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 03f
One the most
extraordinary minds of
20th-century France
Sanskrit scholar, poet,
E .
X-~RREAL~,
philosopher, student of Gurdjieff
...Ren6 Daumal died in 1944 at the
age of 36, leaving behind this remark-
able hwk.
MOUNTANALOGUEis the profound
(One of the most intriguing poetic
reveries of contemporary literature.-
Fimolol and funny (Gleams with a kind
Evergreen Revlew Volume 4

contents 9
24 Roger Shattuck: Superliminal Note

I. THE SATRAPS
36 Raymond Queneau: A Fish's Life
46 Eugene Ionesco: Foursome
54 Boris Vian: A Letter to His Magnifcence The ViceCurator
Baron
62 JacquesPrkvert: Chant Song
...I t Droppeth As The Gende Rain ( A Ballet)
67 R e d Clair: The Chinese Princess
69 Jean Ferry: Two Stories
73 Jean Dubuffet: Monsieur Juva'sFlint Sratues
79 Maurice Saillet: Close to Antonin Arrmrd
84 Michel Leiris: Voodoo in Haiti

II. THE PATACESSORS

97 Alphonse Allais: Literary Assassin
103 Fdix F6nbn: Soft Spoken Anarchist
106 Remy de Gourmont: Man of Masks
111 Marcel Schwob: Double Soul
115 Lbn-Paul Fargue: Explorer
118 Julien T o m : Author by Neglect
122 Renk Daumal: J2xperirnental Mystic
 %-m

I Number 1 3 May-June 1960

Pruvedited by:
RWBR SHATTUCK
SIMON WATSON TAYLOR

111. ALFRED JARRY (1873-19071

128 Exploits and Opnwns of Dr. F m ~ t ~ oPmphysician
ll,
The Fragrant Isle
The Isle of Ptyx
Elements of 'Pataphysics:
Definition
Faustroll Smaller than Faustroll
T h e Surface of God
139 ulnr cow (Act I)
146 ThreePoems

IV. THE COLLEOE OF 'PATAPHYSICS

l!lO Simon Watson Taylor: An Apodeictic Outline
160 Jean Borzic: Scienee: An Administrative Qz~estiOn
169 His Late Magnificence, Dr. I. L. Sandomir: O w PatrrphyAm
Inaugural Harangue
AllOCUtiOn
Protheses (on Ubu and the Serious)
Testament
181 Nicolaj N. Kamenev: Report on Some Concrete ~~

Problems
186 His Late Magnificence,Dr. I. L. Sandomir: EpmrorthoSir
the Moral Clinmnen
187 His Magnificence Jean MoUet: Message to the Civilized or
Uncivilired world
 Superliminal Note
The world is ready for Pataphysics-about as ready as it is for outer
space. Occupying an inner space where we arc at the same time most
and least ourselves, Pataphysics has always been there. It will remain;
unlike other spaces, it will never be conquered. Yet the Science of
Sciences has had a name and a place on earth for only sixty odd years,
and recently it has begun to lurk almost too visibly in certain prominent
forms of human activity. So the time has come to talk of Pataphysics.
Just recall a few of last years major happenings. A British news-
paper organized a race between a marble arch in London and a lime
stone arch in Paris, and all Europe gaped in delight as a roller-skater
in a derby, several playboys unoccupied since the Twenties, three air-
craft corporations, and finally the Royal Air Force itself jumped into
the fray. Western technology achieved the supreme demonstration of
free enterprise (at great expense) in an air-borne hopskipand-jump
relay race that was more tastefully staged than a hot war, and as p r o
ductive of newspaper copy. May our leaders ponder the lesson. A few
months earlier, a diplomat inadvertently revealed that he and his peers
of several nations daily risk their reputations and their counties future
on their capacity to introduce naturally into the proceedings of a con-
ference a word like unicorn or hermaphrodite-any outlandish word
agreed upon beforehand among the players. The point is to say it first
and without it sounding forced. One admires these p r men of state
trying to brighten a bleak life of cultural exchange and disarm8ment.
But the cat is out of the bag: diplomacy is finally unmasked as an
international word game.
It was last year alxl that a physicist advanced the theory that every
charged particle in the universe is balanced not only by an oppositely
charged particle in the same atom but also by an oppositely charged
24
SHATTUCK 25
particle in a totally different phantom universe, which haunts this
one like a ghost. Alices looking-glass world is right here around us if
wc could simply change all the signs of our thinking or being.
Reflect on these events for a moment. The ultimate manifestations
competitive industrial wiety, of international statesmanship, and
of science are sheer Pataphysics. No other single perspective could
assemble them as anything more meaningful than symptoms of collec-
tive hysteria or boredom. In reality (a word I shall henceforth have to
dismiss), they manifest the final stage of Pataphysics practiced uncon-
sciously before it mutates into the higher, conscious stage. Such events
as these reveal the desperate measures of men starved for a new science;
they need no longer go hungry.
With the majestic and millenial timing of a comet, a handsomely
printed book appeared privately last year in France amid all this
pathetic fumbling and points the way toward the higher level of thought:
Opus Pataphyricum, the Testament of his Late Magnificence, Dr. I. L.
Sandomir, Vice-Curator and Founder of the College of Pataphysics,
Preceded by his Writings in Pataphysics. (Extracts are given in Section
IV.)
At this point it is probably necessary for me to make a gratuitous
comment: I am quite serious. Seriously.
What then is Pataphysics? This is no new literary-philosophical
school spawncd in Paris and proffered now to the voracious American
public.* Pataphysics, I reiterate, has always existed, ever since a man
first scratched his head to quell the itch of reflective thought, ever since
Socrates demonstrated to Meno that his slave boy had known the
Pythagorean theorem all along,t ever since the day Panurge defeated
the English scholar in a disputation by signs, ever since Lewis Carroll
established the equivalence of cabbages and kings. N o t until the end
* These notes and texts are appearing in a publication oddly called the Ever-
pen Review, whore last years foliage was considerably filled out by the -tings
of a generation dubbed beat before it started. h e of my bert friends wear
beards, but may their shadow, cool as it is, not fall upon this n u m b . A simple
transposition will ret things straight. The evergreen texts of Pataphysics are a p
Faring in B publication henceforward lo be refened to as the Deciduous
Review.
t h a t e s , the pataphysician, a u l d of MU= plove anything by d i n g a few
questions. In this case, the exchange ends thus: "Senates: Then he who does not
know still has true notions of that which he does not know. Mew: He has.
26 Evergreen Review
of the nineteenth century, however, at a time when science, art, and
religion were coming very close to bumping into one another in the
dark, did 'Pataphysics drop its disguises and disclose its intentions. Its
chosen vessel was Alfred Jarry, who achieved notoriety by assuming
paternity of a raucous schoolboy farce, Ubzc Hoi, performed in Paris
in 1896. Jarry appropriated from P k e Ubu his "gience of 'Pataphysics"
and attributed it to a new personage, Dr. Faustroll. In a book that
remained unpublished until after his death (Exploits and Opinions of
Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician, 1911), and in a variety of novels, poems,
and speculative texts, Jarry elaborated and applied the science of sci-
ences. Both Jarry and 'Pataphysics have remained controversial subjects
in French literature through the periods of Symbolism, Dada, Sur-
realism, and even Existentialism.' Highly contradictory praise has
come from such sources as Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Andre Breton,
And& Gide, Antonin Artaud, and Raymond Queneau. 'Pataphysics
had occasional difficulty preserving its identity until after the second
World War, when the Coll2ge de 'Pataphysique was founded. With
its proliferation have come a set of statutes, a complex hierarchy, corn-
missions and subcommissions, quarrels and settlements, a quarterly re-
view, publishing house, world-wide representation and occasional public
manifestations. (See the Planisphere and the Introduction to Section
IV.) In all its internal and external activities, the College has cultivated
the pataphysical sense of life, until it is possible to say very simply
with P k e Ubu: "'Pataphysics is a branch of science we have invented
and for which a crying need is generally experienced." Faustroll wasted
less words when he took over: "La 'Pataphysique est la science . ."t .
But what, once again, is 'Pataphysics? The real yet half legendary
tigure of Jarry provides the readiest access to it. Born in 1873 and cele-

Clinamen, one of the tenets of 'Pataphysics and derived from Lucretiur' use
of the term to refer to the mcial role of deviation and chance in atomic happen-
ings, a e e p frequently enough into Same's writing to amuse suspicion. Could
L'Etre et le Ndmt (we pp. 471 and 529; aLo "R&onse a Albert Camus" in Ler
Temps Madernes) amount to a marrive and apoayphal demonstration of the
Science of Sciences?
t English-rpeaking members of the College are still deliberating over the mrrect
translation of this sentence. " 'Pataphysia is the science." '' 'Pataphysics is the one
science." '' 'Pataphysics is all science." '' 'Pataphysics is the only science." " 'Pata-
physics is science." " 'Pataphysics is the science of .. ." More than one version
has been used in chis volume (see pp. 137, 151 and 172).
SHArnCK 27
brated at twenty-two for his premcious talents and deliberate eccen-
tricity, Jarry lived fully exposed to his era. He belonged to the
bohemian world of Montmartre cabarets and was at home with the
great tradition of embittered humor and honesty that came out of this
squalid exoticism. H e was befriended and published by the symbolists
and shared their sense of the musicality and suggestiveness of language
as reflecting the hidden relations between all existing beings. He had
felt the lure of occultism, the wave of Rosicrucianism and Satanism
and esoteric knowledge that had been gaining popularity throughout
the century. And, without inner conEct, he had become ahsorbed in
the transformation taking place in science-nut in the expiring posi-
tivism of his own country but in the highly imaginative investigations
of a generation of British thinkers such as Lord Kelvin (on relativity
and units of measurement) and C. V. Boys (his amazing volume, Soup
Bubbles and the Forces W h i c h Mould T h e m was republished just
last fall in the Science Study Series) and inevitably H. G. Wells.
Finally, Jarry welcomed the fearless dynamism of the anarchists, who
set out, like Ubu, to destroy in order to construct upon the ruins.
Leaving the greater part of the society intact, these several forces were
rarely related and spent themselves in divergent directions. It was
Jarry's particular talent to have transformed them into the single
science of 'Pataphysics. It can be seen as a method, a discipline, a
faith, a cult, a point of view, a hoax. It is all of those and none of
them.
W e have now reached the point where it is necessary to undertake
the selkontradictory task of defining 'Pataphysics in non-pataphysical
terms.
1. 'Pataphysics is the science of the realm beyond metaphysics; or,
'Pataphysics lies as far beyond mtaphysics as metaphysics lies beyond
physics-in one direction or another.
Now, metaphysics is a word which can mean exactly what one wants
it to mean, whence its continuing popularity. To Aristotle it meant
merely the field of speculation he took up after physics. The pata-
physician beholds the entire created universe, and all others with it,
and sees that they are neither good nor had hut pataphysical. Rent!
Daumal, writing in the twentieth century, said that he proposed to
do for metaphysics what Jules Verne had done for physics. 'Pata-
physics, then, entering the great beyond in whatever direction it may
28 Evergreen Review
lie, offers us a voyage of discovery and adventure into what Jerry
called ethernity. That, of course, is wherc we all live.
2. Pataphysics is the science of the particular, of lnws governing
exceptions.
The realm beyond metaphysics will not be reached by vaster and
vaster generalities; this has been the error of contemporary thought.
A return to the particular shows that every event determines a law, a
particular law. Pataphysics relates each thing and each event not to
any generality (a mere plastering over of exceptions) but to the singu-
larity that makes it an exception. Thus the science of Pataphysics
attempts no cures, envisages no progress, distrusts all claims of im-
provement in the state of things, and remains innocent of any mes-
sage. Pataphysics is pure science, lawless and therefore impossible to
outlaw.
3. Patuphysics is the science of imaginary solutions.
In the realm of the particular, every event arises from an infinite
number of causes. All solutions, therefore, to particular problcms, all
attributions of cause and effect, are based on arbitrary choice, another
term for scientific imagination. Gravity as curvature of space or as
electro-magnetic attraction-does it make any difference which solution
we accept? Understanding either of them entails a large exercise of
scientific imagination. Science must elect the solution that fits the facts-
travel of light or fall of an apple. Pataphysics welcomes all scientific
theories (they are getting better and bettrr) and treats each one not
as a generality hut as an attempt, sometimes heroic and sometimes
pathetic, to pin down one point of view as real. Students of philoso-
phy may remember the German Hans Vaihinger with his philosophy
of als ob. Ponderously yet persistently he declared that we construct
our own system of thought and value, and then live as if reality
conformed to it. The idea of truth is the most imaginary of all
solutions.
4. For Pataphysics, all things ure equal.
The pataphysician not only accepts no final scientific explanation
of the universe, he also rejects all values, moral, esthetic, and other-
wise. T he principle of universal equivalence and the conversion of
opposites reduces the world in its pataphysical reality to particular
cases only. All the more reason, indeed, that the pataphysician should
enjoy working, and in the mast diverse ways, should respond to all
SHATIUCK 29
the normal (and abnormal) appetites of the flesh and the spirit,
should xlmetimes behave with considerateness toward his neighbor and
even fulfil a responsible role in society. Pataphysics preaches no
rebellion and no acquiescence, no new morality nor immorality, no
political reform nor reaction and certainly no promise of happiness
nor unhappiness. What would be the use, all things being equal?
5. Pataphysics is, in aspect, imperturbable.
Jarry was regatdcd by most of his contemporaries as a joker or a
lunatic. Here lie the first errors of incomprehension. Pataphysics has
nothing to do with humor or with the kind of tame insanity psycho-
analysis has drummed into fashion. Life is, of course, absurd, and it
is ludicrous to take it seriously. Only the comic is serious. The pata-
physician, therefore, remains entirely serious, attentive, imperturb
able. He does not burst out laughing or curse when asked to fill out
in quadruplicate a questionnaire on his political affiliations or sexual
habits: on the contrary, he details a different and equally valid activity
on each of the four sheets. His imperturbability gives him anonymity
and the possibility of savoring the full pataphysical richness of life.*
6. All things me pataphysical; yet few men practice Pataphysics wn-
sciously.
No difference in value, only in state, exists between ordinary men
and those who are consciously aware of the pataphysical nature of the
world, including themselves. The College of Pataphysics is no better
and no worse than the French Academy or than the Hilldale Garden
Club Mens Auxiliary Committee of Three on Poison Ivy Extermina-
tion. The College, however, being aware of its own nature, can enjoy
the spectacle of its own pataphysical behavior. And what science hut
Pataphysics can cope with consciousness, self<onsciousness perpetu-
ally twisting out of itself into the reaches of ethemity? P&re Ubus
monstrous gidouille or belly is represented by a spiral, which Dr.
Faustrolls Pataphysics transposes into a symbol of ethernal conscious-
ness circling forever around itself. Symbol? By now all words are pata-
physical, being equal.

* Imperturbability is not just a dignified version of cool kicks. Playing it

mol means indifference and in, at hest, an indifferent game. The pataphysician
is concerned; not through engagement in an attempt to create human values, but
in the manner of the child looking h o u & a kaleidormpe or the astronomer rtudy-
ing the gakxy.
30 Evergreen Review
7. Beyond Pataphysics lies nothing; Pataphysics is the ultimate defense.
Like the mrcerers apprentice, we have become victims of our own
knowledge-principally of our scientific and technological knowledge.
11, Pataphysics resides our only defense against ourselves. Not that
Pataphysics will change history: that great improvisation of the past
already belongs to the Science of Sciences. But Pataphysics allows a
few individuals, beneath their imperturbability, to live up to their
particular selves: Uhu or Faustroll, you or I. Outwardly one may con-
form meticulously to the rituals and conventions of civilized life, but
inwardly one watchcs this conformity with the care and enjoyment of
a painter choosing his colors-or perhaps of a chameleon. Pataphysics,
then, is an inner attitude, a discipline, a science, and an art, which
allows each man to live his life as an exception, proving no law but
his own.

A special number on Pataphysics of any review, annual or perennial,

evergreen or dcciduous, can serve no constructive purpose. This was
the argument employed to convince the Optimates of the College,
gathered in august session over an excellent Beaujolais, that they
should allow the doctrine to be propagated across the pstcolumbian
hcmisphere and thence placed within the reach even of Angles and
Saxons-all this in the pages of a review renowned for its determined
pursuit of social and esthetic truths. Overcoming their reluctance to
assume international responsibilities of such an order, the Optimates
finally delegated authority for bringing about this avatar of Pataphysics.
No such synthetic presentation eaists in France.
This publication is designed, like a newspaper, to afford entry at
either end. The man who, each morning, starts with the financial page
and works back through the comics and sports to the fiction of the
front page will want to turn directly to the last section on the College,
its history, structure, scripture, and activities. T h e editing of that
section by the Pmveditor-Delegatory has already produced a new
chapter in the history it recounts, for the clarifying of certain doctrinal
pojnts provoked several bitter heresies in the College, two resignations
and a still raging controversy over the translatability of ideas severed
from their linguistic substance. As we go resolutely to press, His Mag-
nificence the Vice-Curator of the College is appointing (under the
Subcommission of Implications and Measures of Security) a new
SHAlTUCK 31
Intermission of Lost Missions and False Prophecies to deal with any
crisis provokcd by the distribution of these texts. After the last section,
the potential pataphysician will regress naturally to the Jarry section
in order to understand references to it in what he has just read. The
texts by Jarry should confound him enough to lead him hack further
to the patacessors: they are the spirits of the pataphysical era who did
not live long enough to belong to the College but whose work has
become part of its canon. They both patacede us and patacede for us
in the universe supplementary to this one. A Regent or other digni-
tary of the College has written a brief note on each of the patacessors.
The Satraps represent, in every respect, the front page of Pata-
physics. All (except Boris Vian, who died in the spring of 1959) are
active members of the College, active by the very act of refraining
from any activity. Further, all are so prominent in their professions as
to reveal the omnipresence of Pataphysics in the innermost offices and
conference rmms of our civilization.
Author of a dozen volumes of fiction and poetry, RAYMOND
QUENEAU is a member of the Acad h ie Goncourt (twelve members,
compared to forty in the undiscriminating A c a d h i e Frangaise) as
well as of the Scciktk Mathematique de France, serves as general
editor for the Encyclopedic de la Plkiade, and gleefully passed last
summer in Saint-Tmpez obstructing the filming of his own best-seller,
Zazie duns le mQtro. A Fishs life forms the opening section of the
novel Saint Glinglin in its revised (1948) version and blinks at inter-
vals in the direction of a certain literary-philosophical movement that
flourished at that moment.
T. S. (for Transcendent Satrap) Queneau was among the earliest
to raise his voice in praise of EUGENE IONESCO, whose first p u b
lished play appeared in the Cahiers du ColUge de Patuphysique. T. S.
Ionesco, born in Roumania, passed his early years in Paris working on
an essay entitled No, dealing with the identity of contraries. Accord-
ing to the latest communique, his nineteen plays are being simultane-
ously produced in eleven languages and fifteen countries, excluding
Roumania. In a recent broadcast over the B.B.C. he took the trouble
to sketch the Pataphysics of the Theatre: Reality is the only unreality.
... My theatre has the tragedy of comedy. .. . Comedy is the most
.. .
desperate of all situations in life. The theatre is an inferior a ~ ,
that is why I write anti-plays. Foursome, originally staged in Italy,
32 Evergreen Review
appeared last year in the special number of the Dossiers du Collhge de
'Patnphysique that celebrated the election, installation and acclamation
of the new Vice-Curator, His Magnificence Baron Mollet.
The same number carried A Letter by BORIS VIAN. He was
stricken three weeks later by a heart attack at the first showing of the
film carved out of the novel he wrote (on a bet and under a pseu-
donym) in 1947 on the United States: J'irai cracher sur vos tombes.
Trained as an engineer, jazz trumpeter until stopped by his heart
condition, singer and lyricist with several censored songs (political) to
his credit, for several years acknowledged prince of Saint-Gemain-des-
I
P r h , translator of Nelson Algren, James M. Cain and General Omac 1

Bradley, and occasional recording executive, T. S. Vian had so rich a I

career that people overlooked the fact that he was one of the most
powerful writers to have appeared in France since the war. The literary
world took notice when it learned he had died-at thirty-six. Last
December, Jean Vilar's T h a t r e National Populaire produced Vian's
Empire Builders, a play published by the College before his death. A
forthcoming number of the Dossiets will be devoted to his life and work.
For living quarters, T. S. Vian divided with JACQUES PREVERT
the top floor of a vast building in Montmartre whose terrace commands
Paris and looks directly down on the Moulin Rauge. (Here the College
met to acclaim His Magnificence, the new Vice-Curator.) T. S. Prkvert's
p e m s are memorized by beginning students of French the world over,
and .his film scenarios reach the remaining segments of the populace.
His cinematographic activity cannot, however, match that of RENE
CLAIR, whose films (Le Million, Sars Zes tofts d.e Paris, The Ghost
Goes West, Le Silence est d'or, etc.) are so well established as classics
that many of his admirers are astonished to discover he is still a young
man-compared to His Magnificence at eighty-four. T. S. Clair has
I,
published, to boot, two novels and various writings in verse and prose,
several of them privately printed by the College.
In his capacities as director and producer, T. S. Clair has had occa-
sion to call u p n the services of JEAN FERRY, whose reputation as a
resuscitator of dead scenarios has come close to halting his activity as
a writer of fiction. His collection, The Mechanic and Other Stories,
carries a preface by A n d d Breton, hut he read himself out of the
surrealist movement in time to save himself for 'Pataphysics.
MICHEL LEIRIS has as deeply a divided a life as any of his col-
SHATTUCK 33
leagues. As an ethnologist, he is director of the M u s k de 1Homme in
paris and in charge of research at the Centre National de Recherche
Scientifique. UNESCO commissioned him to write Race and Culture,
published in 1951. As a writer, he has published two volumes of poems,
lengthy essays on Picasso and And16 Masson, and the personal narra-
tive, A Mans Estate (LAge dHomme). His memoirs, two volumes of
which have appeared under the general title, The Rules of the Game,
are already recognized as one of the most revealing personal documents
of our era. T. S. Leiris decided to be represented in this collection by
one of his writings in the ethnological field: all is Pataphysics.
Figurative artist and champion of kcrude art, JEAN DUBUFFET
did not finally settle down to painting as a career until just after the
last war at the age of forty. Since then, amid a dazzling series of
successes, he has been consistently associated with the non-edstent
school of cacaisme and with the heroic figure of Uhu appropriately
contained in his name. T. S. Dubuffet refuses neither association, and
has been more articulate about his art than any other painter working
today.
MAURICE SAILLET was for six years the chief literary critic of
the daily newspaper, Combat, and contributed the regular poetry
chronicle to the Merare de France. Following a book on the poetry
of Saint-John Perse, he has published a collection of his critical essays
and an edition of Fougeret de Monhrons scandalous novel, Margot la
Rauaudeuse. Long the associate of Adrienne Monnier in hex bookstore
on the Rue de LOdbn, he is now cataloguing the materials she left
after her death and preparing a definitive bibliography of the work of
his colleague, T. S. Leiris.
May Dr. Faustroll be with the reader in his journey into Pataphysics.
And may the monkey, Bosse-deNage, remain ever present with his
tautological and monosyllabic explanation of all things: Ha ha!

I 5 Clinamen 87 E. P., Feast of ROGER SHATTUCK

the Invention of Pataphysics Proveditor-General Propagator for the
Islands and the Americas, Regent [by
Transseunt SUSCeptiOn) of the Chair of
Applied Mateology, GMOGG
 Raymond Queneau, Satrap
Phoro b y Jrvn Wabrr

.. ..
Strange life, a fish's life! , Sturgeonstrange! minnow . I've never
been able to understand how anyone could live like that. T h e aigue-
sistence of life in that form disturbs me marsh more than any other
reason for tears that the world may impose on me. For me an aquarium
foments a concatenation of red-hot pincers. This afternoon I went to
see the one that is the pride of the Zoological Gardens of the Foreign
City. I stayed there in a stupor until the attendants turned me out.
'The fact that they are prisoners emphasizes still more the strangeness
of this life. I noticed one of these animals, it had black stripes, swim-
ming up and down with perfect regularity. As these beasts don't sleep,
such at least is my opinion, I therefore suppose that at this late hour
at which I am now writing, my zebra is still running down and up,
still as radically unoccupied. Even when he eats he doesn't need to stop
moving, no more than he does when he reproduces himself. This latter
occupation takes place, so they say, in so impersonal a fashion that
there is clearly no need to stop flapping your fins in order to indulge
in it.
Then what does he think about, my fish? Of course I don't expect
him to reflect, to indulge in rational activity, to construct syllogisms
From Saint Glinglin, copyright 0 1948 by Librairie Gallhard.
36
QUENBAU 37
and to refute sophisms, no, of course not, but doesnt my fish ever look
at whats going on on the other side of the thick glass window that
separates him from the human world? In everybodys opinion, the
answer is: no, my fish doesnt think, his intellectual activity is equal
to Zero. This is what I find atrocious. It isnt possible to have a human
relationship with a fish. Fishermen, it seems to me, tell certain anec-
dotes. But they are people one rarely meets in my Native City; for me
these anecdotes are fables and hear-at-a-distance-say.Outside his aquar-
ium the animal comes back to life. You can ascribe a meaning to his
aiguesistence: he comes and goes in the river (I have seen some rivers
in the Foreigners country), slips in between the weeds beaten down
by the current, lies in wait for his prey, allows himself to be tempted
by the bait. Yes, the river-fish, one can still understand. But the sea-
fish? the sardine? the hemng? the md? A sardine is stupefying. In a
cinematograph in the Foreign City where I recently strayed, I saw,
Bat, some sardines, layer upon layer of them, innumerable and mari-
time, a compact crowd, familiarly rubbing scales with each other. A
sardine, though, is a living being. And the cod! the herring! They
bring tears to my eyes. Daddy! Mamma! Its really too atrocious, the
life of a fish in a shoal! If you tried to think about it for long, youd
run the risk of bursting open your skull. We get born in a crowd, by
millions, then all together we go off, we fraternal hemngs, to cross the
boundless Ocean, jostling each others fins and falling into all the nets.
Thats how it is, the life of us herrings. And what about the one who
happens to be in the middle of the shoal? Millions of his congeners
surround him and here one day, only he doesnt distinguish day or
night, here one day he suddenly feels giddy, the central herring. Yes,
giddy. Then what would be his fate? Oh, its really too dismal! Daddy!
Mamma! its really too atrocious, the life of a fish in a shoal.

This is becoming intolerable. Its made my scales all ruffled. The

salt is cracking my gums. The ocean foam comes and bursts its last
bubbles under my window. I am so alone in this town where I am
laboriously studying the foreign language. But thats the last-born of
my worries. It doesnt interest me. My Native City has bestowed a
Special Scholarship on me to enable me to acquire a thorough knowl-
edge of this language. The only part my father thinks me capable of
playing is that of professor of gibberish. I shouldnt like to disappoint
38 Evergreen Review
him; I shall prove myself worthy of this favor that he managed to get
for me; 1 have a heart and Im grateful; but why does my father think
me stupid? Ill be a professor of macaronics, right. I defer, I dont say
anything, but I cant stop myself having other anxieties, and which
concern the science of life. Life! I shall devote my life to studying
life! I swear it on oath, here and now, in front of my window which
looks out on one of the quadrilaterial streets of the Foreign City. I
stood up, I held out my arms to the air of the street and I said: I,
et cetera, life. Then I sat down again. Now its done. My eggsistence
has a meaning now and I think if a person gives his life a meaning
while he is still young, this enables him to increase his pssibilities
and intensify his devclopment, in short: to build himself a destiny.
It Seems to me that the star is rising that will lead me towards the
heights that I want to attain and that I shall attain. For I have my
pride. It is the heights of the sciencc of life that I shall reach, and to
hell with the mumbo-jumbo lingo of these Foreigners whom we only
know in the guise of Tourists, rare at that. Whats the g o d of talking
to them?

Today I went back to the aquarium. I saw the moray. Each one is
alone in its cage. They are ferocious. They eat meat, In the days when
the nations had an emperor, they used to eat slaves, so the journalists
say. They differ a great deal from other fish, and the thing that thus
exalts them is ferocity. Now ferocity is one of the cardinal categories
of mans life in society. There are great mysteries in it. That ferocity
should save certain fish from the atrocity of the life common to their
genus is yet another reason for anxiety. The moray seems to be an
autonomous individual solely by virtue of the power of its ferocity!
There is something else that causes me distress: the skate. The
anatomical construction of this fish wrings my heart: to have your
head on your back or on your belly, I cant tell which, this pains me.
Its gills I take for cycs. And its eyes, they are underneath it! and it
has a nose! and a small, cruel mouth. I nearly wept with grief when
I was deciphering this appalling face, and this apparition flew off
towards the surface of the water, beating its fins as if they were wings,
suddenly having turned into some marine bird, the reflected image
of the albatross with its great feathers. No. Its not possible, the exist-
ence of the skate. To have your eyes in such a place, and to fly in the
water, and to do nothing. No.
QUENEAU 39
Thats how it is. I started tw low on the ladder of the living. The
abyss is sn deep. A monkeys life one can concede; a cows, not too
bad, a birds, well, all right. But what I cannot bring myself to under-
stand with all these animals is that they do nothing, and that they
care even Icss. Pish. Fish. This morning I had two letters, one from
my father and the other from Paul. The former writes: Our town is
preparing for the Festival. I am sorry you wont be able to be there;
there wont have heen a finer one for years and years. I shall make
considerable sacrifices which will consecrate my wealth and my glory.
I hope you are working zealously and that you will prove worthy
uf the Special Scholarship which I had so much trouble in getting for
YOU. It is fortunate that I managed to wangle you this meritorious
distinction which guarantees you a brilliant, respectable and hitherto
unheard of situation: certificated guide interpreter dragoman of the
Native City. Is this not glorious? What a future, my b y ! What a
debt of gratitude you owe me! Without me, what would you be?
For me, what should you not do? Make yourself worthy of my great
name. Work. ,
Right. The second writes: Thanks for the means of locomotion on
two wheels that you Sent me. I can use it now and I astonish the
populace, which is a thing I had no desire to do. E v e r y m y says that
this year the Festival will surpass in splendour anything that has so
far been seen. Its a pity you wont be there. But that isnt the most
interesting thing. Jean is making some strange discoveries; hes on a
really very odd track. Were waiting to be sure of ourselves before we
tell you this extraordinary news. The velocipede is very useful to me.
A discovery is a discovery, a track isnt a discovery. My brothers? just
children.

