ALMANAQUE (EXTRAIT)
ALFRED JARRY (1873-1907)
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Laval, Mardi 12. Novembre 2019 - Mercure, passage du soleil. Pleine lune.
Laval, Mercredi 13. Novembre 2019 - 43-45 Rue du Val de Mayenne (Intérieur)
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Laval, Mardi 10 As E.P. 147 St Abstrait, bourreau
Laval, Mercredi 11 As E.P. 147 St Ossian, barde postiche
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Out of thin air, I appeared in Paris, and jumped in my hired Mercury ride and sped off to Laval - 280 kilometers west to the boarder of Brittany. I had a pilgrimage in the name of Alfred Jarry.
Soon I sat by a dinner table in my chosen place to rest my bones for the night - Manoir de Rouessé. The table was given identity to the host or guest sitting by this table by a bird in black-brown bronze on a square pedestal in stone. The bird stood on one leg and out of balance by tilting too much backwards, like falling off the pedestal if not noticing soon enough. The other tables had something to identify them too.
The host served me food and wine of plenty, and he soon stood inside the walk-in fireplace and lit it up. Later I had cognac by this fire and looked at a model of the mansion I sat inside. This skinless mansion, from the 15th century, had a moat to protect and to double itself in its reflection as you could have seen from behind the hâ-hâ in the garden. It gave some ubuesque qualities for a Phalanstery.
In my eagerness of seeing Alfred Jarry’s birthplace I went out for a walk in the night under the full moon and passed under the medieval city gate Porte Beucheresse where Henri Rousseau was born and dizzyingly stumbled further down on an empty ancient cobblestone alleyway with overhanging, half-timbered buildings, likening an Expressionist movie-set, towards the river and 8 Quai de Mayenne (Rue Alfred Jarry).
Here in Laval, this modern-saint was born on September 8, 1873. Or as stated in his ‘pataphysical calendar - the day to be known as the beginning of his reign of a new era: 1’er Absolu, 1’er E.P.
The occultation of Alfred Jarry, pataphysician, happened in Paris in the midst of the triduum of the Hallowmas season - November 1, 1907, All Saints-Day.
I walked down along the steep side of the Palais de Justice and soon found myself in a picture of a postcard taken around the time Alfred Jarry was born. It’s an image which has been used to depict his birthplace and to encompass that specific time, giving related impressions for a biography on him. I try then to find the same position to capture a similar photograph, without the policeman nor the other posers who are all zapped by the lens some 147 years ago.
A fountain, with a high cistern top in stone, positioned on the side of the street I came down in junction with the main, had a deep gap filled with bushes,but on the upper street made an alignment with the fountain top. I thought I’d try to make the leap. This was to get a better shot of the house, I thought. So I cracked the camera, in my backpack, in two, over my spine, and a stone, as I fell, trying to get up on the pedestal. I fell backwards, off the foot I had managed to put on top. The bird...?
The house was more or less looking the same as on the old image, but abandoned. The doors were locked and barred, but windows on the higher floors were open behind shutters left for the wind. It seemed impossible to access.
Swirling around the house the next day like a Rat in the Chinese calendar, forgetting my back pain, I was soon inside and collected useless remains from dusty, empty rooms for my reliquary.
In a letter from Rousseau to Jarry at the time they lived together in 1894 and were to move out: I have been to fetch your palette and the box of famous actors, also the Japanese lantern which will look very passable in the trees.
And is it possible that I uncovered an original drawing by Alfred Jarry scribbled with a pencil over a flowery wallpaper in the living room? And could it be an absurd version of his protagonist and antagonist in one - Pèré Ubu?: From behind a half-torn wall the first covering appears, and on it, barely visible - a quick, curly eye continues to line up a slightly oblique triangular pear-head of his Physics teacher seen in profile. Instead of his leafy, green mustachio, or other down-growing element, the line halts by a ladder which is stuck up underneath its muzzle. The ladder is an illusory third dimension element made different from the space of the head by shading the poles on each side holding three parallelograms making steps. The staircase is like a collage element by being made to differ from the other simpler drawing, but also by squaring it off with an extra line drawing making a box to capture and to emphasis their differences. The line of the softened triangular head continues from the other ladder bar and to the neck. Four lines are opening and sticking through the shape in the back of the head as some kind of hairy decoration, and the line continues to close the triangle at the top of the head, forming
a short forehead before it’s back to the eye. This could be an architectural drawing of the head of Ubu...
On my way out of Laval I passed the bridge Pont Aristide Briand was fully decorated with Christmas trees hanging upside down all over the bridge. I never saw something like it and started thinking that this was in the spirit of Alfred Jarry.
In this manner my pilgrimage continued to Rennes, Mayenne, Coudray, Corbeil, Paris, La Frette and Paris, again.
Oslo, January 16, 2020