It is hard to envision - Edit 2
Before modification by DomA at 22/04/2012 04:18:26 PM
A bit easier with 'pataphysical texts, but not always that much more! It's often very close to the absurd. Faustroll isn't Jarry's hardest text (he's written a basically unreadable "novel" using only heraldic vocabulary, for instance. Several of this texts were more accessible to the average educated people once, but now require tons of footnotes to make any sense of, mostly because most people have nothing close to a real classical education - myself included despite a few years of basic latin and one of greek). A lot of Jarry's works can be described as "college humor", but the kind that amuses those who can spot a very obscure parody or reference to Greek classics, or who have enough Greek to understand and find funny his neologisms.
One of the classics 'pataphysical sayings is that at some point in his life each 'pataphysician, consciously or not, is confronted with the two following propositions:
A. a real 'pataphysican never takes anything seriously except 'pataphysics, which consists of taking nothing seriously.
B. Since 'pataphysics consists of taking nothing seriously, the real 'pataphysician must take nothing seriously, therefore not even 'pataphysics itself.
Of course, one must also consider if 'pataphysics' admonition to take nothing seriously should be taken seriously, and whether this has to be considered seriously or not.
Faustroll is the founding text of 'pataphysics, but its classic is rather Jarry's Ubu King cycle. It's a play cycle, originally one performed by a puppet theater. Like Ionesco's best plays, it's still produced every decade or so. It's two hours of pandemonium - like a circus gone nuts. It's a classic and powerful satire of power, greed and their evils for all that it's in the form of a huge farce.
Ubu King is a much better place to start with Jarry's works, and no doubt available online (Faustroll too certainly, perhaps not in English translation while Ubu probably is. Before the internet, Faustroll had become quite hard to find, except in Jarry's complete works (in the expensive Pléiade edition, so not very accessible to many).
Those are nice, and you find them here and there. One novelist who used them a lot (before the letter, the term was coined later) was Boris Vian.
The English writers most admired by 'pataphysicians were Swift and Carroll. Aside from Jarry himself, Rabelais is their number one influence.
One of the classics 'pataphysical sayings is that at some point in his life each 'pataphysician, consciously or not, is confronted with the two following propositions:
A. a real 'pataphysican never takes anything seriously except 'pataphysics, which consists of taking nothing seriously.
B. Since 'pataphysics consists of taking nothing seriously, the real 'pataphysician must take nothing seriously, therefore not even 'pataphysics itself.
Of course, one must also consider if 'pataphysics' admonition to take nothing seriously should be taken seriously, and whether this has to be considered seriously or not.
Faustroll is the founding text of 'pataphysics, but its classic is rather Jarry's Ubu King cycle. It's a play cycle, originally one performed by a puppet theater. Like Ionesco's best plays, it's still produced every decade or so. It's two hours of pandemonium - like a circus gone nuts. It's a classic and powerful satire of power, greed and their evils for all that it's in the form of a huge farce.
Ubu King is a much better place to start with Jarry's works, and no doubt available online (Faustroll too certainly, perhaps not in English translation while Ubu probably is. Before the internet, Faustroll had become quite hard to find, except in Jarry's complete works (in the expensive Pléiade edition, so not very accessible to many).
I do like the idea of 'pataphors, where a metaphor creates its own reality. I suppose in 'pataphors, a face would physically launch a thousand ships.
Those are nice, and you find them here and there. One novelist who used them a lot (before the letter, the term was coined later) was Boris Vian.
The English writers most admired by 'pataphysicians were Swift and Carroll. Aside from Jarry himself, Rabelais is their number one influence.