Antonin Artaud

Biography

Which am I?
From which do I come?
I am Antonin Artaud
You will see my body actuel
To fly in éclats
And ramasser
Under ten thousand aspects
Notoires
a body neuf
Where you pourrez
More jamais
to forget Me.
Antonin Artaud is resulting from an easy middle-class family. His/her father, Antoine King, were captain with the long course, and his/her mother, Euphrasie Nalpas, are originating in Smyrna (Turkey). If he knows a cherished early childhood of which he has memories of tenderness, heat, it is however disturbed by nervous disorders which one allots to a meningitis. Only the stays in the fatherland of his/her mother with her grandmother relieve it. The physical pain will not leave it any more in spite of stays repeated in private hospital. At eight years, it loses a eight month old little sister. This discovery of dead affects it deeply. At ten years, it avoids the drowning. It will keep this accident the phobia of water. Its religious education at the Pères Marists will bring a strong knowledge of the catholic theology to him which one finds in the esthetics of his work. It expresses a taste for the Greek, Latin and the old story. At fourteen years, he discovers Charles Baudelaire.
In 1920, it arrives at Paris and starts to write. Its first collection is refused in 1923 by directing Jacques Rivière of the " NRF " and a correspondence starts between them. Artaud explains to him why its writing is a fight against the thought which gives up it, nothing which invades it. " I never found what I write but by pangs " . River publishes the correspondence in the " NRF".
The poet becomes one moment the director of the Power station of the office of surrealist research . During this period, he writes film scenarios and prose poems, and several texts are published in " The Revolution surréaliste" , the body of the surrealist group. December 10th, 1926, during a meeting of the group, adhesion with the French Communist party is considered. Artaud refuses and leaves the group. For him, the revolution must be spiritual and not policy. " I do not like the poems of food, but the poems of the hunger, those of the patients, bet, poisoned, the torture victims of the language who are in loss in their écrits" . .

In the incipit of “ the Umbilical point of the limbs ”, it declares that " where others propose works, I do not claim another thing only to show my spirit ".

Artaud and the theater

It is necessary to be unaware of the setting in scene, the theater. All the large playwrights thought apart from the theater. remove or about the setting in external scene, but they dig ad infinitum interior displacements, this species of perpetual to and from of the hearts of their héros.
control with the author, the tender with the text, what a funeral table! But each text has infinite possibilities. The spirit and not the letter of the text! But a text requires more than analysis and penetration.
Each work they think it because of the theater. Rethéâtraliser the theater, such is their new monstrous cry. But the theater, it should be rejected into the life. What does not want to say that it is necessary to make life with the theater. As if one could only imitate the life. What it is necessary, it is to find the life of the theater, in all its freedom.
It would be necessary to change the conformation of the room and that the scene was removable according to the needs for the action. It would also be necessary that the side strictly spectacle of the spectacle was removed. One would come there either so much to see, but to take part. The public must have the feeling which it could without very erudite operation make what the actors make . The quotation above is extracted from a article published in the review " Comedia" of April 19th, 1924, in which Artaud exposes as much as it announces its vision of the theater such as it will have to be and such as it intends to carry it out. But supports and means will be constantly lacking to him, preventing it from implementing its design of a total theater .

In 1920, it meets Lugné-Poë, director of the Theater of Work, known for its stubbornness to represent works of authors little or not known like Maurice Maeterlinck, Alfred Jarry, Oscar Wilde, Henrik Ibsen, with wrong way of the theater sclerosed since the Second Empire (middle-class light comedy, melodrama of the thatched cottages, tragedy of antiquities…). Engaged, Artaud reveals great capacities of actor (" Beautiful like a wave, moving like a catastrophe… ") and of odd-job man: he created the decorations and the costumes for “ the Life is a dream ” of Calderón of Barca.

max Jacob suggests to him going to see Charles Dullin which has just created the Theater of the Workshop and takes again the restorations undertaken by Jacques Copeau in 1913 ( invention of the director, RE - creation of the theater company, refusal of employment, decoration to the strict service of the dramaturgy) that the First World War stopped. " One with the impression by listening to the teaching of Dullin which one finds of old secrecies and a whole forgotten mystic of the setting in scène." (letter with max Jacob).

