Minus the Bull or How A Little French Sewing Circle Dodges the Minotaur
From English 194 Wiki Site
By Alex Barkett
12:34, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
Contents |
Abstract
The collaborative efforts of the mathematicians and writers in the Oulipo group have resulted in numerous, specific types of literary constraints, many of which they then employ to produce their own poetry and prose (although they emphasize publicizing their inventive constraints for all to use over their own personal texts). The most important effect of their association is not actually any specific works, but the conceptual strategies of inventing new expressions by taking mathematical views to the structure of language and traditional writing patterns. My concern is this theoretical collaboration, not the direct style of communication seen when the individuals pictured below gather for meetings.
Description
Analysis and Evaluation
A room bustling with energy, papers flying as if the midnight deadline for the news press was only minutes away. Mathematicians triumphantly canceling out variables on the chalkboard and poets vigorously debating over ancient Greek texts. Trash baskets spilling over with nonsense rhymes, partial equations and gibberish gone astray. Brilliant minds with loosened ties and clenched brows frustratingly pounding their heels to break the foundations of their fields. One man's hands blistered from pulling the dictionary out of the flames for one last look.
This is how I imagine the original Oulipo meetings in 1960's France to have gone. The members of the group, which stands for “Ouvroir de littérature potentielle”, presumably did not meet this way. However, this image provides a good backdrop for the intellectual fervor that their literary “constraints” stirred up and also acts an interesting contrast to the nature of their philosophy. The Oulipo group, which is still functioning today, suggests styles of literary constraint for anyone and everyone who wants a way to write. They locate and revitalize constraints from the past and sometimes invent entirely new ones. These constraints are of a specifically mathematical nature. They are discrete, useful and tangible ones that stem directly from the theoretical collaboration between mathematics and writing and allow Oulipo to work inside the great chaotic labyrinth of language to focus on new possibilities, instead of trodding already beaten paths.
Literary constraints are not a new approach for stimulating the writing process, but they can be a very effective one. They act as challenges that provoke the author to focus their language into a specific style or form that should then reciprocate back on the language, reemphasizing and strengthening it. The clarity and influence of the work should come from the strong coherency between the language and the constraint. The beauty of the work should come from the words, as always, and also from the difficulty it took to produce.
The common complaint against literary constraints is that they simply act as limitations that frustrate the author and result in texts that are merely unprofessional, protracted, gimmicks. On the surface, this is often how these works appear. The only creative (see creativity defined) effort this group seems to make is to take what is originally an untouched slate and posit barricades on top of it to trap the author in an obscure and inflexible maze. One that makes the struggling author look more like a robot in a cheese-chase than someone starving toward perfection.
Fortunately, this interpretation suffers from one incorrect premise and an overall close-mindedness, which is probably due to how extreme these conventions seem relative to all the other literature that was composed in a more traditional fashion. First, there are already longstanding structural constraints on literature. Language, itself, being the biggest one. Anyone who has ever felt they knew exactly what they wanted to say but could not express it in words knows this fact. It is also constantly reaffirmed by poor translations of a work into second, third, and fourth tongues. Language itself posits the initial walls; its structure is the maze, or labyrinth.
Of course, these linguistic walls are not always the kind that should be broken down. While language does drop every author in the middle of an enormous spider-web, it is still an established system of communication. It is the standard that all authors agree to use. If they do not agree, then they have taken up another pursuit. For those concerned with writing, they can knock down individual walls by writing in multiple languages, by translating their own works, or by emphasizing the visual artistry of words. None of these methods are escapes from the system. They are only ways to move about within its structure. And while language is a largely unavoidable overarching structure that needs explorers and mapmakers moreso than demolition men, there remain systems inside that further confine beginning authors.
