to questions about how the
expressionfunctions, what changes occur when it is under way, and what effects result
from its operation. The conversion of objet-chose to objet-descriptionis studied by
Ponge as if it were a physical phenomenon akin to the change from a gas to a liquid
state, 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 states of expression (object, word, mind). As cold can change water to ice,
so the advent of words, the act of writing, can change one object, the objet-chose,into
another, the objet-description.The title of one of Ponge's most beautiful "proemes"
aptly expresses this conversion: "De la modification des choses par la parole" {PPC,
pp. 122-23).
Words modify things, and a Ponge text simultaneously dramatizes and activates
this modification.At once, it converts the objet-choseinto the objet-descriptionand at
the same time describes the very process of conversion that is taking place. Ponge
is like a magician who performs tricks of appearance and disappearance whereby
things are transformed into 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 explains
Ponge's insistence that his texts should function more than they should mean ("Le
murmure,"Methodes, p. 201). They function as catalysts in an act of description by
which a real object becomes a text. Ponge's work on "la Seine," for example, is at
once the description of a river, a cours d'eau, and that of a text, a discours, with all
the multiple parallels that exist between the two. The poet's acts of contemplation,
descriptionand writing, which are essentiallythe same act, "ferontde la Seine ce livre,"
writes Ponge (TP, p. 541). They literally make the river, the objet-chose,into a book,
an objet-description,and at the same time dramatize the transformationof which they
are the cause. The art of description as used by Ponge is not a technique of static,
fixed representationby which exterior realities or things are expressed categorically
once and for all. On the contrary,it is a process,an act, that literally moves the object
into being.
 STAMELMAN 691

Ponge's poetic texts dramatize the struggle for verbalization of an objet-chose,

while being, in their own right, a "verbalisationen acte" (Entretiens, p. 97). The
story of the quest of the objet-chose for expression occurs at the same moment that
the objet-description,the text, is unfolding. What interests Ponge above all is the act
by which expression is taking place. He is more preoccupied with the process of ex-
pression than with the products or creations it generates, more concerned with the
making of the text than with the text itself, as he explains to Philippe Sollers:
. . . mais il ne s'agit pas tellementde dire, au sens 'd'avoirdit,' il s'agit de dire au
sens transitif du 'dire,' c'est-a-direde parler dans le moment present, comme
homme,commeanimal,dansle momentpresent,et de montrercommentles choses
se font dans le moment meme, de creer la communicationdirecte, non par la
recitationd'un produit fini, mais par l'exemple d'une operationen acte, d'une
parole (et done d'une pensee) a l'etat naissant.(Entretiens,p. 99.)
An indication of Ponge's commitment to process at the expense of product is
evident in the provisional and incomplete nature of his writings. His texts show a
kind of " 'tremblementde certitude'" (Malherbe, p. 143) in the discursive and expan-
sive way they have of moving forward. They generate a certitude which, because it
is 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'inachevement perpetuel" (Entretiens, p. 19). What Ponge has written is
never allowed to petrify into a definite form, and in this respect he would appear to
share Sartre'shorror of the en soi and to do battle against it by attempting to make of
each of his texts a pour soi, something still susceptible to modification. Ponge's love
of process explains, perhaps, why he is continuously rewriting his texts, adding bits
and pieces to them, beginning them anew, incorporating new variants into texts
already in progress,repeating his expressionsover and over again in different genres
(sometimes in poetry, sometimes in prose) in different typographies (sometimes in
roman characters,sometimes in capitals, sometimes in italics) and in different ar-
rangements.4The perpetual rectification that Ponge sees as essential to his work of
description-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. It
is in this need for process, perhaps, that Ponge reveals an existentialist penchant. In
an absurd world 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 an
otherwise meaningless universe. For Ponge the act of writing is an existential act.
Only a poetics of 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 guide
the transformationof objet-chose into objet-description-,as Ponge writes:
En revenirtoujoursa l'objetlui-meme,a ce qu'il a de brut,de different:diffe-
rent en particulierde ce que j'ai deja (a ce moment) ecrit de lui.
Que mon travailsoit celui d'une rectificationcontinuellede mon expression
(sans souci a priori de la forme de cette expression)en faveur de l'objet brut
("Bergesde la Loire,"TP, p. 257.)
As Ponge suggests, a return to the "objetbrut"is in order, especially if the drama
of expressionis to be understood.For not only is Ponge concerned with the act or the
process by which the objet-chose is converted to the objet-description,he is acutely
692 BOOKS ABROAD
sensitive to the gestures, the motions, the acrobatics,and above all to the feelings of
the objet-chose as it journeys from the world of the res to the world of the text. A
drama of expression, in which joy, jubilation, ecstasy, enthusiasm, exhilaration, pain,
sadness, and death play a part, unfolds around the movement toward speech of the
objet-chose, its subsequent disappearance,and the resulting formation of the objet-
description. The scenario for this drama takes the following general form in such
poems as he savon, La Seine (TP), "L'orange"(PPC), and "Le lezard" (Pieces), to
name but a few. The object lies imprisoned in its silence until awakened by a word,
which whets the object'sappetite for expression.Verbalization begins, and the object
initiates its struggle and drive for expression,a quest that finally culminates in the joy
and jubilation of expression,but at the same time in the disappearanceof the object,
which is transformedinto a new form, the text. As the objet-chose slowly disappears,
its words construct a new object. Language invades and fills the forming, growing
void left by the self-exhausting objet-chose in proportion to and in rhythm with its
disappearance.Thus, the act of self-expressionby the objet-chose is an act of self-
sacrifice. In order to create a presence, the object must destine itself to absence. It
literally ex-pressesitself, squeezing its inner being outward, by means of language,
toward depletion. And yet this dramatic act of projective self-expression and self-
extinction reverberateswith joy, for the object has succeeded in ecstatically revealing
the intimacy of its uniqueness.5This drama of expression, which is both dramatized
in Ponge's poems as well as activated and accomplished by them, lies at the heart of
his 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,quant a moi, enfin, c'estevidemment,si vous voulez, pour
aller tres vite, la chose, l'objetqui provoquele desir et qui, lui aussi, meurt, . . .
dans Toperationqui consistea faire naitrele texte. Done, il y a mort a la fois de
l'auteuret mort de l'objetdu desir, mettonsde la chose,du pre-texte,du referent,
pour que puissenaitrele texte. (Entretiens,p. 171.)
The emphatic verbalization of the objet-chose and its dramatic disappearanceis
nowhere better expressed by Ponge than in Le savon. The drama of soap centers
around the transformationthat occurs when soap, inert, stone-like, mute and suffering
from a painful reticenceas it sits in a soap dish, suddenly comes to life in water, where
it begins to lead "une existence dissolue" (p. 25), expressing itself with jubilating,
effervescentsuds. Touched by water the soap changes state; it becomes a "pierre ba-
varde" (p. 35); it froths and foams; "le savon ecume, jubile" (p. 26). The soap has
much to say and does so by generously giving of itself, communicating bubbles, lather,
suds and scents, in sum its being, its "soapness,"to the water. But this gift of self,
this joyful volubility, this expressiveness exhaust the soap. When taken from the
water it has almost disappeared,so greatly reduced is it in size and so formless in
shape. The soap "'a fait la vie'" (p. 104). The drama of the soap, which is also the
drama of expression,is reflectedin the conflict experiencedby the soap between mute-
ness, and therefore self-preservation - for forgotten, the soap becomes hard, cracked
-
and dry on the one hand, and expression with its consequent self-depletion, on the
other.
An interesting aspect of Le savon, aside from Ponge's desire to express his sub-
 STAMELMAN 693

