Mute Objects of Expression Read Online Free PDF Page A

twisted and torn by the violence of their talk:
    most particularly a perfume such that it produces on human nostrils a pleasurable effect all but sternutatory
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    June 15
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    The stem
of this magnificent hero – example to follow –
is a delicate green bamboo
with vigorous well-spaced swellings
polished as a fingernail
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    Beneath each one come unsheathed is the word
two very simple little sabers
symmetrically inoffensive
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    At the tip destined for success
swells an acorn a supple pointed olive
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    Which suddenly bringing about an overwhelming
modification
forces it apart, pulling it open
and unbudding it?
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    A marvelous dust cloth of cool satin
a ruffle with profusion of cool flickers
little tongues of the same fabric

twisted and shredded
by the violence of their talk
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    A trumpet choked
on the redundance of its own cries
at the pavilion shredded by their sheer violence
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    While to confirm the phenomenon’s importance
a perfume continuously is given off
arousing in human nostrils
an effect of intense pleasure
almost sternutatory.
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    At the tip of a vigorous stalk
trumpets of linens
shredded by the violence of their talk:
a perfume of sternutatory essence

    Plant with immobile kneecaps.

    The bud of a vigorous stalk
splits into carnation
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    O rent into Œ
O! Bud of vigorous stalk
rent into OEILLET!
Plant, with immobile kneecaps
ELLE, she, O youthful vigor
L of the symmetrical apostrophes
O the supple pointed olive
unfolding into Œ, I, double-L, E, T
Little tongues shredded
By the violence of their talk
Damp satin raw satin
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    etc.
    (My carnation shouldn’t amount to much; one must be able to hold it between two fingers.)
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    Concluding Rhetoric for the Carnation
    Among the ecstasies, including lessons, to be drawn from a contemplation of carnations, there are several varieties, and I’d like, on a progressive scale of pleasure, to begin with the least spectacular,
the most down to earth and perhaps most solid, those that emerge from the mind at the moment the shoot itself emerges from the earth . . .
    At first this plant hardly differs from ragweed. It clings to the soil, which looks at that spot both hard-packed and as sensitive as a gum being pierced by fangs. If you try to extract the little wisp, success won’t come easily, for you soon notice that beneath it there’s a sort of long horizontal root underlining the surface, a long and very tenacious will to resist, relatively quite considerable. We find ourselves dealing with a very resistant sort of thread that throws the extractor off balance, forcing him to alter the thrust of his effort. It is something very much like the sentence through which I’m trying “at this very moment” to express it, something that unfolds less than it tears away, that grips the soil with a thousand adventitious radicles – and is likely to break off (under my effort) before I have managed to extract the principle. Aware of this danger I risk it viciously, shamelessly, repeatedly.
    Enough of that, right? Let’s drop the root of our carnation.
    â€“ We will drop it, fine, but restored to a more tranquil state of mind, and before letting our thoughts rise towards the stem – settling down on the grass, for instance, not far away, and observing without touching it again – we’ll nonetheless ponder the reasons for this form it has taken: why a thread rather than a tap root or simple subterranean branching like ordinary roots?

    Indeed we shouldn’t give way to the temptation of believing that it is simply to plague myself that I have just described this carnation behavior.
    But perhaps it is possible to detect in vegetal behavior a will to bind up the earth, to be its religion, its religious – and consequently its masters.
    But let’s return to the form of the roots. Why a thread rather than a tap root or a branching like ordinary