[In the following essay, Issacharoff examines the sources for one of Jarry's lesser-known plays, Léda.]

Intertextual signals in drama are necessarily distinct from those used in other literary texts. The oral mode of transmission inherent to the medium requires a far more explicit method of cueing than that used in instances where a reader is not obliged to decode instantaneously and can, if need be, turn back and reread. I have suggested elsewhere¹ that oral (and specifically theatrical) intertextuality is, in consequence, more likely to entail simplified textual mechanisms and processing.

Two forms of intertextuality² are commonly used by dramatists: quotation and transformation. Quotation is the placing in a new textual environment of a normally recognizable passage and thus, sometimes, the subversion (or reinterpretation) of famous lines—Hamlet's soliloquy and the récit de Théramène would be examples of likely candidates. Tom Stoppard, for instance, has taken such textual games to a provocative extreme by importing into Travesties, and placing cheek by jowl, a Shakespeare sonnet and excerpts from speeches and letters by Lenin! Transformation is the lexical or phonetic tampering with a necessarily well known line or passage, usually for comic effect. The appropriate decoding of such verbal play is contingent on recognizing the hidden hypotext (to use Genette's term) and the discrepancy between text and intertext. Christine Brooke-Rose's amusing article title, “The Squirm of the True,” exemplifies this. The device is not, of course, restricted to literary discourse. It is frequently used in journalism (especially in titles of articles), in advertising, as well as in political slogans. Advertising captions frequently transform literary phrases or titles—“Ma chemise contre un Perrier!”; “Tendre est la nuit à bord du France …”; “Bonjour souplesse” (an allusion to Françoise Sagan's novel in a panty hose ad), and so forth.³

Theatrical intertextuality may be limited to specific discursive units, or may be extensive, in which case it usually takes the form of parody. The latter was extremely popular in the nineteenth century—Seymour Travers has traced over a thousand examples of the genre for the period 1789-1914.⁴ An analysis of his corpus shows that intertextual cues often occur in titles or subtitles of plays (e.g., parodie, parodie bouffe, imitation burlesque, etc.), thus constituting a reader's “contract” or implicit “instructions for use” for a particular playscript.⁵

A further distinction may be made between mandatory intertextuality (in which a specific passage or a whole playscript parodies an intertext of variable length and significance, ranging from a brief, often playful allusion, using the title or short excerpt to a complete text) and broader, unfocussed intertextuality in which there is no specific hypotext but rather a theatrical convention or device that is parodied or ridiculed. Thus, for example, in parodying Lamartine's Toussaint Louverture, Labiche, in addition to offering pastiches of particular lines, also pokes fun at Romantic conventions such as the long soliloquy (“Est-ce qu'on ne va pas se taire un peu, par ici? (…) Sortez! J'ai le plus grand besoin de faire un monologue!”).⁶ Similarly, in the same play, Labiche parodies other conventions, including the use of the Alexandrine, elevated style, and so forth. Intertextuality is not restricted to the mandatory linking of a text to a given intertext. The visual channel is also open to the resourceful and imaginative dramatist. Thus, well known props associated with a particular dramatist or play—Beckett's trash cans, the dagger in Macbeth, the banana in La Dernière Bande, and so on—may be used as intertextual signals. Gesture, movement (and even sound effects) can be put to similar use.

The preceding remarks will serve to illustrate, albeit in summary fashion, some of the intertextual devices commonly found in drama. Let us now consider Jarry's Léda from that broader perspective. The manuscript of the play, long thought lost, was recently rediscovered by Carlton Lake, Curator of the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.⁷ In 1981 a first edition appeared as a joint publication of the Humanities Research Center and Christian Bourgois in Paris.⁸ The play was first performed on May 15, 1900,⁹ though little is known about the performance. I have found no record of further performances or revivals.

The title¹⁰ of the play is the first implicitly intertextual signal, though not perhaps, narrowly so, in being focussed on and forming a dynamic relationship with specific earlier text(s), but in the wider sense of providing an allusion to the famous Zeus-Léda legend. The latter is derived from a variety of sources, including Homer, who alludes briefly to the story in the Odyssey (Book XI, l. 298), specifically to Léda as mother of Castor and Pollux; Euripides, who mentions Léda briefly in Helen; and Herodotus whose allusion is equally short. Other references to the legend are to be found in Ovid—a passing reference in the Metamorphoses and slightly longer allusions in his Heroides and Amores.¹¹ None of these references qualifies as an intertext in any strict sense, since none of them in any way governs the deciphering of Jarry's operetta. A far more interesting version of the legend is provided by Yeats' fine poem, “Leda and the Swan,” but unfortunately for our purposes here, it was published well after the performance of Jarry's text …¹²

