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Soap (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) Paperback – July 1, 1998

Name: Amazon.com: Soap (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics): 9780804729550: Ponge, Francis, Dunlop, Lane: Books
Price: 15.73 USD
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Rating: 4.7 (14 reviews)

by Francis Ponge (Author), Lane Dunlop (Translator)

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". . . And now, dear reader, for your intellectual toilet, here is a little piece of soap. Well handled, we guarantee it will be enough. Let us hold this magic stone."

The poet Francis Ponge (1899-1988) occupied a significant and unchallenged place in French letters for over fifty years, attracting the attention and admiration of generations of leading intellectuals, writers, and painters, a notable feat in France, where reputations are periodically reassessed and undone with the arrival of new literary and philosophical schools.

Soap occupies a crucial, pivotal position in Ponge's work. Begun during the German occupation when he was in the Resistance, though completed two decades later, it determined, according to Ponge, the form of almost all his postwar writing. With this work, he began to turn away from the small, perfect poem toward a much more open form, a kind of prose poem which incorporates a laboratory or workshop, recounting its own process of coming into being along with the final result. The outcome is a new form of writing, which one could call "processual poetry." Ponge's later work, from Soap on, is a very important tool in the questioning and rethinking of literary genres, of poetry and prose, of what is literature.

There is a blurring of boundaries between Soap and soap (which was hard to come by during the Resistance and is also, of course, metaphorical for a larger social restitution). Soap contains the sum of Ponge's aesthetics and materialist ethics and his belief in the supremacy of language as it becomes the object of the text. In the words of Serge Gavronsky, "this work, perhaps one of the longest running metaphors in literature, slowly unwinds, bubbles in verbal inventions, and finally evaporates, leaving the water slightly troubled, slightly darker, but the hands clean, really clean. . . . Out of murky literary habits, Ponge has devised a way of cleaning his text, and through it, man himself, his vocabulary, and as a consequence, his way of being in the world."

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This text manages to be whimsical, political and philosophical all at once by behaving like its subject―soap―and slipping between modes.”―Matthea Harvey, Boston Review

From the Inside Flap

“. . . And now, dear reader, for your intellectual toilet, here is a little piece of soap. Well handled, we guarantee it will be enough. Let us hold this magic stone.”
The poet Francis Ponge (1899-1988) occupied a significant and unchallenged place in French letters for over fifty years, attracting the attention and admiration of generations of leading intellectuals, writers, and painters, a notable feat in France, where reputations are periodically reassessed and undone with the arrival of new literary and philosophical schools.
Soap occupies a crucial, pivotal position in Ponge’s work. Begun during the German occupation when he was in the Resistance, though completed two decades later, it determined, according to Ponge, the form of almost all his postwar writing. With this work, he began to turn away from the small, perfect poem toward a much more open form, a kind of prose poem which incorporates a laboratory or workshop, recounting its own process of coming into being along with the final result. The outcome is a new form of writing, which one could call “processual poetry.” Ponge’s later work, from Soap on, is a very important tool in the questioning and rethinking of literary genres, of poetry and prose, of what is literature.
There is a blurring of boundaries between Soap and soap (which was hard to come by during the Resistance and is also, of course, metaphorical for a larger social restitution). Soap contains the sum of Ponge’s aesthetics and materialist ethics and his belief in the supremacy of language as it becomes the object of the text. In the words of Serge Gavronsky, “this work, perhaps one of the longest running metaphors in literature, slowly unwinds, bubbles in verbal inventions, and finally evaporates, leaving the water slightly troubled, slightly darker, but the hands clean, really clean. . . . Out of murky literary habits, Ponge has devised a way of cleaning his text, and through it, man himself, his vocabulary, and as a consequence, his way of being in the world.”

