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THINGS
IN
RECENT
FRENCH
By J. Robert
LITERATURE
Loy
properly
forthe motivationof such writing,its charmand attraction,
fall underobject-literature,
lie in the fantasyof animalsplayingmen.
2 "La Pens6e circulairede Flaubert" in NNRF, xxxi (1955), 30-52, as well as Poulet's
pointof departurein ErichAuerbach,Mimesis (Princeton,1953), pp. 482-491.
27
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28
"Things"
can pluck, handle and admire. Valery's concern with Monsieur Teste
and the processes of intellectual effort is not immediately involved with
the shape, substance, and texture of objects. The Impressionists, the
for a moment to be
the Symbolists?seem
Cubists, the Surrealists?like
on the track of Things. But surrealism was a revolution and primarily
an intellectual revolution; one does not make a revolution against
Things.3 Searching for a new and more honest mode of communication
in which the Thing was to play a major role, surrealism failed in its
incapability to communicate from things up, rather than from the
intellect down. Those closest to Things from symbolism to surrealism
were also those most concerned with style and expression. Sensing the
importance of objects, yet too much in revolt against traditional com?
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/. Robert Loy
29
its most recent appearance in French literature after 1930, with a noticeable concentration of frequency and clarity following the second world
war. One can as yet speak of no movement; indeed, the individual treatment given by each artist to his stock of Things seems to preclude the
possibility of a movement. Some of the writers were formerly surrealists
as seems natural when one considers that Apollinaire, at the threshold
of surrealism, had on occasion written of such material objects. All of
them have lived through the confusion common to the twentieth century,
and the moral and philosophic readjustment in France after the second
war. They come now to Things in varying degrees of directness and
immediacy. It is our conviction that they come to them as a new point
of departure for both literature and general world outlook, out of the
crisis of meaning in letters and out of the realm of absurdity and despair
in philosophy.
A discussion of this new direction falls naturally into two broad compartments: the meaning behind Things, or the reason for the attraction
they hold for writers; the accompanying changes in means of literary
communication in a literature surfeited with words and basically distrustful of them. In the literature at the center of this discussion, the
latter problem has become secondary to the first in point of logical process
if not in point of importance; a change of attitudes toward verbal ex?
pression is slowly growing out of a change in general philosophic view-
point.
In considering the philosophic implication of Things, two very different climates of thought and feeling are to be distinguished. These
two kinds of writers might most rapidly be summed up as those who use
Things as a prerequisite to more primary concerns, and those for whom
the Thing is the primary concern, motivation, center, and final achievement of their writing. In the first group, Sartre and Camus suggest them?
selves immediately. The unforgettable passage in La Nausee, that
existentialist literary primer, suffices as an example of the role played
by things in Sartre: "La racine du maronnier s'enfoncait dans la terre,
juste au-dessous de mon banc. Je ne me rappelais plus que c'etait une
racine. Les mots s'etaient evanouis et avec eux, la signification des choses,
leurs modes d'emploi, les faibles reperes que les hommes ont traces a leur
surface. . . . Le mot d'absurdite nait a present sous ma plume; tout a,
l'heure, au jardin, je ne l'ai pas trouve, mais je ne le cherchais pas non plus,
je n'en avais pas besoin: je pensais sans mots, sur les choses, avec les
choses."4 It can be said that the gnarled root is no more than a symbol,
most certainly not rare in literature. Symbol it is, to be sure, and yet it is
also a Thing and essentially a Thing. Other similar scenes from Sartre's
1La Nausee (Paris: Gallimard,1938),
pp. 161-163.
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30
"Things"
later novels in the Chemins de la liberte series could be found. The sun
and microbe provide the same sort of basis for the realization of absurdity
in Camus. And except for a basic difference in conclusions, one might cite
the interfering mosquito net at the beginning of La Condition humaine
and the line of trees in Malraux' Noyers de VAUenburg.
