Download the article in PDF

Jarry, the Almanac and the Oral Stream

With the same impulse that leads him, more or less implicitly, to ask literature to take charge of "potachique" cultural facts, Jarry is concerned with gathering the traces of popular culture declining at the end of the 19th century. The spread of books and the press, the industrialization of printing methods, and the effects of compulsory public education led to the disappearance of chapbook literature, myths, legends, and images that it spread to the most remote hamlets. Soon, the gramophone would replace, in the countryside, the voice of the spinner or the shepherdess, especially as these, deprived of work, would have no choice but to seek employment in workshops. When he joined Rémy de Gourmont to publish the luxurious print magazine L'Ymagier, Jarry did not merely intend to resurrect popular imagery or awaken the sleepy workshops of Epinal. To amateurism and archaeology, he tried to substitute the concept of nourishing graft, by means of collage. Thus, old engravings illustrating Joachim of Fiore would serve him, reworked, to adorn the Mercure edition of César Antéchrist. And Gourmont declared: "Alongside and beneath printed literature runs the oral stream: tales, legends, popular songs." (1) But we know that for the author of Ubu Roi, there is no hierarchy of genres. Printed literature and the oral stream are equivalent. Better yet, they must help each other to build what is called literature, without any other qualifier.

The Almanacs of Père Ubu, as well as the fragments of traditional songs inserted into the narrative work, proceed from the same intention. They aim to show the continuity of certain motifs in the collective imagination, regardless of the form of expression. In other words, the most elaborate literature, which Jarry defends and illustrates with his companions from the Mercure de France, cannot endorse the division established, for ages, between scholarly culture, deemed worthy only of the elite, and popular culture, supposedly only good, as its name suggests, for entertaining the common people!

— 31 —

This assertion may seem paradoxical to those who know Jarry's contempt for crowds. Yet, everything suggests that his work, postulating from the outset the identity of opposites, could not advance if it did not intertwine the popular and scholarly veins, which are absolutely complementary.

Beyond circumstantial, financial motives, this is the fundamental reason that led him to publish in 1899 and 1901 the Almanacs of Père Ubu, illustrated by Pierre Bonnard, modeled after the Grand Kalendrier et compost des bergiers, composed by the shepherd of

the great mountain of the Almanac journalier /…/ calculated by Master

Matthieu Laensberg or the Messager boiteux. These eponymous works of popular culture, extremely widespread in the French provinces since the 16th century, both by the Oudot workshop in Troyes and those in Liège and Basel, had ceased to circulate at the end of the monarchy, replaced by volumes purged of all prophecy and astrological conjecture, standardized and industrialized, such as the Almanach Hachette (2). Jarry took up the tradition, attributing the text to a character as legendary, by now, as the Grand Berger or the Messager Boiteux, as learned as Matthieu Laensberg since he is capable of "disserting de omni re scibili" (Pl. 1211): Père Ubu.

The structure of the quarterly almanac for 1899, as well as the annual for 1901, broadly follows that of previous works: to the calendar (however fanciful for 1901) and meteorological indications are added practical advice, various moral instructions, and a review of the most notable events of the past year. Unlike the Almanach journalier, Père Ubu does not provide the dates of the main fairs. He justifies this with a Rabelaisian explanation: "Eh! by my green candle, my Almanac gives it to readers by making them laugh. Another saving on the doctor" (Pl. 537). His Exhortation to the reader (Pl. 535-36) parodies the prologues of Rabelais to Gargantua and Pantagruel. As for the "useful knowledge collected by Père Ubu especially for the year 1899 according to the secrets of his learned friend the Reverend Lord Alexis, Piedmontese" (Pl. 533-34), they are, as the note explicitly states, a collage of para- or pseudo-scientific articles by this Ruscelli, an Italian doctor, translated into French since the 16th century and constantly reprinted in almanacs. Of the four recipes recorded by Jarry, only the first is his own. Closely parodying his

— 32 —

model, he associates green capers with the dyeing of hair the same color. Among the anecdotes told about him, it is said that one day Jarry wanted to astonish his friends by going to the café with his hair dyed a beautiful emerald color. These friends, having been tipped off by an indiscreet companion, were not surprised at all, and the humorist was left disappointed.

