Ponge, Francis (1899-1988). Usually classified as a poet, to his own annoyance. Of Protestant origins, for a time a Communist (1937-47), Ponge lived a comparatively uneventful life, though periods of poverty show his absolute commitment to his literary ideal.
He compares his work to a scientific activity providing a form of knowledge (Nioque, 1983). The source and subject of his writing is the indescribability of the most commonplace objects. He spent his whole writing career struggling to describe such things as a pebble, a bar of soap, a snail, bread, water, moss. As he says (Le Parti pris des choses, 1942): ‘Fix your attention on the first thing that catches your eye: you'll see at once that nobody has ever looked at it properly, and that the most elementary things remain to be said about it.’ To see objects properly, we must break down the conventional linguistic categories which constrict our minds; we must free ourselves to see them anew. He tells us that his early writing faced a succession of problems: he found it impossible to express himself; he fell back on attempting to describe objects; he recognized the impossibility of describing objects; he resolved to publish descriptions or accounts of failures to describe. Consequently, works such as Le Savon, La Fabrique du pré, La Rage de l'expression contain repeated efforts to describe a wasp, mimosa, a pine-wood, etc. All these, though supposedly ‘failures’, are highly evocative of concrete reality and wonderfully enrich our perceptions. Other work is collected in Le Grand Recueil (1961) and Tome premier (1965).
[Graham Dunstan Martin]