1 really live like a foreigner in this Foreign City: without the

slightest contact with its population. I hardly know anyone but the
Landlady, the Professor and the Keeper. I do not even have with its
inhabitants that intermediate and massitudinarian contact which is
engendered by the use of public transport, for I move from place to
place only by means of birotation. My bicycle transports me from the
place where my landlady watches to the place where my professor
teaches and from there, most often, to the place where the keeper
reigns. I ride through the Foreign City, without any. other relation
with the compact mass that throngs the streets than the abuse, which
40 Evergreen Revieu
I dont understand, of the bus drivers and the reprimands of the
vigilant urban militia-men watching over the even Row of the traffic.
The only existing relationships are those that I construct for myself
and by myself. In other words, among the rcal ones, I see none that
are feminine. My virginity I believe necessary to the intensity of my
thought. That was how a Foreigner imagined the law of the falling
apple. I ought not to lose in semen what rises to my brain for my
future glory. My life is dedicated to life, Ive sworn it on oath. Life,
I observe in the lobster. Then its appalling. He, the lobster, finds
satisfaction in it. At least youd think so. Ive just written to my father
telling him what I think of the life of the lobster. Im quite aware that
my father has no ideas on that subjcct, hut I do want to keep him
up to date with thc progress of my thought.
It seems at first sight that there is hardly any difference between a
fishs life and that of the crustaceans. The day before yesterday I saw
a lobster meandering about in the middle of some turbot and sole.
They all seemed to belong to the same world. But on further reflection
I perceive that thcrc arc plenty of differences between these people.
A lobster is quite different from a fish! The sole is not so far removed
from man, after all: thats what I think now. But the lobster! To live
in a shell, in other words to have your bones all around you, what a
radical alteration that must cause in your way of understanding life!
To have the entire sea perpetually around you; to move your pincers;
to see the others pass by; to lie in wait for your prey: those, no doubt,
are the prolegomena to any reflection on the palt of the lobster.
As for fish, I persist in regarding theirs as a hitch of a life, a cow
of an aiguesistence, and devoid of personality. But that doesnt make
the ogresistence of the lobster any less distressing. Is that life, then?
That silence, that shadow, that seaweed, that kind of ferocity on the
end of pincers, that avid armor? One should meditate upon life when
one thinks of the lobster in his osscurity. And how do they die, those
who dont finish up boiled in the housewifely pan? Do they depart
this life of old age, lobsters? Do they pass on quite peacefully, or
do they resist death with pincers hardened by arthritis on which little
annelida have become encrusted? Does he have any suspicion of his
defunction, the lobster? Wouldnt he prefer to be a skate, for instance,
with eyes on his belly and white wings? Wouldnt he prefer to climb
uets and devour their fruit like his colleague the coconut-palm crab,
QUENEAU 41
that surift and jagged animal? And when I say that an animal is this
or that, I ccrtainly dont intend to make a subjective judgment. Not
even a human one. But to define the very meaning of its eksistence.

1 havent had any letters from the Native City. Ive been working
very hard. The streets seem to me so lifeless when I go home in the
I thought of my father, of my mother, of my brothers; and
then of the cheetah I met the other day in the Zoo. It may seem odd,
but he belongs to the nobility. What a vast distance from the cheetah
to the lobster, even though the latter also wears armor.
I imagine what it would be like if a man and a cheetah were the
only beings left in the world. Both would walk on the surface of the
earth, proud and free companions. It would probably be so. Now lets
postulate a man and a lobster as the sole survivors of some catastrophe.
Flames obscure the horizon. The exhausted man divests himself of his
tattered shoes, of his torn socks. H e immerses his bleeding feet in the
sea to find some comfort therein. Then up comes the lobster and
crushes his big toe. The man, who has lost the habit of howling, leans
over the surface of the water and says to the lobster: We are the only
creatures alive in the universe, we are alone in the fight against uni-
versal disaster, shall we enter into an alliance, lobster? But the
contemphious animal turns his carapace on him and makes his way
towards other oceans. For do we know what a lobster dreams of? And
what can we think of his incomprehensible hatesistence? The image
of the inflexible and imperturbable lobster pierces the humans sky
with its unintelligible pincers. Above the foggy roofs, from my open
window, I suddenly seem to see its two threatening paws rise up,
opening and shutting their gigantic nippers to dissect the constellations.

1 am making hardly any progress in the Foreign Language. My

professor has informed me of this and, if I understand him aright, I
shall return to my Native City not very much more bilingual than
before, a bit less, perhaps. And then what will my father, and the
entire city with him, say? This could cause me some anxiety, if I
didnt have other and more important things to worry about.
Would animal life be perpetual happiness? And once again I go to
the aquarium to look at the sole and the dorado. I look at them impar-
tially, objectively. Well! the fish dont appear to be specially happy;
 i
42 Evergreen Review
they dont give that impression. Here is one more categov that doesnt
apply itself to this animal and maritime life. It doesnt participate in
happiness. But in unhappiness? Congers, turbot and sole couldnt
answer me. So I didnt deign to pay any more attention to them, and
made my way towards a quarter I didnt yet know and which serves
as a refuge for tropical fish. There were the cancerous and the capri-
comous, and others that came from the eels sea. There were feathery
ones and moustached ones, and others which had dogs faces or trun-
cated bodies. Millimetric individuals, absolutely transparent, were
moving at lunatic speed. Other, bigger ones, allowed themselves
variegated ornaments, zebra stripes, stippling, color. These little fish
started my entire mind off on a new track, one which was as confusing
as the first; it seemed to me, however, that these minute beasts, prob-
ably devoid of any even slightly coherent view of the world, or so I
imagined then, showed, at least in a certain sense, all the signs of
gaiety. Their abrupt and absurd convolutions, the lightning flashes
they described in the water, no matter how unjustifiable they might
be from the p i n t of view of any sort of system, however incoordinate,
the hazards of these broken trajectories, seemed to me to manifest a
certain joy which, I felt, could only be tropical.
This discovery of a littlc humanity in the behavior of these tiny
beasts, or, to communicate my impressions otherwise, but in a practically
identical fashion, this discovery of a true vitality corresponding to the
human idea of life, had to wme extent assuaged the anguish that every
visit to the aquarium inflicts on me, when I noticed not far from the
exit a poorly lit corner where a glass cage seemed to be sleeping. I
didnt know what was in it. I went to see.
In a sense it was a good thing that I went: in the interests of the
science of life. But I could perfectly well have done without that
frightful sight. The solitary tank contained (Contained!) a few white
worms: they were fish: to he ahsolutcly precise, cave-fish. Cut off from
the sun, they have lost their eyes. Thcy have forgotten all about color
and their fins are now no more than minute, vermiform appendices.
The silence and osscurity of the sea is still a phosphorescence and an
echo. In the subterranean caves, where pockets of pure water stagnate,
it is a mineral silence and osscurity. Its still possible to live there.
There are living beings, but what living beings: those whitish larvae
that claim the name of fish. Their ancestors, so it says in the essplana-
QuENEAU 43
tory card, were gallant fish with lively eyes and nimble fins, and
colored, like everything that the light caresses. But living in the
bas transformed them, and here they are. Theyre alive!
Theyre alive! There are people who see that as a testimony to the
pwer, the adaptability, the perenniality of life. But I wept at the
sight of the aouatic, living cavedsh, at the thought of the atrocious
life they lead. Its difficult to imagine it: to be born, to endure, to die
prhaps: osscure, blind. And they reproduce themselves. What a
terebrant mystery, this persistency in subsistence in such wretched
conditions. Yes, wretched, they are wretched! And if, even x),they
..
had a way . I dont say of thinking, but if, even so, they had ...

I dont say a consciousness , . . but if they had a way of transcending

themselves? Yes, exactly that: a way of transcending themselves. There
is nothing there that resembles human life. It would be perfectly
inhuman and without any possible interpretation; and yet, there would
be some sense in living like that: blind, osscure.
.
Blind . . . Osscure . . I wept indeed.

My mother has written to me. Jean is making long excursions into

the And Mountains, those harsh and violent mountains where nobody
 1
f
:
44 Evergreen Review '
ever adventures. He has been gone for several days, so perhaps he has
gone as far as the Petrifying Spring, perhaps to the top of the Grand
Mineral, the highest of these mountains. All this worries my mother.
She's afraid he'll never come back. But my father never reproaches
him in any way. As for me, I must work and make myself worthy of
the great honor that has been done me. Yes, I'm very willing to make
myself worthy, but this foreign language seems KJ little made for me.
I am not making the slightest progress. My professor reprimands me,
and complains. Could some echoes of my lack of ability already have
reached the Native City) Could the fellow have written to them?
Sometimes I imagine that my landlady is a spy. Ah! why am I not
delivered from the obsession with these cockeyed words the Foreigners
use to express what they imagine to he thoughts; and to see them
again, these Foreigners, under the guise of Tourists, with their foolish
questions, their stupid interests, their asinine sight-seeing; and to talk
to them, lathering with my saliva the globulous vocables of their
hyperdialect! Pooh! Misery! And all of a sudden I remembered, but
why that memory? one winter day. The wind was bellowing behind
thc windows: alone in my room I was initiating myself into the spring-
game; I must have been eleven. It was already dark. My father came
in suddenly, looked at me for a few moments and his eyes seemed to
me to be made of stone; then, without a word, very quietly, he shut
the door and went away. I stopped playing and started thinking; and
understood that later on I should become . . . Silence. It isn't the
memory of a happy moment, but an uneasy impression, a premonition
of something extraordinary.
When I'm hack in the Native City I'm afraid my father, and the
people under his jurisdiction too, will judge me severely at first, for
my knowledge of the foreign language will perhaps seem to them to
be insufficient, even though few of them are connoisseurs, unless it is
Le Busoqueux, the traditory. But their opinion on this matter won't
worry me, for I shall have other treasures to present to them, treasures
won from the depths, treasures for whose discovery I ventured into
the most secret caves, got mixed up with the lobster, and embroiled
myself with the innumerable sardines of the Ocean. My meditations
on life, that's what I shall offer them, and it is then, and then alone,
.that the Native City will be able to pride itself on being such for me.
It is when I lose life such as man understands it that I achieve the
QuENEAU 45
of my research, and this object manifests itself in an absolutely
pure and lancinating fashion in the guise of the cave-fish. Today I
go hack and see them. I did think that if they were capable of
transcending thcmselves, what inhumanity this transcendance would
he! But look here, was it possible? I looked at them. The tank that
contains them (contains!) isnt specially big. A horizontal bulb lights
them up, hut faintly, as is proper. The water seems to stagnate, as is
propcr. There they are, four, no more. Perhaps some others are
hiding more radically from the light. They dont do much. Most of
the time they remain motionless. When they do bestir themselves,
its a sort of whitish flow, a pallid belly that lightly brushes the sand
and, a few steps further on, ceases to move. I wonder when they eat
and what they eat. Yes, what do they eat? And the lobster, what does
he consume? fish, I suppose; that can still give the illusion of pene-
trating into the lobsters world since man also eats sea food. But these
livid beings? What do they eat? Some weed as devoid of all color as
thcmselves? Perhaps they dont eat? Or perhaps something which isnt
food.
What interested me only a month ago now leaves me completely
cold. It is life and not its baroque translation into a barbaric dialect,
its life itself which is the meaning of my activity: its towards the
comprehension of life that all my intelligence is tending. And what
is still finer is that the immediate result of this passionate study is the
contrary affirmation of the noncomprehensibility of animal life, of its
inhumanity. How can one claim to have enclosed the universe within
a series of interconnected concepts, what I mean is: within a system,
if the meaning of the life of the lobster or of the cave-fish is completely
beyond the grasp of the human spirit? The only categories in which
one can discern this life are those of Terror, of Silence, and of the
Shadows. For the cave-fish, perhaps one should add that of Discolora-
tion.
Two in the morning is striking. From my window 1 can see a room
opposite lit up. Its shutters are closed. This room lit up late at night,
like mine . .. . ..
The light goes out Was it a mirror?
Translated by Barbara Wright,
Regentess of Shakesperian Zowlogy, GFCOGG
 Foursome
Eupdne lonesco, Sarrap
Pholo by Nlr CollPa-a

The Scene:
T h e entrance is to the left. Stage center, there is a table, and
on it three potted plants are lined up side by side. Elsewhere, an
armchair or a sofa.

The Characters:
DUPONT, costumed like Durand
DURAND, costumed like Dupont
MARTIN, costumed in the same fashion
THE PRETTY LADY, wearing a hat, dress, shoes, cape or furs, and
gloves, and carrying a hand bag, etc., at least on her entrance
PlRST AND ONLY SCENE

[As the curtain rises, an agitated DUPONT, his hands behind his back,
is pacing around the table. DURAND, doing the same business, moves in
the contrary direction. W h e n DUPONT and DURAND meet and collide,
they about-face and move in opposite directions.]

DUPONT: . . . NO...
DURAND: Yes.. .
From Cahiers du Coffdge de 'Pataphysique, by arrangement with the author.
* P i & d 4, tcanslated by Donald M. Allen. All rights reserved. Permission for
any use of the play must be obtained in writing from the author's agents:
professional rights from Ninon Tallon Karlweis, 57 W. 58th St., N.Y.C. 19;
amateur rights from Samuel French, Inc., 25 W. 45th St., N.Y.C. 36.

46
IONESCO 47
OUPONT: N O . . .
DURAND: Yes...
DUPONT: N O . . .
D ~ Yes.. ~ . ~ ~ :
DUPONT: I tell you no ... ..
Look out for the potted plants.
..
UURAND: I tell you yes . . . Look out for the potted plants.
DUPOWT: And I tell you n o . . .
OURAND: And I tell you yes. . . and I repeat to you yes. . .
OUPONT: You dont need to keep on saying yes to me. For its no, no
and no, thirty-two times no.
DURAND: Dupont, look out for the potted plants. ..
DUPONT: Durand, look out for the potted plants . . .
DURAND: Youre pigheaded. My god, how pigheaded can you be. . .
UUPONT: Who, me? Youre the one thats pigheaded, pigheaded, pig-
headed. ..
DURAND: You dont know what youre talking about. Why do you say
that Im pigheaded? Look out for the potted plants. I am not pig-
headed at all.
.
DUPONT: Do you still want to know why youre pigheaded . . Oh, you
do bug me, you know.
DURANO: I dont know whether I bug you or not. Maybe I do hug you.
But Id really like to know why you say Im pigheaded. Because,
..
in the first place, Im not pigheaded .
DUPONT: Not pigheaded? Not pigheaded, when you refuse, when you
deny, when you resist, when you insist, in short, after Ive made it
all perfectly clear to you . . .
DURAND: Perfectly unclear .. . you havent convinced me. Youre the
one whos pigheaded. As for me, Im not pigheaded.
DUPONT: Yes, you are pigheaded. . .
DURAND: NO.
DUPONT: Yes.
DURAND: NO.
DUPONT: Yes.
OURAND: I tell you no.
DUPONT: I tell you yes.
DURAND: But I just told you no.
OUPONT: And I just told you yes.
DURAND: You dont need to keep on saying yes to me, its no, no . ..
NO.
48 EvergreenReview
1B
DUPONT: You are pigheaded, you can see very well that you are pig- I
headed. .. ,I
i
UURAND: Youre reversing our roles, my friend . . . Dont knock over 1
the potted plants .. . Youre reversing our roles. If you are acting {
in gwd faith, you ought very well to realize that youre the one !
whos being pigheaded.
D U P O N ~ : How could I be pigheaded? Nobodys pigheaded when hes ~

in the right. And as you will come to see, I am right, thats all, Im
.
just plain right. ,
DURAND: ..
You cant be right because I am right.
DUPONT: I beg your pardon. I am,
DURAND: No, I am.
DUPOM:No, I am.
nuRmD: No, I am.
DUPONT: No, I.
DURAND: NO, I.
DUPONT: No.
DURAND: NO.
DUPONT: No.
DURAND: NO.
DUPONT: No.
DURAND: NO.
DUPOM: No.
DURAND: NO. mk out c the potte Jants.
DUPONT: Look out for the potted plants.
MARTIN [entering]: Ah, at last you have come to an agreement.
DUPONT: Oh, no, far from it . . . I am not at all in agreement with
him . . . [fIe points at Durund.]
DURAND: Im not at all in agreement with him. [He points at Dupont.]
DUPONT: He denies the truth.
DURAND: He denies the truth.
DUPONT: He does.
DURAND: He does.
&iAR Tm : Oh . . . stop being so stupid ...
And look out for the potted
plants. Characters in a play dont always have to be even more
stupid than in real life.
DURAND: Were doing the best we can.
DUPOM [to Martin]: In the lint place, you bug me, you and your big
cigar.
IoNESCO 49
&%ARTIN:And you think you two dont bug me, pacing around like this,
with your hands behind your backs, neither one of you willing to
..
make the least concession . Youll end up by making me dizzy
and by knocking over the potted plants . . .
D L ~ Well,
~ ~you~ and
~ your
: disgusting smoking are going to make me
vomit.. . Its absurd to go around smoking like a chimney all day
long.
MARTIN: Chimneys arent the only things that smoke.
DUFONT [to Martin] : You smoke like a chimney thats not been cleaned
out.
.
MARTIN [to Dupont]: What a banal comparison . . Youve got no
imagination.
DURAND [to Martin]: Its certainly true that Dupont has no imagination.
But as for you, you havent got any either .. .
DUPONT [to Durand]: And neither do you, my dear Durand.
MARTIN [to Dupont]: Nor do you, my dear Dupont.
DUPONT [to Martin]: Nor do you, my dear Martin.
DURAND [to Dupont]: Nor do you, my dear Dupont. And dont call me
my dear Durand anymore, Im not your dear Durand.
DUPONT [to Durand]: Nor do you, my dear Durand, youve got no
imagination. And dont call me my dear Dupont.
MARTIN [to Dupont and Durand] : Dont call me your dear Martin, Im
not your dear Martin.
DUPONT [to Martin, overlapping Durand]: Dont call me your dear
Dupop, Im not your dear Dupont.
DURAND [to Martin, overlapping Dupont]: Dont call me your dear
Durand, Im not your dear Durand.
MARTIN: In the first place, my cigar couldnt possibly bug you because
I havent got a cigar . . . GentIemen, permit me to tell you that
you both exaggerate. You exaggerate. Im outside whatever is
bothering you. So I can judge objectively.
n u w D : Good, judge. ..
DUPONT: Judge, then. Go ahead.
MARTIN: Permit me to tell you, freely, that you are not going about it
in a way that will get you anywhere. Try to agree on one thing-
find at least some basis for discussion, to make a dialogue possible.
DURAND [to Martin]: No dialogue is possible with Monsieur [he points
at Dupont], under these conditions. The conditions he proposes
are not admissible.
50 Evergreen R e v i e w
DUPONT [to Martin]: Im not trying to get somewhere, at any cost.
These are the conditions of Monsieur [he points at Durand] and
. .
theyre dishonorable .
D u w N n : Oh! what nerve . . . To pretend that my conditions are dis-
honorable...
MARTIN [to Dupont]: Let him explain.
DUPONT [to Durarrd]: Go ahead and explain.
MARTIN: Look out for the potted plants.
nuporn: I shall explain. But I dont know if anyone will really listen
to me, nor do I know if anyone will really understand me. How-
ever, understand me well, for if were to understand each other,
we have to understand each other, this is what Monsieur Durand
doesnt manage to comprehend, and hes famous for his incompre
hension.
D u m n Ito Dupont]: You dare speak of my famous incomprehension.
You know very well that its your incomprehension thats famous.
Youre the one who has always refused to comprehend me.
DUPONT [to Durand]: Now youre going tw far. Your bad faith is self-
evident. A child of three months would understand me, that is if
it were a baby in good faith.
DUPONT lto Martin]: You heard him, huh? You heard that . , .
.
DURAND [to Dupont]: Thats going tw far . . Youre the one who
doesnt want to comprehend. [To Martin.] Did you hear what he
had the nerve to claim?
MARTIN: Gentlemen, my friends, lets not waste time. Lets get down
to it, youre talking but youre not saying anything.
DUPONT [to Martin]: Who, me? Im talking without saying anything?
DURAND \to Martin]: What, you dare say that Im talking without say-
ing anything?
ramTIN: Excuse me, I didnt mean to say exactly that you were talking
without saying anything, no, no, it wasnt entirely that.
DUPONT [to Martin]: How could you say that we were talking without
saying anything, when you are the one who has just said that there
was talking without saying anything, although it is absolutely
impossible to talk without saying anything inasmuch as every time
one says something, one talks and contrariwise every time one
talks one says something.
MARTIN [t Dupont]: Lets grant that I said what I said about your
IONESCO 51
talking without saying anything, now this doesnt mean that you
always talk without saying anything. There are times, however,
when one says more in saying nothing and when one says nothing
in talking tco much. This depends on the situation and on the
people involved. Now just how much have you actually said dur-
ing the last few minutes? Nothing, absolutely nothing. No matter
who says so.
DURAND [interrupting Martin]: Duponts the one who talks without
saying anything, not me.
DUPONT [to Durandj: Youre the one.
DuRAND [ t o Dupont]: Youre the one.
MAn r I N [ t o h p o n t and Durand]: Youre the ones.
DUPONT [to Durand and Martin] : Youre the ones.
MARTIN: NO.
DUPONT: Yes.
OURAND [to Dupont and Martin]: Youre talking without saying any-
thing.
DUPONT: I, Im talking without saying anything?
MARTIN [to Durand and Dupont]: Yes, exactly, youre talking without
saying anything.
DUPONT [to Durand and Martin] : You too, youre talking without say-
ing anything.
MARTIN [to Dupont and Durand]: Youre the one whos talking without
saying anything . . .
DURAND [to Dupont and Martin]: Youre the one whos talking without
saying anything.. .
DUPONT [to Durand and Martin]: Youre the one whos talking without
saying anything.
MARTIN [to Durand]: Its you.
DURAND [to Martin]: Its you.
DUPONT [to Durand]: Its you.
DURAND [to Dupont] : Its you.
DUPONT [to Martin]: Its you.
h i m T I N [to Durand and Dupont]
DURAND [to Martin and Dupont]
DUPONT [to Martin and Durand]
I
[Exactly at this mment, the PFSITY LADY enters.]
THE LADY: Good day, gentlemen , ..
.
: You. . . y o u . . . you. .

Look out for the petted plants.

52 Evergreen Review 4
[The three men halt suddenly and turn towards her.] What are
you squabbling about? [She simpers] Come now, gentlemen . . .
DUPONT: Oh, dear lady, here you are at last and now youre going to
rescue us from this impasse.
DURAND: Oh, dear lady, youre going to see where bad faith has brought
us...
MARTIN [interrupting Durand]: Oh, dear lady, let me tell you just
whats happened . . .
UUPONT [to the two other men]: Im the one who will tell her whats
happened, for this lovely lady is my fiancee , . .
[The PRETIT remains standing and smiling.]
LADY
UURAND [to the other two men]: This lovely lady is my fiancee.
MARTIN [to the other two men]: This lovely lady is my fiancee.
DUPONT [to the Pretty Lady]: My dear, tell these gentlemen that you
are my fiancee.
MARTIN [to Dupont]: Youre mistaken, she is my fiande.
DURAND [to the Pretty Lady] : Dear lady, tell these gentlemen that you
are really . . .
DUPONT [to Durand, interrupting]:Youre mistaken, she is mine.
MARTIN [to the Lady] : Dear lady, please tell ...
D u w n [to Martin]: Youre mistaken, shes mine.
DUPOITI [to the Lady]: Dear lady. . .
MARTIN [to Durand]: Youre mistaken, shes mine.
UURAND [tu the Pretty Lady] : Dear lady. ..
nuporn It. Martin] : Youre mistaken, shes mine.
MARTIN [tu the Lady] : Dear lady, please say that . ..
DURAND [to Dupont] : Youre mistaken, shes mine.
DUPONT [to the Pretty Lady, violently pulling her towards him by her
arm] : Oh, dear lady . ..
[The PRETIT loses a shoe.]
LADY
DUP.AND [violently pulling the Lady by her other arm]: Let me embrace
you.
[The LADY loses her other shoe, and one glove comes off in Du-
ponts hands.]
MARTIN [who has gone to pick up a potted plant, making the Lady turn
tuwards him] : Please accept this bouquet.
[He sticks the potted plant in her m s . ]
THS LADY: Oh, thank you.
IONESCO 53
DUPONT [turning the Lady towards him and putting another potted
plant in her arms]: Do take these pretty flowers. [The LADY i s
jostled and loses her hat.]
.
T I ~ ELADY: Thank yon, thank you . .
DURAND [same business as Dupont] : These flowers belong to you, just
.
as my heart belongs to you . .
THE LADY: I'm delighted . .. [Her arms are loaded dawn with the potted
plants and she's dropped her purse.]
MARTIN [violently pulling her towards him and shouting]: Embrace me,
. .
embrace me . [ T h e L ~ loses Y her cape and furs.]
DURAND [same business] : Embrace me.
DUPONT [same business]:Embrace me.
[They continue this business for several moments; the LADY drops
the flowers, her skirt comes undone, and h n clothes me rumpled.
T h e three men alternatively tear her from each other's arms as they
move about the table.]
THE LADY: Oh, shit . . . Leave me alone.
DUPONT [to Martin]: Leave her alone.
MARTIN [to Durandj : Leave her alone.
DURAND [to Lhpont]:Leave her alone.
EACH OF THE M E N [tothe other two]: It's you she's telling to leave her
alone.
THE LADY [to the three men]:Leave me alone, all of you.
DURAND, DUPONT, MARTIN [astonished]: Me) me? me?
[All movement stops. T h e LADY, rumpled, unhookd, winded, half
undressed, moves down to the footlights.]
THE LADY: Ladies and gentlemen, I agree with you entirely. This is
completely idiotic.
Curtain

Transluted by D m I d M . Allen.
My Lord,
In the past-as I feel certain I've no need to remind Your Magnifi-
cence-we frequently had our doubts. Now they've been confirmed and
it's impossible to keep quiet any longer. Wars, Your Magnificence, are
a wixdle. Which wars? The lot. As far as I can see there hasn't been
a good one yet, and I shall try and show why. But what I really want
to do is point out to all good citizens the disgraceful use to which their
hard-earne
It was a life that first
started this particular bee buzzing round my bonnet. borced to leave
my internally comhusting chariot in its stable (sheer laziness, I'm
afraid) the other morning, I seized on the idea of catching-in order
to get to that top secret spot where I spend my working hours trying
to can, in something approaching silence, those delicate ear-tonics that
are called musical vibrations4 seized, as I said, on the idea of catching
a bus. It wasn't very crowded and I managed to find a seat opposite an
old man. A respectably old man? I really don't know. I'm not used to
respecting or despising, usually preferring to choose from the scale that
From Cahiers du CollBge de 'Pawphysique, by arrangement with Mme, Boris Vim.
54
VIAN 55
ranges from love to hate and runs through affection and indifference to
enmity. In short, there I was, facing an old man of 69-a figure for
which once again I feel no particular respect since, when all is said
and done, it is nothing more than a symbol, and Im not, if Your
Magnificence will allow me to say so, the sort of fellow to be scared
of a symbol which, however great its disruptive force, I am perfectly
capable of keeping under control.
But, getting back to our subject, I noticed that the jacket my old
enantiomorph was wearing was decorated with a little row of c o l o u d
ribbons. Inquisitive by nature, I took the liberty of asking him what
they were for.
This, I was told, is the Military Medal. This is the Victoria Cross.
This is the Legion of Honour. And this is the rosette.
But I cant see any medals, crosses or legions, I said. Theres
nothing there hut a few bits of pretty coloured ribbon. Do you mean
.
to say that theres been a war, and that you . .
Fourteen Eighteen, he said, hutting in so politely that I couldnt
possibly object.
Thats not quite what I meant, I went on. Do you mean that you
came back from this war?
Without a scratch, young man.
The old scoundrel seemed proud of it.
Do you mean to tell me, I went on (and I had some trouble in
keeping my voice down), that the Nineteen-Fourteen War was badly
organized?

