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Pataphysics Bergen 1 In writing my book, it became apparent that, however informative it may be, it is useless on a number of levels. Firstly, it is useless to try to explain ‘pataphysics. To understand pataphysics is to misunderstand pataphysics. Second, a chronology of pataphysics, however pataphysically delivered, is at best a description only of some of the evidence, the lineaments of pataphysics in the world. Third, the overwhelmingly subjective nature of pataphysics, with its contradictions and exceptions, does not allow for what was conceived as a “user’s guide”. Furthermore, I state, very early on, that pataphysics is profoundly useless. The subtitle has apparently made people laugh out loud. Yet it is the only possible subtitle, in my opinion. 2 3 4 We should pause for a moment to consider pataphysics itself. This is a talk about the publications of the College, and not a general introduction to pataphyiscs, which is just as well, because that would take more than one lecture! However, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the concept, I should just give a brief summary. The word was invented by schoolboys (including Alfred Jarry) at the Lycée de Rennes in the 1880s, as a way of taking the mickey out of their science teacher, an unfortunate man named Hébert. He became the butt of many jokes, including a collection of puppet plays in which he was transformed into the mostrous Ébé, who undergoes a series of Rabelaisian adventures and is baptised with essence of pataphysics. These skits became the basis of Jarrys celebrated play Ubu Roi, first staged in 1896, which caused an enormous scandal and pretty much launched modern theatre. Its opening word, merdre, which is shit with an extra r, was delivered by Ubu, a puppet-like figure, holding a loo-brush, with a spiral painted on his belly, who turns out to be a Professor of Pataphysics. He swears by his green candle, which in Latin is Viridis Candela, hence the general title of the College publications. Jarry (pictured), who lived from 1873-1907, dying young partly from the effects of a lifestyle that involved poor nutrition and vast quantities of alcohol, developed the idea of pataphysics much further than just Ubu. In a series of novels and other speculative writings he elaborated what he was eventually to define as the science of imaginary solutions. These included instructions on how to build a time machine, a set of telepathic letters to Lord Kelvin challenging his materialistic view of the universe, and a mathematical definition of God that sets Him as a point on a line tangential between zero and infinity. Pataphysics, said Jarry, was the science of the laws governing exceptions and contradictions. Pataphysics is to metaphysics as metaphysics is to physics. You can tell from this that pataphysics persistently eludes definition, and is purposefully useless. 5 The pataphysical symbol is the spiral, which is in fact two spirals: that which is drawn and that which is described by what is drawn. A common trope in pataphysics is the simultaneous existence of mutually exclusive opposites. The name Faustroll itself combines the supreme magus Faust with a dangerous creature from Norse mythology. Another key idea is dervied from Epicurus – the clinamen – or accidental swerve of atoms that creates matter. A third is the syzygy, the unexpected alignment. For Jarry, a pun was a syzygy of words. The apostrophe before the word was only ever used once by Jarry, to avoid an obvious pun, he said, although it remains rather unclear exactly what that pun might be. Today it is used only with the noun, and to distinguish voluntary, or conscious, pataphysics from involuntary, or unconscious, pataphysics, as practised by everybody (for we are all pataphysicians). The Collège de Pataphysique came into existence to document and explore pataphysics, not just in Jarrys work but in all its manifestations, including those patacessors who developed the science unawares. 5 Each of the noted pataphysicians after Jarry understood these fundamental ideas. Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions. There are solutions, but they are imaginary. So, for the Dadaists, such as Arthur Cravan and Jacques Vaché, inspired respectively by the intellectual scene in Paris and the First World War, pataphysics became an imaginary solution to the problems of the uselessness of life and death. 6 7 8 Duchamps work, and life, is an exploration of the pataphysical theme of uselessness. Having established the uselessness of painting early on, he proceeded to remove art itself, preferring chess. His works, of which Fountain is one of the most celebrated, replace functionalism with an attempted un-aesthetic. Its not that they are about anything in particular. They are something. Its just that that thing has no apparent function, apart from the fact of its existence and the consequences of that fact for other things in the world. By being present (or even, in some cases, absent) they stand in contradistinction to the utilitarian world, yet without seeking to overthrow it. They are contradictions and exceptions. These are the by-products, the evidence, of Duchamps pataphysics. The Marx Brothers, on the other hand, made themselves, as a three-in-one entity, an unholy trinity, inutilious. Lets pause to watch their classic take on an old clowns routine in Duck Soup. The visual gags here will say more than I can about their pataphysics. 