The basic frustration is the same as that involved in the classic humorous example of the runaway collar button. Things can be notoriously
unsympathetic to anthropomorphic design.5 The physical universe is
adamant, and nothing is to be gained by human reasoning, cajolery, and
menace. The easiest way out of a bad situation is, perhaps, to install
into the Thing a personality and superior design of its own, and thus at
least save one's human dignity. This solution the early Greeks understood well. For Sartre, Camus, and, in a less conclusive way, Malraux,
these crucial encounters with objects spell out the basic absurdity of
all that such existence suggests in the way of
human existence?with
a universe of inanimate
logic, reason, culture, and social organization?in
was
in
no
alien
when he chose
material
Camus
way
annexing
objects.
the Sisyphus myth with its perverse rock as the title for his philosophic
essay. From this confrontation with Things, however, Camus and the
existentialists do not continue as far, from a point of view of literature,
as writers of the second group whose interest in Things is essential. For
Sartre, the absurdity leads to "engagement" with little insistence on the
secondary problem of literary expression. For Camus, the absurd diverts
us from primary literary considerations to the realm of social ideas. For
Malraux, the same absurdity has led along several trails to his present
if the basic frustration of the Thing's impact on
concern with Art?as
human nature could lead finally only back to the Thing, this time the
object created and impressed with man's will. In his predilection for the
plastic arts, Malraux seems little interested in the problem of words.
In the poetry of Henri Michaux, one comes closer to the development:
Things-absurdity-experiment in expression. That Michaux is struck with
the absurdity of existence there can be little doubt, but that this ab?
surdity should be represented primarily by Things is not so clear. There
seems to be equally an inherent distrust with particulars of human nature.
or uncooperative?as
Nor does Michaux accept Things?cooperative
his
central theme. Nevertheless, his attempt at conveying his own sort of
nausea fits into this survey. His richness of invention is immediately an
indication of his basic direction. Since words no longer suffice to suggest
his immense disgust with the state of the world, nor yet to project what
he would do with such a state of affairs, he invents Things which become
6 Cf. Ernst Cassirer,An Essay on Man (New York: Doubleday), p. 103,forthe mythic
characterof things.They have lost their"objectiveor
or what he calls the physiognomic
cosmological"value but not their"anthropologicalvalue."
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J. Robert Loy
31
Things. "Ayant conscience de mon inmoins en moins et tres peu des autres
de
justice," says Michaux, "j'ecris
hommes. Si les cailloux et la nature m'entendaient, je n'oserais plus
parler. . . . Heureusement, ils n'en savent rien et je n'ai pas a en tenir
compte."6 But Michaux, by the very inventiveness of his word-things,
is not honest with the material world as it exists and, as in the text
quoted above, would seem to indicate only a direction toward the Thing,
with, at once, distrust and nostalgia for such direct inspiration.
There is such an incipient direction in Raymond Queneau. In one
work he comes close to combining an intoxication with Things and a
special mode of expression. It is his Petite Cosmogonie portative, a kind
of modern De Rerum Natura ("ou Lucrece voisine avec Jarry," says
Jean Rostand).7 However bitter the Cosmogonie about man's role in
existence, however frequent the strong expressions, when, at the end of
the third canto after an enumeration of mineral elements, he concludes:
"Le poeme jaillit d'un coin de cette terre," one can see in Queneau a
potential movement toward the kind of writing under discussion. His
predilection for experimental styles and expression are, however, far
from the cold description of Things to be seen later.
Supervielle, Prevert,8 and Rene Crevel (and perhaps others) would
eventually merit mention in any exhaustive analysis of writers who
show tendencies rather than clear steps in the new direction. But "revenons a nos moutons." The clearest example, the most cogent apologist,
as it were, is Francis Ponge. The very title of his most widely read
collection tells much?Le
Parti pris des Choses. "Le parti pris des choses,
les Sapates, sont de la litterature-type de l'apres revolution." In the
Parti pris collection of 1942 (and most of the poems were written before,
starting in 1928), Ponge very simply and forthrightly describes inanimate
objects. "Et puis donc, aussi bien qu'il est de nature de l'homme d' elever
la voix au milieu de la foule des choses silencieuses, qu'il le fasse du
moins parfois a leur propos."9 The world itself is no less absurd for
Ponge than for Camus; he is no less aware of the crisis of communication
and words than Paulhan:
Bien entendu le monde est absurde! Bien entendu, la non-significationdu monde!
