Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)

Abstract

Artaud had opted for a theatre that worked on the nerves and senses, and rejected one which sought to speak to the intellect alone. His Theatre of Cruelty, as described in his essays and manifestos (1931–35) published in The Theatre and its Double (1938), derides everything that is logical and suggests a search be made to seek out the ‘marvellous’, the hidden and mysterious forces within humankind and nature. ‘Beware of your logic, Sirs, beware of your logic,’ he wrote, ‘you don’t know to what lengths our hatred for the logical can lead us.’¹ Artaud’s attacks on reason in the arts, on education, and on conventional modes of thinking in general reflected perfectly his own mental deficiencies and explain in part his affinity with the Surrealists. What was faulty within Artaud’s psychological makeup was his inability to think in a Cartesian manner. Hence his rejection of the status quo en bloc. For him, more than for the Surrealists, his attitude disclosed an unconscious desire to banish everything that smacked of normality. With the reign of the illogical, Artaud would be one of many, like the others; no longer a recluse, tormented by the vast gulf that separated him from society.