From the Back Cover

“. . . And now, dear reader, for your intellectual toilet, here is a little piece of soap. Well handled, we guarantee it will be enough. Let us hold this magic stone.”
The poet Francis Ponge (1899-1988) occupied a significant and unchallenged place in French letters for over fifty years, attracting the attention and admiration of generations of leading intellectuals, writers, and painters, a notable feat in France, where reputations are periodically reassessed and undone with the arrival of new literary and philosophical schools.
Soap occupies a crucial, pivotal position in Ponge’s work. Begun during the German occupation when he was in the Resistance, though completed two decades later, it determined, according to Ponge, the form of almost all his postwar writing. With this work, he began to turn away from the small, perfect poem toward a much more open form, a kind of prose poem which incorporates a laboratory or workshop, recounting its own process of coming into being along with the final result. The outcome is a new form of writing, which one could call “processual poetry.” Ponge’s later work, from Soap on, is a very important tool in the questioning and rethinking of literary genres, of poetry and prose, of what is literature.
There is a blurring of boundaries between Soap and soap (which was hard to come by during the Resistance and is also, of course, metaphorical for a larger social restitution). Soap contains the sum of Ponge’s aesthetics and materialist ethics and his belief in the supremacy of language as it becomes the object of the text. In the words of Serge Gavronsky, “this work, perhaps one of the longest running metaphors in literature, slowly unwinds, bubbles in verbal inventions, and finally evaporates, leaving the water slightly troubled, slightly darker, but the hands clean, really clean. . . . Out of murky literary habits, Ponge has devised a way of cleaning his text, and through it, man himself, his vocabulary, and as a consequence, his way of being in the world.”

About the Author

Francis Ponge (b. 1899) became known in French literary circles in the wake of the First World War, but commenced his most important work during the German Occupation. His fame began to reach its present height with the respect shown him by Tel Quel in the late fifties.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Stanford University Press (July 1, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 114 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0804729557
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0804729550
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.88 x 0.29 x 7.88 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,702,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #500 in French Literary Criticism (Books)
- #5,846 in Essays (Books)

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Eric
Genius, genius, genius, a literary experiment like no other
Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2021
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I will start with a confession: I pretty much only bought this book because I was a few bucks short from a free shipment. I only had a very vague idea what it's about (want to take a guess?) and saw it had some relatively low ratings.

I can wholeheartedly say this is simply one of the most brilliant things (I don't know how to brand it as anything other than a 'thing' as it is neither prose, poetry, novel, philosophy... while simultaneously being all of these together). Without giving away too much, because I really think one will benefit most by going into this little book with zero expectations, I can just say that it is about soap.

I consider it to be one of the most ingenious literary experiments of all time, and it is surprisingly deep once you start to analyze it, as it is open to analysis from so many different angles it's unbelievable. I also think it's a rather hilarious little book but it depends on how you read it and how serious or cynical you take the writer for.
Despite the obvious difficulties, the translation is rock solid, retaining the poetic power of Ponge, also with adequate translator's notes thorough to explain certain translation choices, or, to shed light about the impossibility of translation in certain occasions.

Again, I don't want to spoil anything, despite this book being practically spoiler proof, but just do yourself a favor and dive straight in and perhaps also try to finish it in one reading as it is a fairly short read. I am completely and utterly baffled, yet endlessly pleased at how this book so chaotically found its way into my life and just as easily solidified its place as one of the most outstanding literary efforts in recent history. Soap!

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Engrooviast
Ponge's signature
Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2002
Soap is different from Ponge's other work. He is best known as the author of many brief, well-crafted prose poems which take the form of minute observations on natural and manmade objects. This book, as the title implies, is also an observation on a common household object.
This work is not merely a prose poem, although it contains elements of prose poetry. It is comprised of (fictional?) radio addresses, a short dramatic piece, correspondence, notebook extracts and other narrative forms culled from twenty years of occasional writing on one topic: the nature of soap.
The whole work is a metaphor on the relationship between soap and language. There are affinities between language and soap, their artificiality, their cleansing power, their slipperiness, etc. But these metaphorical connections are not explicitly expressed by Ponge - they are everywhere implied. The fragments of writing here are like bubbles, containing the same substance but constantly changing form ever so slightly. The form relates quite well to the content.
What Ponge has found here is a subject whose nature corresponds almost exactly to his writing style and his narrative method - perhaps this is what motivated him to linger over this particular piece for twenty years and to elaborate and refine it to an extent unfamiliar in his other works. This work, more than any other, displays the virtues and the virtuosity of Ponge.
I give the book four stars mostly because of the presentation. It's a handsome edition and the translation is quite good. But it is a slim volume (about 75 pages of text) and it would have been extremely worthwhile for the publisher to have included the French text on facing pages. Most prospective purchasers of this volume have probably more than a nodding acquaintance with French, since Ponge is known to American readers largely through the influence he has had on other writers and thinkers like Robbe-Grillet or Derrida. Because Ponge relies so much on wordplay and etymological affinities, the French text would have been useful.

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Soap (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) Paperback – July 1, 1998

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5.0 out of 5 stars Genius, genius, genius, a literary experiment like no other

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