Of Unprecedented Adjectives
The archaic theory that matter is created by the spontaneous infinitesimal deviation of atoms in free fall—the Epicurean clinamen—was revived in Jarry's work, proposed as a codex of the anomalous to enable a network of alternate orders, where reality is observed from an inclination revealing supplementary universes. The leap from the playful to the methodological, anticipated by Swift, materialized when Queneau and Le Lionnais—from the College of 'Pataphysics (with apostrophe)—founded the Workshop for Potential Literature (Oulipo), whose object is the nonexistent text, systematically enabled through calculated constraints. The canonical ‘Oulipo Compendium’ explains the structural, not cosmetic, distinction between “anoulipism”—analysis of past constraints, from Laso to Llull—and “sintoulipism”—invention of new generative rules—thus detaching itself from aesthetic avant-gardes to establish itself as a laboratory of mechanized imagination.
