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The Thing Poetry of Marianne Moore and Francis Ponge » « Reflecting the Other: The Thing Poetry of Marianne Moore and Francis Ponge » by Vanessa Jane Robinson A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto © Copyright by Vanessa Jane Robinson 2012 « Reflecting the Other: The Thing Poetry of Marianne Moore and Francis Ponge » Vanessa Jane Robinson Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto 2012 Abstract Across continents and independently of one another, Marianne Moore (1887-1972) and Francis Ponge (1899-1988) both made names for themselves in the twentieth century as poets who gave voice to things. Their entire oeuvres are dominated by poems that attempt to reconstruct an external thing (inanimate object, plant or animal being) through language, while emphasizing the necessary distance that exists between the writing self and the written other. Furthermore, their thing poetry establishes an “essential otherness” to the subject of representation that (ideally) rejects an objectification of that subject, thereby rendering the “thing” a subject-thing with its own being-for-itself. This dissertation argues that the thing poetry of Marianne Moore and Francis Ponge successfully challenged the hierarchy between subject and object in representation by bringing the poet’s self into a dialogue with the encountered thing. The relationship between the writing self and the written other is akin to what Maurice Merleau-Ponty refers to in Le visible et l’invisible when he describes the act of perceiving what is visible as necessitating one’s own visibility to another. The other becomes a mirror of oneself and vice versa, Merleau-Ponty explains, to the extent that together they compose a single image. The type of reflection involving self and others that ii Moore and Ponge employ in their thing poetry invokes the characteristically modern symbol of the crystal with its kaleidoscopic reflective properties. Self and other are distinct yet indissolubly bound, and rather than a hierarchy between subject and object there are only subjects who exist for-themselves and for-each other, reflecting the kind of reciprocal Pour soi that Merleau- Ponty’s phenomenology envisioned. iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee at the University of Toronto for their excellent feedback on the ideas that went into this dissertation: Professor Victor Li, Professor Pascal Michelucci, and Professor Malcolm Woodland. iv Table of Contents Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………............ 1 The importance of the thing ……………………………………………………........... 3 Moore and Ponge: the genuine and l’objeu ……………………………………............ 7 Chapter presentation ……………………………………………………....................... 9 1. Mimesis and the Concept of Natural Language in the Modernist Period ……………......... 12 1.1: Mimesis and the moral imperative of poetry ………………………….................. 18 . Gardens and toads ……………………………………………………........ 19 . Ponge’s poetic burden …………………………………………….............. 22 1.2: On natural language ………………………………………………….................... 27 . Humboldt and the romantic tradition …………………………................. 29 . From Benjamin’s language of things to Saussure’s modern linguistics ....... 32 . Writing with an open Littré ………………………………………………. 38 . Picking and choosing words ……………………………………………… 44 2. Reflection as Discovery ………………………………………………………………..….. 49 2.1: The modernist crystal ............................................................................................... 50 . The many sides of Mount Rainier ................................................................. 54 . Clean and proper language ............................................................................ 57 2.2: Reflection and the other ........................................................................................... 59 . In defence of things ....................................................................................... 64 . Rooted in language ....................................................................................... 71 v 2.3: The impenetrability of the shell ............................................................................ 79 . Perfect proportions ..................................................................................... 82 . The shell as a symbol of inner strength ..................................................... 86 . Additional armour ..................................................................................... 91 3. From Pictures to Words; From Words to Pictures.................................................................. 94 3.1: Words and (or versus) images ................................................................................. 97 3.2: Painting a poem with lines: the cubist model ........................................................ 102 . Observations from within the artist’s Atelier ............................................. 105 . The gaze of the female subject ................................................................... 111 3.3: Ekphrasis in Ponge and Moore ............................................................................. 119 . Ponge, Fautrier and la rage de l’expression ............................................... 119 . Moore’s objets d’art …………………………………………………....... 128 4. The Language of Animals ……………………………………………………………….. 135 4.1: The animal figure in modernity and modern literature ………………................ 137 4.2: From animal metaphor to human identity ............................................................. 144 . Ponge the hunter ......................................................................................... 146 . Moore’s moral animals .............................................................................. 155 4.3: From animal metaphors to the language of animals ............................................. 166 . From cage to desert sand: seeing and not seeing animals .......................... 171 . No animals were used in the writing of these poems ................................. 179 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 189 vi Appendix ............................................................................................................................... 199 vii List of Appendices 1. Nielsen, Kay. “Little Green Patch in the Midst of the Forest.” 2. Nielsen, Kay. “Cinderella.” 3. Fautrier, Jean. “Tête d’otage, no. 14.” 4. Plank, George. “Smooth Gnarled Crape Myrtle.” viii 1 Introduction Across continents and independently of one another, Marianne Moore (1887-1972) and Francis Ponge (1899-1988) both made names for themselves in the twentieth century as poets who gave voice to things. Marianne Moore was born in Missouri, United States and began writing poetry at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania before moving to New York City in 1918, where she became acquainted with poets like William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens. They, along with others like Ezra Pound, H. D. and T. S. Eliot (who were by then overseas), recognized a great and unique talent in the emerging poet. Francis Ponge was born in Montpellier, France in 1899, and during the First World War moved to Paris where he too soon made the acquaintance of various literary figures like Jean Paulhan and André Breton. Although Moore and Ponge came from very different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, they began writing a remarkably similar kind of poetry that is best termed a poetry of things, or “thing poetry.” By this name I recall the German term Dinggedicht, which is defined by Michael Winkler in the New Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and Poetics as “[a] type of poetry that seeks to present concrete objects (or a pictorially perceived constellation of things) with factual precision and in symbolic concentration,” and which enables “detached expression of inner experiences evoked through contemplative contact with the object” (295-6). My own definition of Moore and Ponge’s thing poetry varies slightly from this, as it is poetry that attempts to reconstruct an external thing (inanimate object, plant or animal being) through language while emphasizing the necessary distance that exists between the writing self and the written other. This kind of thing poetry establishes an “essential otherness” to the subject of representation that (ideally) prevents that subject from being objectified, thereby rendering the “thing” a subject- thing with its own being-for-itself. Moore and Ponge were both highly concerned with the (im)possibility of mimesis in poetic representation, and their writing displays this concern in its frequently self-reflexive consideration of its subject matter. In other words, their thing poems refer not only to the subject of representation but equally to the act of writing itself. In such a way the writing self of the poet is defined in and against his/her written other and the two enter a relationship of interdependence and reciprocity. This relationship is akin to what Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes in Le visible et l’invisible when he writes that the act of perceiving what is visible necessitates being visible 2 (to another) oneself. The other becomes a mirror of oneself and vice versa, Merleau-Ponty explains, and even still “nous-mêmes n’avons pas, de quelqu’un et de nous, deux images côte à côte, mais une seule image où nous sommes impliqués tous deux,
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