View source for Francis Ponge

{{Short description|French essayist and poet}}
[[File:Francis-Ponge.jpg|thumb|right|Ponge in later years]]
'''Francis Jean Gaston Alfred Ponge''' ({{IPA|fr|pɔ̃ʒ|lang}}; 27 March 1899 – 6 August 1988) was a French poet. He developed a form of [[Prose poetry|prose poem]], minutely examining everyday objects. He was the third recipient of the [[Neustadt International Prize for Literature]] in 1974.

==Life==
Ponge was born into a Protestant family in [[Montpellier]], the son of Armand Ponge, a banker, and his wife Juliette, ''née'' Saurel.<ref name=gale>[http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/GLD/hits?r=d&origSearch=true&o=DataType&n=10&l=d&c=1&locID=wes_ttda&secondary=false&u=CA&t=KW&s=2&NA=Ponge "Francis Ponge"], ''Contemporary Authors Online'', Thomson Gale, 2007, accessed 29 February 2012 {{subscription required}}</ref> He studied in Paris at the [[University of Paris|Sorbonne]] and the [[Paris Law Faculty|École de droit]] where he read law,<ref name=gale/>  In 1918–1919 he served in the French army. In 1919 he joined the [[French Socialist Party (1919)|Socialist Party]].<ref name=green/>

Ponge worked for the Parisian publishing companies [[Éditions Gallimard|Gallimard]] (1923–1931) and Hachette (1931–1937), and before the outbreak of the Second World War he was briefly an insurance salesman.<ref name=gale/> His earliest poems were published in 1923,<ref name=times>[http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:UKNB:LTIB&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=0F90F730114A6416&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=102CDD40F14C6BDA "Obituary – M. Francis Ponge"], ''[[The Times]]'', 11 August 1988</ref> and he established a reputation in French literary circles, principally for his contributions to the ''[[Nouvelle Revue Française]]''.<ref name=green>[http://www.greeninteger.com/pipbios_detail.cfm?PIPAuthorID=1432 "Francis Ponge"], Green Integer, accessed 29 December 2011</ref> The editor of the publication, [[Jean Paulhan]], became Ponge's mentor, and remained so for many years. Their correspondence continued until Paulhan's death in 1968.<ref>Fawcett, Peter. "Greatness through method", ''The Times Literary Supplement'', 26 December 1986, p. 1440</ref> During the 1930s Ponge was for a short while associated with the [[Surrealist]] movement, influenced by which he joined the [[French Communist Party|Communist Party]] in 1937.<ref name=green/>

During the Second World War, Ponge joined the [[French Resistance]].<ref name=gale/>  He also worked for the National Committee of Journalists, 1942–1944 and was literary and artistic director of the communist weekly ''L'Action'' 1944–1946.<ref name=gale/> He left the Communist Party in 1947.<ref name=oxford>[[Graham Dunstan Martin|Dunstan Martin, Graham]] [http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t188.e3720 "Ponge, Francis"], ''The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French'', ed. Peter France. Oxford University Press 1995, Oxford Reference Online, accessed 29 February 2012  {{subscription required}}</ref> From 1952 to 1965 he held a professorship at the [[Alliance française]] in Paris.<ref name=gale/> In 1966 and 1967 he was a visiting professor at [[Barnard College]] and [[Columbia University]] in the US.<ref name=gale/>

In his later years Ponge was a recluse, living at his country house. He died in [[Le Bar-sur-Loup]] at the age of 89.<ref name=times/>

Awards made to Ponge included the  [[Neustadt Prize|Neustadt International Prize for Literature]] (1974),<ref name=gale/> the [[Académie française]]'s French National Poetry Prize (1981),<ref name=times/> and the Grand prix of the Société des gens de lettres (1985).<ref name=gale/> He was a Commandeur of the [[Légion d'honneur]] (1983).<ref name=gale/>

==Works==
In his work, ''[[Le parti pris des choses|Le Parti pris des choses]]'' (often translated ''The Voice of Things''),<ref name=times/> he meticulously described common things such as oranges, potatoes and cigarettes in a poetic voice, but with a personal style and paragraph form ([[prose poem]]) much like an essay.<ref name=gale/>

Ponge avoided appeals to emotion and symbolism, and instead sought to minutely recreate the world of experience of everyday objects. He described his own works as "a description-definition-literary artwork" which avoided both the drabness of a dictionary and the inadequacy of poetry. His principal aim was to avoid stereotypical thinking. In ''Le Grand Recueil'' (The Grand Collection), published in 1961 he explained his "concentration on simple objects – stones, grass, directed towards a restoration of the power and purity of language," according to his obituary in ''[[The Times]]''.<ref name=times/>

