The quarterly journal 303 of the Loire countries is published in Nantes. Being then president of the Society of Friends of Alfred Jarry (SAAJ), it solicited me for an issue devoted to Jarry. Since it is now out of print, I reproduce here my collaboration which was intended in a spirit of popularization. It also marks the state of publications concerning the author of Days and Nights at the beginning of the 21st century.

Alfred Jarry, Man of Letters

It was not Father Ubu, nor "the literary supermale" (sic), nor even a belated schoolboy, indulging in immature jokes. The centenary of his death must be the occasion to set things straight, and Alfred Jarry must appear in full light for what he has always been: a full-fledged writer, even if the circumstances and works he had the audacity to produce set him entirely apart. In this regard, the biography recently published by Patrick Besnier sets the record straight, unlike the previous ones. Jarry is, simultaneously, the inventor of 'Pataphysics and Father Ubu, a creature that literally devoured him and whose traits he ended up adopting. He knew how to transcend deleterious symbolism, which could only lead to the impoverishment of thought through excess of style, by introducing heterogeneous elements into it, nourished by life.

An Inspired Schoolboy

Alfred Jarry was born in Laval on September 8, 1873, into a bourgeois family, concerned with respectability. However, his mother seems to have had a marked tendency toward eccentricity: "Our mother [...], willful and full of fantasy, whom we were obliged to approve before having a say. She was very fond of cross-dressing." (1) His parents having quickly separated, he was raised in Saint-Brieuc by his maternal grandfather, with his sister Caroline, called Charlotte, eight years his senior. She left an emotional testimony about her younger brother, more credible than is claimed. In the same way, it is now established that his father, Anselme Jarry, maintained relations with his children throughout his life, and that he was not quite the poor wretch without importance that his son said to shock the public: "He certainly made our elder sister, [...], but he must not be for much in the making of our precious person!..." (2). A precocious and sarcastic writer, imbued with Breton folklore, young Alfred composed the poems and sketches of Saint-Brieuc-des-choux (posthumous, 1964), fragments of a dossier, Ontogeny found long after his death and containing in germ several traits of his future work. The title, ontogeny or ontogenesis, which designates, in biology, the set of processes of development of an individual from the embryonic stage to adulthood, as opposed to phylogeny, which studies the development of the species, refers to the great scientific-philosophical debates of the time, while letting perceive, through a pun (shame on genius!), the superior attitude of the author towards his childhood. I see, in this dossier, the characteristic approach of an adult writer who dares not publish creations directly from the juvenile universe, but who, unable to resolve to destroy them, leaves posterity the care of deciding... The year he turned fifteen, the family left Saint-Brieuc for Rennes. From his entry into the Rennes high school (where he was enrolled from 1888 to 1891), he had The Poles performed, with puppets and shadow theater. These were elements of a geste elaborated by several generations of students, targeting their physics teacher, Félix Hébert, alias "P. H." or "Father Heb," or "father Ébé," whom Jarry would name Father Ubu. His merit? Having given dramatic form to adolescent genius, having brought it to the stage in various forms: Ubu roi (1896), Ubu enchaîné (1900), various drafts of Ubu cocu (1944) or Ubu intime (1985) and the Almanachs du Père Ubu (1899, 1901). This means that Jarry never renounced his "schoolboy" works, which he reworked throughout his existence, certainly convinced that he held there something that has much to do with literature, not that which reproduces mechanically, but as he conceives it. I call "schoolboy," derived from "potache," not only, according to the dictionary definition, that "which has retained the spirit of adolescents and young students, the taste for joking," but more precisely what relates to the culture of high school and college students of the Third Republic, a compromise formation between classical education and various popular traditions. Pure products of this culture, these works, many times reworked, deal with scatological rather than erotic themes, in forms parodying great literature.