ject in "un style savonneux, moussant, ecumeux" (p. 27) ,6 is the way in which the
story of the soap's acquisition of speech becomes a metaphor by which Ponge shows
how Le savon text is formed. The poem's "theme," as expressed hesitantly in the
opening pages of the book, is compared to the shy, dormant soap lying in its dish.
The exuberant variations and digressions of the text are said to resemble the froth
and foam generated by the soap in water (p. 32). The soap is shown to act like a
word because it possesses the properties, gestures and movements of language.7 In
Le savon, soap and word enact a drama of expressionthat is common to them both.
The fundamental subject of Ponge's texts concerns the making of the text, the
process of expression by which an objet-chose,recently born to language, expresses
itself and thus gives birth to a text, an objet-description.Although one could say that
a Ponge text, like Le savon, presents an allegory about poetic creation and the genesis
of poems, this would be misleading, for there is no referencein Ponge's texts, as there
would be in an allegory, to a reality existing outside of the text and for which the
text would be a symbolic representation.In Ponge's poetry the text refers to itself and
to itself alone. If reference is indeed made to something, it is only to the drama of the
objet-chose's death and the consequent birth of the objet-description,and that drama
exists nowhere but in and through the words of the poem, not the poem as a finished
product but as a process.The only thing the text "represents"is its own surging into
being through language, its own act of expression.Ultimately, the text signifies itself.
Ponge sees writing,
non comme la transcription,selon un code conventionnel,de quelque idee (ex-
terieureou anterieure),mais a la verite comme un orgasme:comme l'orgasme
d'une etre, ou disons d'une structure,deja conventionnellepar elle-meme,bien
entendu- mais qui doit, pour s'accomplir,se donner,avec jubilation,comme teller
en un mot, se signifierelle-meme.(Le savion,p. 127.)
The joy, jubilation, ecstasy and pleasure of self-expression,this is what Ponge
means by his notion of an ecriture-orgasme.In ecstasy, an objet-choseexpresses its
being and then expires; and out of this ecstasy surges the objet-description,the text,
whose only purpose,according to Ponge, is to "donner a jouir" ("My creativemethod,"
Methodes, p. 22), to give enjoyment to man and to remind him of "le bonheur de
vivre"(Malherbe,p.29l):
For the wandererdoesn'tbring from the mountainslope a handfulof earthto the
valley,untellableearth,but only some word he has won, a pure word, the yellow
and blue gentian.Are we, perhaps,here just for saying:House, Bridge,Fountain,
Gate, Jug, Olive tree, Window,- possibly:Pillar, Tower? . . . but for saying,re-
member,oh, for such saying as never the things themselveshoped so intenselyto
be. Is not the secretpurposeof this sly earth,in urging a pair of lovers,just to
make everythingleap with ecstasyin them?8
Wesleyan University

