BOOKS
143
PERE JARRY
Selected Works of Alfred Jerry. Edited by Roger SheHuck end Simon
Wetson Teylor. Grove Press. $7.95.
Though it's kept the story quiet, history has treated Alfred
Jarry rather well. To be sure, in France he remains something of a
cult; in England and America, he has been neglected. This is unfortunate
in
both cases, but it has a certain justice, too. However much it
deserves
to
be appreciated in its own right, Jarry's provocative style
has survived mainly through its impact on others. Many modern
movements have been nourished on his bravura subversion of the nine–
teenth-century esthetic of pathos. His explosive relation to symbolism
("after us, the Savage God," Yeats wrote of him)
in
some ways allowed
the movement to
go
beyond Mallarme. And the
epatisme
associated
with his life and his work (he made little distinction between them)
is closely connected with this success.
Jarry was most famous during his lifetime as a topic of conversa–
tion, that is, as the madman responsible for the seldom produced, end–
lessly discussed farce,
Ubu-Roi. Ubu's
electrifying
succes de scandale
in 1896 (it opened with the neologism
merdre
and closed after one wild
performance before an audience that included Mallarme, Toulouse–
Lautrec, Gauguin and Yeats) led to a frenzy among the critics that sug–
gests some rougher jolt than mere obscenity of dialogue. The problem
was that this carefully prepared piece of tastelessness refused to explain
itself. And further, J arry, whose personal manner was at least as strange
as it seems in
The Counterfeiters,
refused to explain himself. One
must have a position from which to take hold of a work of art; in this
sense, criticism is justification. But despite
his
remarks before the per–
formance, J arry offered none of the usual handholds: no polish, no
profundity, no suffering, no "affirmations," no social criticism-only
Ubu being nothing but himself. And it drove the audience wild.
One can be serious about the playful only when justifying it, never
when participating in it. The seriousness of Jarry's art lies precisely in
its systematic, highly adept evasion of solemnity. He robs the great
Romantic virtue, suffering, of its status: any attempt to deal with his
work must confront this radical, suspect fact. This does not mean that
Jarry
can be judged as one judges the dissolution of value implied by
the depthless, sentimental evasion of pain associated with
kitsch.
Jarry
does not evade suffering. He strips suffering of its moral authority.
His work begins with the insight that most personal anguish-such as
