Starting with Sort l’assassin, entre le spectre, the article attempts to establish a more precise use of the notion of variation as it exists in music and as it can be found in a text (reversal, alteration, repetition, expansion, transtylization, digression, and so on) and to connect it to a use of the notion of constraint that is different from OULIPO’s. The shock between variations leads to a salutary questioning of the relationship to truth.
