Mute Objects of Expression (8 page)

Carnival trinkets, props for the
commedia.
Pantomime, 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 have 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:

“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?

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.

Little suns, already too tolerable: turning still more sallow, they have lived.