Les Subsidia Pataphysica
Les Subsidia Pataphysica du Collège de ’Pataphysique. Written in French.. Numéros 0 à 28 (années 1965 à 1975 vulg.)
No 1 | No 2 | No 3-4 | No 5 | No 6 | No 7 | No 8 | No 9-10 | No 11 | No 12-13 No 14 | No 15 | No 16-17 | No 18 | No 19 | No 20-21 | No 21 | No 22 | No 23 | No 24-25 | No 26 | No 27-28
No 0 (28 tatane 92)
Elementary Chrestomathy of ’Pataphysics
Number zero of Subsidia Pataphysica inaugurated the new series with an essential Chrestomathy of pataphysical texts. Already published in the Cahiers or the Dossiers, they were gathered here for the training of neophytes and the retraining of veterans. Grouped under three commercial categories: The True, The Beautiful, The Good, they constitute, without pretension or complacency, a small synopsis of the themes that the vulgar take for paradoxes but whose pataphysical evidence can serve to structure the speculations of those who feel poorly protected against present day contagions. A precious handbook.
No 1 (29 sable 93)
Governments for the Subsidia
After looking back at issue zero, Subsidium 1 opens up new horizons: "The era of preparatory work is over." The Message by which His Magnificence inaugurated his Magisterium sets the tone (dating from Ethernity 93), and the ideotomic works that accompany it (Criteria, General, Feint, Humanistic, etc.) make this issue, combined with number zero, the Little Yellow Book of the Pataphysician. Texts by Jacques Rigaut, R. Queneau, Jacques Prévert, Jean Ferry, drawings by Max Ernst, Paul-Émile Victor and (a great many) by Pierre Bassard. Studies by Tavera (on the sestina: this essay was the source of the prodigious developments given to this form by the Oulipo), Duchateau (G. Ohnet), Gayot (Imaginary geography), Chaise, Francueil (What is television ?). Not to mention the great Bernoulli who, thanks to Queneau, makes the spiral pronounce: eadem mutata resurgo.
No 2 (29 tatane 93)
Applications of these Governments
Part of this issue was supposed to appear in no. 1 and was only severed from it as a convenience. Contents: an indirect analysis of the pataphysics of the "Avant-garde" (by Louis Barnier and Irène Gondoire); the pataphysics of Language (for the first time a scientific language is studied, that of botany,also works of the Oulipo,and the Language of Our Time). Then, the pataphysics of Attitude (the Stylites, Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin, Saint Augustine and Trotsky, and an unpublished text by Marcel Duchamp, not to mention Battleships and Molluscs by Jean Ferry).
No 3-4 (8 sable 95)
Guide to the Surroundings of Vrigny
This issue takes an unexpected form: a guide book to a region full of memories for, and the activities of the College, this large fascicle develops a Pataphysics of tourism and its literature, at the same time as it supplements Dossier 28 with a folklore. A medley of archeology, religion, idleness, art, botany, toponymy, regionalist sweetness. One of the most sumptuously published illustrations from the College. Numerous maps. Index. A letter from Sherlock Holmes, texts by Senninger, Bassard, Brunet.
No 5 (22 gidouille 95)
The Events of May
Once does not make a habit, the College of ’Pataphysics sacrifices itself to Actuality, or rather it is Actuality which immolates itself on the altar of the College, since this number, compiled before those of good will, who were happy to label "events", even "revolution", or even "a crisis of civilization", discovered the whole genesis of the thing (the masterly chatterings of the Teaching Establishment),along with its most consubstantial aspects (proselytizing Moralism) and its most anecdotal (bad behaviour of motorists), etc. The majority of the pieces in this collection are by contemporaries of Karl Marx, Léon Jouhaux or Sigmund Freud, but their names, if not their works, are much less known: an imparity is here compensated for.
No 6 (10 sable 96)
Varia
Opens with a tribute to the memory of the inventor of the readymade and ends with a literary readymade (by Senninger). Study of the sources, ancestors and inspirations of Jarry, Boris Vian, Ray Ventura. Structural and impressionistic analyses of New Impressions of Africa. Bibliography of Boris Vian by Michel Rybalka. Lipogrammatic texts by Georges Perec. Rich Beatitudes.
No 7 (1er gidouille 96)
Fanzines and Crambophyllology
The College descends the family tree instead of climbing it: studying the descendants, followers and imitations of the College who have appeared (and some of whom survive) since its inception. From the League of Owl Adorers to the Faculty of Catachimy through that of Pygology. The reader avid for doctrine will learn very effectively from error, heresy, deviation, muddle or from the doctoral thesis of Keith Beaumont, on Pataphysics. Numerous texts; drawings by Gil. Shadows.
