surdity

But the sense of the ab- surdity was beginning at last to exercise its well- known fascination.

M&M's "Melts in your mouth, not in your hands" remains probably the best-known example, though there were thousands of them - often reaching new levels of irrelevant ab- surdity.

The only difference between these two paradigms of cultural translation, perhaps, is that while "Pierre Menard" remains a theoretical speculation, whose allegorical nature is underscored by the ab surdity of the premise that a contemporary Frenchman with a shaky grasp of Spanish could rewrite the masterpiece of Castilian Golden Age literature, "El atroz redentor" serves as a practical example of how cultural difference is registered in nearly every word.