Your Magnificence, 1 wont bore you with the rest of this conversa-
tion which only led me to the unhappy conclusion-and confirmation
of my doubts-that not only are wars badly organized, hut that some
of the men that fight them survive to tell the tale. Oh, I can see Your
Magnificence shrugging his shou!den. There he goes again, Youre
thinking, with that funny little smile and that shake of Your head that
I know K) well. Him and his ideas! Hes gone and got himself worked
up again and hes got to let off steam!
But that isnt quite correct. Ive gone into the matter thoroughly, and
the facts are conclusive. The truth is hideously revolting-solid jet black
all the way through, with only one or two spots of sunshine in the
56 Evergreen Review
middle. Just listen. Millions of soldiers come back safe and sound from
every war.
I wont strcss the psychological dangers of this sorry state of affairs
because theyre colossal enough already. Overwhelmingly and mon-
strously undeniable. Every single person that gets back from a war
alive is bound to think that it wamt very dangerous after all. This
attitude only helps towards the failure of the next one, and eventually
prevents war from being taken seriously. That in itself wouldnt matter
so very much. But the soldier that hasnt got himself killed off is
always going to feel that hes been a failure; deep down in his secret
heart he will want to make up for this and will he only too eager to
join in the preparations for the next war. Now how on earth can we
expect him to prepare for it properly if he came out of the preceding
one alive and consequently, as far as the future of war is concerned,
must be counted as disqualified?
But, I repeat, I shant linger on the private aspect of the problem.
The social side is a much graver matter. This, Magnificence, is the way
they spend the money You generously give them; this is how they spend
mine. This is what they do with our taxes; and this is how they value
all our efforts. Such is the result of the labours of tens of thousands of
gallant working men who wear themselves out from morning till night,
year in and year out, polishing shells, building bombs, risking their
lives concocting dangerous explosives in draughty factories, and putting
together airplanes which should never come hack either, but which
sometimes do. Actual cases have been quoted to me. Life leaves its scars.
Oh, the enemy is involved in a good deal of this too. That, Mag-
nihcence, I wont deny. Its all very grave, to he true. Because the
enemy simply dont do their duty either, although we must admit that
we normally do our best to get in their way. With a little bit of help
from us theyd be bound to wipe us out in no time. But, far from
helping them, all we do is lash out with our long arms and short arms,
mortars and ordnance, cannons to the right of us and cannons to the left
of us, bombs of every shape and size, and the whole mixture liberally
garnished with napalm. And if an occasional attempt is made, as it was
in 1940, to introduce some new kind of tactics such as trying to make
the enemy run so fast that, carried away by their own impetus, they
will tumble into the sea, we must also admit that such examples arent
very common, and that in any case the 1940 technique wasnt really
VIAN 57
good enough since we didnt jump into the sea first so that they would
follow us.
But what can You expect? The same silly thing happens every time.
Thousands of inexperienced amateurs get called up. But war isnt just
any old thing. War is waged in order to kill people. And killing people
is a thing that can be taught. But what happens? Instead of giving to
professionals the millions of complicated jobs which would ensure the
successful outcome of a fine campaign, both sides simply hire thousands
of non-specialist labourers every time and have them instructed hy old
or low-ranking professional warriors who, by definition, can only be
failures from previous wurs. HOWcan we possibly hope that the morale

of these recruits-and some of them ask for nothing better than to

devote themselves body and xlul to the cause of war-should acquire,
under such cimumstancps, the qualities essential for the perfect waging
of an ideal war? Without spending too much time on it, lets just touch
on the words general mohilization for a moment. Do You think that
58 Evergreen Review
when our legislators selected these words their idea could have been to
immohilize those generals (and others) already mobilized in their
barracks? Enlightened as I now am by these reflections, such a contra-
diction doesnt shock me any more. Its obvious that i t springs purely
and simply from that undercurrent of sabotage which i s carefully kept
alive hy the survivors of past conflicts.
Lets imagine, by a majestic Bight of the spirit-and the spirit of Your
Magnificence can easily encompass such immcnse strides-a successful
war. Lets imagine a war in which all the munitions have been ex-
ploded, all the rations eaten up, all the captains and the kings-and all
the other ranks-killed off, and nothing left at all on either side. Oh,
I know that such a result would mean the most carefully detailed and
elaborate preparations beforehand-and instead of that, people go around
hastily declaring war at the slightest provocation, making thc ideal war
that we have envisaged quite impossible. And yet, despite all this, WC
carry on-and no doubt shall carry on carrying on-doling out our daily
dollar. But, Magnificence, lets go on imagining, lets lingrr for a little
longer over the prospect of this battle from which not one single warrior
will escape! If such a vision could become reality it would he the
answer to all our problems. And problems, as Your Magnificence knows,
dont raise themselves. SOMEBODY i s always raising them, and once
this somebody is suppressed, the problem goes with him. In the same
way a battle would no longer he a battle if there were no old soldiers
left. Once they had all faded away, thcn wars would fade away too.
Ive slandered-hut Your Magnificence will grant that I have not
done so unreasonably-Ive slandered amateurs. But I must go farther
and state the still sadder fact that many professional men dont do their
duty. True, its unforgivable for an ordinary national service man to
come hack from the front in one piece; but thats because we call up
simply anybody, and far tw many such anybodies at a time. If Your
Magnificence gave me an army of fifty mcn, then Id do my best to com-
mand and control it. Id guarantee that not one of the fifty would come
back alive, even if I had to slaughter every one of them with my own
hands, completely unaidcd by the enemy. But a million men, Magnifi-
cmce-no! Give me a million, and I cant promise anything. But thats
not the point. The most tragic thing is that professional soldiers get out
of the war alive. Once upon a time officers used to charge at the head
of their trwps; in those days they understood that, according to those
VUW 59
rules of the game which said that the next best qualified subaltern
should be immediately shifted up into the dangerous spot where his
superior had just perished, their own death was essential to the smooth
running of the war. This basic notion seems to be overlooked nowadays.
Modern generals (some of them still alive at 50) have been known to
direct their forces from sheltered (!I rearguard H.Q.s. They tell me,
and I see no reason to doubt their word, that this has the happy effect
of widening the field of operations and thus increasing the risks and
enlarging the enemy attack. There are now enough airplanes, they say,
to drown the largest targets in bombs. I havent got much confidence
in this-we know, to our own costs, alas, that some bombs sometimes
miss their targets, and that all of them dont always go off. The stupid
ugly camouflage with which we try to increase the value of certain
selected targets often has its effects cancelled out by Mother Nature
who is clever enough to imitate it expertly. And yet I have to admit
that people still imagine that professional warriors, fed up with having
nothing but amateurs under their command, try to get rid of them as
quickly as possible by sending them straight up to the front. Now,
when they get there, they meet lots of other amateurs-oh, enemy
amateurs, to be sure-who are just as clumsy and inexperienced as
themselves. And so the battle goes on and on and on, just as it did
apparently at Verdun forty years ago-none of these poor fellows being
clever enough to wipr out the othcr lot, even with the encouragement
of all the artillery on either side. This is a tender point. No doubt there
are plenty of things to be taken into consideration when deciding the
order in which officers should be eliminated. Snares lurk at every
comer. For example, if a general is smart, should he be the first or the
last to be killed? What a decision to have to make! If hes very smart
indeed, hell kill-or arrange the killing of-large numbers of the enemy
without losing too many of his own men in the pnress. But if he
doesnt suffer very heavy losses himself, then it must be because his
opposite number isnt so smart. If this is the case, how can we say that
the first general i s clevcr when he confines his efforts to defeating less
clever ones? And if hes not very clever himself, wouldnt the best
thing-for the welfare of the war, of course-be to have him killed off
as quickly as possible? The problem, as I say, is a thorny one and
depends on all sorts of probabilities. Naturally we can say that by and
large it would be a good thing for a general to disappear once hes
60 Evergreen Review
exterminated a specified quota of victims. Statistics and charts could
give the minimum quantities allowed.
Getting hack to the examplc of that officer of old charging a t the
head of his professional troops, our last, hut by no means least, point
must he that wars are much more successful-relatively speaking-when
they are fought by professionals than when the battlefield is smothered
with amateurs. In my opinion one man, long lung ago, sct us all a
marvellouS example. It was at the Battle of Fontenoy, and this glorious
man was the one that pronounced the justly famous phrase, Gentlemen
of the English Guard, fire first! Obviously his idea was that the Gen-
tlemen of the French Guard should fire at the same time. This was
the way to bring about the maximum slaughter: gather as many soldiers
as possible togethcr in one place and order them tu shoot each other
at point-blank range. The poor chap was let down by dim-witted
subordinates, hut all the same this real man, this splendid soldier,
didnt do too badly. Since then, improvised stratagems have forced the
invention of cold wars, phoney wars, guerilla wars, underground wars,
wars of nerves, and retreats to positions prepared in (oh, hideous
pleonasm!) advance-tactics which are admirable in so far as they use
up tremendous amounts of material and cost enormous fortunes, but
which neglect the essential requirement of getting rid of the fighting
soldier.
Your Magnificence will pardon, I know, the tangled nature of these
reflections which I have thrown together any old way as they have
sprung to mind. My indignation hasnt given them time to sort them-
selves out and establish the correct order of precedence fur each element
which cropped up to nourish my thoughts. This letter comes from the
heart. It suddenly dawncd on me that 1 was being rubbed, duped,
swindled and laughed at. We dont get the wars we pay for, and Im
not happy a b u t it. Your Magnificence wont deny that I was right to
complain.
Lets wake up then, while there is still time. Lets take arms against
this dangerous current which is daily dragging us down deeper and
deeper. Please believe me when I say that the day when nobody comes
back from a war it will be because that war has at last been p~operly
organized. When that day comes, people will realize that all those
historic battles were nothing but abortive preliminary essays impm-
vised by buffoons. Only ONE war is needed to wipe out all those
r
vIAN 61
prejudices which still cling to this method of destruction. And, when
that day comes, there will be no need to smrt all over again.

29th Sable, 86. BORIS VIAN,

Satrap.

P.S. Ive been asked how we should deal with people who come back
from our modern wars. I really couldnt care less. In the first place these
wars arent genuine, and secondly theyre nothing to do with me.
Logically I suppose we should kill everybody that comes back safe and
sound, and-providing they keep their mouths shut-put up with the
ones that come back half dead or with a few bits and pieces missing.
The only ones we muld ever acknowledge at all kindly are those whove
completely lost the use of their speech. And it should be absolutely
forbidden for anybody to boast that he is an old soldier. Only one
name would seem to fit such deserting rats-the name of war failures.

Translated by
Stanley Chapman,
Vice Deputy Chief Deuterodatmy
of the Rogation.

I de Pafaphysique
I nentreprend pas de

I SAUVER LE M O l D E
Only the College of Pataghysia dasr NOT underurke to save the rwrld.
 63

Oh flower girl
children enfant
oh yes je t'airne
je t'aime tant
t'aime tant
t'aime tant
time temps
time temps
time temps
time temps
et tant et tant
et tant et tant
Chant song
chant song
ettant.. .
blue song et temps.
et oiseau bleu
blood sang
and bird oiseau
blue song red sang Translated by the author.
Oh girl fille
oh yes je t'aime
oh oui love you
oh girl fille
oh flower girl
je t'aime tant

Oh girl fille
oh oui love you
 . . . It Droppeth As The Gentle Rain*
A BALLET

Iacques Privert, Satrap

FlnsT T A B L E A U
A large town.
A hostess is welcoming her guests.
They discuss the latest news in the papers, reading them and reading
aloud from them.
How strange.
It says that the most extraordinary storms have broken out all over
thc world-in California, Japan, Spain and Guatemala-and are already
spreading a little bit everywhere else too.
Peculiar cloud formations, diluvian and foul-smelling showers.
Fully dbcumented and highly scientific articles describe how the
specialists, whose torrent of words must never be doubted, agree that
the clouds filling the skies are themselves filled with excreta!
The gentlemen are all rather intrigued and just a little worried, and
the ladies are all very sceptical but extremely curious.
-Just imagine what a splash it would make if it were really true!
-And that's putting it mildly!
And all the guests who are going to go, leave the room.
One rnonsewer, standing on the thrcshold with a sheepish grin,
srrctches out his hand the way people do stretch out their hands to see
if perhaps it might have stopped raining.
Suddenly he draws back his hand and dolefully holds it under the
noses of the others as a silent witness of his affliction. ,
The newspapers were telling the truth after all, the evidence cannot
be denied.
-But who do you think will cver believe such rubbish?
-It smells like the end of the world-and ours in particular!
From Spectale, copyright 0 1951 by Librairie Gallirnard.
* At first glance this ballet's original title Ler Falures Seeptiques (The Scep-
tical Impostors) lwkr like a pastiche of a typically cksric title by MoliPre 01
Marivaux; but at second hearing it sounds exactly like Ler Fosser Septiques (The
Septic Tanks 01 Tho Cerr Pits).

64
&VERT 65
-How divine-after us the deluge-and what a shower!
With these words on their lips, the ladies take dainty little deep
breaths as they delicately pass out.
And one of them, as shc departs, adds, smiling:
-All the same, it could have the most madly amusing possibilities!
The curtain falls.
So does the shit.

SECOND TABLEAU
Time has passed, and the weather has gone from bad to worse.
The hostess is still there welmming guests a t another of her eternal
receptions.
Some comc back, others go.
The gentlemen are wearing their best draincoats and the ladies arrive
with their sweet little parashits.
As the sewage-scrapers are on strike and prying no further than their
own privies, the rowdy young folk with their shittzle-sticks are beating
it up everywhere.
But everybody goes on talking in the same old way about the wind
and the weather and the good old days.
-It was bound to happen, say the ladies, they told you it would!
And as the ballet takes place in present-day France, and in the neigh-
bourhood of Paris, the conversation is extremely witty and everybody
is quoting the latest gossip from the Barber of Sevilles Literary Sup
plement.
66 Evergreen Review
-The smell of what falls in foreign fields is nowhere near as foul
as ours.
-The only genuine, original shit falls in Paris!
But nobody mentions Father Ubu who
SHITE
had forecast and foretold the lot.

THIRD AND FINAL A N D HIGHLY EDIFYING TABLEAU

Apotheosis to end all apotheoses-ill which the whole world ends u p
crappy ever after, and in which we let the people sing.
One or two hits of wall that are almost white can still be seen on a
smeared and smothered Sacre-Coeur in the middle of the backdrop.
For we are in Montmartre where already it will swn he spring, al-
though like snow in winter the shit falls inexorably.
And along comes a religious parade of pious souls-yet it is still the
same gay, elegant, carefree and joyful Paris of old.
And the pilgrim fathers and the pilgrim mothers, perched high on
their pilgrims staffs which with perfect and exquisite taste they have
converted into stilts, go on their way singing.
Following the musicians, they pray for the assuagement of the Roods,
and for the advent of the rainbum of the Lord.
Singing and parading they wend their way along the Boulevard des
Crapucines.
Translated by Stanley Chapman,
V.D.C.D.R.
 Privcess Photo by Jim Wsbsr

Renb Clair, Satrap

That morning (it was four oclock and we were sitting in a small
cafC near the Place Blanche), Earthworm had been telling me his life-
story, and he was in bad shape. I had drunk just as much but I was
feeling good, like when the fog and darkness disappear suddenly and
you meet the warm friendship of the sun on the open road. The laws
of Destiny appeared to me that morning with the clarity of the dawn.
Cheer up, I told Earthworm, anything can happen-except the
impossible. But first we have to distinguish between relative and abso
lute impossibility.
Again please, said Earthworm. At that hour he wasnt in a mood
for abstractions.
Take an example. The cafeowner. If I told you that he was going
to flap his arms and fly over to the roof of the house across the street,
what would you say? That its impossible, and youd be right. So much
for absolute impossibility. But, on the otber hand, its not absolutely
impossible for you to be in Marseille this evening with the daughter
of the emperor of China in your arms.
Why Marseille?
From La Princesse de Chine, copyright 0 1951 by Bernard Grasret.

67
68 Evergreen Review

Its just another example. Youll admit that a plane could get you to
Marseille before the day is over?
Earthworm was reluctant to agree to this imaginary voyage. He had
good reasons for not being seen in that province.
If the thread of your destiny passes through Marseille today, youll
have to go there, thats all, I replied. And why shouldnt the emperor
of China have a daughter, who has just arrived in Marseille?
The Chinks are on a Peoples Republic kick.
<You walked into that one! Thats why the princess is in exile. But
lwk-is it absolutely impossible for a woman to dig a sourpuss like youY
She could do worse.
So, in fact, its not ahsolutely impossible. This Chink chick might
fall for your line.
Sure, she might be a little crazy.
.
Could be . . And that rounds out my argument! You cant hack
out now! Since not one of the events weve just imagined is impossible,
my hypothesis as a whole is in the realm of the possible.
Youre getting through to me, my friend grinned. Ive never tried
it with a Chinese.
(Extract)
Translated by Neal Oxenhandler.
 Photo by the CollLgr

C*.CI*LII 0,. ."O*I.I*. UII"1"" C"".."

Apart from texts for which I scarcely hold myself responsible (a

moment before writing them I know nothing about them, and they are
so to speak dictated, so that it is absolutely impossible for me to recreate
them if I lose the first notations) I would like to write thirty or so
novels, with the very precise go41 of inserting therein at logical points
a few sentences of which I am very fond. I will certainly never have
the leisure to do anything like this, nor even to dream further of this
enterprise. Besides, nothing indicates that, once I had led up to and
set down one such choice sentence, I would go on writing the book.
Most likely, I would finish none of them, unless the chosen sentence
happened to be the last of the novel. It's not certain either that I would
be capable of such a feat. I once had to write a serial novel, it's bombly
difficult, and my first tries aroused the indignation, then the laughter
of the critics.
I prefer to get rid of these sentences pell-mell once and for all; that
will be much quicker than writing the novels which wouldn't be of
much interest anyway.
But still, despite this failure, I am convinced-without being able to
begin to prove it-that it was just this preoccuption with key-sentences
that led certain novelists to write their most copious works. I long to
believe (for this would be its most poignant justification), that Victor
Hugo wrote Toilers of the Sea solely to set in the right place: "At that
.
moment, he felt himself seized by the foot . .," a terrifying phrase
From Le Mdcinnieien et autes conter, copright 0 1953 by Librairie Gallimard.
69
70 Evergreen Review
which undoubtedly (for me) existed before the work itself. Again: It
was a nugget of lead .. . seemed to Jules Verne worthy of the effort
of writing the three volumes of The Mysterious Island. Again, the
chapter ending, And Frederick, astonished, recognieed Senccal, moti-
vates, for me, as it must have done for Flaubert, the Sentimental
.
Education; Thcrc are steps on the ceiling , . gave birth to Balaoo,
etc.. . .
Without claiming to equal these models, and lacking the tenacity of
such writers, I shall merely write below a few of those sentences that
I would have preferred to adorn with an entire novel.

Please come in, dear friend, make yourself at home! exclaimed a

cordial voice from behind the door. And Joseph K . . , went in.

They met for the last time in Januarys dark twilight, on the terrace
of the cafe All-Goes-Well, which is in fact the one spot in Paris where
things can be counted on to go badly. Never had she appeared to him
so pale, so gaunt.

Driver, a thousand francs for you if we reach the Gare de Lyon in

time for the Marsrille express!

Between Marbleman Street and Spoiled Square, there is a network,

a tangle of narrow streets, courtyards, deadcnds and passages wherc he
came to escape the investigations of Decius Mus.

The Marquis de Sade, who did not want to be disturbed, went to see
if the door of his cell was tightly shut. It was double-locked from out-
side, He closed the inside bolt, obtained through the kindness of the
warden, returned to his table and started once again to write.

Many years have passed. Now dead, the gentleman from Scotland
Yard has been replaced by his ghost, but nobody has noticed the
substitution. Roscbush-Baby is dead, and so is little Griselda of the
bright eyes, she whom the experts called Velvet-Thighs. Of the old
crowd, only old Pave1 remains; he hasnt changed, any mure than the
surroundings. T h e twisted paper cane is still there, above the bottles
of Kummel with their floating flakes of gold. And, now just as then,
its raining.
FERRY 71
There will be no Last Judgment, Monsieur Popincourt used to say,
the tears caused by the wicked are shed in darkness, silence and obliv-
ion, and will not be redeemed. Still better! the wicked man profits
doubly from his wickedness. First, he never ceases to admire it, it is a
satisfaction in itself, and further, it allows him to succeed where others,
hindered by kind feelings, must fail. A wicked life is a happy life.
So spoke this kindly, this unhappy and sensitive man on whom, in
point of fact, evil had such a hold. In that respect, his wife denied
him nothing.

He came into Paris one fine April morning by the Pore des L i h .

Well, he thought, the jig is up. Ill go back to Shanghai alone.

Bring in your calves!

The monster of Gevaudan laughed in the shadows.

Its an old story still told on certain freighters. Not, of course, on

board shiny new tankers or huge American liners, but on board those
freighters where I lived my finest hours, those miserable Boating out-
houses whose battered hulls (according to their discouraged officers) are
held together by the layers of black paint slapped on to hide their dis-
repair. Those freighters which, when they mmr astern of a liner, a
yacht or any other decent ship, Seem like an old battered, muddy,
verminous shoe, scorned by the worst bum, a mouldy piece of refuse
which some malicious kid has tied to the rear bumper of a Packard.
These freighters which poverty-stricken outfitters swap back and forth
for small change, insure for fabulous sums, load up to the bridge with
wood stowed any old way and unsecured, and send out into the Gulf
of Gascony, with cracked boilers, in unbelievable weather. So the out-
fitter goes home rubbing his hands and risks a promise to his too young
wife, married in haste, of a fur coat for her very SoDll now-her present
coat is really getting a little worn. After fifteen days of golden dreams,
the impoverished outfitter receives a reassuring telegram from his Lisbon
agent. The freighter has arrived without a hitch, despite a difficult
crossing (there will be some expensive repairs to make), but the c a p
tain has already found a return cargo. And the outfitters friends
congratulate him by slapping him on the back, which never comforted
72 Evergreen Review
anybody. Not this time, not the next, never. It takes a war to liquidate
ships like these. They dont give a damn for the whims of fashion.
But to return to our story, it seems that just off the Island of
Beniguet, one had winters night in the year eighteen hundred and
eighty-three, six Conquet fishermen saw, to their astonishment

CABocboNs
I dont know what cabochons are.
This evening I have completely forgotten the meaning of the word
cabochon, but I revolve it in my head like an incandescent pebble.
Cabochons, at any rate, suit the woman I love.
I remember a Christmas story involving cabochons. It was a very
English detective story: muddy streets of a London suburb lit by gas-
light, and a volatile white man who had swallowed a blue diamond.
Through the window of this recollection, memory tries to persuade
me that the cabochon is a precious gem. Perhaps it is the pirates golden
beetle, luminous in the dark. An example: Lila moved through the
Brazilian night, her red hair full of phosphorescent cabochons.
Cabochons, to whatever kingdom they belong, are ardent and proud.
No one would dare to hold a cabochon in his hand. It would burn
instantly with a horrible odor of burnt flesh. A necklace of cabochons
rvould burn the breast of whoever wore it, but would be extinguished,
harmless, on the breasts of Lila.
But I must be wrong. Perhaps cabochons are merely animals of the
Far North, a mixture of walrus and caribou, and all they do is wander
in the mist, looking for damp lichen and verdigris. The mist is so thick
they never see each other. And yet, no, cabochons are like Lila-they
hum. Its this detective, with his pipesmoke, who puts the mist in my
head, the mist which makes it hard to tell the Thames from its docks.
And cabochons dont belong to that species of globular insect who
lower themselves to argue with eagles. So?
Cabochons are nothing else but the scarlet waves of her hair, or the
words which she sometimes speaks, obscene in her scandalous mouth.

Translated by Neal Oxenhandler.

 M o n s i e u r Juvas
Jean Dubuffet, Satrap

Flints are particularly interesting pebbles because they can he found

embedded in the earth, like little cannonballs: sometimes as small as a
fist or as big as a chicken (specimens the size of a sheep are pretty
rare), hut they are always round like cannonballs and distinct individ-
uals, not hits of a larger rock-little beings all in themselves, fruits of
the earth, like truffles. Flint is formed just as it is found: intact, lodged
in its original gangue, clothed in its skin of capriciously silicified chalk.
There are those who find it a moving experience to hold one of these
small personages of the tertiary era in their hand.
Its hardness means that flint has known few avatars. It is, indeed,
an extremely hard stone. A strong agglomerative power keeps each
molecule standing fast; every pebble holds its own with a pigheaded
desire to endure. The hardness of steel is nothing in comparison. Steel
cannot scratch a n t even slightly. Flint is a being in which the will-
the will to endure-is particularly intense. Therefore those who are
fascinated by the will and interested in all things hard, will he inclined
to feel strongly about this &stone.
Even as a young man M. Juva (he is old now) showed a marked
taste for working in hard stones; later he collected cameos, vases made
F r w Cahims de la Plkiade, copyright 0 1948 by Librairie G a h a r d .
73
74
of rock crystal and the so-called semi precious stones, porphyry, sardonyx
and agate objects (he was very well-off not 50 long ago). Obviously he
is one of those people who is fascinated by hard materials, and it is
natural that an esteem for hardness should increase as a man gets on
in years.
It is significant, too, that M. Juva, after being interested in semi-
precious stones, which are not very much in demand, grew to admire
utterly neglected stones. Understandably, as a man grows older, he may
come to prefer more muffled voices, less brilliant stones. In early
(prehistoric) times Aint was highly valued. On his wedding day the
Duke of Burgundy, Philippe le Bon, instituted the Order of the Golden
Fleece, the necklace of which, still worn by the Archdukes of Austria,
consists of Hints surrounded by Hames. But interest in the mineral has
died out, and the road-gang at work on Route Nationale N 313 is
astonished these days to see a well dressed, elderly gentleman crawling
about on a pile of stones from the quarry at Pressagny recently dumped
beside the highway and destined for the road-bed. Busily picking up
the stones and examining them at length, he displays the imposing
stature and austere manner of a Central European man of letters.
Under yhe waters (of the sea), where the hasin of the Seine and
the malodorous, cacophonous city of Paris extend today, there were
concentrated, not so very long ago, in the hcart of enormous, congealed
deposits of shell-fish-ignoble substances at best-noble molecules of
noble Hint, gathering themselves into those little whorled, marvelously
hard nodules, those little beings x) lively in their form that people
(who are intrigued by form) are drawn to them.
Why are there people like this who are fascinated by form, fascinated
by the language of things which form indeed is, fascinated by the
message from the very soul of things which the visual language of form
renders immediately-pple who sense that the soul of things is
stripped bare (and nobly so) in their form, who sometimes go so far
as to believe that the soul of things and their form-their immediate
appearance-are one and the same, one bring the tangible outline of
the other? Psychologists may someday clarify, if anything can be clari-
tied, these tropisms of the mind, which are so astonishingly strong in
some people. These people are naturally inclined to study things, beasts
and men more avidly than their fellows do and to pay more attention
DUBUPPET 75
to what they look like than to what they say or do-and even when
its a question of words or actions, they are more attentive to their
allure than to their contents.
You cant make an incision in a kidney of flint. The word kidney is
not mine: geologists use the term. Flint is too hard. But break it you
can. Not very easily, of coulse-you have to hurl it against another
piece of flint and hope that the shock will break it. And you can be
sure it wont break where you want it to. It will break capriciously,
along the unforeseeable lines of internal tension and in the mnes of
least cohesion. For nowhere in its mass is its texture even or homo-
geneous; it is entirely capricious throughout; this is one reason that
certain people-those who react with consternation to amorphous s u b
stances and who delight in the capricious element in life-are fascinated
by this mineral. These same people would not, in contrast, find much
interest in entirely uniform rocks without any internal diversity, such
as marble, for example, which is simpleminded enough to let people
saw and scrape at it as if they were grating cheese. In the same way
those who love the capricious will esteem wild beasts over the more
passive domestic animals, and even among the wild beasts will prefer
the most intractable creatures such as the wild boar and the black
panther. These, too, like flint, can be broken; the right caliber bullet
will do the job. But get them to balance on a barrel with a ball on the
end of their nose you never will. The common admiration for so called
pure- or thorough- bred animals is an aspect of this same taste.
Minerals like amethyst and smoky topaz are also silicates, but in
crystallized form. The molecules, impelled by a passion for crystalliza-
tion, line up all in the same direction like trees bent by some prevailing
wind, or Moslems fanatically bowing elbow to elbow toward the Kaaba.
It is a beautiful, moving process. What g w s on in a piece of flint,
however, is quite another matter: here wills conflict, ambitions diverge,
tumult reigns. For this reason flint is opaque. Some of its molecules
line up and turn ecstatically toward Mecca, as in a crystal, but many
others refuse forthwith and spin round helterskelter, arranging them-
selves into different patterns or none at all.
Those who experience similar conAicts will be profoundly moved as
they take in their hand a mineral in which they recognize a being of
their own humor, a being which has experienced passions and turmoil
76 Evergreen Review 1
so violently that it has taken the very form of there impulsions and
of the conflict between them and so has become something like their
statue.
There are more people than one might believe who feel a deep
kinship with trees and stones, who have an unusually vivid Sense of
the fraternity and common essence OF beings; for them the vehement
forms taken by flint will not conjure up resemblances suggesting the
idea of thighs, elbows, tumors or kneecaps, flesh and blood and bones,
hut will, indeed, be these very things, the springs of their life, all the
more moving For being discovered there in another world-the world
of oxide of silicate. These people will respect and admire the valiant
bulb of flint and will not draw up their stwl and attack it, as M. Phidias
or M. Michelangelo did his marble, with their scrapers-pare a hit off
here, lop a chunk off there, file it down all over like any old piece of
Ivory soap, and he hack later with my sandpaper when the carver has
roughed out the figure from the model. You have to be pretty brazen
to treat a natural substance in this fashion. You have to he entirely
convinced that what it has to say is of no interest in comparison with
what you have to say. You have to be enamored of everything human
and deaf to the rest.
But Monsieur Juvas art, his execution, is certainly not a humanistic
art. It is the very opposite. M. Juva is not teaching the mineral a
lesson. He is questioning it, questioning it avidly, with passionate
curiosity, for days and weeks on end, focusing the full intensity of
his vision on the smallest details of its shape, on its every flaw, crack
or fault, lending an ear to its muffled, barely audible voice.
And the stone replies. After several days or several weeks OF auscul-
tation, M. Juva obtains a response. An obscure reply to be sure, and,
as suits the nature of the material, indistinct, but it is obvious that
Cartesian clarity or rational formulations are not what M. Juva is after,
but altogether different manifestations. Someone who is so ardently
enamored of minerals and who, after being drawn to crystals of the
semi-precious stones, turns to opaque, impenetrable flint and begins
an intimate, feverish dialogue with its hard, somber, spark-throwing
substance is certainly not a man in love with reason. Evidently it is
something else, a revelation of an order other than rational that M.
Juva asks of his flint. It would seem that we have to do with one of
those people-of which there are some-whore taste runs to things that
DUBUFPET 77
are scarcely formulated, v e q confusedly formed, which exist only
potentially or else are in the process of formation rather than already
formed-people who prefer the egg to the chicken, who like tap roots
and spring onions.
Those whose mind tends to trace everything to its genesis, who
thread their way back through the entire past of a phenomenon until
they reach its dark origins-in one swift, almost instantaneous l e a p
or else by a movement of the mind that zigzags like a bolt of lightning,
glancing off the echoes of the phenomenon in other orders and other
kingdoms to reach by this rapid detour the turbines of creation-these
people whose mind functions quite happily in a fashion that reverses
the process of the ludicrous sausage machine (you put a live pig in
one end and all sorts of sausages come out the other; you can also
hitch it up so that it works the other way round)-these people will
find M. Juvas statues to their liking, for the virtue of these works,
the power with which they are charged, rcsides precisely in the simul-
taneity, the striking abridgement they contain, which links on the one
hand actions and appearanca that are about us every day-the charm-
ing mien of familiar beings-and on the other hand the central
laboratories of creation, the turbines governing the elaboration of things.
What is most remarkable in M. Juvas vision is the extent of his
ambition. Alchemists aim to transmute one metal into another, or one
body into another, or, at the very most, one kingdom into another; but
in M. Juvas case, a whole additional range of activity is opened up
which the alchemists never envisioned, for it must be pointed out that
he effects transmutations from mineral forms not only to animal (or
human) forms but equally to ideas-the most cerebral of ideas-to
poetic myths, and to the most abstract notions generally considered the
specialty of the intellect. These metamorphoses are suggested by the
titles given to the statues in the catalogue: The King of the Birds,
Royal Purple, Greek Ephebe, Frog Princess, etc.-all these notions
of king, purple, ephebe, etc. thrown in pell-mell with splintered and
ruptured pieces of flint, fissured cacholong, and patinas of iron oxide,
could be envisaged only by a man for whom the world of forms and
that of ideas is one and the same, the one being only a modality of
the other.
Those who insist on water-tight divisions between human ideas and
the physical world-in a word, the humanists-will undoubtedly regret
78 Evergreen Re-
the hodgepodge of the two orders which constantly occurs in M. Juvas
work, but those (and there are those) who by temperament are more
in favor of the resemblances between mans ideas and the ideas of
matter-the latter dumb, of course, but revealed by the language of
forms which communicates no less than human phraseology (and in
any case speaks more quickly)-will see in M. Juvas stames something
more profound than simple juxtapositions resulting from an artists
whimsicality.
But who, in our time of excessively futile art and thought, will take
heed of these statues? Few indeed. If, though, there are some who are
touched, however lightly, fleetingly-made ever so slightly uneasy-by
a wind coming, for once, not from any point of the mnpasrcard but
from under ones feet and from under the earth-then so much the
better! Clap on more sails!
Translated by Phyllis Johnson.
 cLose TO
Photo by the Co113ge
ANTONiN ARTAUb
Maurice Saillet, Satrap

All those people that everybody knew as friends of Antonin Artaud

(and many others that nobody knew as friends of his) were in the
box-office crush at the Vieux-Colombier Theatre at 9 o'clock in the
evening on the 13th of January, 1947. Not realizing that there were so
many of them, hardly anybody had bothered to book in advance. They
were saying that Gide and Breton, who had been asked to come along
by the poet himself, had gone home again when they found there were
no seats left. But when we got inside we found both of them already
sitting there-one in the middle of the front row, and the other right
at the back. Altogether six hundred odd people-and a hundred of that
number standing, often on each other's feet-were lucky enough to
squeeze into the tiny theatre. The program went on until midnight, in
a silence that was awe-inspiring.
What could all these people know about Antonin Artaud) Every
sort of person seemed to be there-writers, poets, actors, producers,
painters, journalists, doctors-and all those other people that always
turn up on such occasions and just could not miss the chance of seeing
in the flesh this poet who had been locked up for nine years in mental
homes at Sotteville-lBs-Rouen, Sainte-Anne, Ville-Evrard and Rodez.
Every period of his life was cacfully represented in the audience.
There was Jacques Boiffard to remind us of the adventurous beginnings
of surrealism Roger Blin to remind us of that dream theatre in which
interpretation and production would rise to a metaphysical plane; Jean
Paulhan to remind us that the literary world still cared for its lost-
and all the more precious-children; and Arthur Adamov to remind us
79
80 Evergreen Review 1
of those miseries and sufferings throughout which he had been the j
1
pets constant companion. The mixed gcnerations (ranging from Gide
by way of Brcton and Camus to Pichette) and the large majority of
young people there, all go to show that Artauds books-only a few
copies of which were ever printed and which have been impossible to
come across for years-must still circulate mysteriously and continue to
gain new readers for him every day.

a * * .

