The Name
The OuLiPo
(Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle) was founded by Raymond Queneau and
François Le Lionnais in 1960. The name is an acronym, generally loosely
translated into English as “Workshop of Potential Literature.” Looking at each
French term individually reveals subtle indications about the group and their
goals. Ouvroir is an archaic word
that has been mostly eliminated from contemporary French. Etymologically
related to ouvrer or the verb “to
work” and œuvre or “a work,” the term
has three distinct possible meanings: 1. A place of work, where (within a
community of women or a convent) one sews; 2. A workshop (generally
confessional) where benevolent individuals sew objects for use in a church or
another charitable organization; 3. The group of women who work in an ouvroir,
a sewing circle of sorts.[1]
Evoking religious imagery and selfless acts of charity, the word also brings to
mind repetitive manual work, sharing patterns, and group activities. In short,
an ouvroir is a workshop meant to create the LiPo, or Littérature Potentielle. As defined by the OuLiPo on their webpage[2],
literature is “what one reads and what one crosses out,” but with the
adjectival modifier, Potentielle, the
term begs a new definition. The OuLiPo prefers a mathematical one: “literature
in unlimited quantities, potentially producible until the end of times, in
enormous quantities, infinite for all practical means.”[3]
This definition however, as Le Lionnais points out in the first Oulipian
manifesto (of three), is nowhere to be found in any dictionary: “Ouvrons un
dictionnaire[4]
aux mots : ‘Littérature Potentielle.’ Nous n’y trouvons rien. Fâcheuse lacune.”[5]
The Founders
To understand
why the OuLiPo would use a mathematical vocabulary in their own definition, it
is necessary to examine its founders. Raymond Queneau (1903-1976) was a French
novelist, poet, philosopher, and amateur mathematician (among other
professions, job descriptions, and titles). Known for his sense of humor,
strange treatment of the French language, and rhetorical acrobatics, Queneau
participated in several literary groups during his lifetime, including
Surrealism, ‘Pataphysics, and the OuLiPo. Secretary of the reader’s panel at
the Gallimard publishing house (an extremely important position), he most
notably played an editorial role in the Encyclopédie
de la Pléiade. His cofounder, François Le Lionnais, was a chemical engineer
and mathematician by trade, but also a general erudite in all fields including
literature. After being interned in the Dora concentration camp during World
War II, Le Lionnais would be one of the most important collaborators on the
mathematical treatise, Les Grands
Courants de la pensée mathématique (Major Trends of Mathematical Thought). These
two polymaths, disillusioned by postwar literature in general, decided to
reinvigorate the field through the addition of mathematical methods. Their basic
principle: constraint.
The Goals
A constraint is
a rigorously defined rule for composition. Sometimes a generative device that could,
in theory, produce a text; sometimes an inciting challenge that incites
immediate textual production on the part of an author. Certain constraints
create new texts from preexisting ones (such as Jean Lescure’s famous S + 7,
which replaces every noun or substantif in
a text with the one seven entries later in a dictionary of the author’s
choosing), and some necessitate the creation of new ones (such as the lipogram,
which, though not invented by Georges Perec, was famously employed by him in
order to write the E-less novel, La disparition).
Not only is the definition of a constraint strict in a mathematical sense, it
is also meant to be carried out with a similar level of care, meaning that it
is also demonstrable. In other words, an author can use a constraint to produce
a text, proving in a certain sense the constraints literary potential. The
OuLiPo theorizes this notion and charges itself with the categorization and
invention of constraints. Their goal is twofold: an analytic orientation
(denoted anoulipisme) aims to explore
constrained literature from the past, seeking out and evaluating authors who
predate the OuLiPo and their use of constraint-based writing (otherwise known
as plagiarists by anticipation); the
second, primary goal of the OuLiPo is synthetic (synthoulipisme), which seeks to propose new constraints to propose
to authors.
The Influences
The OuLiPo can
be characterized by its relationship to other movements of the time. In its
early years, it primarily defines itself by simultaneously distancing itself
from surrealism and likening itself to Bourbaki. Surrealism, a group in which
Raymond Queneau voluntarily took part in his younger years, espouses what they
call “automatic writing” in order to release the true literature of the
unconscious. While Queneau left the group largely for personal reasons (a split
with good friend André Breton, whose ex-wife was Queneau’s wife’s sister), the
notion of automatic writing was not compatible with his personal conception of
literature. However, even publishing, Odile,
a roman à clef that criticizes Breton
and his group (not very subtly), Queneau continued to harbor strong
anti-surrealist tendencies in his writing. The OuLiPo was founded in 1960,
years after Queneau’s participation in the group, but from the very beginning,
the use of the surrealists as a foil is quite clear. While the OuLiPo’s
practices can often create nonsensical texts using automatic procedures, its
members insist on the fact that everything they produce is “voluntary
literature.”
