Alfred Jarry and the Theater of His Time

ALFRED ]ARRY AND THE THEATER OF HIS TIME INSPIRED BY Mallarme's challenge that realism was "a banal sacrilege of the true meaning of art"1 the Symbolists during the turn of the century in France organized a reaction against realistic art and theater. Although he was not a Symbolist in the orthodox sense,2 Alfred J arry became a participant in this campaign. Jarry devoted much of his energy to a critique of realistic theater which reached a climax in 1898 when with a defiant gesture he let Ubi Roi loose upon the Paris stage. This gesture ignited the biggest explosion in the French theater since the premiere of Victor Hugo's Hernani in 1830.3 Jarry's attack against realistic theater warrants study 110t for its vehemence, but for its significance in the evolution of the modern theater. Out of his reaction against realism and his search for a moreviable alternative, Jarry developed the ideas and engaged in the experiments that made him a forerunner of both the Theater of Cruelty and the Theater of the Absurd.4 The purpose of this study is to examine the anti-realistic reaction and its implications in the theater of Alfred Jarry. It will trace the manner in which Jarry arrived at his ideas for a new approach, and the way in which these ideas have affected developments in the modern theater. When Alfred Jarry arrived in Paris for the first time in 1891, the Theatre Libre had become the principal target of the Symbolists. In a period of three years, Andre Antoine's theater, begun as a reaction 1 Haskell M. Block, Mallarme and the Symbolist Drama (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963), p. 84. 2 This was particularly true in regard to theater. Whereas the Symbolists tried to undermine the realistic theater with delicate poetry, Jarry engaged in a frontal attack of extreme protest and shock tactics. 3 The fuse was lit when Firmin Gemier, as Pere Ubu, opened the play with a thundering "Merdrel" According to the novelist Rachilde, this caused "such a tumult ... that Gemier had to remain mute for fifteen minues." (Alfred Jarry et Ie Siirmale des Lettres, Paris: Grasset, 1928, p. 80) Moreover, Rachilde recalled that ". . . each time the word was said during the action of the play, and it was said very often, it received the same welcome; cries of anger and indignation or insane laughter." (Ibid., p. 81) Catulle Mendes described the kind of vociferous demonstrations which broke out in the audience, some for, some against the play. "Hisses? yes, howls of rage and peals of nasty laughter? yes, benches ready to fly onto the stage? yes...." (VArt du. Theatre, Paris: Bibliotheque Charpentier , 1897, II, P. 438) 4 Such eminent critics as Martin Esslin (The Theatre of the Absurd, Garden City: Doubleday, 1961, pp. 255-258), Leonard Pronko (Avant Garde: The Experimental Theatre in France, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962, pp. 6-7), and George Wellwarth (The Theatre of Protest and Paradox, New York: New York University, 1964, p. x) have pointed out that Jarry is an important precursor of the modern theater. 10 1970 ALFRED JARRY AND THE THEATER OF HIS TIME 11 against the "Boulevard" and a champion of theatrical reform, had become a symbol of the status quo in their minds. A prisoner of the Naturalists and their deterministic theories, Antoine had lost the eclectic spirit which had made his theater so promisingly experimenta1 .5 The Theatre Libre increasingly limited itself to plays whose themes were adultery and the eternal triangle.6 Moreover, Antoine came to rely heavily upon what has ironically been termed faits divers.7 These were fast-moving, sordid shockprovoking , little plays. A typical exponent of the faits divers was Oscar Metenier. In La Casserole, a play in which a gangster gets his cohort to murder his-the gangster's-girl in revenge for her having informed on him, Metenier combined seduction and murder in a manner that was pure Grand Guignol. Metenier's La Bonne atout faire depicted a maid who became the mistress of her employer, his son, his son's friend, as well as the lover of the employer's wife. Having...