As for the other three recipes, they come verbatim from the collection of Alexis Piemontais (3). The reader of ["Etoile-Absinthe" will judge by the reproduction attached. Only the spelling and punctuation are modernized by the copyist, who occasionally repeats a word, gives its current equivalent, or switches from singular to plural.

It should be noted that if Jarry's choices reveal some of his supposed obsessions and testify to his taste for strangeness, he could have selected many other remedies for venereal diseases, the drying of testicles, or recipes for jams and scented pastes with the most prodigious virtues.

Collections of good advice and practical guides to daily life, popular almanacs also had an entertainment function, which Père Ubu does not fail to assume by Homerically counting the artist people (Pl. 560-63) and granting them a nomination in the Order of the Great Gigouille (Pl. 597-98), by sharing his new inventions (partly borrowed from Alphonse Allais, Pl. 594-96), and by publishing a "song to make the negroes blush": "Tatane" (Pl. 618-19).

The evocation of remarkable events, the commentary on current affairs concerning: the Dreyfus Affair, which Jarry treats as a sketch where the unjustly condemned captain takes on the appearance of Bordure; the death of Mallarmé, to whom he devotes a moving page by taking up a passage from Faustroll (Pl. 564-65); various typically French concerns at the turn of the 20th century, the Universal Exposition, the spelling reform, etc. (Pl. 581-93).

Once again, by resorting to a vanished tradition, Jarry shows himself more attached than he appears to popular tradition, which he claims to maintain by modernizing and updating it. It did not take great prophetic gifts to know that this revival would not be very successful and would interest only a small circle of friends.

— 33 —

If he ever had any illusions about this, Jarry quickly realized that he would not reach the print runs of his predecessors. Not that the formula was absolutely outdated, nor that he could not approach current events, but because he treated them in terms far too detached and too far removed from the style of the imitated booklets. Still, he demonstrates the curiosity of the intellectuals of his time for the heritage of popular literature.

A similar movement would lead the editors of L'Ymagier to publish, in each issue, an old popular song: round, ballad… (4) Jarry treats, in his writings, the oral current in the same way as imagery and almanacs. For him, the "marvelous horn" is an object of admiration, pleasure, and also textual material, worthy of being worked and woven into the narrative. He covers the whole range, from children's rounds to marching songs, bacchic hymns, and bawdy songs.

The text of traditional songs first appears as a quotation, not without producing various effects of support or contrast. In Haldernablou, an old woman, a WC attendant, starts singing the following verse:

La belle dit à l'amant : Entrez, entrez, bergerette ; Noire la langue muette, Baiser de bouche qui ment ; Et des morts dans la brouette. (Pl. 221).

And three scenes later, it is the chorus that sings this frightening round, seemingly from the popular treasure of the western provinces:

"La rôde, la rôde Qui n'a ni pieds ni piaudes, Qui n'a qu'une dent Et qui mange tous les petits enfants." (Pl. 223).

I would not be surprised if Jarry copied the text from a scholarly collection, as he did, at the end of his life, for the Chanson des corporeaux, a 16th-century march that was to appear in La Dragonne, which he transcribed at the Bibliothèque Nationale from the Chansonnier, manuscript of Maurepas, modernizing the spelling and adding the meaning of certain words that had fallen out of use. (5) Here are the first and last verses:

— 34 —

"Un corporeau fait ses préparatifs Pour se trouver des derniers à la guerre, S'il en eût eu, il eût vendu sa terre, Mais il vendit une botte d'oignon. Viragon vignette sur vignon.

Un corporeau devant Dieu protesta Que pour la peur qu'il avait de combattre Il aimait mieux chez lui se faire battre Que de chercher si loin les horions. Viragon Vignette sur vignon."

We do not know what would have become of this march from the time of the religious wars in the final state of La Dragonne. On the other hand, in the volume edited under the responsibility of Jean Saltas, alternating with a very crude military march, are these three delicate verses:

"La fille, la fille ! attends encor trois jours ? — Trois jours n'attendrai guère, Trois jours n'attendrai pas ! La fille, la fille ! attends encor deux jours ? — Deux jours n'attendrai guère, Deux jours n'attendrai pas ! •••• La fille, la fille ! attends encor un jour ? — Un jour n'attendrai guère, Un jour n'attendrai pas (La Dragonne, pp. 85-86)

They are found in a passage that, in the manuscript, is in Charlotte's hand, but the rest shows that she only acted as a copyist, without adding anything of her own. Again, the text appears as an anonymous quotation. The features of the popular song are quite characteristic, although, in the current state of our knowledge, it is not possible to specify the nature of the text further.

