Antonin Artaud's Writing Bodies (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs)

oxford modern languages and literature monographs Editorial Committee c. h. griffin e. m. jeffreys a. kahn k. m. kohl m...

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oxford modern languages and literature monographs Editorial Committee c. h. griffin e. m. jeffreys a. kahn k. m. kohl m. l. mclaughlin i. w. f. maclean r. a. g. pearson

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Morfee: Artaud’s Writing Bodies 00-Morfee-prelims Final Proof

page iii

29.6.2005 3:25pm

Antonin Artaud’s Writing Bodies ADRIAN MORFEE

CLARENDON PRESS

.

OXFORD

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Adrian Morfee 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Excerpts from Antonin Artaud’s Oeuvres comple`tes ß Editions Gallimard Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–927749–4

978–0–19–927749–0

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

to Nathalie, of course


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Editions Gallimard for permission to reproduce extracts from Artaud’s Œuvres comple`tes. I also wish to thank the British Academy for a Postgraduate Studentship, which helped fund the thesis on which this work is based. I have received generous help from many teachers, colleagues, and friends. I am particularly grateful to Dr Christina Howells, who supervised the thesis. Without the guidance, encouragement, wisdom, stimulus, and inspiration of Professor Malcolm Bowie, who jointly supervised this work, it would never have been completed. His beneWcial inXuence is present throughout. To him I am most deeply grateful.


CONTENTS Notes on Texts and Abbreviations

x

Introduction

1

1.

Painful Bodies of Thought

20

2.

Self-Presence, Thought, and Language

49

3.

Angelic Bodies, Demonic Bodies

71

4.

Creating Identity and Meaning

97

5.

Writing Doubles

121

6.

A God-Ridden Artaud

150

7.

A Simple Artaud

173

Conclusion

206

Bibliography

221

Index

227

NOTES ON TEXTS AND ABBREVIATIONS References to Antonin Artaud’s Œuvres comple`tes are given by volume and page number in the main body of the text. The second revised edition is used where one exists. Volumes i and xiv are each in two parts, designated * (part 1) and ** (part 2) by the publisher. Thus (i**. 9) refers to vol. i, pt. 2, p. 9. In addition to the main nrf Gallimard series is Nouveaux écrits de Rodez, referred to as NER. Other references to uncollected texts are set out in footnotes where appropriate. In capitalizing titles of Artaud’s works I have in all cases followed the format of the Wrst edition.

en poe´sie nous avons des droits sur les paroles qui forment et de´font l’Univers (Apollinaire, Alcools) Songez-y, un me´taphysicien n’a, pour le syste`me du monde, que le cri perfectionne´ des singes (Anatole France, Le Jardin d’E´picure)


INTRODUCTION Il faut faire les choses plus simplement et plus terre a` terre. (xv. 218) What can be thought of must certainly be a Wction.1

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) was a man of many parts: his creative intellect travelled across both generic and conceptual boundaries and he was poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, actor, producer, theoretician of the theatre, and artist. He has also been feˆted as a schizophrenic, druguser, and internee, and posthumously further roles were thrust upon him as the following generation saw him as cultural iconoclast or as an example of suVering, failure, and the descent of a great literary intellect into madness. But all agree that his energies were channelled towards the exploration and perhaps even the creation of the self within the artistic act. When Artaud died of cancer at the age of 51, he was a liminal Wgure in the French artistic world. Scarcely known as an author other than to those familiar with Surrealism, he was remembered as a minor actor, having given remarkably intense supporting performances in Abel Gance’s Napoleón (1927) and Carl Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928), and on the stage with inXuential theatre companies such as Lugne´-Poe¨’s anti-naturalistic Theáˆtre de l’Œuvre and Dullin’s L’Atelier in the early 1920s. With the poet Roger Vitrac he founded the short-lived and controversial Theáˆtre Alfred Jarry in 1926, and, having seen a Balinese dance troupe at the Colonial Exhibition in Paris in 1931, he wrote an article on the performance now known under the title ‘Sur le theáˆtre balinais’. This was the Wrst of a series of essays setting out an alternative to Western theatre, which were published in 1938 as Le Theáˆtre et son Double, Artaud’s best-known work and one of the seminal inXuences on modern drama.2 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), para. 539. 2 For details of Wrst publications, as well as for full details of Artaud’s juvenilia, the reader is referred to the extensive bibliography established by J.-C. Ramiel in Obliques, 10–11 (1976), 257–84.

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However, Artaud was an original poet as he demonstrated with two collections of self-analytic prose poems and fragmentary texts published in the mid-1920s, L’Ombilic des Limbes and Le Pe`se-Nerfs. These inXuential collections build on the autobiographical correspondence of 1923 with Jacques Rivie`re now known, under the title Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re, as one of the deWnitive discussions of a favoured topic of twentieth-century letters, literature, and silence. The force with which Artaud here exposes how linguistic lack provokes a sense of ontological thinness has led critics to see these early self-analyses as a displacement of the centre of writing in his texts. It is certainly the point at which the adult Artaudian text emerges from the preceding juvenilia, and after Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re Artaud abandoned the attempt to produce self-suYcient, extended works and produced instead the characteristic fragmented texts that, it is argued, seriously disrupt the limits of the Modernist artistic and conceptual tradition and challenge the terms by which we deWne a literary work. Certainly, all Artaud’s writing refuses traditional genres and fuses modes; the most prominent forms are the open-letter essay poem of early years and the poetic fantastic metaphysical diatribe of the late years, both highly rhetoricized. Frequently Artaud incorporated letters into his works, destabilizing the relationship of art to life. His 1920s texts are already exercises in imaginative metaphysical and linguistic hypothesizing—but, in common with the theoretical works of the leading Surrealist poets of his generation (Breton, Aragon), the most striking quality of Artaud’s theorizings is their poetry. In addition to his acting and poetry, he played a prominent role in the Surrealist movement, which he joined in 1924, editing an issue of la Re´volution surreáliste. For an intense two-year period he energized the movement, and his impassioned belief in the need to combat not just cultural inertia but all that upheld orthodoxy and tradition accentuated the darker side of the movement. Although it was during the 1930s that Artaud was most closely engaged in theatrical activities, with which his name is now linked, over the course of the decade he became an increasingly marginal Wgure. He drifted away from the heart of Parisian cultural life, and, while French intellectual debate was becoming increasingly concerned with contemporary politics, he became especially interested in esoteric and ancient modes of knowledge. He´liogabale, an essayistic novel, retells the story of the Roman Emperor of that name and Artaud’s alter ego within the framework of ancient Phoenician solar religions and ideas drawn from the alchemic tradition, and the oracular Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre is

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explicitly an apocalyptic reading of Tarot cards. In 1936, following the failure of his 1935 production of Les Cenci in which he had endeavoured to realize his philosophy of theatre, and already in a highly excited state of mind fuelled by increasingly large doses of opiates, he travelled to the Mexican Sierra to take part in the sacred rituals of the Tarahumara Indians. These involved the drug peyote and, to his eyes, were an enactment of the theatrical principles he held dear. This trip inspired a series of articles, written (and rewritten in the light of his Xuctuating religious beliefs) between 1937 and the end of his life and published posthumously as Les Tarahumaras, in which Artaud tells the story of his visit as one of a frustrated metaphysical and mythic odyssey. On his return to Europe in 1937, in a state of severe mental confusion, he undertook a disastrous trip to Ireland to return to the Irish people what he maintained to the end of his life was Saint Patrick’s cane (actually an unusually carved cane given to him by a friend), and this culminated in his deportation and internment, the last three years of which were spent at the asylum of Rodez in the south-west of France. Here he started writing compulsively, Wlling hundreds of notebooks with Wctionalized retellings of his past and present life woven in with wild theological imaginings. Nearly three-quarters of Artaud’s total output (and all his tortured drawings) come from the Wve-year period between his arrival at Rodez in 1943 and his death, and it is these surprisingly under-discussed late writings that are the focal point of this study. In 1946, thanks to the inXuence and Wnancial support of a group of friends—including the playwright Arthur Adamov, the director and actor Roger Blin, and the young woman who was to become the editor of Artaud’s Œuvres comple`tes and defendant of his cultural legacy, Paule The´venin—he was transferred to a private asylum at Ivry-sur-Seine, where he enjoyed near total independence. In the last two years of his life he produced the major texts, including Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu, Artaud le Moˆmo, and Ci-gıˆt preće´de´ de la culture indienne, and many more notebooks and uncollected poems, which have interested recent theorists for their dissolution of dominant modes of discourse and their expression of the fragmentation of the subject. Artaud has become one of the cultural legends of the twentieth century. During his lifetime Artaud published substantially less than half of the textual material now available, rarely with the same editor, and only three print runs exceeded 1,000 copies.3 Since his death the publication 3 The three were: Le Theáˆtre et son Double, Van Gogh, le suicide´ de la socie´te´, and Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu.

