Selected Works Quotes

“One can show one's contempt for the cruelty and stupidity of the world by making of one's life a poem of incoherence and absurdity.”
― Alfred Jarry, Selected Works

“The theater, bringing impersonal masks to life, is only for those who are virile enough to create new life: either as a conflict of passions subtler than those we already know, or as a complete new character. It is obvious that Hamlet, say, is more alive than the man in the street, being both more complicated and more integrated, and perhaps he is the only one really alive, for he is a walking abstraction. Therefore it is harder for the mind to create a character than for matter create a man; and if we are absolutely incapable of creating and giving birth to a new being, then we would do better to keep quiet.”
― Alfred Jarry, Selected Works

“What is a play? A public holiday? A lesson? A pastime? In the first place it might seem that a play ought to be a kind of public holiday, being a show put on for a crowd of citizens gathered together. But we must not forget that there are several different kinds of theater audiences, or at least two: there is the audience of a few intelligent people, and the one that is just a crowd. For the crowd, spectacular shows [...] are mainly a pastime, and maybe just a little bit of a lesson since they are not forgotten quite immediately, but a lesson in mock sentimentality and mock esthetics, which are the only real kind for people like that, and for whom the minority theater seem an incomprehensible bore. This other theater is neither a holiday for its audience, nor a lesson, nor a pastime--it is something real: the elite join in the creation of one of themselves who, among this elite, sees a 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.”
― Alfred Jarry, Selected Works

“To keep up even a worthwhile tradition means vitiating the idea behind it which must necessarily be in a constant state of evolution: it is mad to try to express new feelings in a "mummified" form.”
― Alfred Jarry, Selected Works

“The virtue of dress rehearsals is that they are a free show for a select group of artists and friends of the author, and where for one unique evening the audience is almost completely expurgated of idiots.”
― Alfred Jarry, Selected Works

“Writing a part with the talents of a particular actor in mind is the method most likely to result in ephemeral plays: for, once that actor is dead, it will not be easy to find an identical replacement. This system gives and author without creative talent the advantage of a ready-made model whose muscles he can flex as he chooses. Really, the actor (with a minimum of education) might just as well talk about himself and say whatever he liked. The weakness of this system is most obvious in the tragedies of Racine, which are not really plays, but rosaries of roles. It is not "stars" that are needed, but a homogeneous array of somber masks: docile silhouettes.”
― Alfred Jarry, Selected Works

“If we want to lower ourselves to the level of the public there are two things we can do for them--and which are done for them. The first is to give them characters who think as they do [...], and whom they understand perfectly. When this is the case they receive two impressions; firstly they think that they must themselves be very witty, as they laugh at what they take to be witty writing--and this never fails to happen to Monsieur Donnay's audiences. Secondly they get the impression that they are participating in the creation of the play, which relieves them of the effort of anticipating what is going to happen. The other thing we can do for them is give them a commonplace sort of plot--write about things that happen all the time to the common man, because the fact is that Shakespeare, Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci are somewhat bulky; their diameter is a bit difficult to traverse because genius, intelligence, and even talent are larger than life and so inaccessible to most people.

If, in the whole universe, there are five hundred people who, compared with infinite mediocrity, have a touch of Shakespeare and Leonardo in them, is it not only fair to grant these five hundred healthy minds the same thing that is lavished on Monsieur Donnay's audiences--the relief of not seeing on the stage what they don't understand; the active pleasure of participating in the creation of the play and of anticipation?”
― Alfred Jarry, Selected Works