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Abstract Constrained writing (i.e., the use of any type of formal technique or pro-
gram whose application is able to produce a sense of its making text by itself, if need
be without any previous "idea"from the writer) is a rather small but highly signifi-
cant dimension of modern literature.In the face of mainstream writing, it not only
maintains but also alters the conception of literatureas a formally regulated type of
discourse. However, its principal contribution to this ancient tradition is less tech-
nical than ideological and ethical. Constrained writing can indeed be considered
as a kind of literature that frees the writer as well as the reader.Thanks to writing
under constraint, the first is freed from the often unconscious burden of the cliche,
that is, the cliche of all that is written too easily, while the second is freed from his
secondary role by the necessity of creative participation, that is, by the possibility of
becoming a writer himself.
ing a postmodern period that, in some extreme cases, even amounts to the
destruction of every normative structure of natural language itself. This is
the case, for instance, in the work of such authors as Denis Roche (1980) of
France and Tom Raworth (1984) of the United Kingdom, whose "poetry"
often goes far beyond the cohesion and coherence imposed by the use and
uses of natural language.
Already remarkablein itself, this evolution becomes even strangerwhen
compared to one of the most important general tendencies of prose in the
same period. Prose indeed became at times dramatically sophisticated, at
times even appearing "overruled"or "overregulated,"as in the experiments
of the French nouveau roman (Ricardou 1973) and other types of meta-
fiction derived from it (Brooke-Rose 1978; Federman 1975;Waugh 1984).
So strong was this divergence that-at least for some critics (see Barthes
1973)-prose and poetry seemed to have changed places: the traditionally
"looser" forms of prose were now to be found mostly in poetry, whereas
the heritage of the traditionally "tighter"rules of poetry became primarily
the privilege of the experimental novel. (It was probably Roland Barthes
[1973] who first formulated this interchange.)
Nevertheless, the idea (and the practice) of a totally decodified poetry,
freed from all formal constraints, is not really as widespread as the pub-
lic-and some scholars-might think. On the one hand, indeed, tradi-
tionally written poetry has never disappeared, although often little of its
former prestige remains. (Not surprisingly, this type of poetry is written
primarily by reactionary or elderly authors.) On the other hand, the be-
ginnings of the 196os saw a renewed interest in what are now called the
fixedforms,that is, formally closed and predetermined genres such as the
sonnet (de Cornulier 1982), or more generally, the constraints (i.e., any
formal program or rule that exists prior to the act of writing, such as the
anagram or the lipogram [Benabou 1986]). In opposition to the general
term rule,the more narrowly defined term constraint indicates any type of
formal technique or program whose application is able to produce a sense
of its making text by itself, if need be without any previous "idea"from the
writer. A constraint-ruled text is thus the opposite of a text in which the
author tries to express an idea or a meaning he saw or felt within his own
mind before he started to write. Oulipo, the internationally oriented-
and still active-workshop of experimental authors created by Raymond
Queneau and Francois Le Lionnais in 1960 (see Motte 1986), is certainly
the best example of this revival, but it is not the only one.' (Joseph Conte's
1. Non-FrenchOulipoauthorsinclude,forinstance,ItaloCalvinoandHarryMathews.But
many other writersactuallyworkin the same vein, a good examplebeing the Argentine
BernardoSchiavetta.
One cannot just say that a text produced by constrained writing is charac-
terized by a high degree of internal relationships, because such a definition
would fit for every literary text. Nor would it be sufficient simply to state
that this internal organization of the verbal signs draws attention to lan-
guage itself, because such a definition would suit every writing dominated
by the Jakobsonian poetic function. In order to mark the true specificity of
constrained writing, one has to add that this focus on the material aspects
of language has to comply with at least two supplementary rules.
First, the constrained text must respect the traditional structures of
a meaningfulverbalutterance.In other words, it must succeed in showing
the formal constraint engaged in writing without destroying the ordinary
formal and semantic properties of the natural language in which it is
written. Indeed, if the exhibition of formal aspects annihilates the mean-
ing and the natural verbal form of the writing, then the constrained text
would simply invert (and thus, in a certain way, would copy) the struc-
ture of a freely written text. Instead of a work that devalues its formal
aspects in order to highlight its meaning, we would then have a work in
which meaning is devalued in order to highlight form. Several texts in-
spired by constrained writing function in this way. The difference between
genuine constrained writing and writing under constraints that abandons
the requirements of natural language can be illustrated by Georges Perec's
two lipogrammatic novels: La Disparition(1969), which omits the vowel e,
and Les Revenentes (1972), which omits all vowels except e. Only the first-
a major achievement of modern writing under constraint-provides a
grammatically well-written text and, in spite of the omission of the most
frequently used letter in French, succeeds in telling a thoroughly rich and
subtle story. The second, a shorter and less ambitious work written as
a kind of recreation after the effort spent on La Disparition,contains, as
the story goes on, a growing number of totally agrammatical words and
phrases (for a complete analysis see Magne 1989: 175-92). Other examples
of such agrammatical texts are often found in the work of authors inspired
by the cut-up techniques of William Burroughs (see Prigent 1995).
The second rule of the constrained text is that it should be readable, that
is, decodable with regard to its formal aspects by any attentive reader.Un-
questionably, if the reader cannot discover the rules, constrained writing is
exposed to a twofold risk. On the one hand, readers will quickly get bored
and stop reading a kind of literature whose importance is essentially situ-
ated on the formal level. On the other hand, they will no longer be able
to observe the difference between constrained and formal texts, with all
the consequences such a misreading entails. Yet, several constrained texts
violate this rule: neither the text itself, nor its paratextual complements
(such as interviews or notes by the author [see Genette 1987]),provides the
reader with sufficient material to detect and appreciate the presence and
the role of the constraints at work. (For an example of such paratextual
explications see Mathews 1995.) The constraint, then, functions as a scaf-
fold (Queneau 1962: 245) that is taken away after the completion of the
work. Le Chiendent,an early novel by Queneau (1933), is often cited as an
example of this strategy.