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process has stalled on several occasions, and up until 1970 the only major texts to exist in widely available and reliable editions were the Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re and Le Theáˆtre et son Double, a fact that does much to explain their preponderance in Artaud criticism. With the appearance of Suppoˆts et Suppliciations in 1978, all Artaud’s texts intended for publication were in the public domain, including many of his letters, which he saw as integral to his work, and since then most of the many notebooks Artaud Wlled from 1945 on have appeared. But some of the most characteristic and revelatory of Artaud’s Wnal texts, which appeared in small circulation reviews, and which are widely known thanks to Jacques Derrida’s ‘La Parole souZeé’, remain virtually unobtainable.4 The only exposure to what are arguably some of Artaud’s greatest Wnal texts is, therefore, through the medium of scholarly articles that quote them within the framework of their own argument, and this has led to a reluctance to challenge, correct, or expand upon earlier readings. Though the majority of Artaud’s writing is largely unread, his reputation as a leading Wgure in European Modernism is secure. Had he published but Le Theáˆtre et son Double, Artaud’s position in the history of French letters would have been assured. Together with the writings of Bertolt Brecht, Artaud’s visionary writings on the theatre have long been recognized as among the most fertile and vigorous inXuences on the development of twentieth-century Western theatre, which Artaud condemns for its reliance on the text and on the conventions of plot and character. Le Theáˆtre et son Double is a typically singular work, for it does not set down theories (though Artaud does give explicit if impractical technical instructions) but explores the function of theatre through the extended development of images. He oVers an inspired, unclear, and in fact impossible vision seeking to jump clear outside the logic of representation and signifying processes. Artaud’s essential theatre is compared to the plague in that ‘comme la peste il est la re´ve´lation, la mise en avant, la pousseé vers l’exte´rieur d’un fond de cruaute´ latente’ (iv. 29), to Lucas de Leyde’s painting Loth and his Daughters for its ‘langage physique [ . . . ] mate´riel et solide’ (iv. 36), and to alchemy for a shared working-out of underlying metaphysical principles through the manipulation of symbols (iv. 46). For Artaud the essence of the theatrical performance is an organized delirium that calls up the dark forces in humanity, to intensify and thus exorcise them. At the heart of Artaud’s theatrical vision is the idea that gestures, movement, colour, lighting, music, and the phonic 4

Only the Bibliothe`que Nationale in Paris holds all the material.

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qualities of the voice should be revelatory of underlying metaphysical forces, reXecting his lifelong belief in an immanent metaphysical unity subtending reality but incompatible with linguistic expression. Thanks to the breadth of material now available under the Gallimard imprint, it would no longer be possible for a judicious critic to write: ‘Le Theáˆtre et son Double, Antonin Artaud’s major theoretical work, to which all his other writings are conWrmatory marginalia or addenda [ . . . ]’.5 The vestiges of some such attitude remain, however, and, whilst the rest of Artaud’s writing might no longer be discarded so cavalierly, his ideas on theatre have been the centre of enquiry for nine out of every ten scholarly publications on his writings over the past thirty years. This is out of all proportion: whilst all Artaud’s writing is profoundly inXuenced by the idea of replacing representation with performance, which is at the heart of his theatrical doctrines, this does not mean to say that his writing in the domains of poetry or autobiography may be reduced to an extrapolation of Le Theáˆtre et son Double.6 The fame of Le Theáˆtre et son Double can still cramp critical exploration of the other twenty-Wve volumes of Artaud’s Œuvres comple`tes. In this context it is worth recalling that Blanchot suggested Le Theáˆtre et son Double is ‘rien d’autre qu’un Art poe´tique. Je reconnais qu’il y parle de theáˆtre, mais ce qui est en cause, c’est l’exigence de la poe´sie telle qu’elle ne peut s’accomplir qu’en refusant des genres limite´s et en aYrmant un langage plus originel.’7 Derrida disagrees with Blanchot here, arguing that the theatre is the total art form for Artaud, citing: ‘La question pour moi n’e´tait pas de savoir ce qui parviendrait a` s’insinuer dans les cadres du langage ećrit, mais dans la trame de mon aˆme en vie’ (i*. 9).8 Blanchot’s suggestion is worth pursuing a little further, however. As Derrida observes, it is the gestural dimension of language that is to be privileged in the Theatre of Cruelty—sonority, intonation, and intensity—where the word-gestures are linked up by a syntax of bodily drives. 5 Eric Sellin, The Dramatic Concepts of Antonin Artaud (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 81. This fundamentally excellent work, together with the book by the philosopher Henri Gouhier, Antonin Artaud et l’essence du theáˆtre (Paris: Vrin, 1974), constitute the starting point for those interested in Artaud’s theatrical ideas. 6 This is not to deny the very interesting application to which Artaud’s conception of theatre has been put to read his other works, especially He´liogabale, a novelistic transposition of many of the ideas of Le Theáˆtre et son Double. See e.g. Carol Jacob, ‘The Assimilating Harmony: A Reading of Antonin Artaud’s He´liogabale’, Sub-Stance, 17 (1977), 115–38. 7 Maurice Blanchot, ‘La Cruelle Raison poe´tique’, Cahiers de la Compagnie Renand-Barrault, 22–3 (1958), 69. 8 Derrida discusses Blanchot in ‘La Parole souZeé’, Tel quel, 20 (1965), 41–65. Repr. in L’Ećriture et la diVe´rence (Paris: Seuil, 1967), 253–92.

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And it is precisely sonority, intonation, and intensity that characterize Artaud’s poetry, where the syntax linking up the words is driven by oral pleasure. To return to the line quoted by Derrida: j 1 2 3 j 1 2 3 j1 2 j j 1 2 3 j 1 2 3 j 1 2 j j dans les cadres j du langage j ećrit j, [mais] j dans la trame j de mon aˆme j en vie j

what is striking is the heavily determined 3/3/2 rhythmic patterning where the stress falls on the Wnal syllable, with this pattern reinforced by the dual anaphora of ‘dans’ et ‘de’ and the internal rhymes and half-rhymes; and it is surely not innocent that the line closes on envie (en vie), suggesting the desiring bodily pulsions driving this text forward. It will be suggested here that poetry becomes the space in which to enact the Theatre of Cruelty. In addition to the work on his conception of the theatre, from the 1960s on Artaud’s reputation has been bound up with theoretical, mainly post-structuralist readings presenting him (frequently alongside Bataille and Nietzsche) as a radical Wgure throwing deeply entrenched presuppositions about the ‘subject’ into question, thus problematizing the foundations of epistemology. A list of theorists who have devoted substantial articles to discussion of Artaud’s writing reads like a roll-call of recent intellectual history: Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze (both on his own and as a co-author with Fe´lix Guattari), Julia Kristeva, Susan Sontag, Phillipe Sollers, Leo Bersani, not to forget earlier critical interventions by Maurice Blanchot, and the more Xeeting attention of Michel Foucault.9 Their inXuence on Artaud scholarship has been enormous, and through their power of intellectual provocation they initiated Artaud criticism proper. What these readings have in common is that they are attracted to Artaudian writing for what Sollers has dubbed the ‘expe´rience des limites’. The critical theorists see Artaud as oVering an experience of the otherness they seek to think, and a certain bias is thus introduced. For post-structuralism, rather than being a self-conscious, self-possessed source of insight, the subject is regarded as decentred, elusive, an eVect of language or residue of pernicious metaphysical thinking. But self-conscious self-possession is precisely what Artaud 9 Kristeva provides an excellent characterization of Artaudian practice in psychocritical terms. The concept of the chora—the immediate manifestation of semiotic and bodily pulsions—allows her to articulate the links between Artaud’s Surrealist texts on writing and the late texts on the imagination of a new bodily form, and her account is wholly convincing. Despite Deleuze’s grandiloquent championing of Artaud in his article ‘Le Schizophre`ne et le mot’, where he declares he would not sacriWce one page of Artaud for all of Carroll, in fact only half a page out of Wfteen are given over to discussing Artaud. This is a disappointing failed encounter.

