Baetens, ethics, constraint
Baetens, Jan. “Free Writing, Constrained Writing: The Ideology of Form.” Poetics Today 18.1 (Spring 1997): 1-14.
Jan Baetens is one of the editors/founders of the journal Formules: Revue des litteratures a contraintes, which I have collected a number of issues of, but only so far browsed through. Having now read this article by him, I am curious to see how his ideological stance will make its appearance in that journal.
Baetens is quite serious about constrained literature; he is also determined to make it an ethical and ideological issue about breaking down the barriers between readers and writers. Unfortunately, I can’t say I think he is going about it the right way. Some of his logical and obvious premises are less so than he would like us to believe.
He starts off with a brief overview of the loss of form in the “free verse” and other poetries of the past century and how, strangely enough, prose seems to have taken on the interest in form and structure — particularly in the experimental novel (an idea he attributes to Barthes and another reason I need to finally read his Writing Degree Zero that sits on my shelf) — previously held by poetry. Then he goes into the resurgence of formally fixed poetry and begins his work defining and discussing the idea of constraint.
His first definition is that “…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 wihout any previous “idea” from the writer.” He then goes into the opposition of constrained writing to “free writing” and how constraint forces writing as technique wherein easy cliches are avoided.
This part is all well and hard to argue with (though the constrained vs. free writing is probably an argument in itself, it’s one I’m willing to agree with), but then he starts into his attempt to “define a ‘text’ written under constraint”. Rule one being that the text must “respect structures of meaningful verbal utterance”, ie it must follow “natural” language. This rule is to me an indicator of quality rather than definition. Certainly a text could be written under a constraint and not follow “natural” language while still being a “text written under constraint”. Baetens uses the example of Perec’s Les Revenentes — written as a lipogram of a, i, o, and u in the aftermath of his lipogram in e — as a text that is not “genuine” constrained writing, an absurd notion that crosses defining with quality (I’ll admit it’s not a very good text under constraint but it still is one).
Baetens second rule is even more problematic and set-ups the main problems with the rest of the essay: “it [the constrained text] should be readable, that is, decodable with regard to its formal aspects by any attentive reader.” He claims that without this exposure of the “formal aspects”: a) readers will get bored and b)readers will no longer be able to see “the difference between constrained and formal texts.” A is just downright absurd. I quite enjoyed Harry Mathews’ Cigarettes, which he claims is his most oulipian novel but the constraint of it has never been divulged or explicated as far as I have seen (which is to say, it wasn’t decodable to me on my reading, yet I enjoyed the novel quite a bit). And I’m honestly not sure why B is such a problem. How important is it that the reader know the text is constrained?
This is where Baetens and I differ, as far as I can see, in that he is much concerned about the reader and breaking down boundaries between the reader and writer through the reading and understanding of the creation of constrained texts. For me, constrained writing is about writers (tools for writing, as the Oulipo have it) and on a more democratic and pedagogical level the ability to follow Lautreamont’s call for poetry to be made by all, not through the reading of constrained texts but through the use of constraints as found in explanations/directions.
His rhetorical strategy goes on to call it “illogical” to conceal the constraint and that “true constrained writing” must have room for “active collaboration” and the “collectivization of writing”. Again, all fine and good from the procedural vantage but not from the perspective of the texts themselves.
He even misreads a statement by Queneau in re the Oulipo: “We call potential literature the search for new forms and structures that may be used by writers in any way they see fit,” an excellent quote for explaining the Oulipo mission, so to speak, yet he neglects to mention that Queneau is referring to the constraints themselves not the texts created from the constraints. Baetens even goes on to call it unethical to conceal the constraint as this “prevents the reader from becoming able to take his [the author's] place”.
I feel I have gone on enough here, the article continues a bit with the idea of a constraint changing in-process and a section on the medium (with an emphasis on photo-novels that is not immediately obvious (he never explains what constraint is involved there) except that he has written a book on the topic) of the constraint and how the traditional book format is not always the most expeditious for constrained texts.
I hope this doesn’t come off as me being some kind of writerly snob, in fact I think Baetens seems to expect a certain “writers are better” attitude and is pre-emptively trying to fight against it, one which I find strange as any writer should know that his work, in the end, relies upon readers. I just don’t like Baetens implication of ethical and ideological superiority in these matters, particularly when defining something that doesn’t not inherently hold an ethical relevancy.
I think there is level where the use of constraints can, so to speak, break down boundaries between writers and readers, but I don’t think it takes place on the level of the reading of the text. Rather, it is in the very use of the constraints, the writing, the process where readers can become writers. (Though on a whole other level, there probably too many people trying to be writers than the world really needs, at least those that are really trying to publish.)
Tags: Constraint, definitions
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