Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) is a notoriously difficult author to approach, and not only because it is easy to be diverted by the Ubu plays, which were only a minor port of his output. His own statements of position or artistic sympathy tend to be at best indirect, and are often masked by his complex, inventive language, and by the blurred distinction between the univer supplmentaire of la pataphysique and our own. Add this to the eccentric, self-destructive persona he adopted for most of his career, and any new critical approach to Jarry becomes all the more welcome. Fortunately, Jill Fell has found on, or rather a group of them.
This handsomely produced and profusely illustrated volume is not a straightforward investigation of Jarrys texts; it studies him as a writer who was also an artist, an art critic, and a performer, and in so doing allows illuminated new readings of various parts of his work. The main beneficiary is Jarrys first published volume, Les Minutes de sable memorial (1894), and eclectic collection of verse, prose, and dramatic poetry, illustrated by the author, which has often been seen as a mix of post-juvenilia and an attempt to take the Symbolist cult of difficulty to excessive new heights. Fell presents it more as a product of the period when Jarry, yet to adopt the mask of Ubu, was subject to a broad range of artistic influences that were as much visual as literary, and more importantly, where no firm boundaries were accepted. Thus concepts emerge of the written word as a unit of image and pattern, and not merely of sound or meaning, and of a radial rather than linear text, which give this collection a fresh and worthy place in a lineage running between Mallarm and Apollinaire. These concepts are also capably identified within Jarrys own enigmatic statements about his purpose and technique.
Fell provides a richer, more personalized account of Jarrys links with artists than any previous critic. The connections with the Nabis, the School of Pont-Aven, and Henri Rousseau are well known, but this book pursues them at a pictorial as well as textual level in a most productive manner, and the author also continues her previous quest for Beardsleys lost portrait of Jarry and/or his creation Dr Faustroll. Jarrys own talent for woodcuts is shown as providing a link to his previously little-acknowledged innovations in the art of the book, prominent in but not confined to his collaboration with Remy de Gourmont on the review LYmagier, and his own short-lived Perhinderion.
Pre Ubu also finds a place, both as a visual construct influenced by primitive ethnic arts and as a puppet; the sections on the marionette aesthetic in Symbolism and the puppet theatres of the time have an interest stretching well beyond Jarry, as well as exploring his own skills as a puppeteer. Similarly, discussion of Jarrys references to dance represents quite fresh ground, and also manages to stir interest in Messaline, perhaps Jarrys most straightforwardand hence least memorablenovel.
This does not set out to be a general study of Jarry, or indeed to pursue a single thesis. Nevertheless, it succeeds admirably in rounding out his portrait as an active, diverse member of the lively artistic culture of the belle poque, and in reminding us that Jarry was an entertainer as well as a visionary. The work is rigorous and scrupulously referenced, with an erudite and very readable style, and is warmly recommended not only to readers of Jarry, but also to anyone with an interest in the literature or art of the period.
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