La Table

by Francis Ponge

Written from 1967 to 1973 over a series of early mornings in seclusion in his country home, The Table offers a final chapter in Francis Ponge's interrogation of the unassuming objects in his life: in this case, the table upon which he wrote. In his effort to get at the presence lying beneath his elbow, Ponge charts out a space of silent consolation that lies beyond (and challenges) scientific objectivity and poetic transport. This is one of Ponge's most personal, overlooked, and--because it was the project he was working on when he died--his least processed works. It reveals the personal struggle Ponge engaged in throughout all of his writing, a hesitant uncertainty he usually pared away from his published texts that is at touching opposition to the manufactured, -durable mother- of the table on and of which he here writes.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, French Literature

128 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2002

About the author

Francis Jean Gaston Alfred Ponge was a French essayist and poet. Influenced by surrealism, he developed a form of prose poem, minutely examining everyday objects.

Reviews

[Justin Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps more interesting for dedicated poets than for readers of poetry; Ponge's notebooks are pretty much replicated here, which is fine if you're interested in the process of writing something, but if you're looking for something that has been written, I'd go elsewhere. I regret, Ponge seems to have little of interest to say about his table. There's tiresome etymology. There's a real crying need for editorial intervention. There's a general feeling that more Ponge should be in print in English, but that this is a very odd place to start.

