(15-04-2021, 05:43 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (15-04-2021, 05:13 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That's interesting. In the Bennett's book I read about some guy who wrote a whole novel altogether without the letter "e", but I never knew that the idea dates back to centuries BC. Are there any historic examples where functional words would be omitted?
The late 12th and early 13th century French poet Petrus Riga wrote a verse commentary on the Bible (in Latin of course) titled Aurora, which has been called the verse Bible of the Middle Ages. Each canto of it is followed by a summary in lipogrammatic verse, the first without A, the second without B, the third without C, and so on through the Latin alphabet. You can read the lipogrammatic verses You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.: the lipograms can be found on pp. 8-13 of this pdf file, which are pp. 32-42 of the work, Fragmenta ex Aurora.
I have attached a MS Word file of the text of the most interesting of Petrus Riga's
Aurora lipogrammatic verses, in my view: the ones written without using A, B, C, E, I, O, Q, and V respectively. (Ok, the one without B is not that interesting, but I must include it after proposing a hypothesis of lipogrammatic text without ABC.) Hopefully this format will make it more convenient for purposes of searching and performing statistical analysis of the text. I apologize for any typographical errors that may have crept into my transcription work; hopefully the number of them is minimal enough that it will not significantly affect any statistical analysis of the text.
Here are a few of my notes and comments about these medieval Latin lipogrammatic verses:
"Sine A" is 10 lines long. It does contain the ligature "æ" twice in the line "Ecclesiæ signum fuit hæc de corpore Christi".
"Sine C" is 18 lines long. But it contains forms of "Christus" five times, and the editor explains this in a footnote as follows: "C. in Ch. aut saltem in voce Christus a littera C. ordinaria diversa habetur, scribiturque plerumque in codicibus veteribus mss. Ch. in Christus per Græcum X. Quamvis vero hæc vox excusari possit, tamen in aliis versibus auctor aut scriba adversus institutum pugnavit quo littera C. abesse debebat."
Further, in two other places in the "Sine C" verses, the text contains the words "crucemque" and "construxit", and the editor adds the following explanatory footnotes respectively: "
Fidemque rectius ut C careat vocabulum." and "Ad C. tollendum potuisset scribi :
Qui turrim Nimroth exstruxit, vel :
Nemrothus turrim qui struxit."
"Sine E" is 12 lines long. Unlike the "Sine A" and "Sine O" verses, here the author does not use either of the ligatures "æ" or "œ".
It is notable that the exclusion of the letter "e" in Latin precludes the use of both the word "et" and the suffix "-que", the standard ways to express the basic conjunction meaning "and".
However, the text of this "Sine E" verse
contains the word "et" once, and the editor adds the following explanatory footnote: "Rectius :
ac."
"Sine I" and "Sine O" are 22 lines and 28 lines long respectively, suggesting that it is significantly harder to not use "A" or "E" in Latin text than it is to not use "I" or "O".
However, the author does still use the ligature "œ" once in the "Sine O" verse, in the word "cœlesti".
I find "Sine Q" very interesting, since here the author may not use a whole host of basic Latin function words such as "-que", forms of "quis", "quid", "qui", etc.
(Only once in the 26 lines of the "Sine Q" verses did the author allow a single "-que" suffix to sneak in, in the line "Ecclesiam mulier signat Christumque propheta :". The editor does not comment on this either.)
I sense a "choppier" feel to the syntax of the "Sine Q" verses due to the lack of these "q-" function words. This verse also includes "dialogue" such as "Clamantes : Crucifige Jesum ! crucifige !"
Finally, there is no "Sine U" verse! Moreover, the "Sine V" verse contains the letter "u" in the suffix "-que" three times, as well as in the words "profuit" and "Num"! Perhaps the author was just tired of the exercise at this point in the alphabet, and just didn't make the effort to write a verse without the vowel or glide "u", since the official standard Latin alphabet of the time considered "U" to be merely an allograph of the actual letter of the alphabet "V". Maybe the author was not up for making the same effort to avoid all "-qu-" words and forms that he had made in the "Sine Q" verses. I note that "Sine V" is only 10 lines long, and even those 10 lines contain the 5 occurrences of the letter "u" already noted. (By the way, I have great sympathy for Petrus Riga's plight, and I intend these comments to justify his compositional decisions rather than to criticize him for them.)
Perhaps the "Sine Q" verses may thus be seen as the high point of these lipogrammatic verses of Petrus Riga. Therefore I will present these 26 lines here in full, and others may evaluate these verses for yourselves:
"Igneus Heliam rapit ad sublimia currus :
Non ope non curru fertur ad astra Deus.
Hospes inops mulier Heliam pascit, et ille
Pascit eam : magis hæc pascitur , ille minus,
Non huic defecit oleum farrisve medulla,
Nec minui poterat ille vel ille cibus.
Ecclesiam mulier signat Christumque propheta :
Hunc cibat hunc reficit moribus illa bonis.
Est Christi corpus et chrismatis unctio victus :
Hinc cibat Ecclesiam gratia larga Dei.
Iste cibus semper expenditur; iste redundat
Semper; nec minui sive perire potest.
Sumptus in altari panis manet integer; illum
Semper sumis ; eum sumere semper habes.
Ascendat calvus, pueri clamant Helyseo ;
Sed necat ursus eos, devorat ille simul.
Jure notat calvus Christum : calvaria nempe
Dicitur esse loci pars, ubi Christus obit.
Ursi sunt illi duo : Titus, Vespasianus :
Jerusalem cives hic secat, ille necat.
Clamantes : Crucifige Jesum ! crucifige ! necantur,
Et patrum culpas tota propago luit.
Das famulo baculum, tradas Helisæe ministro :
Nil agitur surgit te veniente puer;
Non hominem salvat præmissæ littera legis :
Cœpimus adventu vivere, Christe, tuo."