Alipogram (fromAncient Greek:λειπογράμματος,leipográmmatos, "leaving out a letter"[1]) is a kind ofconstrained writing orword game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided.[2][3] Extended Ancient Greek texts avoiding the lettersigma are the earliest examples of lipograms.[4]
Writing a lipogram may be a trivial task when avoiding uncommon letters likeZ,J,Q, orX, but it is much more challenging to avoidcommon letters likeE,T, orA in the English language, as the author must omit many ordinary words. Grammatically meaningful and smooth-flowing lipograms can be difficult to compose. Identifying lipograms can also be problematic, as there is always the possibility that a given piece of writing in any language may be unintentionally lipogrammatic. For example,Poe's poemThe Raven contains noZ, but there is no evidence that this was intentional.
Apangrammatic lipogram is a text that uses every letter of the alphabet except one. For example, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" omits the letterS, whichthe usual pangram includes by using the wordjumps.
Lasus of Hermione, who lived during the second half of the sixth century BCE, is the most ancient author of a lipogram. This makes the lipogram, according toQuintus Curtius Rufus, "the most ancient systematic artifice of Western literature".[5] Lasus did not like thesigma, and excluded it from one of his poems, entitledOde to the Centaurs, of which nothing remains; as well as aHymn to Demeter, of which the first verse remains:[5]
| Original Δάματρα μέλπω Κόραν τε Κλυμένοι᾽ ἄλοχον | Transliteration Dámatra mélpô Kóran te Klyménoi᾽ álochon | English translation I chant of Demeter and Kore, Wife of the famed [Hades] |
The Greek poets from late antiquityNestor of Laranda andTryphiodorus wrote lipogrammatic adaptations of the Homeric poems: Nestor composed anIliad, which was followed by Tryphiodorus'Odyssey.[7] Both Nestor's Iliad and Tryphiodorus' Odyssey were composed of 24 books (like the original Iliad and Odyssey) each book omitting a subsequent letter of theGreek alphabet. Therefore, the first book omitted alpha, the second beta, the third gamma, and so forth.[4]
Twelve centuries after Tryphiodorus wrote his lipogrammaticOdyssey, in 1711, the influential Londonessayist and journalistJoseph Addison commented on this work (although it had been lost), arguing that "it must have been amusing to see the most elegant word of the language rejected like "a diamond with a flaw in it" if it was tainted by the proscribed letter".[8]
Petrus Riga, a canon of Sainte-Marie de Reims during the 11th century, translated the Bible, and due to its scriptural obscurities called itAurora. Each canto of the translation was followed by a resume in Lipogrammatic verse; the first canto has noA, the second has noB, the third has noC, and so on. There are two hundred and fifty manuscripts of Petrus Riga's Bible still preserved.[9]
There is a tradition of German and Italian lipograms excluding the letterR dating from the seventeenth century until modern times. While some authors excluded other letters, it was the exclusion of theR which ensured the practice of the lipogram continued into modern times. In German especially, theR, while not the most prevalent letter, has a very important grammatical role, as masculine pronouns, etc. in the nominative case include anR (e.g.er,der,dieser,jener,welcher).[10] For the Italian authors, it seems to be a profound dislike of the letterR which prompted them to write lipograms excluding this letter (and often only this letter).[11]
There is also a long tradition ofvocalic lipograms, in which a vowel (or vowels) is omitted. This tends to be the most difficult form of the lipogram. This practice was developed mainly in Spain by the Portuguese author Alonso de Alcala y Herrera who published an octavo entitledVarios efectos de amor, en cinco novelas exemplares, y nuevo artificio para escribir prosa y versos sin una de las letras vocales. From Spain, the method moved into France[12] and England.[11]
One of the most remarkable examples of a lipogram isErnest Vincent Wright's novelGadsby (1939), which has over 50,000 words but not a single letterE.[13] Wright's self-imposed rule prohibited such common English words asthe andhe, plurals ending in-es, past tenses ending in-ed, and even abbreviations likeMr. (since it is short forMister) orRob (forRobert). Yet the narration flows fairly smoothly, and the book was praised by critics for its literary merits.[14][15]
Wright was motivated to writeGadsby by an earlier four-stanza lipogrammatic poem of another author.[16]
Even earlier, Spanish playwrightEnrique Jardiel Poncela published five short stories between 1926 and 1927, each one omitting a vowel; the best known are "El Chofer Nuevo" ("The new Driver"), without the letterA, and "Un marido sin vocación" ("A Vocationless Husband"), without theE.[17][18]
Interest in lipograms was rekindled byGeorges Perec's novelLa Disparition (1969) (openly inspired by Wright'sGadsby) and its English translationA Void byGilbert Adair.[13] Both works are missing the letterE, which is the most common letter in French as well as in English. A Spanish translation instead omits the letterA, the second most common letter in that language. Perec subsequently wroteLes Revenentes (1972), a novel that uses no vowels except forE. Perec was a member ofOulipo, a group of French authors who adopted a variety of constraints in their work.La Disparition is, to date, the longest lipogram in existence.[19]
Lipograms are sometimes dismissed by academia. "Literary history seems deliberately to ignore writing as practice, as work, as play".[20]
In his bookRethinking Writing, Roy Harris notes that without the ability to analyse language, the lipogram would be unable to exist. He argues that "the lipogram would be inconceivable unless there were writing systems based on fixed inventories of graphic units, and unless it were possible to classify written texts on the base of the presence or absence of one of those unitsirrespective of any phonetic value it might have or any function in the script". He then continues on to argue that as the Greeks were able to invent this system of writing as they had a concept of literary notation. Harris then argues that the proof of this knowledge is found in the Greek invention of "a literate game which consists, essentially, in superimposing the structure of a notation on the structure of texts".[21]
Apangrammatic lipogram orlipogrammaticpangram uses every letter of the alphabet except one. An example omitting the letterE is:[22]
A jovial swain should not complain
Of any buxom fair
Who mocks his pain and thinks it gain
To quiz his awkward air.