Those who missed this strange gathering (surely thcy did not think
it would have been too much for them?) must always regret it. It was
not the peepshow that some of those who were there seem to have
thought when they started looking for Antonin Artauds impresarios
during the interval; nor was it a theatrical evening according to the
strict definition of the term. But it was not meant for those who were
expecting beautiful speaking and an elaborate presentation.
What happened was that we really did meet the poet-intimately-
during an evening that he had looked forward to more than anything
since his return. This meeting is an important date-I will not s3y in
the history of poetry, or in the annals of scandal-but for a certain
tradition of revolt, for the spirit in revolt, that spirit chained to the
body of Antonin Artaud and which was struggling to set itself frce
before us.
It is not very likely that this terrible struggle would have gripped the
normal theatrical public:
Sprawling in their delicate viscosity; their greasy backsides swamp-
ing the puddle of complacency . . . Bringing nothing, but taking
shelter under that inborn wickedness which lies at the root of
everything.
But for the greater or smaller intellectual prey that was crammed
into the Vieux-Colombier that evening it was.less a question of squat-
ting in the puddle of respcctability and indifference than of being
itself that
puddle of supprated venom-since sickness is all that is left when
health is gone.
SAILLET 81
Antonin Artaud, who used to say:
I am a man who has fuffered greatly in spirit, and have therefore
the right tn speak. I know how it all goes on inside. I have agreed
once and for all to give in to my own inferiority,
Antonin Artaud kept right on to the end of his road of suffering; he
drank the dregs of what he took to be his inferiority. He became
Artaud-the-Momo-the mummified living child. And today he is the
possessor of the innocence that we have lost, and also of the experience
that we shall never gain. W e know how dearly he has paid for all this,
and our duty is to listen to him to the end.

* * *
When he came onto thr stage with his worn, emaciated face, looking
like Edgar Allan Poe and Baudelaire at the same time; when his
impetuous hands fluttered like a pair of birds round his face; when his
raucous voice, broken by sobs and stumbling tragically, began to declaim
his splendid-hut practically inaudible-poems, it was as if we were
k i n g drawn into the danger zone, sucked up by that black sun, con-
sumed by that overall combustion of a body that was itself a victim
of the flames of the spirit.
True, we only grasped a tiny part of those three great poems, Le
Retour dArtaud-le-Momo, Centre-Mkre et Patron-Minet and La
Culture Indienne. And yct it seemed that the poet had never been
better translated into opaque, living words, that he had never been
more conscious of the body of Antonin Artaud:
And this body is a fact: myself.--It has no inside, no outside, no
spirit and M conscience, nothing but the body we see, the body
that does not stop being even when the eye that sees i t drops.
And this body is a fact: myself.
Even his mind should not be considered separately. He is not in the
least bit interested in making his words easily acceptable, any more
than in what he used to call the disseminating diminution of his
thought. Passionately absorbed by his own mechanics, his hack has
always remained firmly turned on society:
 3
82 Evergreen Review 1
1 have never been great GT glorious, but bitter, repugnant and
fetid.
I have always peferred whatever grates and rasps, and against
which one strips off pride, pomp and plenty . . .
But today, it is the nature of the world that is his chief aggravation.
His revolt is against its physical-and even metaphysical-structure.
The wild obscenity of his latest poems reveals a deep state of rebellion
against the mysteries of birth and death, against those taboos that are
thought to ensure the continuity of species and the preservation of the
individual. His obsession and loathing of sex crash out in C!entre-M&e
et Patron-Minet, and in a similar piece published in the Troisidme
Cunvoi. (I must ask the reader not to judge too hastily any of Artauds
writings hc might come across in magazines. If the problem of expres-
sion is of the utmost importance to him, he also deliberately scorns
w a l l e d literary styles and fashions-and his work, which is in fact
extremely specialized, can only suffer from such promiscuous appear-
ances. T o really know and understand it we must wait therefore until
his works are collected in his own book-in the same way as we need
to see him on his own, as we did that night at the Vieux-Colombier.)
* X I

After the dramatic reading of his poems, Antonin Artaud chatted to

us about his life. The story of his trip to Dublin and his arrest touched
us, without quite managing to enthral us. And the unpublished episode
of his Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumaras did not seem as good
as the published parts. He aroused our attention again by describing
his extraordinary schizophrenic experiences, and the terrors of the
electric shock treatment:
W h e n you come round you Simply cannot find yourself again.
Life itself has been permanently debased, and a portion of original
goodness and joy lost forever.
He went on about telepathic experiments, but as his revelations fell
on barren ground, he plaintively looked round for at least someone
to share his beliefs. At times he would stop short in his tracks and give
up the thread of his subject altogether:
SAILLET 83
Putting myself in your place I can see how completely uninterest-
ing everything that I am saying must seem. What can I do to be
completely sincere?
He regained this total psychological sincerity when reading his poem
LInconditionn6. The absolute freedom of this poem is a mockery
of what we pompously call our humanity, and which is incessantly
menacing us. We are like a boat drifting backwards and forwards on
the changing tides, hoping to enter the harbor, dreaming we are safely
anchored in the port-but really forever in peril on the high seas, at
the mercy of all that is untamed and untamable. Antonin Artaud then
flung at us magnificent shreds of his work, and the words stinking
carrion, which concerned us in particular, hit hard.
This heartbreaking lesson in humility closed our evening with the
man who had once written to Jacques Rivihe: I may honestly say of
myself that I am not of the world-and this is by no means a spiritual
affectation.
January 24,1947
Translated by Mmie-Louise Ch-
 Phora b? lean Wsber

ON THE USE OF CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS PRINTS BY

THE PRACTITIONERS OF VOODOO IN HAITI
Michel LeMs, Satrap

It is evident not only from its name-which comes from the Daho-
meian word vodoun (meaning what may generally be called spirits)
-but also from various similarities observable in the rites, dances and
songs, in the names of the divinities, and in different elements of its
special terminology, that what is commonly called voodoo (of which
Haiti is one of the main strongholds) is composed basically of a kernel
of beliefs and practices originating in Dahomey. Although categorically
condemned ex cathedra by the Church, and at the most tolerated by
the government, this religion based on possession can be considered,
despite its disavowal by many, as a kind of national cult of the Haitian
people. It is practiced in an almost overt fashion by a great mass of
people whose official religion is actually Roman Catholicism, and it is
admittedly impregnated with Christian elements, in its rituals as well
as in its liturgy. T h e use of Catholic prayers and chants (together with
actual voodoo prayers and songs) in the ceremonies, the presence of
the crucifix in the hounfors or sanctuaries, and the use of holy pictures
(Catholic colored prints, usually of Cuban origin) to represent the
loas or mysteries-who are also called the saints because of their
syncretic identification with the saints of the Catholic Church-bear
84
LEIRIS 85
witness to this union in a striking fashion. Its origin may be traced-
without thus attempting to pass judgment on all later developments-
to the fact that during the colonial period baptism was legally imposed
on slaves almost immediately upon their arrival in San-Domingo.
During my brief stay in Haiti (September 24th to October 26th,
1948, under the auspices of the French Institutc of Port-au-Prince,
directed by Simon B. Lando) I was able to make some observations on
the ways in which an identification is established between a certain loa
and a Catholic saint, as the latter is depicted in a colored print. This
was done with a series of 15 pictures, all more or less of the same format
(height: 10 to 10% inches; width: 7% to 8 inches) and all purchased
at various times in the covered market of Port-au-Prince. The prices
averaged a half-gourde for those on thin paper and one gourde (about
twenty cents) for those on heavy paper. Nine of these pictures were
of Cuban origin (7 marked L.N.V., 1 marked Missions Parroquiales
Cuba and La Nueva Venecia, and one with no particular markings),
while six (marked C.G.with a tiny stamped design) had been printed
in Italy. These prints now belong to the Dept. of Iconography of the
Musee de 1Homme.
In the course of my visit I saw numbers of similar prints jn the
hounfors, on the walls of rooms which are called cuy mysth-e or
house of mysteries (a kind of holy of holies, each one belonging to
a particular group of divinities). In order to find out to which Zoa
exactly each one of these prints corresponded, I made inquiries mainly
among the women who sold them in the market; or, as a means of
checking, among other informants. The identifications thus obtained,
and the reasons that were spontaneously offered to justify these identi-
fications, seem to permit the inference that the corelation of a saint
with one of the divinities of the voodoo pantheon depends at least as
much on the recurrence of distinctive emblems or props forming part
of the picture as on any larger system of general correlations.
Pupa Legba, the god of crossroads and of the routes which give men
access to the other gods, is represented as an old man leaning on a
forked stick (a detail that is never forgotten by those adepts who, during
the ceremonies, are possessed by him). My informants, as an example,
identify him with the following saints: Saint Lazarus (San Lazaro)
depicted as an old man with sores (which two dogs are licking), with
a bound forehead, who walks leaning on two crutches, holding in his
86 Evergreen Review

AU,,rd

left hand a wooden clapper; Saint Anthony the Hermit (San Antonio
Abate) dressed in sackcloth and carrying a tall staff with a bell,
blessing a g o u p of domestic animals against a background of a wooded
landscape with a burning house; Saint Anthony of Padua (San
Antonio) in a monks robe, the Child Jesus (in his arms), standing
before a prayer-book and flowers, against a large cloud on top of which
two cherubs appear. The same image of Saint Anthony the Hermit, in
those cases where a pig is shown with the other animals (hone,
donkey, ox, sheep, dog, rooster, ducks in a p n d ) , is considered equally
to represent Simbi P&o, a spirit whose service demands the sacrifice
of a pig (which is also customary for other ZOQS of the pdtro group), and
also is always performed near a bcdy of water.
Dambalh Wedo, the god of springs and rivers, whose symbol is the
viper, is identified as Saint Patrick (San Patricio), who is depicted
in full episcopal regalia driving the snakes of Ireland into the sea.* It
seems that what occurs here is simply the fact that a relationship of
hostility and not of sympathy exists between the saint and the snakes.
Ayda Wedo, the consort of Damballa, is identified by my informants
in a picture of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (Santa Elisabetta-Regina
LEIRIS 87
dUngheria), who is shown with a crown on her head encircled by a
rather large halo that consists of a very fine double circle, which stands
out against the sky-an attribute which recalls the rainbow associated
with Ayda and Damballa Wedo.3
A picture OF Nuestra Senora de la Caridad del Cobre (which shows,
as its main figures, the Virgin standing on a crescent mwn, invoked by
a young Negro kneeling in a boat where two oarsmen struggle against
a foaming sea) offers possibilities of more complex interpretation, and
one could expect the picture to be used in various situations in view of
its many motifs and figures (besides those named above: three cheru-
bim, as well as two young girls in blue tunics carrying a banner with
the inscription MATER CARITATIS IN PLUCTIBUS MARIS
AMBULAVIT). The attention of some of my informants was in fact
drawn to the canor, and they here interpolated symbolically the figure
of the sea-god Agwd Taroyo (whose primary attributes are a boat and
a rudder); but certain others were more interested in the principal

heavenly figure, in whom they recognize Clennizine or Cldnzerzine,

daughter of the sea-god Clermeil; she is imagined to have some con-
nection with the niaon. These two interpretations are not contradictory
(since General Clermeil is considered to be commander of the guard
of Agwk and consequently belongs to the same order as the latter);
but a third interpretation must be mentioned, which brings in a dif-
ferently identified god: according to Emile Marcelin, a Haitian re-
searcher whom I have already quoted, certain practitioners of voodw
in Portau-Prince identify Agaou (the god of wind and storm, who is
one of the companions of the peasant god Zaka Mddd, the brother of
Cousin Zaka) with Saint Roch, others with Saint Michael, and still
others with the young Negro who is depicted in the prints of the Virgin
Caridad, kneeling in a canoe with folded hands.
Errilie Frdda or Grande Erzilie (as well as her double or alter ego
Mdtresse Enilie) is the goddess of love, whose symbol in the white
flour drawings or v h d which are her sacred emblems-as they are for
the other lous-is the heart; she is entitled to all so- of objects of luxury
and ornament. To her corresponds a picture of the Mater Dolorosa
88 Evergreen Review
(Dolorosa con joyas), shown covered with rich jewels and surrounded
with several hearts, among numerous other ex-votcs.3
Because of a secondary figure, a picture of Saint James the Great
(San Santiago, literally Saint Saint-James, since the place name
Santiago, which refers to a Cuban city under the patronage of the
Spanish Saint James of Compostella, has become in this case the name
of the saint himself) will receive a double interpretation. The picture
show> Saint James on horseback with sword and shield, fighting the
Infidels, escorted hy a knight in armor bearing a red standard with a
white cross. All my informants agreed that the principal figure is the
blacksmith and warrior god Ogwn Feraille or Ogoun Fer (whose basic
attribute is a saber, and together with the othcr Ogouns the color
red), but according to some the figure in the background is Ogoun
Badagri, the brother of Ogoun Feraille, while others identify him
rather as a guidi, or graveyard spirit; this is because of the lowered
visor of the helmet of the figure in question, which seems to recall the
chincloth and other attributes of a corpse (such as cotton in the
nostrils), which are frequently adopted hy adepts who impersonate
the g u i S ; all facts which would explain, by the way, why these latter
are reputed to speak always through the nose?
In a San Miguel, Archangel, with a red cloak, holding in his left
hand a balance, and in his right a sword with which he wards off the
devil, some of the people whom I interrogated recognize an Ogoun,
and, they maintain, Badagri himself. A San Giorgio Martire, an
equestrian figure clothed as well in a red cloak, armed with a sword
and pinning to earth a dragon, is equally regarded as an Ogoun-
perhaps the one called Balinjo.
Cousin Zaka, a rural god, one of whose main attributes is a wicker
basket, is identified with Saint Isadore (San Isidro), depicted as a
peasant carrying a leather sack across his shoulder, and praying with
one knee on the ground and hands folded, while in the background
an angel leads a cart pulled by two oxen.
Baron Samedi, father of the guidis, whose emblem is the funeral
cross and who is also called Roi Degonde (from Saint Radegonde,
foundress of the monastery of the Holy Cross) is identified with Saint
Expedit (San Espedito), depicted as a Roman cummander holding
in his left hand the martyrs palm and in his right a cross bearing the
word HODIE, while his right foot crushes a raven holding in his beak
LEIRIS 89
a scroll with the word CRAS, and at his left on the ground lies a
helmet with the visor raised. The identification depends essentially on
the presence of the cross and of the helmet, which is interpreted as
being a skull (in one view, because those who had never seen a helmet,
such as the natives of the Haitian hillcountry, imagined it to be a skull
by its shape; in another view, because it had in fact been a skull in
the original prints and had only later been transformed into a helmet).
According to Marcelin, however? the analogy between the name of
this saint and the term expedition used to designate the rites of
sorcery in which Baron Samedi plays an important role figures strongly
in their mutual identification.
In the same way the loa Brave Gukdi, all of whose attributes are
black, will be identified in a print of Saint Gerard (San Gerard0
Majella) dressed in a bluish-black cassock, a long wooden crucifix in
his left hand, his right elbow leaning on a table on which are lying an
instrument of mortification and lilies or other white flowers-substi-
tutes for the skull which evidently used to appear on older examples
of the same print.
szs
Quite naturally too, the marassa or twins (to whom a cult is dedi-
cated in Haiti, as in Dahomey and in numerous other regions of Africa)
are identified in a print depicting Saints Cosmo and Damian (SS.
Cosma e Damiano) standing side by side, both dressed in rich vest-
ments embroidered in gold (one in a kind of green dalmatic and red
pallium, the other in a red dalmatic and green pallium), and carrying
besides their martyrs palms, one a ciborium and the other a book.
It happens as well that completely contradictory interpretations are
made of the same print, according to the emphasis given to one or
another of its details. This was the case, for example, with one of my
prints which showed a young Saint John the Baptist (San Giovanni
Battista) dressed in a sheepskin, sitting beneath a large tree with a
lamb on his knees, and in his left hand a cross made of two branches
tied together, with the legend ECCE AGNUS DEI. According to one
person, the picture represented the loa Ti Jean Pino, and I imagine
that there is more than the similarity of the name at work here, since
T i Jean PBtro is a tree-dwelling spirit, who is imagined to-be a little man
 Y
90 Evergreen Review
without feet, or with one foot only. Not only the presence of the tree
agrees with this double character, but also the apparent absence of
legs-the young Saint John is represented sitting down. According to
another informant, the picture represents not a loa of the petro order
(these are spirits to whom it is customary to sacrifice a pig, as we have
seen above), but a Zoa of the rada order; this is bccause of the presence
of a lamb.

I must add besides, that among the other images of Catholic devo-
tion that I observed at the house of a mambo, or celebrated priestess,
at Croix des Missions in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince-Mme. Ildevert
(or Soustinie Minfort, to use her nom vaillant or professional name)
-I picked up a picture of Nucstra Senora de Montserrate, shown
surrounded by four singers and six musicians, all adolescents dressed
in black robes and white surplices, and used here to represent the god-
dess Enilie. Now, about a month before I had seen a copy of this
same picture used, in a process analogous to syncretism, in the chapel
of Changy near Carangaise in Guadeloupe. This is one of the main
CulNral meeting-places of the descendants of the coolies-individuals
of Dravidian stock who came to the French West Indies from India
after the abolition of slavery as hired laborers; now, while for the
voodoo worshippers of Haiti this virgin had been Erzilie, the Hindus
of Guadeloupe used her to represent Maryemen (or Madyemin, or
MayOm6-perhaps Marie airnee?), a feminine deity whom they equate
with the Virgin Mary-as is the case for Erzilie, in voodoo-and to
whom a black stone statue on the main altar of the chapel is dedicated.
This figure is completely covered with a large white cloth which reveals
only the face; but once the cloth is removed, the statue is seen to have
four arms and to be holding in the outside right hand (that is, the one
farthest away from the body) a kind of sword, in the outside left hand
a branch of Indian lilac or vilepe, and in the inner left hand a trident.
(None of these attributes recalls the mirrors and different articles of
jewelry and decoration which are so often seen on the dressing tables
consecrated to Erzilie in Haitian sanctuaries). This divinity-whose
chapel is occasionally frequented by Guadeloupeans of African de-
scent, who mix with the Hindu faithful-is claimed to be a goddess of
the plague: Mariyammei or Mother Death, evidently one of the
LEIRIS 91
grdmadevatds, village deities who, because of their connection with
the vegetation cult and their prevalence in Dravidian lands, were partly
absorbed into Sivaite theology; the very name of the goddess and her
ambivalent maternal nature can only have helped to facilitate her
identification with the Virgin Mary.
I must finally call attention also to the fact that although among the
colored prints to be seen in voodoo sanctuaries there are for the most
part only images of devotion, particularly images of the saints, some are
purely profane from the viewpoint of the Catholic religion. For exam-
ple, while visiting the hounfor of the hmngan or priest Jo Pierre-Gilles
(at Croix des Missions, not far from the house of Mme. Ildevert), I
happened to see, in a cay consecrated to lolls of the pktro order and-
as far as I can remember-to the Simbis, gods of rain and fresh water,
two copies of the following print, surrounded by prints of pious sub
jects: in a lush landscape, two nudes (nymphs?) bathing at the edge
of a stream.

This cursory investigation made with the fifteen colored prints PUT-
chased at Port-au-Prince, seems to indicate that often the connection
between loa and saint is established because of some purely circum-
stantial detail and through what might he called a pun, not on words
but on objects (as, for example, the lowered visor of the helmet identi-
tied as the chincloth of a corpse). In order to establish such a connec-
tion, there need not exist an analogy in the content of the symbol: a
superficial resemblance, fragmentary and generally accidental, seems
to suffice in most cases. The use of a certain print to represent a
particular loa appears to be largely a matter of accommodation, and
the fluidity of certain identifications is illustrated by a fact noted by
Marcelins: the seagod Agwe, whose symbol is a boat or a fish and
who is hence identified with Saint Ulrich (shown in the prints with a
fish in his hand) was identified with Saint Ambrose during the last
war, when pictures of Saint Ulrich became quite difficult to find: the
print sellers then sold, as pictures of Agwk, pictures of Saint Ambrose
that had been adapted by drawing a fish in the saints hand.
A plurality of attributes and names for the same divinity or the
92 Evergreen Review
same saint (from which arises an extremely extended and complex play
of elements between which identification can be made), extreme
elasticity in the possibilities of identification (which can be made, as
in the above case, outside of any community of attributes), variability
in representation of the same divinity, variability in interpretation of
forms-all tend to the conclusion that one can expect literally anything,
from the moment that historical circumstances and social conditions
are such as to favor the process of syncretism.
A systematic study of the manner in which the images of Catholic
saints are used by different groups to represent non-catholic divinities
would certainly furnish some interesting examples of the often obscure
processes whereby systematic connections are established between one
religion and another.

Notes

1 According to Milo Marcelin, Mythologie voudou (rite mad=), I, Les Editions

Haitiennes, Port-au-Prince (1949). p. 16: Legha is usually identified with Saint
Anthony the Hermit (because, evidently, of his sexual frigidity) or with Saint
Anthony of Padua (who is depicted in these prints with all kinds of domestic
animals). Yet acmrding to a houngan with whom I spoke myself, the picture of
Saint Anthony the Hermit is used to represent Legha in the rada rites, while the
picture of Saint Anthony of Padua is used in the p&o rites. In addition,
Jacques Roumain notes in Le Sacrit;Ce du Tambour-Assoto (r), Publication du
Bureau dEthnologie de la Rhuhlique dHaYti, no. 2, Imprimerie de IEtat, Port-
au-Prince, (1943), p. 19: Whereas in Dahomey Legha is a phallic divinity, he
has lost this characteristic in Haiti, and in Cuba is even identified with St. An-
thony because of his sexual frigidity. T h e pdho rites, which tend toward magic,
seem to be of more recent origin than the rndn, which latter, according to Major
Louis Maximilien, (Le V o d m haitien, Rife Radas-Conzo, Imprimerie de YEtat,
Port-au-Prince, no date, p. 151) hecause of its fundamental nature perptuates
the real religious traditions of Dahomey. T h e same author (p. 151) remarks
that many loas of the PIno order are merely replicas of thore in the Rndn order.
Among the prints I collected, it was that of Saint Anthony the Hermit (not of
Saint Anthony of Padua) which showed the saint surrounded by animalr; in any
LEIRIS 93
case, according to Marcelins informants and to mine, the pictures in which a pig
appears refer definitely to a Ion pdtro (either Simbi, OT Legba in a pdm mani-
festation).
According to Marcelin (ibid., p. 571, for certain believers Damhlla Wedo,
who is imagined as a white man, is not Saint Patrick, who according to them
would be his son Odan Damballah Ouedo. They identify him with (Saint)
Moses, saved from drowning, because they say Damballah stammers like him. A
houngan assured me that Damballah Ouedo, a Rada Loa, is Saint Moses, and
Damballah Laflambeau, also called Saint-Blanc, a P h o lon, is Saint Pahick.
3 Marcelin (ibid., p. 69) identifies this divinity with Our Lady of the Im-
maculate Conception, represented in Catholic prints crowned with stars, dressed
in blue and white, standing on the globe of the earth, with a viper beneath her
feet before a crescent moon.
1 Ler Grands diem d u voudou haitien, (Journal de la S&4 der A&-
nines, nouvelle rerie, vol. XXXVI, p. 51-135). Acmrding to the rame author
(Mythdogie .. . p. 89-90), The Virgin Caridad, goddess OF the sea, is p m b
ably another identity for Erzilie. She walks with Agw.4; in Cuba, she would be
identified with the A f d u b a n divinity Chlm, who is imagined ffi a mulatress
with long hair, m m t h and gleaming. Eailie, guardian of fresh waters, is reputed
to have had numerous sexual relationships and to have becane principally the
wife of A&; thus one can imagine the essential idea hehind identi6cation be
tween the picture of the Virgin Caridad and the seadivinitiw.
5 According to Marcelin (Mytholopie ... p. 77). Mdtrense Enilie is iden-
tified as well with two black Virgins: the Virgin of Altagrada (also called the
Virgin of Higuey, after a city in the Dominican Republic), and Our Lady of
Mt. Camel.
6 According to Marcelin (Ler Grandr D i e m .. . p. 85 f.), the prints which
represent Saint James the Great dressed in armor are interpreted as portraiaitr of
Ogoun Feraille. For some the visor of his helmet is a blindfold which by prevent-
ing his sight restrains his anger, for others it is a blind which was put o n by
Badagri his father (and not his brother), who is jealous of his determined atten-
tions to hlafvesse&lie and of the favors he obtains from her. This armor-plated
knight is also called Saint Philip, and considered the twin-brother of Saint James
the Great. In this armor-plated knight some of my informants have recognized
Ogoun Badagri, and others a guddk.
7 Harold & d a n d e r (Haiti Singing, The University of North Carolina Press,
Chapel Hill, 1939, p. 40) mentions Ogoun Balindjo as a brother of Ogoun
Badagri. Both are warriors and blacksmiths, and it is quite possible that the p m -
ence of flames in the pictures of Saint Michael (the hell-lire) and Saint George
(tongues of fire shooting from the dragons mouth) have mmething to do with
the identification; in fact, it is customary for persons p o d by one of the
Ogouns to show that they have no fear of h e by walking on live coals or by
handling red-hot bars of iron. One must note, however, that in the interpretations
of the pictures of Saint Anthony the Hermit, identified ffi Papa Legba, the prer-
ence of a burning house has no significance.
.
Les Grrmds Diem.. pp. 120-121.
94 Evergreen Review
B1
9 It seems reasonable to assume that this characteristic has an African origin,
since there exists in Western Africa a belief in spirits which haunt large trees
and are often imagined to have one leg, or one leg longer than the other. These
are known as dyinous.
10 Louis Renou and Jean Filliorat, Llnde Classique, I , Payot ed., Paris, (1947-
1949), p. 487. Dazzled by the beauty of the gandharvas whose images she had
seen ieRected in the water, this divinity lost her p w e r to penetrate liquids, which
solidified at the touch of her hands. Condemned by her husband to be burned
alive, but saved by her Eon, her body remained covered with scars and she became
the goddess of the small-pox. The connection between the element of water and
the female idea, of course, is a very common une; it is nevertheless quite interest-
ing to come upon this myth which makes the Dravidian Mariyammei (transported
to Guadeloupe) into a goddess connected with water like the Haitian Erzilie
(who p~sesserthe same ambivalent nature and, in addition w a s herself trans-
ported, since the vaadm chants speak of her as Dahomin or Dahomey).
11 T h e aquatic name of these divinities is supported in particular by the fact
that their chief Papa Simbi is usually identified with Saint Christopher u w i n g
a stream with the Child Jesus on his shoulders. It is said of thi-, same g d that he
kidnaps children who go to certain springs or streams either to draw water or to
bathe. (Marcelin, Les Gmds Diezu, pp. 131-135.)
12 (Mytholopie ... p. 103.)
Translated by Paul Schmidt.
 I1
THE PATACESSORS
Presented by the Optimates
 Alphonse Allais
(1854-1905)
Literary Assassin

It is indeed a pity that a great nation like France should have to

count among her writers such an immoral and sadistic individual as a
certain Alphonse Allais.
Born in 1854 in Honfleur (Calvados), not troubling to address a
word to his parents before the age of three, the druggists son learned
nothing in his fathers laboratory save the concoction of poisons and
explosives. Such a depraved wretch could end up nowhere but in
literature: and there he is still. In 81 E.P. (vulg. 1954) the College of
Pataphysics celebrated the joint centcnary of the births of Alphonse
Allais and Arthur Rimhaud with a banquet in Honfleur and a harangue
to the populace by His Late Magnificence.
One fine day, both out of curiosity and for the enlightenment of the
masses, we undertook to enumerate and record all the murders and
violent deaths which Allais was pleased to describe in five volumes
(chosen at random): we arrived at the figure of twenty-three, not
counting incidental references. Overcome with loathing, we gave up
our investigation, which no one, to this day, has bad the courage to
begin again.
So theres nothing Eunny about Allais, needless to say. Not content
with his macabre elucubrdtions, he does not hesitate tn write a dis-
gustingly pure French, Reading the original text, one is quickly aware
that this is only another outrage to the moral order: Allais is thoroughly
acquainted with the alchemy of the French language and with verbal
fireworks; yet his skill only serves to tumble down the niceties of gram-
mar and bludgeon the reader with imbecilic puns. And to think that
in France there are those who will laugh at such stuff!
We are bound, what is more, ta m n i z e that Allais was quite aware
of the seriousness of his own case. Jules Renard reports in his Journal
these words uttered by Allais in 1905: Tomorrow, I shall be dead.
You think thats a joke, but Im not laughing. Tomorrow, I shall be
dead . . . And the next day he died of a hld-clot. So as to have
the last word.
97
98 Evergreen Review 1
Who's laughing?
F. Cmadec,
Pruveditor of Exhibitions
md Ostenswns, GMOGG ,
(Alphonse Allais wrote mure than a thousand stories. We have chosen
for export to the Americas a moderately pataphysical text, which,
though immoral enough, is free from actual bloodshed. The honorable
Assassins will doubtless be good enough to excuse us, and will under-
stand that we were loath to spread abroad such nice little French
inventions.)

A Real Parisian Affair

CHAPTER O N E

IN W H I W W E MAXI3 'IHB ACQUAINTANCE OP A GENTLEMAN AND A

LADY W H O MIGHT HAVE BEEN HAPPY, HAD IT NUT BEEN
FOR THEIR PERPETUAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS.

"Ho! but he hath chose finely, that

merry Customer!"
Rabelais

At the time this story begins, Raoul and Marguerite (a pretty name
for love) had been mamed five months or so.
Married for love, needless to say.
One fine evening, Raoul, on hearing Marguerite sing Colonel Henry
dErville's pretty love song:
Hey, nunny! the frogs' beloved showers
Quicken and scent the woodsy bowers. . .
The woods are like to my heart's delight:
He always smells better after Saturday night.
Raoul, then, had sworn that the divine Marguerite (diva Mmgurita)
would never helong to any man but himself.
The couple would have been the happiest of couples, if it hadn't
been for the lousy character of both partners.
From A se tordre, by arrangement with Albin Michel.
ALLAIS 99
For a yea, for a nay, bing! a busted plate, and bang! a slap in the
face, or a kick in the tail.
At these sounds, Love would fly off in tears and, in some corner of
the great estate, await the moment of reconciliation, which was never
far off.
And then: kisses without number, tender and knowing caresses
without end, infernal ardors.
One might almost have thought this filthy pair only wrangled to
treat themselves to the pleasure of making up.

CHAPTER TWO

A MERE EPISODE, NOT DIRECTLY CONNECTBD TO THB PLOT,

BUT CIVINC T H E GOOD CUSTOMERS AN WEA OF OUR HEROES WAY OP LIPE.

