“L’OuLiPo”: mixing maths and literature

How constraints can help creativity

In 1911, the French writer André Gide said that:

“Art is born from constraint, thrives in the struggle and is killed by freedom”

(Personal translation of the original quote)

Although some might disagree and believe that one should create in total liberty, others have decidedly followed this path to eventually come together as a group of writers and mathematicians called the “OuLiPo”.

The OuLiPo (link in French) is named after a French acronym that stands for “Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle” — which can be roughly translated as “workshop of potential literature”. While it originally started in France in the 1960s, this group of is now all over the world: beside publishing new artworks regularly, they also organise conferences, seminars, sessions…

Their goal is to use mathematical constraints and tools to write books, poems, or any other type of literary content; for example, you might know of Georges Pérec’s book, La Disparition: in this example, the author wrote an entire story without using the letter “e” a single time (quite a feat since this letter is the most frequent in French!). This text illustrates the mathematical idea of…