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Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics

Free Writing, Constrained Writing: The Ideology of Form


Author(s): Jan Baetens
Source: Poetics Today, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 1-14
Published by: Duke University Press
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FreeWriting,ConstrainedWriting:
The Ideologyof Form
Jan Baetens
CulturalStudies,Leuven

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.

It is nowadays generally agreed that a distinguishing characteristic of mod-


ern poetry is its radical refusal of formal rules. Since the "revolution" in
poetic language effected by Rimbaud and Mallarme, so well described by
Kristeva (1974), the writing of poetry has undergone the gradual elimina-
tion of every trace of classic versification. Following the history given by the
most brilliant-and most critical-theoretician of this tendency, Jacques
Roubaud (1978), it is clear how, beginning with the breaking of traditional
verse, metrics, and rhyme in the period of verslibrism,we are now enter-
I would like to thank Dr. John Higgins (University of Cape Town) and Dr. Ortwin de Graef
(University of Louvain) for their valuable help with the editing of this article.
PoeticsToday18:1 (Spring 1997). Copyright ? 1997 by The Porter Institute for Poetics and
Semiotics.

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2 PoeticsToday18:1

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.

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Baetens * The Ideologyof Form 3

Unending Design:TheFormsof Postmodern Poetry[1991]gives very useful infor-


mation on more or less parallel developments in Anglo-Saxon countries.)
This second type of traditional poetry, however, is not simply some
surviving remnant from the past, but a rather highly conscious reaction
against the excesses and insufficiencies of free writing, which has been ac-
cused of producingjust the opposite of what it intended. Instead of creating
"new" forms and meanings, free writing seemed only able to repeat itself
and to reduce literature to a small set of endlessly repeated stereotypes:
it was surrealist automatic writing, which systematically degenerated into
an uncontrolled accumulation of banalities, that usually served as the bete
noire of the defenders of fixed forms in poetry (see Roubaud 1978).
The rediscovery of fixed forms and constraints is thus much more a
matter of philosophy of writing than of technique. It is, more accurately, a
philosophy of writing quatechnique. As Jean Lescure puts it (speaking of
the Oulipo, but in terms that are valid for all writing under constraint):

FranCoisLe Lionnaiswrote:Everyliterary workbeginswithaninspiration


.. . which
mustaccommodateitselfas wellaspossible
toa seriesofconstraints etc ....
andprocedures,
Whatthe Oulipointendedto demonstratewas that theseconstraintsare felici-
tous,generous,and are in fact literatureitself. (1986:34)
Constraints, then, are no longer seen as an obstacle (as defenders of
free writing might assume), but as an incentive, a stimulus without which
no good, that is, no well-writtenliterature could even exist, be it poetry
or prose. (Many of the authors working under constraint indeed practice
both discourses, even though it must be noted that much more work has
been done in the field of poetry.) This is the case even when the given con-
straint seems very poor. The work of Michelle Grangaud, who produces a
wide range of literary texts solely by using the technique of the anagram,
is a superb illustration of such richness. (For an annotated anthology see
Grangaud 1995.)
In the present article I do not propose to write the history of the anti-
free writing movement. My objectives here are strictly theoretical: I will
try to investigate the scope and the internal frontiers of constrained writ-
ing in order to show that this movement is highly innovative indeed, and
that it is in no way monolithic. More concretely, I will do so by discuss-
ing four fundamental topics: the focus of constrained writing on what is
called a text; its transformation of the traditional rule of the author; the
problematic relationship between the formulation of the constraint and
its practical realization; and, finally, the growing importance of the con-
straint's host medium.

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4 PoeticsToday18:1

How to Define a "Text"Written under Constraint

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

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Baetens * The Ideologyof Form 5

