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'UBU ROI'
Ubu Roi created a scandal when it was first performed in the Theatre de l’Oeuvre in Paris in 1896 and was described by André Gide as "the most extraordinary thing seen in the theatre for a long time". Having seen the play, W.B. Yeats said: "After us, the savage god." Critics were divided between those who compared it to Rabelais and Shakespeare (Père and Mère Ubu like the Macbeths without consciences or poetry), and those who dismissed it as rubbish and a degenerate schoolboy joke. With its bad language and schoolboy humour, the play tells the farcical story of Père Ubu, an officer of the King of Poland, a grotesque figure whom Jarry saw as epitomising the mediocrity and stupidity of middle-class officialdom. Aided and abetted by his wife, Père Ubu kills the King and claims the throne. Having amassed a great fortune by executing his subjects and seizing their property, he is finally driven out by the ‘Whole Russian Army’ and flees across Europe. Despite the simplicity of the plot, the influence of both the play and the writer has endured. Born in Laval, Mayenne, France in 1873, Jarry wrote Ubu Roi at the age of twenty-three, and it remains his best known and most influential work. Derived from a schoolboy play called Les Polonais, Ubu was inspired by M. Hébert, a school teacher and the butt of schoolboy jokes at the Lycée in Rennes which Jarry attended. Lacking both authority and dignity, the physically grotesque figure of M. Hébert became for Jarry, as Barbara Wright relates in her introduction to the book:"the symbol of all the ugliness and mediocrity he already saw in the world", and he in turn became the inspiration for Père Ubu. The figure of Père Ubu was to be a potent one for Jarry, who became obsessed by his creation, to the point that he began to imitate him, adopting an odd way of speaking, referring to himself as ‘Père Ubu’ and behaving in a highly eccentric, Ubuesque manner. Absurdity became the hallmark of Jarry’s style. Hailed as the father of the Theatre of the Absurd, he told a friend that "talking about things that are understandable only weighs down the mind and falsifies the memory, but the absurd exercises the mind and makes the memory work". It was through writing Ubu Roi that Jarry became the creator of the science of Pataphysics, a logic of the absurd, and "science of imaginary solutions", enshrined since 1948 in the Collège de Pataphysique. However, the importance of the play lies not its plot but in its anarchic presentation in the theatre. A precursor of Dada and Surrealism, Jarry was to be of influence to Picasso, Satie, Cocteau and Apollinaire, and as a critic noted "almost everyone has seen in Jarry — and especially Ubu — an intimation, if only a shadow, of the future... His spirit… can be seen in all the Absurd Art, Anti-Art and so forth, which has obsessed the art of this century". It was the anarchic theatrical experience of Ubu Roi that Gaberbocchus Press sought to portray in the presentation of the book, making its design as subversive as its text. Barbara Wright was persuaded to adopt the unconventional technique of writing her text by hand on lithographic plates, on which Franciszka Themerson later made her drawings. This, together with the yellow paper on which the book is printed, already gives a suitably anarchic appearance, which as one writer has noted "graphically communicates the play’s wild (and often scatalogical) irreverence". Ubu Roi attracted critical acclaim, puzzlement and curiosity."...as exciting a piece of modern book publication as we have ever seen" claimed New Directions Books in their catalogue in January 1952; a "striking example of brains and imagination in book production" commented a writer in Ark, Journal of the Royal College of Art, 1954). Andrew Sinclair in Time and Tide (30 November 1961) wrote: "Jarry’s Ubu is perhaps even more powerful a satire today than it was 65 years ago…The weird and wonderful Gaberbocchus Press have dashed in where others fear to print". A columnist in Times Literary Supplement, (18 August 1966), commented on "the wit and the precision and the merciful economy of Mrs Themerson’s drawings" that capture the spirit of the play. The success of the publication led to the production of three subsequent editions. The role of the Themersons was duly acknowledged by the Collège de Pataphysique and they were awarded honorary titles, Franciszka became Commendeur Exquis Petits fils Ubu, and Stefan Commandeur Requis ou Capitulaires Quatrièmes fils Ubu.
In 1952, Franciszka created masks for a dramatised reading of the play at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; she designed the stage production with life-size puppets by the Marionetteatern of Stockholm in 1964, and finally drew her own comic-strip version of Ubu in 1969. This tour-de-force of a comic strip consists of 90 episodes, with each drawing measuring one metre. Finally, when the Gaberbocchus Press published Ubu Roi, time had added another irony. Both in the play and in reality, Poland was a 'nowhere'. In 1896, Poland was not on the map of Europe. From 1939 to 1945 it vanished again, and was under foreign, Soviet, control after that. The murderous and stupid Ubus had one thing in common with the multitalented Themersons: all had had to flee from foreign invaders of Poland. Items on display 1. Franciszka Themerson, drawings for Gaberbocchus Press logo, c.1950. 2. Alfred Jarry Ubu Roi London : Gaberbocchus Press, 1951 3. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi, 1951, title page 4. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi, London : Gaberbocchus Press, 1961. Second edition. 5. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi, London : Gaberbocchus Press, 1966. Third edition. 6. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi, London : Gaberbocchus Press, 1976. Fourth edition and limited edition, no. 9 of 50, with an original drawing by Franciszka Themerson 7. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi,1951, p. 31. 8. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi,1951, p. 67 9. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi,1951, p. 78 and 71 10. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi, p. 78 and 71. Lithographic plate. 11. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi, 1951, p. 104 and 93 12. Ordre de la Grande Gidouille, College de ‘Pataphysique. Copy of the certificate electing Stefan Themerson as ‘Commandeur exquis’ of the Order, dated Sable 84 (10th December 1957). 13. Ubu Roi, programme of a dramatised reading, ICA, London, 18 February 1952, produced by William Jay, with Harold Lang and Selma vaz Dias. 14&15. Papier mâché masks made by Franciszka Themerson for dramatised reading of Ubu Roi at ICA, London, 1952. |
Alfred
Jarry's Ubu Roi was translated for the Gaberbocchus Press by Barbara
Wright and illustrated by Franciszka Themerson. It has been described
as "undoubtedly the most acclaimed book of the Gaberbocchus Press",
and is radical both in its choice of text, as the first English edition
of the play, and in the design of the book.