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Cent mille milliards de poèmes
Selon les mots mêmes Queneau dans sa préface, « Ce petit ouvrage permet à tout un chacun de composer à volonté cent mille milliards de sonnets, tous réguliers bien entendu. C’est somme toute une sorte de machine à fabriquer des poèmes, mais en nombre limité ; il est vrai que ce nombre, quoique limité, fournit de la lecture pour près de deux cents millions d’années (en lisant vingt-quatre heures sur vingt-quatre) ».
L'objet-livre de Queneau offre au lecteur un instrument qui lui permet de combiner des vers de façon à composer des poèmes répondant à la forme classique du sonnet régulier : deux quatrains suivis de deux tercets, soit quatorze vers.
L'objet-livre de Queneau offre au lecteur un instrument qui lui permet de combiner des vers de façon à composer des poèmes répondant à la forme classique du sonnet régulier : deux quatrains suivis de deux tercets, soit quatorze vers.
38 pages, Hardcover
First published July 7, 1961
About the author
Raymond Queneau
192 books523 followersNovelist, poet, and critic Raymond Queneau, was born in Le Havre in 1903, and went to Paris when he was 17. For some time he joined André Breton's Surrealist group, but after only a brief stint he dissociated himself. Now, seeing Queneau's work in retrospect, it seems inevitable. The Surrealists tried to achieve a sort of pure expression from the unconscious, without mediation of the author's self-aware "persona." Queneau's texts, on the contrary, are quite deliberate products of the author's conscious mind, of his memory, and his intentionality.
Although Queneau's novels give an impression of enormous spontaneity, they were in fact painstakingly conceived in every small detail. He even once remarked that he simply could not leave to hazard the task of determining the number of chapters of a book. Talking about his first novel, Le Chiendent (usually translated as The Bark Tree), he pointed out that it had 91 sections, because 91 was the sum of the first 13 numbers, and also the product of two numbers he was particularly fond of: 7 and 13.
Although Queneau's novels give an impression of enormous spontaneity, they were in fact painstakingly conceived in every small detail. He even once remarked that he simply could not leave to hazard the task of determining the number of chapters of a book. Talking about his first novel, Le Chiendent (usually translated as The Bark Tree), he pointed out that it had 91 sections, because 91 was the sum of the first 13 numbers, and also the product of two numbers he was particularly fond of: 7 and 13.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
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February 22, 2022Queneau shows me, once again, ( if it was still needed ) - what the original means.
I was amazed, there are 10 sonnets in this book, each on a page . It's just that each one is cut out, so that each verse can be combined with any other, giving rise to a new poem.
A calculation of combinations shows me that, yes,
a hundred thousand billion different poems can result ! ( more or less ...) They fit perfectly in rhythm and rhyme, none of them betraying the structure of the sonnet, and the book is an endless series of poems ! What a crazy idea !
It is more a presentation of a way of construction, ( as I appreciated his " Exercises de style" too ), a puzzle book without a fixed key, an experiment in the spirit of textual constraints, like Perec's " La Disparition " , a book written entirely in the absence of the letter " E"....
Queneau writes in the introduction that " as Lautreamont said, poetry must be made by all, not by one ".
He was probably referring to all the neurons, I guess...
For composing poems, therefore, Queneau provides us with the lyrics !
" Les mots il suffit qu'on les aime pour écrire un poéme ."
You're right, master. And a little madness.
I was amazed, there are 10 sonnets in this book, each on a page . It's just that each one is cut out, so that each verse can be combined with any other, giving rise to a new poem.
A calculation of combinations shows me that, yes,
a hundred thousand billion different poems can result ! ( more or less ...) They fit perfectly in rhythm and rhyme, none of them betraying the structure of the sonnet, and the book is an endless series of poems ! What a crazy idea !
It is more a presentation of a way of construction, ( as I appreciated his " Exercises de style" too ), a puzzle book without a fixed key, an experiment in the spirit of textual constraints, like Perec's " La Disparition " , a book written entirely in the absence of the letter " E"....
Queneau writes in the introduction that " as Lautreamont said, poetry must be made by all, not by one ".
He was probably referring to all the neurons, I guess...
For composing poems, therefore, Queneau provides us with the lyrics !
" Les mots il suffit qu'on les aime pour écrire un poéme ."
