Mute Objects of Expression by Francis Ponge

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.
FROM THE AUTHOR TO G.A.
    Roanne, March 16, 1941
    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).
    Â 
    F.P.
    The Pine Woods remained unpublished. But here is another passage from a second letter addressed by the author to G.A. concerning the “poet’s craft”:
    Roanne, July 22, 1941
    . . . 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