Entry into Literature

Having passed his baccalaureate in advance, with dispensation, a sign of certain precocity, Alfred Jarry entered the Henri IV high school in Paris to prepare for the École Normale Supérieure. He followed Bergson's teaching, and we have the notes he took in his course, for two years. After three successive failures, he definitively renounced the teaching career, and presented himself, with as little success, to the license in letters, at the Sorbonne. It must be said in his defense that Jarry would have suffered from a serious illness in January-February 1893, perhaps typhoid fever, to the point that his mother came specially from Laval to care for him. She herself was to die shortly after, on May 10. It was then that, according to Dr. Michel Gazeau, the depressive episode that had marked the end of his schooling would have returned at a gallop, at the origin of his addiction to alcohol and his disorienting behavior to say the least. In other words, the disappearance of his mother, for which he blamed himself, would have provoked in him a profound psychological reaction, which it would be interesting to follow the inscription in his literature. Nevertheless, from the same year dates what could be called his entry into literature, and his approaches to penetrate the milieu of men of letters. It was indeed during his "khâgneux" schooling that Jarry gave puppet performances of Ubu roi for his classmates in his room at the "Calvary of the Slain." Jarry enters the career of letters in a very original way, through the path of prize competitions in newspapers. L'Écho de Paris monthly illustrated awarded him the first prize three times in April, May and June 1893. He collaborates with essays and notes of literary and pictorial criticism to the small journal L'Art libre, a publication to which he contributes financially. At the same time, Jarry went several times to rue de Rome to the famous Tuesdays of Mallarmé, without any traces of his interventions being recorded, all the less probable since the Master was in charge of the conversation alone! It is thus that he is noticed by the companions of the Mercure de France, the most representative organ of Symbolism. Rachilde, the wife of Alfred Vallette, its director, invites him to her "Tuesdays." He gives readings of Ubu roi there several times, playing all the roles with his admirable voice, to the memory of Jean de Tinan, in such a way that he triggers, unforgettably, the laughter of the audience. As we can see, Jarry did not hesitate to use Ubu, whose value he knew in the eyes of this public, to penetrate literary circles. Astute, he consolidates his position by buying four shares of the Société anonyme du Mercure. Rachilde, who becomes the most faithful of his female friendships, appreciates him enough to devote to him, after his death, a vibrant testimony of sympathy, under the title Alfred Jarry or The Literary Supermale. With Remy de Gourmont, the éminence grise of the journal, he founded in 1894 a luxurious art journal, L'Ymagier, which had seven issues, then, on his own account, Perhinderion, for which he had special typographic characters composed. His first collection, Les Minutes de sable mémorial (1894) illustrates his aesthetics of the moment: "To suggest instead of saying, to make in the path of sentences a crossroads of all words," he writes in his "Lintel." He announces future "elements of pataphysics" and makes Ubu appear in Guignol, a text already published by L'Écho de Paris, where father Heb had become Father Ubu, "former king of Poland and Aragon, doctor in pataphysics." A year later, César-Antéchrist (1895), containing a condensed version of Ubu roi, appears as an absolutely symbolist piece.