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

By forcing himself to write under-and by the grace of-constraints, the


author puts himself radically into question. By making use of formal rules,
he indeed renounces the unfettered expression of all he might want to
say (his feelings, observations, experience, worldview, etc.). Rather than
striving for such expressive self-exposure, he consents to write only what
the chosen constraints permit or demand. These two attitudes-the desire
for free expression versus the discipline imposed by writing under con-
straint-seem antithetical, in that the first one apparently accords the au-
thor infinite creative possibilities, while the second seems to restrain those
possibilities drastically. The practice of writing, however, shows that the
less "liberal" situation (i.e., that of the constraint) in fact turns out to be
the one with the greater potential to liberate the writer.
Writing under constraint allows the author to lay down the burden of
cliches. As some authors and critics have stressed, immediate expression of
one's intimate feelings and opinions frequently leads to stereotypes, as is
often the case in surrealistautomatic writing (Gleize 1988). By fighting the
cliche, constrained writing helps the subject to emancipate him- or herself
from all stereotypes that smother and imprison creativity.The avant-garde
novelist Renaud Camus accurately formulates this "axiom"when he com-
ments on the Barthesian concept of doxa:
"Le naturel,c'est la culture."Donc, plus vous croyezparlernaturellement,
plus
vousetes sincereet plusvousetesparleparvotreculture,votreage, votremilieu,
etc. Ce n'estqu'enimposanta son discoursdes contraintesformellestout arti-
ficielles,ou s'embarrasse le vouloir-dire,qu'onpeut esp6rerechapperau babil
en
implacable, soi, de la Doxa. Ainsi, 1'ecriture,au sens modernedu terme,
s'articule-t-elle a une 6thique.

[Nature is culture. Therefore, the more you believe yourself to be talking in a


naturalway, the more sincereyou are, and the more you are spokenby your
culture, your age, your social class, etc. It is only by adding to one's discourse a

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6 PoeticsToday18:1

set of fully artificialformalconstraints,whichhindersthe wish to expressone-


self, that one can hope to escape from the ruthlessbabble,in one's mind, of
the Doxa. Thus, writing,in the modernsenseof the word,is relatedto ethics.]
(Camus 1980: 66; my translation)
This relation to ethics may surprise, but it is a crucial element of con-
temporary writing. On the one hand, as the statement just quoted asserts,
modern constrained writing helps one to free oneself from the burden of
the stereotypes of one's own culture. On the other hand, as I will argue
presently, the democratic implications for the relationship between author
and reader of the modern techniques of writing under constraint are con-
siderable.
Indeed, constrained writing does not only have aesthetic and ethical im-
pacts on the process of writing. It also vigorously contests the traditional
vision of the author as an inspired genius. This mythological as well as
romantic conception of the writer is struck down by constrained writing,
whose adepts thus adopt and accomplish what Roland Barthes calls an
ecriture,that is, "the writer's consideration of the social use which he has
chosen for his form, and his committment to this choice" (Barthes 1973:21).
A possible objection to this argument would claim that the authority of
the traditional vision of the writer simply shifts from the domain of what
is said (the free expression of thinking, feeling, observing, etc.) to the way
it is said. Constrained writing, from this perspective, would be even more
authoritarian than free writing.
Yet, this objection cannot be taken seriously. Constrained writing can
indeed be authoritarian, but only in the case of a purely and poorly me-
chanical application of the rule, which then denies the complexity of all
writing. The far-from-convincing examples of literary texts created by
computer programs demonstrate that a totally controlled use of constraints
is a utopia we had better not dream of. (Even authors who actually use
computer programs admit that there remains an abyss between the combi-
nations the machine permits and the selection and arrangement that make
art [Calvino 1986; TE.M. 1985]). Genuine constrained writing, on the
contrary, should always include the possibility of fully exploiting all types
of surprises that the writing process itself raises, even if this gives birth to
the transformation of the initial constraint, as happens in Jean Ricardou's
La Prise/prosede Constantinople (1965), in which the dactylographical errors
that the author made when working on his manuscript were integrated in
the work and influenced the developments of the plot (see Higgins 1979).
But the best example of the freedom created by writing under constraint
remains, of course, Raymond Queneau's Exercicesde style(1947), with its
dazzling variations on a single and very simple anecdote described in

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Baetens* The Ideologyof Form 7

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)

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8 PoeticsToday18:1

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.

