SubStance

SubStance 30.3 (2001) 71-87

Jacques Roubaud:
Literature, Mathematics, and the Quest for Truth

Elvira Monika Laskowski-Caujolle

A text written according to a constraint
must speak of this constraint.
A text written according to
a mathematizable constraint
must contain the consequences of the
mathematical theory it illustrates.

Jacques Roubaud (Atlas, 90)

What do permutations or such mathematical theorems as the isomorphism of algebraic groups have to do with French literature? In 1960, a diverse group of poets, novelists, scientists, mathematicians and philosophers announced at Cérisy-la-Salle the foundation of a literary workshop--later called Oulipo, the acronym for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle. Establishing the aesthetic of formal constraint, Oulipo concentrates on the reciprocal relations between literature and mathematics. The group's intention is to demonstrate the complementarity of these two modes of discourse in their work. One of the first members of the group, Jacques Roubaud, a professor of mathematics as well as a poet, novelist, and critic, succeeds especially well in mathematizing literary inspiration.

Roubaud and Oulipo

Roubaud, the author of such successful novels as La belle Hortense (Our Beautiful Heroine), L'enlèvement d'Hortense (Hortense is Abducted), and L'exil d'Hortense (Hortense in Exile), submitted his first book, entitled C (the mathematical symbol for "element of a set"), structured like a game of Go, to Gallimard in 1965, where he met Raymond Queneau, the founder of the Oulipo group, ¹ who was the secretary of Gallimard's readers' panel at the time. Due to this coincidence, Roubaud became the first new member of Oulipo. The group's ambition--to combine such different disciplines as mathematics and poetry--coincided precisely with Roubaud's interests. [End Page 71]

As an established Oulipian author, Roubaud has formulated several basic principles of text production, combining literary writing, poetry and mathematical forms. Various formal Oulipian constraints such as the lipogram (Georges Perec's La Disparition is an impressive example) are based on the alphabet. But the basis for a multitude of Oulipian constraints is mathematical. Oulipo can be characterized by one of the main postulates of its poetics--that of the essential analogy between mathematics and literature.

Mathematics and the Grail, Bourbaki and The Quest for Truth

In the recently published third volume of his autobiographical project, Mathématique: (récit), ² the poet Roubaud explains his unusual decision to become a mathematician:

J'allais changer décisivement de voie. J'allais interrompre les études que j'avais entreprises, pour une licence d'anglais, presque terminée, le diplôme de russe de l'Ecole des langues orientales, et m'orienter d'une manière radicalement différente; [...] j'en étais arrivé à la conclusion que toutes les études littéraires, pas seulement celle de la littérature française, étaient contradictoire avec la poésie comme activité d'invention. [...]

Et je m'étais dit alors: je serai mathématicien! C'était une idée; seulement une idée; mais ce fut une idée soudaine, une idée exaltante, bouleversante, illuminative. Je n'avais aucune espèce de compréhension réelle de ce que cela signifiait.

[...] je m'étais persuadé de la nécessité des mathématiques pour la compréhension du monde. [...] J'en espérais aussi, sans le formuler très explicitement, des bénéfices indirectes pour l'exercice même de la poésie. (24ff.)

Roubaud will soon discover that studying mathematics does not automatically lead to la compréhension du monde. In the same volume of his autobiography, Roubaud compares his search for (mathematical) truth and knowledge to the Quest for the Holy Grail ³ :

On vous fait pressentir un futur merveilleux en vous montrant combien, a posteriori, était merveilleux le futur qui s'offrait aux grands mathématiciens du passé avant leurs grands découvertes. On vous dit: il y avait et il y a toujours à découvrir, pas seulement à répéter les choses autrefois trouvées par d'autres; on vous offre la vision du Graal, les grandes hypothèses ou conjectures depuis des siècles résistantes...