Marcel PAGNOL - Autograph manuscript of his piece "Jazz". 1926.

Marcel PAGNOL (1895.1974)

Autograph manuscript – Jazz.

Nine ½ in-4° pages with montages.

Checkered sheets taken from a notebook.

Slnd [late 1926]

Remarkable working manuscript constituting the argument for his satirical and dramatic play in four acts, Jazz .

The subject of Jazz is most dramatic: a Hellenist scholar named Jean Blaise devotes the best years of his life to a work that he believed to be capital: the discovery of a lost dialogue by Plato, the Phaethon. Having become a renowned scholar, Jean Blaise discovered too late the vanity of his work, and the uselessness of his sacrifice, when an English scholar revealed that his text was only a late pastiche. Now haunted by his lost years of youth, Blaise tries in vain to make up for time, but it, incarnated in the form of a ghostly teenager, kills him.

Created at the Grand Théâtre de Monte Carlo on December 9, 1926, the play was performed immediately afterwards in Paris, at the Théâtre des Arts, on December 21, 1926.

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Jazz 

“After a solitary and passionately studious youth, Jean Blaise once had the chance to find, during a trip to Egypt, a palimpsest, that is to say a manuscript whose Greek text had been erased with pumice by a monk from the Middle Ages, who then copied the Gospel according to St John on refurbished parchment. 

Blaise bought the parchment; by known chemical processes, he made the Latin text disappear, then made the shadow of the Greek text reappear. The shadow, because more than half of the Greek sentences, too well erased by the monk, emerge in the form of almost indecipherable brown spots. However, there remained enough legible words for Blaise to understand the value of his discovery: he had found the Phaethon, a lost work of Plato.

So, for many years, he looked at the mutilated work. With all his intelligence, with all his heart, he searched for the missing letters, he completed the destroyed words, he completed the truncated sentences. One day, finally, after many alternations of hope and discouragement, he was able to give a complete text of the Phaethon . Scholars from all over the world welcomed him with unanimous joy. Blaise, who was a high school teacher, obtained a chair in a Faculty. He was therefore considered one of the highest authorities on Greek language and paleography.

When the curtain rises on the scholar's study, Mr. Barricant, an ironmonger and a childhood friend of Blaise, has just arrived. He hasn't seen his old friend for three years, and as he was passing by on a mechanical mower business, he had the idea of ​​stopping one day at his friend's house. But Blaise went out; Barricant is received by Mélanie, the old servant, who was in conversation with the Dean of the Faculty.

This Dean, who is a bilious little old man, does not like Blaise, this subordinate whose glory bothers him. He announces, barely hiding his satisfaction, that a great misfortune has happened; he speaks about it in veiled words, he sneers with allusions to Phaethon, and asks Barricant, who understands nothing, to “prepare his friend for the fatal news”. Then he leaves, declaring that he will return in an hour to carry out his difficult mission.  

Left alone, Barricant and Mélanie look at each other, worried. Old Mélanie, who has served Blaise for years, tries to reassure Barricant. Then, she talks about Blaise's health. He's not sick, but he's been weird for a while. He stays alone, in the night, for hours. He hardly sleeps anymore, she hears him walking around his room… He gets angry over nothing…

Blaise returns from his class. He shows great joy as soon as he sees his old friend again, and they chat while drinking a little port, while Mélanie prepares partridges with cabbage. Suddenly, a visit. She is a student of Blaise, Cécile Boissier. She comes to ask her master for a phonetics textbook. Blaise gives him the volume, and then makes some observations on the Greek theme of the day before. He reminds her of certain grammar rules – and we feel, in the way he explains the use of the future optative, that he has, without knowing it himself, a particular tendency for this little blonde girl. ... When leaving her master, Cécile Boissier is embarrassed. She hesitates, she suddenly decides: she would like to speak to Blaise about Stepanovitch.

Stépanovitch is a young Serbian professor who came to France to pursue lessons. He is very poor, and he will give up his studies for lack of money. The students clubbed together, they collected a thousand francs and Cécile Boissier asks Blaise to give these thousand francs to Stépanovitch. Blaise refuses the money, and promises to help the Serb in a less humiliating way. And indeed, Stepanovitch comes to say goodbye to his master. But before he could even announce his departure, Blaise offered him a job, and paid him a deposit. “Stépa” will not leave.

Barricant returns, and the two old comrades resume their conversation. Barricant talks about his children. Blaise talks about Phaethon. The good Barricant, who was worried by Doyen's vague threats, tries to show Blaise that this Phaethon is not his whole life... Blaise immediately bursts into flames, and responds harshly to his old friend. And here is the Dean, who comes to bring the terrible news: an English scholar has found another text from the Phaethon. A complete text, without gaps, preserved away from the air in a tomb... And this new text proves, irrefutably, that all of Blaise's conjectures to fill the gaps in his palimpsest are entirely false. Furthermore, this Phaethon is not that of Plato, it is the work of a schoolmaster from the 1st ^century who enjoyed making pastiches... The Dean brings the article by the English scholar, this article that destroys his life's work...

And here is Blaise alone, sitting in front of his desk, leaning over the pages which are destroying his glory... Little by little, his face tenses, tears flow down his cheeks... Then, we see emerge from the shadows behind him, a young man poorly dressed, unshaven, a pale young man, who has a school briefcase in his arm, and who carries an old umbrella. This young man leans over Blaise, and he reads over his shoulder, shaking his head, while the curtain comes down.

The setting of the 2nd ^act represents a classroom at the Faculty of Letters. Blaise, who stayed at home for a few days, will come back to do his class. The Dean is worried. He wishes Blaise wouldn't come home so soon after the collapse of the Phaethon, which caused a lot of noise. He can't stop him from coming back, but he has the schoolmaster send the students away. Only a few faithful remain. Cécile Boissier, Stépanovitch, Melle Poche… Others want to see Blaise again, out of curiosity. When he arrives, there are ten of them, and it is in front of them that he gives his last lesson. The stranger at the end of the act entered with him; he sits among the students who do not see him; visibly, it is he who inspires Blaise with the unexpected words that he says from the top of his pulpit: intellectual effort is absurd and vain. The works of the mind are only a game and literary culture is only a means of existence authorized by law ... Only one thing counts: living a human and simple life, far from books, at sun.

For him, he regrets the wasted years, his youth wasted by books. He leaves followed by the young man and leaves his students stunned.

Finally, in the 3rd ^act , the mysterious young man speaks. This young man whose invisible presence made Blaise nervous in the first act is his youth, this is the young man he was at twenty. The poor student trapped in books. The one who would have wanted to speak to the young girls... The fall of Phaeton freed him. First, he demands accountability.

And when Blaise replies “too late!” “, he will prove to the scholar that he is still young, that he can still be loved, and he will push him towards Cécile Boissier. The old professor drags himself on his knees in front of his student, he begs her to become his wife. The young girl, who is tender and serious, and who has never thought of love before, will accept out of pity.

But a few days later, Stepanovitch came to snatch her from the old man. Then the young man appears again. He would like to lead Blaise towards places of easy pleasure... The scholar resists. The young man jumps at his throat. Blaise grabs a revolver and shoots his double, who bursts out laughing: we can't kill him! It is he who will take the pistol from the old man's hands and kill him.

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After the failure of his play, The Merchants of Glory , in 1925, Jazz enjoyed critical success and esteem. However, it was not until the young Provençal's third play, Topaze , created in 1928, that Marcel Pagnol's name became established in the theatrical world.