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wants, and, far from being at ease with postmodern views of language, Artaud Wnds the fact that meaning is caught in a perpetual round of deferral to be catastrophic (as is clear in texts such as ‘La question se pose de . . . ’). The post-stucturalist readings at least partially edit out the desires motivating the text, altering the tenor of Artaud’s project. The earliest and the most inXuential of the theoretical readings were Derrida’s two articles ‘La Parole souZeé’ and ‘Le Theáˆtre de la cruaute´ et la cloˆture de la repre´sentation’, subsequently reprinted in his seminal L’Ećriture et la diVe´rence. For most literary scholars these will be the two pieces of Artaud criticism with which they are familiar, and after thirty years they remain the most inspiring and still sketch out the richest agenda, privileging the later texts and the notions of subjectivity, language, and metaphysics that are at the heart of Artaud’s creative enterprise. But this can be a problem for critics working in the wake of Derrida if they are expected to engage with his analysis on his own terms. Derrida observes that Artaud struggles against distinctions such as life and philosophy, experience and concept, and this can only be conducted within the structure his discourse seeks to demolish. Readings operating outside the terms of Derrida’s debate Wnd themselves relying on just these notions, and so can seem to fall foul of his argument with the (erroneous) implication that Derrida’s portrayal of Artaud is thus somehow superior. But, whilst Derrida’s conceptual analysis of what is at stake in the Artaudian project is indubitably correct, that does not thereby guarantee the accuracy of his portrait of Artaud—which is in fact wholly incidental to his conceptual analysis. And, once we look at the practice of the Artaudian text—and no longer at the subjacent dyadic thought structures they bring into question—then we can see that Derrida presents a skewed vision of Artaud, especially in the Wrst and most inXuential part of ‘La Parole souZeé’, where he discusses Artaud’s non-theatrical writings. It is worth looking at this in some detail, for both its insights and its oversights. As Derrida convincingly argues, Artaud promises an art that gives rise to no works, an artist who is no longer the point of access to something beyond or outside himself. Artaud thus protests against exemplarity itself. Yet in this context Derrida silences Artaud’s own hesitations over the exemplarity of his ‘maladie’, which Artaud comes to see as both singular and exemplary (an attitude Derrida upbraids Blanchot for). Whilst in no way invalidating Derrida’s critical methodology nor his reading, this indicates the sort of thing that might be left out if we take Derrida as chief guide to Artaud—and that is the speciWcs and logics of

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Artaud’s writings. In general Derrida operates at the level of the conceptual implications of Artaud’s writing, suggesting, for example, that Artaud seeks to destroy dualist metaphysics by eliminating expression in favour of pure creation. This current study focuses more on the how and the what, the excitements and incoherences of Artaud’s writing about his desire for pure creativity. These diVerent focal distances and levels of enquiry are, of course, complementary. But Derrida’s account, concentrating on the implications of Artaud’s writings for Derrida’s arguments about a deconstruction of metaphysics, loses sight of his texts; and in this second instance he inverses the means and the end—what Artaud seeks is not the destruction of dualist metaphysics but pure creation. Artaud’s thinking is not primarily metaphysical. A second distortion arises from the ambition of Derrida’s overview. His titular thesis is that ‘Artaud a voulu interdire que sa parole loin de son corps soit souZeé.’10 This is a typically crafty act of preterition, for Derrida, never one to fall victim to the conceptual implications of his own theses, outplays Artaud and consistently speaks Artaud’s texts in the Wrst person, illustrating the impossibility of circumventing the metaphysics that, by treating a text as separate from its locus of production, legitimates commentary. Yet, however sophisticated a move, it cannot validate Derrida’s major thesis that any word oVering itself to be read or heard thereby becomes for Artaud a stolen word. Perhaps some such tenet is implicit within Artaud’s desire for a form of pure non-expressive creativity, but that is beside the point: Artaud is not one to unpack his claims, nor police the internal coherence of his thought. There is quite simply no textual evidence for the claim that all utterances are by deWnition stolen. And, if a supporting passage were found—and no doubt it could be—many more would contradict it. Artaud is not a careful thinker, and one of the major problems with Derrida’s reading is that it credits him with too much philosophy. Artaud is not as smoothly coherent and pat as Derrida makes him look. Artaud is quite simply not as meditative, reXective, and philosophical as Derrida’s brilliance makes him appear, nor do his texts carry the penetrating insights he lends them. Derrida argues that ‘impouvoir’ is not lack of inspiration, the sterility of having nothing to say, but on the contrary is the inspiration itself in so far as it is antecedent and another voice coming from ‘nowhere’. This is a powerful insight, but the idea of the essential alterity of the inner voice is hard to Wnd in any Artaud 10

‘La Parole souZeé’, 261. Page references are to the reprint in L’Ećriture et la diVe´rence.

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text—it is instead a transtextual deduction hovering above all his texts and none in particular. In Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re and Le Pe`seNerfs where Artaud discusses ‘impouvoir’, linguistic crisis is associated with the three diVerent problems of material Xashing through the mind, of manifestations welling up from the chora, and of the linearity of language. Artaud’s way of thinking is not unidirectional and incisive, but fragmented, messy, and repetitive. Similarly, Derrida observes that ‘de`s que je m’entends, le je qui s’entend, qui m’entend, devient le je qui parle et prend la parole [ . . . ] a` celui qui croit parler et eˆtre entendu en son nom’ and so suggests that for Artaud word-theft is founded on the ‘unite´ premie`re de ce qui ensuite se diVracte comme vol’.11 He experiences speech as an act of dispossession where the speaking subject is no longer he (alone) who speaks, and so always Wnds himself in a secondary position—is thus always the double. Once again, this is a luminous insight, brilliantly linking up the motifs of word-theft and doubling belonging to distinct periods of Artaud’s career. Yet, once again, this is too intellectual and too tidy for Artaud and there is no textual evidence that such is his position. It is a teasing-out of the implications for philosophy of what Artaud has to say, but in being used this way Artaud slips beneath the Derridean argument and out of view. In fact Derrida is driving to his own goal, and Artaud’s texts are used as fuel. He is not detained by the passages he quotes but oVers links between them, joining up the dots, as it were, to see the larger picture, but paying scant attention to the textual speciWcs.12 Beyond any local distortion, the greater danger with this approach is that it assumes Artaud may be treated synthetically. But Artaud is not that sort of writer. His ideas evolve and mutate over time, and, to make matters more complicated, he proceeds by developing pairs of conXicting accounts, and in his Wnal poetry two mythic narrative systems, the one to trace the genealogy of his alienation, the other to trace out a future genealogy that would end it. ‘La Parole souZeé’ takes Artaud as oddly static, univocal and free from internal dissension and fails to appreciate the inner 11

Ibid. 265. Context is ignored when he yokes together a 1920s text about the body, for example, with the identiWcation of God as ‘le Voleur’ in the 1940s texts. Suppositions are shallowly anchored, with the textual evidence lacking for such cornerstone ideas as that God is the name of that which deprives us of our own nature and birth and who will always, on the sly, have spoken before us, introducing himself between me and me. Some suggetions seem unfounded, as when he suggests that, for Artaud, God does not just usurp our innate attributes but our very inneity, quoting from the ‘Preámbule’ to the Œuvres comple`tes: ‘Il y a des imbećiles qui se croient des eˆtres, eˆtres par inneíte´. j Moi je suis celui qui pour eˆtre doit fouetter son inneíte´’ (i*. 9), where the link to God requires substantiation. 12

