Alfred Jarry: An Imagination in Revolt (review)

Jill Fell's study on Alfred Jarry focuses on the relationship between his work and the visual arts. The first chapter sheds new light on Jarry's poetics by pointing to his use of profile art and ornament, both in his writing and his art work. Where most Jarry scholars thought the subject of Ubu to be exhausted, Fell even reveals plausible new sources for Ubu's iconography. Another novel feature of Jarry's complex work is addressed in the final chapter where his work is related to the aesthetics of dance. These intriguing new perspectives are, however, accompanied by very speculative analyses of his texts. Throughout the book, Fell attempts to decode personal references and protest messages to support her image of Jarry as a subversive writer. Fell therefore views the role of science in Jarry's work as 'guerrilla warfare with the new age of scientific analysis'(p. 78). She also concludes that the Christian woodcuts selected by Jarry for the magazines Ymagier and Perhindérion 'have an underlying pagan or heretical accent calculated to shock or disturb'(p. 97) and that Jarry's art criticism is part of 'his methodological campaign against the art critical establishment'(p. 123). There is no doubt that Jarry's work broke with many contemporary aesthetic norms, but could his use of Christian imagery not also reveal a genuine fascination? Could the recurring use of science not also be regarded as providing new possibilities for literature instead of simply a rejection of the 'machine aesthetic'? Was his art criticism really that subversive or could it also reveal a desire to become a respected member of the literary world? Fell's conclusions leave very little room for nuance and ambiguities. She joins the bulk of scholars in the past who viewed him primarily as a rebel. Having set out to position Jarry as an iconoclast of his time, Fell also portrays him as a homosexual writer, defying sexual norms. She bases this idea mostly on supposed anagrams and double meanings, some pointing, for example, to Oscar Wilde and Alfred Douglas. Even though she herself states that 'posterity should pause from drawing to many conclusions from this game' (p. 178), Fell seems to draw her conclusions quite easily from exactly that game of wordplay. A similar analysis leads her to suggest that the Mnester episode in the novel Messaline hints at a possible relationship Jarry might have had with an acrobat. Instead of discussing the effects of the visual arts on Jarry's writing, Fell continually sidetracks to these kinds of speculative conclusions about hidden personal references, often based on a small body of textual evidence. This is a shame since the book also shows Fell's great knowledge of Jarry's work and her extensive research on the period. Nevertheless this study should certainly interest Jarry scholars for it opens up two new research perspectives: profile art and dance. Moreover Fell's book offers a wonderfully illustrated discussion of Alfred Jarry's work to English-speaking readers not yet familiar with this fascinating writer.