No less important than the roots in ancient literature is the long and distinguished tradition in sculpture and painting, the Italian Renaissance being one of the richest periods for versions of the legend. Brancusi, Falconet, and Maillol have represented the story in sculpture, while Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Tintoretto, Veronese, Pontormo, Nicolo Dell'Abate, Largillière, Boucher, Titian, are among those who have immortalized Léda in paint. Again, however, we are not dealing with “intertexts” in a strict sense. Though Jarry may have known several of these visual versions, they cannot be considered intertexts, since none of them is explicitly (or even obliquely) alluded to in the script (either in the dialogue or in the didascalia). It is likely, though, that the visual tradition is more significant as a “source” than the mere passing references in Homer, Euripides, Herodotus and Ovid.

But there are at least two other written sources which were in all likelihood known to Jarry and which may function as quasi intertexts. The first is possibly signaled by the subtitle of the play, “opérette bouffe.” Jarry was familiar with Meilhac and Halévy's operettas and may have intended to parody La Belle Hélène, in particular, which was first produced in 1864, with music by Jacques Offenbach. In the Introduction to the Bourgois edition, Henri Bordillon is right to suggest Meilhac and Halévy as a source; Patrick Besnier, author of the “Postface,” goes much further in claiming that: “Léda est un ‘à la manière de’ Meilhac et Halévy dont nombre des ingrédients se trouvent dans La Belle Hélène.”¹³ The evidence hardly supports the claim. The allusions to the Zeus-Léda legend amount to four in number—two in each of Acts I and II (only three of which are cited in support of the claim):

(a) (Acte I, sc. v, p. 8):
CALCHAS:
Ce cygne traqué par un aigle,
Que Léda sauva dans ses bras …
HéLèNE:
Ce cygne-là … c'était mon père (…)
(b) (Acte I, sc. v, p. 9):
HéLèNE:
(…) Mais est-ce ma faute? … moi, la fille d'un oiseau, est-ce que je puis être autre chose qu'une cocotte?
(c) (Acte II, sc. i, p. 35):
Une salle dans les appartements particuliers de la reine (…) Au fond à droite, un tableau représentant Léda et le cygne: Léda est seule dans un bois, et, au fond d'une allée, le cygne s'approche d'elle, la tête haute et l'œil animé.
(d) (Acte II, sc. iii, p. 37):
HéLèNE:
regardant longuement le tableau qui représente Léda et le cygne. J'aime à me recueillir devant ce tableau de famille … Mon père … ma mère … les voici tous les deux … O mon père, tourne vers ton enfant un bec favorable! Et toi, Vénus … ne pouvais-tu trouver pour ce berger une récompense moins falâtre? … Pourquoi, mais pourquoi, ô déesse, as-tu toujours choisi notre famille pour faire tes expériences?
Nous naissons toutes soucieuses
De garder l'honneur de l'époux,
Mais des circonstances fâcheuses
Nous font mal tourner malgré nous …
Témoin l'exemple de ma mère!
Quand elle vit le cygne altier
Qui, chacun le sait, fut mon père,
Pouvait-elle se méfier?
Dis-moi, Vénus, quel plaisir trouves-tu
A faire ainsi cascader la vertu?(14)

These brief allusions are not much longer than those occurring in Ovid. The only other “proof” provided is the comment about a comparable use of anachronism in Léda and in La Belle Hélène. Given the scant evidence, the case is hardly convincing, even if one may feel that Besnier is not wrong in drawing the reader's attention to La Belle Hélène.

It is just possible, of course, as Besnier suggests, that Jarry's Léda, in performance, made specific musical reference to Meilhac and Halévy, using parodies of Offenbach, and so forth, but this amounts to no more than speculation, since no account of the performance appears to be extant, and the score is lost. At any rate, the didascalia of Léda cast no light on the matter whatsoever, and it seems reasonable to assume, therefore, that explicit reference to Meilhac, Halévy and Offenbach was not intended.

