Jacques Roubaud in London: Oulipo and the Second World War
This weekend, a series of conference will be held at Senate House on the subject of “Oulipo and the Second World War”.The Oulipo is a group, founded in the 1960s, gathering writers and mathematicians who create their works following a specific set of constraints. “Oulipo” is a shortened form of “Ouvroir de littérature potentielle”, more or less “a workshop for potential literature”, potential literature being defined as pursuing new literary forms, rules, and patterns. Oulipians Jacques Roubaud and Olivier Salon will be in conversation on Friday evening, and there will be a reading by Salon of Oulipo co-founder Francois le Lionnais’s La Peinture à Dora. If you are interested in experimental post-war French literature, this is an event you absolutely shouldn’t miss!
Jacques Roubaud was born in 1932. His father taught philosophy, and his mother taught English; his grandfather, who was also a teacher, played an active role in nurturing his grandchildren’s love for reading. His childhood unfolded in the shadow of the Second World War, with most of his family involved in the Résistance - Britain’s role during the war, and his mother’s education, contributed to a life-long passion for the country and its language. As he was raised in such a book-friendly environment, it is little surprise that Roubaud’s literary career actually predates his joining the Oulipo: in 1944, aged only 12, he published his first collection of poems titled Poésies Juvéniles; his second compilation followed suit in 1952. By then he had already caught the eye of Louis Aragon. After his baccalauréat, Jacques Roubaud first chose literary studies, but he soon realised that they did not suit him at all. Instead he turned to mathematics, which he taught at university for twenty-one years.
The Oulipians
Roubaud is thus a peculiar writer, one that was trained in mathematics and working as a professor for most of his life; thus he is one of the rare contemporary writers who didn’t earn his living through the writing or studying of literature. Still he defines himself above all as a poet, and looking at his extensive bibliography, it is obvious that he never deserted literature. A couple of other traits feed into the idiosyncratic feel he gives: unlike many others of his generation, Roubaud did not develop a fascination for psychoanalysis and the work of Lacan; and for the most part he reads in English rather than in French, fearing a “porosity” with his poetic work.
His work is mostly structured in the forms of series: a series of 9 poetry publications in total, began with Octogone; a cycle of 3 novels centred around Our Beautiful Heroine, and a “prose of memory” began with his prose masterpiece The Great Fire of London (Dalkey Archive Press). Roubaud’s body of work did not come from the impulsive vagaries of a “wild poet”, it was carefully planned: each book’s position in relation to others is significant. On the other hand, the creation itself proceeds, from an authentic Oulipian approach: walking through the city, “reading the streets”, listening to all its “infra-sounds” of daily lives. Mathematics, of course, play an important part, which Roubaud describes as a reservoir full of potential poetic forms and rules.