Mais qu'y a-t-il la de tragique?
J'6terai volontiers a Tabsurde son coefficientde tragique.
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32
"Things"
. . . celui [the theme] de Tinndelite des moyens d'expression, celui de l'impossibilite pour rhomme non seulement de s'exprimer mais d'exprimer n'importe quoi.
(pp. 146, 166)
his predilection for Things; thus, his descriptive songs of the
is not necessarily any meaning in the Things; there is the
There
pebble.
of
seizing their material being in words. "Si j'ai choisi de
possibility
la
de
coccinelle
c'est par degout des idees. . . . C'est parce qu'elles
parler
ne me viennent pas a bonheur, mais a malheur" (p. 146). Hence a
literature of rain, orange-crates, cigarettes, bread, flre, water, meat, and
Hence,
stones. One thinks immediately of the Cubists, and with good reason
where Braque is concerned.10 Yet there is a difference. All of the Cubists
were not essentially interested in Things; sometimes their collage of
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/. Robert Loy
33
the object begins by being an excuse for talking of men, and that the
secondary step of humanism as seen by Ponge already preconditions
the poet's vision of the external thing. Nonetheless, there are striking
passages of word still-life. In "Veillee" a cascading series of objects, in
"Le Maitre" the solitary presence of a pine tree serve to spell out, first,
the real world of man's hope, then the measure of his blindness. Yet in
the same collection, in "Tyrannie,"
the "Mais toi tu savais / T'apdes
choses"
clear
indication
that Ponge's direction Thingprocher
gives
Man has become here Man-thing. The stark object painting in "Taureau"
and particularly in the glass-jug-and-paper
of "Filets"?"Oui,
c'est
vous qui menez" gives ample proof that Guillevic has, nonetheless, understood the message of Things.
Although poetry has seemed to yield the richest example in Ponge,
Things are not entirely absent from recent prose writing. The Irish
writer in French, Samuel Beckett, writes in a style, and creates an
atmosphere of indifference, which lean heavily on objects. Their importance throughout Molloy is striking. But the long episode of the "pebbles to suck on" which troubles Molloy for several pages is such a
pointed example that the reader wonders if Molloy is sensitive to anything except inanimate things in his strange world. This suspicion is
borne out by many passages of Malone meuri and VInnommable, The
whole motivation for Beckett's writing, which shows none of the optimism of a Ponge, seems precisely a need to talk, and to talk about Things.
He ends the last novel {VInnommable)
saying: "II faut dire des mots,
tant qu'il y en a, il faut les dire jusqu'a ce qu'ils me trouvent." And until
the words find the me, one suspects that the author is condemned to talk
of Things. The complete absence of human action and motivation, the
theatrical stagnancy of En attendant Godot where objects assume such
11"J'en Sais,"
says Beckettin Molloy,"ce que savent les mots et les choses mortes,et
ca faitune jolie petitesomme,avec un commencement,
un milieuet une fin,commedans
les phrasesbien batieset dans la longuesonatedes cadavres." For different
explanationsof
the phenomenon,Beckett,see GeorgesBataille, "Le Silence de Molloy," Critique,xlviii
(1951), 387-396; and Edith Kern, "Drama Strippedfor Inaction," YFS, xrv (1955),
41: "It is not man's relationshipto theworldofthingsthatcountsforBeckett."
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34
"Things"
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/. Robert Loy
35
such a conclusion might at first appear.16 But there are materialisms and
materialisms, and for the past two centuries it has become increasingly
important to distinguish among them.
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36
uThings"
Thus it is Ponge who most clearly sketches the potential of the object
in relation to man. His experiment is another attempt at a tabula rasa,
but this time an humble attempt which does not pretend to explain the
all in an all-embracing structure. It hopefully assigns to itself the rea very physical and objective19 way?with
communion of man?in
the
him.
which
surround
It
suffices
to
talk:
"II
faut
le
siThings
parler:
18Protmes,p. 180.
