Man and Things

FIRST EDITION. This is one of 100 out-of-commerce copies on Johannot vellum.

It was withLe Parti pris des choses, a collection of thirty-two poems written between 1924 and 1939 and published in 1942, that Francis Ponge became known as a poet. Two years later, in 1944, Sartre wrote L'Homme et les choses. Indeed, according to Sartre, Ponge's project is not to describe as best as possible, "with the means at hand" that language offers him, the things he encounters. Sartre criticizes Ponge for positing "the anteriority of the object over the subject" and, consequently, reducing men to the rank of "automata."