Raymond Queneau: Style exercises

In Exercises of style (1947) Raymond Queneau narrates a trivial incident of 99 different ways. It is one of these books of impossible classification, a literary work with a strong metaliterary component or perhaps "paraliterario", as indicates Antonio Fernández Ferrer in the prologue of his excellent translation (Ed. Chair, 1993).

Style exercises there is a clear example of the use of a literary restriction (to write 99 times the same history) like a creative engine, one of the characteristics of the movement Oulipo, of which Raymond Queneau was one of the founders.

The titled version History gives us an idea of the incident that is counted:

One morning to midday, along with the park Monceau, in the rear platform of an almost finished bus of the line S (at present 84), I observed a personage with the quite long neck that was taking a hat of felt surrounded with a drawstring braided instead of tape. This individual addressed, of blow and punch, to his neighbor, claiming that it was trampling on him deliberately whenever they were rising or travelers were going down. But it left quickly the discussion to be thrown on a place that had remained free.
Two hours later, I saw it again in front of the Saint-Lazare station, conversing with a friend who was advising him to diminish the neckline of the overcoat making raise the top button for some competent tailor.

Fernández Ferrer reveals to us that the origin of Exercises of style is not literary, but musical, since it was inspired by The art of the escape of Bach, considered like “construction of a work by means of changes that were proliferating up to the infinite concerning a quite insignificant topic.”

As precedents of this experiment, in Cyrano de Bergerac of Edmond Rostand we find a reply expressed of twenty different forms, of the protagonist to the viscount, who has made fun of his nose.

Umberto Eco, who translated style Exercises for the Italian, emphasizes that Queneau transforms consciously the esthetic values associated with the figures of the rhetoric in order to achieve their own explorations paródicas and playful of the language.

Next a pair of examples of how narrating - with enough humor - the same history:

Bombastic:

At the time when the pink fingers of the dawn begin to crack, it was me who was riding, which fast arrow, on a bus, of imposing height and bovine eyes, of the line S, of sinuous long journey. I warned, with the precision and keenness of the ready Indian to the combat, the presence of a young man whose neck was longer than that of the giraffe of light feet, and whose hat of cracked felt was adorned by a braid, which hero of an exercise of style. The baneful Discord of bosoms of soot came with his stinking mouth for scorn of the toothpaste; the Discord, I say, came to inoculate his harmful virus between this young man of neck of giraffe and braid about the hat, and a traveler of blurry and farinaceous visage. That one spoke to this one in the following terms: "Hear me, evil being, one would be said that you are trampling on me deliberately!”. This way there exclaimed the young man of neck of giraffe and braid about the hat and he was, he was big enough, to sit down.

Later, in the square of Rome, of majestic proportions, I repaired again in the young man of neck of giraffe and braid about the hat accompanied by a companion, umpire of the elegance, who was dropping this criticism that was given me to perceive with my agile ear, criticism directed to the most external clothing of the young man of neck of giraffe and braid about the hat: "You should diminish the neckline by means of the addition or elevation of a button in the circular periphery.”

Subjective:

It was not discontented with my clothing, precisely today. It was releasing a new, quite nice hat, and an overcoat that seemed to me but that very well. I am X in front of the station of Saint-Lazare, which me tries to water down the holiday trying to demonstrate to me that the overcoat is very low-cut and that he should add one more button to him. Although, less evil that has not dared to put with my cap.

Little earlier, it had argued from the pretty thing to a yokel's species that was pushing me deliberately like a brute whenever the personnel was happening, on having gone down or on having risen. That happened in one of these filthy buses that fill with plebs precisely at the time when I must deign to use them.

As for the author, Raymond Queneau (Le Havre, 1903-1976) studied mathematics, philosophy and psychology in The Sorbona. It belonged to the Academy Goncourt and it was part of the curious surrealistic movement known as Patafísica. In 1960 it founded, along with François Le Lionnais, a group of literary investigation and scientific called Oulipo (littérature potentielle Ouvroir, or Workshop of potential literature). Lover of the mathematics, Queneau tried to apply arithmetical norms in the construction of his works.

In 1959 there published his most well-known work, the novel Zazie dans him Métro (Zazie in the meter), who was adapted to the movies by Louis Malle.

We can read other versions of the history that is narrated in style Exercises in Focusing.

Category: Books, Literature and language

Tags: France, surrealism