Mute Objects of Expression

Accept the challenge things offer to language. These carnations, for instance, defy language. I won’t rest till I have drawn together a few words that will compel anyone reading or hearing them to say: this has to do with something like a carnation.

Is that poetry? I have no idea, and it scarcely matters. For me it is a need, a commitment, a rage, a matter of self-respect, and that’s all there is to it.

I make no claim to being a poet. I believe my vision is quite commonplace.

Given an object, however ordinary, it seems to me that it invariably presents certain unique qualities which, if clearly and simply expressed, would elicit unanimous and invariable comment; they are the ones I’m trying to elicit.

What’s to be gained by this? To bring to life for the human spirit qualities, which are not beyond its capacity and which habit alone prevents it from adopting.

What sort of disciplines are required for this venture to succeed? Certainly those of scientific thought, but particularly a large measure of art. And that’s why I think one day such research might also legitimately be called poetry.

The examples that follow ¹ will reveal what serious groundwork this process assumes (or implies), what tools one may or must invoke, what procedures and rubrics: dictionary, encyclopedia, imagination, telescope, microscope, both ends of opera glasses, lenses for the myopic and the presbyopic, puns, rhyme, contemplation, forgetfulness, volubility, silence, sleep, etc.

One will also observe what reefs must be avoided, what others to be confronted, along with what navigation (what tacking), and what shipwrecks – what shifts in point of view.

It might well be that I’m not qualified to carry out such an undertaking – under any circumstances.

Others will come along and put to better use the procedures I point out. They will be the heroes of tomorrow’s spirit.

(Another day.)

After all, what’s so unusual about the naïve program (viable for all authentic expression) solemnly propounded above?

Probably just this: . . . that instead of feelings or human ventures, I choose as subjects the most indifferent objects possible . . . where the guarantee of the need for expression appears to me (instinctively) to reside in the object’s habitual mutism.

. . . Both a guarantee of that need for expression and guarantee of the opposition to language, to standard expressions.

Mute opposable evidence.

Opiniâtre. Opinionated: strongly attached to one’s opinion.

Papillotes, papillons, papilles. Paper frills, butterflies, papillae: same root as vacillate.

Déchiré. Torn or rent. From a German word skerran. Déchiqueter. To shred.

Dents et dentelles. Teeth and lace.

Chiffons. Rags, dust cloths. Crème, cremeux. Cream, creamy.

Œillet. Carnation: Linnaeus calls it a perfect bouquet, the ready-made bouquet.

Satin.

Festons. Garlands: “The beautiful forests outlined the crest of the slopes with a long pliant garland.”

Fouetté. Whipped: whipped cream which turns into foam or froth with beating.

Éternuer. To sneeze.

Jacasse – magpie – and Jocasta?

Jabot. Ruffle: appendage of muslin or lace.

Froisser: to crumple or to crease; to cause irregular folds. (The source is a sound.)

Friser. To crimp (as a napkin): to fold into small pleats, like waves.

Friper: to crease (in the sense of crumple), to crush; confused with fespe, from fespa, which means rag and also fringe, a kind of plush.

Franges. Fringe: etymology unknown. 2. Anatomical term: synovial folds.

Déchiqueter: to shred into small scraps through many cuts. Se déchiqueter: to mutilate oneself.

Contrast it to calm, rounded flowers: arum, lilies, camellias, tuberoses.

Not that it’s crazy, but it is violent (though well compacted, put together within reasonable limits).

At stem-tip, from an olive, from a supple acorn of leaves, the luxurious marvels of its linen come unbuttoned.

Carnations, those marvelous rags.

How clean they are.

Breathing them in, you feel a pleasure whose flip side would be a sneeze.

Seeing them, the pleasure you feel at a glimpse of underpants with fine-cut lace, of a young girl who attends to her linens.

For “se déboutonner,” to unbutton or unburden oneself, to come unbuttoned, “unbudded” see bouton, button or bud. See also cicatrice, scar.

Bouton: checked, avoid bringing together bout, end, and bouton, or even déboutonner in one sentence, since it is the same word (from bouter, to shove).

And naturally, all is but movement and passing, otherwise life, death, would be incomprehensible.

Thus if they were to invent a pill for dissolving in vases to give the carnation eternal life – by nourishing its cells with mineral extracts – it would still not survive for long as a flower, since the flower is only a moment of the individual, which plays out its role as the species prescribes.

(These first six pieces, the night of June 12 to 13, 1941, in the presence of the white carnations in Mme Dugourd’s garden.)

At stem’s tip, coming unbudded from a supple olive of leaves, a marvelous ruffle of cool satin with crevices of verdant snow still harboring a bit of chlorophyll, whose perfume stimulates the nostrils with pleasure just short of a sneeze.

Paper frill crinkled dust cloth
Luxurious cool satin rag
Luxurious dust cloth finely laced
Crinkled rag of cool satin
Luxurious kerchief finely laced
Luxurious frippery in cool satin
Lustrous

Ruffle paper frill or kerchief
Luxurious rag finely laced
Dust cloth
Cool satin finely laced
Fragrant frothy frenzied
Stem tip green bamboo
Swelling of polished fingernail
Supple knob bulging with leaves
Multiple fragrant sachets
From which the frothy dress gushes

June 13

Beacon in a buttonhole
Projector
Portable lamp
Magondo

Ruffle dust cloth kerchief
Togs frippery tatters

Billows of linens or ruff
Of cool satin
Opulent assembly
Competition association
Demonstration gathering
Of petals done in humid cloth
Coolly satined

Throng pouring out of communion in a spreading stream
Or finely laced white underpants of a young girl who attends to her linens
Continually giving off the sort of perfume
That threatens such pleasure – bringing you to the verge of a sneeze

Trumpets filled gorged choked
By the redundance of their own expression

Throats entirely choked by tongues

Their pavilions their lips shredded
By the violence of their cries of their expressions

Puckered creased crimped crushed
Fringed festooned flogged
Rumpled buckled cockled
Quilled waffled curled
Slashed ripped pleated tattered
Flounced whorled waved denticulated

Creamy foamy snowy white
Homogeneous blended
Perfect bouquet Ready-made bouquet
Sprung from the supple acorn from the supple pointed olive
That it forces ajar that it splits
At the tip of its slim green bamboo stem
With the well-spaced polished swellings
And tongued as simply as possible

But with July approaching
The carnation is unbudding

June 14

At the tip of its slim green bamboo stem with the polished well-spaced bulges from which two symmetrical leaves come unsheathed very simple little sabers successfully swells an acorn a supple pointed olive that’s forced ajar that’s rent into carnation from which unbuds

a ruffle of cool satin marvelously crumpled a ruff profuse with little tongues twisted and torn by the violence of their talk:

most particularly a perfume such that it produces on human nostrils a pleasurable effect all but sternutatory

June 15

The stem
of this magnificent hero – example to follow –
is a delicate green bamboo
with vigorous well-spaced swellings
polished as a fingernail

Beneath each one come unsheathed is the word
two very simple little sabers
symmetrically inoffensive

At the tip destined for success
swells an acorn a supple pointed olive

Which suddenly bringing about an overwhelming
modification
forces it apart, pulling it open
and unbudding it?

A marvelous dust cloth of cool satin
a ruffle with profusion of cool flickers
little tongues of the same fabric
twisted and shredded
by the violence of their talk

A trumpet choked
on the redundance of its own cries
at the pavilion shredded by their sheer violence

While to confirm the phenomenon’s importance
a perfume continuously is given off
arousing in human nostrils
an effect of intense pleasure
almost sternutatory.

At the tip of a vigorous stalk
trumpets of linens
shredded by the violence of their talk:
a perfume of sternutatory essence

Plant with immobile kneecaps.

The bud of a vigorous stalk
splits into carnation

O rent into Œ
O! Bud of vigorous stalk
rent into OEILLET!
Plant, with immobile kneecaps
ELLE, she, O youthful vigor
L of the symmetrical apostrophes
O the supple pointed olive
unfolding into Œ, I, double-L, E, T
Little tongues shredded
By the violence of their talk
Damp satin raw satin

etc.

(My carnation shouldn’t amount to much; one must be able to hold it between two fingers.)

Concluding Rhetoric for the Carnation

Among the ecstasies, including lessons, to be drawn from a contemplation of carnations, there are several varieties, and I’d like, on a progressive scale of pleasure, to begin with the least spectacular, the most down to earth and perhaps most solid, those that emerge from the mind at the moment the shoot itself emerges from the earth . . .

At first this plant hardly differs from ragweed. It clings to the soil, which looks at that spot both hard-packed and as sensitive as a gum being pierced by fangs. If you try to extract the little wisp, success won’t come easily, for you soon notice that beneath it there’s a sort of long horizontal root underlining the surface, a long and very tenacious will to resist, relatively quite considerable. We find ourselves dealing with a very resistant sort of thread that throws the extractor off balance, forcing him to alter the thrust of his effort. It is something very much like the sentence through which I’m trying “at this very moment” to express it, something that unfolds less than it tears away, that grips the soil with a thousand adventitious radicles – and is likely to break off (under my effort) before I have managed to extract the principle. Aware of this danger I risk it viciously, shamelessly, repeatedly.

Enough of that, right? Let’s drop the root of our carnation.

– We will drop it, fine, but restored to a more tranquil state of mind, and before letting our thoughts rise towards the stem – settling down on the grass, for instance, not far away, and observing without touching it again – we’ll nonetheless ponder the reasons for this form it has taken: why a thread rather than a tap root or simple subterranean branching like ordinary roots?

Indeed we shouldn’t give way to the temptation of believing that it is simply to plague myself that I have just described this carnation behavior.

But perhaps it is possible to detect in vegetal behavior a will to bind up the earth, to be its religion, its religious – and consequently its masters.

But let’s return to the form of the roots. Why a thread rather than a tap root or a branching like ordinary roots?

Two reasons might have existed behind this choice, either of them valid depending on whether you look at it as an aerial root or rather as a rampant stem.

Perhaps if it is taken as an atrophied shrub, a weary, limp shrub without enough faith to raise itself vertically off the ground, then perhaps some millennial experience taught it the value of reserving its altitude for the flower.

Or is it perhaps that this plant must cover a vast terrain in search of scarce principles suited to the particular urgency that culminates in its flower?

The sheer length of these paragraphs devoted purely to the root of my subject must correspond to an analogous concern . . . but here we’ve gone the limit.

Let’s come out of the ground at this chosen place . . .

So there we’ve found the tone, upon reaching indifference.

That was certainly what mattered most. Everything will flow from that . . . some other time.

And I may just as well remain silent.

Roanne, 1941 – Paris, 1944