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.
2
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).
3
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.
4
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.
5
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).
6
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.)
7
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.
8
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
9
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
10
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
11
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
12
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.
13
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
14
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.)
15
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
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 hav
e 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
Mute Objects of Expression Page 3
