I had to laugh out loud when I read that sentence embedded in an erudite prose poem on snails. They are hell on salad, indeed – and bring up a fond memory of a long ago trip with my then 13 year-old to France. There we were, having lunch in an outdoor café, when what I thought to be a black olive began to move…. the waiter, resenting that I called him over, just shrugged, did not even take the plate away, much less took it off the bill or compensated with a free dessert. “What did you assume,” a bystander at the next table declared, “after all, it’s Marseille.” My son’s aversion to French waiters, who regularly scolded him for not finishing the food on his plate, a move long given up by his mother, went up a notch.

Here is another passage from the poem (it is too long to print here, therefor the link above,) revealing Francis Ponge‘s artistry with words as much as observations:

“There is more to be said about snails. First of all their immaculate clamminess. Their sangfroid. Their stretchiness.“

One might add: their pace…..

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Ponge (1899-1988) was an interesting character and marvelous wordsmith. He was keen on creating a “visual equivalence” between language and subject matter by emphasizing word associations and by manipulating the sound, rhythm, and typography of the words to mimic the essential characteristics of the object described.” Seems more like an auditory equivalence to me, but what do I know.

Trained as a lawyer and philosopher, he was loosely connected to the Surrealist movement in the 1920s, and affiliated with the French Communist Party in 1937, and was active during the war in organizing the Resistance movement among journalists. He left the Party in 1947 decrying its embrace of Stalinism. In 1952 he became a professor at the Alliance Française and started to concentrate on writing. His politics remained progressive, though, and his choice of subjects – the everyday, common use, down-to-earth objects of the material world around us in some way echo his commitment to make the world a better place. Being mindful about the things around us and respectful of nature were frequent themes in his work. He was made Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1959 and received the French Academy’s grand prize for poetry in 1972 and the National Poetry Prize in 1981.

His early work had a focus on small things. Soap, shells, cigarettes, plants, – and, of course, snails. There is something to be learned from looking at the minute, then extrapolating from it to the larger world around us. I find myself doing that as a photographer as well and maybe his astute observations crafted into detailed descriptions of the visual qualities of things explains why I am drawn to his early writings.

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And so it was some days ago, when the rains had once again made the woods into a muddy, moist, verdant, dripping landscape where fungi unfolded in full curves and snails and slugs slimed their way across the glistening surfaces.

My camera depicted, as did Ponge’s poetic words, but stuck to the observable, in contrast to his musings. For one so interested in a materialistic aesthetic it is surely weird to anthropomorphize the feelings of snails.

“It must be a pain to have to haul that trailer around with them everywhere, but they never complain and in the end they are happy about it. How valuable, after all, to be able to go home any time, no matter where you may find yourself, eluding all intruders. It must be worth it.

They are a little vain about this convenient ability: “Look at me, a vulnerable and sensitive being, who is nevertheless protected from unwanted guests, and so always in possession of happiness and peace of mind!” It’s not surprising the snail holds his head so high.

“At the same time I am glued to the earth, always touching it, always progressing, though slowly, and always capable of pulling loose from the soil into myself. Après moi le déluge, I don’t care, the slightest kick may roll me anywhere. I can always get up again onto my single foot and reglue myself to the dirt where fate has planted me, and that’s my pantry: the earth, the most common of foods.”

Oh well, to each their own. I certainly appreciate that there are people other than me who indulge in the beauty of these creatures, even though I regularly smite them when they decide to eat my garden. Hell on salad and hell on hostas, too. Aesthetic appreciation only goes so far.

Here is a strange snail ballet from 2019, part of Cryptic’s Sonica Festival.

From the announcement: “176 snails will travel to Kings Place to take centre stage in a live sonic installation like no other. French artists Elizabeth Saint-Jalmes and Cyril Leclerc conduct an immersive sensorial experiment as they harness each snail with a small diode. Slow Pixel highlights Kings Place’s theme of ‘time’ and invites the audience to slow down as the snails draw their individual trajectories through this sensory environment.”

If Leclerc’s music is too jarring (certainly for my Monday brain), here is something classical, lilting albeit at a snail’s pace, the Adagio from Mahler’s 9th.

And here is a shorter prose poem about the substance that makes snails (presumably) happy, particularly on this rainy Monday morning:

Rain

BY FRANCIS PONGE

TRANSLATED BY JOSHUA COREY AND JEAN-LUC GARNEAU

The rain, in the backyard where I watch it fall, comes down at different rates. In the center a fine discontinuous curtain — or network — falls implacably and yet gently in drops that are probably quite light; a strengthless sempiternal precipitation, an intense fraction of the atmosphere at its purest. A little distance from the walls to the right and left plunk heavier drops, one by one. Here they seem about the size of grains of wheat, the size of a pea, while elsewhere they are big as marbles. Along gutters and window frames the rain runs horizontally, while depending from the same obstacles it hangs like individually wrapped candies. Along the entire surface of a little zinc roof under my eyes it trickles in a very thin sheet, a moiré pattern formed by the varying currents created by the imperceptible bumps and undulations of the surface. From the gutter it flows with the restraint of a shallow creek until it tumbles out into a perfectly vertical net, rather imperfectly braided, all the way to the ground where it breaks and sparkles into brilliant needles.

Each of its forms has its particular allure and corresponds to a particular patter. Together they share the intensity of a complex mechanism as precise as it is dangerous, like a steam-powered clock whose spring is wound by the force of the precipitation.

The ringing on the ground of the vertical trickles, the glug-glug of the gutters, the miniscule strikes of the gong multiply and resonate all at once in a concert without monotony, and not without a certain delicacy.

Once the spring unwinds itself certain wheels go on turning for a while, more and more slowly, until the whole mechanism comes to a stop. It all vanishes with the sun: when it finally reappears, the brilliant apparatus evaporates. It has rained.
Translated from the French