Ubu Roi [antikvár]

This book, this play, this draina ¦ Jarry was not very definite in his description of Ubu Roi. André Gide called it 'themostextraordinary thing seen in the Theatre for a long time'. Sacha Guitry went further: 'The question whether or not it is a masterpiece seems to me idle. I believe it is a masterpiece of its kind. You will ask, what is its kind? That is very difficult to define, for it is neither strictly humour nor strictly parody. It is not related to any other form of literature If I wereforced to classify this phenomenon I should put it fîrst among excessive cari" catures, ranking it with the most original and powerful burlesques of ail time.' Since its publication and production in 1896, Ubu Roi has always been subjected to exalted claims or exaggerated scorn. What it really is becomes more apparent if one considere what its author really was. Alfred Jarry was born in 1873, the son of petit bourgeois parents, in Laval, Mayenne. He was a brilliant and original boy, independent, curious, eager to live; obstinate, tierce, sarcastic, shy. In 1883 he en-tered the Lycée at Rennes where he learnt with extraordinary ease but would take orders from no one. He worked when he Iiked and not otherwise, he was a superb wrecker of classes when he felt inclined; he applied himself to sabotage with wit and intelligence. One of his professors was a M. Hébert, already known to previous générations of pupils as le Pere Lbé, or P.H. Le Pere Ebé was physically grotesque, flabby and piglike, lacked ail dignity and author-ity, and had been the butt of schoolboy humour for years before Jarry's arrivai at Rennes. To Jarry he became the symbol of ail the ugliness and mediocrity he already saw in the world, and he became the fier-cest and most bitter protagonist in the anti-Hébert ranks. He, and other schoolboys, wrote Les Polonais, and performed it in 1888 in a marionette theatre in the house of one of the Lycéens. This was the prototype of Ubu Roi. In 1891 Jarry went to Paris where he studied undc Bergson. He published Hal-dernablou, a kind of dramatic divertissement in verse and prose, he founded two reviews, wrote various works, and in 1896 he pub-