You're right, master. And a little madness.
July 21, 2012
Technically I could be “sampling” the poems on this combinatorial generator for another two hundred million years. If the GR master server is still working in the year 200,002,012, I would like to make a few apologies on behalf of us, The Agents of the Amockalypse.
The texts that put such a strain on the GR server and led to the nature of your present reality—A Game of Thrones and Fifty Shades of Grey—originated in our time. Over the years, these sacred bestsellers acquired so many readers who would pass the texts down through the generations, that the GR server fattened to an area the size of Wyoming. This resulted in the destruction of Wyoming to make room for another billion reviews of these texts and their five-billion-and-counting combinatorial sequels. Gradually, the GR server required an area the size of North America to cope with the demand for the poisonous reviews of the computer generated Fifty Shades et al sequels until North America was assimilated into the GR server, its inhabitants cohabiting with the reviews they’d written on the books they had partially read for some vague sense of belonging.
Reviewers were forced into a perilous digital reality, where Fifty Shades reviews constantly streamed around them in a sort of passive-aggressive, sneery talking-head opinion matrix. Blunt dismissals of the texts’ literary merits told in homespun, telling-it-like-it-is sarcasm killed thousands of citizens. Unfunny gifs of movie clips and lolcats blinded the entire state of Ohio. Deadly, unmerited likes flew like scimitars in the air, mauling people in unimaginably horrific ways, but mainly straight through the gullet. Many drowned in page after page of excruciating analyses of these “worthless texts” written by people who’d spent a month of their reading time proving systematically these texts were worthless, aware of their making millions for the author and assisting the publicity department in their “see what all the fuss is about” campaign but devoted to making “personal studies” of these texts under the guise of cultural research regardless, as though blind to basic logic in their fact-gathering frenzies.
Locked in these prisons of endless, babbling opinion, all speech broke down into criticisms of these texts, so ordinary commands such as “pass the salt” became “WTF that Christian is a pig” until ordinary meanings became impossible. Speech was soon abolished. As the GR server expanded across the Atlantic, mass suicides were popular. Those that remain today, those that may catch a fleeting glance of this apology as it streams past their eyes and crashes into a bilious outpouring for Fifty Shades #672,822,828,727, will hopefully take some comfort in this apology in their hopeless world. And finally complete these poems.
The texts that put such a strain on the GR server and led to the nature of your present reality—A Game of Thrones and Fifty Shades of Grey—originated in our time. Over the years, these sacred bestsellers acquired so many readers who would pass the texts down through the generations, that the GR server fattened to an area the size of Wyoming. This resulted in the destruction of Wyoming to make room for another billion reviews of these texts and their five-billion-and-counting combinatorial sequels. Gradually, the GR server required an area the size of North America to cope with the demand for the poisonous reviews of the computer generated Fifty Shades et al sequels until North America was assimilated into the GR server, its inhabitants cohabiting with the reviews they’d written on the books they had partially read for some vague sense of belonging.
Reviewers were forced into a perilous digital reality, where Fifty Shades reviews constantly streamed around them in a sort of passive-aggressive, sneery talking-head opinion matrix. Blunt dismissals of the texts’ literary merits told in homespun, telling-it-like-it-is sarcasm killed thousands of citizens. Unfunny gifs of movie clips and lolcats blinded the entire state of Ohio. Deadly, unmerited likes flew like scimitars in the air, mauling people in unimaginably horrific ways, but mainly straight through the gullet. Many drowned in page after page of excruciating analyses of these “worthless texts” written by people who’d spent a month of their reading time proving systematically these texts were worthless, aware of their making millions for the author and assisting the publicity department in their “see what all the fuss is about” campaign but devoted to making “personal studies” of these texts under the guise of cultural research regardless, as though blind to basic logic in their fact-gathering frenzies.
Locked in these prisons of endless, babbling opinion, all speech broke down into criticisms of these texts, so ordinary commands such as “pass the salt” became “WTF that Christian is a pig” until ordinary meanings became impossible. Speech was soon abolished. As the GR server expanded across the Atlantic, mass suicides were popular. Those that remain today, those that may catch a fleeting glance of this apology as it streams past their eyes and crashes into a bilious outpouring for Fifty Shades #672,822,828,727, will hopefully take some comfort in this apology in their hopeless world. And finally complete these poems.