In 1923, it leaves Dullin for the company of Georges and Ludmilla Pitoëff installed with the Comedy of the Fields-Élysées. Then with Roger Vitrac, Robert Aron and the material aid of Dr. Rene Allendy, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who looks after it, it founds the Theater Alfred Jarry and defines a new design of the dramatic art in proclamation published at once: " If we make theater is not to play of the parts but to arrive so that all that there is the obscure one in the spirit, of hidden, unrevealed expresses in a kind of material projection. " (1926).

The Theater Alfred Jarry will present four series of spectacles: “ Mysteries of the love ” of Vitrac, “ Belly flaring or the insane Mother ” of Multi-stage Artaud and “ ” of max Robur (pseudonym of Robert Aron), “ the Dream ” of August Strindberg disturbed by the surrealist ones (June 1927), the third act of the “ Division of midday ” of Paul Claudel played against the will of the author that Artaud qualifies d'" publicly; infamous traître". It follows an estrangement with Jean Paulhan and the reconsideration of surrealist (January 1928). “ Victor or the children with the capacity ” of Vitrac will be the last representation (December 1928). A few months later, Roger Vitrac leaves the Theater Alfred Jarry and entrusts the setting in scene of its part “ the Underhand trick ” to Marcel Herrand. Artaud shows Vitrac of treason: " Between the Surrealism free but poetic of the “Mysteries of the love” and the explicit satire of an ordinary light comedy, Roger Vitrac did not know to choose; and its part feels the parisianism, the topicality, the boulevard. The part carries the sorrow to belong to a system and a condemned world, and it must disappear with this world. "

But Artaud, which carries out face its literary activities, cinematographic and theatrical, has already the head elsewhere. In 1931, it attends a spectacle of the Balinese Theater presented within the framework of the colonial Exposure and made share to Louis Jouvet of the strong felt impression: " … of the quasi uselessness of the word which is not any more the vehicle but the point of joining of the thought, of the need for the theater for seeking to represent some on the strange sides of constructions of unconscious, all that is filled, satisfied, represented, and beyond by surprising the achievements of the Balinese Theater which is a beautiful snub with the Theater such as we conceive it. "

Continuing its search of a theater of the dream and the grotesque one, risk and setting in danger, Artaud write successively two proclamations of the “ Théâtre of Cruelty ”: " Without an element of cruelty at the base of any spectacle, the theater is not possible. In the state of degeneration where we are it is by the skin that one will make return metaphysics in the spirits. " (1932).
Its first realization “ Cenci ” played in decorations of Balthus is a failure. By its refusal of the passivity of the public, Artaud wanted to place it in a " constant bath of light, images, movement and noises " , like the diffusion by loudspeakers of the bumblebee of the cathedral of Amiens. He sought to create at the spectator a state of hallucination and fear, with the " to confront with an action, but without practical consequences " ; the image of a crime being, for the spirit, " infinitely more frightening than this same crime carried out. " The part is withdrawn from the poster after 17 representations (1935).

In 1938 appears a compilation of texts under the title “ the Theater and its double ” of which “ the Theater and the plague ” text of a conference literally incarnated , more than marked, Artaud playing the last convulsions of pestiferous in front of a dismayed assistance then hilarious.

Artaud and the cinema

To make be used the cinema to tell stories, an external action, it is to deprive itself of best of its resources, to go against its major goal.

With the " question; Which kind of films do you like? " posed by the scenario writer Clear Rene, Antonin Artaud answers: " I like the cinema. I like any kind of films. But all the kinds of films are still to create. I believe that the cinema cannot admit that a certain kind of films: that only where all the means of sensual action of the cinema will have been used . "

Disappointed by the theater which proposes only small roles to him, Artaud hopes for cinema a career of another scale. " With the cinema the actor is only one alive sign. It is with him alone all the scene, the thought of the author. "
He addresses himself to his cousin Louis Nalpas director artistic of the Company of Cinéromans, which obtains to him an engagement in “ Surcouf, the king of the corsair ” of Luitz-Morat and “ Fait various ”, a short-measuring of Claude Autant-Lara, turned in March 1924, in which it interprête " Mister 2" , the lover strangled with the idle by the mari.
Always by the intermédaire of his/her cousin, Artaud meets Abel Gance with which it sympathizes with the great astonishment of the entourage of the famous scenario writer of difficult access. For its film “ Napoleon ” in preparation, Abel Gance promises to him the role of Marat.