In the following sections, both aspects will be discussed in more detail.
On Readability
ninety-nine different ways, with each new variation being produced by the
selection of a new constraint.
In constrained writing, then, it is clear that the author is less important
than the writing, and that the subject is dominated by the process. This
general statement, however, requires further specification.
First of all, constrained writing helps one to see more clearly the inex-
tricable relationship between writing and reading. In order to provide a
piece of writing with the truly textual characteristicsas indicated above, a
great number of corrections and rewritings are a conditiosine quanon.And
as everybody knows, this process of reworking and reprocessing the text is
in its turn only possible when the author him- or herself undertakesa great
number of new (re)readings. Similarly, the discovery of textual structures
during the act of reading is only possible if the reader of the constrained
text agrees to write down his own reading. If he proceeds otherwise, he will
quickly lose all durable insight into the complexity of the textual mecha-
nisms. Without writing, no memory, no organization, and no verification
of what one has read is even thinkable, at least in the case of the often
microscopic subtleties of the constrained text.
Second, one can easily observe that constrained writing weakens the
boundary between the author and the reader. Such a change goes even
further to demystify the author than the already mentioned critique of the
concept of inspiration and genius. This is what happens, for example, in
Exercicesde style.In order to understand better the shifting from one varia-
tion to another, the reader obviously looks for the basic version of the
ninety-nine stories. But, given the fact that this primal version is not ex-
plicitly given in the text (some stories seem a transformation of version X,
others of version Y, still others of version Z, etc.), the reader's efforts will
produce one or more new variations.
However, at this moment we encounter yet again the particular prob-
lem of the readability of the constraint. Let me put it this way: if it is true
that constrained writing imposes the marriage of reading and writing, it
is not logical to write in such a way that the reader does not have, tech-
nically speaking, the capacity to do the same job as the author. Yet this is
what happens when the rules of constrained writing remain hidden within
the text, or when no further information is available, either in the margins
of the work, or outside it.
As I have stated, such an attitude of concealment is rather illogical, but
it is quite comprehensible, for it preserves the privileged position of the
author, even when working inside the framework of constrained writing.
From an ideological point of view, constrained writing should not endorse
practices that increase the separation between the happy few (the authors)
and the hoi polloi (those who are just readers). True constrained writing,
in other words, should make or leave room for active collaboration, and
even for a certain collectivization of writing. This is clearly what Raymond
Queneau expresses when, explicitly evoking Raymond Roussel, he states:
We call potentialliteraturethe searchfor new formsand structuresthat may
be used by writersin any way they see fit. (Queneau1962;quotedin Lescure
1986:38)
The statement of Raymond Roussel Queneau refers to is the famous open-
ing of his Commentj'aiecritcertainsde meslivres:
Je me suistoujoursproposed'expliquerde quellefagonj'avaisecritcertainsde
mes livres.... Il s'agitd'un procedetres special. Et, ce procede,il me semble
qu'ilest de mon devoirde le reveler,carj'ai l'impressionque des ecrivainsde
l'avenirpourraientpeut-etrel'exploiteravecfruit.
between the domain of the creative work itself and the peritext (or perig-
raphy) that surroundsit without really being part of it (Compagnon 1978;
Genette 1987).
Both of these properties- the linearization of text and reading, and the
hierarchy between text and perigraphic "nontext"-may go against the
basic structuresand aims of constrained writing, which displays a certain
tendency toward translinear arrangements and toward an integration of
the perigraphic elements into the canvas of the whole work.
An outstanding illustration of the renewal of the host medium by writing
under constraint is Coverto Cover(1975),Michael Snow's hallmark photo-
graphic novel. The two basic principles of the story (champ/contrechamp on
the microlevel of each recto and verso of the page, and circularity on the
macrolevel of the book) are successfully executed because they are here
extended to the host medium itself. Snow succeeds in doing this thanks
to a twofold procedure. First, he exploits the potential circularity of the
host medium: toward the center of the book, the photographs are gradu-
ally being turned upside down, so that the reader must go on reading from
right to left. He or she thereby ends where he or she had started, and is
able to make a new and inverted reading of a circular structure that never
ends. Second, Snow includes the perigraphical units within the work itself,
so that the story can start at the front cover without any interruption by
the traditional blank spaces occupied by the perigraphy (for further details
see Baetens 1993).
The constrained text, then, must not and cannot accept the linear and
hierarchical presuppositions of the book, that is, of the way we normally
use the book. The problem indeed lies not with the book itself, but with the
traditional ways in which we use it. It is thus not imperative to argue that
new types of writing necessarily demand new types of host media (see for
instance the plea in Butor 1974). Often the transformationof the book will
give more satisfactory results. This historical transformation of the perig-
raphy (for instance, see Compagnon 1978) shows that such an evolution is
indeed possible.
Conclusion
Constrained writing is a rather small but highly significant dimension of
modern literature. In the face of mainstream writing, it not only main-
tains but also alters the conception of literature as a formally regulated
type of discourse. However, its principal contribution to this ancient tradi-
tion is less technical than ideological and ethical. Constrained writing can
indeed be considered as a kind of literature that frees the writer as well
as the reader. Thanks to writing under constraint, the first is freed from
the often unconscious burden of the cliche, that is, the cliche of all that is
written too easily, while the second is freed from his secondary role by the
necessity of creative participation, that is, by the possibility of becoming a
writer himself. In this regard, one can consider constrained writing to be
an eminent form of democratic literary production.
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