SubStance

SubStance 30.3 (2001) 4-16

With (and Without) Constraints

Jacques Jouet

Uses of Constraint

In France and elsewhere, since 1960, there is a group of writers and others, the Oulipo, whose members don't "write literature under constraints"--an oft-heard approximation--but seek out usable constraints so that literature is written. As for the constraints, the Oulipo brings them back (sometimes exhumes them) from the past, or imports them from far away, or else invents them piecemeal, notably with recourse to mathematics.

The Oulipo is faber, it fabricates tools.

The Oulipo's work is first of all this fundamental research: conception and exercise. Sometimes an oeuvre, but only sometimes. There is a current sophistry that could be expressed as follows: L is a book by A. A is member of the Oulipo. Therefore L is an Oulipian book. Unfortunately, it is only sometimes true; sometimes it's false. One also encounters the situation L is a book by A. A is a member of the Oulipo. But L is not an Oulipian book..

In order for there to be an Oulipian constraint, an explicit procedure must be used--a formal axiom whose implications, whose deductive chain of events--will create the text. The constraint is the problem; the text the solution. If you will, the constraint is the enunciation of an enigma, and the text is the answer--or rather one answer, for usually there are several possible ones. Thus the constraint is quite different from an organized manipulation of literary work. And there's nothing wrong with organized manipulation! But it's not the same as a constraint. A constraint is systematic. Further, an Oulipian constraint must be usable by others, which implies requirements of clarity and enunciation (formalization). Constraint is altruistic.

Writing under constraints is one way of making literature. It's not the only way. It's one.

For me, there are three obvious ideas about constraint, and one latent idea. [End Page 4]

The first idea about constraint: it's an affirmation of continuity. Literary constraints have been used in every time and place, more or less obviously, more or less in theoretical opposition to more spontaneous conceptions. In particular, it's the domain of the fixed forms of poetry, but it can also accompany or influence drama or narrative writing. In terms of continuity, the Oulipo doesn't situate itself in the classical tradition, but rather alongside the Grands Rhétoriquers or the Troubadours. There is a simple reason for this: classicism has chiseled out a fairly constraining form that it considers unsurpassable. Form is found at the end of a finite linear evolution. One attempts, as much as possible, to make it seem a natural order. With the Troubadours, on the other hand, it's a matter of assimilating the work of one's predecessors, knowing how to equal them (at least technically) on their own ground, and, elsewhere, giving the principle of invention its due. Further, form showcases itself; it showcases itself as something artificial, as work. This is also the Oulipian conception, neither starting from tabula rasa nor aspiring to neo-classicism. Constraints form a common capital, by no means obsolete, that must be brought into fruitful production. Originality and community. Further, the Oulipian endeavor is a group endeavor, with its concurrent dilution of individuality and its impersonality. The group consists of the members of the Oulipo, "plagiarists by anticipation."

The second idea about constraint is a pharmaceutical affirmation, the idea of constraint as a tonic. The writer wakes up with a hangover, mumbling, "I'm in no shape to write today..." (mask of tragedy) "Oh! Use a constraint!" (mask of comedy). It's the idea of constraint as a vitamin or a vaccination against writer's block. Constraint as a form of training and as a means. This idea is based on the positive, multiplying and structuring power of constraint. Also on its ability to sweep aside the possibilities of language. This is not a false idea about constraint, but it is a bit simplistic. It is here that pedagogy jumps in with...