The Subversive Poetics of Alfred Jarry

Ubusing Culture in the Almanachs Du Pere Ubu

Marieke Dubbelboer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781907747984
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351540186
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Paradox and provocation were essential features of all of the work of Alfred Jarry (1873-1907). His non-conformist attitude, whether employed to subvert literary or artistic conventions or to scrutinize social and political issues, marked both his literary writing and his view of the world. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the experimental and satirical Almanachs du Pere Ubu (1898 and 1901), which to date have received little critical attention. Jarry's groundbreaking use of collage in these early works, his absurdist humour and his rethinking of literary authorship and artistic originality foreshadow many innovations of twentieth-century art and literature. In this generously illustrated study Marieke Dubbelboer examines key characteristics of Jarry's poetics through an analysis of the Almanachs and addresses their role within the European avant-garde.

1

Symbolism and Beyond:The Almanacs in Context

Ubu’s Almanacs were written at a crucial time in Jarry’s literary career. During the 1890s he had worked hard to gain access to Symbolist circles. He had made a fairly successful literary debut in 1893 with the prose text ‘Guignol’, published in L’Echo de Paris, and became a regular contributor to the monthly journal Mercure de France. However, Jarry’s literary ambitions pulled him in two directions. On the one hand, he desperately wanted to get his work published and to be a success, but on the other, he often refused to compromise on anything to do with his texts. Around the time of Ubu Roi ‘s premiere in 1896, he began to make increasingly intransigent demands when it came to his text.¹ Lugné-Poe described Jarry’s constant interference with the production of Ubu Roi as tiresome and difficult.² His uncompromising attitude started to complicate the publication of his work. In January 1899, shortly after the first Almanac was published, the Mercure de France’s editor in chief Alfred Vallette warned Jarry to write clearly if he wanted to be published.³ Jarry told Vallette that he was not willing to change his work, even if this meant that it would remain unsold.⁴ Alfred Vallette then refused to publish Jarry’s novel L’Amour absolu and told Jarry that he would stop publishing his novels altogether. Although he would remain personally close to Vallette and the broadly Symbolist Mercure de France, by 1900 Jarry had found a more welcoming literary climate elsewhere when La Revue Blanche and its publishing house took over publication of his work; this was partly due to its editor, Félix Fénéon, an admirer of Jarry. La Revue Blanche, a journal rooted in Symbolism, but open to new ideas, also employed Jarry, who had been free-lancing for the magazine since 1896, as a regular chronicler and critic. This provided him with a much needed source of steady income over the next few years. It was during this period that the second Almanac (1901) appeared and Ubu Roi was staged as a marionette play at the cabaret Les Quat’z’Arts in Montmartre.

These changes in publisher and publishing platform also signalled a change in Jarry’s writing which is reflected in the Almanacs. Leaving behind the Symbolism of his early writings, Jarry’s work took a new direction that had been set in motion with Ubu Roi. At the same time Jarry became acquainted with a ‘younger’ generation of avant-garde writers and artists, who would lay the foundations for a number of early twentieth-century avant-garde movements. Jarry befriended Guillaume Apollinaire, who also wrote for La Revue Blanche.⁵ In bars and cabarets he socialized (and drank) with André Salmon and the Bateau Lavoir circle.⁶ Jarry also met the future founder of Futurism, F. T. Marinetti. The poet André Salmon later recalled the literary banquets organized by La Plume, where the ‘older’ Symbolist writers would mingle with the young members of these future avant-gardes. Jarry presided over one of these banquets, performing as Ubu and mockingly reciting some of his early Symbolist poetry.⁷ Of course, Jarry was not alone in his derision of Symbolism. Both Symbolists and Decadents before them had parodied their own peers and their work, and there had been heated debates about the Symbolist aesthetic among Symbolist writers, some of which appeared in their journals.⁸

At the beginning of the twentieth century representatives of both old and new generations often met and gathered in the same places, exchanging ideas, influencing each other.⁹ However, the members of the future avant-garde, such as Apollinaire, Salmon and Picasso, all expressed a greater appreciation of Jarry’s work than many of his earlier literary friends had done.¹⁰ For this new generation, seeking to radically challenge artistic traditions, Jarry became an important role model. Symbolism had provided an inspirational and experimental environment for Jarry in the 1890s and it had helped shape his ideas on literature. He always kept a sincere admiration for many Symbolist artists and writers.¹¹ But Jarry had always demonstrated an unrelenting thirst for new artistic forms and modes of expression, reflected in his notorious reluctance to comply with contemporary literary standards. This search for alternative models and sources of inspiration is clearly visible in Ubu’s Almanacs.

