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Ubu's almanac: Alfred Jarry and the graphic arts
Ubu's Almanac: Alfred Jarry and the Graphic Arts is a book from the Spencer Museum of Art, Univeristy of Kansas. The publication includes images of prints and books by or edited by the French playwright, Alfred Jarry. Today Jarry is remembered almost exclusively as an author, especially of his notorious play, Ubu Roi. However, as this exhibition seeks to demonstrate, Jarry was also very involved in the world of printed images. He made woodcuts and drawings to ornament his own books, and he was involved with two periodicals (L'magier and Perhinderion) that sought to assemble a broad spectrum of printed art, much of it of anonymous or popular production and generally of a devotional nature. These periodicals also included, however, images by the important German Renaissance artist, Albrecht Dürer, and many of Jarry's contemporaries, such as Henri Rousseau and Pierre Bonnard.
49 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
9 people want to read
About the author
Alfred Jarry
262 books267 followersAlfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side.
Best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896), which is often cited as a forerunner to the surrealist theatre of the 1920s and 1930s, Jarry wrote in a variety of genres and styles. He wrote plays, novels, poetry, essays and speculative journalism. His texts present some pioneering work in the field of absurdist literature. Sometimes grotesque or misunderstood (i.e. the opening line in his play Ubu Roi, "Merdre!", has been translated into English as "Pshit!", "Shitteth!", "Shittr!", "Shikt!", "Shrit!" and "Pschitt!"), he invented a pseudoscience called 'Pataphysics.
From Wikipedia
Best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896), which is often cited as a forerunner to the surrealist theatre of the 1920s and 1930s, Jarry wrote in a variety of genres and styles. He wrote plays, novels, poetry, essays and speculative journalism. His texts present some pioneering work in the field of absurdist literature. Sometimes grotesque or misunderstood (i.e. the opening line in his play Ubu Roi, "Merdre!", has been translated into English as "Pshit!", "Shitteth!", "Shittr!", "Shikt!", "Shrit!" and "Pschitt!"), he invented a pseudoscience called 'Pataphysics.
From Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 3, 2023
review of
Alfred Jarry's Père Ubu's illustrated ALMANAC (January-February-March 1899)
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 3, 2023
Now, strictly speaking, this ALMANAC is by Père Ubu & not by Alfred Jarry (& friends). So, perhaps, I'm already doing an injustice to it by ripping it out of its archetypal author's cloaca, maybe I'm slapping its naked butt to get the shit off. I shall proceed, nonetheless, staggering under the weight, looking here & there for a verbosity I can grab on the fly & use for my own questionable &/or questioning porpoises.
Alfred Jarry, How do I love thee, let me count the ways. Or don't. Sometimes I fantasize that reincarnation exists & that I'm a reincarnation of Alfred Jarry. That's. How. Much. I. Identify. With. Him. Then again, he died at 34 & I'm still going at 69. &, yeah, there're quite a few other differences. I learned about Jarry when I was 18, in the fall of 1971. I'd (barely) graduated from high school & I started walking to the public library (quite a few miles away) carrying Abe Lincoln's rigor mortis on my back (not his corpse, just his rigor mortis). I decided that since I was no longer surrounded by students & teachers suggesting reading material to me that it was time to start researching more on my own. I knew about Marcel Duchamp & reading about him led me to Jarry. Suddenly. A human-sized preying mantis dropped from the sky riding the word "Suddenly" & struck up a little chat w/ me. I knew I was on the right track.
The cover of this has the original publisher's address, "3 rue Corneille, Paris", presumably the address from wch it was available at the original time of publication, roughly scratched out w/ the publisher of this edition's name written below: "mOnocle-lash anti-press". The bk is in black & white but the scratching-out & new publisher is the only instance of color, it's a dark orange. I find this calculated irreverance in a similar spirit to the original.
The "Dates for your Diary FOR THE YEAR 1899" included "Since the coronation of Père Ubu" (p 2) & warns of "a partial eclipse of Père Ubu on 29th, 30th and 31st February." (p 3). People who compile ALMANACs have a keen sense of what's important, of the pragmatic. Hence we arrive at "USEFUL INFORMATION":
"How to dye your hair green.
