French writer Raymond Queneau’s famous collection of over a hundred thousand billion written poems.
It’s been over 60 years since Raymond Queneau shocked the world with his groundbreaking publican of Cent mille milliards de poèmes (A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems). This ten-page book of sonnets features ten sonnets of fourteen lines each. The kicker? The volume claims to feature a hundred thousand billion unique poems, making it the largest collection of poems in the world. Curious how? Read on to find out.
Queneau’s Way with Words
Raymond Queneau was a French novelist and a co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or Oulipo. The idea behind Oulipo was ”a workshop of potential literature.”
The group of French writers and mathematicians investigated the potential of the written word under structural constraints and aimed to create new patterns of writing for artists to enjoy.
The Surrealists of France
Queneau was creative at heart, always looking for new inspiration for his art and personal life to thrive. In 1924, he was briefly a member of the famous group of Surrealist artists, which included many famed names like André Breton, Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso.
He separated from the group after ideological and political differences, but embraced many of their core values, like dream-like artistic encouragement from the unconscious mind.
You Do the Math
The book itself is a collection of ten sonnets in the traditional fourteen-line form. Each line is printed on an individual strip of paper, as seen above. Every sonnet features the same rhyme scheme and rhyme sound, meaning that each line of each sonnet could be combined with lines from any other sonnet and still make a complete, accurate poem.
With ten sonnets total at fourteen lines each, you’ll get 10^14, equaling 100,000,000,000,000 and thus creating a hundred thousand billion unique sonnets. Queneau estimated that anyone aiming to finish the book would need to read 24 hours a day and it would still take roughly 190,258,751 years to complete.
Join our community of 1.5M readers
Like this story? You’ll love our weekly newsletter.
Welcome to the 1000 Libraries community!
Migz
Carley Bishop
Carley is an editorial lifestyle writer and aspiring novelist. She is based in North Carolina where she resides with her husband and their puppy, Daisy, and is a proud graduate of University of South Carolina. Carley is a lifelong bookworm who enjoys reading everything from the classics to modern romances. When she's not reading or writing, she enjoys traveling, getting outside and trying new recipes at home.