The Invention of Ubu

His strategy of insertion into the literary avant-garde was interrupted by the call to arms. Jarry is incorporated into the 101st infantry regiment at the Laval barracks, from where he continues to direct L'Ymagier and programs contributions to the Mercure de France. Numerous are the anecdotes relating to his stay at the barracks, but even more important is the transposition he gives of it in Days and Nights (1897), subtitled "novel of a deserter." Contrary to what one might think for a work whose setting is the barracks, this noun is to be understood figuratively, since the singular hero takes advantage of the moments when he is on guard to "desert" external reality, to return within himself, to escape into his reveries, even his favorite hallucinations. Jarry's father died in Laval on August 19, 1895. Suffering from influenza, his son is bedridden in the infirmary. He therefore does not attend the funeral. In December, he is taken to the military hospital of Val-de-Grâce, in Paris. At the end of the year, he is definitively discharged for "chronic biliary lithiasis," which then rules out the hypothesis of tuberculosis or mental disorders, or even alcoholism. He also receives a certificate of good conduct in support. Back in Paris, he manages to be employed as secretary-factotum by Lugné-Poe at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre where, as the latter writes, "he makes the Ubu pawn advance." He had renamed The Poles as Ubu roi, which he publishes in journal then in volume before having it performed on a real stage. With the historic premiere at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, on December 10, 1896, he becomes the most original figure of Symbolism, whose themes he exploits by pushing them to their most extreme consequences, while striving to lead the life of a man of letters. "Restored in its integrity as it was represented by the puppets of the Phynances theater in 1888": the subtitle immediately indicates the juvenile and collective origin of a work elaborated by the high school students of Rennes, of which Jarry wanted to be the faithful transcriber and adapter, passing from children's theater to adult stage. Fitting into the form of Shakespearean tragedy while parodying it, the play shows, schematically, how Ubu, commanding in the past once glorious, pushed by an ambitious woman, eliminates the king of Poland Wenceslas and seizes his throne. He conspires with Captain Bordure, whom he disowns once his misdeed is accomplished. The entire royal family is massacred. Only the king's son, young Bougrelas, who will finally avenge his ancestors, escapes. Ubu governs with the sole ambition of eating andouille and enriching himself: "I will kill everyone, then I will leave." He exterminates the nobles, magistrates, financiers who resisted him. The Czar of Russia declares war on him. He goes on campaign and entrusts the regency to Mother Ubu. The latter, chased by the revolted people, takes refuge in a cave where, by a strange coincidence, she finds Ubu defeated. The reconciled spouses embark on the Baltic and sail towards new adventures. Ubu regrets his country: "If there were no Poland, there would be no Poles" he says to finish, alluding to the primitive title of the play, but also to the fact that the country was erased from the map since the Congress of Vienna. More than by the plot, the work makes history by its gestures, its language and its style: the initial "Merdre," the mixture of archaic vocabulary and expressions specific to Father Ubu: "by my green candle," "cornegidouille," the "phynance hook" and the inseparable "palotins." Language of such theatrical effectiveness that it communicates infallibly to all spectators who, from then on, begin to "speak Ubu." Supported by the symbolists, the creation was considered a new battle of Hernani, by its repeated provocations, its scatology, the debility of the plot and characters, while youth saw it as a good farce. With the hindsight of history, the play marks a dramaturgical revolution by sending back to back the opposite aesthetics of naturalism and symbolism. Many directors and even more critics have wanted to make it a political satire, which it could only be at an abstract level, by condemning any type of government. Retrospectively, the whole ubuesque work of Jarry takes the forms of a counter-culture on at least three levels: By taking on a collective creation, of schoolboy origin, by showing its realization capacities at the higher level, that of avant-garde theater, Jarry did not content himself with reconnecting the thread of the Rabelaisian tradition, he highlighted the creative virtues of a school group and reintroduced everything that classical or learned culture had evicted from the literary horizon, the corporeal, which, in sum, relates to the constitutive trilogy of Father Ubu, merdre, phynance and physics. This laughter of childhood, nourished by a whole buried, repressed past, came to strike head-on a society stuck in its celluloid collar, and it was understood, from then on, that one had to reckon with the adolescent gaze, different from that of parents and the environment where it develops. On the artistic level, Jarry radically subverted the theater of his time, by introducing a fecal being, literally unbearable, a reappearance of Falstaff, at the center of the ethereal stage of the symbolists. Perhaps involuntarily, insofar as the initial performance was far from realizing all his projects, he showed the third way, between "this need for reality that torments us," characteristic of naturalist aesthetics, and "the stage free at the whim of fictions" that symbolism postulated. Posing, there again, an equivalence between puppet theater, what he called "mirlitonesque theater" (Ubu sur la butte, Par la taille, etc.) and the stage of the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, he sought a synthetic form, ridding theater of all its artifices, including the actor, concretely demonstrating that extremes meet, that extreme lightness borders on heaviness, and, conversely, that heaviness sometimes attains grace. Finally, with the Ubu type, he created one of the rare symbols of our time, ambiguous as desired, swollen with all meanings, the most contradictory. It is, according to the times and versions, a reincarnation of Nero, Caligula, Napoleon, the perfect Bourgeois, the Brute, the bloody Dictator (Hitler or Stalin), or, at the other extreme, the Imbecile, the Coward, the Bastard. It is also instinct in its pure state, the Freudian "id," the power of lower appetites. All these interpretations are acceptable in the name of the equivalence of opposites. Except that the character is given to us as stupid, devoid of any spirit, and he could not defend any political regime other than that which provides him most surely with the satisfaction of his desires.