In Latin tongue light sweet Love A-mar,

Who mortifieth and bringeth tremor,
And ere Death come, a carerid Humor,
Sighs, pitfalls, Teares, and Inwits clamor.
(LovesEmblem)

One day, though, it was worse than usual.

Or rather, one evening.
They had gone to the Theatre dApplication, where, among other
plays, The Faithless Woman, by MI. Porto-Riche, was being performed.
When youve had a good enough look at Grosclaude, grated Raoul,
please let me know.
And when yuu have committed Miss Moreno to memory, vituper-
ated Marguerite, be good enough to pass the opera glasses.
Initiated in this style, the conversation could not help but end in
the most deplorable mutual violence.
In the camage, on the homeward way, Marguerite took pleasure in
scraping away on Raouls vanity as on an old worn-out mandolin.
And thus, no sooner had they entered their house, than they took
up their respective battle positions.
With hand raised to strike, a cold eye, moustache abristle like the
whiskers of a raving tomcat, Raoul marched on Marguerite, whose
position seemed suddenly quite unenviable.
100 Evergeen Review
The poor creature Red, furtive and swift as the doe in the wide wood.
Raoul was upon her.
Then, in a blinding Rash, the genius of ultimate anguish illumined
Marguerites little brain.
Turning in her tracks, she threw herself into Raouls arms, crying
Raoul dear, I beg you, save me!

CHAPTER THREE

IN WHICH OUR PRIENDS MAKE PEACE AS I HOPE IT M A Y OFTEN BE GIVEN

TO YOU TO MAKE PEACE, YOU WHO THINK YOURSELVES SO CLEVER.

Hold your tongue, please

x * * * * * * x
x *. * * x * * *

CHAPTER FOUR

HOW IT M A Y BE OBSERVED THAT THOSE WHO MEDDLE IN THE AFFAIRS

OF OTHERS WOULD W BETTER TO HOLD TITEIR PEACE.

Gore, aint it terrific how mean the

world is gettin lately!

Pronouncement of my
concierge, Monday
last, in the forenoon.

One morning, Raoul received the following note:

If perchance you should wish once to see your wife in high
spirits, betake yourself on Thursday to the Incoherents Ball,
at the Moulin Rouge. There she will be, masked and got up
as a Congo Pirogue. TO him who grasps my meaning,
greetings.
A Gentleman Who Wishes You Well.
1 In English in the original.
ALLAIS 101
That very morning, Marguerite received the following note:
If perchance you should wish for once ta see your husband
in high spirits, betake yourself on Thursday to the Incoher-
ents Ball, at the Moulin Rouge. There he will be, masked
and got up as a Pre-Raphaelite Knight Templar. To her who
grasps my meaning, greetings.
A Lady Who Wishes You Well.

These messages fell not on deaf ears.

Each craftily dissembled his purpose when the fatal day came, and
Kaoul, with his most innocent air, hazarded, My dear, I shall be con-
strained to leave you alone until tomorrow. I am called to Dunkerque
for matters of the greatest consequence.
How fortunate indeed, replied Marguerite with delightful candor,
I have just rcccived a telegram calling me to the bedside of my aunt
Aspasia, who has gone into a decline.

CHAPTER FIVE

IN WHICH IS SEEN THE FOLLY OF TODAYS

YOUTH, WHIRLING GIDDILY IN
IDLE AND EPHEMERAL PLEASURES, WITH NEVER A THOUGHT
FOR ETfRNITY.

And still Ill choose to live, withal,

For life is sweet and bonny!
Auguste Marvin

The gossip writers of the Hobbling Goblin unanimously declared

that, that season, the Incoherents Ball shone with unwonted splendor.
Many shoulders and not a few legs, to say nothing of the accessories.
Two of those in attendance seemed not to be sharing in the general
madness: a Pre-Raphaelite Templar, and a Congo Pirogue, each her-
metically masked.
On the stroke of three, the Templar made fair to ask the Pirogue to
come sup with him.
The Pirogue placed her tiny hand, in answer, on the Templars
brawny arm, and the couple went off into the night.
 Evergreen Review
B
102 ~

CHAPTER SIX

IN WHICH THE SITUATION BECOMES CONFUSED.

I say, dont you think the rajah

laughs at us?
Perhaps, sir.l
Henry OMercier

Leave us a moment in peace, said the Templar to the waiter, we

shall decide on our menu and then ring for you.
T h e waiter withdrew and the Templar, with some care, bolted the
door of their private room.
Then, with a quick motion, having doffed his helmet, he snatched
away the Pirogues mask.
At the same instant, both uttered cries of amazement, for neither
recognized the other.
He was not Raoul.
She was not Marguerite.
Excuses having been olTered and received on both sides, the couple
was not long in making a firmer acquaintance, with the encouragement
of a small supper: and that is all you shall be told.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A HAPPY ENDING FOR ALL CONCERNED, EXCEPT THE OTHERS.

SOswill we vermouth and

grenadine,
T h e grenadiers one last,
faint hope.
Georges Auriol

This little miscarriage of fortune taught Raoul and Marguerite a pre-

cious lesson. From then on they never quarreled, and their happiness
was without blemish. As yet, they have not had many, many children:
all in due time.
Translated by Edward Morris.
1 In English in the original.
 (1861-1944)
Soft Spoken Anarchist

Impetuous Keeper of his peace, in the words of Father Ubus

Little Almanach: A disturbing peace for those impenitent men of
letters, his contemporaries: offhandedly to have explored and exhausted
the charms of the Gothic tale, to have made sport of the learned rarity
of the symbolists style in a few pages of bold and brilliant art criticism,
in sum, to be a man full of talent and promise, and to give up writing
anything other than snotty little reviews for the Revue independante
and three-line news items in Le Matin-could all this be taken seri-
ously? Enigmatic, impenetrable Finion, with the look of an American
Mephistopheles, according to Remy de Gourmont; canonized, more-
over, by his indictment for anarchism in the trial known as the Trial
of the Thirty (but in fact, there is no indication in his Works, edited
by Jean Paulhan, that he wrote for the subversive En-Dehws). As
editor of the Revue Blanche, to which he himself deigned to contribute
only two translations, he backed Jarry, who, in turn, dedicated to him
the thirty-sixth chapter of Faustroll. Who else besides Jarry could have
understood that these brief notations, which the profane will take for
an innocuous, superficial game, are in fact the epitome of the exploits
and opinions of one of the most intelligent men of all time?

Michel Dbcaudin,
Regent of the History and
Exegesis of Pataphysics

103
104 Evergreen Review

Scratching it with a hair-triggered revolver, Mr. Ed ...B ...

removed the end of his nose, in the Vivienne police station.

Falling from a scaffolding at the same time as Mr. Dury, stone-mason,

of Marseille, a stone crushed his skull.
*
Louis Lamarre had neither work nor lodging; but he did have a few
coppers. He bought a quart of kerosene from a grocer in Saint Denis,
and drank it.

A madwoman of Pukchabon (HQault), Mrs. Bautiol, nke Hkrail,

used a club to awaken her parents-in-law.

At finding her son Hyacinth, 69, hanged, Mrs. Ranvier, of Bussy-

Saint-Georges, was so depressed she couldnt cut the rope.

In Essoyes (Aube), Bernard, 25, bludgeoned Mr. Dufert, who is 89,

and stabbed his wife. H e was jealous.

In Brest, thanks to a smokers carelessness, Miss Ledru, all done up

in tulle, was badly burned on thighs and breasts.

In Djiajelli, a thirteen-year-old virgin, propositioned by a lewd rake

of ten, did Kim in with three knife-blows.

Scissors in hand, Marie le Goeffic was playing on a swing. So that,

falling, she punctured her abdomen. In Bretonneau.

Not finding his daughter of 19 austere enough, the Saint-Etienne

jeweler Jallat killed her. He still, it is true, has eleven other children.

What! all those children perched on my wall! With eight shots,

Mr. Olive, a Toulon property-owner made them scramble down, covered
with blood.
From CEhwes, copyright @ 1945 by Librairie Gallimard.
FBNBON 105
Marie Jandeau, a handsome girl well known to many gentlemen of
Toulon, suffocated in her room last night, on purpose.

A Nancy dishwasher, Vital Frkrotte, recently returned from Lourdes

forever cured of tuberculosis, died, on Sunday, by mistake.

Miss Verbeau did manage to hit Marie Champion, in the breast,

but she burned her own eye, for a bowl of vitriol is not an accurate
weapon.

At skittles apoplexy felled Mr. Andrk, 75, of Levallois. While his

bowl was still rolling, he ceased to be.

. LAFORGUE (Jules). A plump and beardless youth. Sings to the moon:

insidious aroma1 laments, incantatory litanies. This Selenite is reader
to the Empress Augusta. Oh, the agonies of that good lady, if he
should read her his poems!
TAINE (Hippolyte). Applies to literary history the techniques of
scientific farming. For any given country, studies soil chemistry, topog-
raphy, and climate, then treats a generation of artists as a crop of
mushrooms, beets, and Brussels sprouts.
LARROQUB (Jean). Pen and Sword in the Eighteenth Century.
(Ollendorff). How tedious for Mr. Jean Larrque, conscientiously to
have read every last publication of a whole century! He felt that he
should not suffer alone.
BOYER DAGEN. Native Land. (Victor Havard). Mr. Boyer hoes
through his memory, culling reminiscences of childhood and seminary
years which he sets out in chunky, ill-assorted, haze-ridden, garlicky
sentences. Were Athens, Sienna, Venice, and Haarlem to vie for Mr.
Boyer, he would choose Agen.
Translated by Edward Morris.
 (1858-1915)
Man of Masks

Two major events influenced the direction of Jarrys early career:

his encounter with le pkre Hkbert, the inspiredly muddleheaded
physics teacher at the Zycee in Rennes, and his encounter in Paris with
Remy de Gourmont, theorist and practitioner of Symbolism. Of the
first meeting was born le pkre Ubu and the universal science of
Yataphysics; of the second, applied Pataphysics or what one might
call Jarrys work proper-not its substance, but its workmanship and
manner of expression.
A mysterious figure who appeared little in public, author of a series
of highly suggestive novels, Gourmont did his most important work as
critic of the whole body of symbolist literature. One is astonished to
find fused in his writing linguistic, esthetic and scientific preoccupations
that in later authors have developed in totally opposed directions. Ezra
Pound, T. S. Eliot and several schools of Anglo-American criticism
claim Gourmont as their principal ancestor.
The collective schoolboy creation, Ubu, would have remained buried
in the unsavory memory of former students at the Rennes Zycbe if
Jarry had not assumed his paternity. In the same way Jarry would not
have been able to impose the all too believable Ubu on the world if
Symbolism, and principally Gourmont, had not helped out by assum-
ing Jarrys paternity-by taking him unto itself. It would be as false to
take Jarry away from Symbolism (or vice versa) as to cut him off from
Pataphysics. He carried Symbolism to its extreme, aggravated it like a
disease, heated it to the white heat of incandescence and transmutation,
as Lautrkamont had done with Romanticism. Yet one must admit that
Lautrkamonts excesses struck Romanticism far more gently than they
struck the historians of Romanticism. He provided dynamite for the
professors, a posthumous explosion which Romanticism itself easily
deflected; the shock and damage was felt principally in the pages of
literary history. Romanticism did not die of these excesses; at the very
outset over-excited literary demagogues had preached the same violent
tactics from the security of their preferred cafk table. It died rather of
anemia, an end quite worthy of it. It was Symbolism that brought
106
GOURMONT 107
Lautrkamont rushing out on stage, and it happened because of Remy
de Gourmonts perfectly lucid decision to resuscitate him in Le Mercure
de France. As a result Lautrkamont, thirty years after his death, sat
about breaking up.the mirrors and embroidery tables, the tea sets and
incense burners of Symbolism.
There is a significant difference between the role played by Lautrka-
mont during the great collective itching of Romanticism and that
sustained by Jarry in the midst of Symbolism. In Lautrkamonts case
the tumor sprouted from a sickly body close to extinction, whereas
Jarrys healthy organism accepted the graft and flourished.
The working friendship that formed between Gourmont and Jarry
for a few short years accomplished far more than simply establishing
Jarry inside the fortifications of the symbolist review, Le Mercure de
France. Together they founded and edited a luxuriously printed review,
LYmagier. Its finances were probably provided by Berthe de Courrihre,
Gourmonts priest-chasing mistress, who had inspired Sixtine, Novel of
the Life of the Mind. When Berthe was urged by friends to throw
herself at Jarry and met with an outraged rebuff, Gourmont and Jarry
ceased seeing one another. Yet their collaboration had delivered intact
into Jarrys impious hands the whole trinket shop of Symbolism and
offered Pataphysics a vast terrain for expansion-a field for experiment
and a splendidly equipped laboratory. The text below, written by
Gurmont before his break with Jarry, represents the kind of tongue-
in-cheek Symbolism at which Jarry was to excel.
Gourmont, who knew perfectly well what he was doing in setting
Lautrkamont loose inside the house of Symbolism, must also have been
aware of the consequences of his connivings so early in the game with
Father Ubu. Surely he was adept at this kind of machination, this high
symbolist who strove for originality more than for beauty, and who
refused to mistake perfection, a mere average, for beauty, which is a
form of excess.
N o d Arnaud,
Regent of General Pataphysics and
Clinical Rhetoriconosis, Covice-Rogator,
Cmferent Major OGG
 News From The Unfortunate Isles
T o Jules Renard
It was a tranquil land, sad and green, as if saved from some ancient
catastrophe, a wide plain of affliction and resignation. I followed a path
squeezed between two unflowering hedges bristling with thorns,
grievous thorns, thorns which seemed to weep over the cruelty of their
lot; and, having walked for hours in the prison of these grievous
thorns, I was stopped by a barrier like an absurd stockade between me
and the infinite.
The rough hewn timbers let through lozenges of light, and when I
looked, this is what I saw.
A tranquil garden, sad and green, in which fresh, applegreen salads
were growing, nothing but tender heads of lettuce, and amid all that
succulent pasturage, a herd of naked women. I recognized them right
away; travellers descriptions had been exact. I had never seen a
woman; now I was seeing a whole herd.
The spectacle absorbed me.
The woman struck me as a fairly graceful animal, to be classified
with the opossum and the kangaroo. But she differed from these species
in certain characteristic features. Like the horse, women have a mane,
black, bay, or chestnut, which falls over their eyes and trails on the
ground. They have little body hair, though it grows thick in a few
spots, lighter or darker than the mane. They have no tail. T o scratch
themselves they lift a foreleg, just the opposite of most animals, who
lift a hind leg. Their breasts are pectoral, whereas in most mammals
they are inguinal.
They were browsing about on the green tender lettuce, a leaf here
and a leaf there, searching uneasily, sniffing for several minutes at a
salad that would have satisfied me, and finally disdaining it for another
exactly the same or even less appetizing.
Despite their restless air, it seemed to me they took pleasure in bend-
ing toward the ground and were content to serve their material appe-
tites, for during the whole hour that I watched them, not one raised
its head. Salad, succulent lettuce, was their one passion.
No animal had ever interested me to so great a degree; I should have
From Proses Mmoses, Mercure de France, 1894, by permission.
108
GOURMONT 109
liked to see them from close up, to touch them. I whistled, called out,
thought up the sweetest modulations of my voice; as at the zoo I put
my hand through the opening in the fence, beckoned to them, made
believe I held something tempting in my fingers: the herd was not
aroused in the slightest.
I was impatient and became angry; I threw stones at the beautiful

beasts, but my aim was bad and I could not hit any of their rumps.
The herd did not react.
Still, I wanted one of those beasts!
The hedge, the grievous hedge of thorns, circled the garden with an
impervious defense, but the barrier could be scaled. I mounted the
assault of my desire, got over, and, adopting the ruse of going down
on all fours myself, succeeded in approaching unnoticed a little chest-
nut slightly separated from the herd. It was seized and thrown over
my shoulder; after a feverish effort I found myself on the other side
of the barrier again, without any clear idea of this abduction having
formed in my mind. Deeply disturbed, without catching my breath or
looking behind me, I fled, happy to bear the burden of that fine stolen
beast, which moaned a little but resigned itself with a strangely gentle
inertia.
110 Evergreen Review
What happened back in the little house I had built for myself near
the shore, while waiting for the snowy sailed ship that was to come
and cairy me away from the Unfortunate Isles?
Alas, I cannot say.
But, as soon as I had set the woman down within my walls, when I
had it and playfully kissed its fine mane, when I had taken its
head in my hands and looked into its green eyes, eyes that were in
truth the color of fresh tender green lettuce-yes, at that moment,
when the green eyes OF the beautiful beast, eyes moist with an ingenu-
ous animal mistiness, knowing eyes full of an impervious charity, when
its eyes, such as I have never seen, had impregnated me with their
fluid-then I became drunk, and perhaps mad.
What happened?
Nothing I can relate, for I was drunk and perhaps mad.
But from that time on the'beast, having risen on its two hind legs,
and having become similar to what I was, has dominated me and
tamed me.
Now I am the one to graze on salad, fresh, tender green lettuce.
And I know that no snowy sailed ship will ever come to carry me
away from the prison I have made for myself, in the Unfortunate Isles.

Translated by Crispin,
Actual Correspondent
 (1867-1905)
Double Soul
The year of Our Lord 1895, the twenty-second of the Pataphysical
Era, Paul Valkry published Introduction to the Method of Leonard0 da
Vinci; a year later Alfred Jarry staged and published Ubu Roi. Valkry,
aged twen ty-five, and Jarry, aged twen ty-three, dedicated their respec-
tive works-situated at opposite literary poles-to the same person,
Marcel Schwob, aged twenty-nine. In an era of astonishing careers,
Schwob's ~7asone of the richest and most varied. He was born into a
Jewish family of journalists and intellectuals, achieved vast erudition
before he reached twenty in a variety of fields including Villon and
Rabelais studies and English literature, and then plunged into the
world of letters and the theatre. He became a close associate of the
biercure de France in its early symbolist years and held the influential
post of literary editor of the Echo of Paris Illustrated Monthly. After
collaborating with Lugnk-Poe at the Thkitre de L'CEhvre, he produced
two translations for Sarah Bernhardt, including the famous Hamlet
that she played herself en travesti. Schwob was married to the actress,
Marguerite Morkno, and died at the age of thirty-eight.
Schwob's writings are usually assimilated to Symbolism or to the
kind of intellectualized decadence we call fin de sikcle. Yet his best
works display an originality of technique such as one rarely finds in
the prose of the era. In T h e Children's Crusade, he probes the
dimensions of a simple action by relating it from several intersecting
points of view, a narrative device still judged revolutionary when
employed by Faulkner or Lawrence Durrell. Imaginary Lives, a collec-
tion of hypothetical biographies of real figures such as Captain Kidd
and Cyril Tourneur, opens up a promising literary genre half way
between the prose poem and the historical novel. T h e text translated
below on the obsolescence of laughter comments obliquely on the
relationship between 'Pataphysics and the comic, a subject generally
misunderstood.
Valkry and Jarry knew what they were about. Marcel Schwob
nurtured within him the double soul of phre Ubu and Monsieur Teste.

Pascal Pia, Satrap,

GMOOG
111
112 Evergreen Review

Laughter is probably destined to disappear. With so many animal

species extinct, why should a tic peculiar to one of them persist? This
coarse physical proof of our sense of a certain disharmony in the world
will have to go by the board in the face of complete scepticism, abso-
lute knowledge, universal pity and respect for all things.
To laugh is suddenly to find oneself disregarding laws: did we then
really believe in the world-order and a magnificent hierarchy of final
causes? And when all anomalies have been linked up with some cosmic
mechanism, men will laugh no longer. One can only laugh at indi-
viduals. Generalizations do not affect the glottis.
To laugh is to feel superior. When we come to kneeling and making
public confessions at cross-roads and humbling ourselves the better to
love, then we shall have no understanding of the grotesque. And those
who, apart from any grasp of relativity, have made much of the
equivalent value of their own existence and that of any dependent or
solitary cell, will, without the understanding of it all, begin to hold
things and objects in respect. The recognition of the equality of every
individual in the universe will never send peoples lips curving over
their bicuspids.
Then, when this movement has vanished from the human face, this
is perhaps the interpretation that will be placed on it:
This kind of contraction of the zygomatic muscles was peculiar to
man. It was his means of showing at one and the same time his imper-
fect grasp of the system of the world and his conviction that he was
superior to everything else.
From SpiciZdge, Mercure de France, 1890, by permission.
SCHWOR 113
The religion, science and scepticism of the future will contain only
a very small part of our labored thinking on these subjects. Further-
more, it is certain that the contraction of the zygomatic muscles will
have no place in them. And, to those who in the future will fall in
love with the things of the past, I should like to point out the plays
of George Courteline (1860-1929) that in our barbaric age provoked
the greatest amount of laughter, which will by then have disappeared.
I know that men will be astonished by our convulsed mouths and

tear-filled eyes, our shaking shoulders and twitching bellies, just as

we ourselves are astonished by the odd practices of the earliest men;
but I earnestly beg enlightened persons to bear in mind how very
important is any historical docuinent, of whatever kind it may be... .
The biographers of the poet Walt Whitman say that he was never
once seen to laugh in his life. H e was a gentle, cheerful man, and
one who understood all things. Anomalies were not miracles of the
absurd to him. He thought himself superior to no living being.
Philemon, who died laughing on seeing a donkey eating figs, may be
placed at the opposite pole of humanity to the great poet Walt Whit-
man. Observe that all that made Philemon laugh to such excess was
that he was sure he, being a poet, was superior to a donkey; and yet
this donkey, supposedly so different from Philemon, was eating the
same dessert as he. W e possess a portrait of Walt Whitman in which
the old poet, paralysed and grave-faced, is compounding the error of a
butterfly which has lighted on his arm as on a dead tree-trunk.
 3

114 Evergreen Review

T h e tics of humanity are not immutable. Even the gods sometimes
change. W e have already changed our manner of laughing; you must
learn to look with equanimity on the prospect of an age when men
will not laugh at all. Those who then want to shape their own lips
into such a contraction will get a very good idea of this bygone habit
by reading the books of Georges Courteline. And those who wish to
laugh now should make haste to do so. W e are not yet at the stage of
seeking out the pedestal of the Laughter God among ruins. He lives
among us. When our statues have fallen and our customs have been
swept away, when men number the years in some new era, they will
tell each other this simple little legend of him who gave us so much
joy:
He was a charming little divinity of subtle wit and kind heart, who
dwelt in, Montmartre. He wrote with such grace that coarse words,
seeking an indestructible sanctuary, found it in his work.

(Extract) Translated by Ross Chambers,

Proveditor-Propagator in Australia and the
Antipodal Islands, GMOGG
 (1876-1947)
Explorer

The most sedentary poet of the century was its most untiring explorer
of the imagination. Born March 4, 1876 in the center of Les Halles,
the market district of Paris, Lkon-Paul Fargue scarcely ever left the
capital; here he met his numerous friends (les ffpotassons-the
grinds). He died there in 1947, after four years of retirement caused
by para1ysis-years particularly rich in final voyages and discoveries.
An individual with twelve thousand senses, wharves of ideas, colonies
of feeling, and a memory of three million acres (Haute Solitude) could
easily consider the travels and experiences of a tourist vain and
valueless.
In 1894 his first verses appeared in the review Art Littdraire
together with Jarrys Minutes de Sable Mbmoriul. This conjunction
was not accidental-schoolmates at the lycke Henri IV and bound by
strong affection, they had gone off together on scandalously amusing
expeditions on the upper decks of the Paris buses. Later, while Jarrys
Dr. Faustroll was assaulting the great pataphysical islands of time, the
opinionated Fargue, prowling with half-closed eyes, departed day after
day to explore and recreate the lost islands of his past. H e couples a
bent for discovery with a flair for creating a style suited to these
astonishing circumnavigations, with their uncertain, hilarious or decep-
tive endings, to these ambiguous dead-ends cluttered with butterflies
where we observe the pataphysical creation of imaginary memories.
The Ludions (1929), set to music by Erik Satie, whose child-like
counting style matches Fargues taste for mystification, recreate with
frequently invented and distorted words an eerie and vital world,
more immediate than the present. The past disappears-and with it,
once and for all, every type of poetry which concerns itself with the
past.
Fargue was as little inclined to follow a literary school (he quickly
disassociated himself from the surrealist poets, whom he referred to as
false witnesses) as to seek out the public, and it was often necessary
to take his manuscripts away from him. Sous la karnpe (1930), Le
115
116 Evergreen Review
Pieton de Paris (1939) and especially Haute Solitude (1941) stake
out his tireless and solitary prospecting of the imaginary.
At the end of his voyaging, like Jules Vernes polar captain, he
arrives finally at Destiny (Saison e n Astrologie- 1945 and Les Quat
Saisons-1947): in his role as director of the obsequies of the universe
-to the tune of his Danse Mabraque (Haute So2itude)-Fargue
unveils his mystification; everything has been foreseen in the inelucta-
ble, delectable disorder of that grandiose and final voyage. At the cross-
roads of the break-down of twenty centuries of civilizations, Fargue
calmly watches the universal chaos roll by.
H . P. Bouche,
Proveditor-General of Animal and Vegetable Affairs,
Administrator of Quincunxes,
Grand Anallagmatic Deferent OGG

I was lost in a forest of strange protozoae-in a city without props,

that hung like a buzzard over the stampede below. I recognized
everything and recognized nothing. My soul was running on ahead in
zigzags, like a dog happy to be free of his kennel. Grasses and meta-
phors, blue mice, furies and pebbles burned like dribblings of powder.
W e saw fade and disappear in the air, like schools of nautiluses, num-
bers out of our heads, grammatical rules, first names and insults. A
kind of sharp-clawed autumn, sparkling with animal-suns, ripped
everything out of us, laid everything bare. The vacuum-cleaners of
astral Mythology were engulfing both matter and mind. And our eyes
were watching all this-our ears were hearing it all!
-Our eyes, our ears, our sensibilities-bah! the old hexmaphrodite
from the Conservatory kept saying, pestering me-bah! Shells, shards,
peelings-nothing. Spoiled brats diapers, barnacles, spondulae, calyp-
trates, glistening dung-beetles!
Above our heads thundered flotillas of 3s and of 9s; Mary Anns,
Rhones, +s and %s whirled about mixed with Charleses, goddams,
springs and flies, with foot/feet, goose/geese, moose/. . . . .. .
. The ether
From Haute Solit&, copyright @ 1941 by Emile Paul frhe.
FARGUE 117
grew hump-backed, for the stuff of the world was pouring out of its
perfect and imagined form. It was no more the orange or the round
rush stem they once used to teach us in high school, but a stained glass
window of caramels melting into mens guts stuck with toothbrushes
and butterfly wings. Our beards sprouted enormously during those
months of collapse. But to look for a barber, a knife or the top of a
tin can was asking for the height of the ridiculous. My cheeks were
covered with fish scales. And yet, strangely enough, I hadnt the least
desire to scratch. All furious urgings had left us like hunger , .. and
in fact, this is true-neither of us was hungry. Yet, since the devil is
everywhere, even in the heart of the Apocalypse when he is no longer
needed, we kept seeing restaurants! ... No more notaries, no more
glasses, no more matches, no more sickness, no more soap ... but the
restaurants remained, as bizarre in their blinding solitude as fringes of
snow were once, lying in an already green and flowery meadow, in
..
the middle of April. April, I say . thats it! March, April, May, June,
Jamestown, Nashville, Baltimore, Trenton, this is the forest primeval,
the murmuring pines and the Bowery, 27th street, the Washington
Heights uptown local, Adams, Jefferson, Madison Avenue ... he, she,
we, you, add seven, carry two. ... !
Here it is then.
It is better to die like an army of candles. To have known the world,
to have had gold, sight, sperm and sense, and to finish in such stupidi-
ties, is really too much. This is all we have found-
Adultery, cocktails, pimps, Jewish finance, quickie whorehouses,
authors rights, expense-accounts, the rule of three. And these dog-faced
lovers who boast of making miracles!
W e must agree to die, without insolence, without brilliance. But let
us keep our places on the gleaming toboggan-puffing and fatherly as
a suburban locomotive-and let ourselves slide into the ultimate dust
of this sooty factory: If we are enough to constitute another world, and
if we find ourselves toe over tea-kettle in a finer civilization, more lasting
than our own, we may still consider ourselves happy. But this present
one is finished-Everybody out! Closing time! Exits at the back of the
hall!
(Extract) Translated by Paul Schmidt.
 Julien Torma
(1902-1933)
Author by Neglect

The greatest pataphysician of the 20th century, and the purest.

This is Andrk Rousseauxs description of Julien Torma. His strange
drama, Le Bbtrou, has been called the Fuust of the 20th century,
and his collection of notes, Euphorismes, the most important work of
the last fifty years. Yet Torma remains little known-so little known
that several writers have not hesitated to borrow from him.
His work is indeed brief. Four slim volumes: T h e Dark Lamp
(1920), T h e Big Tuft (1925), Euphorismes (1926), Cuts (1926),
published during the authors life, and the uncollected works carefully
published by the Colkge de Pataphysique since 1951.
But this off-hand and apparently neglected literary work, in which
genius reveals itself in its own failure, turns out to be an audacious
and perfectly deliberate enterprise. Torma consciously began his literary
venture where Rimbaud, Lautrkamont and Jarry had left off. It is here
that Torma differs from the surrealists who were his contemporaries
(he stayed wholly aloof from the movement though a close friend of
Robert Desnos and R e d Crevel, both of whom he profoundly influ-
enced). Now, at a distance of thirty years, it is clear to us that the
surrealists, even while they professed not to be artists and men of letters,
were esthetes above all else: and they must not be reproached for
something that their ultimate development has perfectly justified.
Torma who had seen them as consummate men of letters, the sons
of Dada,t was infinitely better able than they to create a work beyond
art and literature. His nature and his tastes played their part in this:
his tendency to mystification, his way of life so unstable as to be still
partially unknown, his incredible negligence. His attitude of detach-
ment from his poems and other writings was free of all affectation: and
we owe our knowledge of the part of his work that has survived to
the miracle of Jean Montmorts friendship for him. His life and atti-
* Sartre found the subject of N o Exit in Euphorismes.
t The French reads fils A Dada, a play on the expression fils A papa, i.e.,
young men whose fathers assure their material prosperity. [Translators note.]
118
TORMA 119
tude toward his own creation is not less significant than the creation
itself. These poems-without descending to the facile ornamentation of
automatic writing-definitively galvanize language, and his theatre,
with naivete and a formidable ingenuity, reverses the sets and reveals
the machinery: thats all there is, on stage and in life. Psychology is
turned inside out like a glove.
L.Barnier,
Proveditor-Inquisitor General,
Administrator of Aberrances,
Hereditary Stator OGG

The Experiment of the Musical Jet

 120 Evergreen Review i .1

Lille fj

October 20, 1929 ,

M y dear DaumaL,* Y

Dont make excuses for having sent me the number of Bifur. B i f w

is Bifur, and you can write on the walls if you feel like it. If you
hadnt sent it, I wouldnt have read your essay-and learned that
Pataphysics can be married to mysticism. That still interests me. Out
of all the readings that chance has tossed in my way-and that good
old divinity has always humored me-the scraps of Jarry that Ive read
have annoyed me the least. I see through them. There are people who
see through H. Bordeaux or Gide. Do we blame them? As for me, I
see better through Sengle or Emmanuel Dieu. A question of taste and
ambition. Its this in fact which makes some books still possible, for I
havent sunk-despite your past protests-to gardening or to gnosticism.
And Im glad that you see through the same bodies of smoke.
But Im dragging my heels again.
You probably suspect that I dont much appreciate being slapped
with the absolute, believing in no other absolute than that of the slap. i
Isnt this the one and only? Your article annoys me, because everything
in it is true. But the tone is missing. Precisely, the word true means
nothing here and is a patsy for a pataphysical pat. Youre right to
speak of chaos. But its obvious that you believe in it like a kind of
God. In spite of all your finesse, dear R e d , youre on a pilgrims
progress. Let me be malicious. Youre playing with the absolute.
Your Pataphysics laughs too much. And with a laugh much too
comic and cosmic. Putting metaphysics behind Pataphysics is like
making a belief into a mere facade. When in fact the real nature of

Pat. is to be a facade which is only a facade, with nothing behind it.

