On Friday 7 February 2020, at 8.15pm at Casa della Poesia (Via Convento 21/a Baronissi (Salerno), Roberto Lombardi reads EXERCISES IN STYLE by Raymond Queneau.
There is no degree zero of writing - perhaps not even in the caption -: the word always contains an albeit minimal degree of expression, together with the information that conveys.
Queneau, in his "Exercises in style", explodes the form, leading it, in a playful and highly rhetorical crescendo, to cancel out any illusory content pretention.
If in music the variations on a theme are very widespread, since musical art is pure form, in literature they are much less known: the "Variations on a Commendatore" by Flaiano, some "Patiches" by Proust, the "Exemplary Crimes" by Aub and a few other examples in addition to Queneau's essential text.