Clear Rene: " Which kind of films would you like to see creating? " Artaud: " I claim phantasmagoric films, poetic films, with the dense, philosophical direction of the word, psychic films. What excludes neither psychology, neither love, nor unpacking of any the feelings of the man. But of films where is operated a trituration, a remalaxation of the things of the heart and spirit in order to confer the cinematographic virtue to them which is to be sought. "

Artaud starts to write scenarios in which it tests " to join the cinema with reality intimates brain ". Thus “ Eighteen seconds ” proposes to unroll on the screen the images which ravel in the spirit of a man - struck of a odd disease - during the eighteen seconds preceding its suicide.

At the end of 1927, learning the preparation from film “ the Fall of the house Usher ” of Jean Epstein, Artaud proposes with Abel Gance to play the part of Roderick Usher: " I do not have many claims in the world but I have that to include/understand Edgar Poe and to be myself a type in the kind of Usher Master. If I do not have this character in the skin, nobody it A.I carry it out physically and psychiquement. My life is that of Usher and her disaster hovel. I have the stench in the heart of my nerves and I suffer from it. " After some tests, Artaud will not be retained due to " suracuity of sound interprétation".
The same year, Artaud furnishes proof to the surrealist its participation in the turning of film of Leon Poirier “ Verdun, visions of History ”, with the title that this " is not a patriotic film, fact for the exaltation of the most wretched civic virtues, but a film of left to inspire the horror of the war to the conscious and organized masses. I do not compose any more with the existence. I mistake more still it although the evil. Heroism makes me shit, morality makes me shit. "

Ten scenarios written and suggested, only one will be turned “ the Shell and the clergyman ” by Germaine Dulac. Extract of the scenario: " Fine bottom of its mouth between opened, from the interval of its lashes emerge as gleaming smoke which all collects in a corner of the screen, forming like a decoration of city, or extremely luminous landscapes. The head ends up entirely disappearing and of the houses, the landscapes, the cities continue, tying itself and untying itself, form in a kind of amazing firmament of celestial lagoons, caves with the incandescent stalactites and under these caves, between these clouds, in the middle of these lagoons one sees the silhouette of the ship which passes and passes by again black on the white zone of the cities, white on these decorations of visions which turn suddenly to the noir."
Engaged at the same time by Carl Theodor Dreyer for his film " the Passion of Jeanne d' Arc " , Artaud follows only intermittently the realization of “ the Shell… ”. The evening of the first projection to the Studio of the Ursulines (February 9th, 1928), her disappointment is such as it cannot be prevented from expressing bruyamment its disapproval with the surrealist ones come in group with the meeting.

Consequently, the magic of the cinema does not exist any more for him. It continues despite everything a career of actor, by food needs. The advent of speaking diverts it this " machine with the eye buté" which he opposes " a theater of blood which with each representation will have saved corporally something ".

In 1933, in an article “ the early Old age of the cinema ”, it writes the funeral praise of it: " the cinematographic world is a died, illusory and cut up world. The cinema world is a closed world, without relationship to the existence. "
In 1935, it appears two ultimate times in “ Lucrèce Borgia ” of Abel Gance and “ Koenigsmark ” of Maurice Tourneur.

Antonin Artaud will have turned in nearly 25 films without never to have obtained to the least first role nor even a supporting role of importance:

“ Makes various ”, Claude Autant-Lara, 1924
“ Surcouf, the king of the corsair ” of Luitz-Morat, 1925
“ Graziella ”, Marcel Vandal, 1926, turned to Italy
“ the Jew wandering , Luitz-Morat, 1926, role of Runt
“ Napoleon ”, Abel Gance, 1927, role of Marat
“ the Passion of Jeanne d' Arc ”, Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1927, role of the monk Massieu
“ Verdun, visions of history ”, Leon Pear tree, 1927
“ the Shell and the clergyman ”, German Dulac, 1928, with Génica Athanasiou
“ the Money ”, Marcel the Herbarium, 1928, role of the secretary Mazaud
“ Tarakanova ”, Raymond Bernard, 1929, role of a young gipsy
“ the one night old Woman ”, Marcel the Herbarium, 1930, touné with Berlin, role of Jaroslav the traitor
“ the Opera of quat' under ”, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1930, French version round in Berlin, role of an apprentice begging
“ Suburb Montmartre ”, Raymond Bernard, 1931, role of Follestat, a leader of revolt
“ wood Crosses”, Raymond Bernard, 1931, role of Vieublé
“ Shot at dawn ”, Serge de Poligny, 1932, turned at Berlin, role of a chief of gangsters
“ MATER dolorosa ”, Abel Gance, speaking version, 1932
“ Liliom ”, Fritz Lang, 1933, role of the grinder-angel guard
“ Lucrèce Borgia ”, Abel Gance, 1935, role of Savonarole
“ Koenigsmark ”, Maurice Turner, 1935.