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dialectic of Artaud’s mythopoeisis. When Derrida argues: ‘Pour me garder, pour garder mon corps et ma parole, il me faut retenir l’œuvre en moi, me confondre avec elle pour qu’entre elle et moi le Voleur n’ait aucune chance, l’empeˆcher de dećhoir loin de moi comme ećriture’, he is taking evolving narrative schema and treating them as a synchronic system.13 Here he confuses early Artaud on the work as detrital artefact and late Artaud on the need to faire bloc against the Voleur. For late Artaud the œuvre is essentially a process moving towards the elimination of the other, and so the text qua alterity is not to be retained but perpetually evacuated. Further, while Artaud at times does link up the two ideas that the Voleur is present at birth and that alterity is in language to suggest that the Thief is present within utterance, he basically keeps these two narratives separate (for otherwise writing would perpetuate, not put an end to alienation). Derrida’s account of Artaud’s texts breaks down as he is insuYciently attentive to their ongoing development. Derrida claims to be speaking towards Artaud; to adapt this expression, he is in fact writing away from Artaud, used as part of a larger argument about logocentrism. Derrida is at his strongest in drawing out what is at stake in Artaud’s writing. Thus he concludes his article by observing that Artaud seeks to destroy and to preserve in one and the same moment metaphysics in general. Artaud’s discourse recalls the motifs of the metaphysical tradition—self-presence, unity, self-identity— accomplishes their deepest tendencies and so destroys them. Derrida’s insights are right—there are two madnesses staring each other in the face, the madness of an art without works and that of art as a relay, and he brings this aporia into clear focus. But the Derridean performance is ultimately uninterested in Artaud’s texts. Perhaps this is true of all criticism that is disingenuous if it pretends to be handmaid to a master text. Nevertheless, the problem is more pressing with Derrida because of the way he has been read. First, because of the minute attention the Derridean text pays to its own details, it creates the impression (to which it never lays claim) of paying equal attention to the Artaudian text. And Derrida, of course, produces the least handmaidenly of readings. Secondly, the playfulness of Derrida’s text makes us slow to realize how earnestly he takes Artaud’s texts, ignoring Artaud’s own playfulness. Thirdly, Derrida’s deconstructionist approach makes us similarly slow to appreciate that, whilst never monolithic nor reductionist, his reading fails to adjust to the way Artaud produces not a synchronic system but 13 ‘La Parole souZeé’, 272. Artaud’s ideas on text and excretion are discussed fully in Chapter 7.

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more of a burning hieroglyph (to use Artaud’s image from Le Theáˆtre et son Double). And, if Derrida is very strong on the metaphysical reactions making that burn, that does not qualify him as a guide to the forms those hieroglyphs might take. It is in fact ironic, though here the fault lies with his readers, that Derrida, the commentator of distrust, should have been taken by Artaud studies as a guide to Artaud. This study, then, does not seek to correct Derrida so much as to extricate Artaud from Derrida’s performance on Artaud. As Jane Goodall reminds us, Derrida fails to see the ‘oVensive dynamic that fuels [Artaud’s writing] and the indefatigable strategic resourcefulness of Artaud’s campaign’.14 This gleeful resourcefulness is integral both to the structure of Artaud’s way of thinking and to the local details of his way of writing. Artaud has a liking for hyperbole and for the extreme form of his own ideas. Further, his ideas are not discarded but transformed by the new work they are called upon to perform into bolder and more encompassing variants. Artaud’s writings are clearly not a single event (as ‘La Parole souZeé’ might seem to imply), and his ideas are better thought of in terms of their elaborate and volatile rhetorical surface, at least as much as in terms of any conceptual substance. This is why it is so important to see what Artaud says and how he says it—to view his texts closer up in greater detail losing the (false) clarity of a conceptual overview. Artaud ampliWes the rhetorical surface networks— his ideas and narratives—to a point where they become deranged, supercharged with meaning. This is lost if Artaud is read exclusively for the implications of his problematization of dyadic thought structures. The mobility of his ideas is not just the mobility of a thinker such as Freud and his evolving modellings of the psyche, it is more of a burningup of ideas—and this constitutes a major part of the challenge of his texts. This is where Derrida’s reading fails Artaud. However right he may be in his transtextual exegesis, he does not respect this mobility, this dance of ideas. And this dance is in fact integral to the overall architecture of the project, both an aesthetic principle and generative of the joy that Derrida—along with many others—fails to see. Artaud’s conceptual systems are intrinsically playful, and are in turn vehicled by playful language.15 It is the combination of the impulse to 14 Jane Goodall, Artaud and the Gnostic Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 216. Anyone interested in Derrida’s extraordinary readings of Artaud may proWtably consult Goodall’s closing polemical chapter where she turns deconstructionist techniques against their practitioners (pp. 213–20). 15 Canuille Dumoulie´ is the only critic to refer to Artaud’s humour (in Antonin Artaud (Les Contemporains; Paris: Seuil, 1996)).

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introduction

theorize his sense of alienation and, to redeploy Jacques Vache´’s term, umour that is so signiWcant. The Artaudian text plays recklessly with language in the midst of its most extraordinary conceptual leaps, injecting literarity into existential crisis, unsettlingly allowing the pleasures of language to guide the unfolding of lines of thought. Metaphors are no sooner established than they become the basis for a new, further Xight towards epic mythologization, and the irritation Artaud’s writing provokes arises from his refusal to accept the cherished notions of the Western tradition, but especially from his refusal to go about his questioning in the sanitized, decorous mode of intellectual endeavour. Philosophy may be considered as the type of writing in which the signifying element is illusorily repressed in favour of the signiWer, and Artaud refuses to leave metaphysical and theological notions in unruZed dignity. Instead his texts take mischievous delight in mixing modes and Xouting discursive etiquette, and in his late writing he develops a signatory hybrid genre of poetic fantastic metaphysical diatribe tinged with both puerile naughtiness and deadpan irony. This is his true iconoclasm. It can be hard to maintain one’s equanimity in the face of Artaud’s wilfully wild writings, which at times veer towards rant and the dishearteningly simplistic. But his texts can also be highly enjoyable and this, perhaps the most important thing about his writing, goes forgotten.16 If Artaud has some message, if he leaves us with an abiding image, it is perhaps that the subject’s écarte`lement by discourse goes far deeper than other Modernist writers suggest, and the only way to face up to this fact is through word-plays and -ploys. Unfortunately, however, Artaud’s writing is disappearing under criticism. And the problem with much criticism is that it treats Artaud’s texts as puzzles, or as failed message-conveyors that may with ingenuity be rebuilt or unscrambled. Artaud suVers here from his reputation as a problem writer. Typically, his writing is said to be fragmented, his style jagged, and the various phases of his writing career to display only minimal unity of purpose. Criticism has thus been reluctant to do more than organize his work in such a way as to allow certain recurrent images and themes to come to the fore. Even Derrida’s reading takes Artaud’s texts as instances of a certain mode of metaphysical thinking, 16 Kristeva observes how the eroticization of the vocal apparatus leads to the introduction into language of the surcharge of oral pleasure that poetry translates into the redistribution of sound and syntax. It might further be argued that this phonic and syntactic redistribution and consequent staving-oV of closure and meaning are something Artaud takes to a high point, frequently combining them with eroticized descriptions of lower bodily processes; this is what makes Artaud a master in juicy linguistic performance.

