Abstract
Artaud’s most influential work by far has been Le Théâtre et son Double (The Theatre and its Double). His insistence on bodily presence, immediacy and corporeal language meant that the theatre seemed, at least at first, to be the perfect medium. However, Artaud’s career in the theatre was relatively short-lived, and by 1935 he had abandoned the theatre after the failure of his production of Les Cenci, writing to Jean Paulhan ‘j’en suis encore à CHERCHER ma voie. Le Théâtre m’a laissé matériellement et socialement sur le flanc’ (‘I’m still in SEARCH of my path. The theatre has materially and socially worn me out’).1 In many respects, he would never find this path, tearing his way through each different medium with an extraordinary ferocity, constantly disappointed by the inability of the representative form to enact the kinds of corporeal explosions that he so desperately sought.
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Notes
Antonin Artaud, (Œuvres (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), p. 661.
Artaud, OCIV (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), p. 52.
See, for example, Paule Thévenin’s ‘Artaud naturalisé beatnik!’ in Le Figaro littéraire, 9, December 1965, 2, quoted in Bradnock, Lucy, “Mantras of Gibberish’: Wallace Berman’s Visions of Artaud’, Art History, 35, (3), 2012, p. 628.
For an in-depth account of Artaud’s influence at Black Mountain College, see Lucy Bradnock, ‘White Noise at Black Mountain’ in Spectres of Artaud (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2012), pp. 65–78.
See Stephen Barber, The Screaming Body (London: Creation Books, 1999), p. 31.
Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, trans. M. Buszewicz and J. Barba (London: Methuen, 1968), p. 118.
Helga Finter, ‘An Impossible Theatre: the Legacy of the Theatre of Cruelty’, trans. Matthew Griffin in Edward Scheer (ed.) Antonin Artaud: A Critical Reader (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 53.
Artaud, OCIII (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), p. 94.
Artaud, OCII (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), p. 154.
Also see Virmaux, Alain, Antonin Artaud et le théâtre (Paris: Seghers, 1970), p. 187.
Much has been written on the Orientalist perspectives of 19th and 20th Century French writing, see for example Saïd, Edward, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003), pp. 166–91
Paule Thévenin, ‘1898–1948’ in Antonin Artaud et le Théâtre de notre temps, XXII-XXIII of the Cahiers de la compagnie Madeleine Renaud — Jean-Louis Barrault, Paris, Julliard, mai 1958, pp. 44–5. In Monique Borie, Antonin Artaud et le retour aux sources (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), p. 347.
Penelope Murray and T.S. Dorsch, Classical Literary Criticism (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 7.
Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, The Freudian Subject, trans. Catherine Porter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 47.
Borch-Jacobsen, The Freudian Subject, p. 42. Borch-Jacobsen’s use of Vorstellung is informed by Hegel’s use of it, implying it is ‘reflectively a step above the deceptive presentational immediacy of sensuous perception’, as James Yerkes writes in Yerkes, The Christology of Hegel (Albany, NY: The State University of New York Press, 1983), p. 80.
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, ‘Typographie’ in Mimesis des articulations, ed. Sylviane Agacinski, Jacques Derrida, Sarah Kofman, Ph. Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, Bernard Pautrat (Paris: Flammarion, 1975), p. 209.
Jane Goodall, Artaud and the Gnostic Drama (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), p. 168.
Monique Borie, Antonin Artaud: Le Théâtre et le retour aux sources (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), p. 11.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Tristes Tropiques (Paris: U.G.E., coll. “10/18”, 1965), p. 350
Edward Saïd, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 177.
Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale, ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye (Paris: Payot, 1972), p. 100.
Guillaume Fau, Antonin Artaud (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale de France / Gallimard, 2006), p.40.
Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, trad. Ralph Manheim (New York: chocken, 1996), p. XIV.
Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), p. 49.
Manfred Lurker, The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Egypt (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980), p. 7.
Richard Santana, Language and the Decline of Magic (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005), p. 6.
J.L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), p. 1.
Artaud, OCVIII (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), p. 131.
Evelyne Grossman, in Artaud, Antonin, 50 Dessins pour assassiner la magie (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), p. 6.
Alain and Odette Virmaux, Antonin Artaud (Besanç on: Editions la Manufacture, 1991), p. 124.
Artaud, OCXII (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), p. 19.
Josephine Machon, (Syn)aesthetics: Redefining Visceral Performance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 44.
Henri Gouhier, L’Essence du Théâtre (Aubier-Montaigne: Paris, 1968), p. 16.
Artaud, OCI (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), p. 49.
Artaud, OCXIII (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), p. 293.
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Murray, R. (2014). Theatre, Magic and Mimesis. In: Antonin Artaud. Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137310583_4
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