Belle absente¶
belle_absente · letter · validated
A poem with one line per letter of a dedicatee's name, each line omitting exactly that letter while using every other letter of the alphabet.
Provenance¶
- Source: Georges Perec, in Oulipo, Atlas de littérature potentielle (1981)
- Attribution:
primary— a named author, work and year this catalogue stands behind - Checkability:
self— decidable from the text and its parameters alone - Attested:
author-stated— the originator set this rule down
Details¶
- Kind: restrictive
- Languages: en, fr
- Requires:
alphabet,fold_diacritics - Deterministic: yes
- Also known as: beautiful absent
- In other languages: Belle absente (fr)
Prompt hint¶
Write one line per letter of the name; each line omits that letter and uses all the others.
Parameters¶
| Name | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
fold_diacritics |
boolean | True |
Treat accented letters as their base letter, and ß as ss. |
name |
string | — |
The dedicatee. One line per letter of it. |
Examples¶
two-letter-dedication¶
en — this text satisfies the procedure.
b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
a c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Parameters: name='ab'
Source: constructed example; the form is Perec's, in Oulipo, Atlas de littérature potentielle (1981)
a-line-keeping-its-own-letter¶
en — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
banana
banana
Parameters: name='ab'
Source: constructed counterexample
dedicace-a-deux-lettres¶
fr — this text satisfies the procedure.
b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
a c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Parameters: name='ab'
Source: constructed example; the form is Perec's, in Oulipo, Atlas de littérature potentielle (1981). Letter-level, so the lines are the alphabet itself: what the French case exercises is the French pack's alphabet and tokenisation, not French wording.
une-ligne-garde-sa-lettre¶
fr — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
banane
banane
Parameters: name='ab'
Source: constructed counterexample