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thus as message. Little attention has been paid to the poetic practices, to the processes by which his texts generate their meanings nor to the logics developed to hold these meanings precariously together. What such readings miss is not only the speciWc terms of the thematic, the logics, and the structurings of Artaud’s texts, but also the anger, polemics, and inventiveness. If we content ourselves with a non-reading knowledge of Artaud, we shall miss out on the pleasure that is the real key to his work. It is only by reading Artaud that we may see beneath the large tidal currents (so convincingly identiWed by Derrida) and see the crossrhythms that make the individual Artaudian sentence such fun to read. Collapse and fragmentation are indeed strongly present features of Artaud’s writing, and this study explores the characteristic processes of dismantling, but this is far from being the whole story. Of course Artaud’s writing is a-rational and does not hit any stride that would sustain the prolonged development of a text—an inherent short-windedness means that in Artaud’s two novels the narrative machinery is continually breaking down and having to be Wred up again—and his view of reality becomes increasingly divorced from anything to which most readers would wish to subscribe. But if we acknowledge the dispersive forces at work in the Artaudian corpus, we must also acknowledge that they are held precariously in check by equally impressive structuring forces. In what follows I attempt to demonstrate both how Artaud disrupts and how he builds meaning-giving structures in his writing. Each phase of his thought has suYciently strong structuring features for us to talk of deviant systems. There are indeed contradictions and incoherences, and one of the most striking features of his systems is that they display an ongoing hesitancy towards the ideas they develop; but even more impressive than his dissolution of established views of reality is that he produces structures, Xawed, unstable, and provisory perhaps, out of the debris. And at the level of textual detail we shall see that Artaud displays an almost maniacally tight control over phonic patterning, the semantic shifts to which he subjects terms, and the organization of semantic blocks through both a wilfully idiosyncratic syntax and, in his poetry, lineation. Out of these details, which make his prose and his correspondence an especially free form of free verse, Artaud builds his larger structures, which are marked in turn by the combination of Xuidity and order that characterize his sentences. It is both the details of the incoherences of Artaud’s conceptual systems and the details of his sentences that allow us to get to grips with the Artaudian text. For, with the exception of Le Theáˆtre et son Double

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(and arguably He´liogabale), Artaud’s texts are either not read, only rapidly read, or else read as examples of liminal discourse. The most neglected area is the writing from 1943 on: the extensive correspondence written at Rodez, the late writings intended for publication (Artaud le Moˆmo, Ci-gıˆt preće´de´ de la culture indienne, Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu and Suppoˆts et Suppliciations), and the extensive notebooks. What discussion there is approaches them as a largely homogenous group needing to be lent coherence (this is also true of his more discussed 1920s writings). The general tendency is to tell the story, as it were, of Artaud’s writing, a tendency that helps to identify the structural features of the texts in question but fails to respect their literarity. Traditionally the late texts have been interpreted according to the hidden paradigm of the linear narrative: if Artaud composes a series of works, it is, the tacit assumption seems to be, because he cannot say everything at once. Consequently the shifts in his ideas have been played down. What this study seeks to do is to explore these late texts, in all their internal and mutual contradictions, for their own structuring devices. And, as importantly, to treat them as distinct if related works and trace the ways in which Artaud’s ideas are subjected to pressures by the fact of their expression within a particular work, leading to the need to write a new version of these ideas in each subsequent work. There is a drivenness to Artaud’s writings that escapes readings that would smooth over the plasticity of his ideas. In brief, then, this study analyses the read but under-scrutinized early writings, so as to provide a framework, derived largely from Artaud’s work itself and not from external bodies of theoretical or doctrinal discourse, within which to start reading the under-read Rodez writings, before turning to the Wnal works. The aim is to elucidate the larger structures by looking at the neglected low-level structuring features, but also to highlight the complexities, contradictions, incoherences, and tensions that propel his writing forward into the next phase.17 The opening two chapters suggest that the sense of linguistic and existential crisis in Artaud’s 1920s and early 1930s texts is a response to the impossible desire to write a pre-linguistic state of bodily awareness. The Wrst chapter charts Artaud’s engagement with Surrealist thought, 17 It is, of course, not strictly true that no critics have paid close attention to textual details. The most obvious example that comes to mind is Rodolphe Gasche´’s brilliant reading of the onomastic complexities that gravitate around Artaud’s naming the plaguebearing boat of Le Theáˆtre et son Double the Grand-Saint-Antoine (in ‘Self-Engendering as a Verbal Body’, Modern Language Notes, 93 (1978), 677–94). However, my point is that critical overviews of Artaud’s work do not engage in such low-level analysis and that they thereby miss out on the dynamics of Artaud’s writing.

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his abjuration of rationalistic discourse and preoccupation with the paucity of verbalized consciousness. His sense of de-realization in discourse leads him to imagine a new idea of selfhood privileging an instinctual awareness of the welter of bodily experience. The second chapter disputes the view that his early writing documents literary silence and cognitive stalling. Instead his texts are seen implicitly to invoke an ideal, pre-verbal prise de conscience of himself as a functioning, sentient body-in-the-world. This leads Artaud to imagine a rejuvenated language able to say the Xuctuations of such rudimentary experience in its dynamic complexity, for he concludes that only new linguistic forms could deliver full self-cognition and thus the eZorescence of an inner self. The opening two chapters therefore discover the positive theorizing work carried out under cover of the negative critique of language and show his underlying concern is not the dysfunctioning of his psyche but selfpresence, precisely that which is ever more explicitly his concern in the writings from 1943 on. In Chapters 3 and 4, Artaud’s deepening metaphysical dualism is traced, providing the intellectual background to the idiosyncratic ontotheological system of his neglected asylum texts of 1943–5, which have not previously been studied in detail other than as symptomatic documents of psychosis. As part of a broader questioning of all origins and givens, Artaud recasts his Surrealist ideas on language and the body, privileging the idea of a dual body of abjection and purity, which later grows into the notion of the corps sans organes. Similarly his idea of ‘envouˆtement’ evolves into a metaphoric account of the way cultural and linguistic structural patternings bring alterity into the heart of the linguistic subject. Chapter 4 then expands this reading, tracing the ideas on language that run through the religious narrative. Artaud considers there to be a gulf separating human language from the cosmogenesic Word of God, resulting in an impoverished status for artistic utterance. He rebels against this until the discursive hierarchy has been inverted, overthrowing Artaud’s Christian beliefs. Artaud’s enquiries into language are thus shown in Chapter 4 to be the wellsprings of the project of the Wnal poetry, to create a new Artaud by doing away with God. The closing three chapters read the univers imaginaire of his late writings in the light of these narrative structures on body and language. They argue that his late texts poetically rewrite metaphysical orthodoxy by fostering large-scale ambivalences, and that the interrelated writing on God and the body constitutes a ludic yet eerily compelling mythic system. Chapter 5 is pivotal, arguing that the extravagance of Artaud’s

16

introduction

Wnal writing resides in the work upon language as much as in the ideas expressed. The diYculty of the writing is frequently an index of its subversive energies, and the techniques that make the text diYcult actually perform positive sense-generating work. The text disrupts normal linguistic functioning to disclose and so purge language of the values and structures of Western conceptual orthodoxy, considered to be incommensurate with authentic self-expression. Linguistic exuberance might threaten Artaud’s texts with unintelligibility, but the Cahiers work on language in order to fashion the sense-units with which they build a strange new textual world. The closing pair of chapters examines the dual, intermeshing myths Artaud evolves in his late writings of a God who inhabits his body and of an alternative body he would possess unchallenged. Emphasis is placed on the extent to which formal qualities structure these mutating narratives. The story of God’s vampiric, salacious practices becomes increasingly extravagant as it feeds oV its own images and rhetorical devices, pushing the narrative system beyond a metaphoric account of alienation. This increasing extravagance means it would be as unwise to portray Artaud’s theology as purely a ludic parody as it would be to portray it as merely psychotic. Despite the fame of his image of the corps sans organes, what the Wnal poetic texts say about the body, and how they say it, have received only brief critical attention. Far from glorifying the lower body and its Xuids, the notion of the corps sans organes is an increasingly unbodily body.18 It is the idea of the corps sans organes that leads the conceptual dance, drawing the diverse theorizing mythic systems loosely together. But, as with the related account of God, the writing on the body takes oV and becomes a self-perpetuating, mutating narrative fuelled by its own rhetorical energy. Increasingly the text identiWes the writing subject with the corps sans organes, and linguistic innovation here plays a key role in reimagining a new kind of identity. The Wnal emphasis is placed on the increasingly stretched structure-giving qualities of his poems, precariously holding in check the conceptual excesses of their mythic narratives. The reading put forward here, then, discerns the structuring, reconceptualizing work performed by Artaud’s writing without losing sight of the disordering impulses. When both the system-dismantling and the 18 This is perhaps where the missed encounter between Deleuze and Artaud may be most clearly seen: to suggest that ‘le corps sans organes est seulement fait d’os et de sang’ and that the corps sans organes is ‘un corps Xuidique et glorieux, Xamboyant’ can be qualiWed only as misreading (Gilles Deleuze, ‘Le Schizophre`ne et le mot’, Critique, 255–6 (1968), 741 n.).