First you must take some green capers and distil them in water; then, take this water and wash your hair with it, and allow it to dry in the sun.
"How to make your teeth fall out.
Burn earthworms on a well-forged red tile; then, take the ashes of the burned worms and apply them to worn or painful teeth. Cover the teeth with wax, and you will soon find your pain and discomfort alleviated." - p 13
Even though Jarry was a mere 24 yrs old when he concocted this rich collection of wisdom he was already on to things worthy of the venerable Dr. Faustroll.
"And with the help of our Tempomotive (a vehicle unlike the locomotive, which may only traverse space, in the present and in three dimensions), which we invented thanks to our mastery of the scientific arts in order to explore the realm of time, we will bring you news of your future as well." - pp 18-19
Some of you might be getting the impression that this ALMANAC was targetted at a future demographic but I assure you that Jarry's sense of present-tense business was as sharp as my own.
"So buy this Almanac; and consult it as you would a prayer-book to ascertain whether the newspapers with which you so naively burden yourself conform to our infallible opinion. Our expert knowledge in meteorology (we once saw fourteen telegraph poles struck by lightning in a single day) will render them completely obsolete in advance." - p 19
"ADVICE
to Capitalists and Unattended Children
Don't miss this incredible investment opportunity - buy now! 45,
rue de l'Echaudé Saint-Germain:
"Overture to Ubu Roi, for piano (four hands)
Polish March, for piano (two hands)
Brain-Bashing Song." - p 80
In fact, this ALMANAC was so prescient that it included an ad for "The mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press Revenant Edition Series" (p 88), the very press that published this re-release. mOnocle-Lash has certainly done the world a service by so doing b/c very little of the ALMANAC seems to've made it to us English speakers over the last 124 yrs. In my own superb personal library, of the 14 Jarry bks therein, only the Roger Shattuck & Simon Watson Taylor edited Selected Works of Alfred Jarry (Grove Press, 1965) has excerpts from the ALMANAC, "Ubu, Colonialist" & "Useful Knowledge and New Inventions" - both, apparently, from a different edition of the ALMANAC than that presented by mOnocle-Lash.
If one reads closely, one might even find some humor.
"Père Ubu repairs to the big hardware store at Saint-Hubert: - Comrade, this mousetrap is utterly feeble. Our property is being torn apart by rats. These traps look as if they would disintegrate in our hands. Give us a bear trap made from the jaws of a crocodile.
"In the garden, overlooking a trap which resembles a mouth and a long green serge tail, there stands a sign bearing the legend: Beware of the Crocodile. Do you think that Mr Ubu, with all his worldly knowledge and mastery over the sciences, has taken into account the trifling fact that geese cannot read?" - p 36
Naturally, it wd've been more sensible to've hired a town crier w/ a bell to announce this warning every 5 or 10 minutes. An Automobile Ride might also be called for.
"Père Ubu. – My dear friend, this insistence of yours on reading only newspapers has clogged up your mind with absurd ideas. I advise you to purify your brain by reading our Almanac or, better yet, sir, by joining us on a digestive morning constitutional in my Omnubu, The Course of Events in Reverse." - p 52
It's remotely possible that a few of you poor souls may still be relying on 'news'papers & their fellow stoopers for yr lack of understanding of reality. I assure you that the ALMANAC serves just as much as a corrective to that as it ever did, 124 years later. Consider the proof in the following pudding:
"I won't explain individual references here, but I recommend referring to the appendix in Marieke Dubbelboer's Ubusing Culture: Alfred Jarry's Subversive Poetics in the Almanachs du Père Ubu (Routledge, 2012) for comprehensive explanations." - p 100
" Translator's apology
"Père Ubu's Almanac is Alfred Jarry's answer to the annually published almanac, a format which provided ordinary people with the forecasts that helped them tend their crops, fish their waters and mark their religious holidays for centuries until it was superceded in 1988 by the invention of Hello! magazine. Offering a unique and irreverent insight into the cultural and political landscape of Paris on the cusp of the 20th century, Ubu's Almanac was created by Jarry in 1898 along with some friends, artistic contemporaries and colleagues at the Mercure de France, including Claude Terrasse, Pierre Bonnard (who created the illustrations), Rachilde, Pierre Quillard, André-Ferdinand Hérold and Marcel Collière, while they summered together in a riverside house in Corbeil. It's a multidimensional collage of found text, in-jokes, puns and contemporary cultural references, written during the height of the political scandal that would come to be known as the Dreyfus Affair. It enjoyed a small print run and many fewer sales. No contributor, even Jarry, is credited with its creation within the text itself. Whether this was a ploy to evade liability for its controversial contents isn't certain, but the fact that even the printer chose to leave their name off the cover may be some indication of its anticipated reception.