Ubu Inventor of 'Pataphysics

By a game of symmetry sometimes simple, sometimes inverse, all of Jarry's narratives illustrate the principle of equivalence of opposites. Thus, Days and Nights, already named, presents a singular but doubled hero, who balances the antinomies, dream and wakefulness, real and imaginary, just like that of Absolute Love (1899), ultimate reverie of a condemned man identifying with God. It happens that Ubu is also the creator of "'Pataphysics." The term would have been used as a transcendence of physics taught by Félix Hébert, physics teacher and initial model of Ubu, by the high school students of Rennes as early as 1889-90, and collected the following year by Jarry in Ubu cocu, where Father Ubu presents himself as a "Pataphysician." He defines his knowledge thus: "Pataphysics is a science that we have invented and whose need was generally felt." Jarry mentions it on various occasions in his early writings, up to the "Lintel" of Minutes de sable mémorial (1894) of which a note specifies that "Simplicity does not need to be simple, but complex tightened and synthesized (cf. Pataph.)". César Antéchrist brings it to the theater, under the species of the Physics-Stick, a sexual instrument, which is both the plus sign and the minus sign, masculine and feminine, by virtue of the identity of opposites. This is clearly exposed in Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien, posthumous work (1911), elaborated as early as 1898. It contains several definitions: "An epiphenomenon is what is added to a phenomenon... And the epiphenomenon being often the accident, pataphysics will be above all the science of the particular, whatever one says that there is no science but of the general. It will study the laws that govern exceptions [...]" Book II, entitled "Elements of Pataphysics" opposes induction to deduction, accident to general, paradoxical to universal consent. It contains this "Definition: pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically accords to the lineaments the properties of objects described by their virtuality." It is the opposite of positive science; it studies exceptions and explains universes parallel to ours, like the Great Transparents that André Breton will postulate later. Followed an immobile journey, an exploration of imaginary universes conceived by the greatest contemporary artists, and a very learned calculation of the surface of God, defined as the tangent point of zero and infinity," which Boris Vian will take up. Born in the school playground, pataphysics is a creation of the spirit of childhood, which it perpetuates in its works. Ubu and Faustroll are both doctors in pataphysics, they are therefore equivalent. Complementarily, Messalina, Novel of Ancient Rome (1901) and The Supermale, Modern Novel (1902) develop in chiasmus, as a representation of the limits of human forces for both sexes, indissolubly mixed with death. Realism places man and machine in two absolutely separate universes. The fantastic (and particularly what will become science fiction) applies itself to confusing them. The American scientist, father of Ellen, is convinced that the Supermale does not love his daughter. To oblige him to do so, he invents the machine to inspire love, made, roughly, of an induction coil placed on the head of the subject seated on a sort of electric chair of such powerful voltage that in principle he risks nothing (as in the Faraday cage). However, to the astonishment of the observers, they must face the evidence: "it was the man who influenced the Machine-to-inspire-love" (269). To the point that it becomes in love with the man. A positivist would account for this phenomenon by the overload of vital energy accumulated by the brain during its love record. An idealist will see in it the triumph of spirit over matter. Finally, the novel illustrates, in its entirety, the principle of identity of opposites in that it is the opposite of Messalina, Novel of Ancient Rome. To antiquity are opposed future times, to the empress "known in history for having wiped in one day more than twenty-five lovers" (206) responds the Supermale. Remembering his Latin versions, and the schoolboys' curiosity for all licentious passages of literature, Jarry translates the verses of Juvenal on which he relies to construct his novelistic fiction, but, according to the good principle of his masters, he leaves in original language the most inappropriate words. I will not go beyond. Let us simply remember, therefore, that Messalina and the Supermale are inversely symmetrical. Both accomplish amorous exploits, both perish by where they have sinned, by adoring what seemed to them of no importance: Messalina by the phallic sword, Marcueil by the Machine-to-inspire-love. Pataphysics certainly belongs to absolute idealism, to a total trust accorded to the spirit and especially to words. But, by virtue precisely of the philosophy that underlies it, it includes a warning already formulated in Absolute Love: the absolute lies.

A Programmed Disaster

After having squandered his inheritance in artistic enterprises without a future, Jarry lived miserably, asking alcohol and ether, "it detaches," he said, the vitality that he could not afford otherwise. Surprised by his strange capacities, his friend Rachilde gives an overview of his daily regime: "...he began the day by absorbing 2 liters of white wine, 3 absinthes spaced between 10am and noon, then at lunch he watered his fish, or his steak, with red wine or white wine alternating with other absinthes. In the afternoon, a few cups of coffee with marc or alcohols added... then at dinner, after, of course, other aperitifs, he could still support at least 2 bottles of any vintage... However, I never saw him really drunk..." This resistance is perhaps explained by the fact that he lived as much as possible in the countryside, practicing sports (cycling and fishing). From 1901 to 1903, he regularly entrusted his articles to La Revue Blanche, from which he drew the bulk of his income. Starting from daily gestures or news items, these are exercises in applied pataphysics, first published under the title Speculations (1901, posthumous, 1911) then under that of Gestes (1902) they were gathered under the title La Chandelle verte in 1966. Before his disappearance, Jarry thought to publish some of them with the publisher Sansot, who had published his "mirlitonesque theater": Par la taille (1906), Le Moutardier du Pape (1907), operetta inspired by Emmanuel Rhoidès' novel, La Papesse Jeanne, which he translated from Greek with Jean Saltas from 1905 (posthumous publication in 1908). Besides these pen works, various operettas, written in collaboration: Léda (1900), Le Manoir de Cagliostro (1905), the endless comic opera Pantagruel (posthumous, 1911) undertaken since 1898 at the request of the composer Claude Terrasse, some fugitive collaborations to journals (La Renaissance latine, La Plume, Le Canard sauvage, L'Œil and even to the daily Le Figaro, finally an unfinished novel, La Dragonne (1943), making a return to his mythical origins, gave the illusion of a feverish activity. Jarry died in Paris, on November 3, 1907, at the age of 34, of tuberculous meningitis, at the Charité hospital. In fact, he had contracted this tuberculosis as early as 1894-95, and his state of health was aggravated by an alcoholic overdose.