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system-building tendencies have been appreciated, the most impressive thing about Artaud’s texts is the way that, within each poem, line by line, Artaud’s trenchant, muscular style manages to craft a precarious equipoise between order and dissolution. In what follows we shall see great energy expended by Artaud’s writing in its disruption, dispersal, and regeneration of structures. In the early writings he develops what the critic Dumoulie´ nicely characterizes as a ‘dynamique de la fureur’, which, whilst pretending to reveal his naked being uncloaked by literary artiWce, actually sets up a rhetoric to convince the addressee of the reality of the analysis carried by his images.19 This fury of destructive energy is not only directed against the higher level structures of orthodox ideas on thought and language; from the beginning of his writing career it spills over into the lower level of sentence and paragraph in such texts as ‘Paul les Oiseaux ou la Place de l’Amour’ (written in 1925, the opening year of Artaud’s major publishing career). Artaud here writes a Wctionalized version of his own life refracted through the intermediary of the Florentine Renaissance painter Uccello, renowned for his perfection of the structure-giving quality of perspective. The excedentary energies of Artaud’s writing leap over the Wrebreak separating writing self from the image reXecting back that self: Paulo Uccello est en train de se de´battre au milieu d’un vaste tissu mental [...] Quitte ta langue, Paulo Uccello, quitte ta langue, ma langue, ma langue, merde, qui est-ce qui parle, ou` es-tu? Outre, outre, Esprit, Esprit, feu, langues de feu, feu, feu, mange ta langue, vieux chien, mange sa langue, mange etc. J’arrache ma langue. oui. Pendant ce temps [ . . . ] (i*. 54)

There is here a quite extraordinary headlong rush from the stability aVorded by the stage-direction-like detachment of the Wrst line through the direct address of the second-person singular to an increasing breakdown of logic and referentiality. The momentum gathers as the text accelerates to full near-nonsensical speed in just three lines, only to apply the breaks with equal force as Artaud swallows the linguistic outburst back down as the clauses lengthen out again for the second paragraph to close on the imposition of silence. A silence immediately shattered by the full-throated aYrmatory outburst. The third paragraph is one single capitalized word, and this lineation, to which we have been sensitized 19

Dumoulie´, Antonin Artaud, 11.

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by the use of punctuation to expand and contract the semantic units in the second paragraph, underscores how the will to structure contained in one word is equal to forty words of dissolution. An intense centrifugal force has curbed the threatened incoherence and allows the text to progress in cliche´d tranquillity. Artaud’s explosive energy is brought to heel by a reordering of the textual world he has just shattered in a way that will be echoed less than a year before his death in Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu, with the aYrmation that his uncontainable explosive force will scatter reality into 10,000 shards before regrouping it into an unforgettable new form (xiii. 118). From the earliest through to the latest texts Artaud’s writing displays this dual movement of dispersal and restructuring. His strong-armed control over syntax, punctuation, and lineation allows him, with increasing conWdence, to subject his writing to extreme distensions, and in the later writings the unfolding of sense is deferred until breaking point. He orchestrates his writing with a Wne ear for the limits to which he can push disorder without quite rupturing the structures that contain it. The twin impulses to order and disorder are carried over from sentence making to the higher level of writing deviant conceptual systems. Artaud’s pathological onto-theology and metaphysics display great elasticity. In his mythologized conceptualization of the human condition the rebellious theological and metaphysical structures he has crafted have to expand and contract to accommodate the discordances and contradictions generated by his unstoppable ‘dynamique de fureur’. And, having restructured metaphysics and theology, he then writes against these restructurings, dissolving his own creations and producing ever sparser and more agile conceptualizations of his life. This ongoing creative conceptualizing is conducted through imagery, and this explicit poeticization of theorizing can lend his thinking a phantasmal air. It is a theorizing of suggestion, not of deWnition, and the object in whose name this theorizing is covertly undertaken is absent from his texts. Whether it be his early desire for a language that might enable self-presence, a theatre of metaphysical immediacy in his middle period, or the performative, dynamic identity he lays claim to in his Wnal writings, he is always gesturing towards something he cannot quite state. The structures of his theorizing are grandiose constructs that do not hold their unobtainable desires. Artaud does not build theories but theorizes, his work is directed not towards creating objects, either aesthetic or theoretical, but towards the activities of thinking and writing. His is a writing

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of intellectual energy, not intellectual fruits. What matters to Artaud is not structures, but the dissolution and reconstitution of structures. This study is a study of literature. It is not an apologia for Artaudian thought. It looks at what happens when linguistic playfulness is placed at the service of wide-scale metaphysical restructuring in Artaud’s writing, and, if this involves tracing Artaud’s ideas, this should not be taken as an endorsement of them. In his Wnal great work, Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, Artaud suggests that, ‘depuis cinquante ans que je dure, mon de´lire ne m’a pas quitte´ et c’est le de´lire d’un homme ećlaire´’ (xiv**. 167). We might not agree that it is an enlightened delirium (at least not in the sense Artaud here suggests), but we must recognize that Artaud’s is a coherent delirium. And both these terms, ‘coherent’ and ‘delirium’, must be given equal weight if we are to trace the extraordinary structuring and dismantling energies at work in the Artaudian text. If the delirium of Artaud’s writing increases with time, so too does its eerie coherence. In the face of increasing self-dissolution, Artaud’s increasingly voluminous writing aYrms his will to stay just this side of disorder, and out of the dispersal of self and sense to forge a verbal self-reinvention. The organization, and aYrmation of will achievable in writing mean the text replaces an existence of entropy and disarray. If the heart of Artaud’s late idea of a new form of existence created by writing is delirious, it is undertaken out of a desire for coherence and simplicity. What follows, then, is an attempt to chart the Xows of order and disorder, and of creation and destruction, in Artaud’s work. He theorizes on a cusp between reason and unreason, but throughout his energies are directed by questions of authorship and of language. The rationale behind his vast rhetorical and mythic systems is to create a means of expressing the cruel creativity of being, but rhetoric and myth cannot say being, only gesture towards it. And yet, when we Wnish reading Artaud, what is even more striking than the delirious desire to dissolve and recreate being by the act of writing is the immense creative, orchestrating will, what Artaud calls at Rodez: ‘la simplicite´ de ma Volonte´ inabdiquante’ (xv. 112), which plays unnervingly with order and disorder. And, as we shall see, if at diVerent stages in his career Artaud’s writing organizes reality in very diVerent ways, there is an underlying dynamic that allows us to see Artaud not just as a giver of local structure but as the author of a master structure, and his writings not just as a series of fragmented texts but as a precariously ordered œuvre of exciting, irreducibly strange, and fascinating poetic works.