19Sartre,despite his study of Ponge (UBomme et les Choses,Paris:
Seghers,1947),
wouldfindfaultwiththeuse ofthewordas wellas withthesubsequentdiscussionofpassing
fromdenominationof thingsto comprehension
of man, as he makes clear in an attack on
la subjectivite*
materialistmethod."Mais une foisqu'il a supprime'
au profitde l'objet, au
lieu de se voir chose parmiles choses,ballotte*
par les ressacsde l'universphysique,il se
faitregardobjectifet prStendcontemplerla naturetelle qu'elle est absolument.II y a un
la qualite"passivede l'objet regarde"
et tant6t
jeu de motsurPobjectivit6,qui tant6tsignifie
la valeur absolue d'un regarddSpouille"des faiblessessubjectives.Ainsi le matSrialiste,
et s'Stantassimile*
a la pure vSrite*
ayant d6pass6toute subjectivite*
objective,se promene
dans un monded'objets habite*
par des hommes-objets"(SituationsIII, Paris: Gallimard,
1949,p. 141). For an excellentpresentationof Ponge as seen by Sartre,see RobertChampigny,FR, xxv (1952), 254-261.
20Protmes,p. 162.
21GastonBachelard,La Terreetlesrdveries
du repos(Paris: Corti,1948),p. 11. The valuable and unique studiesofBachelardincludeUAir etles songes,UEau etles r&ves,
La Terre
et les r&oeries
de la volonU,and La Psychanalysedu jeu. Althoughwrittenfroma special
point of view, Bachelard's studies are extremelyilluminatingon the whole problemof
In thetextquoted,dependingupon themeaninggivento "connaissance,"
object-literature.
Bachelard suggestsequally egocentricpoetryand object-poetry.
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37
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38
"Things"
What he (and in general the NNRF reflects similar interests) is underwriting is a return to what might be called classicism for lack of a better
term.26 Again it is Ponge who furnishes corroboration that such is the
inherent implication of a return to the material object as model and
theme. "Rhetorique par objet (c'est a dire par poeme). La forme meme
du poeme est en quelque sorte determinee par son sujet."27 Tortel sees
this clearly in the conclusion of his article of Proemes: "Comment . . .
n'y pas voir [in Ponge's decision to talk against words] la definition,
comme cristalisee, d'un art, d'un eflort: l'art volonte, le defi classiques.
expression?very
personal and intimate?of the individual at grips with
his own particular world, that the idea of calling upon the indifferent
atoms?as
Lucretius did?for
the stuff of poetry seems strange and
alien to us. Rimbaud, Mallarme, and Valery30 were all concerned, in
their own way, with rising above the trite and stagnant of the so-called
world of reality. Surrealism has no other goal. And yet, in various ways,
they all worked from the particular and idiosyncratic of the individual
poet toward a more inclusive truth which assumed mystic and cosmic
26That the termbegs manya questionand is
I
capable ofarousingmuchdisagreement,
am quite aware. By classic,it seemsto me,one mustnecessarilysuggest"moretendencies
in one directionthanin another,"just as by "romantic"one does notnicelydelimita metaphysic,a theme,and a style.Thus, myusage here approximatesthe scientificmannerof
on a slidingscale. G. E. Clancier,Panoramacritiquede Rimdelineatingacidity-alkalinity
baud au surrealisme(Paris: Seghers,1953) would disagreebecause "on ne peut pourtant
pas parlerde classicismea proposd'une poesie qui s'eleve en un tempstragique,au milieu
d'un mondeen ruines. . . et qui doituserd'un langagequi ne peut plus,depuislongtemps,
etrele lieu commundes pensSesou des sentiments
d'une societecoherente."Thus Clancier,
too intenton a purelysociologicalinterpretation
of classic tendencies,misses the whole
noveltyand interestof Ponge's experiment.