"I embarked on this translation project mostly out of curiosity, since as far as I could tell no one had ever translated the text into English." - p 93
So there you have it, everything you need to know about EVERYTHING unless you haven't read it yet, in wch case it doesn't matter b/c you're already dead.
Alfred Jarry's Père Ubu's illustrated ALMANAC (January-February-March 1899)
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 3, 2023
Now, strictly speaking, this ALMANAC is by Père Ubu & not by Alfred Jarry (& friends). So, perhaps, I'm already doing an injustice to it by ripping it out of its archetypal author's cloaca, maybe I'm slapping its naked butt to get the shit off. I shall proceed, nonetheless, staggering under the weight, looking here & there for a verbosity I can grab on the fly & use for my own questionable &/or questioning porpoises.
Alfred Jarry, How do I love thee, let me count the ways. Or don't. Sometimes I fantasize that reincarnation exists & that I'm a reincarnation of Alfred Jarry. That's. How. Much. I. Identify. With. Him. Then again, he died at 34 & I'm still going at 69. &, yeah, there're quite a few other differences. I learned about Jarry when I was 18, in the fall of 1971. I'd (barely) graduated from high school & I started walking to the public library (quite a few miles away) carrying Abe Lincoln's rigor mortis on my back (not his corpse, just his rigor mortis). I decided that since I was no longer surrounded by students & teachers suggesting reading material to me that it was time to start researching more on my own. I knew about Marcel Duchamp & reading about him led me to Jarry. Suddenly. A human-sized preying mantis dropped from the sky riding the word "Suddenly" & struck up a little chat w/ me. I knew I was on the right track.
The cover of this has the original publisher's address, "3 rue Corneille, Paris", presumably the address from wch it was available at the original time of publication, roughly scratched out w/ the publisher of this edition's name written below: "mOnocle-lash anti-press". The bk is in black & white but the scratching-out & new publisher is the only instance of color, it's a dark orange. I find this calculated irreverance in a similar spirit to the original.
The "Dates for your Diary FOR THE YEAR 1899" included "Since the coronation of Père Ubu" (p 2) & warns of "a partial eclipse of Père Ubu on 29th, 30th and 31st February." (p 3). People who compile ALMANACs have a keen sense of what's important, of the pragmatic. Hence we arrive at "USEFUL INFORMATION":
"How to dye your hair green.
First you must take some green capers and distil them in water; then, take this water and wash your hair with it, and allow it to dry in the sun.
"How to make your teeth fall out.
Burn earthworms on a well-forged red tile; then, take the ashes of the burned worms and apply them to worn or painful teeth. Cover the teeth with wax, and you will soon find your pain and discomfort alleviated." - p 13
Even though Jarry was a mere 24 yrs old when he concocted this rich collection of wisdom he was already on to things worthy of the venerable Dr. Faustroll.
"And with the help of our Tempomotive (a vehicle unlike the locomotive, which may only traverse space, in the present and in three dimensions), which we invented thanks to our mastery of the scientific arts in order to explore the realm of time, we will bring you news of your future as well." - pp 18-19
Some of you might be getting the impression that this ALMANAC was targetted at a future demographic but I assure you that Jarry's sense of present-tense business was as sharp as my own.
