Alphonse Allais, a French artist and humorist who straddled the late 19th and early 20th centuries, carved a unique niche for himself with his playful and often absurd approach to both art and language.
Allais’ work defied artistic conventions and embraced the unexpected, as evidenced by his infamous 1883 exhibition. His painting titled “First Communion of Anaemic Young Girls In The Snow” wasn’t a depiction of the scene at all, but rather a blank canvas. This audacious act perfectly captures his signature style, challenging the traditional notions of what constitutes art. Another work, “Apopleptic Cardinals Picking Tomatoes Beside the Red Sea,” further underlines his penchant for wit and the unexpected.
Beyond the visual arts, Allais also left his mark on the realm of language. He is credited with inventing the holorhyme, a unique form of poetry that pushes the boundaries of wordplay. A holorhyme consists of two lines that, when spoken aloud, sound identical but hold entirely different meanings.
Par les bois du djinn où s’entasse de l’effroi,
Parle et bois du gin ou cent tasses de lait froid.
Which translates as…
By the genie’s forest where fear abounds,
Talk, drink gin, or a hundred cups of cold milk.
While not as prevalent in English, the spirit of the holorhyme lives on. The English writer Miles Kington successfully created his own version:
In Ayrshire hill areas, a cruise, eh, lass?
Inertia, hilarious, accrues, hélas