August 13, 2015
My very own poem! (Composed using Queneau's prompt of ten pages with 14 lines that can be arranged to form 100,000,000,000,000 grammatically correct sonnets. This experiment brought about Oulipo (a catchy abbreviation of "Workshop for Potential Literature" (obviously the letters are different in French)), a super-group of mathematically minded writers who went buck-wild pushing the boundaries of what can be considered a poem, a short story, an essay, a novel, a memoir, and so on and so on. If you like Calvino, then you just might be a Oulipian.)
Don Pedro from his shirt has washed the fleas,
Socrates watched his hemlock effervesce
Such merchandise a melancholy brings.
(How it surprised us pale grey underlings,
With gravity at gravity's great cog.)
"And starve the sniveling baby like a dog!"
Replies like this the dumbstruck brain may tease
That every verbal shock aims to deprave,
The acid tongue with gourmet's expertise.
We'll suffocate before the epilogue.
Don Pedro from his shirt has washed the fleas,
Socrates watched his hemlock effervesce
Such merchandise a melancholy brings.
(How it surprised us pale grey underlings,
With gravity at gravity's great cog.)
"And starve the sniveling baby like a dog!"
Replies like this the dumbstruck brain may tease
That every verbal shock aims to deprave,
The acid tongue with gourmet's expertise.
We'll suffocate before the epilogue.
November 18, 2013
Impossibile affermare di aver finito di leggere questo romanzo: sono centomila miliardi di combinazioni diverse che contribuiscono alla creazione di infiniti sonetti. Un esperimento di scrittura combinatoria entusiasmante e unico davvero! Da tenere sul comodino e sfogliare, di tanto in tanto, per scoprire una nuova combinazione.
It is impossible for me to say that I actually finished reading this book: there are One Hundred Thousand Billion different combinations which contribute in creating infinite sonnets. Nobody could read them all, not even in an entire life! Amazing experiment!
It is impossible for me to say that I actually finished reading this book: there are One Hundred Thousand Billion different combinations which contribute in creating infinite sonnets. Nobody could read them all, not even in an entire life! Amazing experiment!
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February 8, 2015Este atât de frumoasă O sută de mii de miliarde de poeme! Și nu frumoasă în sensul în care vorbim de obicei despre cărți, ci frumoasă atât ca obiect, o carte dintre cele mai inedite, cât și ca idee, de carte aproape infinită, pe care o poți citi iar și iar, schimbând combinațiile versurilor, amintindu-ne mereu că literatura ne scapă printre degete.
Prima dată am văzut-o în facultate, când doamna profesoară Antoaneta Tănăsescu a adus-o la un curs, să ne arate ce înseamnă ineditul. Am fost uimiți – o carte care nu semăna cu nimic din ceea ce știam noi despre cărți. Sunt zece sonete în ea (teoretic), fiecare pe câte o pagină. Doar că fiecare vers e decupat, are fâșia lui de hârtie separată, astfel încât fiecare vers se poate combina cu oricare altul, dând naștere unui nou poem.
Un calcul de combinații ne arată că da, sunt o sută de mii de miliarde de poeme diferite! Se potrivesc perfect ca ritm și rimă, nici unul nu trădează structura sonetului, și cartea e un nesfârșit (îți ia 200.000.000 ani să le citești pe toate, chiar dacă faci asta non stop) șir de poeme. O carte pe care n-o poți termina într-o viață, ce idee nebunească!
Apoi, studiind despre cybertext, am văzut cât de bine se pretează cartea lui Raymond Queneau unei lecturi hypertextuale, non-liniare, cât de bine poate fi relaționată cu tehnologia, cu arbitrarul, cu faptul că cititorul este cel care-și stabilește traseul propriu de lectură, dovadă fiind și multele aplicații web care pornesc de la ea și care o transpun tehnologic. (continuarea cronicii: http://www.bookaholic.ro/o-suta-de-mi...)
Prima dată am văzut-o în facultate, când doamna profesoară Antoaneta Tănăsescu a adus-o la un curs, să ne arate ce înseamnă ineditul. Am fost uimiți – o carte care nu semăna cu nimic din ceea ce știam noi despre cărți. Sunt zece sonete în ea (teoretic), fiecare pe câte o pagină. Doar că fiecare vers e decupat, are fâșia lui de hârtie separată, astfel încât fiecare vers se poate combina cu oricare altul, dând naștere unui nou poem.