In 1967 he published his best-known work, ''Le Savon'', translated as Soap (1969), a long prose poem that, in the words of ''The Times'' "is unique precisely because, and often very humorously, it exhausts the topic of the word and the thing." An extract from the original, and an English translation published in 1969, illustrate this:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-valign:top; width:90%;"
|<poem>
{{spaces|25}}''Le Savon''{{spaces|25}}
Si je m'en frotte les mains, le savon écume, jubile...
Plus il les rend complaisantes, souples,
liantes, ductiles, plus il bave, plus
sa rage devient volumineuse et nacrée...
Pierre magique!
Plus il forme avec l'air et l'eau
des grappes explosives de raisins
parfumés...
L'eau, l'air et le savon
se chevauchent, jouent
à saute-mouton, forment des
combinaisons moins chimiques que
physiques, gymnastiques, acrobatiques...
Rhétoriques?
[...]
</poem>
|<poem>
{{spaces|25}}''Soap''{{spaces|25}}
If I rub my hands with it, soap foams, exults...
The more complaisant it makes them, supple,
smooth, docile, the more it slobbers, the more
its rage becomes voluminous, pearly...
Magic stone!
The more it forms with air and water
clusters of scented grapes
explosive...
Water, air and soap
overlap, play
at leapfrog, form
combinations less chemical than
physical, gymnastical, acrobatical...
Rhetorical?
{{spaces|20}}''Translation by Lane Dunlop:''<ref>Ponge, Francis. ''Soap'', trans. Lane Dunlop. London:Jonathan Cape (1969). {{ISBN|0-224-61658-7}}</ref>
</poem>
|}

Other works include 'La Guêpe', a word play on the name of painter [[Émile Picq]] (1911–1951).<ref>The Art Criticism of Francis Ponge – Page 37 0901286397
Shirley Ann Jordan – 1994 – ... and completed in 1943, a year before the text on Picq, 'La Guêpe' is an intertext which links the wasp and the painter by the verb piquer, and illustrates many parallels in behaviour between painter and insect: 'petite cuisine volante "</ref><ref>Živilė Gimbutas The Riddle in the Poem 2004 – 0761828451- Page 49 The invention of ombe in "Les Ombelles" and ponches in "La Fenetre" interrelate the word as sound system with the word as a unit of meaning. "La Guepe" is supposedly an "irruption" of the wasp in literature, "in a manner at once irritating, ...</ref>

==Bibliography==
* ''Le Parti pris des choses'' (1942)
* ''Proêmes'' (1948)
* ''La Rage de l'expression'' (1952)
* ''Le Grand Recueil'' (I. "Méthodes", 1961; II. "Lyres", 1961; III "Pièces", 1962)
* ''Pour un Malherbe'' (1965)
* ''Le Savon'' (1967) as ''Soap'', [[Jonathan Cape]], London
* ''Interviews with [[Philippe Sollers]]'' (1970)
* ''La Fabrique du Pré'' (1971)
* ''Comment une figue de paroles et pourquoi'' (1977)
* ''Pages d'atelier, 1917–1982'' (Gallimard, 2005)

==Source of information and publicity for Francis Ponge's work==
The association based on a suggestion of Armande Ponge (daughter of Odette and Francis Ponge) was founded by Jean-Marie Gleize in Paris in 2011 and was named Société des Lecteurs de Francis Ponge (S. L. F. P.). The Ordinary General Assembly take place once a year alternatively in Paris and in Lyon. The association is aimed not only at disseminating and promoting Ponge's writing, but also at encouraging cultural knowledge and research. It provided financing for the publication of the Society's bulletin replaced since 2017 by the Cahiers Francis Ponge published by Classiques Garnier. The Internet site (http://francisponge-slfp.ens-lyon.fr) offers news, historical as well as recent articles, links and contains some informations about Francis Ponge's works, letters and manuscripts and radio, video, photo archives.

==Notes==
{{reflist|2}}

==Further reading==
;Commentaries on Ponge
* [[Jacques Derrida]], in his essay, "[[Psyche: Inventions of the Other]]," minutely analyzes Ponge's poem, "''Fable''." [https://web.archive.org/web/20050915221506/http://personales.ciudad.com.ar/Derrida/psyche.htm]
* Jacques Derrida, in his book ''Signeponge-Signsponge'', English translation by Richard Rand, Columbia University Press, 1984.
* [[Philippe Sollers]], in his essay ''Francis Ponge'', Seghers éditions, Paris, 2001.
* Annick Fritz-Smead, ''Francis Ponge: De l'Ecriture à l'Oeuvre'', Peter Lang Publishing, 1997.
* Marco Nuti, ''Au Pays des Mots. Francis Ponge et l’inaperçu du réel'', LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 2009, {{ISBN|978-88-7916-417-7}}
* [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], "L'homme et les choses", in ''Situations I'', Paris, Gallimard, 1947, 251–252.

{{Neustadt International Prize for Literature}}
{{Surrealism}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ponge, Francis}}
[[Category:1899 births]]
[[Category:1988 deaths]]
[[Category:French male essayists]]
[[Category:French male poets]]
[[Category:French humorous poets]]
[[Category:French socialists]]
[[Category:Writers from Montpellier]]
[[Category:Communist writers]]
[[Category:20th-century French poets]]
[[Category:20th-century French essayists]]
[[Category:20th-century French male writers]]
[[Category:Commanders of the Legion of Honour]]
[[Category:Communist members of the French Resistance]]
[[Category:University of Paris alumni]]