Raphèl

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Year: 
2003
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On the Web, Bernardo Schiavetta proposes Raphèl. Raphèl is a multilingual cento, a collage poem of quotations in various languages, which is to be read as the endless commentary of a sentence from the Divine Comedy, an asemantic sentence attributed by Dante to Nimrod, the builder of the Tower of Babel. The basic form of Raphèl is a cyclic stanza of ten lines which can reproduce itself infinitely if the reader clicks on one of its ten linear links and/or ten interlinear links: A click on a line in the left column gives access to its source. A click (precise) on a line spacing gives access to the corresponding stanza at the next level.

Raphèl is thus a poetic hypertext whose very form relies on the hyperlink. As far as Raphèl develops a formal process of proliferation of lines based on the principle of the cento and the crown of sonnets, this "unlimited babelic hyperpoem" is structurally a never ending text.

(Source: Serge Bouchardon, "Digital Literature in France")

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Scott Rettberg