Alfred JARRY – Autograph manuscript – “The Dragon”. 1903.

Alfred JARRY (1873.1907)

Autograph manuscript – The Dragon

A page in quarto, in red ink, taken from a notebook.

Minor flaws

Slnd [1903]

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Rare autograph manuscript by Jarry constituting the chapter "The Battle of Morsang", central and foundational part of the novel La Dragonne.

Of the unfinished novel La Dragonne, whose posthumous publication is based on a complex set of manuscripts, only the chapter "La Bataille de Morsang" appeared during Alfred Jarry's lifetime, in La Revue Blanche of March-April 1903.

Its writing was completed shortly before, Jarry informing Félix Fénéon on February 28th that he had ready "the short story, a complete work borrowed from the novel," before sending him the full manuscript. The manuscript is known to contain three superimposed phases: the first in pencil, the second correcting the first in red ink, followed by final corrections in black ink.

The present fragment depicts Erbrand Sacqueville shortly before his encounter with the heroine Jeanne Sabrenas on the battlefield.

The Battle of Morsang, the central episode around which the entire novel revolves, takes place on a horseshoe-shaped road, with a troop moving in a circular pattern around Sacqueville. Sacqueville is armed not with a sword but with a cane made from a vine stock, which takes on the appearance of an umbrella handle and then a circus tent pole.