Questioned by us, the excellent song exegete France VERNILLAT replied: "Regarding these quotations, I can tell you, without much risk of being wrong, that they do not belong to the traditional French repertoire. The style is falsely popular: they are skillful pastiches of traditional themes. It was a fashion much followed among writers, since Nerval, Mérimée, or George Sand had brought folk songs back into fashion. G. Sand set the example, in 'Les Maîtres sonneurs', by recomposing a famous Berry song 'Les Trois fendeux', to the point that no one knows which is the real one! Other writers 'fixed up' in good French songs that, in their opinion, took too many liberties with syntax…"

The treatment of military songs, widely spread, is not open to dispute: they are there to punctuate the soldier's life. The Réveil, quoted at the beginning of the chapter "Le chant du coq" in Les Jours et les nuits (PL. 780) and in La Dragonne, Jeanne Sabrenas taking the place of the guard bugler to play the Appel, Au Rapport, Aux Lettres, La Visite du médecin (D. 140-142).

Of all the bawdy songs, which, according to his contemporaries, Jarry knew well, the one he prefers and cites several times is Le Pou et l'araignée. It appears, with the epenthetic r, in the Rennes saga, contrasting with the lament of Malborough sung by the cobbler:

"On entend sous l'ormeau Battre la merdre, battre la merdre ; On entend sous l'ormeau Battre la merdre à coups de marteau! (Pl. 482)

The frivolous virtues invited by the Surmâle allude to the painful trade of the spider and to the exploits of their hero while awaiting the promised visit (S. 99). An echo of this same verse is found in "le Chœur des fidèles constipés" that Jarry inserts in Le Moutardier du Pape:

"Et nous attendons sous l'ormeau Nous attendons sous les murailles La délivranc' de nos entrailles."

A similar allusion is made to the benevolent "Thérèse, qui rit quand on l'embrasse! (The rhyme was different)" during the memorable evening at Café Biosse, at the beginning of La Dragonne (D. 26). Although these are operettas, and no longer traditional songs, we can classify in the same category the quotations from Offenbach "Ce tonneau qui s'avance, neau qui s'avance, neau qui s'avance, c'est le Père Ubu" (Pl. 505) or from his parodists:

"Décochons, décochons, décochons Des traits Et détrui, et détrui Détruisons l'ennemi. C'est pour sau, c'est pour sau C'est pour sau-ver la pa-tri-e!" (Pl. 765)(6)

From the more or less faithful quotation to the transformation of the text for narrative reasons, there is an intermediate form that could be called dramatized quotation. In L'Amour en visites, the hero of a May night visits his Muse, an allegorical bogeywoman, frightening, and before whom he sings to taunt her "as one sings before death", a spinner's lament:

"Trois grenouilles passèrent le gué Ma mie Olaine Avec des aiguilles et un dé Du fil de laine Le roi n'est plus, le roi est mort, Ma mie Olaine Et nous partagerons son sort: Cassez la laine." (Pl. 889-90)

This gives him the opportunity to monologue about the need to invent new rhythms, which require the Apocalypse, while waiting for the Muse to appear, blind, in Modern Style beauty, imploring him on her knees

"Le roi n'est plus, le roi est mort! Ma mie Olaine Et je viens partager son sort: Cassez la laine!" (Pl. 893)

The embedding becomes a setting and takes on the appearance of tragedy in the chapter: "O Beau rossignolet" where Ellen and the Surmâle literally perform the figures of this "very well-known song, printed in several folklore collections" played by the phonograph. Until the end, which makes acts and words coincide, Ellen dying of excessive pleasure.

"A u troisième tour de danse La belle tombe mo-or-te, O beau rossignolet! A u troisième tour de danse La belle tombe mor…" (S. 130)

The song was so well known that L'Ymagier No. 6 published it under its traditional title: "La triste noce." The popular ballad tells the sad story of two lovers who made love for seven years without saying a word. But after this time, the lover gets married, invites the girl to his wedding. She dies during the dance. Some versions add that the lover killed himself immediately. Jarry interprets the text by giving it a specifically erotic meaning, whereas it is only implicit, the song of the nightingale euphemizing, since the Middle Ages, the sexual act.