A more salient, and probably detrimental, constraint is one that befalls every aspiring novelist. At some point during the writing process an author should ponder in what section of the Barnes & Noble or under what heading on Amazon they might find their book once it is published. This is the problematic constraint, because indeed it is a problem, of genre. Every book makes its way through a process of categorization, usually landing it side-by-side with other new hardbacks, sexy summer reads, back-to-school bargains, critics' picks, Oprah picks, employee picks, or Da Vinci Code write-offs. Of course if it cannot get a table of its own, and the author has considerable talent, the book might someday be found in the confusingly named, (just to show how small some words can become), fiction & literature section, which will probably be against the back wall. Lower these signs down from the ceiling of your local Borders and you will see how categorizing books into genres results in the routing of texts, whether intended by the author or as a liberty taken by publishers or booksellers, into individual paths through the great maze hidden on the naked page or the sterilized aisles of finished products blending in on store shelves. The force of books, pre-production or post-production, into these molds usually results in works that, successfully-enough, make it through the decaying hoops that make the novel a mystery. This is the kind of finished product that critics think is the effect of all constraint. But as we see, barriers and obstacles are evident before, during, and after the text. Language is the maze of constraint meant to be worked within, genres are the well-beaten paths, and the Oulipo group constraints are either long-forgotten paths unearthed or entirely new ones forged.
When Raymond Queneau and Francois de Lionnais founded the Oulipo group they knew the futility of destroying the labyrinth or finding a way outside of it, so they began making walls of their own until great works began to be seen, not peaking through the exits, but springing forth from the existing foundation. Situating the lipograms, anagrams and alliteratives on the same plain as some of the broader constraints that are already engrained in our notion of conventional writing helps to diminish their ostensible extremity. Literary constraints are nothing new. Past and present Oulipeans know this as well as anyone. Lionnais writes in his First Manifesto:
What is particularly interesting and inventive about the group is the way mathematicians collaborate (see collaboration) with writers to find new paths within the labyrinth by turning to the structure as a whole, instead of trying to knock down its walls. In other words, everyone has material to write and more than enough genres and forms to shape that material. As Lionnais puts it in the First Manifesto of the Oulipo, “It's a question of developing new possibilities unknown to our predecessors.” These possibilities must not be confused with ideas for constraint, which as noted are ancient and vast. They are possibilities for new meaning and beauty that will arise after the constraints are employed.
With some basic theories of constraint exhaustively outlined, we can now turn to the specific way the Oulipo looks at constraints to see how they generate new possibilities from an archaic structure. For this we turn again to the First Manifesto. Only two sentences after expressing a desire to develop new possibilities, Lionnais explains the general role that mathematical interpretations of language can play in developing these new possibilities:
The words “openness” and “closure” recall to mind the image of the labyrinth. By employing a loop structure (popular in electronic literature, but also exhibited elsewhere, such as Finnegans Wake), one might find an exit from the labyrinth where they had not otherwise looked. By walking in circles, or by retracing their steps, an author might never be lost.
Another mathematical outlook Oulipeans apply to their writing is seen by alterations of simple systems within the structure of language. The alphabet works as a system that can easily be subtracted from and redefined to inspire new ideas. All or parts of the characteristics that categorize a work into one genre, as opposed to another can be combined, subverted, or completely done away with. Traditional linear plot structures could transform into a tree-like branching structure that might show the decentralization of one idea, as it becomes interpreted by more and more people, or a the destructive spiraling of a man from the moment he breaks one moral code. For overtly mathematical ideas, one might turn to Mike Keith whose short story, Cadaeic Cadenza, spells the digits of pi, if each word is written as its number of letters.
The possibilities here are endless, and many of them, probably all, can already be found in literary works. The effect, however, is clear. Inventive (see invention), creative strategies that build entire new ways of writing can arise from taking a mathematical perspective on structural linguistics and creative storytelling. The Oulipo group saw the correlations between these two massive academic fields and the resultant theoretical outpouring from this dynamic collaboration is only the tip of the iceberg. Computers will be the dominant medium for literary production, if they are not already. The implications of mathematical constraints for code poetry are something I cannot even imagine.
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