Stay in psychiatric hospital

In 1936, Artaud leaves for Mexico and goes to horse at the Tarahumaras to find " there; the solar antique culture " and of the Peyotl.
One year later, on its forced return of Ireland, it will be interned to have exceeded the established limits of the marginality. It is also a means, according to his/her friends, to ensure him to be nourished during the Second world war. Unfortunately, the psychiatric hospitals undergo the same ones, if not more, food deprivations that the unit of the population.

Antonin Artaud spent nine years of internment in various asylums. With Sotteville-the-Rouen on its return of Ireland, where it is retained two months lasting without the possibility of contacting anyone, then to the hospital of Evrard City, close to Paris. In this établissment, two Italian doctors, Ugo Cerletti and Lucino Bini want to try out a new treatment. The first having noted in the slaughter-houses of Rome that the electric shocks do not kill strike the animals but them, it passes from the experimentation on the animals to the human beings, encouraged in this company by the Nazis who prohibit the use of insulin for the mentally ills. Artaud escapes the electric shocks thanks to the diagnosis from a doctor who considers it too weak to support the treatment. It will not have this chance at the hospital of Rodez. It will undergo fifty-two electric shocks which will complete to break it physically.

Last years

His/her friends, Arthur Adamov, Marthe Robert and Jean Paulhan obtain that it left the asylum of Rodez, on May 25th, 1946. It goes back to Paris where it will live three more years. January 13rd, 1947, the Theater of the Old man-Dovecote is attacked by nine hundred people of literary and artistic All-Paris, of André Gide with André Breton. In a silence of in addition to tomb, 9 p.m. at midnight, " Artaud Momo" ressuscite. Gide: " Jamais still Antonin Artaud had appeared more admirable to me. Of its material being nothing remained that of expressive: its dégingandée silhouette, its face consumed by the interior flame, its hands of which drowns. "
During this period, it is lodged in a private clinic of Ivry-sur-Seine, but free of its movements. There, he writes on more than four hundred books of schoolboy, and draws self-portraits and portraits of his friends to and the chalk black lead of colors. In November 1947, it records for the radio “ to finish some with the Judgment of God ” with the participation of Maria Casarès, Paule Thévenin and Roger Blin. Programmed for on February 1st, 1948, the diffusion is prohibited by it by the director of French Broadcasting. Following various reactions caused by its prohibition, its diffusion is proposed with a public restricts made up journalists, artists and writers. Maurice Nadeau: " I approve Guilly when it finds scandalous the emission of Antonin Artaud and I delighted by this scandal. Did one repeat us on all tons them only in the state of decline where we are, nothing could not scandalize more? That a poet by his only voice reaches that point, gives again a certain credit with the words. " The text will be the subject of a posthumous publication in April 1948.
Reached of a cancer of the diagnosed rectum too late, Antonin Artaud dies the morning of March 4th, 1948, probably victim of an accidental surdose of chloral hydrate, product of which he knew little about the use. One found it recroquevillé with the foot of his bed. When its family arrives, prevented almost nine hours after its death, it finds its room completely plundered of all its businesses personal, of its books, its books, its manuscripts, its notes, its contracts, its correspondence, as of its drawings of which some were bugs with the walls of its room. Antonin Artaud rested on its bed, the turned over pockets. A " complaint against X" was deposited for vol. On one of his rough notebooks, one could read his last sentences: " to continue with/make ego/this envoûté eternal/etc etc "

Hypnotized by its own misery, where he saw that of whole humanity, Artaud rejected with violence the refuges of the faith and of Article He wanted to incarnate this evil, in living total passion, to find, in the middle of nothing, the extase. Cry of the suffering flesh and the spirit alienated in a man who wants to be such, here is the testimony of this precursor of the theater of the absurd (Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett) and ceremony (Michel de Ghelderode, Jean Genet). We are not free. And the sky can still fall us on the head. And the theater is made to teach us that initially. I have to cure me judgment of the others, all the distance which separates me from myself.

