FRANCIS PONGEto black—one may come to the conclusion that any book it may contain will
consist entirely of prose: a dry cell; a drained battery; a pile of newspapers
reaching back through the centuries, illustrated in places by some of the oldest
known fossils which, though submitted to monstrous pressures, and now welded
into the pile, are still the product of an incomplete metamorphosis.
It su√ers from having never been touched on the shoulder by the finger of
fire. Unlike the daughters of Carrara, therefore, it will never swathe itself in light
nor radiate light.
These damsels come from the end of the secondary, whereas slate belongs to
the establishments of the primary, and is our old-time governess, stony-hearted,
showing a sad, dejected face: a complexion less evocative of night than of the dull
penumbra of the ages.
Cut along the line of stratification, then sawn into square blocks, slate’s com-
pact, dull-hued cross-section, once the quick has been reached, is simply pre-
pared for polishing, pumiced: never anything more or anything less, except
perhaps when the rain sometimes makes it shine, on the northern slope, like the
vizorless helmets of a company of royal guards at attention.
Nevertheless, a great deal of credit attaches to slate, is put on the slate.
A humble prop for a humble science, it is designed less for what must be
retained by the memory than for precarious, chalky formulations, for what must
be transmitted from one memory to another, rapidly, repeatedly, for what can
easily be obliterated.
In the same way, it resists the sky’s transgressions deviously, at an angle,
keeping one wing hidden.
Let’s say no more about it. Clean slate!
There is less pleasure to be gained in writing on a slate, on the subject of slate,
than in obliterating one’s words, one’s thoughts, with a single gesture, like that
corrective weather phenomenon the sudden squall which has only to brush up
against it for a moment to turn it black, painting a gloomy picture of it in an
instant.
But it quickly changes colour again, loses its vowels between moistness and
modesty, soon dries:
‘‘Let me unknit my brow and o√er its smooth surface to the humblest school-
boy, who may wipe it with the humblest rag.’’
A slate is really nothing but a kind of temporary stone, lustreless and hard.
Worth contemplating.
—simon watson taylor