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Poemes.
At first glance this text seems to consist ofonly ten pages with ten sonnets, each printed
on a single page. The page is cut into fourteen horizontal strips each containing one
sonnet line, allowing readers to create new sonnets by turning each of the strips in a
random fashion. The number of sonnets that can be produced this way (all perfect
sonnets with the correct metre and rhyme scheme) is very large - 10'4 - one hundred
trillion (the cent mille milliards promised in the title). No reader would ever be able to
read allof these sonnets. According to OuLiPo's own calculations "a reader can read for a
millionyears at five minutes per sonnet without reading the same sonnet twice?", This is
an open work in Eco's definition that, just like the construction kit Eco uses as a
metaphor, contains in its structure vastly more possibilities than can ever be realised by
one reader. But of course no reader would ever attempt to read more than a few of the
poems, as with most of OuLiPo's work here again the structures and principles are more
important than their actual realisations.
Queneau's work, and especially the Cent Mille Milliards de Poimes, are a candidate for
computerisation.William Paulson, for example, states in his 1989 article that "obviously
the possibilities of the book as format are being strained to the limit, and Cent Milk
Milliards de Poemes would be an ideal candidate for a computerized edition.Y I do,
however, agree more with Espen]. Aarseth, who argues that
the fact that it is a book is just as significant; and if it seems easy to implement as a
computer program, that is because ofthe simple and unstrained elegance ofits idea."
Examples of printed text are just as open, even in Eco's sense, as electronic texts exist;
the question, however, remains whether it is very helpful for the understanding of
interaction and interactive structures to look for 'literal' implementations of the
construction kit metaphor. Theories ofreading stress the subtlety and complexity of the
reading and sense-making process, and, in a similar manner to the oversimplification of
intertextua1ity to a more immediate reference system (as discussed in the previous
83 O.B.Hardison Jr., Disappearing Through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century
(New York: Viking Penguin, 1989), p.20I.
84William Paulson, "Computers, Minds, and Texts: Preliminary Reflections", New Literary History, V.20
n.z (Winter 1989),PP.291-304 (P.297).
85Espen J.Aarseth, "Non-Linearity and Literary Theory", in: HyperlTextffheory, ed.by George P.
Landow (Baltimore, MA:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), PP·51-86 (p.67)·
Chapter 3 -page 126