I cant see Dr. Faustroll laughing. I dont have a copy of the book
at the moment. But I know what Im saying-eh?-you write, Faustroll
sneers. Youre frightfully out of date. Weve passed Mephisto. And
evil and a bad conscience, and conscience itself. If Faustroll played at
being Mephistophelean it could only be for the pataphysic hell of it.
* Daumal had just published an important article in the review Bifur (July
1929) on Pataphysics and the Revelation of Laughter and sent it to Torma
with a cordial letter, since published by Gallimard in Correspondence of Rend
Duumal. Tormas reply is dated three years after his last published work.
TORMA 121
Because Mephistopheleanism is still part of their cookery, as we say.
Faustroll is imperturbable. Or not even. He seems natural and isnt
natural. Because nature is only a gag neither more nor less interesting
than any other. He doesnt choose. He makes no distinction, he has no
preferences. H e navigates upside down. But even his navigation
doesnt exist. These characters and their adventures arent real. You
can see this in the death and resurrection of Bosse-de-Nage. Still, they
arent imaginary like the heroes of novels and fantastic tales. For in the
case of these characters we suppose, at least temporarily and extrava-
gant as the hypothesis may seem, that they could without too much
unlikelihood exist. So I see what youre driving at when you say that
all defined existence is a scandal. With the One and Co. But why not
say-that undefined existence is a scandal, even though the word scan-
dal is unnecessary, Faustroll says: I am God, and he certainly has as
much right to say it as God himself. But its going a bit far-or not far
enough-to take him seriously.
Writing nothing-holy or impious-No time. Doing nothing, vague
jobs-and vagueness in the jobs. Itll last while it lasts ... probably
until the hour of our death. Amen-Dont consider that an allusion.
Yours, with the customary reservations.
J. Torma

R.D. did the other one tell you that I almost spoke badly of you six
months ago? He wrote me that he has broken with the brain-washers.

Translated by Neal Oxenhandler.

Robert Desnos, leading surrealist poet, had severed relations with Andrt
Breton. [Editors note.]
 Ren6 Daurnal (1908-1944)
ExperimentaZ Mystic

Poet, novelist, philosopher, Sanscrit scholar and specialist in Hindu-

ism, could Ren6 Daumal have been a pataphysician to boot? One
wonders. His translations include three volumes of Suzukis writings
on Zen Buddhism, Hemingways Death in the Afternoon, and a collec-
tion of the earliest dramatic texts in Sanscrit. W e are dealing, naturally,
with a multiple personality that will not be easily pinned down: a
grave and fantastical spirit, mystical and mysterious, an authentic
magician who also dealt in jokes and games. One could almost believe
he took pains in advance to evade the methods and classifications of
pedantic critics.
Since Pataphysics is pure limitlessness, however, no one is diminished
by being called a pataphysician. Daumal so recognized and proclaimed
himself. In T h e Great Carouse he introduces Jarry into the action con-
versing with Rabelais and Lkon-Paul Fargue; and in the Thirties he
edited and contributed to a regular feature of the NouveZZe Revue
Franpise entitled Pataphysics this month.
Daumal practiced a kind of experimental mysticism all his own-
6.
just to see. Principally, he risked a series of semi-suicides by
controlled inhalation of carbon-tetrachloride in order to test the fron-
tiers of life. I had entered another life far more intense than this one,
a burning coal of reality and sheer evidence into which I had hurled
myself as a butterfly into a candle flame. Daumal affirmed the vision
of the Absurd as the purest and most elementary form of metaphysical
experience. Its cruel testimony sheds light on all experience, and thus
it becomes a significant moment in the discovery of the world. I readily
call this moment of knowledge Pataphysics because I recognize the
same attitude in Jarrys book, Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll,
Pataphysician.
It is understandable that a pataphysician like Julien Torma should
have reproached Daumal for thinking Pataphysics can be married to
mysticism. . . . Youre right to speak of chaos. But its obvious you
believe in it like a kind of God. (See p. 120) Those, however, are
merely differences between pataphysicians.
122
DAUMAL 123
One can form ones own opinion of Daumal as magician and pata-
physician from the story which follows, written shortly after The Great
Carouse in 1936 or 1937, and a few years earlier than Mount Analogue,
A Novel of Symbolically Authentic, Non-Euclidean Adventures in
Mountain Climbing. (The latter, recently published in London, will
appear this spring in New York.) A good half-dozen symbolic interpreta-
tions of the story come to mind, none of them necessary for so limpid
a text. And furthermore, there is no reason why any of these explana-
tions should be the right one, nor that there should be a right one at
all. That, of course, is in the nature of Pataphysics.
Luc E tienne,
Regent of Spoonerism (Contrepet),
Superintendent of Versification,
Holorhymes, Palindromes and
Jingles,DSOGG

There was once a powerful magician who lived in a garret in the

Rue Bouffetard. He lived there in the guise of a little old clerk, tidy
and punctual, and worked in a branch of the Araganais Bank on the
Avenue des Gibelins. With the wave of a magic toothpick he could
have transmuted all the tiles of the roof into bars of gold. But that
would have been immoral, for he believed that work ennobles man.
And-to some extent-even woman, he would add.
When his Aunt Ursula, an old shrew who had just been ruined by
the collapse of Serbian-Bulgarian stocks, came to live with him and
demanded that he take care of her, he could have transformed her at
will into a pretty young princess, or into a swan harnessed to his magic
chariot, or into a soft boiled egg, or into a ladybug, or into a bus. But
that would have broken with good family tradition, the backbone of
society and morality. So he slept on a straw mat and would get up at
six oclock to buy Aunt Ursula her rolls and prepare her coffee; after
which, he listened patiently to the daily broadside of complaints: that
the coffee tasted of soap, that there was a cockroach baked into one of
the rolls, that he was an unworthy nephew and would be disinherited.
Disinherited of what? you might well wonder. But he let her talk
on, knowing that if he wanted to . .. But Aunt Ursula must never
124 Evergreen Review
suspect that he was a powerful magician. That might give birth to
thoughts of lucre and close the gates of Paradise to her forever.
After that, the great magician would go down his six flights, some-
times almost breaking his neck on the murderously slippery stairs.
However, he would pick himself up with a faint smile, thinking that
if he wished he could change himself into a swallow and take wing
through the skylight. But the neighbors might see, and so wondrous
a feat would shake the very foundation of their naive but wholesome
faith.
When he reached the street, he would brush the dust off his alpaca
jacket at the same time taking care not to pronounce those words
which would have instantly turned it into a brocade vestment. Such an
act would have planted a sinister doubt in the hearts of the people
passing and shaken their innocent belief in the immutability of the
laws of nature.
He had his breakfast at the counter in a cafk, taking only some
ersatz coffee and a bit of stale bread. Ah, if he wanted to . .. but in
order to stop himself from making use of his supernatural powers, he
would swallow five cognacs in rapid succession. The alcohol, dulling
the edge of his magic powers, brought him round to a salutary humility
and to the feeling that all men, including himself, were brothers. If
the cashier repulsed him when he tried to kiss her, pretending it was
because of his dirty beard, he would tell himself that she had no heart
and understood nothing of the spirit of the gospels. At a quarter of
eight, he was in his office, his sleeve-protectors on, a pen behind his
ear, and a newspaper spread before him. With only a slight effort of
concentration he could have known straight off the present, past, and
future of the entire world, but he restrained himself from using this
gift. He made himself read the paper so as not to lose touch with the
common language; it allowed him to communicate over an apdritif
with his equals-in appearance-and guide them in the right direction.
At eight oclock, the paper scratching began, and if he made a mistake
now and then, it was in order to justify the reprimands of his superiors,
who otherwise would be guilty of the serious sin of having made a
false accusation. And so, all day long the great magician, in the guise
of an average employee, carried on his task as humanitys guide.
Poor Aunt Ursula! Whenever he returned at noon having forgotten
to buy some parsley, that dear lady, instead of cracking the basin over
DAUMAL 125
his head, would certainly have behaved differently had she known
who her nephew really was. But then she would never have had the
opportunity of discovering to what extent anger is a momentary mad-
ness.
..
If he had wanted to! . Instead of dying in a hospital of an un-
known disease in barely christian fashion, leaving no more trace on
earth than a moth-eaten coat in the wardrobe, an old toothbrush, and
mocking memories in the ungrateful hearts of his colleagues, he could
have been a pasha, an alchemist, a wizard, a nightingale, or a cedar
of Lebanon. But that would have been contrary to the secret designs
of Providence. No one made a speech over his grave. No one suspected
who he was. And who knows-perhaps not even he himself.
Still, he was a most powerful magician.

Translated by Charles Warner,

Emphyteutic Correspondent.
126 Evergreen Review

An Idiomatic Tale*
There was not a soul in the streets. Business Ivas at a complete
standstill. "No song, no supper" I muttered. It was raining cats and
dogs; and, thinking that it never rains but it pours, I have put by For
a rainy day. It was also pitch dark. Everything was going to rack and
ruin. I was not in a laughing mood. A person came across my way, a
man who shall be nameless. "He is the right man in the right place,"
I thought, "he is a man about town. H e is rolling in wealth, he will
surely raise my moral standard."
H e was crawling along at a snail's pace. H e was in a brown study.
( T h e plot thickens!) You could have heard a pin drop. I said to myself,
"Strike while the iron is hot."
But he smelt a rat. H e could see I was bent on mischicf. H e came
OF his own accord-he was, you know, a mere apology for a man-
he was stark naked!

* Written directly in English by Daumal when he was learning the language.

Alfred Jarry

Phoro by rhc CollPgc

 Exploits and Opinions
of Doctor Faustroll,
Pataphysician
-- -- - (EXTBACTS)

Bonnard
XVII
T H E FRAGRANT ISLE*
To Paul Gauguin.

The Fragrant isle is completely sensitive, and fortified by madrepores

which retracted themselves, as we landed, into their coral-red casemates.
The skiff's mooring-line was fastened around a great tree which swayed
in the wind like a parrot rocking itself in the sunshine.
The king of the island was naked in a boat, his loins girded with
his white and blue diadem. He was clad, too, in sky and greenery like
a Caesar's chariot race, and as red-headed as if he were on a pedestal.
We drank to his health in liquors distilled in vegetable hemispheres.
His function is to preserve for his people the image of their Gods.
He was fixing one of these images to the mast of his boat with three
nails, and it was like a triangular sail, or the equilateral gold of a dried
fish brought back from the septentrion. And over the doorway of his
wives' dwelling-place he has captured the ecstasies and contorsions of
love in a divine cement. Standing apart from the interlacing of young
breasts and rumps, sibyls record the formula of happiness, which is
double: Be amorous, and Be mysterious.
From Gestes et Opinions du docteur Faustroll, Pataphysicien, Fasquelle, 191 1 , by
permission.
* See notes which follow this text.
JARRY 129
He possesses also a zither with seven strings of seven colors, the
eternal colors; and, in his palace, a lamp nourished from the fragrant
wellsprings of the earth. When the king sings, moving along the shore
as he plays his zither, or when he prunes with an axe, from images of
living wood, the young shoots which would disfigure the likeness of
the Gods, his wives burrow into the hollow of their beds, the weight
of fear heavy upon their loins from the vigilant gaze of the Spirit of
the Dead, and from the perfumed porcelain of the great lamp's eye.
As the skiff cast off from the reefs, we saw the king's wives chasing
from the island a little legless cripple sprouting green seaweed like a
wizened crqb; on his dwarfish trunk a fair ground wrestler's tunic aped
the king's nakedness. H e pushed himself forward jerkily with his
cestuscovered fists, and with a rumbling from the casters under his
base attempted to pursue and clamber aboard the platform of the
Omnibus de Corinthe, which was just crossing our route; but such a
leap is not within everyone's power. And he fell miserably short,
cracking his posterior lavatory pan with a fissure less obscene than
ludicrous.

XIX
T H E ISLE OF P T Y X
T o Stdphane Mallamd.

T h e isle of Ptyx is fashioned from a single

- block of the stone of this
name, a priceless stone found only in this island, which is entirely
composed of it. It has the serene translucency of white sapphire, and
is the only precious stone which is not ice cold to the touch, for its
fire enters and spreads itself like wine after drinking. Other stones are
as cold as the cry of trumpets; this has the ~ r e c i ~ i t a t eheat
d of the
surface of kettledrums. It was easy for us to land there, since it was
cut in table form, and we had the sensation of setting foot on a sun
purged of the opaque or too dazzling aspects of its flame; as with the
130 Evergreen Review
torches of olden times. One no longer noticed the accidents of things
but only the substance of the universe, which is why we did not care
whether the flawless surface was a liquid equilibrated according to
eternal laws, or a diamond, impervious except under a light falling
directly from above.
T h e lord of the island came towards us in a ship: the funnel puffed
out blue haloes behind his head, magnifying the smoke from his pipe
and imprinting it on the sky. And as the ship pitched and tossed, his
rocking chair jerked out his welcoming gestures.
From beneath his travelling rug he drew four eggs with painted
shells, which he handed over to doctor Faustroll after first taking a
drink. In the flame of the punch we were drinking, the hatching of
the oval embryos broke out over the island's shore: two distant
columns, the isolation of two prismatic trinities of Pan pipes, splayed
out in the spurt of their cornices the quaddigitate hand shake of the
sonnet's quatrains; and our skiff rocked its hammock in the newborn
reflection of the triumphal arch. Dispersing the haily curiosity of the
fauns and the rosy bloom of the nymphs aroused from their reverie
by this mellifluous creation, the ale motor vessel withdrew its blue
breath towards the island's horizon, with its jerking chair waving
goodbye.*

* Since the writing of this book, the river around the island has turned into a
funeral wreath. [Author's note.]
 VIII
Definition
An epiphenomenon is that which is superinduced upon a phenom-
enon.
'Pataphysics, whose etymological spelling should be Z T ~ rti
@varrtd) and actual orthography 'pataphysics, preceded by an apostrophe
so as to avoid a simple pun, is the science of that which is superin-
duced upon metaphysics, whether within or beyond the latter's limita-
tions, extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter extends beyond
physics. Ex: an epiphenomenon being often accidental, 'Pataphysics
will be, above all, the science of the particular, despite the common
opinion that the only science is that of the general. 'Pataphysics will
examine the laws which govern exceptions, and will explain the uni-
verse supplementary to this one; or, less arn6itiously, will describe a
universe which can be-and perhaps should be-envisaged in the place
of the traditional one, since the laws which are supposed to have been
discovered in the traditional universe are also correlations of exceptions,
albeit more frequent ones, but in any case accidental data which,
reduced to the status of unexceptional exceptions, possess no longer
even the virtue of originality.

DEFINITION.-'Pataphysics i s the science of imaginary sobtions,

which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by
their virtuality, to their lineaments.
Contemporary science is founded upon the principle of induction:
most people have seen a certain phenomenon precede or follow some
other phenomenon most often, and conclude therefrom that it will
ever be thus. Apart from other considerations, this is true only in the
132 Evergreen Review
majority of cases, depends upon the point of view, and is codified only
for convenience-if that! Instead of formulating the law of the fall of
a body towards a center, how far more apposite would be the law of
the ascension of a vacuum towards a periphery, a vacuum being con-
sidered as a unit of non-density, a hypothesis far less arbitrary than
the choice of a concrete unit of positive density such as water?
For even this body is a postulate and an average man's point of
view, and in order that its qualities, if not its nature, should remain
fairly constant, it would be necessary to postulate that the height of
human beings should remain more or less constant and mutually
equivalent. Universal assent is already a quite miraculous and incom-
prehensible prejudice. Why should anyone claim that the shape of a
watch is round-a manifestly false proposition-since it appears in
profile as a narrow rectangular construction, elliptic on three sides;
and why the devil should one only have noticed its shape at tKe
moment of looking at the time?-Perhaps under the pretext of utility.
But a child who draws a watch as a circle will also draw a house as a
square, as a facade, without any justification, of course; because, except
perhaps in the country, he will rarely see an isolated building, and
even in a street the facades have the appearance of very oblique trape-
zoids.
W e must, in fact, inevitably admit that the common herd (including
small children and women) is too dim witted to comprehend elliptic
equations, and that its members are at one in a so-called universal
assent because they are capable of perceiving only those curves having
a single focal point, since it is easier to coincide with one point rather
than with two. These people communicate and achieve equilibrium
by the outer edge of their bellies, tangentially. But even the common
herd has learnt that the real. universe is composed of ellipses, and the
bourgeois even keep their wine in barrels rather than cylinders.
So that we may not abandon, through digression, our usual example
of water, let us reflect, in this connection, upon the irreverence of the
common herd whose instinct sums up the adepts of the science of
'Pataphysics in the following phrase:
 IX
Faustroll Smaller Than Faustroll
To William Crookes.

"Other madmen cried ceaselessly that the

figure one was at the same time bigger
and smaller than itself, and proclaimed a
number of similar absurdities, as if they
were useful discoveries."
The Talisman of Oramane.

Doctor Faustroll (if one may be permitted to speak from personal

experience) desired one day to be smaller than himself, and resolved
to explore one of the elements, in order to examine any disturbances
which this change in size might involve in their mutual relationship.
For this purpose he chose that substance which is normally liquid,
colorless, incompressible and horizontal in small quantities; having a
curved surface, blue in depth and with edges that tend to ebb and
flow when it is stretched; which Aristotle terms heavy, like earth; the
enemy of fire and renascent Erom it when decomposed explosively;
which vaporizes at a hundred degrees, a temperature determined by
this fact, and in a solid state floats upon itself-water, of course! And
having shrunk to the classic size of a mite, as a paradigm of smallness,
he travelled along the length of a cabbage leaf, paying no attention to
his fellow mites or to the magnified aspect of his surroundings, until
he encountered the Water.
This was a globe, twice his size, through whose transparency the
outlines of the universe appeared to him gigantically enlarged, whilst
his own image, reflected dimly by the leaves' foil, was magnified to
his original size. He gave the orb a light tap, as if knocking on a door:
the deracinated eye of malleable glass "adapted itself" like a living eye,
became presbyopic, lengthened itself along its horizontal diameter into
an ovoid myopia, repulsed Faustroll by means of this elastic inertia
and became spherical once more.
The doctor, taking small steps, rolled the crystal globe, with some
considerable difficulty, towards a neighbouring globe, slipping on the
rails of the cabbage leaf's veins; coming together, the two spheres
134 Evergreen Review
sucked each other in, tapering in the process, until suddenly a new
globe of twice the size rocked placidly in front of Faustroll.
With the tip of his boot the doctor kicked out at this unexpected
development of the elements: an explosion, formidable in its fragmen-
tation and noise, rang out following the projection all around of new
and minute spheres, dry and hard as diamonds, which rolled to and
fro all along the green arena, each one drawing along beneath it the
image of the tangential point of the universe, distorting it according
to the sphere's projection and magnifying its fabulous centre.
Beneath everything, the chlorophyll, like a shoal of green fishes,
followed its charted currents in the cabbage's subterranean canals . . .

XLI
The Surface of God
God is, by definition, without dimension, but we must be permitted,
for the clarity of our thesis, to propound on his behalf a certain number
of dimensions, greater than zero, despite the fact that he possesses none,
if these dimensions cancel each other out on either side of our equa-
tions. W e shall content ourselves with two dimensions, so that these
flat geometrical signs may be easily written down on a sheet of paper.
Symbolically God is signified by a triangle, but the three Persons
should not be regarded as being either its angles or its sides. They are
the three' apexes of another equilateral triangle circumscribed around
the traditional one. This hypothesis conforms to the revelations of
Anne-Catherine Emmerich, who saw the cross (which we may consider
to be the symbol of the Verb of God) in the form of a Y, a fact which
she explains only by the physical reason that no arm of human length
could be outstretched far enough to reach the nails of the branches
of a Tau.
Therefore, POSTULATE :
Until we are furnished with more ample information and for greater
ease in our provisional estimates, let us suppose God to have the shape
and symbolic appearance of three equal straight lines of length a,
emanating from the same point and having between them angles of
120 degrees. From the space enclosed between these lines, or from
JARRY 135
the triangle obtained by joining the three furthest points of these
straight lines, we propose to calculate the surface.
Let x be the median extension of one of the Persons a, 2y the side
of the triangle to which it is N and P the extensions of
the straight line ( a +
x ) in both directions ad infiniturn.

Thus we have:
x=a-N-a-P.
But
N=m-0
and

Therefore

In another respect, the right triangle whose sides are a, x and y give
US
a2 = x2 + y2,
By substituting for x its value of ( - a ) one arrives at
a = (-a)s + y2 = a" y2.
Whence
Y2 = a2 - a2 = 0
and
y = fl.
Therefore the surface of the equilateral triangle having for bisectors
of its angles the three straight lines a will be

COROLLARY.-At first consideration of the radical 0, we can affirm

that the surface calculated is one line at the most; in the second lace,
if we construct the figure according to the values obtained for x and y,
we can determine:
136
now know to be
on one of the straight
ines a in the opposite di-
rechon to that of our first
hypothesis, since x = -a; also,
that the base of our triangle coin-
cides with its apex;
That the two straight lines a
make, together with the first one,
angles at least smaller than 60,
and what is more can only attain
2 VI3 by coinciding with the first

Which conforms to the dogma

of the equivalence of the three
persons between themselves and

W e can say that a is a straight

line connecting 0 and a,
and can define God thus:
DEFINITION.-God is the
shortest distance between

In which direction? one

-We shall reply that

His first name is not
Jack, but Plus-and-
Minus. And one

* God is the short-

est distance be-

in either direction.
 Which conforms to the belief in the two principles; but it is more
correct to attribute the sign +
to that of the subject's faith.
But God being without dimension is not a line.
-Let us note, in fact, that, according to the formula

the length a is nil, so that a is not a line but a point.

Therefore, definitively:
GOD IS THE TANGENTIAL P O I N T BETWEEN ZERO AND
INFINITY.
Pataphysics is the science . . .

Notes
Chapter XVII:
Paul Gauguin: Jarry and Gauguin were together at Pont-Aven in 1894, and
probably knew each other previously, since both were contributors to the review
Essais d'Art Libre (1892-4), edited first by Remy de Gourmont, subsequently by
Lbn-Paul Fargue and Jarry.
The unfortunate Pierre Loti makes his &st (anonymous) appearance in
Faustroll at the end of this chapter, a s the legless cripple ("cul de jatte"). The
Omnibus de Corinthe on which he fails to get a footing was a short-lived quar-
terly satirical review, edited by Marc Mouclier, describing itself as an "illustrated
vehicle of general ideas," the title of which was doubtless derived from the Latin
proverb, Non licet omnibus adire Corinthum.

Chapter X I X :
The title of this chapter is inspired by Mallarmt's sonnet based on the ending
-yx. In a letter, addressed to LefCbure and Casalis, MallarmC writes: ". . . I only
have three rhymes in ix, do your best to send me the real meaning of the word
ptyx: I am assured that it does not exist in any language, which I would far
prefer so that I may have the pleasure of creating it through the magic of rhyme."
To answer MallarmC's query: the word is, in this nominative singular form,
unknown in ancient Greek, but is found often in its conjugation, ptykos, ptyki,
etc. In the nominative, the alternative gtykhi was used (from which we derive
"triptych"), the sense being a fold or thickness.
Jarry's footnote refers to Mallarmk's death in 1898. He attended the latter's
funeral, and wrote a homage Le Grand Pan est Mort1 in the Almanach du
&e U b u Illustrd (January 1899).
138 Evergreen Review
Chapter VIII:
Para. 2: "so as to avoid a simple pun." A simple pun in French, e.g. 'patte h
physique.'
Chapter IX:
Sir William Crookes, F.R.S.: his presidential address to the Society for Psychi-
cal Research in London on January 29th, 1897, is largely responsible for the
theme and some of the phraseology of this chapter. The Address was translated
into French and printed in the Revue Scientifique, Paris, May, 1897.
Chapter XLI:
Anne-Catherine Emmerich: an unlettered mystical fantasist, who produced
some highly imaginative revelations of the life of Christ (e.g. La Douloureuse
Passion) under the influence of divine inspiration.
The final sentence: "Pataphysics is the science . . ."In the original, "La pata-
physique est la science .. ." The French may be translated with important dif-
ferences in nuance; either as the beginning of a deliberately unfinished sentence
.
("Pataphysics is the science . .") or, if one takes it to be a complete sentence,
it might equally well read "Pataphysics is science . . ."Let this remain, textualIy,
the final pataphysical mystery.
In the original MS of Faustroll, the last words of the book are followed by the
word END in the center of the page, and, underneath this, Jarry's remark: "This
book will not be published integrally until the author has acquired sufficient
experience to savour all its beauties in full."
Taken from the complete translation by
Simon Watson Taylor,
Proveditor-Delegatory, Regent
(by Transseant Susception) of the Chair
of Faustrollian Brittanicity and of
Applied Hypselic Alcoholism, GMOGG
 (UBU CUCKOLDED)
from a version by CYRIL CONNOLLY

ACT I
Scene: Salon in the home of Professor Achras.
ACHRAS: Oh but it's like this, look you, I've no reason to be discontented
with my polyhedra; they bear their young every six weeks, it's
worse than rabbits. And it's also quite true to say that the regular
polyhedra are the most faithful and devoted to their master, except
that this morning the Icosahedron was a little fractious, so that I
was compelled, look you, to give it a slap on each one of its faces.
And that's the sort of language they understand. And my thesis,
look you, on the habits of polyhedra-it's getting along nicely,
thanks, only another twenty-five volumes!
(Enter flunkey.)
FLUNKEY: Sir, there's a fellow out there who wants to have a word
with you. He's pulled the bell off with ringing, he's broken three
chairs trying to sit down.
( H e gives Achras a card.)
ACHRAS: What's all this? Monsieur Ubu, sometime King of Poland
and Aragon, Professor of 'Pataphysics? That makes no sense at all.
What's all that about? 'Pataphysics! Well, never mind, he sounds
a person of distinction. I should like to make a gesture of good
will to this visitor by showing him my polyhedra. Have the gentle-
man come up.
(Enter Poppa Ubu in travelling costume, with a suitcase.)
UBU: Hornstrumpot, Sir! What a miserable kind of hangimt you've
got here, we have been obliged to ring the bell for more than an
hour, and when, finally, your servants made up their minds to let
us in, we were presented only with an orifice so minute that we
still don't understand how our strumpot was able to navigate it.
140 Evergreen Review
ACHRAS: Oh, but it's like this, excuse me. I wasn't at all expecting the
visit of such a considerable personage . . . otherwise, you can be
sure I would have had the door enlarged. But you must forgive
the absent-mindedness of an old collector, who is at the same time,
1 venture to say, a great savant.
u s u : Say that by all means if it gives you any pleasure, but remember
that you are conversing with a famous pataphysician.
ACHRAS: Excuse me, Sir, you said?
u s u : Pataphysician. 'Pataphysics is a branch of science which we have
invented and for which a crying need is generally experienced.
ACHF~AS: Oh, but it's like this, if you're a famous inventor, we'll under-
stand each other, look you, for between great men . . .
u e u : A little more modesty, Sir! Besides, I see no great man here ex-
cept myself. But, since you insist, I have condescended to do you
a most signal honour. Let it be known to you, Sir, that your house
is convenient for us and that we have decided to make ourselves
at home here.
ACHRAS: Oh, but it's like this, look you . . .
u s u : W e will dispense with your expressions of gratitude. Ah, by the
way, I nearly forgot. Since it is scarcely right that a father should
be separated from his children, we shall be joined in the immediate
future by our family-Madame Ubu, and by our dear sons and
daughters Ubu. They are very quiet, decent, well-brought-up folk.
ACHRAS: Oh, but it's like this you see. I'm afraid of . ..
u s u : W e quite understand. You're afraid of boring us. All right then,
we'll no longer tolerate your presence except by our kind permis-
sion. One thing more, while we are inspecting your kitchens, and
your dining-room, you will go and look for our three packing-
cases of luggage which we have deposited in the hall.
ACHRAS: Oh, but it's like this-that's not a good idea at all to install
yourself like that with people. It's a manifest imposture.
usu: A magnificent posture! Exactly, Sir, for once in your life you've
spoken the truth.
(Exit Achras.)
usu: Are we right to behave like this? Hornstrumpot, by our Green
Candle, let us consult our conscience. There it is, in this suitcase,
all covered with cobwebs, It is obvious that it's of no earthly use.
JARRY 141
(He opens the suitcase. Enter Conscience as a big fellow in a
nightshirt.)
C O N S C I E N C E : Sir, and so forth, be so good as to take a few notes.
u s u : Excuse me Sir, we have no fondness for writing, though we have
no doubt that anything you have to say would be most interesting.
And while we're on the subject, I should like to know why you
have the cheek to appear before us in your shirt?
C O N S C I E N C E : Sir and so forth, Conscience, like Truth, usually goes
without a shirt. If I have donned one, it is out of respect for the
distinguished audience.
u s u : As for that, Mr. or Mrs. Conscience, you're kicking up a great
fuss about nothing. Answer this question rather. Should I do well
to kill Mr. Achras who has had the audacity to come and insult
me in my own house?
CONSCIENCE: Sir and so forth, to return good with evil is unworthy of
a civilized man. Mr. Achras has lodged you, Mr. Achras has re-
ceived you with open arms, and made you free of his collection
of polyhedra, Mr. Achras, and so forth, is a very fine fellow, quite
harmless; it would be cowardly and so forth, to kill a poor old
man incapable of defending himself.
u s u : Hornstrumpot, my good conscience, are you quite sure he can't
defend himself?
C O N S C I E N C E : Absolutely, Sir, so it would be a coward's trick to make
away with him.
u s u : Thank you, Sir, we shan't need you any more. Since there's no
risk attached, we shall assassinate Mr. Achras, and we shall also
make a point of consulting you more frequently, for you know
how to give us better advice than we had anticipated. Now, into
the suitcase with you!
(He closes it again.)
C O N S C I E N C E : In which case, Sir, I think we can leave it at that and
so forth, for to-day.
(Enter Achras, backwards, prostrating himself with tmor before
the three red packing-cases pushed by the flunkey.)
u ~ (to u flunkey): Off with you, sloven-and you, Sir, I want a word
with you. I wish you every kind of prosperity and I beg you, out
of your great kindness, to perform a friendly service for me.
Mother Ubu by J a n Mir6, Satrau
JARRY 143
ACHRAS: Anything, look you, which you can demand from an old
professor who has consecrated sixty years of his life, look you, to
studying the habits of polyhedra.
u s u : Sir, we have learnt that our virtuous wife, Madame Ubu, is most
abominably deceiving us with an Egyptian yclept Memnon, who
performs the triple functions of a clock at dawn, at night a barrel
scavenger, and in the daytime becomes the comutator of our person.
Homstrumpot, we have decided to wreak on him the most terrible
vengeance!
ACHRAS: AS Far as that goes, look you, Sir, as to being a cuckold I can
sympathize with you.
u s u : W; have resolved then to inflict a severe punishment. And we
can think OF nothing more appropriate in this case, to chastise the
guilty, than the torture of Impaling.
ACHRAS: Excuse me, I still don't see very clearly, look you, how I can
be of any use.
usu: By our Green Candle, Sir, since we have no wish for our scheme
of justice to go astray, we should be delighted that a person of
your standing should make a preliminary trial of the Stake, to
discover how it performs its function.
ACHRAS: Oh, but it's like this, look you, not on your life-that's too
much. I regret, look you, that I can't this little service for
you, but it just doesn't make sense at all. You've stolen my house
from me, look you. You've told me to bugger off and now you
want to put me to death, oh no, that's going too far.
u s u : Don't distress yourself, my good friend. It was just our little
joke. W e shall return when you have quite recovered your com-
posure.
(Exit.)
( T h e Three Palcontents come out of the chests.)
(Song)
THE THREE P'S: W e are the Palcontents
W e are the Palcontents
With a face like a rabbit
Which seldom prevents
Our bloody good habit
of croaking the bloke wot lives on his rents.
144 Evergreen Review
W e are the Pals
W e are the Cons
W e are the Palcontents.
CRAPENTAKE: In a great box of stainless steel
Imprisoned all the week we feel
That Sunday is the only day
When we're allowed our getaway.
Ears to the wind, without surprise
W e march along with vigorous step
And all the passers-by cry "Hep"
Those must be bloody poor G.I.'s.
THE THREE: W e are the Palcontents, etc.
BINANJIITERS: Every morning we get called
With the Master's boot on our behind
And half-awake our backs are galled
By the bleeding kit we have to mind
Then all day long with hammer greasy
W e bash your skulls in good and easy
Till we restore to Pa UbC
The dough from the stiffs we've croaked this day.
THE THREE: W e are the Palcontents, etc.
(They dance. Achras terrified sits down on a chair.)
FOURZEARS: In our ridiculous loonyforms
W e wander through the streets so pansy
Till we can plug the bockle-an-jug
Of any guy whom we don't fancy.
W e get our eats through platinum teats
W e pee through a tap without a handle
And we inhale the atmostale
Through
- a tube as bent as a Dutchman's candle.
THE THREE: W e are the Palcontents, etc.
(They dunce round Achras.)
ACHRAS: 0 but it's like this, look you, it's ridiculous, it doesn't make
sense at all.
(The stake rises under his chair.)
Oh, dear, I don't understand it, if you were cnly my polyhedra,
oh dear, look you, have mercy on a poor old professor. Look-look
you-There's no sense in it, you see.
 /

JARRY 145
( H e is impaled and raised i n the air despite his cries. It grows
pitch dark).
THE PALCONTENTS: (ransacking the furniture and pulling out money
bags from i t ) Give the finances to Pa Ubu. Give all the finances-
to Pa Ubu-let nothing remain, not one sou, to go down the drain
for the Revenue. Give all the finance to Pa Ubu!
(Going back into their chests.)
W e are the Pals, we are the Cons, we are the Palcontents.
(Achras loses crmsciousness.)

