Spencer Museum of Art

Alfred Jarry Exhibition

About Almanac of 1899

Almanach du Père Ubu illustré, Paris, 1899

Lithographs by Pierre Bonnard
Virginia and Ira Jackson Collection, Houston
113 x 99 mm

• Alfred Jarry
  Cover
• Alfred Jarry
  Page 5
• Alfred Jarry
  Page 12
• Alfred Jarry
  Page 21
• Alfred Jarry
  Page 52
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Jarry produced two almanacs with lithographs by Émile Bonnard: one for the first three months of 1899 and the second for the year 1901. It seems apt that Jarry should experiment with the almanac format. Almanacs traditionally combine a wealth of both sacred and profane popular lore, stories, short pieces, and moral examples; and they are concerned with astronomy, time reckoning, and the earth's relationship to the rest of the physical universe. Jarry's oeuvre might well be encapsulated within this format. Not too surprisingly, we find Ubu, gazing at the universe through a telescope, on the cover.

The title page of Jarry's 1899 almanac announces non-existent articles on such subjects as the birth of Jesus Christ and the reign of Père Ubu and a section on the ecclesiastical and secular calendar. Actual entries appear under the headings of "Useful Knowledge," "The Urban Agronomist," "The Trait of Probity," and "Astronomical Tables" (incorporating a short Ubu play). The almanac concludes with a necrology for Stéphane Mallarmé, the "Statutes of the Grand Ordre de la Gidouille," and "Prognostications." The almanac allows Jarry to insert Ubu into the larger scheme of things. In it, for example, we can find information about the eclipse of Père Ubu as well as for the eclipse of the sun.