Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Francis Ponge: The Art of Parable

Author(s): Edouard Morot-Sir
Source: Books Abroad, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 707-711
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40128157
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Francis Ponge: The Art of Parable

By EDOUARD MOROT-SIR

A first reading of Ponge's poems invites one to a sort of meditative preliminary, in

which, guided by etymology, one should remain quietly on the threshold (limeri) of
the poetic world and become little by little conscious of its pure existence. This is in-
deed the time to recall that a poet in presenting a poem intends to be the poet in se.
Such a claim is not a Platonic reference to a universal model or paradigm for poetry.
On the contrary, it is the faith and assurance that an individual act, in and by its very
uniqueness, is absolute and projects through its language the singular and eternal
individual who calls himself poet. It is why this poem that we are about to read may
itself be seen as striving, gently and proudly, to become the poem in se, to express
the very essence of poetry. It is not, as a Hegelian critic would say, the synthesis of
the individual and the universal; it is the transposition, rather, of a unique anecdote
into a unique language - the passage by means of words from an historical situation
to its triumphant negation. When a poet becomes conscious of such a poetic condition
- and Ponge pushes this consciousness to a permanent state of obsession - he has to
face another preliminary trial, i.e., the godlike temptation to begin again the very
first act of creation. For Ponge it is not a matter of rivalry; a poet should not pretend
to compete with Prometheus or Moses. Poetry was born before Man had begun to
try to get rid of God. Poetry is a meditation on the Genesis - the great beginning of
all things. Let us not be naively romantic and believe that the poet repeats, perhaps
improving on the Creator, the act of Creation - the passage from nothingness to reality.
No, poetry is born when a man becomes conscious of the mysterious simultaneity be-
tween two aspects of any act: creation and naming. It does not mean that creation
is achieved when a name is given or, on the contrary, that the act of naming changes
nothingness into something. It means that real light and the word "light" exist at the
same time, in that very moment when sign and thing make the two complementary
aspects of any creative decision. Thus, it is not a matter of being God's rival. Ponge's
sense of humor and his sense of poetry are too strong for him to play at that theatrical
game. The cliche of poetry-as-Genesis is the original sin of poetry, the beginning of
prose, when poetic inspiration is converted into cosmic or humanistic eloquence. We
must not take Francis Ponge for a thaumaturge or a Mallarmean Doctor Faustus who
pretends to change sign into being - word into reality. Poetry is the consciousness of
this necessary simultaneity of language and reality; and the poet is the one who makes
us conscious of that primal fact. This is why Ponge's poetics is centered around it
and why his poetical devices pursue a single goal - to be present at that unique mo-
ment when word and being help each other to attain reality. For that fundamental
reason, Ponge's poetry responds to a constant pattern - the secret and deep relation
between desire and images. But let us not be misled by this formula. "Desire" does
not include Freudian connotations; it is not a libido impulse. The relationship between
language and reality is presexual and makes reality possible. Thus, the relationship
Ponge establishes between desire and images is not an act of evasion into a

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708 BOOKS ABROAD

symbolic world of images which get their meanings from the disgu
rather, "desire" and "image" are the two words on which a poetic on
developed. The usual words (like "creation," "genesis" and all those
vein) can only be used by the poet if they are transposed within the "de
signifying pattern. Again, let us note the presence of humor at this mom
emergence. Can the poet say "fiat lux"? It is not so simple! The rela
language and reality becomes meaningful within this poetic consciou
desire and images - desire of being with images as modes of existence. P
that the poet is not the magus or the seer. He is a clockmaker or, more
repairman - "reparateur attentif du homard ou du citron, de la cruche ou
. . . ." His poetical tools (in our civilization) were conceived and coine
that wonderous time when geometry, logic and rhetoric were formulate
patterns : The forms of the world are analogous to the forms of languag
for the origin of rhetoric, one has to read the Elements of Euclid. Pong
"ellipses, hyperboles, paraboles sont aussi des figures de cette geometric"
that perhaps one day new "figures" will be formed so that the Word wi
travel through non-Euclidian space. Such is Francis Ponge- the poe
geometer and, as such, Master of Rhetoric.