A Hermetic Language?

Jarry did not write "like everyone else," we must recognize it, and yet it is he who, a new Rabelais, promoted popular and childish language to the supreme essence of theater. In fact, he cultivates several languages, reflections of his different cultures. There is on the one hand the symbolist Jarry, lover of paradoxes: "We only believe in the applause of silence" (Twelve Arguments on Theater); "The noblest conquest of the horse is woman" (La Chandelle verte). On the other hand, there is the journalist, cultivating the point, in the manner of songwriters. A militant alcoholic, he declares: "Anti-alcoholics are sick people in the grip of this poison, water, so dissolving and corrosive, that it was chosen among all substances for ablutions and laundry and that a drop poured into a pure liquid, absinthe, for example, troubles it." He is above all a great lover of rare words, linguistic pearls, using concentrated images, preferring ellipsis to articulated reasoning, abstraction to mimetic description. Jarry is a visionary because he wanted from the start to abstract himself from the everyday to situate himself in eternity, or better ethernity, as he wrote: "If one wants the work of art to become eternal one day, is it not simpler, by freeing it oneself from the swaddling clothes of time, to make it eternal right away."

Bibliographic Orientation

1. Biographies Rachilde: Alfred Jarry or The Literary Supermale, (1928), Arléa, 2007. [Jarry's best friend, perhaps the only one, speaks of him trembling with sympathy, not without literature sometimes!] Arnaud Noël, Alfred Jarry, from Ubu roi to Doctor Faustroll, La Table ronde, 1974, 457 p. [A lively and abundant biography, which unfortunately stops at the year 1898.] Bordillon Henri, Gestes et opinions d'Alfred Jarry écrivain, Laval, Éd. Siloé, 1986, 224 p. [Quick but sure biography, full of finds.] Régibier (Philippe), Ubu sur la berge, Alfred Jarry à Corbeil, Presses du management, 1999, 220 p. [On Jarry's stays in the Paris region.] Besnier Patrick, Alfred Jarry, Paris, Fayard, 2006, 725 p. [The most recent biography, therefore benefiting from previous research, it is also the most sober and certainly the closest to the writer. Almost definitive, it is, today, the reference bio.]
2. Knowledge of the Work Levesque (Jacques-Henry): Alfred Jarry, Pierre Seghers, 1963, coll. "Poètes d'aujourd'hui," 219 p. [To begin reading the poet, a work admittedly dated, always reprinted.] Shattuck (Roger): The Primitives of the Avant-garde, (1974), Flammarion, Champs. [A very good chapter on Jarry, and others on his considerable contemporaries.] Caradec François, In Search of Alfred Jarry, Seghers, 1974, coll. "Insolites," 152 p. [Very lively study of the work, opening many reading paths.] Europe, special Jarry issue, March-April 1981. [Bringing together the best connoisseurs of Jarry's work, under the guidance of the pataphysician T. Foulc, this journal issue is of undeniable richness, particularly for situating the author's presence abroad.] Jarry & Co., communications from the international colloquium (TNP May 12-13, 1985) gathered by Henri Béhar and Brunella Eruli, L'Étoile-absinthe 25th-28th tours, 1985, 134 p. [Jarry and his contemporaries: Valéry, Claudel, etc. Brief studies by specialists of these authors.] Launay Claude, Have you read? Alfred Jarry the unique, Siloë, 1996, 44 p. [The briefest study on Jarry. Out of print.]
3. On Ubu's Language Arrivé Michel, The Languages of Jarry, Paris, Klincksieck, 1972. [Subtitled "essay in literary semiotics" the first thesis for the State doctorate defended in France on Jarry affirms its arid methodology.]
4. On Theater Béhar Henri, The Dramaturgy of Alfred Jarry, (1975), ed. Champion, 2003. [This is the revised text of the second thesis for the State doctorate defended in France on Jarry. It analyzes the various aspects of the theatrical work and shows its influence on the contemporary stage.]
5. On Culture Béhar (Henri): The Cultures of Jarry, (1988), Éditions Nizet, 1994, 312 p. [The author affirms that Jarry's supposed obscurity comes from the fact that he crosses various cultures: schoolboy, classical, scientific, etc. Each, taken separately, does not present any particular obstacle. It suffices to recognize it, it is written on it.] Van Schoonbeek Christine, The Portraits of Ubu, pre-text by André Blavier, Séguier, 1997. [A beautiful book, reviewing and commenting on all the portraits of Father Ubu.] Centenary of Ubu roi, L'Étoile-absinthe, No. 77-78, 1998. Bonjour Monsieur Jarry, book+cd - box set, ed. André Dimanche, 1995. [Benjamin Péret's program on Jarry, and all the responses to his survey "Was Jarry Christian?"] Launoir (Ruy): Keys to 'Pataphysics, Seghers, 1969, 185 p. [Informed from within the College of 'Pataphysics, a history of this institution, and an introduction to the philosophy aroused by Jarry.] Since 1980, L'Étoile-Absinthe, the journal of the SAAJ (2 double issues per year), offers unpublished documents, analyses of the work or source studies, articles on Jarry's contemporaries (Rachilde, Mendès, Fénéon, Fargue, Beardsley, etc.), as well as a list of public and private funds, a regularly completed bibliography of Jarry publications, reviews, and, periodically, Iconographic Notebooks on Jarry and his time.