A longer example is "Fate of Nassan", an anonymous poem dating from pre-1870, where each stanza is a lipogrammatic pangram using every letter of the alphabet exceptE.[23]
Bold Nassan quits his caravan,
A hazy mountain grot to scan;
Climbs jaggy rocks to spy his way,
Doth tax his sight, but far doth stray.
Not work of man, nor sport of child
Finds Nassan on this mazy wild;
Lax grow his joints, limbs toil in vain—
Poor wight! why didst thou quit that plain?
Vainly for succour Nassan calls;
Know, Zillah, that thy Nassan falls;
But prowling wolf and fox may joy
To quarry on thy Arab boy.
One other pangrammatic lipogram omitting only the letterE is:
Now focus your mind vigorously on this paragraph and on all its words. What’s so unusual about it? Don’t just zip through it quickly. Go through it slowly. Tax your brain as much as you can.
The KJV Bible unintentionally contains two lipogrammatic pangrams: Ezra 7:21 lacks onlyJ, and 1 Chronicles 12:40 lacks onlyQ.[24]
Another type of lipogram, which omits every instance of a letter from words that would otherwise contain it, as opposed to finding other words that do not contain the letter, was recorded byWillard R. Espy in181 Missing O's,[25] based on C. C. Bombaugh'sunivocalic 'Incontrovertible Facts'.[26]
N mnk t gd t rb r cg r plt.
N fl s grss t blt Sctch cllps ht.
Frm Dnjn's tps n rnc rlls.
Lgwd, nt Lts, flds prt's bwls.
Bx tps, nt bttms, schl-bys flg fr sprt.
Trps f ld tsspts, ft, t st, cnsrt.
N cl mnsns blw sft n xfrd dns,
rthdx, dg-trt, bk-wrm Slmns.
Bld strgths f ghsts n hrrr shw.
n Lndn shp-frnts n hp-blssms grw.
T crcks f gld n dd lks fr fd.
n sft clth ftstls n ld fx dth brd.
Lng strm-tst slps frlrn, wrk n t prt.
Rks d nt rst n spns, nr wd-ccks snrt,
N dg n snw-drp r n cltsft rlls,
Nr cmmn frg cncct lng prtcls.
The above is also a conventional lipogram in omitting the letters A, E, I, O, and U.
American author James Thurber wroteThe W[o]nderful [O] (1957), a fairy tale in which villains ban the letter 'O' from the use by the inhabitants of the island of [Oo]r[oo].
The bookElla Minnow Pea byMark Dunn (2001) is described as a "progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable": the plot of the story deals with a small country that begins to outlaw the use of various letters as the tiles of each letter fall off of a statue. As each letter is outlawed within the story, it is (for the most part) no longer used in the text of the novel. It is not purely lipogrammatic, however, because the outlawed letters do appear in the text proper from time to time (the characters being penalized with banishment for their use) and when the plot requires a search forpangram sentences, all twenty-six letters are obviously in use. Also, late in the text, the author begins using letters serving ashomophones for the omitted letters (i.e.,PH in place of anF,G in place ofC), which may be considered cheating. At the beginning of each chapter, the alphabet appears along with a sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". As the letters are removed from the story, the alphabet, and sentence changes.
In Rebeccah Giltrow'sTwenty-Six Degrees, each of the twenty-six chapters, narrated by a different character, deliberately excludes one of the twenty-six letters while using the other twenty-five at least once. And each of the twenty-six letters is excluded from one and only one chapter (the first chapter excludesA, the second chapter excludesB, the third chapter excludesC, etc., the last (twenty-sixth) chapter excludesZ).[citation needed]
Cipher and Poverty (The Book of Nothing), a book byMike Schertzer (1998), is presented as the writings of "a prisoner whose world had been impoverished to a single utterance ... who can find me here in this silence". The poems that follow use only the vowelsA,E,I, andO, and consonantsC,D,F,H,L,M,N,R,S,T, andW, taken from that utterance.