Nicolas Bourbaki
was the pseudonym of a group of post World War I mathematicians at the École
Normale Supérieure in Paris. Disillusioned with the possibility of an
international mathematics after the war and feeling cheated due to the loss of
an entire generation of mathematicians, this semi-secret group decided that the
way to save the discipline was to reinvent it from the ground up. They
published their first textbook, Eléments
de mathématique, in order to reinvigorate mathematics by providing it with
a new, more formalized language. Their first volume on set theory drew from the
preceding tradition of Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert, but was also much
more strictly defined. The title, Eléments
de mathématique, draws first from Euclid’s Elements, a foundational text in mathematics generally admired for
its rigor in geometrical proofs. In returning to such basics, the collaborators
of Bourbaki hoped to unite mathematics (generally referred to in the plural in
French) into a singular mathématique,
one that could—like Euclid’s original work—begin with various intuitively
obvious axioms and from there derive everything else. While this Platonic goal
was quite ambitious and has been mocked for its impracticality, the Bourbaki
group still exists today, still publishes new volumes in this series, and runs
a yearly seminar that is considered to deal with the most cutting-edge work in
the discipline.
The OuLiPo
therefore draws its influences from both an avant-gardist literary group and an
extremely formal mathematical one. Their own early years were characterized by
elements of both. Their semi-secret nature at first likened them to Bourbaki,
which still does not reveal its collaborators; the reluctance to expel anyone
from the group (once one is a member of the OuLiPo, one remains so even after he/she
dies and is simply excused from attending the group’s monthly meetings) is a
clear reaction to surrealism. Their insistence on the lack of a dictionary
definition for “Littérature Potentielle” in their first manifesto also appears
to be in direct defiance of André Breton’s dictionary definition for surrealism
in his first manifesto; whereas the insistence on structures (not to be
confused with the literary movement of structuralism)
is a clear reference to the work of Bourbaki. The three Oulipian manifestos (of
which the third only exists in various excerpts) also mock Breton’s attempts at
making his group’s intentions known; whereas the content of these manifestos
theorizes the notion of constraint in mathematical terms, largely dependent on
the work of Bourbaki.
Text Production
In short, these
two strong influences can both be seen when one examines the early work of the
OuLiPo. What is generally considered to be the first Oulipian text, Raymond
Queneau’s Cent mille milliards de poèmes,
is at once mathematical and surreal, functioning according to a certain
automatism with mathematical delimitations, both surpassing the potential of
automatic writing and reproducing a similar effect. The system is simple.
Queneau wrote 10 sonnets with two additional constraints beyond those of the
form itself: first, across all 10 poems, not only was the rhyme scheme
identical, but the same rhyming phonemes are reproduced (in other words, the
first line of any poem rhymes with that of any other one); second, each line of
every poem is a grammatical unit, meaning it can be understood on its own
(namely, Queneau did not allow himself any enjambment). The final step in the
composition of this “poetry collection” was to print all the sonnets and stack
them on top of each other, cutting a line between each verse. In this way, one
is left with a book of sorts for the reader to manipulate as he pleases,
creating his own poems from fragments of Queneau’s. The number of potential
poems is the number of sonnets (10) raised to the power of 14 (the number of
lines in each sonnet). Otherwise, there are 100,000,000,000,000, or a hundred
thousand million poems.
In his preface
to the collection, Queneau explains his reasoning and that this type of
exercise is inspired more from children’s games in which one rearranges parts
of dolls, than from surrealist games such as cadavre exquis. He continues to inform the reader that,
unfortunately, 1014 – 10 of these poems do not necessarily have the
“charm” of a theme or continuity. Finally, he discourages any attempt to take
the collection seriously—it would take a reader 190258751 years of continuous
reading (24/7, 365 days a year, counting leap years) to read them all. So not
only does the volume itself resemble a fragmented, ruined book, any attempt to
read it is bound to end in failure unless one discounts mortality. And while it
may seem that Queneau has programmed everything to the letter, allowing no
space for chance to disrupt the mathematical potential of the volume, one is
reminded that the original ten sonnets themselves are hardly coherent. Rather,
Queneau’s poems are filled with obscure rhymes, fanciful vocabulary, and are
therefore themselves a difficult read with a less than satisfying “theme or
continuity.” Herein lie the main questions at the heart of Oulipian work: what
is the role of chance and how does the implementation of mathematical
structures change literature?
The Members
Since its
founding, the OuLiPo has been an eclectic group of individuals from many
professions whose interests were just as broad as those of its two founders:
Noël Arnaud (‘pataphysician, surrealist, post-dadaist, etc.), Jacques Bens
(writer and poet), Claude Berge (mathematician, one of the modern founders of
combinatorics and graph theory, both of which would greatly influence the
OuLiPo), Jacques Duchateau (writer and radio producer), Latis (the pseudonym of
another ‘pataphysician, Emmanuel Peillet), François Le Lionnais, Jean Lescure
(poet), Raymond Queneau, Jean Queval (translator), and Albert-Marie Schmidt
(linguist and specialist of the French Renaissance). This early group
established, they began to coopt new members beginning with a first wave in
1961 consisting of computer scientist Paul Braffort, and foreign members Ross
Chambers and Stanley Chapman. Eminent contemporary artist and inventor of the
ready-made, Marcel Duchamp, was inducted as the group’s “American
correspondant” the following year. A second wave of new members began with
Jacques Roubaud in 1966, Georges Perec in 1967, Luc Etienne in 1970, Marcel
Bénabou in 1971, Paul Fournel in 1972, Harry Mathews in 1973, and Italo Calvino
in 1974. Since then, the OuLiPo has coopted even more members and now consists
of 41 members (as of November 2014). Let us examine a few of the most
prominent.
