Roubaud, Jacques (b. 1932). French mathematician, poet, novelist, a member of Oulipo since 1966, author of authoritative studies of French verse and of the lyrics of the troubadours, and disciple of Queneau. Roubaud's literary work is an exemplary demonstration of the creative potential of form and of the interpenetration of mathematics and literature. In ɛ (1967) he structured a poem-sequence according to the rules of the Japanese board-game go, which he helped introduce into France (Petit Traité invitant à la découverte de l'art subtil du go, 1969, in collaboration with Pierre Lusson and Georges Perec). Together with Jean-Pierre Faye, Roubaud launched the review Change in 1970, to counter the influence of Tel Quel. His best-known work of poetry, Quelque chose noir (1986), is a moving lamentation of the death of his second wife Alix Cléo Roubaud. Since then he has published a trilogy of comic novels (La Belle Hortense, L'Enlèvement d'Hortense, L'Exil d'Hortense) which take up themes and games from the works of Queneau; and a brilliant, difficult narrative account of a great work he can never write, entitled ‘Le Grand Incendie de Londres’. In this ‘story with bifurcations and interpolations’, Roubaud asserts that he now knows that he will never rival Sterne, Malory, Murasaki, Henry James, Szentkuthy, etc; readers may judge him less harshly, particularly after the appearance of the second ‘branch’ of his increasingly autobiographical ‘project’, La Boucle (1993).
[David Bellos]