[I havealwaysintendedto explainthe way in whichI had writtensome of my


books.... This involvesa very specialmechanism.And this mechanismI con-
sider it my duty to reveal,becauseI have the impressionthat futurewriters
mightperhapsexploreit fruitfully.] (Roussel1963[1933]:1l;my translation)
In practice, however, many writers of constrained texts do not fully sub-
scribe to this attitude. Concerning Roussel, for instance, it is regularly
said that his attitude of revealing the constraint was rather ambiguous: his
lesson was posthumous and, what is more important, it did not embrace
the totality of his work (the constraints he spoke of governed only someof
his books). Moreover, the degree to which authors address the problem of
readability is not an ethical, but an aesthetic question. The writer, they ar-
gue, can have very good reasons to fear the "exposure"of the rules. An
overly explicit text may indeed have strong dissuasive effects on readers,
who might then find the text boring (see Benabou 1994).These authors re-
member that James Joyce, "instead of solving the puzzles of Ulysses,stated
that he put so many enigmas in it to keep the professors busy for cen-
turies over what he meant and to ensure his immortality" (van de Velde
1992: 197).
The problem remains entirely open. But the given examples show that
the conflict between exposure and dissimulation may be the central point
of all constrained writing (and not only of the critical reflection on it).
the con-
This opposition is not only aesthetic but also ethical: by concealing
straints, the author of the text prevents the reader from becoming able to
take his place; by revealingthem, he agrees to share his knowledge of the
text and makes it possible for the reader to become a writer, too. But one
ought also to try considering this problem in terms of coherence: it is more

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Baetens* The Ideologyof Form 9

coherent, when working in the field of constrained writing, to expose than


to hide; it seems incoherent, when accepting in general the relations be-
tween writing and reading, to hide the constraints and so to reproduce
within the text the particular antinomy between author and reader.

Bridgingthe Gapbetween Programand Result


Just as the author of a constrained text should do his best to showthe rules
he applies and workswith, he should also try to executethem, that is, to pro-
duce at least one text corresponding to the rule but with all the difficulties
such an enterprise entails when working within the field of a natural lan-
guage. If most of the authors indeed agree on this obligation (for a survey
of the attitudes in this regard see Jouet 1994), a manifest opposition be-
tween two visions of the practical execution of the work cannot be denied.
For one group of authors the relationship between rule and work, be-
tween constraint and realized text, is a rather mechanical and secondary
one, in the first place because the rule, they repeat, always precedes the
work and does not change during or after its making, and second, because
the work is in fact nothing more than an illustration of the textual possi-
bilities of the rule. (The text is sometimes compared to the demonstration
of the axiom posed by the constraint.) Several Oulipo authors, for in-
stance, share this idea of the absolute primacy of the rule. They pay little
attention to the production of texts derived from the constraint, which is
never affected by any application: "The Oulipo's goal is to discover new
structures and to furnish for all structures a small number of examples"
(Lescure 1986: 38).
For another class of authors, the difference between the enunciation of
the rule and its fully realized textual version is fundamental. The execu-
tion of a given constraint not only enriches or complicates the original
rule or set of rules, but it even happens that this execution transforms the
nature, the scope, or the status of the constraints. Jean Ricardou, one of
the leading figures of the French nouveau roman, can be considered one of
the spokesmen of this antimechanistic conception. In his book Le Theatre
des metamorphoses (1982), for instance, he works out a very useful distinc-
tion between a finalist and a consequentialist approach to the constraint,
the former submitting all textual maneuvers to predefined effects, and the
latter working with open rules, capable of being altered by the sometimes
unforeseen discoveries of every writing process. If it is possible to compare
the constraint to a kind of scenario (Peeters 1986), then it becomes clear
that some scenarios are slavishly followed, whereas others can be adapted
according to the necessities of realization. Two photographic novels by Be-

