PATAPHYSICS-THE-POETICS-OF-AN-IMAGINARY- SCIENCE_C_Bok

clinamen might become chinameq, cinnamen etc. (1997:16).
For Jarry, the wordplay of such deviance often takes the
form of the portmanteau (cornenidouille, palcontentes,
etc.)--words that do not abbreviate or congregate two
meanings so much as complicate their sequencing through an
act of misprision that parodies their linguistic precedents.
Bloom argues that, because such misprision allows a
poet to evade influence and become anomalous, "the study of
Poetic Influence is necessarily a branch of 'Pataphysics"
(1973:42). Influence is no longer an inter-reference, but
an interference, in which divertissement replaces
ressentiment. Precedent norms no longer inhibit subsequent
forms since "the clinamen stems always from a 'Pataphysical
sense of the arbitraryN--the "equal baphazardness" of cause
and effect:
"'[p]ataphysics proves to be truly accurate; in
the world of poets al1 regularities are indeed 'regular
exceptions'; the recurrence of vision is itself a law
governing exceptions" (42). What repeats is not a rule of
repetition and imitation, but a game of competition and
agitation, in which the clinamen is the smallest, possible
aberration that can make the greatest, potential difference.