In 1971 the series "Les Sentiers de la Creation," published by Alber

Francis Ponge an opportunity to realize an old dream - that of presentin
its final form together with all the texts and notes written for it - from
(11 August 1960) when he decided and noted, "Ce que j'ai envie d'ec
pre: un pre entre bois (et rochers) et ruisseau (et rochers)." The next-to-
completed on 23 July 1964. Free permission is given to enter the wo
poet. No one will be surprised at reading the title of this book that
in three colors (white, brown and green) : La jabrique du pre.
The word "f abrique" has two principal meanings : "factory" and "mak
original equivocality suggests the interference and interplay of two acto
in perfect simultaneity: Nature and the poet. It is not my purpose to an
ing of "Le pre" - this fascinating succession of trials and errors, unt
incarnates itself into the pre, until the "making" is recognized as the po
ly "Le pre" in its final form is also La jabrique du pre - the making o
the poem. I would rather limit my analysis to the techniques that Po
to solve that problem: how to "relate" the interplay between the two act
and the poet) and how to give the feeling of reality-in-the-making thro
the-f ailure ?

1) First, the idea of the poem, its inspiration: it all begins with a
statement to the reader. This is the meaning and value of the first stro
Que parfois la Nature a notre reveil, nous propose
Ce a quoi justement nous etions disposes.
The impossible problem of the beginning is solved : it is merely a fact,
of being in Paradise - happiness immediately before the moment of tru
that from now on nature and the poet are both responsible for that dec
poet must justify himself: why Ponge and not Braque? The confiden

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 MOROT-SIR 709

strophe turns into an act of faith and an awareness of the technic

poetry over painting :

La parole y convient plutot que la peinture . . .

Prendre un tube de vert, l'etaler sur la page,
Ce n'est pas faire un pre . . .
Preparons done la page ou puisse aujourdhui naitre
Une verite qui soit verte.

A green truth - here is the poetic vision and the expected identific
and poetry. Note this first touch of humor. After this declaration, m
words, in favor of poetry - after saying that a meadow requires more
out green paste on a white canvas - the poet uses the painter's vocabul
nique, and accepts the analogy of the page and the canvas. The verb pr
us for the multiple aspects of creation: the poet prepares his page
prepares his canvas, and both can work out that preparation because, a
moment nature herself "nous a prepare (s) (a) un pre." "Preparer un pr
nature is working like a painter or a poet; but "preparer a un pre" me
in her providential benevolence has made a meadow for poetry's s
it pure chance that "la fabrique du pre" begins with an act of "prepara
the word "preparer" (at least in French) indicates its predestination to
when the poet "prepares" the page, he is made conscious of language :
qui obstrue ainsi notre chemin?"
This first movement of "Le pre" turns inspiration into interrogatio
must be the making of the meadow. We understand this poetical situa
a language of confidence and confession which establishes simultaneiti
to exist for an act of creation when nothingness becomes being. Simul
ture and the poet - simultaneity of reality and language - simultaneit
images. May I suggest that we call this process a "technique of nondist
tances between nature and poetry - between subjectivity and objec
word and reality are then abolished. The esthetic consequence of t
clear: the end of poetry is no longer introduction to or description
reality insofar as reality is poetry itself.
2) After the first brief moment of grace, of complicity between n
poet, obstacles arise. The way is blocked. The risk of failure is clearly
that moment becomes an intimate part of the poetical fabrique. Failur
creation, because in nature as in language everything is always at the
and something else. Here Ponge's poetical genius appears at its best: th
ops into a marvelous rainbow of equivocalities where "to mean" me
another meaning" - a state of affairs which Ponge calls "le seul ni
nous convient."

Poetry is beyond contradiction and analogy. The logic of non-contr

the logic of metaphoric participation no longer apply. Let us call this
"logic of voluntary failure," and the technique employed a "circular pr
ing" within reality, within language, within the relation between real
3) As a consequence of voluntary failure, there begins, then, the lab
with its "ethic of scruples" :

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710 BOOKS ABROAD

Pourquoi, des notre issue en surplomb sur la page,

Dans ce seul paragraphe, tous ces scrupules ?