[Dionysius the Areopagite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of all the unconsciously neglected novels in our tradition, which includes Piers the Ploughman and Either/Or and some others, this edition of Ponge's The Table strikes me as one of the very best novels (that may or may not be shelved as fiction, or literature, but is no doubt the latter, and the higher form at that) in the world of continental narrative. Ponge is so original that one feels sparks within one's skull compelling one to do something similar in novelistic form, or poetic-prose form, for a footrest, a shelf, a chair; but rather than do this, it is even more rewarding to instead return from reverie to The Table, and read another page. Ponge says more about life in a town in seventeen pages than Mary Evans did in nine-hundred-and-fifty. I speak from experience, as the year winds down, and I reflect on the lesser and greater reading experiences from this year. Why, you ask, do I compare George Eliot with Francis Ponge? Sheer subjectivity, rather than one looking for a digital quarrel. For I was surprised at how unmoved I was at the end of that reading experience earlier in the year, now that time really only allows me to tackle an English-language classic or two. Last year was, among many others, Stoker's Dracula, which I finished with pure delight. That was, is, a beautiful book; I was supposed to like it, and I did. As for Evans, I prefer her translation of Feuerbach to her magnum opus. But it is strange, at the same time, that one finds it strange, that one feels such a way as concerns 26 black symbols, or imprints, on rectangular pages, that seem to do all sorts of magical things. No doubt some of the magic is pure charlatanry; so goes Schopenhauer's adage, that he who writes for fools is sure of a large audience. Such is higher-level magic that compels Sorel to return to the Church Fathers, and for V. Grossman to emphatically reject Engels. But even these names get wearisome. And yet this is why the rejection or absence of them is so rewarding for those, in the Aristotelian sense, who know. For all of the books that have been composed at tables, how many have been exclusively concerned with the table itself? Somehow, Ponge does not make this slapstick, dada, gimmicky, or any other sort of temptingly asinine thing. Somehow the table becomes synonymous with daybreak, with breathing, with writing with one's feet crossed up at the table, writing as it were upon the board-table at one's knees. One buys many things in a year, for better or worse, but one doubts anything is worth the entirety of five dollars more than the padded writing boards that they sell at Five Below. There is a profound tragedy in Five Below's lack of tragedy. There is a tragedy in expecting tragedy and not finding tragedy. Or at least not at once. Rather, one is in line, contemplating whether or not the tragedy is and always has been interior. Furthermore, a fair thought might be, "I wonder how many persons in the world cannot afford a table." Then there is also the idea of starting a film series in which various persons, famous and unknown and all in between, talk to the host about their various tables. This could be particularly joyous when it came time to visit places like private libraries and trailer parks, ghettos and McMansions. Some persons sit down at their table to write some pages on the history of the concept of time. Others find the spirit in their table, or desk, and write songs called G.O.D. (Good Old Desk). Others, still, talk to their desks. There is a plan for another film: a film in which a man speaks to his furniture and the furniture speaks back. For all of the tables that exist in the world, so very few of them get to tell their stories. Granted, one may proclaim that one is not interested in the lifeworld of a table, but it would be difficult to validate this disinclination by way of empirical experience. Was Proust's bed a table? One should write a paper for Notes and Queries about the place of the table in Proust's maid's memoirs, entitled Monsieur Proust, though I forget the author's name, and yes, I am disinclined to open another tab in order to find out. If the life of a table is uninteresting, it could be said that the life of one at table is equally uninteresting, if we consider how many people in the world living and otherwise are, were, shall be at table, whom we nonetheless do not care to know about. We are told that others exist, but there is no literal proof. In this sense the others, all of them, are like the Great Architect. Yet a comparative study could be made there, even in novelistic form, applying one or two of Goethe's adages to the solipsism of Berkeley, if it is in fact solipsism. It does not matter either way, as being is solipsism. Who else but a table could understand this? Science, politics, and Gnosticism tell us some things, but each in the end is a lamp without a lightbulb. The desk helps with all of these things, but it also goes beyond them. Or in truth one could say that one and the desk go nowhere, but collaborate in a sort of picture-thinking that has the gravity of motion. I would not read this review and then go and read The Table. I have never seen a situation so dismal that socialism could not make it worse. Ideally, these muted strings propel one to do nothing more than make a mental or literal note of the book. Then in time, look into it. The more that is said about this, or anything, the worse off one is. One should use this site for cataloging and making friends, the latter only if one must for some terrible reason, and as far as cataloging is concerned, in the process read some strange notes along the wall. I have read graffiti, carved and penciled, penned and burned, into various tables and stalls, walls and passages, as have you. But never does anyone get literary in their inscriptions. I do not mean a line of poetry but rather a dreamy description of the concept of an object, there for all the world to see, in some cases for hours, in others for centuries. I suppose this is because the scrivener is always in a rush. But the scrivener's reader is never in a rush, unless the ghost of the scrivener enters into him. But the table is always there, just being a table. The tableness of the table one is before says nothing and everything about the tableness of being and the mystery of existence. Yet if the mystery of existence is actually a mystery, the fact that it is a mystery seems to make it suddenly a not-mystery. This raises questions regarding the mysterious, what it was, is, and shall be. There is a tableness to mystery. There are manners about the mystery of the table. Tableism compels one to mind one's own business, to stand still, like a table. If everyone is trying to stand still, it means that they are not standing still, because they are trying to stand still. But why is one trying? Tableism offers a provocative answer which I cannot disclose here. It is extremely offensive. It is the key to Tableism. I do not want to hurt anyone's feelings. But the mystery of the table is a matter whose profundity must necessarily offend, because it is in a sense correlated with the Mystery Schools. The Mystery Schools themselves cannot exist without a dichotomy of revelation, which necessarily severs all non-initiates into various forms of the profane. Please keep in mind I did not make this up. I will not disclose my involvement in Tableism in any great detail, but you must understand that tableistic narrativity goes back thousands of years. Men thought very differently about things then. Granted, today men's thoughts are almost identical to men who lived 5,000 years ago, but in some regards they are different. For instance, it was common sense that women could not partake in the Mystery Schools. Why this is, I cannot say, because I am not a woman. But women were not allowed. I believe certain religious buildings exclude women in certain fashions as well. But much more important than this is that persons seem to have never excluded tables from their dwellings, so long as the table existed in space and time. The problem is that space and time are just words, and do not actually exist. Thus the difficulty, of course, in solidifying the existence of the table. However, one does not necessarily have to believe that a table exists in order to witness a table in action. A table, once it is acquired, is through varied stages, depending on assemblage, mode of transportation, &c., is in the process of revealing itself. There is perhaps nothing so shocking in life as, in one moment, existence in a tableless room, before in the next instant, or at least what feels like the next instant, a table arriving. But tables do not arrive without controversy. I wish not to speak on behalf of tables, but rather about tables; even best is mute perception at one's table. Workers of the world have nothing to lose but their tableless lives. They must unite therefore and reconsider the table. I am not a worker, and I despise workers, be they volunteers or "heroes"; but nonetheless, I give the workers my blessing, so long as they remain true to Tableism. Should they fall from grace, I shall not know them. Whoever loses his table shall find it. There is no Furniture but Furniture, and Table is Its Prophet. May your table with you (and with your spirit). Lift up your hearts (we lift them up to the table). Let us give thanks (it is right at table). I have even once known a man who lived under a table. Granted, it was a pool table. But he did, truly, live under the pool table for about three weeks if I remember correctly. I even visited him under the table, brought him fruit, vegetables, and a waste basket, in addition to cigarettes, hashish, and wine. He even painted a detail of the mythic cosmos atop the bottom of the table, reminiscent of Grand Central Station. In his zodiacal lodgings, one forgot one was beneath a table. I am not glad to report that this friend of mine died about five years ago. Given the current state of things, one can at least say he is not missing much. But surely his table misses him, as sure as it is itself the essence of the manifestation of the incomprehensible passage of time that, further, is itself a reflection of the fact that life is, in the end, a dream. Some men dream of carnal things, other numerical, others still things eternal. But I must commend Ponge for turning to the table. Now all of our lives are a little better. Of this I am certain. You may be less certain. One of us cannot be wrong.