9 10 The Collège de ’Pataphysique was founded in a postwar Paris that was understandably grim and desperately seeking to rediscover its artistic, literary, and philosophical soul. This fervor resulted in a proliferation of variously earnest groupings. There were many right-wing groups, including Gaullist factions, ranging from anti-Communists such as the Rally of the French People (led by de Gaulle himself) through to left-wing Gaullists such as André Malraux. The former surrealists had split, with Louis Aragon, now political head of the National Committee of Writers, leaning ever more toward Stalin, and André Breton, still rather loyal to Trotsky, leading a surrealist group in condemning the French Communist Partys support for colonialism. Sartre and his colleagues meanwhile pioneered the role of public intellectual, espousing a kind of radical individualism that tended to pull people away from the French Communist Party. Many of these groups based themselves in rival cafés on the Left Bank: Les Deux Magots and the Café de Flore on the boulevard Saint-Germain, and the Dôme in Montparnasse, for example. For the curious visitor, it was possible to make a tour of intellectual Paris by visiting the cafés. Adrienne Monnier had opened her celebrated bookstore La Maison des Amis des Livres in the rue de l’Odéon in the Latin Quarter of Paris in 1915. When Sylvia Beach decided to open her own bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, in 1919, Monnier provided advice and support, and the two stores rapidly became important meeting places for the literary avant-garde, attracting French, British, and American writers. Unlike Shakespeare and Company, La Maison des Amis des Livres managed to remain open during the German occupation and continued for a further decade after the end of World War II. The idea of a Collège de ’Pataphysique was first discussed there, on May 11, 1948, by Oktav Votka and Maurice Saillet, witnessed by Mélanie Le Plumet and Jean-Hugues Sainmont. The Collège de Pataphysique was formally founded in the winter of 1948, and right from the 11 start set out its organizational structures. The head of the Collège, its Inamovable Curator, was to be a fictional character: Dr. Faustroll, from Alfred Jarrys novel The Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, pataphysician, published posthumnously in 1911. Faustroll is assisted by his Starosta Bosse-de-Nage, the dog-faced baboon who accompanies him on his travels from Paris to Paris by sea, and who only ever says ha ha. The first and most senior apparently living entity in the hierarchy is therefore the Vice-Curator, who, at the foundation of the College, was His Magnificence Irénée Louis Sandomir (1864‒1957). The present-day Vice-Curator is a crocodile, Lutembi. Another version of the same story concerns a Professor of Letters and Philosophy, who taught at the Lycée in Reims (Baudrillard, among others, was a pupil) and then at the Lycées Michelet in Vanves and Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He was a man of many identities, including P. Lié, Lathis, Jean-Hugues Sainmont, Dr. Sandomir, Mélanie Le Plumet (who turns out to have been a cat), Oktav Votka, and certain other luminaries of the Collège de Pataphysique. 11 This is the complete listing of the trimestrial reviews. The first three series, the Cahiers, Dossiers and Subsidia, map onto the Magistrailities of the first three Vice-Curators of the Collège: Sandomir, Baron Mollet, and Opach, and tend to reflect the visions of those individuals. The Cahiers set out the character, mission and organisational structures of the Collège. The Dossiers focus on administering the science to the world. The Subsidia show a gradual withdrawal from public manifestations. A subsidium is defined as a help, support or relief. This withdrawal culminated in the Occultation of 1975, from which point the reviews, and indeed the visible activities of the Collège itself, were run by a caretaker organisation, the Cymbalum Pataphysicum. Issue 41 of the subsequent Monitoires began a retrograde new series – LExpectateur – which counted down from 16-1 in anticipation of the disoccultation in 2000. The Carnets Trimestriels reinstated the 28 issue formula, and the Correspondanciers are going strong at 18 issues and counting… 12 The pataphysical conception of Time does not necessarily recognize a conventional succession of events. As Jarry clarified: The Explorer in his [Time] Machine beholds Time as a curve, or better as a closed curved surface analogous to Aristotle’s Ether.
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