(Achras [impaled], Pa U b u , Ma Ubu.)

usu: By my Green Candle, my sweet child, how happy we shall be
in this house!
aras.usu: There is only one thing lacking to my happiness, my friend,
and that is to meet the worthy host who has placed such entertain-
ment within our grasp.
m u : Don't let that upset you, my dear, to forestall your every wish I
have had him set u p here in the place of honour!
(He points to the stake. Screams and hysterics from Madame Ubu.)

&k&-
Reaenl of Applied Compamllve Ahoclties. Confanonlet OGG
 Evergreen Rev&
Q a mart With %ha A x e
After and for P. Gauguin.

On the horizon, with sea-mists blown,

vague hazards roar and moan;
waves, our demons we array
where troughs of mountains shift and sway.

Where we sweep into a bay

a giant towers above the clay.
W e crawl beneath him, lizards, prone.
Whilst, like a Caesar on his throne

or on a marble column, he
carves a boat out of a tree,
astride in it will give us chase

to where the leagues' green limits lie.

From shore his copper a m in space
upraise the blue axe to the sky.
1894.
Translated by Simon Watson Taylor.

Across the heath, the monolith's pubic arch,

The prowling deaf-mute looking for a tip
In the gashed meadow and the martyrs' bones
Gropes with his lantern hanging from a rope.

Over the carmine waves the wind's horn blows.

The sea's unicorn quivers across the moor.
The shadow of bony ghosts, brought by the moon,
Hunts with their steel the sable and the ermine.
It laughed beside the human-bodied oak,
Swallowed the whirr of may-bugs, now it scuffles,
Is ruffled sea-urchin straddling a far rock.

The striding traveller writes his shadow down.

Not waiting for the sky to strike midnight
The feathers hammer on the chiming stone.
18%'
Translated by Francis Scmfe.

Mercurial dragon rampant, charging the fess,

The Vistula's argent glister swamps the vert field.
Poland's monarch (once Aragon's) starts to undress
For the bath-tub-omnipotent boob, proudly peeled!

Charlemagne had twelve peers : Ubu's paragonless.

When he walks, his grease quakes; if he breathes, earth will yield:
Father Ube's patagonian footfalls impress
In the sand, with each toe, sable pumps-soled and heeled.

He sets forth, all escutcheoned with belly-it comes

On ahead. His redounding illustrious bum's
Breadth outstrips his poor underpants where we may meet,

Limned in genuine gold, large as life: totem-wise,

On the warpath, a gdloping Redskin (the seat);
The whole of the EifTel Tower (straight up the flies).
1903
Translated by Stunky Chapman.
 Piscibus Schola Cantorum
Scheme of the successive expressive I st Canticle
postures, according to the correspondant ( T h e Canticle of the Broken H e a r t )
tune and words.

Lord 1 am cra-zy for thee . . . . .-

Rend Dlrvmnl
 T H E COLLEGE OF 'PATAPHYSICS

M . UBU.-Say that by all means

if it gives you any pleasure, but
remember that you are convers-
ing with a famous pataphysician.
ACHRAS.-Excuse me, Sir, you
said?
M . UBU.-Pataphysician. 'Pata-
physics is a branch of science
which w e have invented and
for which a crying need is
generally experienced.
Alfred Jarry: UBU COCU, Act I,
Scene 3.

The College of 'Pataphysics or Collegium Pataphysicum has been in

existence now for more than ten years, having been inaugurated at a
meeting on 29 December 1948 addressed by the Vice-Curator-Founder
of the College, His Magnificence Dr. I. L. Sandomir. This Inaugural
Harangue is reproduced on page 169 and is followed by extracts from
his Protheses upon U b u and the Serious and his Testament. The
inaugural meeting was followed in the space of three months by the
appearance of the first issue of Viridis C a n d e h , Cahiers d u Colldge de
'Pataphysique. Since that time, 28 issues of the Cahiers have appeared,
and 9 issues to date of a new series of Dossiers acknondtes. In addition,
the College has produced some sixty publications for private distribu-
tion among its members. Under the supervision of the ViceCurator,
a commission of six ProveditorsCeneral has administered the activities
and non-activities of the College, assisted by additional Proveditors
representing the College in the different regions of the world, by offi-
cials of the Rogation and Executive Organon, by a Corps of Satraps
(which "acts within the College of 'Pataphysics solely b y its very
presence, or indeed . . . by its absence" [Statutes, Art. 6, para. 2]), and
by Regents ("eminent pataphysical personalities whose work, antece-
dents or even accidents qualify them to occupy pataphysically the
College's Chairs" [Statutes, Art. 7 , para. I]). At present, forty-four
Chairs are officially occupied. T he fundamental Chairs include:

a) General 'Pataphysics and Dialectics of the Useless Sciences.

b) Applied 'Pataphysics, Blablabla and Mateology.
c) History of 'Pataphysics and Exegesis.
d) Catachemistry and 'Pataphysics of the Inexact Sciences (Merdecine,
History, Social and Culinary Sciences, etc.) Complementary Course of
Magirosophy.
e) Mythography of the Exact Sciences and the Absurd Sciences. Comple
mentary Course of Alogonomy.
f ) Military and Strategic Eristics.
g) Cinematographology and Oneirocriticism.
h) Erotics and Pornosophy.
i) Pedology and Adelphism.
j) Crocodilology.
k) Ly~ico~athology and Clinical lectures in Rhetoriconosis.
1) ContrepCterie [Spoonerism].
m) Applied Mental Alienation and Psychiatry. Complementary Course in
Occultism, Demonology and Astrology.
n) Applied Moral and Political Science and Comparative Atrocities.
o) Applied Alcoholism and Practical Cephalorgy.
p) Applied Experimental Necrobiosis. etc. etc.

T h e first Article of the Statutes governing the conduct of the College

states that "the Statutes of the College of 'Pataphysics are pataphysical";
.
the second Article affirms that "'Pataphysics is the science . .' (Alfred
Jarry)" and that "'Pataphysics is inexhaustible"; while the third Article
lays down that, "since the human race is composed entirely of pataphy-
sicians, the College of 'Pataphysics distinguishes between those who
are conscious of the fact and those who are unconscious"; in addition,
that "the College of 'Pataphysics promotes 'Pata~hysicsin this world
and in all others."
One can give here only the barest outline of the College's multifari-
ous, energetic and absolutely gratuitous activities during its ten years
of existence, but one must mention one of its first and most brilliant
endeavours-the radical reform of the Gregorian calendar. T h e Pata-
physical Perpetual Calendar, in regular use throughout the College,
is expected to oust gradually all other methods of calculating Time
a l commenced on 8 September
and similar irrealities. T h e ~ a t a ~ h p i cera
 1873, feast of the Nativity of Alfred Jarry, which became dre 1st of
the moath of Absolu of Yeoo 1 PE. (Pamphysical Era), d is fol-
lowed by t h h months (oyelvc of 28 days and one of 29 days) in
this or& in the P 8 t a ~Calm&: ~ l A U~u , &ha, As,
Sable, Dkervelage, Gueules, P&, Clinamen, Palotih, Merdre,
Gidouille (29 days), Tatme, Phalle. Each day is appropriately dedi-
cated to a Primary, Secandmy, Tertirrry or Quaternary Feast with its
own Saint (including 4 &m few retained from the traditional
calendar) or to an appodie Ahistiom. The 13th of each month is '
' always a Friday. The a p F t New Year is celebrated by 'pataphysi-

cians all over the w d b die Feast of Unbraining @kenelage), and

the 25th of December in the vulgar calendar as the Feast of the N&vity
of the Archaeopteryx,

The occasihal pbk i&Wtations of the College have included

ddress by the then Proveditor-

ot L i t e r w e us a metbod of
Mach 1954 after J.F.); and

as a result of intensive preparatory activity, the College was ,

able to cqanise on that day SCtmptsMuo festivities to celebrate Ehe 113th i;
anniversary of the Nativity ob: RaWm Alphonse Franpise, h t e de 1
Sade (known as the Mmqwi& Qnsided over by Her Majesty the '
Queen in person and His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
programme +eluded a -tic parade and a Solemn Service in
Westminster Abbey. The name Coronuth was given tq these festivities
tocommemoratetheMatquir'~fordexercises.
A view of the platform at the meeting commemorating the 19th Crnrcnary of the accession to the
throne of the Emperor Nero: some of the Oprimarcs, listening ortenrivcly to the allocution by
the.

A view of the great parade organized by the College In London. E n ~ l a n d , to celebrate L e

113th Anniversary of the N o t i v i t . ~of the Comre de Sode: the ceremonial coach of His Magnlfi-
cence the late Vice-Curaor pawing through Admiralty Arch.
154 Evergreen Review
The Vice-Curator-Founder of the College, after a long illness, passed
away on 10 April 1956 (vulgar style). It is reported by one of those
closest to the august moribund that his last words were: "Qu'est ce
qui fait du bruit?" ('What is that making a noise?"). Only one week
previously he had addressed a message to the Argentinian members of
the College on the occasion of the solemn Inauguration of the Instituto
de Altos Etudios Patafisicos in Buenos Aires:

I I
Is it necessary to hope that 'Pataphysics should be at
Buenos Aires? It was there as it was everywhere before we
even existed and it transcends everything. It will always be
and will always transcend everything. It transcends even
being. For it does not even need to be in order to exist.

Nine years older than Jarry, His Magnificence the Vicecurator-

Founder was for us not only the living presence of an incomparable
past but the immensely erudite and brilliant inspirer of all our pata-
physical endeavours, who guided us serenely through the shifting
shadows of the real and unreal worlds.
The dignified aspect of his death was marred only by a scandalous
statement in the NouveELe Nouvelle Revue Frangaise by its editor,
M. Jean Paulhan. Commenting upon the Cahiers' announcement of
the death of Dr. Sandomir, M. Paulhan declared that his sorrow at
the death was tempered by the suspicion that probably Dr. Sandomir
had never existed. The College was forced to act firmly against this
provocative insinuation by declaring publicly that M. Paulhan was !
considered henceforth to be pataphysically non-existent. In furtherance i
of this just measure, the College printed post cards bearing the legend ';
JEAN PAULHAN DOES N O T EXIST. These were bought eagerly 4
by members of the College and thereafter arrived in ever increasing I
numbers at the address of the alleged Paulhan: from Rome, London,
Brussels, Geneva, Frankfurt, Moscow, Baghdad, Calcutta, Pondicherry,
Austin (Texas), Singapore, Hong Kong, Brisbane, Chicago, San Fran-
cisco, Caracas, Bogoth, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Senegal, Konakry,
.
Addis Ababa . . the whole world joined enthusiastically in this salu-
brious task. In an interview with the Figaro Littdraire, the alleged
TAYLOR

Two cards issued by the College

La Campagnt. dt. I'Anntc* :

Faire reconnaitre
le College de 'Pataphysique
156 Evergreen Review
Paulhan admitted having received cards from eighteen different coun-
tries: a modest understatement.
T h e popular Campaign of the Year, also launched by post cards
bearing an appropriate slogan, was that the College should be recog-
nised as a public inutility. This important campaign has gained ground
recently and will, it is hoped, be reinforced as a result of the present
publication.
Following the death of the College's founder, the College was
governed for two years by a Commission of Proveditors who, following
the procedures laid down in the Statutes, elected on the second anni-
versary of His Late Magnificence's death, Baron Jean Mollet, senior
member of the Corps of Satraps, as the new Vice-Curator of the Col-
lege. A Ceremony of Acclamation was held, following an Optimatic
Banquet of Allegiance. T h e proceedings at the Ceremony were
movingly broadcast by the French radio-phony, as were interviews
with many of the leading dignitaries of the College. The broadcast
terminated with the fervent singing by the entire assembly of an
anthem composed especially for the occasion by the Transcendant
Satrap Jacques P r k e r t (with the assistance of Jean Racine), The
Whole Universe is Full of His Magnificence (music by Mendelssohn).
Important measures of reorganisation have been undertaken by His
Magnificence, of which the most important perhaps for the future of
the College is the reform and expansion of the College's Sub-Commis-
sions; we present a Recapitulative Chart of the main Sub-Commissions,
followed by a brief exposition of this vast extension of pataphysical
activity by Jean Borzic, Datary of the Rogation, GOOGG, on the
basis of the schemes of reform prepared by Urbain le Hennuyeux,
Regent of Infranuclear Cata~hemistr~.
In addition, private proveditorial conclaves have discussed the prob
lem of the cult of personality within the College, consequent upon
the sudden resignation of the Proveditor-General Adjunct and Rogatory
(a post now shared by two Corogatory Proveditors), the regretted J. H.
Sainmont, whose state of "chronic mental anaemia" keeps him confined
permanently in a sanitarium. An important result of these discussions
has been the report to the Corps of Proveditors by Nicolaj NicolaYevitch
Kamenev, Proveditor-Propagator for the Scythian, Slaveonic and Lower
Tartar Regions, on some concrete historical problems concerning pata-
physical activity. Extracts from this closely-reasoned dialectical analysis
TAYLOR 157
are printed as an Appendix on page 181. As a Contrappendix, and to
show that compassion (in the pataphysical sense) is also a quality
inherent in pataphysical thought, we reproduce the final paragraph of
Idis Late Magnificence's Epanorthosis on the Moral Clinamen (page
186.)
Finally, we are privileged to reproduce an encyclical letter which
His Magnificence, Baron Jean Mollet, deigned to write especially for
the encouragement of the English-speaking world: the Message to the
Civilized or Uncivilized World provides the essential and extraliminal
conclusion to this compilation.
And may Faustroll guide us all.
S I M O N WATSON TAYLOR,
Proveditor-Delegatory, Regent (by
Transseant Susception) of the Chair
of Faustrollian Brittunicity and
of Applied Hypselic Alcoholism,
GMOGG
(Planisphere o f the Pafaphysical World, indicatins the present Cures,
Sees, Missiom and Provinces established by the Collese ol 'Palaphysics.)
I Farsio, Provcditor-Propa~IUor in American Mescmbrinesia, Antarctic Administmtor, GMOOt
 V Z e :
&,CMr/Z&dda& &,%4ih+v
THE SUB-COMMISSIONS: A SUMMARY OF THE PROBLEMS OF THEIR
RECENT REORGANISATION AND OF THEIR PRESENT FUNCTIONS.
.
". . T h i s palliation of mentu
insufficiencies b y the means of
Institutions is characteristic
of the College's entire history."
-P. LACHENAL, Proveditor-
General Propagator in the
Helvetian, Alpine, Teutonic
and Ultra-Montane Lands.

This ~roveditorialapophthegm might well be laced as an exergue

toathis short account of the Reorganisation of the Sub-Commissions, a
reorganisation so long awaited by the College's supporters and which
has been by no means the least of the benefits conferred upon us by
His Magnificence the Vice-Curator-Baron since his accession to the
Supreme Office. T h e College has always created Commissions in order
to solve problems posed by its practical activities, these Commissions
having often divided themselves spontaneously into Sub-Commissions
which, in turn, could very often give birth to several Intermissions and
Sub-Intermissions (a practice which is an institutionalised application
of the second Rule of Descartes' method). The need for a reorganisa-
tion of these Commissions became apparent during the interregnum
caused by the sad passing of His Late Magnificence, when the College
was governed by the Most Serene Commission of the five Proveditors-
General. At this time, Tchang-Tso-Min, Pro-Proveditor-Propagator in
the Serric, Coachian and Insular Territories of the Diverse Orients,

I
during a visit to France, objected that it was no longer proper to make
160
BoRZIC 161
use of the word "Commission" except in reference to the Most Serene
Governing Commission. After a regrettably violent controversy, in
heated exchanges were recorded between the extremists sup-
porting the Most Serene Proveditor-Propagator and the moderates
rallying around the Regent Noel Arnaud, Conferent Major, the Com-
mission of the five Proveditors-General appointed a Transcendant Com-
missional and Satrapic Suli-Commission for the Definition of the Word
Commission. One of His Magnificence's first actions after his election
was to elevate this Commissional SubCommission into a Transcom-
to supervise the Sub-Commissions, under the over-all authority
of the Commission of the Proveditors General and of the Precommis-
sion of the Ten. This latter organism had been duly constituted to
effect the election of a new Vice-Curator, its members being the Tran-
scendant Satraps Jacques PrCvert, Pascal Pia, Boris Vian and Jean Ferry,
the Incorruptible Regents Luc Etienne (Chair of Spoonerism), Caradec
(Chair of Colombophily), Noel Arnaud (Chair of Clinical Rhetori-
conosis), together with the Most Serene Proveditors-General BouchC
and Barnier and the Proveditor-Equator Claude Ernoult. At the same
time, His Magnificence cut short all discussion about the appropriate
divisions of the Sub-Commissions (into Theoretical, Applied and Ad-
ministrative; or Legislative, Executive and Judicial; etc.) by deigning
to declare: "As if Sub-Commissions of the College were capable of not
Administering Science! As if Science were not an Administrative Ques-
tion!" In his decisions as to the reorganisation of the Sub-Commissions,
His Magnificence placed five Commissions over and above the others
under the general title of Exceptional Commissions. These regulate the
Commissions and Sub-Commissions according to their particular attrib
utes: that is to say, the seven main Commissions which control the
seven Departments of the Sub-Commissions, each fundamental Com-
mission having the right to create adjunct organisms assimilated to the
Commissions and having precedence over the various Sub-Commissions.
These are the Cocommissions. T h e Recapitulative Chart makes clear
the appropriate relationship of the Super-Commission, Transcommis-
sion, Precommission, Commissions, Cocommissions and Sub-Commis-
~ions. It will be noticed that the 77 Permanent or Chronic Sub-
commissions (the Chart does not include the various Caducous
are divided into Seven Departments (apart from
162 Evergreen Review
the Sub-Commission of Permanent Assembly, attached to the Precom-
mission of the T e n for administrative reasons). These Seven Depart-
ments are determined by the Seven Fundamental Commissions assisted
by the five Cocommissions. These Commissions and their departments
are controlled by two Accommissions: the Compositive Accommission
and the Diriment Accommission. At the head of these, and, ill a sense,
apart from the Accommissions, radiate the Precommission of the Ten,
the Satrapic Transcommission and the Supercommission of the Prov-
editor-General. It is these five assemblies just mentioned which consti-
tute the category of Exceptionals.

Philippe Dumarwy, Regent 01 Omphalology

BORZIC 163
It is impossible to give more than a bare outline of the functions
and prsonnel of some of the most important of the Sub-commissions
(bearing in mind, of course, the theory of Pataphysical Equivalence).
This is a selection of a few of the most pataphysically interesting, two
commissions being selected from each of the seven Commissions,
the first one being the senior S.-C. in each case.
1) Commission of Licities and Harmonies: T h e S.-C. of Imaginary
Solutions, which has been considered the senior S.-C., was presided
over by the late Boris Vian. Its function is to provide an infinity (at
least three) of lineaments or semi-virtualities for any subject. T h e
S.-C. of Probabilities, with J. J. Mauvoisin (Regent of the 'Pataphysics
of the Inexact Sciences) as President, specialises in the operations of
formal and applied Logic, the interpretation of statistics and enquiries,
the utilisation of the Law of Great Numbers. T h e only organism
competent to consider questions which appear to be moral (casuistry
and probablism) and microphysics.
2) Commission of Unpredictabilities: The Transcendant Satrap Joan
Mir6 is President of the S.-C. of the Great Extraordimry, whose or-
dinary function is to recall by all possible means that only the unusual
exists and that everything is unpredictable, especially the predictable.
Its extraordinary function is to speculate on those realities reputed to
be unpredictable after they have been manifested and have astonished
the commonalty. The S.C. of Glory and Protuberances, under the
Presidency of the T. S. Marcel Duchamp, is a sociological and medical
organism, designed to diagnose "evil" as well as to give scientifically
established astringent or emollient recipes in liaison with the S.-C. of
Imaginary Solutions and the S.-C. of Probabilities. This S.-C. controls
four Intermissions: Apotheoses (questions of panegyrics, necrologies,
canonisations, obsessional publicities, changes of opinion), President
the T. S. Ionesco; Fine Arts and Foul Arts (doxoscopic studies) Presi-
dent the Most Serene Proveditor-General F. Lachenal; Ornaments
(decor, decorations, ribbons, embellishments, flourishes, etc.) President
the T. S. Max Ernst; and Ideas (glorious furnishings) President Quatre-
zoneilles, Vice-Primary Protodatary.
3 ) Commission of Drafts and Minutes: The Lablogical S.-C. deals
with the confusion and profusion of tongues, languages, dialects; with
affabulations, confabulations, affabilities and fabulosities; and with
definitions, indefinitions and subsumptions. T h e Memorial President is
 Recapitulative Chart

COMMISSION OF
LICITIES & HARMONIES
0Cocommission of Inferences

r Compositive
Accommission COMMISSION O F
UNPREDICTABILITIES
0Cocommission of Inventions

Transcommission
and Commissional COMRIISSION OF
and Satrapic S.C.
to define the meaning DRAFTS & lMINUTES
of the word 0Cocommission of Ersatz
Commission

COMMISSION OF
ORDER AND TIME
Most Serene
SUPERCOMMISSION
of the Proveditors
General

COMMISSION OF
PRECEDENCES
Precommission of 0Cocommission of Clothing
the T E N

0 S.C. of
Permanent Assemblies

6 COMMISSION OF
T R A N S ~ ~ ~ AP RToEC E s s I o N s
0Cocommission of S*** P* * *
Diciment
Accommission

COMMISSION OF
ELLIPSES, ECLIPSES
AND ANAESTHETICS
 of the sub-commissions
*sub-Commission of Imaginary Solutions *Doctrinaire
*Prolonging the Activity of the Second Manifesto
*~~rm ands Graces *C$omo!ogical
'Probabilities Usuries
*Revisions *The Inexact Sciences
'Places *The Nights and the Days (chronic)

'The Great Extraordinary *Promptuary

*prices and Budgetary Prognoses *Spirits * Acrolic
Apotheoses
*Glory and Protuberances: Intermissions Fine Arts and Arts
Ornaments
c Ideas
'Realization of Incompetences. *Epiphanies and Ithyphanies
'Attempts and Outrages Anomphalic *Epipomps and Catananches

LLalogical 'Cantonal
*Oreheom, Cliques and Claques *Apostils 'Paraphrases
* Paremegraph *Types 'Cercopsies and Plagiaries
~ypotgesesand Pedestals Umwertung
'Seesaws and Balances: Intermissions { Approximations

'The Ordinary and the Small Extraordinary

*Duties ad Interim, Parallaxes and Substitutions
'Obliquities *Procrastinations and Diamelleses
'Peremptions 'Low Tides 'Disparates I
*Dianyses (Work j n Hand) 'Lustratory
Pyamids and Polyhedrals
Homades (chronic)

I 'Emblems

Equivalences
*The House of His Magnificence
*The Great External *Dioceses
*Anhistorical and Histori%$~knents
*Onomonyms: Intermissions { T~~~~~
Imaginary -Commodities
'Interpretations: Intermissions { -,-ranslations and T~~~~~~~
*Infinitesimal and Leptological
*Mathematical and Exact Sciences

*Pope Marcellus
*Metastases, Assumptions, Diadoses and Rotations
*Implications and Measures of Security
Resumptions
'Ordnances and Berthings: Intermissions { Evacuations
*Bread with Horns: Intermission-Truffles
'Nardigraph 'Funiculars 'Pads and Stamps
*Badgers 'Labels *Parapomps and Escorts

t
*CoDoctrinal
*Impredicables and Epithets *Inadequations
Perimeters
*Canons and Paragons: Intermissions { Amelioration of M~~~~
*Paranomias 'Implied Moralities
*Disparates I1 'Anachroniy and Local Colour
*Utilities and Engagements Paralyses and Anaesthesias
166
James Joyce, and the Consultants include Jean Ferry, Ionesco,
Leiris, Tchang-Tso-Min, Kamenev, Fassio, etc. T h e S.-C. o
phrases is resided over by the T. S. Jacques Pr
means of amplification, dilutions, professions of faith, etc., on no matte
what theme or absence of theme, according to the latest methods o
Scientific, Experimental and Statistical Psychology. Schedules con-
stantly revised.
4 ) Commission of Order and Time: In contrast to the S.-C. of the
Great Extraordinary [see above], the S.-C. of the Ordinary and the
Small Extraordinary is concerned with the fact that even if the pre-
dictable must be regarded in one sense as unpredictable, nevertheless,
in so far as it is predictable, it can be predicted to some extent. This
S.-C. therefore regulates the Activities of the College on the basis of
this average predictability and, at the same time, is concerned to take
into account the average unpredictability which must be considered in
relation to any comprehensive future plans. The President is the T.'S.
Henri Jeanson. T h e S.-C. of Obliquities specialises in oblique solu-
tions ,and the processes that reflect changes in points of vision, and
accumulates reserves of subterfuges and artifices. Frangois Laloux,
Regent of Pompagogy, Pomponierism and Zozology is the President.
5) Commission of Precedences: T h e senior of all the S.-Cs., the
S.-C. of the House of His Magnificence assures H. M. of all the
honours which are due to him according to the Statutes and, more
generally, governs His Relations with the College: escorts, musical
properties, maintenance of the Gonfanon of the Order of the Great
Gobblet, etc. Honorary President: the T. S. Raymond Queneau;
Secretary: Latis. T h e S.-C. of Equivalences, presided over by the
Proveditor-Equator, Claude Emoult, determines the points of equilib-
rium in precedences by defeasance. For this reason it is closely in
touch with literary and art critics, matches, competitions, international
conflicts, political economy, academic and revolutionary agitations,
claims . . . in fact, publicity in general.
6 ) Commission of Transquinate Processions: One of the most vital
of all S.-Cs. is the S.-C. of Pope Marcellus, whose studied polymor-
phism is destined to play a primary part in the life of the S.-Cs. It is
its function to supplement any deficient or obstructed S.-C., to assist
all the other S.-Cs. materially, intellectually, pataphysically, energeti-
.
cally . . Presidium: the T. S. the Orthodox CEkumenical Syro-Malabar
BORZIC 167
patriarch, the T. S. Jean Ferry, the P.G.A.A.V. Henri Boucht. The
s.-c.of Metastases, Assumptions, Diudoses and Rotations, under the
presidency of Rafael de Luc, Regent of Experimental Necrobiosis and
Applied Amnesia, specialises in elementary transquinatory processes .in
order to determine its trans-transquinatory applications (for instance,
displacing a spleen from one date to another, or a tender emotion from
one person to another, etc.) As an extension of these faculties, it
governs the transportation of baggage, house moving, etc.
7) Commission of Ellipses, Eclipses and Anaesthetics: The Co-
Doctrinaire S.-C., under the Presidency of the T. S. Maurice Saillet,
has the right to be consulted on all difficulties, dubious cases, suspicious
operations, doctrinal subtleties, defective nomenclatures, incongruous
nuances, etc. The S.-C. of Anachronism and Local C o h r has a par-
ticularly delicate task. With the T. S. Jean Dubuffet as its President,
it has the virtue of giving equal consideration to Anachronism and to
Local Colour, both being equally appropriate for pataphysical opera-
tions, and both being considered equally as purely pataphysical points
of reference. It encourages a pataphysical assessment of History-the
only one acceptable to the College: the other ways of regarding history
being held to be no less pataphysical (but involuntarily so).