Testimony

“Perhaps it in greater conflict was than us all with the life. Very beautiful, as it was then, while moving it involved with him a landscape of black novel, very transpierced flashes. It was had by a kind of fury which did not save so to speak any the human institutions, but which could, on the occasion, to be solved in a laughter where all the challenge of youth passed. Nevertheless this fury, by the astonishing power of contagion of which it laid out, deeply influenced the surrealist step. It has us enjoints, as far as we were, to take truly all our risks, to attack ourselves without reserve what we could not suffer. ”, André Breton

Works

“ Tric Trac of the Sky ”, illustrated engravings on wood by Élie Lascaux, Paris, Simon, s.d., 1923
“ the Umbilical point of the limbs ”, Gallimard, NRF, Paris, 1925
“ the Weigh-nerves ”, Leibovitz, Paris, 1925
“ Art and death”, Denoël, Paris, 1929
“ the Monk, of Lewis ”, translation and adaptation, Denoël & Steele, Paris, 1931
“ Héliogabale or the anarchist crowned ”, Denoël & Steele, Paris, 1934
“ the New revelations to be it ”, Denoël, Paris, 1937
“ the Theater and its double ”, Gallimard, Paris, 1938
“ Of a voyage to the country of Tarahumaras ”, Editions of the review Fountain , Paris, 1945
“ Van Gogh committed suicide of the company ”, K editor, Paris, 1947
“ Artaud Mômo ”, Bordered, Paris, 1947
“ Ci-To lie preceded of the Indian culture ”, K editor, Paris, 1947
“ to finish some with judgment of God ”, K editor, Paris, 1948
“ Cenci ”, in “ complete Works ”, Gallimard, the Pleiad, 1964
“ 50 drawings to assassinate the magic ”, Gallimard, Paris, 2004
“ Artaud Works ”, edition established, presented and annotated by Evelyne Grossman, collection " Quarto" , Gallimard, Paris, 2004
“ Book of Ivry, January 1948 ”, facsimile, Gallimard, Paris, 2006 New
“ books of Rodez ”, Gallimard, the Imaginary one, Paris, 2006

Sound documents

“ Van Gogh, committed suicide of company ”, radio broadcast, INA, Andre Dimanche Editor, 1995.
“'' the Rite of Peyotl at Tarahumaras ''”
“ to finish some with the judgment of god ”, INA and Andre Dimanche Editor, 1995
an extract of “'' to finish of it with the judgment of god ''”
“'' to finish some with the judgment of god complete ''” in 10 parts
audio Book (reading mp3) of the beginning and an extract of “'' Van Gogh, committed suicide of the company''”

Audio-visual documents

“'' the Shell and the Clergyman ''”
“'' One century of writers ''” (France3 2000)

Bibliographies

Andre Bonneton, the prophetic shipwreck of Antonin Artaud , Lefebvre Editor, Paris 1961.
Jean-Philippe Cazier, " Antonin Artaud" in With the sources of the thought of Gilles Deleuze , Editions Sils Maria/Vrin, 2005.
Raphaël Denys, the will of Artaud , Gallimard, 2005.
Evelyne Grossman, Artaud, the lunatic authenticates , Farrago/Léo Scheer, Tours, 2003.
Christian Nicaise, Antonin Artaud: The Books , the perpetual Moment, Rouen, 2003.
Anaïs Nin, “" I am sickest of the surréalistes" - News where Antonin Artaud appears under the features of the Pierre character”, in the Cloche .
Jacques Prevel, In company of Antonin Artaud , followed Poems. Flammarion, 1994.
Florence de Mèredieu, " It was Antonin Artaud" , Biography. Beech, 2006.

Catalog of films

Antonin Artaud - Realizer: Labarthe Andre S. - Prod.: A.M.I.P./France 3 - Mark: DOC. & Co. (available in media library. Documentary which presents the “cruel theater of the life of Antonin and celebrates the poet, revolutionist of art and the life. ”)
In company of Antonin Artaud (1993) - Realizer: Gerard Mordillat, scenario according to Jacques Prevel by G.Mordillat and Jerome Prior
" True story of Artaud the mômo" (1993) - documentary (2h50) - Realizers: Gerard Mordillat and Jerome Prior (two films available in Dvd - Arte editions)

Random links:

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