Sources of Inspiration: Popular Almanacs, Rabelais, Cabaret Culture

One source of inspiration was the almanac genre. An almanac was generally a small illustrated work, published annually, indicating the seasons, containing a calendar, as well as meteorological and astronomical predictions. In addition, it could include a diverse range of texts and material (anecdotes, practical information or songs) on a variety of themes (history, current events, medicine, cooking, or astrology). In his study of the almanac tradition, Hans–Jürgen Lüsebrink distinguishes four sections in popular almanacs: a pragmatic part, containing information about the weather, fairs, religious dates; a calendar part, divided into months, indicating days, saint’s names and astrological signs; a historic part, referring to events of the past year in the form of narratives and anecdotes; and a ‘varieties’ section, containing proverbs, advice, riddles, and fables.¹² In general, almanacs aimed at being an encyclopaedia of the world, a moral guide and a practical handbook. Most almanacs were supposedly written by a legendary, mythical figure, or by ‘anonymous’ scribes who transmitted their words. Astrological almanacs were particularly successful. They always centred on a well-known figure or astronomer, who provided prophecies on all sorts of matters. Les Prophéties de Nostradamus, first published around 1550, is a well-known example. In the early print culture of the Renaissance, almanacs succeeded in reaching a large audience. This made them potentially subversive and a danger to the status quo, but governments also realized their worth as instruments of propaganda. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, luxuriously illustrated almanacs were commissioned by the French royals, glorifying the king and France¹³ In 1791 the Revolutionary government issued their own Almanach du Père Gérard, in which the dialogue between the peasant representative Gérard and village inhabitants helped to popularize Revolutionary principles. In response, the Royalists issued their own anti-revolutionary Almanach de l’abbé Maury ou Réfutation de l’almanach de Père Gérard, couronnée par la Société des amis de la monarchie.

The importance of popular almanacs diminished during the course of the nineteenth century as new forms of printing and distribution emerged. But although the almanac’s informative function had largely been replaced by newspapers, there was still a considerable range available in France during Jarry’s time, with no less than 175 almanacs published between 1891 and 1899¹⁴ Many of them catered to special interests. Others were still being used as a political tool to reach specific groups in society. Writer and anarchist Émile Pouget, for example, published his Almanach du Père Peinard, hebdomadaire anarchiste, in which he addressed French workers in argot, from 1889 until 1902. At the other end of the political spectrum there existed the Catholic Almanach populaire which emphasized traditional values and warned its readers against socialists and anarchists.¹⁵

Jarry usually spent his day writing and studying in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Not only would he have found plenty of almanacs there, but he could also have read scholarly studies about almanacs. In fact, twenty-eight studies were published between 1891 and 1899.¹⁶ There seems to have been a general, scholarly interest in almanacs and popular culture during these years and Jarry shared such a fascination with popular texts and images with many of his (Symbolist) contemporaries. This had inspired him and Remy de Gourmont to launch the magazine L’Ymagier, in 1894, combining popular images with modern works by contemporary Symbolist artists. Both L’Ymagier and Perhindérion (the magazine Jarry started after he fell out with Gourmont in 1895) testified to Jarry’s keen interest in popular traditions. To a certain extent Ubu’s Almanacs reflect and continue this interest.

Since almanacs were designed to reach a mass audience, Jarry might have also thought an almanac would serve to popularize his Ubu character and bring him much-needed success. Lüsebrink gives an interesting account of French–Canadian writers who, in the late nineteenth century, used almanacs (and their mass distribution) to disseminate their manuscripts, before they were published as books. In this way they hoped to achieve a bigger profit than they could expect to get from regular publication or publication in newspapers.¹⁷ In the end Jarry’s work was largely unsuccessful. It is possible that he hoped that writing an almanac would finally land him a bestseller. However, his unwillingness to comply with contemporary literary conventions, let alone with commercial demands, made such success highly unlikely. It therefore seems more probable that artistic motives, rather than commercial ones, lay behind Jarry’s decision to compose the Almanacs.

Another great source of inspiration was Rabelais. Apart from owning his complete works, Jarry often quoted the author in his texts and he also collaborated with composer Claude Terrasse on a musical based on Rabelais’s oeuvre. Rabelais had of course written almanacs himself, including the satirical Les Pantagruelines prognostications, which appeared between 1533 and 1550. There is no doubt that Jarry had read them and it is highly likely that he had these works in mind when composing his own Almanacs. Again, Jarry was not alone in his admiration. Rabelais was a much cherished author among the artistic bohemia of the fin-de-siècle, especially among those artists who gathered in the cafes and cabarets of Montmartre. This was a milieu that Jarry knew well and from which he also drew inspiration.

The cabarets of Montmartre combined popular entertainment and commercialism with a bohemian counter-culture of rebellion and artistic experiment.¹⁸ These venues had evolved from a number of humoristic artistic groups founded in the previous decades. For example, the writer Émile Goudeau founded the Hydropathes in 1878, and during the 1880s a number of such groups came and went, sporting equally irreverent names, such as the Zutistes (1883), the Incohérents (1882), or the Jemenfoutistes (1884).¹⁹

In 1881 Goudeau joined forces with singer Rodolphe Salis to open Le Chat Noir. The cabaret became an instant success. Le Chat Noir also featured temporary exhibitions and published its own journal. This contained satirical articles and cartoons aimed at the Third Republic’s political, social and cultural establishment, as well as serious art criticism, literary contributions and poetry. Salis organized poetry readings in the cabaret as well as performances with songs and monologues. He would usually address his audience as ‘mon cochon’ [my pig] or ‘tas de salauds’ [bunch of bastards].²⁰ Aristide Bruant, immortalized by Toulouse-Lautrec’s poster, adopted a similar style at the cabaret Le Mirliton. He mixed French argot with sexual innuendo, and spoke about subjects deemed vulgar by contemporary standards.²¹ In 1893 François Trombert opened Les Quat’z’Arts on the Boulevard de Clichy, which continued the bohemian tradition of cabaret into the twentieth century. It became a favourite hang-...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Citations, Translations and Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1 Symbolism and Beyond:The Almanacs in Context
• 2 Collage
• 3 Ubu Reporter: News and Newspapers in the Almanacs
• 4 Jarry, the Almanacs and Politics
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index