Glossary

Ethernity: while Jarry expected much from his poetic and novelistic works, success, recognition from his peers, even from the public, came to him through the scandal of a theatrical piece of which he was only the inventor. However, Jarry had an acute consciousness of the way to achieve what he calls ethernity, in Gestes et opinions du Dr Faustroll, with an H as in ether, by reference to Aristotle, unless it is to the volatile compound that he willingly absorbed: "it detaches," he said! "If one wants the work of art to become eternal one day, is it not simpler by freeing it oneself from the swaddling clothes of time, to make it eternal right away?" he affirmed during his conference Time in Art, 1901. However, the brief inventory of works currently available in bookstores shows that only Ubu roi can claim posterity. Would Jarry have been mistaken? A little, but not totally. In fact, his dramatic creation allowed him to open the way to modern theater by transcending the realism/symbolism opposition. Dadaist and surrealist plays claim him, and it is no coincidence that Artaud and Vitrac wanting to create a revolutionary theater in 1926 name it "Théâtre-Alfred-Jarry." After which will come the New Theater, which from Ionesco to Weingarten claims him. Beyond the dramatic universe, the surrealists considered him as an initiator and a scout (A. Breton). His 'Pataphysics was cultivated by the poets of the Grand Jeu (René Daumal) and gave birth to the College of the same name (see attached). Among its most eminent members, it counted Raymond Queneau, Michel Leiris, Jacques Prévert, Boris Vian, Ionesco, René Clair, Joan Miro, Marcel Duchamp, etc. From the College emanates the Oulipo (Workshop of Potential Literature) whose main writers are named Italo Calvino, Georges Pérec and Jacques Roubaud, and whose vogue is very great in the Americas; as well as its variants Outrapo for theater, Oulipopo for detective novel, Oupeinpo for painting. Thus Jarry's posterity is assured, both on the side of imagination and subjectivity and of objective and algorithmic expression.

Faustroll: Doctor Faustroll is the hero of the eponymous "neo-scientific novel," composed around 1898, published (posthumous) in 1911. He was born and died at the age of 63. Expelled from his home by bailiff's writ, he undertakes an immobile initiatory journey on an "ace" (racing canoe) in the company of a baboon monkey named Bosse de Nage. He visits imaginary islands, which are as many artistic transpositions of works by writers or painters that Jarry admired, not without having taken an element of each of the "even" books he had in his room, for example the "fifth letter of the first word of the first act" of Ubu roi. Nothing will be said of Doctor Faustroll's genesic exploits.