A few reflections on this immense reorganisation and systemisation

of the investigatory and creative organisms of the College will be
appropriate.
First, these Commissions and Sub-Commissions are specifically
3dapted to the needs and activities of the College, of its Corps, its Chairs
~ n dits Administration, and are neither substitutes for nor superimposi-
'ions upon the latter.
Secondly, an experienced eye will easily discover that the apparent
:omplexity of the divisions and "titrations" reveals with trenchant
harness a rigorous reinvention of classifications. All previous classifica-
ions, whether formal or empiric, have been based on ''mutters." There-
n lies their weakness, for if one envisages Matter in its "substantial"
unction, it is "one" (which is meaningless, in fact), and if one
'nvisages it in its variations, it extends far and wide in every sense;
"hich is why the traditional distinctions between matter and spirit,
dministration and science, law and aesthetic, commerce and intellec-
168 Evergreen R e v i e w
tuality (despite the word "speculation"!) etc., are really artificial and
only create confusion in the guise of order. Here, on the contrary, the
principle which w e apply i n making distinctions lies not i n what is
done but the way i n which it is done. It is not the "matters" which are
classified but the attitudes, the operations, the structurations achieved
by those w h o have to "deal with" these "matters." This is why the same
organism may seem to bring together competences that may appear
heterogeneous to an uninformed mind.
This leads us to a more general conclusion: namely, that this Reor-
ganisation is an impressive materialisation of the College's plans. In
its immense Quest for pure Sociality many will judge without fear
of exaggeration that a decisive step has been taken. T h e activity of the
Commissions and Sub-Commissions assures for all time the fecundity
azd the brilliancy itself of the W o r k of the College, which, from now
on, can not only no longer be caught off guard but is bound to renew
itself indefinitely. Let us go further than that: with this Reorganisation
the College will be approaching nearer to that Activity i n a closed and
perfectly self-sufficient circuit which the Founders intended should be
the essence of this Institution of Institutions. The most optimistic among
us can even hope that this "Activity" may finally absorb the College
entirely and that the day will come when all the Members of the
College, from Austin to Sydney, from London to Buenos Aires, from
Reims to Konakry, from Rome to Tal-Pei, will without exception be
participants in one of the Sub-Commissions, and will benefit from its
activity as it reflects and in turn irradiates the activity of each of the
others; the day when this immense individual and collective task will
be so absorbing as to render all others useless; the day when the knowl-
edge that the Sub-Commissions exist will be sufficient to subsume the
College's absolute existence, and when consequently all those partici-
pating in this grandiose circumgyration will no longer demand anything
of the College and will at last be standing within that "zone" (to
quote Victor Hugo's celebrated phrase)
"Where the asymptote pursues and the hyperbola pees."

JEAN BORZIC,
Datary of the Rogation,
GOOGG
 Opus Pataphysioum
Inaugural Harangue
pronounced on 1 Dkervelage 76 P.E.
by His Magnificence Dr. I . L. Sandomir,
Vice-Curator-Founder of the College,
on the occasion of the College's first
meeting, which brought together al-
most all those who were Optimates or
Members at that time.

Beloved Proveditors,
Beloved Satraps,
Beloved Regents,
and you all, beloved Auditors of the College of
'Pataphysics,

Seeing before us such a closely packed Assembly, gathered together

for these solemn and inaugural Assizes, we nevertheless cannot
ignore altogether certain doubts (sensation) which might cloud the
general sense of enthusiasm.
That the College of 'Pataphysics, after a long gestation, should at
last have presented itself to the World and that the World should
have presented itself to the College (applause), does that not in itself
represent a fall from grace and a kind of dilution of its pataphysical
excellence? ( n e w sensation). W e do not fear to say aloud, as you can
hear (bravo, bravo!) what some people may perhaps be thinking sur-
reptitiously. And since for a College such as ours existence can evidently
be little more than a barely necessary evil, we would not be reluctant
to share their opinion if precisely this necessary evil-especially by
virtue of the contradictions which it implies-did not appear capable
of perfecting in depth the pataphysical character of this College: for
it still would be an unwarrantable limitation of 'Pataphysics if one
~houldwish to confine it within the domain of nonexistence under the
Pretext of withdrawing it to the very frontiers of existence. (applause).
170 Evergreen Review
'Pataphysics transcends both equally, and, as our Statutes a h m , the
existence of a College could have no authority to restrain or cramp it
in any manner, since it is illimitation itself. ( T h e audience rises and
applauds the Vice-Curator-Founder.)
It was not necessary for the College to be born in order that 'Pata-
physics should exist. Ontologically, if I may use such a vulgar adverb,
'Pataphysics precedes Existence. A priori, this is obvious because I
Existence has no more reason to exist than reason has to exist. A
posteriori, it is equally obvious because the manifestations of existence
are aberrant and their necessity entirely contingent.
In the infinite glittering of pataphysical light, existence is a mere
ray of light, and by no means the brightest, among all those which
emerge from this inexhaustible sun. And he whom human infirmity
calls the Creator was only, as our Unremovable Curator Doctor
Faustroll (ovation) has made clear, the first in time or in ethernity
of all pataphysicians. When the Scriptures depict new-born Wisdom
proclaiming: Nondum erant abyssi et jam concepta eram, there is no
doubt that it is 'Pataphysics which is being referred to, save in the one
particular that Wisdom was not created by God ante secula, but on
the contrary, as everything tends to show, he created it ipsum et secula,
among other pataphysical objects. T h e World is but one of these
objects and human beings-since custom demands that we mention
them-are pataphysical concretions. (Murmurs of agreement.)
The present era has had the privilege of recalling this fact to us with
brilliant clarity. Since the apparent death of Alfred Jarry, it seems that
humanity has unconsciously taken upon itself the task of incarnating-
not indeed more really for that would be impossible, but more openly
and more fulguratingly-the explosive fullness and undefinable pro-
fusion of 'Pataphysics. (Profound silence revealing complete attentive-
ness.) Our first World Unbraining and the peace which followed it,
our prosperities and our crises, our combined over-productions and
famines, our morale and our defeatism, a vivificatory - spirit
- and an
assinatory literature, our scientific mythologies and our mystics, our
civic or military virtues and our revolutionary faiths, our platonic and
other despairs, our fascist and democratic furies, our occupation and
our liberation, our collaboration, just as much as our resistance ( t h e
audience remuins motionless), our triumphs and our immolations, the
translucency of our emaciations like the blackness of our markets, then,
,pin, the imperturbable and inevitable resumption of ranting from
the forum, our radios, our newspapers, our national and international
organisms, our court orders and disorders, our pedagogies of all com-
plexions, our illnesses and our manias, everything written, everything
sung, everything said and everything done, this whole mass of priceless
seriousness, this whole inexorable buffoonery, this Coliseum of blabla-
bla seems to have been planned with an admirable application so that
"0 false note may intrude to mar this universal and impeccable Pata-
physical Harmony. (Thunderous applause.)
It is For this reason that, turning towards you, my dear young
listcncrs, we say to you: Open your eyes and you shall see (signs of
approval). More fortunate than St. Paul who could only envisage the
deity in terms of an enigma and through a glass darkly, you are
privileged to regard 'Pataphysics face to face. Thus the teaching of
these learned Regents, the example of these incorruptible Satraps, the
counsel of these most serene Proveditors cannot instruct you any more
effectively than can the spectacle now spread before your eyes. And
we Feel it appropriate to recall at this juncture the words uttered by
a great pataphysician who was unfortunately unaware of the fact-
we refer to Dr. Pangloss: Pataphysically one can say that all is for the
best in the most pataphysical of all possible worlds. There could not
be more 'Pataphysics in this World than there is because already it is
the sole ingredient. The World in all its dimensions is the true College
of 'Pataphysics. (Bursts of applause. Choruses of approval.)

In any case, the role of this College here assembled will be far more
modest. And at this point I can appropriately examine a fresh doubt
(some movement among the audience) which I divined in your
thoughts. Have you not, in short, even if only momentarily and despite
the inestimable guarantees which the pataphysically unsuspectable
personality of these Optimates assured you, have you not experienced
almost a hesitation at the threshold of the College (hesitation)? Does
not the word College imply teaching? Does not the word teaching
imply usefulness or pretensions to usefulness? Does not the word
Usefulness imply senousnes3 Does not the word seriousness imply
antipataphysics? All these terms are equivalent (~rofoundsensation).
And it would be too simple to retort that nothing could be antipata-
172 Evergreen Review
physics, since all and even those things beyond all are pataphysical.
This is pataphysically evident but by no means prevents this Antipata-
physics from existing. For it exists: it exists fully; it exists formally; it
exists aggressively. And in what does it consist? Ah! this is where the
argument runs full circle (general sigh of relief): it is precisely igno-
rance of its own pataphysical nature and it is this ignorance which is
its pugnacity, its power, its plenitude and the root of its being. The
seriousness of God and of mankind, the usefulness of services and
works, the gravity and weight of teachings and systems are only
antipataphysical because they will not and cannot proclaim themselves
to be pataphysical; for as far as being is concerned they cannot be
otherwise than they are (general approval). Ducunt volentem fata
(i.e. pataphysica) nolentem trahunt. (bravo!) And so the College is
pataphysically founded (acclamations).
For it is within the College that the unique and fundamental dis-
tinction is made between 'Pataphysics as the substance, if one may s'ay
so, of being and non-being, and 'Pataphysics as the science of this
substance: or in other terms, between the 'Pataphysics that one is and
the 'Pataphysics that one does. For this reason there are, as our Statutes
announce, two sorts of pataphysicians: on one hand, those who are
pataphysicians without wanting to be and without knowing and, above
all, without wanting to know-which is, must necessarily be, will always
be the immense mass of our contemporaries; on the other hand, those
who recognise themselves to be pataphysicians, affirm themselves as
such, demand to be considered as such, and in whom 'Pataphysics is
superabundant. In them resides the true Pataphysical Privilege, for
"'Pataphysics is the only science." (Prolonged cheering:)
It is these then whom our College reunites in its useless Ark which
drifts and plunges upon the flood of usefulness. Should we regret that
it can never have a democratic nature, nor address itself to all? In a
flood, are not the waves of the many necessary to bear up the Noetic
skiff?* Can you believe that an enterprise which takes neither serious-
ness nor laughter-that shameful seriousness-seriously, an enterprise
that refuses to be lyrically lyrical, to serve any kind of purpose, indeed
that refuses to save mankind or, what is even more unusual, the World,
could possibly have oecumenical pretensions? (Cries of: no, no!) The
* Cf. the skiff in which Dr. Faustroll set out on his terrestrial navigation of
the 'imaginary' world. [Editor's note.]
College is not a Church. It is not concerned with winning as many
as possible. In addition, the majority could gain no satisfaction
in its ranks, for, in their pataphysically na'ive misunderstanding of
~pataphysics (which they incarnate nevertheless) they find a sort of
mediocre stimulant which they could never do without. (Disapproving
I~~rm~r~.)
Minority members by vocation (approving murmurs), we are so
much the more alert and ready to undertake our epigenic navigation
in this new appropriately paraffined skiff which is the College of
'pataphysics. (Applause, cheers and acclamations. The Assembly rises
and sings the Palotins' Hymn.)
[stenographic record]

w Allocution
pronounced at the Inauguration

by Dr. I. L. Sandomir
on 18 Palotin 80 P.E.,
in the presence of the
Corps of Proveditos
and the Commission
of Qualificatory h a g -

'Pataphysics does not enlighten any more than it should enlighten.

Because of this, orgies of salvation are avoided. W e are not even con-
cerned here with hoping that those who should see nothing do see
nothing. No more are we concerned to hope that those who do see, see.
It would indeed be better that they should not see too much. Let things
and causes remain enclosed in their inner and nourishing darkness, so
that 'Pataphysics may be superabundant.
 extract from the

Protheses
(upon Ubu and the Serious)

by Dr. I. L. Sandomir,

a dialogue electrically recorded on

15 Clinamen 78 P.E. and published
as the introductory text of the
Cahiers du CollBge (No. 3-4, de-
voted to Ubu). At the time of the
resignation of the regretted Prov-
editor-General Adjunct and Roga-
tory, the other recordings of this
Alfred J u r y nature were, unfortunately, lost.

HIS MAGNIFICENCE THE VICECURATOR-FOUNDER: It is displeasing that

it should often be displeasing to contemplate the Glory of Ubu. For
it is far from being what it should be, either in splendour-however
dazzling it may already be-or, more particularly, in quality. The
vulgar (by which I principally mean great minds) take Ubu to be a
figure of fun; excuse the term. However, in fact, there is perhaps
nothing, apart from Faustroll, more validly and fundamentally
"serious."

THE PROVEDITORGENERAL ADJUNCT AND ROGATORY: Ah! Your Magnifi-

cence wou1.d make an inestimable contribution to the universal spread
of enlightenment by defining once and for all what we should under-
stand by the word serious.

HIS MAGNIFICENCE: TOdefine it? But it is limpid, my dear Proveditor-

General Adjunct and Rogatory. It is the very virtue incarnated by
Ubu. And to be absolutely precise: the serious is 'Pataphysics. W e
SANDOMIR 175
pataphysicians, just like Jarry himself, are by no means entertainers,
jokers or clowns (despite the late lamented Gide's idea that Jarry was
all of these). People mistake the nature of the farce which was ex-
pressed originally, seen from outside, by Ubu's regal gesture (but
childhood at play and, even more, adolescence is imperturbable). And
whatever the case may be, Jarry has certainly promoted it to that
exalted position which you, my dear Proveditor-General Adjunct and
Rogatory, have so paradigmatically personified. W e are, then, serious,
and I would add (for it is at this point that everything becomes clear)
that W E ARE T H E ONLY ONES T O BE FULLY, TOTALLY
AND SUPERABUNDANTLY SERIOUS and to take ourselves
really seriously. Let us add finally that we are moreover the only ones
competent to do this.

THE PROVEDITORCENERAL:
Then serious people ...
HIS MAGNIFICENCE: Socalled serious people are nothing of the sort; or
rather they are serious in the degree to which they derive nourishment
from 'Pataphysics. And indeed, happily, they all derive nourishment
therefrom, but without knowing it or wanting to admit it. It is this
induration which renders their seriousness heavy, drooping, indigestible;
or, as they express it with a glaireous word-human. The same consid-
erations apply to their laughter, which has pretensions to so many
justifications and good motives. Nevertheless, despite its infirmity and
its inferiority compared with a consciously pataphysical seriousness,
their invaluable seriousness is capable, through the miracle of Pata-
physical Ontogeny, of generating a whole host of gestures and words
which cast upon us suddenly the moonlight of what we call epiphanies.
In this way they articulate admirable things, without understanding
that they are admirable, or indeed in what respect they are admirable.

Then the seriousness of serious people is praise-

PROVEDITORCENERAL:
worthy?

HIS MAGNIFICENCE: Immeasurably, since we rejoice in the pataph~sical

spectacle with which they present us; and it would be even more
Praiseworthy if, after becoming aware of its nature, they continued in
the same manner-despite and because of their new awareness.
176 Evergreen Review
PROVEDITORGENERAL: Seriousness is superior, then, to laughter?

HIS MAGNIFICENCE: That goes without saying. And it is for this reason
that those pataphysicians who are unaware of themselves feel the need,
as we have said, to justify their laughter by showing that it possesses
reasons and foundations: in this way they enter again into the realm
of 'Pataphysics, since all justification is and must necessarily be pata-
physical. And in this sense, nothing is more pataphysically sublime
than to see this involuntary homage to the Pataphysical Pancrena from
which all wisdom and all being flow. As for us, following the example
of Faustroll, we inquire into laughter solely in terms of a scientific
explanation, and, what is more important, we inquire into seriousness
just as we inquire into explanations-solely because seriousness and
explanation both possess a pataphysical stigma.

PROVEDITORSENERAL: If such is the quidditative nature of Explanation,

it is then vain to explain 'Pataphysics?

HIS MAGNIFICENCE: Not only vain, but pataphysical. Ah yes! That is

the paradox. All these miserable little pedants who attempt to explain
Jarry and his "case" (there were some even during his lifetime) by
psychoanalysis, poetry, homosexualism or parthenogenesis, patholog-
ical psychology, sociology, ontology or "humour noir,"' do not realise
that they are practicing 'Pataphysics! Only 'Pataphysics, in fact, does
not explain itself but establishes its own position within a vicious circle
that is proclaimed, smelt out and relished. Only 'Pataphysics, too, is
capable of rendering an account of psychoanalysis, poetry and the rest.
W e say "the rest" deliberately, meaning everything and all that is
beyond everything.

PROVEDITORGENERAL: Then according to Your Magnificence it is, for

instance, for 'Pataphysics to explain psychoanalysis and not for psycho-
analysis to explain 'Pataphysics-as two bumptious asses attempted to
do recently?

HIS MAGNIFICENCE:
That is self-evident. It is in fact particularly striking
in the case in It seems to us that it should be evident even to
* Invented by the distinguished humorist Andrt Breton. [Editor's note.]
SA~~OMIR 177
the eyes of the common critic that the psychoanalyst is his own dupe
and succumbs to obsessions.

p R ~ ~ E D I T O R C E N E R A L One
only has to glance through the pages of
:
Freud to discover-not without pataphysical joy-that, without in the
least suspecting it, he performs his own psychoanalysis more often than
that of others.

H r ~MAGNIFICENCE: And in this sense psychoanalysis provides a rich

field of exploration for the pataphysician. T h e only danger would be
to forget that this game is a game and to descend from the heights of
the pataphysical point of view. In this connection, it would be desir-
able, our dear Proveditor-General Adjunct and Rogatory, for you to
entrust one of our beloved Regents one day with the task of setting
forth the whole question in one of our Elementary Courses.

PROVEDITORCENERAL: Your Magnificence's desire shall be satisfied ...

[recorded on magnetic tape]

extract from the
Testament
of Dr. I. L. Sandomir.

[Attached to thc will & testament of

His Late magnificence deposited with
his solicitor, this manuscript of 43
pages, written in a very feeble but
absolutely legible hand, bears as its
only title the word Testament. It
demonstrates brilliantly the whole
breadth of the views which u7c have
always venerated in His Magnificence
and, at the same time, it attests the
extent to which the College rcmained
the cardinal preoccupation of this
great spirit hovering on the verge
of extinction.]

[some reflections on "Science"]

T h e World is a gigantic abcrrance, which, additionally and univer-

sally, is based upon an infinity of other aberrances. Whatever we may
say about it is a fiction of a fiction. The naivety of mankind (another
cvagation) has named Reason what is only one possibility (among
several others) of making apparent the incommensurability of this
super-aberration and of discovering that it is neither one, nor multiple,
but ambiguously iridescent and coruscating.-The least of its innu-
merable reflections, the most simplistic of myths or the most genial of
intuitions, once they become possible, have every right to be placed
on the same level as this supreme and hyperstatic super-aberration.
Pataphysics contains all infinites.
There is thus no difference whatsoever, either of nature or degree,
I
between different minds, any more than there is any difference between
their or indeed between one thing and another. For the
complete Pataphysician the most banal graffito equals in value the
consummate book, even the Expbits and Opinions of Doctor
~ ~ t c s t r othemselves,
ll and the humblest mass-~roducedsaucepan equals
the Nativity of Altdorfer. Who among us would dare to consider
himelf as having reached such a point of extralucidity? Such is never-
theless the postulate of Pataphysical Equivalence, upon which the
,brorlds of worlds and the ersatz spiritual residues find indiscemably
their revolving base, just like the hippoxytic cycle upon its pivot. Thus,
although democracy or demophily are for him only one fiction among
others, the pataphysician is without doubt the undisputed holder of
the absolute record of democracy: without even making an effort he
beats the egalitarians at their own game. T h e fact is that he denies
nothing; he exsuperates. In this as in everything. H e is not there to do
away with things but to subsume them.
Such an attitude may seem scandalous to those who are enamoured
of past or present dogmas, inscient by nature as they are. It will
doubtless appear negative-and negatory of "Science" and "Art." Never-
theless this, as in everything else, is only an appearance. No one is
more positive than the pataphysician: determined to place everything
and to extract everything with the same amiability. "All is fruit which
ymir seasons, Natdre, offer me." Even hostility cannot disturb him.
He has nothing against what the vulgar call delirium or insanity, nor
does he deprecate what clever people term stupidity. H e sees precisely
as much in stupidity as he does in cleverness or wisdom: for, in life,
such folly is for many a very sufficient basis for existence and, more
~articularly,an appropriate garniture for their thought processes. H e
does not even distinguish his own attitude from that of the masses: he
calls it 'Pataphysical, giving himself only the benefit of that humble
apostrophe recommended by Jarry,* the significance and use of which
has been so eruditely defined by our College.
And if anyone asserts the efficacity of "Science"-the term generally
used for its technical "achievements"-the pataphysician will certainly
not deny this claim. But he will apply definite tests to it, tests so

- that once again the part equals the whole. It is often doubtful

See Doctos Faumoll, Chapter 8.

180 Evergreen Review
whether so-called "objective Science" does in fact affect so-called
"reality"-despite the fact that this "reality" is intrinsically aberrant
and that the successes of "Science" hardly ever cling to its initial
justification (the reactions of thirty years later, for instance, are reveal-
ing). Nevertheless it is no less true to say that imaginary solutions
are just as efficacious as supposedly real solutions. These imaginary
solutions influence events. They influence people. And sometimes far
more powerfully. Above all, they influence the very ideas of so-called
objective Science, which draw their power from this motivation. An
average observer could quickly establish the fact that the scholars of
our time, the moment that they approach generalities, merely copy-
usually by way of mathematics-the theories of ancient metaphysics:
and the wilder theories at that. And if our average observer leaves such
panoramatory theoristics, and proceeds to the detailed establishment of
facts, it will be to discover that the identification on an astrophotograph
of the millimetric trace of a spiral nebula involves such a lavish abun-
dance of the most staggering metaphysical assertions that, without
'Pataphysics, it would be demoralising to hear "Science" proclaiming
itself positive and objective. It is clear, in fact, that its capacity for self-
inflation and its ability to provide furniture for the mind depends
solely on the pullulation of Imaginary Solutions.
But we are wrong to hypnotise ourselves with "Science" in conces-
sion to contemporary myths. For this supposed "Science" is not Science,
if it is so ignorant and assiduously self-deluded about itself. It is neithez
the science of a "real," being incapable of "distinguishing" it in any
sense, nor is it the science of self-awareness. It could only become these
things through a participation in 'Pataphysics, which, because of its
illimitation and autocritical faculty alone, has the right to assume
the name of Science.

JARRYJARRYJARRYJARRYJARRYJARRYJARRYJARRYJARRYJARRYJARRY,
 Pro-Proveditor Propagator for the Scythian, Slaveonic and
Lower Tartar Regions:

extracts born the R E P 0 R T

to the Corps of Proveditors
on
SOME CONCRETE HISTORICAL PROBLEMS
Concerning Pataphysical Activity
posed by the fiftieth anniversary
of the death of
JARRY

Is it necessary to assimilate 'Pataphysics to a phenomenon of intellec-

t~absurplus-valuesymmetrical, in the ideological superstructure, to the
surplus-value defined by Marx in relation to the economic infrastruc-
ture? It is not without interest to observe in support of this thesis that
the essential upward thrust of 'Pataphysics as science coincided his-
torically (epoch Alfred Jarry) with the acceleration towards the end
of the 19th century of that great industrial concentration to which
Marx attached so much importance. Still more significantly, it coincides
today with the routing of the imperialist and fascist systems, as the
most widely held theoretical interpretations testify. This proves that
'Pataphysics, originally reserved for an extremely closed Clite of an
182 Evergreen Review
"intellectual propertied class," must inevitably, with the advance in
the socialisation of the means of production, distribute itself propor-
tionally among the different strata of the masses. So we must accept as
a valid working hypothesis that in the same sense in which the economic
surplus-value must increasingly be assigned essentially to those who
produce it effectively, so the pataphysical surplus-value must increas-
ingly find itself genuinely distributed throughout the whole ideological
front.
But such an interpretation remains basically abstract. And it is abso-
lutely necessary to clarify this interpretation, elaborate it and perhaps
criticise it by a rigorous analysis of the historical facts established by
scientific methods.
T h e essential di&culty, in fact-let us go straight to the heart of the
problem-which presents itself to a number of intellectual workers is
not so much the question of whether 'Pataphysics is merely an emor-
escence (an EPIPHENOMENON) of the superstructure, but the far
more serious question of whether it is not indissolubly linked to reac-
tionary idealism, the inevitable product of the capitalist, neo-capitalist
and fascist infrastructure.
However, to reply to such a question, one must first take into
account verifiable scientific realities, of which the first is the very ,
existence and historical development of the College of 'Pataphysics in j
so far as it is a social and ideological phenomenon on an institutional 1
and global wale, and the second is its ideological progression, the con- 1
sistency and correct evolution of which constitute, in themselves, a f
third FACT which demands urgently the undivided attention of those 1'
cadres qualified to assess ideological agitation.

It would certainly constitute an invalid and pretentious confusionis

were one to content oneself with a NEGATIVIST interpretation
the pataphysical phenomenon. An historical analysis of the moveme
shows, in fact, that the pataphysician in no way subscribes to
attitude of sterile refusal, prodrome of a completely objective b
ruptcy, of petit bourgeois anarchism. This is true for two reasons:
in the very fact of the solid construction of a SOCIETY on a wo
scale (the College), an eminently positive reality; secondly in the a
tude of OBJECTIVE RECEPTIVITY which is that of the pataphy
cian in regard to the doctrines which. through the interlocking mecha-
nism of the College's social structures, he is led to consider scientifically
as possible DOCTRINAL FACTS.
Thus, contrary to what certain over-simplist marxists affmn, who in
this respect agree scandalously with the superficial ideologues in the
pay of plutocratic capitalism and the flunkeys of petit bourgeois
anarchism, 'Pataphysics is not (at the best) simply a rejection of out-
worn social-economic forms that arc symbolised by Father Ubu, or (at
the worst) a bourgeois satire on humanity's congenital faults-a satire
which would be deemed by its meretricious exaggerations to engender a
reactionary pessimism from which fascism must inevitably be born.
On the contrary, it is an original dialectical form which represents, in
relation to classically marxist thought, a dialectical leap forward analo-
gous to that which previously Analytical Geometry achieved in relation
to pre-Cartesian geometry, or scientific socialism in relation to utopian
socialist theories.

Certain reactionary circles may protest against this dialectical leap

forward, claiming that on the contrary it is for the marxist-leninist
theory to perform this task vis-a-vis 'Pataphysics. But . . . we recognise
also this aspect of the relationship, and we even base ourselves r re cis el^
on this aspect in order to transcend it by retaining it.
There is, therefore, no logical contradiction between the explanatory
method of historical materialism culminating in dialectical materialism
on the one hand and, on the other, pataphysical speculation considered
as an absorption and detersion of all explanatory methods. There is no
contradiction and there can be none. On the contrary! And the ideo-
logical-surplus-value represents a credit margin ("useless," in one
sense) which becomes reabsorbed of its own volition in 'Pataphysics
in so far as this is cultivated as a science of the "pataphysicum," notably
but not exclusively in and by the College.
Let us add, to forestall any manifestations of displeasure from the
~ataph~sicians in their turn, that we consider the dialectical and
dialectico-historical mechanism not as "justifications" of 'Pataphysics,
but as pataphysical forms themselves . . .
184 Evergreen Review
That being so, there can be no question of accusing 'Pataphysics of
being an emissary of any variety of philosophic idealism, even an emis-
sary particularly well camouflaged so as to capture the confidence of
the masses and divert them from the proletariat's historic mission. For
such idealism and its genesis are considered to be unconscious 'Pata-

physics by all those within the College who have dealt with the
matter objectively. In addition-and we are forced to return repeatedly
to this aspect-the College "im-presses" conscious 'Pataphysics into a
original socialeconomic structure, and this infrastructure irradiates, sa
to speak, a specific superstructure which the College expresses and
which expresses the College. That it is an EPIPHENOMENON there
can be no doubt. If some comrades steeped in reactionary habits
mind see in this epiphenomenal character an ideologico-social weakness,
if some analysts, "reducing revolutionary thought to a collection of
dogmas and congealed formulas" to borrow the phrase of N. Krushchevj
(14 Feb. 1956), consider this character as a simple synonym of ined
istence-then they are perfectly free to escape into abstract worl4
which are convenient because of their very irreality and which basica11J
II
are connected objectively with 'Pataphysics itself.
This epiphenomenal character implies, in addition, that such
are incapable of grasping its nature, and perhaps, in fact, that
section of the working masses, while participating in pata
activities on the various levels at which they operate, is not aware
that fact or does not bother to become aware of it. Which
inconvenient, if one considers the true nature of EPIPHE
ENALITY.
W e have thus substantially redefined the premises with which
commenced: it is indeed a question of surplus value, but not, pro
speaking, of a phenomenon; it is indeed a question, not of a reactio
idealism but of a science-of Science itself.
 Aming at the purest, most total and most complete Science, the
College of 'Pataphysics is not, one must realise, bound to attempt a
gperal educational work, which would not in fact be appropriate
to its structure, or to its methods of expression, or to the special-
ised studies which it pursues: in the same sense that the subtleties of
political Economy need not necessarily be taught to all the citizens in
a society in order for that society to be economically prosperous.
Nevertheless, it is symptomatic that the College, as recent events
demonstrate, at the same time that it spreads throughout the Universe,
becomes increasingly an institution resting upon collective responsibili-
ties and proscribing the slightest vestige of the "cult of personality"
which might still subsist in the shape of reactionary subjectivism and
unconscious 'Pataphysics, as much in the economico-directorial organisa-
tional infrastructure as in the consequent ideology which would neces-
sarily result therefrom.

W e can, indeed, be proud of the long and glorious path that has
been traversed: ~ r o u dpataphysically, it goes without saying. Beneath
the victorious gonfalon of the Grande Gidouille we pursue an invin-
cible policy encouraging peace between all the ideologies coexisting in
the dialectico-empiric subsumption of reality and all the various objec-
tively incontestable irrealities.
Long live the College of 'Pataphysics! Long live the Grande
Gidouillel Long live the ethernal and pataphysical principle of collec-
tive and sparchic leadership!
East Berlin, 1 Tatane 84 P.E.,
Feast of Father Ubu
(vulg. 14 July 1956 after J.C.)
 The final EPANORTHOSIS on the Moral Clinamen

by Dr. I. L. SANDOMIR

the whole having been

composed for the Cahier
Sur la Morale which a p
peared on 22 Sable 83 P.E.

. . . Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but

have not 'Pataphysics, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging
cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries
and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains,
but have not 'Pataphysics, I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods .
to feed the poor, and if 1 give my body to be burned, but it should not '
be pataphysically, it profiteth me nothing. 'Pataphysics suffereth long, 1
and is kind; 'Pataphysics envieth not; 'Pataphysics vaunteth not itself,*
is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own,
is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; rejoiceth not in unright-
eousness, but rejoiceth with the scientific truth; beareth all things,
believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 'Pataphysics
shall never disappear: there will be supersession of prophecies, of
tongues, of science, nay, of reality. For our knowledge and our extra-
lucidity are but partial in both senses of the word. Only 'Pataphysics
can achieve all, even that which it cannot achieve. It alone is Perfection.
* To vaunt or envy is, for the pataphysician, no longer to vaunt or envy if it
.
is done pataphysically

186
 le Baron

Jean Mollet
V i c e -Curateur
dir Co//dge d e ' P a t a p h y i p c

PrC~iJentpar Intdrim PerpPtuel

du Conseil Suprime d e ~G r a n J ~M a f t r e ~
de I'Ordre de la Grande Gidouille

AU MONDE
CIVILISE
OU NON
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T h e Editors wish to express their special pataphysical apprecia-

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