alexpgp | On the art of constrained writing...

Constrained writing -- I just ran across the term -- is apparently the name given to a genre that has to do has to do with the construction of a work of prose or poetry that obeys one or more artificially-imposed rules.

I've been aware of the existence of such works for some time, since before the start of my freelance writing career in the mid-80s. In fact, the second article I sold to a magazine -- and one I got paid for despite it never actually getting published -- had to do with writing a program that aided in a trial-and-error solution of a simple substitution cipher.

In the article, I deliberately made use of a "mystery cipher" that -- in the end -- had been written without the use of the letter 'e'. It's not hard to think of a grammatically valid string of words that lacks such a symbol. (The previous sentence is, ahem, an example. :^) My inspiration for such a constraint in my article was the novel Gadsby, written by one Ernest Vincent Wright in 1938 with, to say it another way, zero wear and tear on the 'e' key of his typewriter.

It turns out there is another such novel, La disparition, by George Perec, which is apparently still in print and available in an English translation -- A Void, by Gilbert Adair -- that also holds to the constraint!

I found this out while looking at a page containing a poem that weaves itself -- by imitating tone, story, and rhyme scheme -- into something that wants to step into the shoes of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, but with the ulterior goal of encoding the first 740 digits of pi!

An excerpt:
Poe, E.
Near a Raven

Midnights so dreary, tired and weary.
  Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap - the weirdest tap!
  An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber's antedoor.
    "This", I whispered quietly, "I ignore".

Perfectly, the intellect remembers: the ghostly fires, a glittering ember.
  Inflamed by lightning's outbursts, windows cast penumbras upon this floor.
Sorrowful, as one mistreated, unhappy thoughts I heeded:
  That inimitable lesson in elegance - Lenore -
    Is delighting, exciting...nevermore.

Ominously, curtains parted (my serenity outsmarted),
And fear overcame my being - the fear of "forevermore".
Fearful foreboding abided, selfish sentiment confided,
As I said, "Methinks mysterious traveler knocks afore.
    A man is visiting, of age threescore."

Taking little time, briskly addressing something: "Sir," (robustly)
  "Tell what source originates clamorous noise afore?
Disturbing sleep unkindly, is it you a-tapping, so slyly?
  Why, devil incarnate!--" Here completely unveiled I my antedoor--
    Just darkness, I ascertained - nothing more.

This sure beats the pants off of:

How I want a drink -- alcoholic of course -- after the heavy chapters involving quantum mechanics.

But I digress... The key to deciphering pi is, of course, linked to the number of letters in each sequential word (punctuation doesn't count, i.e., "is it you a-tapping, so slyly?" is "2231725"), with the following variations: the number zero is encoded by a word 10 characters long, and a letter longer than 10 characters encodes two places (e.g., "ascertained" is "11").

The excerpt represents 157 places past the decimal point, by the way.

Cheers...