No 8 (22 sable 97)
Patanalysis of Jules Verne
A good and even excellent part of this Subsidium is taken up by a study by François Raymond: Jules Verne and Perpetual Motion, which not only sheds light on a new aspect of the author of the 27th Equivalent Book, but is a model of pataphysical analysis (or patanalysis). Continuation of Keith Beaumont’s work on "Pataphysics", Dominique Lacaze on Criteria, “A Supposition” by René Clair; K. Kirmu contemplates the first men on the moon and also brings us back to Jules Verne.
No 9-10 (22 gidouille 97)
Pataphysical Anthology of Poetry
Collection of verse texts in French (and sometimes Belgian) from the seventeenth century vulg. to the present day: from the "greatest" (Molière, Sully Prudhomme, André Chénier, Paul Eluard) to the most "modest" (Robert Ratonie, Sabathier-Gazan, Marcailhou d’Aymeric), from the most expected (François Coppée, Anaïs Ségalas) to the most unforseen (Teilhard de Chardin, Henri Allorge). The whole is divided into scientific, social and religious sections, which remind us that poetry is first and foremost an ethics. To be completed with an issue about political poetry.
No 11 (8 gueules 98)
Good Authors
The notion of "good authors" is to be taken as antiphrasis: like that of Doctor Faustroll, a pataphysical library can only include equivalent authors. Which does not rule out an election. Here, in a pedagogical register, are little-known texts by Lewis Carroll and T.S. Eugène Ionesco. The TT.SS. Marx Brothers and Raymond Queneau, but also Léonce Bourliaguet are scrutinized, as is Pierre Ménard, the author of Quixote, who justifies studies such as those on the influence of Proust on Balzac and of Lovecraft on the Gospel, or of Sully Prudhomme on Lévi-Strauss, Robbe-Grillet, Roland Barthes or Georges Simenon. This issue opens with Grand Largue, an important Message from His Magnificence the Vice-Curator Opach for the twentieth anniversary of the Viridis Candela.
No 12-13 (22 merdre 98)
Political poetry
Continuation of no. 9-10, Anthology of pataphysical poetry, this issue of the Subsidia deals with a subject rarely tackled by the College, at least explicitly: politics. Is it not essentially poetic? Aragon, Paul Claudel, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Apollinaire, Edmond Rostand, General Bruneau are made to sing. The ball, the bayonet, the distant horizon, the tricolour, Hitler, Mao Zedong, de Gaulle, Pétain, Stalin, Matsushita Electric company, the GPU are celebrated in song.
No 14 (8 sable 99)
Exegesis
Voltaire for herpetology, Baudelaire for his cats, Raymond Roussel for his process, Pierre Ménard and Colonel Godchot for Le Cimetière marin, the Latin verses dissected by Saussure, the roots of Bantu by the Rev.P.J. Prat of the Congo missions, are the jewels of this issue also devoted to the exegesis of the notable artworks of the T.S. M.C. Escher.
No 15 (29 gueules 99)
Oulipo and Chaval
Following Dossier 17, the College reveals new works from the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle: the relation x takes y for z, by TS Raymond Queneau, the metamorphosis poems for Möbius strips of the Regent Luc Étienne, the antonymic poetry of Marcel Bénabou, Saussurian anagrams by TS Latis. The Regent François Le Lionnais and Marcel Bénabou open a royal road to the future Oulipopo and Outrapo. In addition, the Regent Mario Ruspoli and Alain Mignien present Chaval, with many unpublished works (letters, drawings, texts and a documentary project on hell). Émile Lesaffre deals with real estate problems in Pierrot mon ami.
No 16-17 (1er tatane 99)
Little Eteem of Relics
The Co-Commission for Inventions gawps at relics. Not only religious relics (heads, faces, foreskin, tears ...) but also worldly relics (de Gaulle, Sherlock Holmes, Johnny Hallyday, Voltaire, Marat, Che Guevara ...), the most material of relics (coproliths or fossil turds) to the most imaginary (but the “hrönir” cancel out this futile distinction), from relict places to relics by absence (three footprints). The attitudes of the lipsanomaniac (lipsanophagy, lipsanoclepty, overbidding) are examined. A valuable index testifies to the limitlessness of the subject.
