Mute Objects of Expression (12 page)

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.”

 

An infinity of partitions and baffles make pine woods into one of nature's spaces best arranged for humanity's ease and meditation.

Not a leaf stirs. But to wind and light in equal measure so many fine needles are subjected that a tempering occurs and something close to complete defeat, a dimming of the offending qualities in these elements, and an emanation of potent scents. The light, even the wind itself, are sifted here, are filtered, restrained, made benign and truly inoffensive. While the bases of the trunks remain perfectly immobile, the peaks are swayed . . .

 

The pine woods are also a sort of
shed,
built like a shed, an arcade, or a market pavilion.

Senile masts coiffed with conical verdant toupees. Apropos of toupees,
firs
are dark green spinning tops (but that's another story).

Market pavilion of aromatic needles, of vegetal hairpins, auditorium of myriad insects, temple of caducity (caducity of branches
and bristles) whose upper tiers – auditorium – a solarium of myriad insects – are supported by a forest of completely crinkled senile masts, lichen-cloaked like elderly Creoles . . .

Slow production of wood, of masts, of
posts,
of perches, beams.

Leafless forest, aromatic as the comb of a redhead.

Am I living, an insect, in the brush or fragrant comb of a giantess . . . ?

. . . A forest whose topknots shed.

If leaves are like feathers, pine needles are more like bristles.

Bristles hard as teeth of a comb.

Bristles of a brush but hard as teeth of a comb.

Am I living amidst the brushery (brush, comb and hair) of an aromatic redheaded giantess . . . And music, vibrant to the rafters, of myriad insects, millions of animal sparkles (effervescence) . . . ?

. . . While one of her delicate kerchiefs hovers in the blue sky above.

 

Let's try to sum up. We have:

Ease

Leisurely roaming, among so many columns, with almost resilient footfall, on these thick carpets made of green-growing hairpins. Leisurely labyrinth.

How one can stroll about amid these columns, the trees so well stripped of their deciduous branches!

 

In many locations around the world, there are structures forming, growing and filling out incessantly along these same lines, greater or lesser in size, whose general pattern I'll attempt to describe:

They include a ground level with very high ceilings (though this last term is inappropriate), and above that an infinity of upper floors, or rather an extremely complicated framework which consists of upper floors, ceiling and roofing.

 

No more walls than roof, strictly speaking: rather, they incline towards an open pavilion or arcade.

An infinity of columns support this absence of roofing.

 

Once again I've been reading the names of Apollinaire, Léon-Paul Fargue . . . and I'm ashamed of the academic nature of my vision: lack of rapture, lack of originality. Bringing nothing to the light of day except what I alone have to say. – As for the pine woods, I've just reread my notes. Little deserves to be saved. – What matters
to me is the serious application with which I approach the object, and on the other hand the extreme precision of expression. But I must rid myself of a tendency to say things that are flat and conventional. It's really not worthwhile writing if it comes down to that.

 

Pine woods, take your leave of death, of dis-regard, of the non-concious!
coiffed in upper floors and roof of a million crisscrossed green pins.

And on the ground a deep resilient layer of hairpins sometimes raised by the morbid and cautious curiosity of mushrooms.

Production of dead wood. (I'm entering this vast factory of dead wood.) What's pleasant within it is the
perfect dryness.
Assuring vibrations and musicality. Something metallic. The presence of insects. Fragrance.

Rise up, pine woods, rise up in speech. We don't know you. – Show us what you are made of. It's not for nothing that you have been noticed by F. Ponge . . .

 

In the month of August of 1940, I made my way into familiarity with the pine woods. During that period, these particular kinds of
sheds, arcades, natural pavilions have had their chance to leave the mute world, the realm of death and dis-regard, and come into the world of speech, of its use toward man's moral ends, ultimately in the Logos or, if you prefer and by way of analogy, into the Kingdom of God.

 

Here, where a relatively orderly profusion of senile masts stand tall, coiffed with verdant cones, here, where the sun and the wind are sifted through an infinite crisscrossing of green needles, where the ground is covered by a thick carpet of green hairpins: here wood is slowly produced. Industrially mass-produced, but with unhurried majesty, here wood is manufactured. Perfected in silence and with unhurried majesty and caution. With a certain assurance and success as well. There are by-products: obscurity, meditation, fragrance, etc., kindling of lesser quality, pine cones (compacted fruits like pineapples), needles of vegetal hair, moss, heather, huckleberries, mushrooms. But, through all sorts of outgrowths, decaying one after another (and no matter), the prevailing idea is pursued and envisaged in the staff, the mast: – the beam, the plank.

The pine (I wouldn't be off the mark in saying this) is the elemental idea of a tree. It is an I, a stalk, and the rest matters little. That is why – from its obligatory outgrowth along the horizontal – it provides so much dead wood. The thing is that only the stalk counts, completely straight, lean, naive and not deviating from that naive
impulse, and with no regrets nor corrections nor second thoughts. (In an impulse without second thoughts, completely simple and straight.)