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.”<
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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
THE PINE WOODS NOTEBOOK
To my late friend Michel Pontremoli
EN MASSE
THE PLEASURE OF PINE WOODS
August 7, 1940
The pleasure of pine woods:
One can roam about at ease there (among tall trunks that look something between bronze and rubber). They are well-stripped. Of all low branches. There’s no anarchy, no tangle of vines, no encumbrance. One can sit right down there, stretch out at ease. A carpet prevails over it all. A few stray rocks supply furnishings, a few flowers hug the ground. A purportedly healthy atmosphere prevails, a discreet and tasteful scent, a vibrant yet gently pleasing musicality.
The great violet masts, still encrusted with lichen and bark that’s furrowed, scaley.
Their branches strip off and the trunks slough their bark.
These great trunks, all of a perfectly defined species. These tall African masts, or at very least Creole.
August 7, 1940 – Afternoon
Easy roaming about between these tall masts, African or at very least Creole, their bark and lichen reaching midway up, solemn as bronze, supple as rubber.
(I wouldn’t say robust, as that adjective generally refers to another tree species.)
No tangle of cords, none of vines, no floorboards but deep carpets on the ground.
Robust refers more to another sort of tree, yet the pine is so nonetheless, though more than any other it can bend without breaking . . .
A shaft and a cone and its conical fruit.
August 8, 1940
Amid the profusion . . . At the base of these great masts, African or at very least Creole, there are no entanglements, no encumbrance of vines or ropes, no washed floorboards on the ground, but a deep carpet.
From the base to midway up, crinkled and lichen-cloaked . . .
Not one snaking vine or cord to hamper the stroller amid the profusion of these great trunks, African or at very least Creole, from base to midway up still lichen-cloaked.
Stripped of branches (to midway up), both by their own single-minded concern for the green peak (the green cone of their peak) and by the grave obscurity devised jointly in their midst . . .
That’s how it happens that even birds are relegated to the heights.
They’re marvelous, these jade carpets, in this terrain where it would seem that all vegetal interest had been withdrawn, where all low branches had fallen dead en masse.
Isn’t the pine the tree that makes the most dead wood? That abandons the greatest number of its limbs, the greater part of itself, that loses interest in itself most totally, withdrawing all sap for the sole advantage of the peak (the green cone)? Whence this odor of sanctity that pervades the vicinity of the trunks . . .
It flares up only at the very peak: somewhat like a candle.
It’s a powerfully aromatic tree, and not only through its flower.
August 9, 1940
It very gently relegates to great heights the effects of wind, of birds and even butterflies. And the vibrant concert of myriad insects.
Senile in appearance, hoary as the beards of aged Africans.
It’s very pleasant underneath all of this, while at the peaks something very gently swaying and musical takes place, very gently vibrating.
Through all this outgrowth (shedding as they go, but no matter) the shaft of the pine must persist and be perceived.
Like masts from base to midway up
All crinkled, lichen-cloaked like an elderly Creole,
With no constraint of lianas or cords between them.
That wind sifts through, that filter the light . . .
Not sails spread taut, but densely packed fruit
Like pineapples . . .
August 9, 1940 – Evening
No!
I decidedly must turn back to the pleasure of the pine woods.
What is it made of, this pleasure? – Primarily, this: the pine woods is a chamber in nature, made from trees all belonging to one clearly defined species; a well-delimited space, generally quite deserted, where one finds shelter from the sun, from the wind, from visibility; but not absolute shelter, not in isolation. No. It is a relative shelter. Shelter that’s not secretive, not stealthy, a noble shelter.
It’s also a place (this is particular to pine woods) where one can roam about at ease, without underbrush, without branches grazing the head, where one can stretch out on dry ground, not spongy, quite comfortably.
Each pine wood is like a natural sanatorium, also a music hall . . . a chamber, a vast cathedral for meditation (fortunately a cathedral without a pulpit) open to all winds, but through so many doors it’s as though they were closed. For winds hesitate before them.
Oh respectable columns, senile masts!
Aged columns, temple of caducity.
Nothing whimsical but such salubrious comfort, such tempering of the elements, such a music chamber discreetly scented, discreetly adorned, set up for serious str
olling and meditation.
Everything is set up without excess, for leaving man to his own devices. Vegetation and animation relegated to the heights. Nothing to distract the eyes. Everything to lull him to sleep, with this proliferation of similar columns. No anecdotes. Everything here discourages curiosity. But all of this almost unintentionally, and in the midst of nature, with no clear separation, no deliberate isolation, with no sweeping gestures, nothing that jars.
Here and there, a solitary rock further deepens the quality of this solitude, compelling gravity.
O natural sanatorium, cathedral fortunately without pulpit, chamber where the music is so
to the heights (at once so wild and so delicate), chamber of music or meditation – a place made for leaving man alone in the midst of nature, to his thoughts, to pursue a thought . . .
. . . To return your courtesy, to imitate your delicacy, your tact (this is the way I am instinctively) – within your bounds I shall not develop a single thought that’s foreign to you, it’s of you that I shall meditate:
“Temple of caducity, etc.”
“I believe I’m coming to recognize the inherent pleasure of pine woods.”
Mute Objects of Expression Page 4
