JARRY (Alfred). - Lot 126

JARRY (Alfred). Born in Laval. 1873-1907. French writer, creator of the character "Ubu". M.A.S. "Alfred Jarry". S.l.n.d. [Paris, 1901]. 1 1/2 pages in-8. Rare. Article for La Revue Blanche [famous fin-de-siècle review by the Natanson brothers] (issue 186, March 1, 1901) in which Alfred Jarry announces the publication of the play by playwright Alfred Capus (1857-1922) entitled "La Bourse ou la Vie": ...Here is, published, this play whose great and deserved success has been noted everywhere and even here on several occasions. All those who applauded it at the Théâtre du Gymnase will want to savor at leisure the cause of their joy, and those who by some chance did not attend will make up for their absence. This work of excellent theater will find fervent readers even among those who hate the theater: they will realize that published theater, at least that of Alfred Capus, is still the most marvelous novel of manners. It's a novel from which the author has pruned everything that would impede the light, human life of his characters, and from which he has endeavored himself, if it is to efface himself to leave only his spirit. We had already encountered similar heroes in a recent novel by M. Capus: with unparalleled [art] he has transposed them entirely; for these dear rascals who confide in us, in the tête-à-tête of reading, their amusing scoundrels scoundrels of the very first order, would say the financier Brassac would manifest themselves in the theater a little too cynically naughty. There are people there who watch them, - there are even a lot of people at the Gymnase [...] Let's be no less witty than the very witty creatures of M. Capus, by asking them what they would do if there were no one there...Jarry's collaboration with La Revue blanche only became regular on July 1, 1900, when the serial publication of Messaline began. From this issue onwards (n°170), and with one exception until the last, Jarry contributed a wide range of texts to the magazine: reading notes, theater reviews, poems, excerpts from novels ("La Bataille de Morsang") and, above all, his "Gestes" and "Spéculations". Henri Avenel wrote in 1901 that La Revue blanche was "one of the most widely read periodicals in literary Europe" [La Presse Française au vingtième siècle, pref. by Jules Claretie, Flammarion, p. 384].