Another example is the bookEunoia written by Canadian authorChristian Bök (2001). The title uses every vowel once and each of the five chapters is its own lipogram. The first chapter only uses words that have the vowel "A" and no other vowels, the second exclusively uses words that only have the vowel "E", the third only uses words with just the vowel "I", and so on.[28]
In December 2009, a collective of crime writers, Criminal Brief, published eight days of articles as a Christmas-themed lipogrammatic exercise.[29]
In June 2013, finance authorAlan Corey published "The Subversive Job Search",[30] a non-fiction lipogram that omitted the letter "Z".[31]
In the ninth episode of the ninth season ofHow I Met Your Mother, "Platonish", Lily and Robin challenge Barney to obtain a girl's phone number without using the letterE.
A website called the Found Poetry Review asked each of its readers (as part of a larger series of challenges) to compose a poem avoiding all letters in the title of the newspaper that had already been selected. For example, if the reader was using theNew York Times, then they could not use the lettersE,I,K,M,N,O,R,S,T,W, andY.[32]
Grant Maierhofer'sEbb, a novel published in 2023, by Kernpunkt Press, was written entirely without the letter "A".
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InTurkey the tradition of "Lebdeğmez atışma" or "Dudak değmez aşık atışması" (literally: twotroubadours throwing verses at each other where lips do not touch each other) that is still practiced,[33] a form of instantaneously improvised poetry sung by opposingAshiks taking turns for artfully criticising each other with one verse at a time, usually by each placing a pin between their upper and lower lips so that the improvised song, accompanied by aSaz (played by the ashik himself), consists only of labial lipograms i.e. without words where lips must touch each other, effectively excluding the letters B, F, M, P and V from the text of the improvised songs.
The seventh- or eighth-centuryDashakumaracharita byDaṇḍin includes a prominent lipogrammatic section at the beginning of the seventh chapter. Mantragupta is called upon to relate his adventures. However, during the previous night of vigorous lovemaking, his lips have been nibbled several times by his beloved; as a result, they are now swollen, making it painful for him to close them. Thus, throughout his narrative, he is compelled to refrain from using anylabial consonants (प,फ,ब,भ,म).
In France, J. R. Ronden premièredla Pièce sans A (The Play without A) in 1816.[34]Jacques Arago wrote in 1853 a version of hisVoyage autour du monde (Voyage around the world), but without the lettera.[35]Georges Perec published in 1969La Disparition, a novel without the lettere, the most commonly used letter of the alphabet in French. Its published translation into English,A Void, byGilbert Adair, won theScott Moncrieff Prize in 1995.[36]
In Sweden, a form of lipogram was developed out of necessity at theLinköping University. Because files were shared and moved between computer platforms where the internal representation of the charactersÅ,Ä,Ö,å,ä, andö (all moderately common vowels) were different, the tradition to write comments in source code without using those characters emerged.[citation needed]
Zanzō ni Kuchibeni o (1989) byYasutaka Tsutsui is a progressively lipogrammatic novel in Japanese. The first chapter is written without the syllableあ (a), the second without あ andい (i), the third without あ, い, andう (u), and so on; usable syllables decrease as the story advances. In the last chapter, the last syllable,ん (n), vanishes and the story is closed.
Zero Degree (1991) byCharu Nivedita is a lipogrammatic novel inTamil. The entire novel is written without the common wordஒரு (oru, "one", also used as the indefinite article), and there are no punctuation marks in the novel except dots. Later the novel was translated into English.[clarification needed]
Russian 18th-century poetGavriil Derzhavin avoided the harshR sound (and the letterР that represents it) in his poem "The Nightingale" to render the bird's singing.
The seventh-century Arab theologianWasil ibn Ata gave a sermon without the letterrāʾ (R).[37] However, it was the 19th-century Mufti of Damascus, Mahmud Hamza "al-Hamzawi" (d. 1887), who produced perhaps the most remarkable work of this genre with a completecommentary of the Quran (published in two volumes) without dotted letters in either the introduction or interlinear commentary.[38] This is all the more remarkable becausedotted letters make up about half of the Arabic alphabet.
InHungarian language, the game "eszperente" is a game where people only speak using words that contain the vowel "e"; as this makes otherwise straightforward communication complicated, a lot of creative thinking is required in describing common terms in roundabout ways.
In Spanish, Mexican authorÓscar de la Borbolla, published in 1991Las vocales malditas (the cursed vowels), a compilation of five short stories composed using a single different vowel: "Cantata a Satanás" (Cantata to Satan), "El hereje rebelde" (the rebel heretic), "Mimí sin bikini" (Mimi without a bikini), "Los locos somos otro cosmos" (we the fools are an another cosmos), and "Un gurú vudú" (a voodoo guru).
While a lipogram is usually limited to literary works, there are alsochromatic lipograms, works of music that avoid the use of certain notes. Examples avoiding either the second, sixth, and tenth notes, or the third, seventh, and eleventh notes in achromatic scale have been cited.[39]
Areverse lipogram, also known as anantilipo[40] ortransgram[41] is a type ofconstrained writing where each word must contain a particular letter in the text. For example, this is a short antilipo where each word contains the letter "O":
Once someone’s gone, nobody loses; also, victory’s not for people who don’t know about world history.
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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