Gidouille: n. f., otherwise named "boudouille"; "bouzine," "giborgne," it is the place of lower appetites. This pure neologism enters into composition, particularly in the exclamation "cornegidouille"; "bouzine" comes from Rabelais, where it designates a sort of bagpipe, "giborgne" would be an alteration of the slang "giberne" or lower back, "boudouille" already designating the same physical part. As Ubu is inseparable from his truculent vocabulary, one cannot imagine him without the objects, constituted in homogeneous series, which form his universe: physics stick, horse (helmet, saber, voiturin) to phynances, hook to merdre. Mysterious, each term bears Ubu's personal mark in its spelling or constitution, the object is first of royal belonging before being a weapon, an instrument of torture, etc. These words disappear in the fifth act, since Ubu, dethroned, is dispossessed. On the other hand, Ubu enchaîné can declare himself satisfied with his slavery: "I begin to observe that My Gidouille is bigger than all the earth, and more worthy that I occupy myself with it. It is it that I will serve henceforth" (V, 7).

Merdre: the first word of the first scene of Ubu roi is not found in any usual language dictionary. However, it is used 33 times in Ubu roi, as a noun or as an interjection and even a signal of revolt. Some see in it the adjunction of an R by propriety; others, a concern for expressiveness. The public perceived in it a will to scandal; the scholars remembered a popular form, as in the Middle Ages robre for robe; others evoked the village of Merdrignac, near Rennes; others finally, refusing to pronounce on the origin of this formation, put the accent on its playful value. The important thing is to observe that "merdre" is a particular creation that does not camouflage coarseness, rather emphasizes it by drawing attention, by giving the tone of the play. Indeed, theatrical language has always been more conservative than other genres. Invented by the schoolboys of the Rennes high school by euphemism, perhaps to avoid the use of a term that good education disapproves, it is supposed to foil theatrical censorship. The latter did not let itself be taken in, as shown by its intervention on the text of Ubu sur la Butte. However, this word says nothing about fecal matter. It is the theater public, quick to be shocked by everything, who believes to hear something other than what is actually pronounced. To such an extent that, in Ubu enchaîné, Father Ubu refuses to articulate it: "I no longer want to pronounce the word, it has brought me too many inconveniences."

Palotins: subst. masc., acolytes of Father Ubu executors of his dirty work. The word plays on different associations: pal, palot, but there actually exists a Polish ecclesiastical order of Palotins. Today, in current vocabulary, Palotin designates a person without importance, a subordinate, any executor, without personality.

Pataphysics: substantive created as early as 1893 by Alfred Jarry to designate what will become in him the "Science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically accords to the lineaments the properties of objects described by their virtuality" (Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien). As such, Ubu and Faustroll are its co-founders and first experts. In this work, the chapter "elements of pataphysics" opposes induction to deduction, particular to general, paradox to doxa or universal consent. Elsewhere in the same volume, pataphysics affirms the identity of opposites and speculates on the surface of God, "tangent point of zero and infinity." This is to say how much this science, apparently amusing and entertaining, can be serious. Born in the playground, it develops into an ethics, a poetics and even a metaphysics since the subject is indifferent to everything, and everything is of the order of universal analogy. Jarry specifies that it is appropriate to write 'Pataphysics, with an apostrophe, to avoid the pun (the dough or the paw to physics, or the bait to physics...). DER. Pataphysician, -ienne, subst. Follower of pataphysics.

Phynance: subst. fem., spelling proper to Father Ubu of an omnipresent term nowadays, which is why it is often taken up thus, in a pleasant mode. On all sides one sees only burnt houses and people bending under the weight of our phynances (Ubu Roi, III, 7). Saint Anthony and all the saints, protect me, I will give you phynance and I will burn candles for you (Ubu Roi, III, 7). Ubu himself explains it in the Almanac: "I write phynance and oneille because I pronounce phynance and oneille and above all to well mark that it is a question of phynance and oneilles, special, personal, in quantity and quality such that no one has, except me."

Ubu: main character of a series of dramatic pieces partly eponymous: Ubu roi, Ubu enchaîné, Ubu cocu, Ubu sur la Butte, etc., he became a type from the historic creation of 1896. Issued from childish imagination, fitting into the mold of classical tradition to better pervert it, this big fellow is perfectly ambiguous. For some, he embodies Nero, Caligula, Napoleon then the Bourgeois par excellence, the Brute, the Dictator (according to the times, Hitler or Stalin). For others, it is the Imbecile, the Coward, the Bastard, the absolute representation of base instincts, the power of lower appetites. All these interpretations are acceptable in Jarry's eyes, in the name of the principle of equivalence of opposites. However, it must be observed that the theatrical character is given to us as stupid, devoid of any spirit, and he cannot defend any regime other than that which will provide him with the greatest satisfaction of his belly.