But there is another written source (also mentioned by Bordillon) which may well have had a significant influence on Jarry—Pierre Louÿs's Lêda ou la louange des bienheureuses ténèbres. Bordillon offers no proof, though, other than to mention that Louÿs's text was published just before the performance of Léda.¹⁵ Yet there is some internal evidence to support the contention that Louÿs's text is indeed a source if not an intertext of Jarry's operetta—the odd spelling of Zeus. Louÿs, like Jarry, uses the rare form Dzeus, no doubt a personal coinage. Louÿs no doubt wished thereby to enhance the Greekness of the name, especially since he also respects Greek phonetics in his spelling of Lêda (Ληδα) by using an open rather than a closed e. In all likelihood, Jarry knew and was influenced by Louÿs's short story—at least to the extent of adopting the spelling of Jupiter's name. On the other hand, given what is no more than a minimal difference between the two forms, the phonetic variation is only slight. We are thus up against what is to some extent at least a visual phenomenon, intended (paradoxically) for the reader rather than for the audience that would barely hear the difference. Though it is comparable to Jarry's playful spelling in Ubu, in cases such as phynance, meant for the eye rather than for the ear, Dzeus does not fall neatly into the same category, given that it is heard on stage on several occasions.¹⁶ Clearly, then, the unusual orthography is intended as a signal to the director as well as to the cast and thus cannot be ignored. In other respects, however, Jarry's script is quite unlike Louÿs's; we are therefore dealing with only a minimal mode of intertextuality.

Jarry's originality in Léda consists chiefly in the rather strange Dzeus-Léda love scene with its surprisingly chaste substitution of pastilles for sex (instead of sleeping with Léda, Dzeus gives her a bonbonnière). The result of this is a desexualizing of the legend and a sort of immaculate conception: “LEDA: J'aurai un fils! deux fils! pour avoir croqué une pastille! Une seule pastille!” (p. 88). This is without doubt the single most significant way in which the author of Léda interacts with his intertexts, throwing mythological caution to the winds, thereby subverting his sources. In technical terms, what we are dealing with is a device that combines some features of two intertextual categories discussed earlier—mandatory and unfocussed. Although the love scene is not mandatorily intertextual in the narrow sense of being focussed on a specific hypotext, it is nevertheless mandatory insofar as deciphering the boldness of Jarry's innovation is contingent on the spectator's (or reader's) knowing the narrative elements of the (unfocussed) hypotexts. In other words, the full impact of Jarry's version of the legend would be lost on the uninitiated spectator/reader unaware of the Léda legend and its tradition.

As we have seen, then, the quotation device is not used in Léda (except in playful orthography), whereas the principal intertextual practice is concerned with the transformation of narrative rather than of textual units. Although the Dzeus-Léda love scene (Scene XI, pp. 86-89) is extremely short, it stands out in an otherwise flat text. Dzeus and Léda only have two brief duos—Scene VII (pp. 83-84) and Scene IX (pp. 86-89). Dzeus hardly has a chance to be seductive; he is certainly never armed with the eloquence accorded him by, say, Giraudoux, in Amphitryon 38. Nor is Léda represented as a femme fatale … Their dialogue, consequently, is less than lyrical, while the purpose of the love scene with its surprising twist is no doubt to undermine the eroticism of the legendary encounter. Jarry's aim in Léda was thus in all likelihood to maximize his surprise effect, whose success would ultimately depend on the skill of the director. The result is no less than a new reading of the legend.

Notes

1. See “Labiche et l'intertextualité comique,” Cahiers de l'Association Internationale des Etudes Françaises No. 35 (1983), 169-182.

2. I am using “intertextuality” in the strict sense of those instances where the intertext governs the way a text is decoded; cf. Riffaterre's concept of intertextualité obligatoire: “[là où] l'intertexte laisse dans le texte une trace indélébile, une constante formelle qui joue le rôle d'un impératif de lecture et gouverne le déchiffrement du message dans ce qu'il a de littéraire …” “La Trace de l'intertexte,” La Pensée No. 215 (octobre 1980), p. 5.

3. These examples are cited by Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni, La Connotation (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1977), pp. 126-7.

4. See Seymour Travers, A Catalogue of Nineteenth Century French Theatrical Parodies [A Compilation of the Parodies between 1789 and 1914 of which Any Record was Found] (New York: King's Crown Press, 1941).

5. For further discussion of the theatrical title as intertextual signal, see my Le spectacle du discours (Paris: J. Corti), in press.

6. Eugène Labiche, Traversin et Couverture (1850), Œuvres complètes (Paris: Club de l'Honnête Homme, 1966-1968), II, 220.

7. The manuscript was first shown to the general public in an important exhibit of French mss. held under the auspices of the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin in 1976. In the Catalogue, From Baudelaire to Beckett. A Century of French Art and Literature. A Catalogue of Books, Manuscripts and Related Material Drawn From the Collections of the Humanities Research Center (Austin: The Humanities Research Center—The University of Texas at Austin, 1976), Carlton Lake describes the ms. of Léda in the following terms:

   No. 268 Léda Opérette bouffe en un acte, par Alfred Jarry et Karl

   Rosenval [Berthe Danville]

   Holograph manuscript, 46 pp. Small quarto.

   Jarry met Berthe Danville in the winter of 1897. In collaboration with her he wrote Léda in 1899 and 1900. Léda was performed on 15 May 1900, but has not been published.