1 Le parti pris des choses, p. 205. In this article
the following abbreviatedtitles will be used to refer
to Ponge's works: Entretiens (Entretiens de Francis
Ponge avec Philippe Sollers, 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 parti pris
des choses, suivi de Proemes. Coll. "Poesie," Paris,
Gallimard, 1942, 1948); Pieces (Pieces, Coll.
"Poesie," Paris, Gallimard, 1962); Le savon (Le
savon, Paris, Gallimard, 1967); and TP (Tome
premier, Paris, Gallimard, 1965).
2 New York, The Modern Library, 1961, pp. 85,
672.
694 BOOKS ABROAD
3 For Ponge descriptionand the act of describing
constitute a means for figuring the being and for
generatingthe being-therenessof an object. His goal
is at once to describeand define the object:
Ne pourrait-onimaginer une sorte d'ecrits (nou-
veaux) qui, se situant a peu pres entre lcs deux
genres (definition et description), emprunteraient
au premier son infaillibilite, son indubitabilite,sa
brievete aussi, au second son respect de l'aspect
sensoriel des choses. ("My creative method,"
Methodes,pp. 11-12)
4 It is also true that Ponge's repetitions enable
him to re-contemplatean object and to describe it
from a new point of view, like someone who, in
trying to extract a root from the ground, contin-
uously changes the position from which he grabs
hold of the object. Each reprise is an attempt at a
re-expression.(See "L'oeillet," TP, p. 303.)
5 This blissful moment is lyrically evoked by
Ponge as follows:
Voyez-vous, le moment beni, le moment heu-
reux, et par consequent le 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 se
produit 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 some
way determined by its subject ("My creative meth-
od," Methodes, p. 37), many of his texts exhibit
structures, styles of writing and syntactical forms
which resemble the qualities of the object being de-
scribed by those texts. See, for example, the descrip-
tion of a forest in spring, which is expressed in
"une espece de printemps de paroles" ("Tentative
orale," Methodes, p. 257), and the portrait of a
wasp presented in a lurching, zig-zag, and piquant
manner ("La guepe," TP, p. 270).
7 This kind of self-consciouscommentaryis quite
similar to the analogy between word and thing that
Ponge makes in his poem "Le lezard" (Pieces, pp.
84-88). Here a skillful convergenceoccurs between
the lizard and its name. Ponge achievesa remarkable
identificationbetween the white stone wall in whose
cracks the lizard dwells, when he is not jumping
out to devour flies, and the white page of paper
from the interior of which gray thoughts (on the
subject of a lizard, perhaps) dart out to swallow
words that have alighted onto the surface.
8 Rainer Maria Rilke. 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 Work

By BETH ARCHER BROMBERT

"Le pre est une des choses du monde les plus difficiles"(228) } Yet, this is preciselythe
task Ponge set for himself and labored over from 1960 to 1964: to speak, to tell, to
explain, to extoll that expanse of green preparedfor us by nature. Few writers have left
a record of themselves in the process of creation, and even fewer a record in which
the totality of the fragments constitutes a genre of its own: "la fabrique,"the making,
the becoming of the art work, the concretization of an unfolding future; and con-
versely, the ruin- the Greek temple, the Norman abbey- assumes a character of its
own, not merely as the part of a former whole, but as the monument of a perpetual
-
past. This eternal becoming or eternal returning the process by which the material
object evolves into a word object2- is as central to Ponge's work as is nature, for it
mirrorsthe cyclic regeneration,the continuous present and continuous past of nature
and the WORD. The sixty-four pages of La fabrique du pre (which Ponge recently
told me represent only a third of the total document) allow us to follow from con-
ception to maturity the four-yeargestation which produced Le pre. They also reveal
this singular process of poetic evolution which bestows on the finished work the
substanceof the past and the possibility of future avatars as connotations change, in
much the same way as any natural object continues to mutate. "Le pre est l'emulation