The beginnings in literature of Alfred JARRY told by an eyewitness.

[Alfred JARRY] – Louis LORMEL (1869.1922)

Signed autograph manuscript.

Five pages in-4° on graph paper.

Slnd [1921]

The beginnings of symbolism. Rémy de Gourmont, Alfred Jarry and literary art. The origins of Ubu Roi.

“He often spoke to me about Ubu Roi , like a puppet play that he had once made and performed himself. »

Precious working manuscript, first draft, constituting the first part of his article devoted to Jarry published in Le Gaulois du Dimanche , December 3, 1921.

Louis Lormel (Louis Libaude, known as) launched, in October 1892, with the help of a few friends, his magazine L'Art littéraire . In December 1893, it was within this group that Alfred Jarry published his first text: the poem Berceuse pour put the dead to sleep , signed “Alfred-Henry Jarry” (subsequently included in Les Minutes de sable memorial) .

Relations between Lormel and Jarry cooled when the latter became a shareholder of Mercure de France and therefore reserved its production for it. However, they were reconciled at the end of Alfred Jarry's life. Upon his death in 1907, Louis Lormel published an article in La Phalange describing Jarry's style as "the infinite variety of images colliding and intersecting in a sometimes obscure framework".

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“I have always kept the cult of memory. It was while leafing through the collection of La Décadence , published in 1886, that in 1892 I had the idea of ​​creating L'Art littéraire , a small journal of the same format and appearance, which was entitled: Monthly Bulletin of 'Art and Criticism . It appeared in October.

In 1886, I was still at college; in 1892, my resources, like my leisure time, were very limited. I first did Literary Art almost alone, to get the business started. However, from the first issue, I had the help of Mr. François Coulon, author of Euryalthès , who wanted to create the Symbolic Drama. We find in the Mercure de France of October 1892, an article by this poet: Essay on Theater Renovation . What did he become ? […]

Remy de Gourmont, who since 1890 had been writing for Mercure and whose name was already known, was particularly kind to L'Art littéraire . Number 11 of the newspaper contains a piece of prose by him: Le Camaldule . For number 12, Stéphane Mallarmé, requested by me, sent me a sonnet then unpublished in France: At hours and without such breath of emotion ... This sonnet was dedicated: To Those of the Excelsior , group of friends Belgians. I almost forgot Mr. André Gide who gave me these verses which I quote out of simple curiosity. […]

Finally, in number 13 and the last of the journal series, a poem by Alfred Jarry appeared: Berceuse pour en putre le mort (become Lullaby of the Dead to Sleep ), the first work he published. So it was I who introduced Jarry. He was then 20 years old. He had left the Lycée Henri IV two or three years ago, where he apparently did well. It is this high school that he wants to talk about, at the beginning of his brochure on Albert Samain when he alludes to the surroundings of the Pantheon.

Literary Art was printed at the home of a Polish Jew, 3, rue du Four; this man, who, as a Jew and as a Pole, hated the Russians, then said to me: “You French people know nothing about Russia and you lend it money. It will cost you dearly one day. » He wasn't entirely wrong.

In the Revue blanche , Mr. Tristan Bernard announced: “Just published: L'Art littéraire , whose offices are 3 rue du Four. Let us hope that this street is not prophetic to him. »

Alfred Jarry came to live on Boulevard Saint-Germain , a small house located on the corner of Rue de Buci, opposite Rue du Four. This house is now demolished. He occupied, on the first floor, a fairly large room; his books were thrown on the ground, pell-mell. Jarry already had owls in cages at home at that time and fed them horse meat and other waste.

We must know this: Jarry was not poor then. He was even considered well-off and helped me make L'Art littéraire a review from 1894. He often spoke to me about Ubu Roi , like a puppet play that he had once made and performed himself. with puppets at Rennes high school. Father Ubu was the caricature of a certain professor of physics (hence, subsequently, the word pataphysics) who was called Hébert. He was, Jarry told me, “breeding polyhedra”.

At this time Jarry may have been tuberculous but not an alcoholic, as he later became . He had been hospitalized in Amélie-les-Bains, during his military service, and his bedmate was little Sucrier, Max Lebaudy. He was preparing a vague degree in letters, for which his family sent him gold. But above all he cultivated heraldic science and dreamed of writing a book “where everything would be by coat of arms” […]