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A review by screen_memory
Collected Works: Volume One by Antonin Artaud, Jacques Rivière, Alastair Hamilton, Victor Corti
5.0
It becomes immediately apparent that Artaud was not one who was situated at the fringes of all things--of society, of his associations, of his self--but one who had breached the borders and
became utterly lost within the dangerous territory that lay beyond.
His severe mental illness seems evident in the bizarre associations he
makes between two concepts, although the strength of his prose is born of his peculiar brand of perverse lyricism. .
For all of Artaud's evident strangeness, it seems ironic that he would be banished from the Surrealists since he alone seems to have best represented the Surrealist ideal, but it was his rejection of Surrealism's alignment with Communism and its consequential focus on more base and unextraordinary desires such as an 8-hour work day and what-not. .
Because of his oftentimes debilitating physical illness as well as his festering mental illness that was given wing to fly into increasingly stranger realms of the unconscious, Artaud was one who was perpetually suspended on the *otherside; the other side of Surrealism, the other side of good health, the other side of life, the other side of the self. Artaud seemed to curse the void cast by consciousness between the mind and the body, and struggled to reconcile the dual existence of the two, to align the Artaud of flesh with the distant Artaud of mind and spirit. .
Years ago I became fascinated with Surrealism, and naturally my fascination extended to its helmsman, Andre Breton, but my interest in Breton has since dissipated along with my interest in what I now regard as the dreary and dull consequence of their pursuit of psychic automatism. In Artaud, I find an ally who stands against this movement I once thought fascinating and, in a certain sense, symbolizes to some degree a turning against my former self.
It was Breton who praised the virtue of living within a glass house, where everything within is turned outward, where nothing could remain hidden and where every thought and desire would be recorded and made known. it is no surprise, then, that the pamphlet in which he attacked Artaud was entitled In the Open. Artaud's vicious rebuke was entitled In the Dark, effectively casting a definite fissure between two opposing sets of values. Whereas once I stood on Breton's side in the open, as I've grown older and shifted my interests and values, experienced certain radical reformations in my worldview, and have turned my obsessive focus on to vastly different things, I find myself more and more drawn to the other side, content these days to remain in the dark.
became utterly lost within the dangerous territory that lay beyond.
His severe mental illness seems evident in the bizarre associations he
makes between two concepts, although the strength of his prose is born of his peculiar brand of perverse lyricism. .
For all of Artaud's evident strangeness, it seems ironic that he would be banished from the Surrealists since he alone seems to have best represented the Surrealist ideal, but it was his rejection of Surrealism's alignment with Communism and its consequential focus on more base and unextraordinary desires such as an 8-hour work day and what-not. .
Because of his oftentimes debilitating physical illness as well as his festering mental illness that was given wing to fly into increasingly stranger realms of the unconscious, Artaud was one who was perpetually suspended on the *otherside; the other side of Surrealism, the other side of good health, the other side of life, the other side of the self. Artaud seemed to curse the void cast by consciousness between the mind and the body, and struggled to reconcile the dual existence of the two, to align the Artaud of flesh with the distant Artaud of mind and spirit. .
Years ago I became fascinated with Surrealism, and naturally my fascination extended to its helmsman, Andre Breton, but my interest in Breton has since dissipated along with my interest in what I now regard as the dreary and dull consequence of their pursuit of psychic automatism. In Artaud, I find an ally who stands against this movement I once thought fascinating and, in a certain sense, symbolizes to some degree a turning against my former self.
It was Breton who praised the virtue of living within a glass house, where everything within is turned outward, where nothing could remain hidden and where every thought and desire would be recorded and made known. it is no surprise, then, that the pamphlet in which he attacked Artaud was entitled In the Open. Artaud's vicious rebuke was entitled In the Dark, effectively casting a definite fissure between two opposing sets of values. Whereas once I stood on Breton's side in the open, as I've grown older and shifted my interests and values, experienced certain radical reformations in my worldview, and have turned my obsessive focus on to vastly different things, I find myself more and more drawn to the other side, content these days to remain in the dark.