In The Passion, Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race (1903), Jarry approaches the characteristic secularization, and banalization, of modernity with playful frankness, turning one of the most solemn scenes of the Christian imaginary into a sporting event not unlike the Tour de France:

Entered to race, Barabbas was scratched.

The starter was Pilate. He pulled out his waterclock (or clepsydra), which got his hands wet, unless he’d simply spat on them. And he dropped the flag.

Jesus broke at full speed.

According to that very good sports commentator, Saint Matthew, it was common practice in those days to flog bike sprinters at the start, the way a coachman does with his hippomotors. This whipping acts as a hygienic massage the same time as it stimulates. So Jesus started off in fine form, but immediately had a flat. A stretch of track seeded with thorns popped his front tire all the way around.

After getting a flat, Jesus mounts the frame of his bicycle, his cross, on his shoulder and does the rest of the Golgotha course on foot. The idea of the passion of Christ as an uphill race recalls the idea of anabasis, the ascent from the underworld, which is equivalent to the act of coming out from a labyrinth (0.5, 1.2, 1.3). In fact, at the end of the race Jesus is tied head to head with the two thieves. “it’s known, too, that he continued the race airborne”, says Jarry “but that’s another story.”