tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post8988130339197732558..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: Slavery is the only true freedom! - Jarry makes an argument, or so I do not argueAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-58673271969144701372013-07-28T22:25:32.106-05:002013-07-28T22:25:32.106-05:00I think you hit it just right. Whatever the inten...I think you hit it just right. Whatever the intent, modern audiences are likely to treat these cruel works as camp. And Jarry is far enough along in the tradition that he was perfectly aware of this.<br /><br />Jarry turned himself into an Ubu-like figure in real life, yet was not cruel.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-1232098049925070162013-07-27T23:17:43.759-05:002013-07-27T23:17:43.759-05:00Two years having past, I have now also read Ubo cu...Two years having past, I have now also read Ubo cuckolded and Ubo unchained. In my post on Ubo Rex I accepted Susan Sontag's classification of Jarry with Kafka and Sade as part of the literature of cruelty . Now I am starting to see a jarry as a camp figure. Maybe social,norms have evolved and made him camp but i do not see an intention to hurt in his works. He is not pure camp as he a self conscious artist.Mel uhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08714473754458914681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-26067938535960749732011-07-09T21:36:57.310-05:002011-07-09T21:36:57.310-05:00Those first two books are wild: Ubu passages are m...Those first two books are wild: Ubu passages are mixed in with over-the-top Symbolist prose poems and Jarry's primitive woodcuts. He doesn't seem like he's trying to shock; more like he's creating an intensely personal version of medieval folklore. Anyway, that's one reading...<br /><br />And thanks for writing the Ubu posts!Doug Skinnerhttp://www.dougskinner.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-39498399868803559442011-07-09T19:19:18.461-05:002011-07-09T19:19:18.461-05:00Doug, that explains a lot. Shattuck's antholo...Doug, that explains a lot. Shattuck's anthology includes excerpts from Jarry's novels, but not either of those.<br /><br />Thanks a lot for reading the Ubu posts!Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-72706715851997143702011-07-09T13:21:47.277-05:002011-07-09T13:21:47.277-05:00"Ubu Cocu" was based on a puppet play ca..."Ubu Cocu" was based on a puppet play called "Onésime," which Jarry wrote and performed while still in school; it actually predates Ubu. Scenes from what later became "Ubu Roi" and "Ubu Cocu" were published in "L'Echo de Paris," "Mercure de France," and in Jarry's first two books, "Les Minutes de Sable Mémorial" and "César-Antechrist," before "Ubu Roi" was performed. So even though "Ubu Cocu" wasn't published until 1944, there were still substantial chunks in print.<br /><br />Cheers!Doug Skinnerhttp://www.dougskinner.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-63167617747821068722011-07-01T17:54:49.238-05:002011-07-01T17:54:49.238-05:00That makes sense to me. Apollinaire had certainly...That makes sense to me. Apollinaire had certainly read all of it. And as long as Jarry was alive, there was Ubu in the flesh.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-90398860344845827052011-07-01T12:34:57.977-05:002011-07-01T12:34:57.977-05:00Jarry was deliberately demonstrating different kin...<em>Jarry was deliberately demonstrating different kinds of radical artistic freedom – freedom to be chaotic, freedom to use form, freedom to offend, freedom to reform.</em><br /><br />Love it. Yay for the success of Ubu Week!<br /><br />You point about <em>Ubu Cocu</em> not being published or performed for so long makes me think of comments from earlier in the week about performing vs. reading plays. It certainly seems as if people were reading these unpublished, unperformed plays and fragments. From the timeline I've got in <em>Tout Ubu</em>, he looks to have been shopping them around, and the whole way the Ubu tradition was built up makes me think that Jarry was sharing these works, or at least their ideas, with his circle. So I think they could probably be pretty influential without ever being performed or published.nicolehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17532641082944082516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-24578954730059662842011-07-01T12:00:07.523-05:002011-07-01T12:00:07.523-05:00The Ubu Plays, Grove Press, 1968, has a 1944 Frenc...<i>The Ubu Plays</i>, Grove Press, 1968, has a 1944 French publication date for <i>Ubu Cocu</i>. Roger Shattuck, in the introduction to <i>Selected Works</i>, Grove Press, 1965, says 1943. Neither mentions anything about performance or the venue of publication. So, Jenny, good questions!<br /><br />The manuscript was actually owned by Paul Eluard, how or why I do not know.<br /><br />Rise - I think that's it, that <i>Ubu Cocu</i> is some sort of extreme, while <i>Enchained</i> is some sort of solution - a synthesis, even, maybe, although that sounds unlikely, as if Jarry thinks like Hegel.<br /><br />What I do not know, or one of many things I do not know is the extent to which the liberty Jarry advocates or undermines is creative or artistic, or really meant for "ordinary" life. Jarry himself tried to merge the two.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-84943976591777971932011-07-01T11:36:02.713-05:002011-07-01T11:36:02.713-05:00Ubu Cocu was performed in 1944? In France? Before ...Ubu Cocu was performed in 1944? In France? Before or after the liberation? That might have something to do with questions of freedom (actual freedom to perform the play, for one thing.) You interest me strangely.Jennyhttp://shelflove.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-37987587247186492572011-07-01T05:32:09.942-05:002011-07-01T05:32:09.942-05:00Oh, to be free! Yes, freedom is the only true free...Oh, to be free! Yes, freedom is the only true freedom. Hurrah! And your thematic exploration was on point. I also think that there's a kind of dialectic between plays, where in <i>Rex</i> the overthrow of the king and the creation of a totalitarian regime demonstrate the usurpation of collective public freedom, in the political sphere. <i>Cocu</i> is about invasion of Achras's privacy, a form of deprivation of individual freedom. <i>Enchained</i> as a kind of 'solution' to the injustices introduced in the two plays. Subvert the structures of power. Level everyone off as 'free' slaves. Abolish the construct called freedom in order to breed a species called equality. Nonsensical, but nevertheless insidious and liberating. The wretched means and ends: what you call "radical artistic freedom".Risehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17446964640160585194noreply@blogger.com