FERNANDO ARRABAL, OF THE TRANSCENDENT CORPS OF SATRAPS OF THE COLLEGE OF PATAPHYSICS

par François Naudin

March 12, 2022

Your Transcendence, Ladies, Gentlemen,

Fernando Arrabal, who is being celebrated here today, holds a glory among the most specious and rare in the world, a glory of which he can be particularly proud: he is invested, by the College of 'Pataphysics, with the dignity of Transcendent Satrap.

Many among you, ladies and gentlemen, have only partial, scattered, and often erroneous notions of the College. The organizers of the Arrabalesques wished that a member of the College would provide three times seven clarifications about the institution, particularly about the role assigned to His Transcendence Fernando Arrabal. This task was entrusted to me, in my capacity as Regent of Angelic & Theoretical Metaphrasis.

The College of 'Pataphysics is a learned society. It was founded in 1948 by a number of philosophers, researchers, oddballs, animals (notably a female crocodile from Lake Victoria and a tortoise), and even jojotes inspired by Alfred Jarry. Subsequently, this small group became known among College members as the Founding Satraps. When the Achaemenids reigned—Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, and other numbers—the satraps were governors and administrators of provinces and collected taxes there. If their renown has reached us, it is because of their splendor, their escapades, and their excesses, especially of power.

Antonin Artaud, Epicurus, Raymond Roussel, François Rabelais, Bonaventure des Perriers, René Daumal, Lucretius, Dietrich Grabbe, Julien Torma, and many other 'Pataphysicians have been invoked to infuse the College with the spirit of fearlessness necessary for its mission of absolute public uselessness.

Everyone understands that under such conditions, the College of 'Pataphysics was launched on a surreptitiously triumphant trajectory. Recruitment by cooptation of ladies, odd fellows, institutions (the Fourth Republic), exceptional personalities (the Khan of the Uyghur Tartars, the president of the Free Union of Waste Disposal Companies), animals (Ergé, Jacques Prévert's dog) has expanded the Transcendent Corps of Satraps and, more generally, through the payment of phynance, the number of College members. Satraps and members of lower ranks have the sole project of inventorying and collating, recognizing and detailing, manifesting and theorizing 'Pataphysics.

It is defined as follows:

'Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions which symbolically attributes to lineaments the properties of objects described by their virtuality.

More simply and commonly, 'Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions; or, more concisely still: 'Pataphysics is The Science, with a capital letter for each of the last two words.

The inexpressible ambition of the College is therefore to administer The Science, that of imaginary solutions, in both senses of the verb: to administer a municipality or the last sacraments. A robust framework is indispensable for such an enterprise. The College has as its Unmovable Curator Doctor Faustroll. The immanence of the Supreme Curatorship is materialized in this world by the Vice-Curators. Since the foundation, Their Magnificences Irénée-Louis Sandomir, Jean Baron Mollet, Opach, the lady crocodile Lutembi, the last two being Founding Satrap and Satrapess, have succeeded to this office. Today, Her Magnificence Tanya Peixoto has the task of assuming the Vice-Curatorship. May She find here the expression of my deep reverence.

Immediately following Her Magnificence the Vice-Curator comes the Transcendent Corps of Satraps. You know a good portion of these illustrious figures: Jacques Prévert, Raymond Queneau, Eugène Ionesco, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Benoît Mandelbrot, three-fifths of the Marx brothers, Paul-Emile Victor, Boris Vian, and many others. The eminence of these personalities entitles them to exercise no office within the College. They propagate the virtues of the science of imaginary solutions by their radiant influence, their flamboyant prestige, their transcendent ascendancy. The Corps of Satraps is independent of the College's administrative bodies: Auditors, Correspondents, Emphyteotes, Dataires, Regents, and Provéditors who do the work.

Let us petition the principle by asking whether it is necessary to emphasize how much TS Arrabal fills, to overflowing, his role within the College. He was even designated by the Quaternary Conventicle as Sole Elector, an ineffable honor, charged with electing HM Tanya Peixoto to succeed the late HM Lutembi.

A few words from Arrabal on 'Pataphysics:

"I do not believe that 'Pataphysics is meaningless. Or that it is hermetic. We ourselves, the small half-dozen living satraps, give one to our works. Or we arrange for them to acquire one. Preferably as confused as existence. To accomplish what Doctor Sandomir knows as a 'good leap.'"

"'Pataphysics, I welcome it as an eternal present. As a perpetual gift. As daily bread (and circus). But perhaps I sin by optimism. Is it unshakeable in endless change?"

TS Arrabal is very active within the College, though nothing compels him to be. He writes in the publications, notably the quarterly journal Viridis Candela, and its annexes and related supplements and complements. He is often present at fgh'ceremonies and events. Most importantly, and most precious besides, is the friendship that unites him with a great number of College members.

Glory to Faustroll our Curator!