Jacques Roubaud, you refer to
yourself as a 'poetry composer'.
What do you mean by this?
The
main idea is that poetry can be understood like music. I am a composer
who works with words, as the musician works with sound. It sits
somewhere on the crossroads between mathematics, music and poetry. My
first book is a book of sonnets. What I liked is the extraordinary
richness of composition in this form. I wanted to trace where it came
from, so I went back to the Troubadours, and their way of constructing
the texts, the cansos, their work on the melody of rhymes. It is so
rich! […]
How do you envisage the poet in
today's society?
I swing between an
optimistic version and a pessimistic version. For example, it is said that the computer will render the book obsolete.
Still, we have never seen someone read a complete novel on screen, but why not.
On the other hand, for poems, it's very easy, and we can even see on the screen the poet
reading himself. It's great; I'm completely in favor of it... So I'm
not completely pessimistic. So long as “le
vroum-vroum” doesn't replace poetry! There are a lot of
readings of poetry today, the festivals, but for a while now poetry has
been disappearing and is being replaced by what is called the
“live spectacle”. For example, someone comes and
goes down a staircase on wheels. That will be: poetry! There is an
impulse within those who compose, tending equally to question poetry.
This becomes natural, to abandon more and more frequently the central
core which is language, precisely because it is very difficult. To make
poetry dependent on gesture, dance, theater, direction, is no longer
related to poetry for me, poetry is in language, poetry is in a
language. There is a special relationship between the poetry of a
language and that language. The systems of composing, the formal
systems which represent poetry in different languages are linked to
history. So if we destroy this, we lose something. Poetry is the memory
of language, collective memory: language is as much a collective object
as individual memory. My language is mine through poetry as well. And I
want to maintain the possibility of coming to give a complex lecture
with no help except the words that one is going to say.
How is it that you were already
an “oulipien” in a certain way before you joined
the group?
It's the axiomatic method!
One of the models for the foundation of the OuLiPo by Francois Le
Lionnais and Raymond Queneau was very dogmatic. It was a kind of
“hommage and desecration” (laughs). Because
it’s difficult to claim founding literature on the
“oulipian” constraints. So, it’s
entertainment as well. At the same time, the notion of
“playing” is very ambiguous, people often question
it. Our response is to borrow (not in a serious way, nor a responsible
way), three ideas from Wittgenstein; the first, that of the game of
language. To work according to the “oulipian”
constraints is to enter into a certain game of language. The second
thing, linked to the first and very important, is that a game of
language, if it is followed through, is a way of life, game of
language-way of life. It is not interesting to consider the game of
language on its own, it only becomes interesting if it is a way of
life. And the third thing; one cannot define precisely what such a game
of language is, but everything that happens within a game of language
resembles each other : Wittgenstein uses the metaphor of family
resemblance. The “oulipian” texts have between them
a clear resemblance, which surprises everyone. […]
How would you place Parc Sauvage?
At
first I wanted the Project to be : mathematic-poetry-novel. I wanted to
write a great novel, but I didn't manage it! My model was Genji
Manogatari. The novel is a great genre, it is the great literary genre.
So, if one is interested in the novel, one would want to imitate
Dickens, Thomas Mann, there are many examples of extraordinary novels.
One can write a short one, a long one...I gave up on this, but one can
write more modest novels. Hortense is more of an ironic novel on the
novel, Parc Sauvage is almost a novel, but it remains closer to the
tale.
One
of the striking things in Hortense, but not only there, is that you
play a lot with the notion of possible worlds...What does this
represent?
For mathematicians and
logicians, the question of possible worlds is a very important one. I
came upon a book which fascinated me by David Lewis on the plurality of
worlds. He took Leibnitz's hypothesis with an entirely philosophical
conviction: all the worlds which are logically coherent exist. Not only
ours. It is a question which could be posed at a more personal level in
the case of grief : this poses the problem of an afterlife. When
someone who you have loved dies, you tell yourself that person perhaps
exists in another possible world, with the question, is a trans-world
voyage possible? You think of the afterlife of the other as well, in a
world which is not our world, which is not defined by our options.
There is equally the possibility of imagining that there is an
afterlife in another world, but organized like ours: that's the
plurality of worlds. Lewis's The Plurality of Worlds took its point of
departure from this idea, to confront the question of the afterlife of
my wife Alix. The majority of people think that the idea of other
possible worlds is nothing but pure speculation. I am not talking about
other worlds as expounded by the religions, I am agnostic. And yet,
that possible worlds exist, which are not our own, is something evident
which we don't think about: our world, that in which we live, is a
possible world, since it has existed. But we cannot go back!
[…]
In
what way is your 'memory prose' neither autobiography nor 'autofiction'?
I
would have been afraid, in doing that, to resemble the character of
Chateaubriand in 'A la maniére de' : he goes to the Indians,
describes his meeting with the chief and says 'I told them about me,
and more about me!' (laughs). I take elements of memory and
recollections which are linked to my Project, and to the description of
my Project, its formation, its development, its disappearance. The
problem is that now it becomes more difficult. I find it more and more
difficult to situate myself in the past, even though I have the
impression of having that at my disposition, and that was the case for
several years, sustained by the advancement of prose.
I have a
certain number of work-books, but they are poetic notes, reflexions on
restrictions, things like that. I don't have any precise routine, not
even an agenda. A notebook which I use to take totally technical notes.
Once I have used it, I throw it away. Because this memory cannot
function unless it has as little recourse as possible to the external :
things which are outside the memory destroy the memory. […]
We warmly thank Lucie Clair and
Philippe Savary for allowing us to translate this interview by Lucie
for “Le Matricule des Anges”, N°90, Février 2008.
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