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10 PoeticsToday18:1

noit Peeters and Marie-Francoise Plissart, Fugues(1983)and Droit de regards


(1985), illustrate this antinomy very well. In the first case, the storyboard
was so meticulously prepared that the final result, the printed book, proved
to be a deception, for there had been no opportunity to realize practically
all that had been programmed. In the second case, in which the authors
used an open scenario, a permanent feedback on the program occurred,
to the great benefit of the work itself, which is much more satisfying both
visually and as narrative. (Forfurther details see Baetens 1993.)
Once again, this apparently technical controversy harbors an ideologi-
cal component whose importance deserves to be fully stressed. The ex-
treme valorization of the rule at the expense of the realized work can in-
deed be interpreted as an authoritarian strategy,which attempts implicitly
to save the dominant role of the author-no longer as the inspired genius
of romantic outpouring or impressions, but as the creator of fixed rules.
From this point of view, it is significant that the constraints invented by the
Oulipo authors are systematically baptized, receiving the names of their
fathers (as if it were possible to claim an intellectual copyright on the con-
straint offered to the public). On the contrary, valorizing the execution
seems a more logical and coherent attitude within the field of constrained
writing. Indeed, in the face of a nonmechanical work, the part played by
the reader is totally different from the one he plays when reading afinalist
work. The reading of an open constraint asks for a much more active col-
laboration on the part of the reader than the reading of a work that is only
a simple illustration of an all-pervading rule. Not only must the reader of
such an open constraint make a greater effort to evaluate the exact rela-
tionship between the initial status of the constraint (as a set of predefined
rules) and the avatars of these rules in the given work, but he or she must
also understand that the transformations of these constraints are often not
the only possible ones. Other transformations, he or she understands, can
also be examined and, if he or she wants to do so, can even be realized in
new texts.
Georges Perec'sAlphabets(1976),for instance, raises these questions with
exemplary ambiguity. Indeed, the book contains a series of poems whose
basic constraint is clear (each line of each poem uses one--and only
one--occurrence of the ten most frequently used letters in French: ESAR-
TULINO). Their miseenpageis odd, however, seemingly half-aleatory, half-
constrained, to the point that there must always remain doubts concerning
the status of the rules and, most of all, concerning the observable viola-
tions of these rules: Are they part of the initial program? Are they sup-
plementary rules produced during the writing process? Are they already
an in(ter)vention of the reader? (For an in-depth theoretical reflection on
these problems see Ribiere 1989 and Ribiere and Magne 1991.)

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Baetens* The Ideologyof Form 11

The Host Mediumof the Constraint


The necessity of execution confronts the author with the problem of the
host medium, that is, the pages of a book or, more precisely, the pages and
the book.
One can of course consider the encounter between the text and its host
medium as a mechanical "accident."And in fact several constrained texts
present themselves in books whose form seems totally indifferent. The in-
genious circularities of Entrelineas(1992), a "circle"of sonnets by Bernardo
Schiavetta, are badly served by the classical and linear structure of the
book within which the text is contained, at least in comparison with the
more mirror-like arrangements throughout the volume of corresponding
(and some by themselves palindromic) poems in the author's latest book
(Schiavetta 1995).The shifting attitude of an author like Schiavetta toward
the material presentation of the sections of a book proves that one can
take this relationship seriously. In that case, the characteristics of the host
medium will be integrated into the set of rules the author defines and fol-
lows. The best-known example of this integration can still be found in one
of Raymond Queneau's most radically constrained productions, Centmille
milliardsdepoemes(1961),whose program proceeds as follows:
At firstglance,it lookslike nothingmore than a collectionof ten sonnets,but
thesepoemsobeyformallawsfar morevast and rigorousthanthoseof the tra-
ditionalsonnet. In fact, they constitutea combinatoryensemble:each line of
each poem may replace(or be replacedby) its homologuein the nine other
poems.Thus,to eachof the ten firstlines,the readercan addanyof ten different
secondlines; there exist thereforelo2, or one hundredpossiblecombinations
for the firsttwo lines. Giventhat the sonnethas fourteenlines, the possibilities
offeredby the collectionas a whole are of the orderof 1014, or one hundred
trillionsonnets. (Motte1986:3)
In order to facilitate the actual execution of this combinatorics, Que-
neau then conceived a book in which the printed pages were cut up in
small strips, each containing one of the verses of the sonnets.
The relationship between text and host medium should never be seen
as indifferent or secondary, if only because the material host medium may
hinder or betray what an author of constrained writing actually wants
to do.
As we all know, the book is not a neutral host medium. In some respects,
the book even displays certain characteristics that contradict the basic as-
sumptions of constrained writing. Indeed, the book normally establishes
a strong vectorization: it distinguishes firmly between a beginning and an
end, or between a noteworthy and a less significant face (the front cover
versus the back cover), and so on. It also generates a sharp opposition

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12 PoeticsToday18:1

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

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Baetens * The Ideology of Form 13

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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