A hundred thousand billion poems

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One hundred thousand billion poems (French Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes ) is an experimental ensemble of ten sonnets published by Raymond Queneau in 1961 . Sonnets have fourteen lines. The sonnets of this work rhyme according to the scheme abab abab ccd eed . The special thing about these sonnets by Raymond Queneau is that in all ten sonnets the a, b, c etc. of the rhyme scheme stand for the same line endings, i.e. all ten sonnets are built according to the same rhyme scheme, not only insofar as they are sonnets, but also insofar as all ten of them always have matching endings in the corresponding verses. This results in any 1st line (out of the ten 1st lines) with any 2nd line (out of the ten 2nd lines) combined with any 3rd line (out of the ten 3rd lines) etc. and so on at any 14th line (out of the ten 14th lines) a correctly formed sonnet (with regard to the whole rhyme scheme). This results in 10 · 10 · 10 ·… · 10 = 10 14 (= 100,000,000,000,000) possibilities - hence the title. The individual verses are Alexandrians .

These Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes were first published on July 7, 1961 by the French publisher Éditions Gallimard . The book is printed in the form of a folding book , i.e. it is made of extra strong paper , and the ten pages with the sonnets are cut line by line in strips with a little space between the lines so that the reader can easily turn the lines individually and combine them according to the composition .

In literary history , this work belongs to potential literature . Queneau worked for years with various interested parties on similar projects in the Oulipo group .

A post-poem or post-composition of these poems in German by Ludwig Harig was published in 1984 by Verlag Zweiausendeins under the title Hundred Thousand Billion Poems (also as a folding book). In English there are two translations or post-poems: one by John Crombie and Stanley Chapman and one by Beverley Charles Rowe .

If, after carefully reading the ten individual sonnets, you keep putting together and reading other combinations, sometimes surprising new impressions arise, sometimes a feeling of déjà-vu or boredom because you've read every single line at least once, some already several times. Reading all possible sonnet combinations would take around 95 million years with a reading time of 30 seconds each without pauses.

expenditure

  • Raymond Queneau: Cent mille milliards de poèmes. Gallimard, Paris 1961, ISBN 2-07010467-2 .
  • Raymond Queneau: A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems. Translated from the French by Ludwig Harig. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt a. M. 1984.
  • Raymond Queneau: A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems. Translated from the French by Ludwig Harig. In: ad libitum . No. 12. Dispersion Collection. People and World, Berlin (GDR) 1989.

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