L'écriture Des Choses à L'épreuve Du Soleil: à Propos Du Soleil Placé En Abîme De Francis Ponge

Abstract

This article examines how the French poet Francis Ponge, in writing a series of texts devoted to the sun (1948-54), inaugurates an ars poetica called "l'objeu." The sun represents a real threat—both empirical and philosophical—to the author's earthbound and stony sensitivity. The notion of l'objeu, which is indissociable from the text Le Soleil placé en abîme, can thus be understood as the invention of a poetical program that challenges the brightness of the sun with the help of science. As he transforms the sun into l'objeu by using the power of his own signature, Ponge takes part in the glorification of a new form of textual transcendence: henceforth the poem is converted into a baroque parasol, whose goal eventually consists in allowing each terrestrial object to be put in the spotlight.

Keywords:

• ars poetica
• l'objeu
• Francis Ponge
• science
• Le Soleil placé en abîme
• sun