I’m never very sure about the Wisdoms. They are altogether more sensible and grown-up than the Pensives. Wisdoms are Wagner while Pensives are Gilbert and Sullivan.
Wisdoms are the literary equivalent of adding up your change after going through the check-out and before packing all the stuff in your car, which is a sensible thing to do.
And that word – sensible – is the one that gives me problems. I can trot out any number of excuses for not being sensible, but Wisdom, Sensible’s big brother, is where I come seriously unstuck.
Wisdom is married to Experience, and whereas I might be able to fluff my way past Wisdom, Experience will stand foursquare in my way, call my bluff and show me up to the pretender that I am.
My Experience bag is more like a pocket; it contains very little. I can lay no claim to be in the pantheon of literary greats, but I know (have heard of) one that is.
May I introduce: Raymond Queneau, a member of the literary group Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle).
In 1961 he presented what is probably the longest book in the world. It is ‘Cent mille milliards de poèmes’ or One Hundred Billion Poems.
No one will ever be able to read the whole book no matter how hard they try. Proper mathematicians have worked out that it would take approximately two hundred million years to read all the poems, without stopping to eat, sleep or do any other activity.
Writing takes longer than reading, so how did he do it? Don’t say AI, in 1961 AI was still only a dream in the mind of science fiction writers.
The book is ten pages long, and each page contains a sonnet.
Before you shake your head and mutter ‘Poor Jos, she’s lost it.’ here is the clever bit. Each page is cut into horizontal strips with one line of the sonnet on each strip. Thus they can be combined strip by strip with those of all the other sonnets. Any mixture will form a meaningful sonnet, paying attention to the stanzas, rhythm and rhyme.
Thus, the total number of possible combinations contained in the book is 10 to the power of 14, which the mathematicians say is one hundred billion different poems.
Why did he do it? Queneau designed this work as a literary experiment to explore new forms and structures in poetry, demonstrating the infinite creativity that can be achieved within a finite format.
Wow!
Look him up on Wikipedia. This is not one of my further flung flights of fancy, it is true!
Illustrator’s note
The owners of Raymond Queneau’s copyrights are infamously litigious in defense of said copyrights, which is why the text of ‘Cent mille milliards de poèmes’ is unavailable online. The chopped up poem in the illustration is actually by Charles Baudelaire, ‘Sonnet d’automne’ (Autumn Sonnet), from Fleurs de mal. The image of Raymond Queneau behind the lines is processed from the low quality portrait held by Wikimedia Commons.
Thanks for sharing, Jos. I’d never heard of this book until now. Great Illustration too.
Thanks, but John did the pic!
What a gem I’ve discovered! The thoroughness of your research combined with your engaging writing style makes this post exceptional. You’ve earned a new regular reader!