Rare and long autograph manuscript signed by Alfred JARRY – Speculations.

Alfred JARRY (1873.1907)

Signed autograph manuscript – Speculations.

Eight pages in-4° taken from a notebook.

Typographer’s instructions in blue pencil.

Slnd [1901]

Very rare first draft manuscript by Jarry, with deletions and corrections, of a chronicle of La Chandelle verte entitled “ Speculations ” and containing three texts: “ L'Abbé Bruneau. – French Trees. – Instant Language. »

Formidable and amusing “speculations” by Jarry – published in issue 192 of La Revue blanche on June 1, ¹⁹⁰¹ – demonstrating through absurdity the aberrations of the judicial system and the justice of the future ( L'abbé Bruneau ); the stupidity of “nationalist” considerations in matters of naturalism ( French Trees ); and the unforeseen and ridiculous drawbacks of universal language ( The Instant Language ).

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Father Bruneau . Martyr and victim of the secret of confession too inviolate, or murderer? Murderer, say the newspapers, since the person who would have made the revelations at the point of death is not dead. A little more, we would have read: assassin, because the victim is not dead. Finally, it seems that we now have proof that Father Bruneau really committed the crime, and that there was no judicial error. We are not yet very accustomed to saying that there is always a judicial error. It is not impossible that in a few dozen centuries, the opinion becoming publicly accepted that virtues and crimes are social and arbitrary things, we will understand that there is only one judicial error as serious as that of to condemn an ​​innocent: it is to condemn a man whom our fashions say is guilty. Crimes or good deeds will, in these utopian times, only be different ways of living for honest people. Thus, we will say, for the convenience of language and to avoid easy confusion: “Mr. Mr. Y…, the honest man who murdered an old lady. »

French trees . The “Section of the French Homeland of the Plaisance district” addresses various “wishes” to “Gentlemen the French nationalist municipal councilors of the City of Paris”. By what aberration they submit them to us at the same time, this is what the human mind is powerless to explain. The members of the said Section were particularly moved by the report, submitted in April, by Mr. Bouvard, chief architect of the works in Paris, "where it is a question, first of all, of transforming the Champ-de-Mars into a park, surrounded by hotels, which would extend to the Seine and join the current gardens of the Trocadéro. Their patriotism revolted at the idea of ​​seeing “these hotels that we have to build connected by an Italian gallery!” » And they declare that it would be “useful and moral, as well as pleasant, to put trees of a species native to France on the transformed Champ-de-Mars”.

We will not discuss the morality or the usefulness of this project, but its approval or rather the possibility of carrying it out: to admit, in fact, only trees whose species is native to France, there will only be at the future Champ-de-Mars no trees . Because if we review the various trees that usually line public walks, we will have to eliminate:

The plane tree ( platanus acerifolia ), native to Mediterranean Asia and a variety of which is found in North America;

The chestnut tree ( æsculus hippocastanum ), whose full name is, as we know: horse chestnut;

The elm ( ulmus campestris ), widespread throughout Europe;

The lime tree ( tilia sylvestris ), which grows in Holland, Poland, Canada and Hungary, and which should be designated with the German word Linde when we want to talk about its shade, reserving the French term when we use its herbal tea;

The cedar of Lebanon, this Jew;

The gas candelabra: the French refused, in fact, the lighting gas proposed by their compatriot, the engineer Lebon, and only accepted it imported by the Englishman Taylor. As for the hollow column of the candelabra, it is of Etruscan origin;

The telegraph pole: the first idea of ​​the electric telegraph is due to the Munich resident Soemmering;

The gallows: fallen into disuse everywhere, it is today naturalized English;

The family trees of French citizens, of varied and exotic strains, the oldest of which is Germanic.

We will hardly be able to see its leaves spread out, in the vast empty and desolate space of the Champ-de-Mars, and even if countries from across the Ocean do not dispute it with us, that the Tree of Liberty... in freedom.

Instant language . The deputies of Haute-Savoie petitioned, this month, to the office of the Chamber for the organization in Paris of a first model school of “instant language”. It is a universal alphabet which would summarize all the alphabets of the world in 45 ordinary letters, and would inaugurate for all languages ​​a single spelling of the utmost simplicity. The no less universal principles of instantaneous language are: “A single letter for each sound; The same sound reproduced by the same letter in all the languages ​​where it is found. “

“Only one letter for each sound” implies, if we understand correctly, as many letters as sounds; according to this method, in French, instead of five simple vowels, their combination into diphthongs, and their long or short accents, there would be at least fifteen. A very small number of these fifteen letters (which would have to be invented, since we want isolated letters) could be used to spell other languages. We would need, instead of the i and the u , currently common to several idioms, new characters for the ai , the iou and the eu of the English, the ou and the u of the Germans... Millions and billions in savings, say the prospectuses: yes, it would take a billion letters.