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

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devices to convey a narrative meaning, but uses such meaning
as an excuse to deploy innovative devices.
Tynyanov almost appears to advocate a 'pataphysical
literariness when he suggests that, "if new phenomena are to
emerge in literature, what is needed is relentless
intellectual activity, and belief in it, together with the
scientific processing of material-even
if such work is
unacceptable to science" (153). Tynyanov observes, for
example, that Khlebnikov often resorts to the clinamen of a
scientific misprision in order to generate the novelty of
poeticized exceptions:
"[ploetry is close to science in its
methods--this is what Khlebnikov teaches" (153)--"[m]inor
mistakes, 'chance features,' explained by the old academics
as a deviation caused by incomplete experimentation, serve
as a catalyst for new discoveries:
what was explained by
'incomplete experimentation' turns out to be the action of
unknown lawstl ( 150 ) .
Tynyanov implies that "[ploetry must be as open as
science is in facing phenomena" so that "when it cornes
across a 'chance feature,' it must reorganise itself so that
the chance feature ceases to be chance" (154).
Khlebnikov
also argues that " [a] misprint, born involuntarily frorn the
typesetter's will, suddenly gives meaning to a new entity;