Though I rarely venture into the brambles beyond page 1 in an internet search, it was myself I was looking for this morning, and I bravely or narcissistically pushed on and found this pleasant few paragraphs on a fellow blog, about a book I am proud of, another of CBe's terrific productions:

"Primarily, this is a brief advertisement for CB Editions‘s irresistible bi-lingual edition of the great Francis Ponge; Unfinished Ode to Mud, translated by Beverley Bie Brahic in 2008. It’s a selection from what she has translated as The Defence of Things and Pieces, some of the latter being their first appearances in English…

So, firstly, please get hold of a copy of the book from the publishing miracle that is CB Editions whom, it’s worth knowing, work on very short print runs. I have no links etc., but urge you to take up their current offer here, while getting hold of this beautiful selection and give copies to people that you wish loved you…

‘Unfinished Ode to Mud’ itself, is also an ode to the Resistance  and was written in 1942. Let me share some lines with you;

“Mud pleases the noble of heart because it is constantly scorned… Who needs such constant humiliation? …/

Despised mud, I love you. I love you because people scorn you./

May my writing, literal mud, splash the faces of those who disparage you!/…

It wards off any approach to its centre, necessitates long detours, stilts even.

Not, perhaps, that it is inhospitable or jealous; for, deprived of affection, at the least advance it attaches itself to you…

I love the way it slows my footsteps, I’m grateful for the detours it makes me take…

All in all mud delights the strong of heart, for in it they see a way to test themselves which isn’t easy… As for mud, its principal and most obvious claim to fame is that one can make nothing of it, one can in no way inform it… And I cannot do better, to its glory, to its shame, than to write an ode diligently unfinished…”

Just a tiny bit of the brilliance of Ponge with whom I’ve spent quite a bit of time this year. I hadn’t realised the degree to which I’d been left up a Derridean creek without a Pongean paddle [Signeponge-Signsponge , 'Psyche; Inventions of the Other'.]...