Mute Objects of Expression (18 page)

But some failing prevents me from doing that, not solely laziness or fear of its difficulty: it seems to me I couldn't interest myself
exclusively, much as I should, and successively, in anyone of those subjects. It seems to me that upon undertaking anyone of them, I'd instantly sense that it wasn't essential, that it would be a waste of my time.

And it's to “the pine woods” that I instinctively return, to the subject that totally preoccupies me, that monopolizes my personality, that brings my whole being into play. This is one of the few subjects in which I'll invest (or lose) myself entirely: a bit like a scholar in his chosen research.

It's not a relating, an account, or a description, but a
conquest.

 

Something important (to remember) in my conversation today with Jacques Babut, the pastor.

We had already gone beyond the point where our doctrines part: mine trusting in man, his forever refusing him any trust. We were talking of what he calls the Kingdom of God, and to which I give another name. And he was telling me that according to the Scriptures, Redemption would not be achieved for any man until this Kingdom had come about (that squares fairly well with my own theory) . . . “Moreover,” he said to me, “this Kingdom must come universally, not only for men, but for things as well . . .” and he cited, I think, Saint Paul.

“Yes, things in the spirit of men,” I replied parenthetically.

And later, describing the new man of my own dreams, I told him that most likely this man would have the ability to ponder the essential problems much more freely – that of the ambient mystery, of speech as well, which particularly interests me (I added).

A new stage in my “thinking” dates from those moments of our conversation.

I begin to perceive with some degree of clarity how the two primary elements of my personality (?) come together in me: the poetic and the political.

Certainly the redemption of things (in the spirit of man) will be fully possible only when the redemption of man is a
fait accompli.
And now it is understandable to me why I work at preparing each of them at the same time.

. . . The birth in the human world of the simplest things, their accession by the spirit of man, the acquisition of corresponding qualities – a new world in which men and things together will enjoy harmonious relations: that is my poetic and political goal. “This might strike you as still somewhat hazy . . .” (I'll have to get back to it.)

. . . My articles in
Le Figaro
have provoked a group of young poets, who are now looking askew at me . . . But I'm not done yet: I gave
Le Jour
an article on the “poet's craft” which will have the fanatics gnashing their teeth. I'll send it on to you . . . And I've prepared another on inspiration stripped bare.

All of this (including the stripping) naturally brings me to your pine woods. Useless – no, useful – to tell you that I find this deeply intriguing . . . Yet I cannot help deploring that your “heroism” in facing the problem of expression nonetheless wound up leading you into a sort of impasse. For the outcome of your efforts runs too great a risk of becoming a quasi-scientific perfection which, for having undergone purification, tends towards a compendium of interchangeable materials. Each thing in itself, rigorously specific and followed through, is excellent. The whole becomes a patchwork. You see what I mean, even if badly stated.

The chimera lies in wishing to reinstate the object in its entirety. You'll never manage to give more than an idea, a moment, of
an
object. (Not even, perhaps, if you should choose, instead of a pine woods – palpitating, evolving – an object as stable in appearance as the pebble, which is still nonetheless an infinitely changing organism.)

Have you repeated the “experience” of the pine woods in winter, in spring? Have you reflected that yours are pines of the area where you were living? The rigid pine with long vertical trunk (like the one they call
pariccio
in the forests of the Corsican mountains, from which they make masts for boats), but which has nothing in common with the wood of maritime pines from my coastline – twisted, tormented – nor with the majestic parasol pines in their chosen
solitude – nor even the slender pines, pencil-drawn, from the inland regions of Provence or Attica?

Instead of “momentarying” the eternity of the thing-in-itself (could God himself do as much, O proud Francis, with that sublime outburst on what the pines owe you for having noticed them?), I believe that the artist cannot aspire for better than to eternalize the shared moment of the object and himself.

Humility? Most likely. But not without grandeur, and which already overlays a rather strong ambition.

All of this on the basis of your research. But the exposé, the revelation of the method, intrigues me still more . . .

. . . Here we're in agreement! Do you remember the chapbook
Poèmes en commun
that I published a while back with C.S.? That was already an essay of this sort (
mutatis mutandi
). In it I alluded to a work I've never published, which I still have in my possession, unpublished:
Genèse d'un poème
(Genesis of a Poem).

What you did, before and during, step by step, word by word, for the
Pine Woods
, (somewhat like the
Journal des faux monnayeurs
(
Journal of the Counterfeiters
) for the novel), I did afterwards, retrospectively, for the
Ballade du Dee-Why
(which is in
Antaeus
) – like Dante's commentary for the sonnets of the
Vita Nova,
or Poe's for
The Raven,
etc.