No 18 (22 haha 100)
Celebration of the Year One Hundred
At the head of this issue, Ce Pain-là by his Magnificence Opach warns against the centenary celebration of the birth of Alfred Jarry and, in anticipation, distances himself from his "friends". It is the hundredth year of the pataphysical era which is celebrated here, 1 Absolu 100, the 8th September 1972 and not September 8, 1973. Thus, the College precedes. Florestan Ferry, T.S. François Laloux, Georges Perec and various Optimates tie the threads of this celebration. Thieri Foulc sets up a museum dedicated to anti-relics, but which is perpetuated.
No 19 (3 pédale 100)
The Ten Thousand Mile Race
On the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the Tour de France, Ruy Launoir pays tribute to its creator, Henri Desgrange, and brings together an anthology of his texts on the sport of cycling, but also on the First World War. He emphasizes the sumptuously pataphysical character of sport, or rather of sports literature, a characteristic already highlighted, in a completely different way, by Antoine Blondin. While Alain Mignien and Roland Baumet deal with the metaphysics of the bicycle, after its pataphysics, Paul Gayot carefully examines the Ten Thousand Mile race, the central episode of The Supermale. He anchors it in the "real", the opposite of Henri Desgrange’s magnifying of sport by poetry. Thus, Pataphysics has two wheels ...
No 20-21 (16 gidouille 100)
Studies of The Supermale
Grand “Patanalysis” of the novel by the Regent of Vernology, François Raymond. Sourcerous work which illuminates it, as far as possible, by means of allusions and exact quotes, whether distorted, apocryphal, folkloric, Latin, Britannical, slang, or aquaphilic. Important errata on the texts of the various editions of Jarry’s novel. Beatitudes and illustrations harmonise with the phalloid aspect of the novel, more particularly as regards riding, as on the bicycle.
No 22 (22 sable 101)
Varia
Study by Thieri Foulc, of the translation by Jarry of the fifth Equivalent Book from the library of Doctor Faustroll (Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner), and of the Calculation of the Surface of God by the Proveditor Georges Petitfaux. An exercise in translation and treason conducted by Regent Vasco Tartuca. Study of Isaac Asimov and History, concerning Hari Seldon and the Foundation. Potential history (but isn’t all history potential?) is applied to the demographics of the College.
No 23 (13 palotin 101)
Imaginary China
Published by the Andrological Laboratory, this Subsidium Sinicum deals less with China than with the vision of China among travelers, ancient or modern. It is first presented as an imaginary journey - like all journeys - and develops a pataphysics of illusion which culminates in the extraordinary revelation of Father Larrieu in "The Great Illusion of the Wall". Three studies, on “The Ethnography of a People Foreign to China”, on the Chinese aspects to be found in Messalina and in The Old Man of the Mountain, lead back from Jarry to Jarry by land.
No 24-25 (2 haha 102)
Crusade for Mystery and the Mystery Novel
After the work of Oulipo, the College reveals that of Oulipopo (the Worksop of Potential Detective Fiction). Founded by François Le Lionnais, this new Ouvroir became one of the first of a cohort of Ou-X-pos. Analytical Oulipopo is here represented by an attempt to summarise every possible situation of the mystery novel that answers the question “Who Did It?”, assembled by the Founder-President of the Ouvroir. Large study of the rules of the mystery novel and their transgressions. Little Red Riding Hood is treated as a detective story, in the manner of Conan Doyle, Chesterton, Ellery Queen and Jorge Luis Borges. Authentic texts by Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar. Acrostic initials and enigmatic rebuses by the Regents Gil and Carelman.
No 26 (29 pédale 102)
Variation on the Ha ha
A A, Ha Ha, Ha-Ha, Ah! Ah! and even Ha! Ha! Ha! This brief anthology of modulations around the tautological monosyllable is the last issue of the College review before the Occultation, if not the last word. Important account of the consequences of this decision to occult collegial activities taken by His Magnificence Opach. The Institutions are organizing themselves to overcome individual shortcomings.
No 27-28 (28 clinamen 102)
Index
Pataphysics takes its place at the table; the third series of the Viridis Candela comes to an end (which, moreover, is more of an opening than a closing) with the index of names cited in the Cahiers, Dossiers and Subsidia (the thematic index is limited to the necessary and sufficient: the words spoken by Bosse-de-Nage). Indispensable to the use of the scientific data accumulated over twenty-five years by College researchers, this tool, as demonstrated by the Indiction (provided with an Indicule) by the Indicative Regent Marcel Troulay, as well as the alphabetical serial novel by the Proveditor Senninger, it is also a springboard for sumptuously inutilious imaginary solutions.