PRIČA NA VAŠ NAČIN REMONA KENOA: JEDNA KNJIŽEVNA IGRA

Francuski pisac Remon Keno (Raymond Queneau, 1903–1976), jedan od osnivača književne grupe Ulipo, te samim tim i popularizator potencijalne književnosti, nakon Stilskih vežbi (Exercices de style, 1947) i romana Caca u metrou (Zazie dans le métro, 1959), koji su ga proslavili, godine 1967. objavljuje još jedno atipično delo koje može biti smatrano začetnikom novog književnog žanra ili samo smelim eksperimentom: Priču na Vaš način (Un conte à votre façon). U ovom radu pokušaćemo da rasvetlimo specifičnosti tog dela podvlačeći njegov ludički potencijal, i to najpre polazeći od sličnosti i razlika sa tradicionalnom bajkom, da bismo zatim, oslanjajući se na njegovu razgranatu strukturu, uočili vezu sa interaktivnom književnošću, ali i izdvojili elemente kojima ovo delo odstupa od prave interaktivnosti; tako će nam zaključak odgovoriti na pitanje kakva je zapravo književna igra pred nama.

The strain of constraint

This article seeks to define and illustrate the notion of ‘constraint’ as it applies to literary translation. After a brief discussion of various ways in which the concept of constraint intersects with literary translation, the focus turns to the notion of ‘elasticity’, which describes tensions exerted upon the translator by factors particular to a given translation project, whether these are stylistic, formal, lexical, or intentional literary constraints. This tension forces the translator to work ‘otherwise’ and dictates to a certain extent where the translator must situate him or herself along a continuum of ‘faithfulness’ that ranges from material form to semantic meaning. Four examples are taken from the author’s own work as a literary translator, drawing on translations of ‘constrained’ texts of progressive difficulty by Marcel Schwob, Raymond Queneau, Olivier Salon, and J.-A. Soubira. Finally, this illustration of varying textual elasticity and constraint is examined from a sociological angle, which seeks to explore practical constraints of literary translation in today’s American literary marketplace.

Stylistics and Translation of Raymond Queneau’s Work: Translation Analysis of „Exercices de style“

The article covers the stylistics of the work “Exercices de style” by the French writer Raymond Queneau and the translation of this work into Lithuanian. Through the analysis of translations into Italian and English as well, the article investigates the distinctive feature of Queneau’s texts – how they play with various language tools. The article distinguishes and discusses the play of literary devices (these are figures of style and rhetoric), the play of linguistic devices (grammatical tenses, barbarisms, neologisms), the play of language registers (colloquial language, jargon), the play of genres and discourses, and the play of narrative techniques. While playing with the language, the author seeks to entertain the reader – the exercises are rich in various elements of comedy, parody and irony. It is not possible to systematically apply one translation strategy to translate this work, therefore the translator Akvilė Melkūnaitė focused on conveying the logic of Queneau’s rules, making the translation strategies related to semantic and stylistic translation of the text diverse and successful, while the complicated conveying of cultural realia (e.g. jargon) is offset by other means of translation.

Jean Echenoz and Georges Perec: Negotiating Occupied Territory

Jean Echenoz’s first four novels (1979–89) exhibit the development of a literary apprenticeship across different fictional genres and acknowledge important precursors. Among the latter, the influence on Echenoz’s work of Georges Perec has not received the same attention as that of the nouveau roman, Raymond Queneau, or crime fiction writers such as Jean-Patrick Manchette. Yet the presence of Perec the narrative jigsaw-maker is unmistakeable in Echenoz’s first novel, Le Méridien de Greenwich. By the end of Echenoz’s decade-long apprenticeship, however, it is less Perec the game-player than the critic of consumerism and above all the observer of urban life who is privileged in Lac’s allusions to the older writer’s work on the infra-ordinary and on place. A previous short novella L’Occupation des sols not only dramatizes Echenoz’s navigation of an urban and socio-critical territory already occupied by Perec; it also prepares his subsequent commemoration in Lac of both Perec’s ludism and the personal loss informing his work. Taken together, L’Occupation des sols and Lac demonstrate how a grant-aided transposition to suburbia allows Echenoz to embrace his Perecquian inheritance of everyday observation, while articulating the subjection of writers too to commercial forces Perec identified, a theme the younger writer has continued to explore.

Creating with Constraints

Musicians have long framed their creative activity within constraints, whether imposed externally or consciously chosen. As noted by Leonard Meyer, any style can be viewed as an ensemble of constraints, requiring the features of the artwork to conform with accepted norms. Such received stylistic constraints may be complemented by additional, voluntary limitations: for example, using only a limited palette of pitches or sounds, setting rules to govern repetition or transformation, controlling the formal layout and proportions of the work, or limiting the variety of operations involved in its creation. This chapter proposes a fourfold classification of the limits most often encountered in music creation into material (absolute and relative), formal, style/genre, and process constraints. The role of constraints as a spur and guide to musical creativity is explored in the domains of composition, improvisation, performance, and even listening, with examples drawn from contemporary composers including György Ligeti, George Aperghis, and James Tenney. Such musical constraints are comparable to self-imposed limitations in other art forms, from film (the Dogme 95 Manifesto) and visual art (Robert Morris’s Blind Time Drawings) to the writings of authors associated with the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) such as Georges Perec and Raymond Queneau.

OULIPO: JUEGOS MATEMÁTICOS EN LA LITERATURA

OuLiPo – Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle – was created in 1960 at the initiative of Raymond Queneau – a man of letters interested in mathematics – and François Le Lionnais – a man of science interested in literature –, and supported by a group of writers , mathematicians and painters. OuLiPo rejects inspiration as the only source of creativity; the restriction – the ‘contrainte’ – is its creative engine. In this paper we will give some examples of oulipian texts written under mathematical restriction. Essentially, mathematics underlies the structure of texts: combinatorics, geometry, topology or graph theory will appear as inspiring patterns in all these proposals.