Mute Objects of Expression (16 page)

Within this brushery high-tufted in green bristles
With crimson wood handles set about by mirrors
Should a radiant body enter come from the bath,
Marine or lacustrian, that steams by the low-lying shoulder
Nothing would remain to tell of sleepless flies
On the deep resilient ocher ground
Of aromatic hairpins
Loosed above by masses of indolent treetops
But a peignoir of shadow splashed with sunlight.

Line 3: Of the glistening body just come from the bath
Line 5: Nothing remains . . .

 

NOTA BENE

If this variation is adopted, and allowing that the distichs WW and OM and the triplet OOL are invariable, their order and that of the lines N and B become freely interchangeable, though B must in any case always be placed after N.

Starting with this, one can lay out the elements
ad libitum
as follows:

However the sequence 4 – 2 is inadvisable (
of
aromatic hairpins
of
the glistening body . . . )

None of this should be taken seriously.

What have I achieved in the course of these sixteen pages (pp. 91 to 106) and these ten days? – Not a whole lot for the pains I've taken.

Only this:

1. that the pine woods seem to be set about by mirrors, by hand mirrors (but this is already noted on pages 89 – 90);

2. the expression
high-tufted,
which is just right;

3. that the hairpins are “loosed above by masses of indolent treetops,” which is quite pretty, gives a rather good picture of the lazy swaying of the pine summits. But I'll have to look up
négligent
, indolent, in the
Littré
. . .

4. the image of the dressing gown, the word
peignoir
itself is right in speaking of Venus, since it is what's put on before combing one's hair,
se peigner;

5.
entaché,
splashed, which gives the right impression of shade
splashed with sunlight, because it includes a pejorative sense, an indication of imperfection in the subject, which is valuable;

6. AND ABOVE ALL, the idea, the awareness of this reality: of the sunlight seen through the pine woods nothing remains but shadow, some taut-strung oblique ribbons, and sleepless flies.

 

If I've achieved no more than this in ten days of uninterrupted and
relentless
effort (I can certainly claim that much), then I've wasted my time. I'd even be tempted to say, the time of the pine woods. For after an eternity of nonexpression in the mute world, it is eager to be expressed now that I have given it this hope, or a foretaste.

Why this disorder, this derailment, this distraction? Once again – after managing to come up with the little prose poem on pages 91 – 95 – I recalled Paulhan's statement: “From now on, the prose poem is no longer for you . . .” and I wanted to make this prose poem into one done in verse. While instead I should have taken apart the prose poem to integrate its interesting elements into my objective relations (
sic
) with the pine woods.

Paulhan was certainly right. But my intention here is not to make a poem, rather to move ahead in the understanding and expression of the pine woods, to gain something for myself there – instead of beating my brains out and wasting my time over it as I've done.

 

NOTE

 

In passing I must note a problem to think through again when I have the leisure: that of the difference between knowledge and expression (relationship and difference). It's a vast problem, as I've just realized. In brief, this is what I mean to say: the difference between the expression of the concrete, the visible, and the knowledge or expression of the idea, of the essential differentiating and comparative quality of the subject. To put it more cogently: in some poems (all of them botched): the frog, the dancer, particularly the bird, the wasp nest, and this last (the sunlight in the pine woods), I practice expressionism (?), I mean that after rediscovering them, I employ the most precise words to describe the subject. But my intention is something other than that: it's the basic understanding of the pine woods, by that I mean the isolation of the inherent distinguishing qualities of these woods, and what I have called its
lesson.
To me these seem to be two quite different things, though ordinarily at the far limits of perfection for each one, they must come together again...

So let's return as quickly as possible to the search for
everything
that can be said about pine woods
and only
of them.

 

Here again there are distinctions:

Primo,
it is clear that the woods or the forest each have a particular quality and that I often tend to stray on this point.

But this time I won't go seriously astray for the
pine
woods clearly possess all the qualities of the woods and forests in general,
plus
individual features as pine woods. Just realizing that is enough to keep me from straying too far.

(In fact, if I do stray off in my pine woods, that will be only half bad, it will even be a good thing, for the woods are clearly propitious places for erring, or for error, there's some labyrinth in all woods.)

Secundo,
there are qualities inherent to the pine, and qualities particular to the pine as a part of pine woods. The pine differs according to whether it lives in isolation or in society. It differs also according to whether it is situated in the interior or at the fringe of the woods of which it is a part. And I rather like those pines at the edge, held to certain sacrifices in their parts turned toward the woods, but free to develop as they please to the side facing the fields, the void, the un-wooded world.

The function of bordering their society falls to them, to conceal the arcana, to conceal the interior nakedness (the austerity, the sacrifice, the lack) through the spread of their lower parts: they must be less exigent about
They are permitted to maintain the memory and display of their earlier outgrowths. They even live through these outer tips as much as through their peaks (oh how badly I'm saying this).

 

If the individuals on the fringes (
orée,
fringes or
lisière,
forest edge: words to verify in the
Littré
) do a pretty fair job of hiding the interior from the eyes of the exterior, they fail quite badly at hiding the exterior from the eyes of the interior. They behave like a glass partition, or rather (since they aren't translucent) like a partition of cloth, of stone, or of carved wood.

When the wood is vast or dense enough, from its core the sky cannot be seen laterally, one must move towards the fringe, to the point where the partition no longer appears impervious. Now there's something that would be sublime if put to use in a cathedral: a forest of columns such that one would progressively reach total obscurity (the crypt).

And yet this is truly more or less what is realized in the woods, for
though ultimately there is no wall,
the monument breathes through all its pores in the very midst of nature, better than a lung, as though with gills.

It could even be said that this should be a criterion of achievement, the mark of this genre of architecture: the point where total obscurity would be realized, taking into account for example that between each column there must be allowance for a space of
x width,
to accommodate easy strolling, etc.