A Poetics of Generative Change: Hitting the Streets with Raymond Queneau
Though not the only inspiration, Raymond Queneau’s 1961 collection of ten sonnets that transmute in the reader’s hands into 1014 — or 100,000,000,000,000 — various poems provided the basic model for n Lines & Changing. The book, Cent mille milliards de poèmes, has been translated at least twice into English but only published once, in John Crombie’s translation, as a limited edition art book in 1983. Outside of France, Queneau is likely best known for his early involvement with the Surrealists and his later, central roles in more obscure experimental literary groups, in particular Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or Workshop for Potential Literature) and ‘Pataphysics, which Alfred Jarry termed “the science of imaginary solutions.”
In France, however, Queneau is perhaps better known for his 1959 novel Zazie dans le métro, in which Zazie, a nine-year-old girl left in Paris under the care of her uncle Gabriel for a weekend is frustrated in her hopes of riding the Métro (there’s a strike) and instead slips in and out of scenes of comically chaotic Parisian street- and nightlife. In Zazie, the polymath experimentalist of Cent mille milliards de poèmes takes a backseat to the writer in love with the city, with slang and street language, and with the ways in which Paris (like all metropolises in their own ways) produces rich, irreproducible experiences for those open to chance. This spirit carries through many other texts by Queneau, including 1967’s Courir les rues, translated by Rachel Galvin as Hitting the Streets, which Galvin describes as “unreeling like a series of clips recorded during a stroll through Paris” and that often operates by way of “the tricks of perspective that can occur when trekking through the urb, such as one rounds a corner and finds a seascape instead of a cityscape, or discovers a street that resembles a ponderous bird.”
It should be no surprise, too, that like so many other mid-20th century experimentalists in the arts and literature, Queneau was fascinated by 易 The Changes….
Though not the only inspiration, Raymond Queneau’s 1961 collection of ten sonnets that transmute in the reader’s hands into 1014 — or 100,000,000,000,000 — various poems provided the basic model for n Lines & Changing. The book, Cent mille milliards de poèmes, has been translated at least twice into English but only published once, in John Crombie’s translation, as a limited edition art book in 1983. Outside of France, Queneau is likely best known for his early involvement with the Surrealists and his later, central roles in more obscure experimental literary groups, in particular Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or Workshop for Potential Literature) and ‘Pataphysics, which Alfred Jarry termed “the science of imaginary solutions.”
In France, however, Queneau is perhaps better known for his 1959 novel Zazie dans le métro, in which Zazie, a nine-year-old girl left in Paris under the care of her uncle Gabriel for a weekend is frustrated in her hopes of riding the Métro (there’s a strike) and instead slips in and out of scenes of comically chaotic Parisian street- and nightlife. In Zazie, the polymath experimentalist of Cent mille milliards de poèmes takes a backseat to the writer in love with the city, with slang and street language, and with the ways in which Paris (like all metropolises in their own ways) produces rich, irreproducible experiences for those open to chance. This spirit carries through many other texts by Queneau, including 1967’s Courir les rues, translated by Rachel Galvin as Hitting the Streets, which Galvin describes as “unreeling like a series of clips recorded during a stroll through Paris” and that often operates by way of “the tricks of perspective that can occur when trekking through the urb, such as one rounds a corner and finds a seascape instead of a cityscape, or discovers a street that resembles a ponderous bird.”
It should be no surprise, too, that like so many other mid-20th century experimentalists in the arts and literature, Queneau was fascinated by 易 The Changes….
Raymond Queneau’s Cent mille milliards de poèmes (1961) and 吴燕南 Wu Yannan’s Chinese translation 《一百万一首诗》(2019)
The Oulipo began when Raymond Queneau, stalled in the composition of his poem “One Hundred Thousand Billion Sonnets,” enlisted the help of mathematician Francois Le Lionnais. Queneau, already an amateur mathematician of considerable ability, and Le Lionnais, already interested in the possibility of applying mathematics to literature, formed a group whose purpose was the investigation of new literary forms through old and new constraints. Their name is an acronym of “Ourvoir de Litterature Potentialle,” which (loosely translated) means “Sewing Circle of Potential Literature.” The word Ourvoir was chosen deliberately. The idea of the sewing circle, with its image of a modest collaboration of skilled individuals. The idea of “potential literature” is important as well. The aim of the Oulipo is not to generate literature but to open up possibilities by introducing new constraints. This is a process that will open up new languages and ideas. As Francois Le Lionnais writes in “Lipo: First Manifesto”:
Should humanity lie back and watch new thoughts write ancient verses? We don’t believe that it should. That which certain writers have introduced with talent (even with genius) in their work, some only occasionally (the forging of new words), others with predilection (counterrhymes), others with insistence but only in one direction (Lettrism), the Ourvoir de Litterature Potentialle (Oulipo) intends to do systematically and scientifically, if need be through recourse to machines that process information. (Motte, Oulipo, 27)
