BOO KS
145
parodists in an age of parody:
Faustroll
is a masterpiece less because of
its "critical" force (it is devoid of rancor, its very claim to authority
is a joke) than because of its range. It engages every faculty- intel–
lectual, cultural, sensu3.I-in the release of laughter. And first on the
list for 'Pataphysical demolition is the transcendental subjectivism which
is 'Pataphysics' own premise. Th'e dog here catches up with his tail
(another 'Pataphysical solution) and comically devours himself, thereby
ontologically establishing
Doctor Faustr()lZ
as what Jarry would call
"ethernal"-timelessly ephemeral.
None of the other selections are quite so important (or so much
fun) as
Faustroll.
Of all dramatic forms, farce is weakest on the page,
and I doubt that the
Ubu
plays can be read successfully at all. My
admiration of Cyril Connolly's translation of
Ubu Cocu
was felt mainly
in a frustrated urge
to
see
it. Jarry's own theater criticism is instructive
here. Positing "audience engagement" as nothing less than dramatic
reality itself, Jarry stands at the beginning of the most radical develop–
ment in the contemporary theater. His audience experiences "the crea–
tion of one of themselves who ... sees the being come to life in himself
that was created by himself; an active pleasure, which is God's sole
pleasure and which the holiday mob achieves in caricature in the carnal
act." Jarry's explorations of this idea are thin. They are interesting
because they are really all about Ubu.
On what grounds are we asked to "participate" in the lumberings
of Pere Ubu, the archetypal slob whose coarse slapstick seems so un–
related to the ideas I have just quoted? The
Ubu
plays are farce pushed
to
the extreme. On stage, Ubu enacts in broadest caricature love,
thought, desire, introspection, ambition, fear, even moral compunction
in a way so devoid of nuance or complexity that they are not meaning–
ful human feelings at all: they are blanks. Their sole function is to
provoke the private reality of feelings in the audience that are then
projected onto the stage. This has nothing to do with the empathy
involved in mimetic drama, and it is entirely incorrect to
think
of Ubu
commenting (except perhaps by ricochet) on any human fact, social,
psychological, moral or whatever. Rather, Ubu is only an
object,
designed
to provoke and register a human reality-the audience's--which he
himself does not necessarily embody. As an object, he is outside morality
and does not have any meaning, except as a neutral pole in the charged
field that surrounds him-a field which, as a figure in farce, he discharges
in play.
Note that Jarry's "active participation" is in fact strictly limited
to farce. It took Artaud and others to propose more advanced pos-