27My CreativeMethod(a workof
Ponge I have not seen), cited in Ponge's UAraignee
(Paris: Aubier, 1952) in the introductionto the poem writtenby Georges Garampon,
"F.P. ou la r&olutionhumaine." Garamponis himselfclose to Ponge, e.g., "Poemes en
langue morte"in Esprit,x (1951), 498-500.
28Cahiersdu Sud, ccvc.
29Protmes, 205.
p.
30For Ponge on
Mallarmg,see Protmes,pp. 63-56: on Val6ry,p. 163. Rimbaud is mentionedfrequently
in Ponge's works,e.g., "II faut travaillera partirde la d&ouverte faite
d'une nouvelle rh6torique)."My Creative
par Rimbaud et Lautr6amont(de la ngcessite*
Method,vide supra.
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J. Robert Loy
39
31Thereis no
suggestionhere,however,that the Pascalian situationof the humanbeing
has influencedthesewriters.On the contrary,most of them,like Ponge, are anti-Pascal.
Cf. Protmes,p. 208. See also the articleof GeorgesMounin,"L'Anti-Pascal,ou la poesieet
les vacances?Francis Ponge," Critique,xxxvn (1949), 493-500, despite its overworked
political conclusion.
32In this
poem, Ponge is at once the spider and the poet describingthe spider.In the
essay by GeorgesGarampon,Garampon'sfinalwordforthe attemptPonge
introductory
makes to synthesizethe object and the poet is "sympathy.""L'ceuvre de FrancisPonge
proceded'un principede sympathie."
33Cf. Ponge,La
Rage de Vexpression
(Lausanne: Mermod,1952),p. 12.
34What Roland Barthes
says {Critique,lxxxvi-lxxxvii, 587) of Robbe-Grilletapplies
to thiswholediscussion:"En somme,les opeYationsdescriptivesde Robbe-Grilletpeuvent
se r6sumerainsi: detruireBaudelaire sous un recoursderisoirea Lamartine,et du meme
coup, cela va sans dire,detruireLamartine."
86As
Monnerot,La PoSsie moderneet le sacrS (Paris: Gallimard,1945), p. 145, puts it:
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40
"Things"
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J. Robert Loy
41
ou du poete."40
It would seem that the poet had won out, not because the revolte
was unnecessary in his training, but because the revolution had led to an
impasse of fear, distrust, and isolation. It would be a mistake to call
the new direction popular,41 but it would be equally wrong not to see
that it is interested in communicating. The poetic world of the individual
mind in isolation becomes eventually sterile. "L'esprit,"
says Ponge,
"dont on peut dire qu'il s'abime d'abord aux choses (qui ne sont que
riens) dans leur contemplation, renait par la nomination de leurs qualit6s
telles que lorsqu'au lieu de lui ce sont elles qui les proposent."42 The
with Things is the fond, the naming of their qualities
reacquaintance
is the forme which aims to make the written word respectable. Ponge's
outcry in Proemes makes his mission clear: "Le Verbe est Dieu! Je suis
le Verbe! II n'y a que le Verbe!" The representatives of the new trend
encourage a tentative, but fundamental and significant, change in the
aphorism of Saint John. "In the beginning was the Thing, and the
Word was in Things, and the Word was with Man"?and
therein lies
perhaps a hopeful, at least a refreshing direction for literature.
University
of Vermont
Burlington
attemptedto read into a literaturelike Ponge's. Cf. the article by Joseph Gabel, "La
R&fication,"Esprit,x (1951), 459-482.
40Protmes,pp. 105-107.
41It wouldbe equallya mistaketo equate themovementwith
politicalsentiment.Ponge,
in his mostrecent"Texte surFSlectriciteY'
p. 17, wheremorethana littlepreciositybegins
to show through,says: "Les architectes,commeles poetes,sont des artistes.En tant que
tels, ils voientles choses dans FSternite'
plus que dans le temporel.Pratiquement,ils se
d?fientde la mode.Jeparledes meilleursd'entreeux."
42Proemes,p. 117.
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