Instead of interpreting, he shortens "for a modest reason" when he literally stages a military march in La Dragonne, which supposes the meeting of Jeanne and the brave Taupin, whose name comes from the song itself (D. 79-82).

Conversely, the sparloes of the Dies irae are superimposed on the tune played by the bugle (D. 142), thus announcing the tragic end of the Maid of Morsang.

Finally, the popular song, the workshop ditty, is the pretext for variations or transformations. Frère Jacques becomes:

"Père Pouilloux Dormez-vous? Sonnez les matines Videz les latrines, Je suis soûl." (Pl. 485)

While the famous Valse des pruneaux, lyrics by Villemer and Lormel, music by Pourny, provides its tune for La Chanson du décervelage before becoming, in a way, the national anthem of the Mercure de France.

Let us admit that we are unable to identify the origin of four of the songs cited here (La belle dit à l'amant; La rôde, la rôde; La fille attends encore trois jours; Trois grenouilles passèrent le gué). May our readers help us prove that Jarry, far from imitating tradition, was instead inspired by it very precisely, to give life to the voices of his childhood. For him, the popular song is valuable both for itself, for its melody, its naive or bawdy poetry, and as material allowing for storytelling, dramatization of the narrative (7). Whether by taking up the structure of popular almanacs reinserted into current events, or by drawing from the oral stream of poetry, he plays with time, bringing the most distant past into the present, projecting the present into the timeless.

Henri Béhar.

NOTES

1. Remy de Gourmont: "L'Ymagier", L'Ymagier No. 1, Oct. 1894 p. 6

2. For the history and structure of these collections, see: Geneviève Bollème: Les Almanachs populaires au XVII et XVIIIe siècles. Essai d'histoire sociale. Paris-La Haye. Mouton et Cie, 1969, p. 152.

3. See: Ruscelli, Les Secrets du Seigneur Alexis Piemontais et d'autres auteurs bien expérimentés et approuvés… Antwerp, Christofle Plantin, printer 1544, 559 p. Respectively: to make teeth fall out (p. 123); To make wine become distasteful to a drunkard (p. 232); To refine gold with Salamanders (p. 477).

4. L'Ymagier thus published: No. 2 "Au bois de Toulouse, ronde populaire inédite"; No. 3 "La Belle s'en est allée, chanson dans le goût ancien"; No. 4 "La Légende de Saint Nicolas, chanson populaire"; No. 5 "Chanson pour la Toussaint"; No. 6 "La Triste noce, ballade populaire."

5. Published by Maurice Saillet in the "Dossier de La Dragonne", DCP No. 27 pp. 31-34, this text was to be the subject of the chapter "La Marche".

6. About this song from Les Jours et les nuits, André Lebois writes: "But by what blunder did Henri Parisot think it necessary to include in the Œuvres poétiques complètes de Jarry (Gallimard, 1945), the following 'poem' / . . . / La Gazette des lettres even proposed to put this poem as an epigraph to all of Jarry's work. It is a ditty taken from a parody of Offenbach on Guillaume Tell, a hunters' chorus that can easily be continued indefinitely…" (Jarry l'irremplaçable, 1950, pp. 101-2)

7. Through refined investigation, Henri Berdillon was able to show that a simple allusion to the private room "with crayfish" in L'Amour absolu (Pl. 939) referred to a "1900 song", Les Ecrevisses by Jacques Normand. See "En marge de l'Amour absolu", L'Etoile Absinthe No. 13-14, 1982 pp. 37-40.

See: in Les Cultures de Jarry, P.U.F., Paris, 1988, "La culture populaire", p. 115-148.

Download and read the digitized version on my personal page: Les Cultures de Jarry | Henri Béhar (melusine-surrealisme.fr)

Further reading:

L'Étoile-Absinthe, issues 121-122: The making of the illustrated Almanac.

"Commentaires pour servir à la lecture de l'Almanach du Père Ubu, illustré, 1899". By Henri Béhar, Marieke Dubbelboer, Jean-Paul Morel