Jacques Roubaud
(b. 1932) is considered one of France’s greatest contemporary poets. A retired
mathematics professor (at University of Paris X), he was first coopted into the
OuLipo in 1966 when Raymond Queneau read his first collection of poetry, Signe d’appartenance, a collection of poems organized according
to the rules of the traditional Chinese board game, Go. Since then, Roubaud has
been stretching the boundaries of literature, composing poetry with
mathematical rules, writing a multi-volume biography that is about both poetry
and mathematics and all the space between, theorizing traditional French poetic
forms (such as the sonnet), historical poetic movements (the Troubadours) and
versifications (notably the alexandrine), as well as translating and creating
new constraints.
Georges Perec (1936-1982)
is best known for his love of experimental wordplay and puzzles as well as the
thematic presence of the Holocaust in his works. Born to Jewish immigrants in
France, Perec was one of the many orphans of the Holocaust, his father having
died in the French army during World War II and his mother having died after
being deported to Auschwitz. Many of Perec’s works can be seen as
autobiographical searching, trying to understand his loss through the work of
writing. Constrained writing was especially useful to Perec, who was able to
create a new language in his famous lipogrammatic novel, La disparition (A Void:
trans. Gilbert Adair), which recounts an overwhelming absence without recourse
to the most common vowel in the French language, the E. Perec’s other Oulipian
masterpiece, La vie mode d’emploi (Life
a User’s Manual: trans. David Bellos), was awarded the Prix Médicis and lauded
for its encyclopedic nature in terms of story and style.
Italo Calvino
(1923-1985) was one of Italy’s greatest 20th century authors. Known
for his Our Ancestors trilogy and his
collection of Italian Folktales (Fiabe
italiane), some of his most famous novels were produced under Oulipian
influence while he lived in the French capital after having broken his ties
with the Italian Communist Party. Il
castello dei destini incrociati (1969, The
Castle of Crossed Destinies: trans. William Weaver), Le città invisibili (1972, Invisible
Cities: trans. William Weaver), and Se
una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (1979, If on a winter’s night a traveler: trans. William Weaver) are three
of his most well-known works, and were all written according to mathematical or
otherwise Oulipian-inspired constraints.
Other more
recent members have been very active in today’s French literary scene. Paul
Fournel, for instance (coopted in 1972, currently the Oulipian president), has
experience working in publishing as well as writing about publishing—his recent
novel, La Liseuse, being a
typographically restricted novel about publishing in the age of e-readers. Anne
F. Garréta (coopted in 2000) was highly regarded when, at 23, she published her
first novel, Sphinx, a traditional
love story in which both protagonists have grammatically unidentifiable
genders. Ian Monk (coopted in 1998) is a
British poet and translator who has succeeded in translating several of Perec’s
more constrained works such as La
disparition (Vanish’d) and the
monosyllabic What a man! (this is the
French title, strangely enough). Jacques Jouet (coopted in 1983) is known for
participating in the radio program “Des Papous dans la tête” (with fellow
member Hervé Le Tellier) and also for inventing the “Poème de métro” whose
composition is done entirely during a trip in the subway, the verses composed
while the train is moving and written down when it is stopped. Hervé Le Tellier
(coopted in 1992), armed with a PhD in linguistics and oulipian constraints has
written many fragmentary texts, in which series of chapters or pieces are
constructed according to the (sometimes hidden) constraint. Michèle Audin, on
the other hand (coopted in 2009) is a well-known symplectic geometer who, along
with Roubaud, does much to theorize the mathematical elements at play in the
OuLiPo and their methods.
The OuLiPo Today
While the OuLiPo
is no longer secret, it is still not entirely open to the public. For one
thing, if a writer expresses interest in joining, he or she is immediately
disqualified for life. The group’s monthly meetings are additionally not open
to the public, however a volume of the first three years of their meeting
minutes has been published by Jacques Bens and Jacques Duchateau in Genèse de l’OuLiPo : 1960-1963 (Paris:
Le Castor Astral, 2005). Currently there is a project underway to make the
remaining minutes available on an online database in a digitized and searchable
medium. The OuLiPo has also begun giving monthly public readings, one Thursday
each month at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Through such initiatives,
the work of the OuLiPo has become performative. Through organized writing
workshops in which they assist amateurs and enthusiasts in writing with
constraints, their work has become pedagogical. While their analytic and
synthetic goals were defined early on, Le Lionnais also made it clear that the
OuLiPo was in the business of inventing constraints and not creating texts.
Those constraints can be used by writers (or by anyone) in any way they wish.
In this vein, the recent efforts of the OuLiPo serve to disseminate the product
of the group—to propose to anyone who is interested various constraints that
can create potential literature.
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