Everyone knows that "scruple" in Latin means "pebble." Here we h

of Chaos - the time of rocks and dark forests wrapped in the original st
calls it first "Forage initial," then at the end of the poem remarks that "F
a longuement parle"). The meadow appears to be a sort of victory of
chaos over itself, expressing order, peace, kindness, sweetness; it is
than a Persian rug. It is also the triumph of Euclidian geometry: thi
mixture of soil and water, can be but a plane, "guere plus grand qu'
(hardly larger than a handkerchief), still surrounded by rocks, hed
trees - a rare place to walk, to lie down, to gambol, to tramp on toward
place. Here I leave it to the reader to unfold the tapestry of infinite possi
tions - from cosmic state to biological behavior, and then from the t
consciousness to the serenity of consciousness, and finally to the ultimate
- the place to pray, if not prayer itself - simply the space in which to b
Such is the finality of this ethic of scruples: Chaos has become word and
experienced the great secret: Reality is sign.
4) Where are we ? At the heart of language, at the very center where
start beating around ad infinitum : "Nous voici, en tous cas, au coeur des
This is the true domain of rhetoric. Here again we are warned that po
a brilliant display of rhetorical efficiency. It entails rather a meditation u
a return to the source of language; for the poet is he who catches words
moment when their sound and meaning are still united. Thus the su
act is, through etymology and homophony, the rediscovery of primi
poeia :
Pas moyen de sortir de nos onomatopees originelles.
II faut done y rentrer.

The game of meaningful circularity is played in full innocence and joy, and we
become conscious of the raison d'etre of "Le pre." It is the "past participle" par ex-
cellence :

Prepare pour nous par la nature,

Pre, pare, pre, pres, pret,
Le pre gisant ici comme le participe passe par excellence
S'y revere aussi bien comme notre prefixe des prefixes,
Prefixe deja dans prefixe, present deja dans present.

Let us not accuse the poet of being ignorant, naive, linguistically incompetent;
let us credit him rather with understanding that linguists, in their eagerness to sur-
vive and to dominate the human sciences for over a century now have tabooed the
onomatopoeic theory of language. Linguistic terrorism of our times is very touchy in
defense of the principle of duality in sound and meaning and its interrelationship
with duality in language and reality. Through "Le pre" Ponge tells us that poetry
represents the contrary obstinate belief and certitude that to use words is to accept
the principle of union between sound and meaning, between meaning and nothing-
ness, between language and reality - in brief, union between all the artificial and
practical dualities invented by man to build up a culture.

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 MOROT-SIR 711

5) Finally, it is for the sake of poetry that the poet assembles all th
niques into a unifying technique for all languages - a technique wh
itself in its bursting emergence, the creature himself forgiving his cr
Not the superficial humor that seeks to use language to alleviate the in
of reality, but the humor that is the heart of language and reminds u
the only possible reality is language, it is still not reality. Humor is th
the smiling Ponge, who meant precisely this when he stated in 1943 {T
p. 206) that, since one cannot remain silent, the only solution is to pub
scribing failures of description ("relations d'echecs de description") . E
30, he had already stated that "remaining silent is not the proper way t
soot of words." (Wittgenstein's famous invitation to silence, as the last
Tractatus, is thus dismissed once and for all.) Ponge concludes: "
parler contre les paroles" {Tome Premier, p. 186). For Ponge, to speak a
is not to reach the last level of anti-language; it is rather to restore to
original triumph over itself - the triumph of "Le pre" over chaos. Such
of poetry and the inspiring unity of its techniques. "Le pre" is by itself
etre, paraboler."
The dictionary gives "parabole" from the Latin parabola which c
Greek parabole, properly, "action of putting near or putting aside." An
this doublet of popular origin, parole (which has passed from the
of parabole to the general sense of parole) . Then the usual two meaning
and rhetoric are cited. This is why parabole is the true form of lan
thing to be "put near" with the risk of being "put aside." But Pon
dictionary in converting a noun into a verb : from parabole he creates
we can see the poet's eyes twinkling: does not "paraboler" lead to and s
coler" ? Our last vision of "Le pre is that of a place for decision and of
duellist - or of a place for cheerfulness and the poet as a young foal -
Oii les petits sabots du poulain qui y galopa le marquerent

Peut devenir celui de la decision.

Near and after chaos, perhaps beside chaos, this is the place of the po
for joy and for death. Now the parable has acquired its finishing a
It is time for the last "naming," and for the poet to invite the printe
proper letters - which are the elements of language - and to write
Francis Ponge.#
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

* I would like to express my gratitude to my colleague Professor Alfred Engst

my text in its final form and suggested stylistic corrections or improvements.

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