Mute Objects of Expression by Francis Ponge Page A

a poet than a “savant.” – I have less desire to wind up with a poem than a formula, a clarification of impressions. If it’s possible to found a science whose matter would be aesthetic impressions, I want to be the man of that science.
    â€œStretch out on the ground,” I wrote fifteen years ago, “and start over again with everything right from the beginning.” – Neither a scientific treatise, nor the encyclopedia, nor the Littré: something both more and less . . . and the way to avoid patchwork will be to publish not only the formula one might have taken as the conclusion, but to publish the entire history of the research, the journal of one’s exploration . . .
    And further down Audisio went on: “I believe the artist cannot aspire for better than to eternalize the shared moment of the thing and himself.” But come now, my dear Audisio, when dealing with a lion entangled in a net and a rat who frees him, La Fontaine comes to this:

    One gnawed mesh won the day.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Patience and the course of time
Do better than force or rage
    Where does La Fontaine figure in all this, where is the shared moment between the lion or the rat and himself? Isn’t this instead a quasi-scientific perfection, the birth of formula? There’s the truth of an action by the lion – entangled strength and rage, and an action by the rat – a gnawed net . . . We often need someone smaller than ourselves. – It is on proverbs much like this that I’d like to conclude. But my chimera would be rather to have no other subject than the lion itself. As though La Fontaine, instead of doing in succession The Lion and the Rat, The Aged Lion, The Animals Sick with the Plague , etc., had only written a single fable about The Lion . It would have been much more difficult. A fable that gave the nature of the lion. As in Theophrastus and his Characters .

    Three important readings in the last few days have seemed to correspond in an amazing way to my preoccupations: a) The Obscurantism of the 20th Century , an anonymous article in an underground
journal – about Rosenberg’s speech at the Palais-Bourbon; b) The Lesson of Ribérac by Aragon in Fontaine , #14; c) Vigilantes nar-rare somnia by Caillois in the Cahiers du Sud , June 1941 issue.
    The first text, totally convincing, confirms my desire to struggle for enlightenment, reassures me on the urgency of my mission (?), and compels me to rethink the problem of the relationship between my esthetic and political positions. The second also offers several confirmations: closed language preparing for general public acceptance (that’s not quite it). The third, rather false in its eloquence, rather conventional despite its pretension, shows me what stringent scruples coupled with constantly renewed acerbic audacity it would take to approach this sort of problem. And when (fourth important text, fifth counting Audisio’s) Pia writes to me: “The coffee, the grounds, the filter, the boiling water, etc.” I clearly see that YES, it is interesting to show the process of “my thought.” But that doesn’t mean that under this pretext one must abandon all restraint, for that would run counter to my purpose. – Yet it is very legitimate for a savant to describe his discovery in detail, to relate his experiences, etc.

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    Roanne, July 19 to 28
    (Time to get back to it!)
    At the place known as “La Mounine” not far from Aix-en-Provence
    One April morning around eight o’clock
    The sky though limpid seen through foliage
    Appeared to me mingled with shadow.
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    A beautiful day is also a meteor, I thought, and would not give up until I had invented some sort of expression to capture it:
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    At first I thought (it was hardly so) that rancorous night
To avenge its retreat from above these regions
Had wished to drain of blue-black ink
Its octopus heart on that occasion.
Or