Ponge and the Poetry of Self-Knowledge

Abstract

Much of the most interesting poetry of France in the sixties is an attempt to replace the surrealist perspective with a more coldly rational literature that codifies man's experience while examining its own powers of formulation. The poetry goes beyond the surrealists' abandonment to the dictates of a dark Unconscious, and beyond their optimistic hope of expressing an all-encompassing greater truth; it also exceeds existential anguish with its sense of defeat and alienation before the impossibility of understanding or expressing man's place in a total reality. In giving up the search for a dark truth or foreign reality, it has returned to discover the boundaries of human nature-to analyze and simultaneously embody the image of man, the creator and user of language. The writers discussed here (Francis Ponge, Yves Bonnefoy, Jacques Dupin, and Andr6 Du Bouchet) separately represent one or another aspect of this consciously calculated expression. Ponge is the old master, achieving eminence in the sixties as his careful attention paid to things takes on the role of a mission to prepare a new man . . . the man of the objeu. Bonnefoy, Dupin, and Du Bouchet direct and contribute to the poetry review L'Ephemere: all three share many of Ponge's attitudes but choose their own ways of manipulating language in expressive forms. Finally, these poets-like many other writers in a highly self-conscious literature-appear extremely insular in that they limit themselves to a profound vision of narrow scope. Trying to develop a and completely conscious rhetoric, they turn their focus away from social, political, psychological, or religious appearances to emphasize their