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WonderLiterary movement fact

French writer Georges Perec's novel La Disparition (1969) never uses the letter e, and that was deliberate. It came out of Oulipo, a group of writers and mathematicians founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais, who set themselves writing rules like this one.

Oulipo

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The story behind the card

A text written without a chosen letter is called a lipogram. In French, e is the most common letter, found in articles, verb endings and countless everyday words, so leaving it out forces constant rewording rather than one clever trick. The title means 'The Disappearance', and the plot turns on something missing. Oulipo stands for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, 'workshop of potential literature': its members used mathematical and linguistic rules to push writing where habit would not take it. Gilbert Adair's English translation, A Void (1994), also avoids e. Other translators dropped the letter hardest to avoid in their own language: the Spanish version has no a, the Russian no о.

Türkçe oku
Fransız yazar Georges Perec'in La Disparition (1969) adlı romanında e harfi bir kez bile geçmez; bu bilinçli bir tercihtir. Roman, Raymond Queneau ile François Le Lionnais'nin 1960'ta kurduğu Oulipo'dan çıktı: Kendilerine böyle yazma kuralları koyan yazar ve matematikçilerden oluşan bir topluluk.

Belirli bir harf kullanılmadan yazılan metne lipogram denir. Fransızcada en sık kullanılan harf e'dir; tanımlıklarda, fiil eklerinde ve sayısız gündelik sözcükte geçer. Bu yüzden onsuz yazmak tek bir kurnazlıkla değil, cümleleri sürekli yeniden kurarak mümkün olur. Romanın adı “Kayboluş” anlamına gelir; olay örgüsü de kaybolan bir şeyin çevresinde döner. Oulipo, Fransızca Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, yani “potansiyel edebiyat atölyesi” adının kısaltmasıdır; üyeleri matematiksel ve dilsel kurallarla yazıyı alışkanlığın götürmeyeceği yerlere zorlamak istiyordu. Gilbert Adair'in 1994'te yayımlanan İngilizce çevirisi A Void'de de e harfi geçmez. Başka çevirmenler kendi dillerinde kaçınması en zor harfi seçti: İspanyolca çeviride a, Rusça çeviride о harfi hiç yoktur.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Oulipo
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