I believe there are two related approaches here; each in its own
way casts surprising light on the paths of creative imagination. If one could pick some journal to gather them in a sort of special issue, which might be called
Birth of the Poem,
for instance, with an introduction, a “head” (and right to the point, O mysterious correlation, my article on inspiration stripped bare aims at promoting studies of this sort), I believe this could be extremely interesting.

What do you think?

G.A.

. . . My mind must be addled by springtime: the proposal I received from G.A. concerning
The Pine Woods
seems to have driven me half-mad. I'm sending you his letter. I really hadn't expected such a use of this poor text. There are moments when I feel totally irritated (defensively) at the idea of being
explained;
others when that slacks off, and I feel discouraged, quite capable of letting it all go...

No! G.A. has (apparently) failed to understand that in this neck of the woods, it is much less a matter of the birth of a poem than an
attempted assassination
(far from successful)
of a poem by its object.

Can I lend myself to such misinterpretation? Honestly, I don't believe so.

Note that aside from that, I agree about the
patchwork
(though perhaps, since it has to do with a bath, I might have preferred
mosaic
).

In case you haven't read it, find enclosed G.A.'s article in last Thursday's
Le Jour.

 

F.P.

 

P.S. (
Two hours later
) – Enclosed, projected reply. If you approve, drop it in the mailbox. Thanks. Without forgetting to enclose with it the
Mémorial
article for Louis le Cardonnel and Pierre de Nolhac.

I read your article in
Le Jour
(so named in antithesis). I follow you up to the moment when it turns (somewhat vaguely in my opinion) positive.

Primo:
Personally, whatever you may think and whatever most people think of it, I don't believe I am answerable to your criticism, for
I don't consider myself a poet.

Secundo:
In any case I maintain that every writer “worthy of the name” must write
against
everything that has been written before him (
must
in the sense of
is forced to, is obliged to
) – particularly
against every existing rule. Actually, this is the way it has always been; I'm speaking of people with character.

It goes without saying, as you have clearly grasped, I am fiercely steeped in technique. But I am partial to one technique per poet, and even, ultimately, one technique
per poem
– as dictated by its object.

Thus, for
The Pine Woods,
if I may put it this way, isn't the pine the tree that (during its lifetime) provides
the most dead wood? . . .

The height of preciosity? – Most likely. But what else can I do? Once you've imagined this kind of difficulty, honor forbids evading it . . . (and anyway, it's rather entertaining).

One thing more, about your series of articles (but I can't attach too much importance to this): it seems to me that to propose right now what I'd call “measures of order” in poetry would play into the hands of those who proclaim that
primo:
“Up to the present there has been disorder,” and
secundo:
“We are the ones who impose order,” which exemplifies the fundamental hypocrisy of this period . . . No, don't you see, in art (at least) there is, there must be, permanent revolution and terror; while in criticism, this is the moment to keep quiet, for want of the power to denounce the false values they claim to impose on us. On that score, and to show you the
danger
, I
attach an article which appeared in the
Mémorial de Saint-Étienne
on the same day as yours in
Le Jour
.

This said, do for
The Pine Woods
exactly what seems best to you. Now you realize that in my mind it has nothing
at all
to do with the birth of a poem but rather an effort
against
“poetry.” And not, it goes without saying, in favor of the pine woods (I'm not altogether mad) but in favor of the mind and spirit, which could gain some lesson there, grasp some moral and logical secret (according to the universal “characteristic,” if you will).

 

F.P.

. . . So then what do you mean by “poet's craft”? As for me, I'm more and more convinced that my doings are more scientific than poetic. It is a matter of attaining clear formulas, on the order of:
One gnawed mesh won the day. Patience and passage of time
, etc.

I need some poetic magma,
but only to rid myself of it
.

I fiercely (and patiently) want to cleanse the mind and spirit of it. It is in that sense that I claim to be a combatant in the ranks of the
enlightened, as they said in the great century (the 18th). Once again, it is a matter of plucking forbidden fruit, with all due deference to the powers of darkness, to God the unworthy in particular.

Much remains to be said about the obscurantism that threatens us, from Kierkegaard to Bergson and Rosenberg . . .

It's not for naught that the bourgeoisie in ITS COMBAT of the 20th century extols a return to the Middle Ages.

I haven't enough
religiöses Gemüt
to accept this passively. You neither? – Fine . . .

Faithfully yours,

F.P.

 

 

END OF APPENDIX
TO
“THE PINE WOODS NOTEBOOK”

LA MOUNINE OR NOTE STRUCK IN AFTERTHOUGHT ON A PROVENCE SKY

 

 

True daylight didn't appear until Martigues.

In Port-de-Bouc not a trace of odor.

The man from Saint-Dié sitting across from me was annoyed by the locomotive's plume of smoke. So I was too.

Enormous graffiti in Marseille and throughout its suburbs.