1 PAINFUL BODIES OF THOUGHT Sous la grammaire il y a la penseé qui est un opprobre plus fort a` vaincre, une vierge beaucoup plus reveˆche, beaucoup plus reˆche a` outrepasser quand on la prend pour un fait inne´. (ix., 10) We set up a word at the point at which our ignorance begins, at which we can see no further, e.g. the word ‘I’ [ . . . ]—these are perhaps the horizons of our knowledge.1

In Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re (1924), Artaud’s Wrst major text and a seminal account of the misdirections and breakdowns in thinking and writing, Artaud presents himself to Jacques Rivie`re, critic and editor of the vanguard journal La Nouvelle Revue française, as a signiWcant writer precisely because of his acute diYculties in writing.2 He claims to be ‘une ve´ritable anomalie’ (i*. 27), and is at pains to distance himself from contemporaries who, if their writings testify to a relative ‘faiblesse’ in front of the written word, are not like him aVected ‘dans la chair et dans [l’]aˆme de tous les jours. Cette inapplication a` l’objet qui caracte´rise toute la litte´rature, est chez moi une inapplication a` la vie. Je puis dire, moi, vraiment, que je ne suis pas au monde, et ce n’est pas une simple attitude de l’esprit’ (i*. 41). Others might opt to surrender intellectual control to follow the caprices of thought, Artaud implies, but the fabric of his being embodies a veritable inability to think. His is no stance; and herein lies the value of his writing, he argues, for its peculiar failings are revelatory of an exemplarily alienated mind: ‘Je m’e´tais imagine´ vous retenir [ . . . ] par la rarete´ de certains pheńome`nes d’ordre intellectuel [ . . . ] Je me Xattais de vous apporter un cas, un cas mental caracte´rise´, et [ . . . ] attirer votre attention sur la valeur reélle, la valeur initiale de ma 1

Nietzsche, The Will to Power, para. 482. Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re was not Artaud’s Wrst publication. Prior to this were a collection of poems in rhyming stanzas, Tric-Trac du ciel (1923), and two copies of a slender review penned entirely by Artaud, Bilboquet (1923), standing midway between traditional rhyming stanzas and the self-analytic poetic fragments developed to the fullness of their power during his alliance with Surrealism. He had also published two dozen or so poems, letters, and essays. It is with Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re, however, that the evolution of the writer we now know commenced. 2

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penseé’ (i*. 28). These are unashamedly publicist letters, and such threadbare rhetorical devices as paired reprises (of the nouns ‘cas’ and ‘valeur’) spring readily to Artaud’s pen. But he claims to live in a diVerent linguistic order and hence diVerent reality from the rationalized and ordered view of the world enshrined in orthodox discourse. There is, he suggests insistently, something special about his thought that makes his a dramatically discontinuous and yet essentially metaphysical and surreal mental universe. However insistent the lament that he suVers from his exclusion from this world (‘je ne suis pas au monde’), he presents his audela` as a realm of greater existential authenticity. It is, of course, no small irony that a series of letters where Artaud is laying claim to a uniquely profound breakdown in his creative thought processes and presenting himself as ‘un cas’ should now be perceived as one of the deWning accounts of creative thought, rivalling Paul Vale´ry’s La Soireé avec Monsieur Teste (1896). Indeed, Rivie`re explicitly places Artaud alongside Teste (i*. 35), but the comparison, whilst an honour to the force of exposition of the unknown Artaud of 1923–4, must not be pushed too far. Teste’s troubles relate to an over-abundance of possible thought trails; in Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re Artaud presents his diYculties in obverse terms as a fundamental stalling of the mind where every thought is recalcitrant. Whereas Vale´ry’s thinker would seem to be threatened by an over-transparency, a too great facility in observing the mind that could lead him to look straight through it, the kind of nothingness described by Artaud is not invisibility but absence. The Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re throws a long shadow over Artaud’s œuvre, not least because he has been taken at his word as importantly and illuminatingly non-mainstream. The prevalent image of Artaud sees him as a revealing combination of the seminal and the marginal and his writing as a heroic failure where genius is at the service of intellectual dissolution. It is certainly true that Artaud takes the question of creativity and silence into new areas by his account of insidious linguistic collapse and the non-occurrence of thought, together with his Wne analyses of the sense of existential paucity this occasions. Throughout his career he courted the image of archetypal yet atypical suVerer and seer, and identiWed with such ‘alieńe´s authentiques’ as Van Gogh, Nietzsche, and Nerval. His most highly regarded texts—Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re, Le Theáˆtre et son Double, Van Gogh, le suicide´ de la socie´te´—are those where his theorizing about art is accompanied by the implicit claim that the excentric perspective he adopts aVords an incomparably superior appreciation of art’s true function, and, by extension, of

22


the basic realities of life. This image of the crazedly lucid poe`te maudit survived his death, and in the late 1940s and 1950s his name was elevated to critical canonization as martyr to artistic suVering,3 while his appeal to post-structuralist critics in the 1960s relied on a more sophisticated yet related vision of his writing as revelatory of the dispersive forces at work on the modern linguistic, thinking subject. Artaud is thought to be interesting because liminal, and this liminality is said to tell us something of the intellectual taboos of Western culture. Yet, whatever the value of seeing his texts as a revealingly distorted mirror held up to the Western world view, it has prevented an appreciation of the way Artaud’s writing does not just assault Western thought modes but also builds up something that, despite its tensions and its increasingly mythic overtones, is a form of conceptual system. Still, there is an important way in which the image of Artaud as a marginal writer whose thought is revelatory of the dissolution of the thinking and linguistic subject does hold good. In countering certain conceptual myopia—thinking, for example, is not just the smooth, homogenous process that the Western tradition was long prone to dress it up as, but may instead be legitimately seen as subject to secret, hidden pressures exerted by linguistic and conceptual systems—Artaud allows repressed aspects of ideas and accounts to come to the fore. What he says about those repressed aspects might, especially towards the end of his life, be extravagant, but that does not detract from his signalling speciWc aspects of a notion as neglected to the point of being occluded (or, as Artaud will call it in the 1940s, occulted—‘envouˆte´’). A fundamental point about Artaud is that he takes ideas with a quite extraordinary seriousness, and what for others are largely dead metaphors are for him vibrantly alive and often threatening truths. Without denying the justiWable basis of the image of Artaud as exemplary marginal Wgure, then, it is important to see that this marginality is not the result of an inherent oddity, an eccentric and perhaps psychotic world view, but is instead the product of a lively intellectual interaction with cultural and intellectual frameworks. He builds his extraordinary and extravagant vision of the human condition out of his analyses of the failure of language and of the voids of the thinking subject.

3 A typical example of early Artaud criticism: ‘Antonin Artaud s’est a` bon escient suicide´ sa vie durant, sans une heure de re´pit, sans se preóccuper de disciples, d’imitateurs, pour notre salut ’ ( Jacques Audiberti, ‘Le Salut par la peau’, Revue K Numero double Antonin Artaud, 1–2 (1948), 62.


23

In his writings of the 1920s Artaud dwells closely on how language, thought, and ratiocination may relate to self, body, and world. His writing circles round these themes, playing out the same motifs with myriad variations. They provide the framework for the exploration of his sense of existential thinness and insubstantiality initiated in the 1920s texts and continued in all his subsequent writings, so this chapter will oVer a general view of what Artaud has to say on these issues and a broad feel of how he tends to express it. It is in fact insuYciently recognized that Artaud’s intellectual trajectory Xows directly from the 1920s collections (Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re, L’Ombilic des Limbes, Le Pe`se-Nerfs, Fragments d’un Journal d’Enfer) and especially from the originally uncollected writings now published under the title ‘Textes surreálistes’ (i**) and largely ignored by criticism. The following chapter in particular will draw on these texts to analyse more closely what Artaud says about linguistic aridity, thus revealing some rather surprising premisses to the philosophy of language structuring his poetics. The notion of a linguistic crisis is not, of course, peculiarly modern, and Artaud is far from being alone in sensing the inadequacy of the poetic idiom.4 To take the example of an immediate precursor, in his famous Chandos Letter (1902) the Austrian poet, dramatist, and essayist Hofmannstahl Wnds that previously real abstract concepts crumble in the mouth like mouldy fungi. Within the English tradition, the generation of Yeats and Eliot—the contemporaries of the Surrealists—felt language to be depotentiated by rationality and to have undergone an irreversible process of deformation and decay. Instead of being a vehicle for selfexpression, language is experienced by the modernist writer as an oppressive superego. In a letter of July 1914 the German-language writer Kafka, who captured so much of twentieth-century anxiety in his work, observed that ‘what I write is diVerent from what I say, what I say is diVerent from what I think, what I think is diVerent from what I ought to think and so it goes on further into the deepest darkness’.5 It is not a lack of individual inspiration or the dead weight of tradition that impedes creativity but language as such. Language is no longer conceived as a tool but as a force in its own right (making literary activity less an aesthetic than an existential activity). The German philosopher 4 The brief overview of the idea of linguistic crisis that follows is especially indebted to Richard Sheppard’s excellent article ‘The Crisis in Language’, in Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.), Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930 (London: Penguin, 1991), 323–36. 5 Quoted in English in ibid. 328.

