PONGE Francis (1889-1988) 7 L.A.S. "Fr. Ponge" or "Francis Ponge", 1929-1943, to…
Description

PONGE Francis (1889-1988)

7 L.A.S. "Fr. Ponge" or "Francis Ponge", 1929-1943, to Pascal PIA; 9 pages various sizes, envelopes and addresses (one letter split). Beautiful literary and friendly correspondence. Saturday [19.X.1929]. He very much wants to see him soon, "although I may have disgusted you the other day, or seemed silly. I hope that if MALRAUX is very busy or if he does not wish to meet me, which I would understand very well [...] that will not prevent us from seeing each other"... December 1929, appointment at the National... [30.XII.1929]. He read the article of Emmanuel BERL in the Nouvelles Littéraires: "it is a garbage, a grotesque tissue of unnameable nonsense: I knew well that I was not mistaken about this guy. I hope that for Malraux and you when you will have read this rag it will be judged also without return "... Wednesday [8.I.1930]. He went to see a Soviet play, La Rouille: "it is a melodrama with a thesis (like "the deadly kiss", a prophylactic play) but the atmosphere is very good (committees, poets, nepmen, young communists etc.), the bourgeois in the orchestra seats suffocate a little, which did not seem unpleasant to me" ............ Saturday evening [Bourg-en-Bresse 30.I.1943]. Cryptic letter of the Resistance: "At the end of a long letter received yesterday that he wrote to me on the subject of the Party-Pris and the Myth, A.C. [Albert CAMUS] proposes to me to write a letter to the Resistance. [Albert CAMUS] proposed that I meet him in St. Etienne, where he will go down"; Ponge will go there and will stop in Lyon to see Pia. "A note from Jean [PAULHAN] today who tells me, among other things, that he was happy to see C. when he passed by, - and who gives the following details about Uncle André (it's Uncle Édouard, no doubt, that he means): "Good news about Uncle André. It is the hotel next door that has been demolished. Not his"... February 4, 1943. He spent a good day with CAMUS, "really nice". He was refused his pass; he found a small house in Coligny (Ain)... He is going to spend a few days with Camus, "sleeping at the Chambon and eating at the Panelier", and he proposes to Pia to join them. "Here, everything is fine. Our fields are already starred with daisies, and the troops are fresh, and we are beginning to train them for the summer marches, with their jackets unbuttoned"... Then on his poems : " Finally, taking advantage of the fact that notwithstanding the contingencies, and without abandoning completely the Washing Machine, the Eucalyptus or the Spider, I got down to the Man (perfectly) - on which it remains perhaps some small things to say (the simplest and most flagrant naturally, like the progressive atrophy of his toes for example, or his disaffection with the concepts of sin, redemption or damnation) ".... A telegram is attached (1943); a postcard a.s. from Odette Ponge (and signed by Francis) from New York (Dec. 1966), an invitation card, and a printed tract: Mais pour qui se prennent donc ces gens-là? (1974).

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PONGE Francis (1889-1988)

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