"So buy this Almanac; and consult it as you would a prayer-book to ascertain whether the newspapers with which you so naively burden yourself conform to our infallible opinion. Our expert knowledge in meteorology (we once saw fourteen telegraph poles struck by lightning in a single day) will render them completely obsolete in advance." - p 19
"ADVICE
to Capitalists and Unattended Children
Don't miss this incredible investment opportunity - buy now! 45,
rue de l'Echaudé Saint-Germain:
"Overture to Ubu Roi, for piano (four hands)
Polish March, for piano (two hands)
Brain-Bashing Song." - p 80
In fact, this ALMANAC was so prescient that it included an ad for "The mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press Revenant Edition Series" (p 88), the very press that published this re-release. mOnocle-Lash has certainly done the world a service by so doing b/c very little of the ALMANAC seems to've made it to us English speakers over the last 124 yrs. In my own superb personal library, of the 14 Jarry bks therein, only the Roger Shattuck & Simon Watson Taylor edited Selected Works of Alfred Jarry (Grove Press, 1965) has excerpts from the ALMANAC, "Ubu, Colonialist" & "Useful Knowledge and New Inventions" - both, apparently, from a different edition of the ALMANAC than that presented by mOnocle-Lash.
If one reads closely, one might even find some humor.
"Père Ubu repairs to the big hardware store at Saint-Hubert: - Comrade, this mousetrap is utterly feeble. Our property is being torn apart by rats. These traps look as if they would disintegrate in our hands. Give us a bear trap made from the jaws of a crocodile.
"In the garden, overlooking a trap which resembles a mouth and a long green serge tail, there stands a sign bearing the legend: Beware of the Crocodile. Do you think that Mr Ubu, with all his worldly knowledge and mastery over the sciences, has taken into account the trifling fact that geese cannot read?" - p 36
Naturally, it wd've been more sensible to've hired a town crier w/ a bell to announce this warning every 5 or 10 minutes. An Automobile Ride might also be called for.
"Père Ubu. – My dear friend, this insistence of yours on reading only newspapers has clogged up your mind with absurd ideas. I advise you to purify your brain by reading our Almanac or, better yet, sir, by joining us on a digestive morning constitutional in my Omnubu, The Course of Events in Reverse." - p 52
It's remotely possible that a few of you poor souls may still be relying on 'news'papers & their fellow stoopers for yr lack of understanding of reality. I assure you that the ALMANAC serves just as much as a corrective to that as it ever did, 124 years later. Consider the proof in the following pudding:
"I won't explain individual references here, but I recommend referring to the appendix in Marieke Dubbelboer's Ubusing Culture: Alfred Jarry's Subversive Poetics in the Almanachs du Père Ubu (Routledge, 2012) for comprehensive explanations." - p 100
" Translator's apology
"Père Ubu's Almanac is Alfred Jarry's answer to the annually published almanac, a format which provided ordinary people with the forecasts that helped them tend their crops, fish their waters and mark their religious holidays for centuries until it was superceded in 1988 by the invention of Hello! magazine. Offering a unique and irreverent insight into the cultural and political landscape of Paris on the cusp of the 20th century, Ubu's Almanac was created by Jarry in 1898 along with some friends, artistic contemporaries and colleagues at the Mercure de France, including Claude Terrasse, Pierre Bonnard (who created the illustrations), Rachilde, Pierre Quillard, André-Ferdinand Hérold and Marcel Collière, while they summered together in a riverside house in Corbeil. It's a multidimensional collage of found text, in-jokes, puns and contemporary cultural references, written during the height of the political scandal that would come to be known as the Dreyfus Affair. It enjoyed a small print run and many fewer sales. No contributor, even Jarry, is credited with its creation within the text itself. Whether this was a ploy to evade liability for its controversial contents isn't certain, but the fact that even the printer chose to leave their name off the cover may be some indication of its anticipated reception.
"I embarked on this translation project mostly out of curiosity, since as far as I could tell no one had ever translated the text into English." - p 93
So there you have it, everything you need to know about EVERYTHING unless you haven't read it yet, in wch case it doesn't matter b/c you're already dead.
Displaying 1 of 1 review