Raymond Queneau

"I've loved Exercises in Style for years. This translation is impeccable, extraordinary. " PHl~IP PULLMAN RAYMOND QUENEAU EXE[RC~SES ~N SlY~[E FOREWORD BY UMBERTO ECO WITH AN ESSAY BY lTALO CALVINO Foreword Reading through the contents pages of fa:ercises ill Style, it would appear that Queneau wasn't working to an overall plan. They're not .. in alphabetical order, nor do they increase in complexity. An expert in rhetorical figures will see immediately that Queneau doesn't employ the full range of these figures, or indeed only rhetorical figures. Figures of speech which are oddly missing include synecdoche, metonymy, oxymoron, zeugma - the list of illustrious absentees goes on. On the other hand, it's true that if Queneau had wanted to follow the classic repertoires of such figures compiled by Pierre Fontanier, not to speak of the German rhetorician Heinrich Lausberg, the total number of exercises would have ended up as far more than a hundred. Nor did Queneau restrict the exercises only to rhetorical figures: in the contents we find parodies of literary genres (like the ode) and of ordinary acts of speech (the abusive, for example). However, on looking more closely, the expert in rhetoric will' notice chat figures of speech and thought and tropes are much more widely represented in the exercises than the titles alone would indicate. In the case of highly technical figures, such as synchysis or epenchesis, Queneau uses the scientific term with a kind of bravado, also because (one just has to read che exercises with "difficult" titles) readers realize immediately that they're not expected to understand so much as admire the author's linguistic vircuosit}\ You need to understand the rule behind the figure in order to admire it properly, bur Queneau leaves it up to the reader to find Vil ~ RAYMOND QUENEAU EXERCISES IN STYLE that out - the element of puzzling it out is probably part of the Yet it is also the case that all this display of rhetorical expertise is game he's playing. not taken too seriously: Queneau frequendy plays around by taking Yet, quite apart from the fact that all the more readable exercises the figures literally (to use an unavoidable oxymoron)-that is to sa}', contain rhetorical figures of various types - and more than one per he applies the technique of a rule to the letter while disregarding its exercise - a reader comes to realize that certain exercises play on a meaning, and turns this into a further element of che game. specific rhetorical figure even when the title is generic and accessible. To illustrate this point: prosthesis, cpenthesis and paragoge all Thcfirstexampleofthisis'Notation'itself,whichisadcmonstration consist in repositioning a letter or phoneme - the first co the front, of sen110 manifestus, in other words of plain and explicit language. the second to the middle, the third to the end of a word - but the 'Double Entry' is an exercise on synonyms and paraphrase - while examples given in the manuals of rhetoric for these figures make 'Retrograde' exemplifies hy~ero11 protero11, Surprises is a survey of sense, so to speak: g11at11s instead of natus, speciality instead of exclamations and both 'Hesitation' and Awkward use the figure of specialty, amongst instead of among. But in the exercises which d11bitatio (since in dubitatio the speaker asks his audience for advice exemplify these figures (though in strict classical terminology che}' on how to organize his speech given the difficulty of the material). arc noc figures so much as virt11tesor vitia eloc11tio11is, adornments or 'Precision', in addition to being a skilful example of redundancy, defects of speech), Queneau shifts letters and syllables around-fore could also be defined in terms of hypotyposis- a detailed description and aft and in the middle - with gay abandon, pushing the figures of an object with the intention of rendering it visible to the listener/ co the point of absurdity. He does the same with apheresis, syncope reader - as could also the five exercises 'Olfactory', 'Gustatory', and apocopc, which, rationally handled, should produce examples 'Tactile', 'Visual' and 'Auditory'. like mittere for omittere, ma 'am for madam, and legit for legitimate, The two exercises entitled 'The Subjective Side' and 'Another but as with the additions of letters and phonemes, the subtractions Subjectivity' are an example of sermoci11atio (in which the speaker pour forth in a torrent, the intention being not to construct a literary appears to quote another person, adopting his style of expression effect but to create noise, even pandemonium. The same occurs with - this figure also applies to numerous other exercises). polyptotes, which normally is che limited repetition of a word in 'Word-.Building' is an example of mots-valise or portmanteau different syntactic contexts, as in the expression "Rome se11le po11vait words. 