"TRANSLATING THE WORM:  IRONY APROPOS"
by Pierre Queneau

Throughout the mystery of life and love  there  has  been  a
single common denominator.  A nocturnal one, to be sure, but
a  denominator  nonetheless.   One suggests that we think of
Bob Folder as the point  where the ideal relationship meets:
a ritual bonfire of simultaneous message and  meaning.   All
of  our  real or purported knowledge, whether of the natural
world, of the standards of right conduct, of the criteria of
beauty or  of  the  existence  and  attributes  of  a divine
creator, is expressed in Folder's prepositions.   He's  lost
his  head.   Actually,  he's lost his poems.  Left them in a
bar, he did, and now they are melting into the rainforest of
the andiron.

Propositions, prepositions.  Is  there a correlation between
general  personality  traits  and  preference  in  modes  of
writing?  Aristotle may have thought  poetry  a  preparation
for death, but most poets have seemed intent upon putting it
to  death.   This bit of jargon has the virtue of suggesting
simultaneously  things  about  carelessness  and inattention
alone.  Folder, in his first publication, appeared to be  on
the  trail of a metaphoric appoggiatura: the calm before the
storm.  With his "Sonnet  For  a Landlocked Numeral" and the
enduring "Bacon  Critters,"  Folder  had  stepped  over  the
bounds  of  what  Van  Wyck  Brooks  called "The Wine of the
Puritans"  (London,  1908).   But  what,  then,  do  Ruskin,
Carlyle, Coleridge or  Hegel  mean  to  the  composer of The
Savage Butcher of Carnale?  He cries "Give the rhyme crank a
hearty foamy Calvinistic dot;"  he  implores  us  to  "skate
methodically." Yet the dog threw his work away.

The  notion  of  erecting  a  system  of  cerulean anecdotes
analogous to  Newton's  system  of  physical  nature  and of
basing it on a force of association  analogous  to  Newton's
force of gravitation was one which would naturally appeal to
the  young and enthusiastic Folder.  But he was too honest a
prevaricator to cling to an  initial  plan when the force of
his hammer led in few and different directions.  He took  to
his  heels.  In short: we cannot have a legitimate explosion
or an illegitimate confusion apparently undermine the entire
sweep of knowledge-claims  on  which  our Folderist and even
everyday knowledge of the world around us is based.

But here we encounter a problem, as  Folder  well  realizes.
"I have untied the exponential acre of concrete dust .  . ."
he says, and this clearly means the past.  He has untied the
past,  indeed.   He  has shattered the premonitions of irony
and motif, he  has  turned  from  harmless satirizing of his
mediocre contemporaries and leveled the barrel of his wit at
Time itself; he has undertaken the complete  translation  of
the  masters.   What matter the language?  What is French to
the Peloponnesians; what  is  English  to  a Baritone Saxon?
For the members of the general public still able to  read  a
written  word  at  all,  Folder has arrived as the Savior to
savor the meaning  of  poetry  at  will.   Assemble, all and
sundry!  He will tell you what it means.  Hear the reckoning
of Dent Fulghum: "Wiry suet burn  your  maids,  /  Ring  out
linens  from  the  shades." Digest the offerings of Armchair
Corso of Valhalla: ". .  . don't fear the misty plate / that
looks in your window.  You  must  eat your lunch." Are these
the pseudo-visionary rambles of a Yeats (Ben Bulben) or  the
sophist  pinings  of a Rilke (Archaic Torso of Apollo)?  Are
these the  inaccessible  parables  of  an  ivory-tower prima
dona?  We should think not.  Let any  misinformed  ignoramus
who  cannot  detect the meaning of "you must eat your lunch"
depart immediately.  Folder has  hit  his mark: the kitchen.
The substantive discovery on which Folder hoped to base  his
translations was the principle of the association of sounds.
As  the dying rabbit unleashes the banshee wail, so does the
anapest match  the  banana-rest.   To  wit:  particularly in
Iron-Clad Pleasure Triscuit, the Manifesto, and My Emergency
Horse Outfit,  Folder  makes  much  of  the  association  of
sounds,  putting  it  forward  as  an explanation of memory,
belief, causal inference, our ideas of material objects, and
even as a clue to the nature of the self itself.  Itself.

The epistemological question  of  conceptual legitimacy, the
persistence  of  belief.    Live   outside   the   religious
framework,   either   formal   or   informal.   Let  God  be
fraudulent,  let  what  is  more  be  more.   Attend  to the
argument and ignore for a  bit  the  rhetorical  flourishes:
large numbers of people seem quite able to live their entire
lives.   One  final  word  of warning.  Folder is one of the
most    elegant    stylists     ever    to    write    about
sufficiently-dissolving problems.  The ease with  which  his
paradigms  fall  and  the  felicity with which even the most
least-adduced points  are  made  may  fool  the  reader into
supposing that nothing of any great weight could possibly be
contained  in  such  diapasonic  prose.   Nothing  could  be
further from the truth!  When Folder is least  polemical  he
is  most  polarized.  Suppose that God or fate has so nicely
arranged these matters.   No  deeper  rationale  can ever be
offered.   Folder:  to  read  him  is  a  pleasure,  but  to
understand him is a challenge.

Pierre Queneau


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