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  • Alfred Jarry: l’expérimentation du singulier by Karl Pollin
  • Marieke Dubbelboer
Alfred Jarry: l’expérimentation du singulier. Par Karl Pollin. (Faux titre, 389.) Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013. 284pp.

This study offers a close reading of several of Alfred Jarry’s works and examines the way Jarry reconstructed the relationship between self and reality. Karl Pollin frames his discussion within the context of philosophical reflections on the self, the body, and human knowledge, inviting comparisons with such contemporary thinkers as Bergson and Freud, as well as later philosophers such as Derrida and Deleuze. The first chapter analyses ‘Être et vivre’ (1894), an early essay exploring the disconnect between human consciousness and lived experience; Pollin considers this text to be a blueprint for Jarry’s poetics. Chapter 2 examines Jarry’s creative reconstruction of the self in the novels Les Jours et les nuits (1897) and Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll (published posthumously in 1911). Both works, Pollin claims, are poignant examples of Jarry’s endeavour to create a unique literary mental space by offering his self-invented science of pataphysics as a solution to life’s contradictions. Chapter 3 addresses the role of the body by looking at Jarry’s [End Page 107] science-fiction novel Le Surmâle (1902); Pollin argues that Jarry’s creation of a virtual body is a means of reconciling the spiritual and the corporeal. In the final chapter Pollin turns his attention to Jarry’s singular and insular vision of the world and its consequences for the Other. The focus here is on the novels L’Amour en visites (1898) and L’Amour absolu (1899), in which Jarry’s bleak portrayals of cruel, artificial love reveal the impossibility of connecting with the Other, leaving no option but to create a more preferable truth. The aims and scope of Pollin’s study are broad — at times too broad when the author makes casual, sweeping claims about complex philosophical concepts. Pollin also tends to bypass a little too readily the humour and absurdist nature of Jarry’s work. Were we meant to take every statement deadly seriously? What are we to make, for example, of some of the hyperbolic decadent imagery and quasi-scientific jargon present in Jarry’s gloomy view of love and sexuality? In places the discussion would have benefited from greater reference to the cultural-historical context—something that other recent studies on Jarry have focused on. That said, Pollin’s emphasis on works outside of the Ubu plays is admirable, and his fresh analyses of these lesser-known works are welcome. The book’s strength undoubtedly lies in Pollin’s close and enthusiastic engagement with the texts, discussion of which is rigorous, insightful, and persuasive, and underpinned by a rich knowledge of Jarry’s literary œuvre and a thorough grasp of previous scholarship. Overall, this book reconsiders Jarry’s place in literary history and in the history of ideas: Pollin presents him as an original, modern thinker on concepts of the self, the body, and human perception. This is a thought-provoking contribution to recent and future scholarship on Jarry.

Marieke Dubbelboer
University of Bristol
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