'Negativities' demonstrates the technique of correctio. Rome faire trembler" ("Only Rome could make Rome tremble"), but 'Insistence' and 'You Know' use pleonasm. 'Ignorance' is an in Queneau 's exercise on the figure the term co11trib11able ("taxpayer" example of retice11tia, and similitude lies at the basis of the group in the English translation) is repeated so often as to produce an effect of exercises on the five senses just mentioned. 'Telegraphic' is a of obsessive nonsense. splendid example of brevitas. 'Hellenisms' provides a classic Synchysis gets similar treatment. lt is a syntactic figure in which example of oratio emendata, and the figure of locus commrmis is anastrophe ("never a breeze up blew") and hyperbaton {"some rise brazenly on display in 'Reactionary'. 'Proper Names' appears, on by sin, and some by virtue fall") are combined to create a confusion strict analysis, to be a bizarre and not entirely explicable case of in the sequence of words which make up the sentence. But Queneau Vossian anronomasia. applies the figure to an entire text (and not for the only time in the VUI IX RAYMOND QUENEAU EXERCISES IN STYLE book, since synchysis or mixwra verbonm1 is necessarily employed in ("srote de filecle" in the original) becomes "srot of strnig", the the exercise entitled 'Permutations by Increasing Groups of Letters'). result of an almost mechanical intervention on the phonic or Many exercises involving variations on alliteration and wrirten form of the word - but doesn't the shift of letters suggest paronomasia - such as 'Homoeotcleuton' (where the alliteration images, which as such already belong to content? Naturally there is on rhc final letter) and 'Parechesis' (where it's on the first) arc are dl!vices - metathesis is one - which start by manipulating the taken to the point of paroxysm. Queneau uses rhetorical figures to expression to set off reverberations ar the level of content (in the obtain comical effects, but at the same time he's also poking fun at same way a good spoonerism should give rise ro embarrassing rhetoric itself. double cntcndres), while there are exercises which start with He can't therefore have taken rhetoric, either as a science or a content (with metaphorical substitution for example) to produce technique, too seriously, dsspite being deeply conversant with it: changes (in this case of bold lexical substitution) at the level of it is this which probably explains the nonchalance and casualness expression. Bue seen in a broad semiotic context, tout se tie11t. with which he puts the exercises together, heedless of system or If we say, "There are many bullfighters in pain," people may classification and just following his own whim. laugh. The effect has been obtained by a simple metaplasm, the At this point, readers might think they understand why Queneau, omission of an S in the word Spain. But why is it less funny to having opted to try out various rhetorical figures at random, say "there are many gull fighters in Spain", which employs another in ocher exercises turns his back on rhetoric to look at literarr metaplasm? Because, semantically speaking, " bullfighters" parody and social convention or refer to different technical and have more to do with Spain than "gulls". The concept arises of scientific jargons. Yet rhetoric is not simply a matter of figures a semantic encrdopedia which has to supply for every word in of speech, pertaining only to elocutio. It includes i11ve11tio and some ideal dictionary a series of information which is not merely dispositio, memory, prommtiatio, the various genres of oratory grammatical. The difference between a mechanical and a significant and of 11arratio, the different techniques of argumentation, the slip of the tongue lies precisely in these connections (or in these rules of compositio - and the standard manuals of rhetoric also incongruities). Thus not even the merely metaplastic exercises can cover poetics, with the who!~ range of literary genres and t}:pes. In be entirely non-semantic. Nor even those which seem deliberately short, reading the Exercises shows us that while Qucneau doesn't to be without meaning, such as all chose which shift lerters around cry out everything there is in the ars r'1etorica, he tries out all sorts within words, can fail co affect our sense of the content. Taken of things which are included in it. His book becomes an exercise on one by one and our of context, they wouldn't make us laugh: they rhetoric itself, indeed a kind of demonstration that rhetoric is to be would appear to be the work of some unhinged typesetter whose found everywhere. boss has gone on holida)'. They become comic in the context of Queneau's project, the metalinguistic challenge which underlies What the Exercises teach us above all is that there is no precise the E.--cercises as a whole. dividing line between figures of expression and figures of content.

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