Ubuesque: adj. derived from the name Ubu. Term characterizing Ubu's personal universe, constituted of the voiturin to phynances, the crocher to nobles, the unnamable little broom, the physics stick, etc. It evokes the grotesque aspect of Father Ubu, the despotism, cynicism, vanity, bravado followed by cowardice of the character. By extension, it qualifies an absurd and grotesque universe, dominated by good pleasure. In media usage, this term competes with the adjectives kafkaesque and surrealist, with, today, a predilection for the latter.

Available Works of Alfred Jarry (2007)

The previous bibliography, classified in chronological order, gives all the necessary indications to obtain the works of Alfred Jarry. It seemed desirable to us, if only to measure the fervor enjoyed by certain works among publishers, to provide the reader with a list of texts currently available. This does not mean that previous editions are therefore obsolete or even inaccessible, either in second-hand bookstores or, a fortiori, in libraries.

Read: Alfred Jarry in Verve

1. Illustrated Almanac of Father Ubu, pres. Patrick Besnier, Castor Astral, 2006, 72 p.
2. Love in Visits, Gallimard, 1996.
3. Love in Visits, pres. Patrick Besnier, Mille Et Une Nuits, 2007.
4. The Green Candle, pres. Patrick Besnier, Castor Astral, 2006.
5. Gestes et opinions du Docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien, pres. Sylvain Goudemare, ed. Cartouche, 2004.
6. Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll pataphysicien (followed by) Absolute Love, pres. Noël Arnaud and Henri Bordillon, Gallimard, Poetry No. 143, 2005.
7. Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustrol, pataphysicien, Arlea, 2007
8. Jarry in Verve, pres. and choice Henri Béhar, Pierre Horay, 2003.
9. Days and Nights, novel of a deserter, Gallimard, L'imaginaire No. 82, 1990.
10. Messalina, ed. A Rebours, 2002.
11. Complete Works, vol. II, pres. Henri Bordillon, Gallimard, Pléiade, 1990.
12. Complete Works, vol. III, pres. Henri Bordillon, Gallimard, Pléiade, 1988.
13. Works, pres. Michel Décaudin, Robert Laffont, Bouquins, 2004.
14. Siloques, superloques, soliloques et interloques de Pataphysique, Castor Astral, 2006.
15. The Supermale, Viviane Hamy, 2006.
16. Time in Art, ed. de l'Échoppe, 1995, 21 p.
17. Tout Ubu, Lgf, No. 6 352, 1999.
18. Ubu roi, pres. Sylvie Chalaye and Koffi Kwahulé, Bertrand Lacoste, "Reading Paths," 1993,
19. Ubu roi, André Dimanche, book + CD, 1996.
20. Ubu roi, Fata Morgana, 1996.
21. Ubu roi, pres. Nadia Ettayeb, Flammarion, 1999.
22. Ubu roi ou Les Polonais, pres. Joël Gayraud, Mille Et Une Nuits, 2000.
23. Ubu roi - Text and dossier, Gallimard, Bibliothèque Gallimard, No. 60, 2000.
24. Ubu Roi, pres. Henri Béhar, Pocket, Pocket classics, No. 6 153, 2000.
25. Ubu roi, pres. Marie-France Azéma, Lgf, Today's Classics No. 14 905, 2000.
26. Ubu roi, pres. Aurélie Gendrat, Bréal, 2000.
27. Ubu Roi, pres. Jocelyne Hubert, Magnard, contemporary classics No. 17, 2001.
28. Ubu roi, Gallimard, Folio classic No. 3 704, 2002.
29. Ubu roi - Complete text and dossier, pres. Frédérique Toudoire-Lapierre, Hatier, Classics and Co., 2003.
30. Ubu roi, Librio, No. 377, 2003.
31. Ubu roi, pres. Stéphane Guinoiseau, Hachette Éducation, 2005.
32. Ubu Roi, Larousse, 2007.

Notes

1. Rachilde, Alfred Jarry ou Le Surmâle de lettres, Grasset, 1928, p. 32.
2. Rachilde, ibid., p. 31.