[Dree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poetry--in no standard form, I don't know how this could be read aloud, performed, or done for audiobooks--about a table. Or tables. In particular, Ponge's writing table.

There are some interesting ideas--table/tablet/tableau--which translate over from French just fine. The idea of a table being horizontal, yet writing lapdesks are angled, blackboards vertical--and both are a form of table.

But in general, this is just exhausting. I'm not sure it 100% translates well, as he discusses words and word roots/similarities, and I doubt all of it comes over effectively.

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

[11] Les Vergers 13-8-68
I've been thinking today that I generally turn to writing to console myself (if I'm not writing on assignment) and that the greater my despair, the more intense (necessarily intense) is my fixation on the object (in linguistics they call it the referent); the more violent is the love (respect, consideration) I bear for it; the more serious, urgent I consider it to be; as if my fate were dependent on it (which is in fact what has taken place, what has happened); as if the law it contains, that it incarnates, should be made I won't say explicit but rather urgently formulated; as if everything depended on it (everything, that is to say my very life and from that, everything else: the world (nature) as a whole. (23)

[24] Les Vergers Night of 17 to 18 Oct. 68
Horizontal table of waxed or varnished wood made of one or several planks of planed-down and smoothed wood, at least two centimeters thick,
It's soil for the pen. (39)

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A meditation on the humble table, or at least the tables in Ponge's life: what it means to be a table, to have a table, to use a table. (OK, that doesn't sound too compelling, right? Leave it to the avant-garde to make it interesting.) Some favorite passages: "Silence is the sand of noise." . . . tables are "soil for the pen." . . . "The table, my console and consoler, as it is recalled to my body and at the same time my mind its notion. . . It isn't on the metaphysical our moral rest: only on the physical."

[ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's a healthy stretch of the imagination to consider the kind of person who would enjoy this.

For a book about one of the most down to earth objects, it's remarkably abstract. Pretentious and claustrophobic. This is what it's like to analyze your reality so that it breaks down and becomes pathological. Don't think this much if you want to write poetry.

[Mukul Sheopory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gets under the hood behind a poet/essayist's thought process.. A brilliant, yet raw meditation on the quotidian table. Takes the reader on numerous tangents and detours, unravelling a thousand associations with the object. I'll never look at a table again without being influenced by this work of Francis Ponge.

[Dylan Rock · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange collection of poetry that's runs the gauntlet from everyday observations to the surreal all centred around a table

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meditations and digressions on the idea of the table. Sometimes philosophic and often poetic.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A strange exercise in empathy