   The manuscript is entirely in Jarry's hand. On the first sheet he has written the title, the cast of characters, and drawn a small sketch of the stage set.

   (p. 98)

8. In the interest of historical and textual accuracy, it might be useful to point out here that the Bourgois edition contains two inaccurately copied passages as follows:

   • (a) Bourgois ed., p. 45 (Léda): “A qui le dis-tu, ma brave Aglaia?” should read: “A qui le dis-tu, ma bonne Aglaia?”

   • [ms. p. 6]

   • (b) Bourgois ed., p. 46 (Anne): “afin qu'ils puissent jouir d'un repos …” should read: “afin qu'ils puissent jouir ensuite d'un repos …”

   • [ms. p. 7]

   The ms. of Léda consists of 46 handwritten (mostly easily legible) numbered pages. I wish to acknowledge here the courtesy extended to me as well as the permission to consult the ms. at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

9. “15 mai [1900]: Première représentation de Léda en collaboration avec Karl Rosenval (alias Berthe Danville, alias Berthe Blocq) [d'après une lettre de Berthe Danville du 29 avril 1900]—Michel Arrivé's note in the Pléiade edition of Jarry's Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), I, xxxix. The text of the letter is included in the Bourgois edition of Léda on p. 12.

10. The title of my article is not, of course, intended to suggest that Jarry did not use intertextual devices elsewhere in his work. The most obvious examples are the plays in the Ubu cycle, which can either be read autonomously, or, as Michel Arrivé convincingly demonstrates, as an intertextual construct, the individual plays being interdependent. See his Les Langages de Jarry (Paris: Klincksieck, 1972).

11. Metamorphoses VI, 109. The allusion in the Heroides is quite laconic:

    Iuppiter ut soceri proavus taceatur et omne
    Tantalidae Pelopis Tyndareique decus,
    dat mihi Leda Iovem cygnus decepta parentem,
    quae falsam gremio credula fovit avem.

    (Heroides XVII, ll. 54 sq.)

    There are two brief references in the Amores:

    (a) Qualis ab Eurota Phrygiis avecta carinis
                        coniugibus belli causa duobus erat,
                        qualis erat Lede, quam plumis abditus albis
                        callidus in falsa lusit adulter ave …

    (I, x, l. 3 sq.)

    (b) Quod si concussas Triton exasperet undas,
                        quam tibi sit toto nullus in ore color!
                        tum generosa voces fecundae sidera Ledae
                        et “felix, dicas quem sua terra tenet!”

    (II, xi, l. 29 sq.)

12. LEDA AND THE SWAN

    A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
    Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
    By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
    He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

    How can those terrified vague fingers push
    The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
    And how can body, laid in that white rush,
    But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

    A shudder in the loins engenders there
    The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
    And Agamemnon dead.
                                                                                              Being so caught up.
    So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
    Did she put on his knowledge with his power
    Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

    (1923)

    The legend has also been reworked by Gabriele d'Annunzio (Leda senza cigno), but this version also appeared several years after the performance of Jarry's operetta. Finally, to complete the picture, Léda makes a fleeting appearance in yet another post-Jarry text—in Giraudox' Amphitryon 38 (1929). In Act II, Sc. vi, Alcmène tries to persuade Léda to make love with Jupiter in her place.

13. Léda, Préface de Noël Arnaud. Introduction et notes par Henri Bordillon. Postface de Patrick Besnier (Paris: Humanities Research Center & Christian Bourgois, 1981), p. 101.

14. Page numbers refer to La Belle Hélène in Meilhac et Halévy, Théâtre (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1955).

15. The date of publication given is erroneous, however, and the bibliographical information incomplete. Louÿs's Lêda was in fact published in a small first edition in 1893 (Paris: Librairie de l'Art Indépendant), and not in 1898 as stated. Talvart et Place provide the following information (which I have verified): “Paris, Librairie de l'Art Indépendant, 1893. Edition originale tirée à 125 exemplaires numérotés (…), Bibliographie des auteurs modernes de langue française (Paris: Editions de la Chronique des Lettres françaises, 1954), XII, 318. In addition to the first edition, there were two others prior to 1900: (a) Mercure de France, 1898 (“Nouvelle édition, tirée à 600 exemplaires numérotés …,” according to Talvart et Place) and (b) [the edition mentioned by Bordillon]: Librairie Borel, 1898. Needless to say, the availability of an edition as early as 1893 in addition to the two others that appeared prior to 1900 makes Louÿs's text a more likely intertext.

16. 16 times in the dialogue (and twice in the didascalia). Léda speaks his name 6 times, while Dzeus says his own name three times.