Un calcul de combinații ne arată că da, sunt o sută de mii de miliarde de poeme diferite! Se potrivesc perfect ca ritm și rimă, nici unul nu trădează structura sonetului, și cartea e un nesfârșit (îți ia 200.000.000 ani să le citești pe toate, chiar dacă faci asta non stop) șir de poeme. O carte pe care n-o poți termina într-o viață, ce idee nebunească!
Apoi, studiind despre cybertext, am văzut cât de bine se pretează cartea lui Raymond Queneau unei lecturi hypertextuale, non-liniare, cât de bine poate fi relaționată cu tehnologia, cu arbitrarul, cu faptul că cititorul este cel care-și stabilește traseul propriu de lectură, dovadă fiind și multele aplicații web care pornesc de la ea și care o transpun tehnologic. (continuarea cronicii: http://www.bookaholic.ro/o-suta-de-mi...)
February 11, 2008
I was given this book by my wife as a present over the holidays. We found it in an incredible Left Bank book shop in Paris. The price was hefty, but she knew that I'd regret the rest of my living days if I passed it up. I love her for getting this for me, and I adore the book, too.
August 12, 2013
Only read the linear poems, and some alternated rimes. Fabulous. If you read this 24 hours per day you it would take like 200,000,000 years to read them all. Eternal wheels of poetry craft. Raymond Queneau, satrape maître!
November 8, 2008
Queneau, vous etes un douchebag, mais je vous coeur.
June 5, 2008
generative poetry, my ass! this analogue version beats the crap out of all contemporary digital ventures within this field. plus, i love the humour...
Want to read
August 1, 2012Does anyone other than myself find it odd that the Polish translation is listed under "other editions" but the English translation is not listed either as another edition or as a separate book?
February 10, 2014
It is really strange to consider this book "read" having in view that zou cannot ever read it.
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May 29, 2014Hopefully one day I get to his number. Brilliant
July 11, 2023
One's left with only sorrow and disease
consuming tea and nibbling cream gateaux
eat fire your mouth will taste like antifreeze
so stink the rotting skins from long ago
You get like dirty goods on busy quays
those greedy mice leave nothing for the crow
for death casts piles of shit on pedigrees
most people like to read the words they know
The genealogist finds every blot
the coward mutters Why was I begot?
the local road laps up leaked gasoline
Such ancestry is merely poppycock
I quite forgive you when you run amok
true twinship blames whatever's in the gene
consuming tea and nibbling cream gateaux
eat fire your mouth will taste like antifreeze
so stink the rotting skins from long ago
You get like dirty goods on busy quays
those greedy mice leave nothing for the crow
for death casts piles of shit on pedigrees
most people like to read the words they know
The genealogist finds every blot
the coward mutters Why was I begot?
the local road laps up leaked gasoline
Such ancestry is merely poppycock
I quite forgive you when you run amok
true twinship blames whatever's in the gene
July 6, 2017
One doesn't actually read A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems given the fact it would take someone approximately 200,000,000 years to read all 100,000,000,000,000 possible poems--even if that person was reading twenty-four hours a day. Really, you just pick around for a bit and rate and review the conceit of the project.
March 12, 2019
Voilà un magnifique objet à avoir dans sa bibliothèque si vous êtes fan de poésie et de livres avec un design spectaculaire!
Il est théoriquement impossible d'en lire tous les poèmes potentiels, mais l'idée même d'un livre tel que celui-ci me semble révolutionnaire.
La couverture, faite en tissu, est fragile. Il faut la protéger de la poussi��re et des liquides, parce qu'elle tache facilement. Les pages sont solides, cependant, et la qualité du papier est très bonne.
Il est théoriquement impossible d'en lire tous les poèmes potentiels, mais l'idée même d'un livre tel que celui-ci me semble révolutionnaire.
La couverture, faite en tissu, est fragile. Il faut la protéger de la poussi��re et des liquides, parce qu'elle tache facilement. Les pages sont solides, cependant, et la qualité du papier est très bonne.
February 10, 2016
Spectaculair boek. Je moet het boek echt in handen hebben om het plezier van dit boek te voelen.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews