MIMOSA
Quite often, genius and gaiety produce sudden little enthusiams.
FONTENELLE
Here, against a backdrop of azure sky, like a character in the Italian commedia, with a pinch of absurd histrionics, powdered as a Pierrot in his costume of yellow polka dots – mimosa.
But it’s not a lunar shrub: rather a solar one, multisolar . . .
A character of naive vainglory, easily discouraged.
Anything but smooth, each seed, made up of silky hairs, is a heavenly body if you will, infinitely starred.
The leaves seem like great feathers, very light and yet bowed under their own weight; therefore more touching than other palms, and for the same reason very distinguished as well. Yet nowadays there’s something vulgar about the idea of the mimosa; it’s a flower that has recently been vulgarized.
. . . Just as in tamarisk there is tamis, or sieve, in mimosa there is mima, mimed.
I never choose the easiest subjects; that’s why I choose the mimosa. And since it’s a very difficult subject, I must open a notebook.
First of all, I have to say that the mimosa doesn’t inspire me in the least. It’s simply that I have some idea about it deep inside that I must bring out because I want to take advantage of it. Why is it that the mimosa fails to inspire me, while it was one of my childhood infatuations, one of my predilections? Much more than any other flower, it would arouse my emotions. Alone among them, they enthralled me. I believe it might have been through the mimosa that my sensuality was awakened, that it awoke to the sun of mimosas. I floated in ecstasy on the potent billows of its scent. So that even now each time mimosa appears within me, near me, it reminds me of all that, and then instantly fades.
So I must thank the mimosa. And since I write, it would be unthinkable for me not to have a piece of writing about mimosas.
But the truth is that the more I circle around this shrub, the more I seem to have chosen a difficult subject. That’s because I hold it in very high regard, wouldn’t want to treat it offhandedly (particularly given its extreme sensitivity). I want to approach it only with great delicacy...
. . . This entire preamble, which could be pursued further still, should be called “Mimosa and I.” But it is to the mimosa itself – sweet illusion! – that we should turn now; to the mimosa without me, if you will . . .
Rather than a flower, we should say a branch, a bough, perhaps even a feather of mimosa.
No frond is more like a feather, a young feather, what lies between down and feather.
Sessile, directly adhering to its branches, countless little balls, golden pompons, powder puffs of chick down.
Mimosa’s minute golden pullets, we might say, gallinaceous seeds, the mimosa’s chicks as seen from two kilometers away.
The hypersensitive palmery-plumery and its chicks two kilometers away.
All this, seen through field glasses, scents the air.
Perhaps what makes my work so difficult is that the name of the mimosa is already perfect. Knowing both the shrub and the name of mimosa makes it more difficult to find a better way to define the thing than the name itself.
It seems as though it has been perfectly applied to it, that this thing has already been pinned down . . .
Why no, the very idea! And then, is it really so much a question of defining it?
Isn’t it much more urgent to emphasize, for instance, the mimosa’s proud but also gentle, caressing, affectionate, sensitive side? It shows solicitude in its gestures and its breath. Both alike are effusions, in the sense that the Littré gives: communication of intimate feelings and thoughts.
And deference: condescension mingled with consideration and motivated by respect.
Such is the sensitive greeting of its frond. Thereby hoping, perhaps, to have its vainglory excused.
A thicket of gray feathers on the rumps of ostriches. Golden chicks hiding there (poorly hidden) but with no air of subterfuge.
Carnival trinkets, props for the commedia. Pantomime, mimosa.
Fans of pantomime disclose a
Plan to undermine mimosa
(As an ex-martyr of language, by now I must surely be allowed some time off from taking it seriously day in day out! Those are the only rights I demand, in my capacity of former combatant – in the holy war. No, really! There must be a middle ground between a tone of earnest conviction and this rag-tag doggerel.)
Perfume this page, shade my reader, weightless bough of drooping feathers, of golden chicks!
Weightless bough, gratuitous, of multiple flowerings.
Downcast plumes, golden chicks.
Full-blown, the little mimosa balls give off a prodigious scent then contract, fall silent: they have lived.
I’ll say that they are flowers of the rostrum (or, yet again: of the stage).
That they have good chest tones, a high C from the chest. That their scent carries far. They are unanimously heeded and applauded, by throngs with nostrils wide.
Mimosa speaks in a clear and intelligent voice; it speaks of gold.
It is a good deed cast wide, a gift that’s gratuitous and pleasant to receive.
Mimosa and its particular good deed.
Yet it’s not a speech that it is giving, it’s one prestigious note, always the same but quite capable of persuasion.
Mimosa (prose poem). – A single spray of the hypersensitive golden chick plumes, seen through binoculars two kilometers down the lane, pervades the house. Full blown, the little mimosa balls give off a prodigious fragrance and then contract; they have lived. Are they flowers of the rostrum? Their speech, unanimously heeded and applauded by the throng with nostrils wide, carries far:
“MIraculous
MOmentary
SAtisfaction!
MInute
MOssy
SAffroned!”
“Combs discouraged by the beauty of the golden lice born of their teeth! Lower yard upper yard of rooted ostriches, erupting with golden chicks. Brief fortune, young millionairess with dress fanned-out, tied at the base, fluttered in bouquets. New pufflet, frail cygnets, soft to the touch and pungently perfumed! Geyser of chicking feathers! Panaches, bearable constellated suns! . . . And decked in bearable polka dots! Pride – supple, bowing in deference to itself and spectators alike.
– Flowering is a paroxysm. Fruition is already on the returning path.
– Enthusiasm (beautiful in itself) bears its fruit (good or bad).
– Flowering is an aesthetic value, fruition a moral value: one precedes the other.
– Good is the consequence of the beautiful. The useful (the seed) is the consequence of the good.
– The good can be just as beautiful as the beautiful (oranges, lemons). The useful is generally aesthetically modest.
– The flower is the paroxysm of the individual’s ecstasy.
– The fruit is but the envelope, the protector, the refrigerator, the humidor of the seed.
– The seed is the specific jewel, it is the thing, the nothing.
– The seed, which looks like nothing is – in fact – the thing.”
At the paroxysm of its own specific ecstasy and the visual and olfactory satisfaction that it causes, the mimosa panache droops and the suns that spangle it contract and fade: they have lived.
Paradisiac vision, thicket of noble ostriches thwarted, through what scruple do they wither, do they display so much discouragement?
– Out of deference for themselves and for the spectators: oh, do excuse us! they seem to be saying, for having so openly enjoyed our ecstasy! For having peaked so openly . . . Thicket of vegetal smoke . . . Would the mimosa not conceive itself as smoke, as incense? And would it not be downcast by its weight and immobility?
There’s a mob of golden chicks
in the thicket of hypersensitive feathers
There’s a mob of golden chicks
between two infinities of azure
cheeping the complementary note
Having reached this point, I went to the library to consult the Littré, the Encyclopedia, the Larousse:
Paroxysme, from παρα, indicating conjunction – and οξυνειν, make sharp, tart. The peak of a fit, of a pain.
Paroxyntique, paroxysmal days: days of paroxysm.
Enthousiasme, from εν, in, and Θεος, god. First meaning: divine fury: a disorderly physical state like that of the sibyls, who delivered their oracles with crying out, foaming, rolling their eyes.
Geyser: no, doesn’t work.
Mimosa, n.f. (but according to the botanists, n.m.): Latin name for a genus of Leguminosae, of which the best known is the sensitive (mimosa pudica). Etymology: see mimeux. Sensitive plants.
Mimeux: said of plants that contract when touched. Etym.: from mime because in contracting, the plants seem to resemble the grimace of a mime.
Eumimosa. This odd little shrub loves full sunlight and frequent watering in summer. Small, sessile flowers. Blooming clusters resemble silky pompons because of the great number of long stamens that whisker them.
Floribonde. Floriferous, florabundant.
Mimosées. This family forms the bridge between legumes and the rosaceous.
April 1, 1941
Little suns, already too tolerable: turning still more sallow, they have lived.
The Sprig of Mimosa (poetry)
Top-of-their-lungs, tender-leafed
Golden chicks of the mimosa
Between two infinities of azure
Cheeping the complementary note.
No, alas! It’s not yet to be with the mimosa that I’ll master my mode of expression. I know it only too well, I’ve struggled too hard over too many sheets of blank paper.
But if there’s anything at all I’ve gained on the subject, I don’t want to lose it.
I have but one recourse left. I must take the reader by the hand, asking him to oblige me yet awhile, imploring that he allow himself to be led – at the risk of becoming bored with my long detours, assuring him that he will enjoy the reward when he finds himself conveyed at last under my care to the heart of the mimosa thicket, between two infinities of azure.
Complementary Vanities (poetry)
Top-of-their-lungs in abundance tender-feathered
Mimosa chicks
On the côte d’azure are cheeping gold.
Variation
Florabundant, top-of-their-lungs, tender-feathered
Between two indefinite blocks of azure
A hundred vainglorious chicks are cheeping gold.
Another
O glorious naifs that once we were
Hatched beneath omega azure
Top-of-our-lungs and feather-bruised
Golden chicks of the mimosa.
Another
Inasmuch as a faithful witness of azure
Nostrils wide breathe their oracles
Florabundant top-of-their-lungs tender-feathered
Chicks of the mimosa cheep of gold.
April 6, three in the morning
When you bring mimosa, it’s almost as though you’re bringing (surprise!) the sun itself. Like a bough that has been blessed (the blessed bough of Ra worship). Like a small burning torch. The mimosa candelabra . . .
(It’s three in the morning and here we are, quite by chance, on Palm Sunday, 1941.)
. . . As though for instance it had rained, and someone had the idea of bringing a branch spangled with droplets . . . Well! Mimosa is just like that: there’s some sun caught up in it, some gold.
I imagine this as a subject completely made to order for Debussy.
Canopies, umbrellas, fly-whisks.
At this point in my research, I decided to go back to the Littré, from which I retained the entries that follow:
Autruche. Ostrich: the largest of known birds, and because of its great size unable to fly.
Floribond. Florabundant: not in the Littré. So it will appear in future editions.
There’s a wading bird (genus Gruidae, crane) by the name of florican.
Faire florès, to flower.
Florilège. Florilegium: 1. Synonym of anthology. 2. Title of several works dealing with plants remarkable for the beauty of their flowers.
Houppe. Pompon: 1. Bunch of wool or silk threads, forming a puff. 2. Zoology: tuft of feathers that certain birds . . . Small tuft dotted with hairs . . . 3. Anat: papillae – small swellings at the end of a nerve. Bot: minute swelling on surface of a stigma, petal, or leaf; a seed composed in this manner.
Houppée, nautical term: choppy sea, slight foam caused by collision of opposing waves.
Panache: clump of feathers bound together at the base, which flutter about at the top like a sort of bouquet (from penna, feather).
“When the peacock spreads his pompous panache to the winds.” (D’Aubigné.)
Paradis: vast parks, sumptuous gardens. The parks of Arche-menidan kings (Renan). Persian word.
Bird of paradise: with long tapered feathers (well!).
Gardeners’ paradise: weeping willow (well, well!).
Pomp, pompons, Pompadour, rococo.
Poussin. Chick: from pullicenus, diminutive of pullus: poule, chicken (newly hatched chicken).
The word poussiniée exists: “chickery,” a flock of chicks.
Poussinières: colloquial name for the Pleiades constellation.
Needless to say, I considered these findings, favoring what I had already written, as a bouquet of proof a posteriori.
So, having circled and circled around this shrub, often straying, despairing more often than rejoicing, distorting more than obeying, I’m now returning (again deceiving myself?) to a consideration of the mimosa’s qualities as: “vainglorious, soon discouraged.”
But wishing to give it more nuance, I would add the following:
1. Each branch of mimosa is a perch of tolerable little suns, of sudden small enthusiasms, jubilant little terminal embolisms. (Oh, how difficult it is to close in on the characteristics of things!) It’s heartening to see a developing creature reach such bursting success at so many extremities. Just as, in well-staged fireworks, the rockets end in a burst of suns.
This is more true of mimosas than of other plants or flowering shrubs, because no other flower is so simply a blossoming as such, purely and simply an unfurling of stamens in the sun.
2. All the turgescent papillae, all the small aureoles, aren’t yet faded, withered, sallow, dead, when the whole bough shows signs of discouragement, of despair.
To put it better: at the very moment of glory, in the paroxysm of flowering, the leaves already show signs of despair, or at least indications of aristocratic apathy. It is as though the expression of the leaves belies that of the flowers – and the other way around.
They say this foliage looks like feathers, but what feathers? Only ostrich feathers, those that serve as oriental fly switches, those with drooping tendencies, that seem incapable – with good reason – of keeping their bird in the air.
3. But at the same time this violent scent, which carries far; this oracle, eyes popping; this violent perfume, almost animal, through which the flower seems to gush out . . .
. . . And so, since it gushes out of its container, let’s bid it goodbye till next spring!
Florabundant top-of-their-lungs tender-feathered
From a thicket to the core stirred by the mere
Approach beneath the azure of man’s memory
Nostrils wide breathing in their oracles,
A billion chicks cheeping, chirping gold.
Mimosa (variants incorporated)
Pungent top-of-their-lungs tender-feathered
Cheeping, they cheep of gold the glorious chicks
The azure nostrils wide breathes in their oracles
By the mute authority of its splendor
Florabundant top-of-their-lungs belying their plumes
Lamenting the thicket aggrieved to the core
By the violet austerity of your splendor
Azure nostrils wide breathing in their oracles
Florabundant pungent tender-feathered
Cheeping, they cheep of gold the glorious chicks.
Mimosa
Florabundant, top-of-their-lungs, belying their plumes
Lamenting their thicket aggrieved to the core
By the violent austerity of your splendor,
Azure! nostrils wide breathing in their oracles
Cheeping, they cheep of gold, the glorious chicks!
MIMOSA
FLORABUNDANT TOP-OF-YOUR-LUNGS BELYING YOUR PLUMES UNDONE FROM A THICKET AGGRIEVED TO THE CORE
BY A TERRIBLE AUTHORITY OF DARKNESS
THE AZURE BREATHING IN YOUR ORACLES NOSTRILS WIDE CHEEP VAINGLORIOUS CHICKS YOU CHEEP OF GOLD
Roanne, 1941
