Alfred Jarry was a counterculture, French playwright during the 1800s in France. Jarry’s work contained writing styles unseen to the world and presented vivid ideas and concepts that shocked crowds. During his lifetime, his most notable works, such as, Ubu Roi were highly controversial and greeted only with either hostility or great admiration. Despite this great controversy, however, Jarry continued to challenge the public in his writings as he continued to branch off and grow from his humble beginnings in high school. Along with his beginning in playwriting, high school brought Jarry’s desire for challenging world views when a grotesque physics teacher seemed to be the very quintessence of everything he had seen wrong with the world. From …show more content…
Jarry was born on September 8th 1873 in Laval, Mayenne, France and “. . . was a brilliant and original boy, independent, curious, eager to live; obstinate, fierce, sarcastic, shy” (New Directions Publishing Co., V). He shared all the traits of an ambitious artist ready to experience the world and express himself into it. By the age of ten years old, he had begun school at Lycée in Rennes, France where he attended for the rest of his school years. While Jarry learned through school with ease, however, he could be a defiant and disruptive student when he desired and would utilize his raw intelligence and wit to do so. After five years of attendance, Jarry had finally became a student under the wing of the most joked about teacher in the school, Professor M. Hébert. To all students, Hébert “. . . was physically grotesque, flabby and piglike, lacked all dignity and authority, and had been the butt of schoolboy humour for years before Jarry’s arrival” (New Directions Publishing Co., V), which inspired Jarry and a few of his fellow classmates. Jarry saw Hébert as everything wrong in society summed up and personified before his eyes every day as his professor’s frantic irresponsibility, pretentiousness, and simple buffoonery led to countless lab explosions and ill-preparedness for everyday classes, but all of these antics brought creative inspiration to Jarry and his classmates …show more content…
Much like how the young Alfred Jarry was a witty, defiant student that would continuously be disruptive in class, he had now become much older and defiant in much larger ways to society as a whole.‘Pataphysics had become his outcry to the public that he would never conform to what they desired from him and continue to write what he so desired for himself. However, this lead to a dichotomy throughout his career as “Jarry wanted to publish his work and gain success, but categorically refused to compromise on anything to do with his texts” (rug.nl). Many of Jarry’s closest friends believe this to be a large contributor to his depression and alcoholism since this provided a creative frustration inside himself that longed for more than what he had but refused to change to achieve it. Through this struggle, it is seen that “Jarry offered himself as a victim of the world’s absurdity” as he continuously tried to bring light to this avant-garde form of art and was only ever ridiculed for his attempts (Styan, 50). ‘Pataphysics became Jarry’s greatest creation but also became what had hurt him the most as it consumed his life and hurt him mentally all while Père Ubu stripped Jarry of his identity. As much as ‘pataphysics had been a torment for Jarry, it was his entirely life and his diehard passion that made him keep striving towards not only being successful but also not sacrificing