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Heidegger, whose work is contemporary to Surrealism, says of language that it does not exhaust itself in signifying but remains excedentary to human uses, outside the world, self-standing and resistant. This captures in abstract terms a strain running through Dada and Surrealist thought. Much of what Artaud has to say on the issues of discourse and reality overlaps with the ideas of French poets of his generation. His conception of language, thought, and reality is inscribed not just within the modernist movement but wholly within the matrix of Surrealist debate, of which he was one of the moving forces. However, where Andre´ Breton and Louis Aragon perceived the split within the speaking subject as introducing a fruitful strangeness into experience that made possible a rejuvenation of reality, Artaud identiWes this doubling in the subject with linguistic breakdown. It is true that breakdown places him on a metaphysically more authentic plane than that of the usual conceptual Wctions of the doxa. Linguistic failure is for him an index of authenticity. It opens his eyes to the delusions of orthodox ideas on the linguistic subject, but only because he is battering himself against the limits of discourse in his attempt to express his subjecthood. But, given that for Artaud the subject is largely the linguistic subject, linguistic failure precludes the possibility of authentic subjecthood. Placing great stress on the jumps, breaks, and losses within thought and on the importance of the suVering body in relation to this non-continuity of thought, Artaud’s personal creed is saturated with an existential pessimism and solipsism that sit oddly with the upbeat fervour and the ludic nature of much 1920s Surrealist writing. Where Surrealist poetry aims to liberate the human spirit, in his selfanalytical writing Artaud never even says to his satisfaction his own fragmentation. So what distinguishes Artaud’s thought on language, truth, self, and world from the Surrealist matrix in which it develops is, Wrst, that he situates his ideas more squarely in the domain of metaphysics, not aesthetics, and, secondly, that he despairs of breaking out of the wasteland of reality and alienation into a surreality of vibrancy and plenitude. This latter is his desired destination throughout his writing career, but one from which the linguistic subject is, he suggests, permanently exiled—or fallen. Artaud, with the other habitue´s of Masson’s studio (sometimes called the 46 rue Blomet group), began attending the second wave of Andre´ Breton’s gatherings in the summer of 1924. If now seen as a secondary Wgure in the Surrealist movement, he was no mere fellow traveller, and leant towards zealotry and extremism in his interpretation of what Surrealism should stand for: ‘J’ai fait connaissance avec tous les dadas


25

qui voudraient bien m’englober dans leur dernier bateau surreáliste’, Artaud writes in 1924, ‘mais rien a` faire. Je suis beaucoup trop surreáliste pour cela. Je l’ai d’ailleurs toujours e´te´, et je sais, moi, ce que c’est que le surreálisme. C’est le syste`me du monde et de la penseé que je me suis fait depuis toujours’ (i**. 112).6 He was nominated Director of the Bureau de recherches surreálistes in January 1925, and edited the third edition of the standard-bearing La Re´volution surreáliste. Soon he was introducing his own urgent concerns and it has been suggested that his expulsion in 1926 was in large part due to Breton’s disquiet at the guiding force Artaud was becoming.7 It was inevitable that Artaud’s alliance with Surrealism be uneasy because of a diVerence in literary temperament. The form his writing naturally took was violent socio-religious invective, whilst the emphasis in Surrealist writing—at least until its politicization in the late 1920s—was placed on the positive ideal of a creative liberation from social and rational orthodoxy, and on a beauty to be spun out of the freshness of the merveilleux and the hasard objectif. In the words of a leading scholar of the movement: ‘Surrealism insults reason for the beneWt of spontaneity, logic for the beneWt of the lyric sense of the marvellous, and everyday reality for the glory of the insolite.’8 The undertow of Artaud’s writing pulls in a very diVerent direction, for he directed his energies towards writing against what he conceived as the barriers to this freedom—language, reason, and conceptual constructs. Artaud intones the apocalypse, and does not sing the Surrealist revolution. Whilst the violence of much Surrealist textual imagery was a joyous, iconoclastic release of energies, the violence of texts such as Artaud’s ‘Adresse au Pape’—‘guerre a` toi, Pape, chien’ (i**. 41)—reveals an earnest hatred. The intense passion that was criticized in his acting of the period was just as apparent in his writing, of uncustomary virulence even for Surrealist polemic. Artaud claims to be naturally Surrealist on the ground that for him the surreal was not a willed, aestheticized vision of reality but attendant upon the acute derealization he experienced within discourse. Leaving 6 This ties in well with Andre´ Masson’s reading of Artaud: ‘S’il existe un surreáliste, c’e´tait assure´ment Artaud’. ‘Artaud, lui-meˆme’, Cahiers de la Compagnie Renaud-Barrault: Antonin Artaud et le theátre de notre temps, 22–3 (1958), 9. 7 The suggestion is made by Stephen Barber (Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs (London: Faber and Faber, 1993), 29). Ge´rard Durozoi, in le Surreálisme, co-authored with Bernard Lecharbonnier (the`mes et textes; Paris: Larousse, 1972), quotes Breton as being distinctly alarmed by ‘cette voie; mi-libertaire, mi-mystique, [qui] n’e´tait pas tout a` fait la mienne’. 8 Mary Ann Caws, The Poetry of Dada and Surrealism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 18.

26


aside the signiWcant diVerence of tone, there is certainly much common ground between Artaud and such major theoreticians of Surrealist poetry as Aragon and Breton. Many elements of the Dada-derived early Surrealist creed are to be found in Artaud’s collections of the 1920s, L’Ombilic des Limbes, Le Pe`se-Nerfs, Fragments d’un Journal d’Enfer, and especially L’Art et la Mort. (This latter, oddly, is the one collection published after Artaud’s rupture with the Surrealist movement and yet the only one extensively to deploy orthodoxly Surrealist stylistic techniques.) The scandalizing of intellectual good manners, negation of knowledge, and celebration of the arational mark their credentials as early French Surrealist polemic. If stylistically most of these texts stand apart, only infrequently displaying touches of Surrealist lyricism (and this is an important point underlining the fact that Artaud’s overlap with Surrealism lay in a mode of thinking more than in an aesthetic),9 they articulate a similar attitude towards Western rationalistic culture and its impasses as the writings of mainstream Surrealist writers, together with a similar neophytic admiration of other (mainly oriental) cultures.10 As Director of the Surrealist Research Centre Artaud was quick to speak for the collective in his more ideologizing moments: in an anonymous text he wrote to open the third edition of La Re´volution surreáliste, for example, ordered thought is decried as anathema to deep reality: ‘logique, ordre, Ve´rite´ (avec un grand V), Raison, nous donnons tout au neánt de la mort’ (i**. 32). Binary logic and dualist thought modes are particularly reviled: ‘L’Europe logique ećrase l’esprit sans Wn entre les marteaux de deux termes’ (i**. 43). Reason and logic have stunted reality to the point of deformation: ‘le reél n’e´tant qu’une des faces les plus transitoires et les moins reconnaissables de l’inWnie reálite´’ (i*. 126) and so the revolution must strive for ‘la rupture et la disqualiWcation de la logique qu’elle pourchassera jusqu’a` l’extirpation de ses retranchements primitifs’ (i**. 45). Artaud departs here from mainstream Surrealist thought, which is not antirationalistic as such but suggests that what rationality presents as contradictory is better seen as complementary. In the Second manifeste Andre´ Breton writes that: ‘Tout porte a` croire qu’il existe un certain point de l’esprit d’ou` la vie et la mort, le reél et 9 Two notable stylistic exceptions are Paul les Oiseaux ou la Place de l’Amour (i*. 54–6) and the text inspired by a painting by Andre´ Masson, Un ventre Wn . . . (i*. 60–2). 10 See e.g. Artaud’s sycophantic ‘Adresse au Dalaı¨-Lama’ (i**. 42). This should not be confused with the hostile text of the same name (i*. 16–19) written by Artaud the cultural terrorist in 1946 to introduce his projected Œuvres comple`tes (see i*. 271 n.). There are also two texts entitled ‘Adresse au Pape’ for the same reason.


27

l’imaginaire, le passe´ et le futur, le communicable et l’incommunicable, le haut et le bas cessent d’eˆtre perçus contradictoirement.’ The aim is to reconstitute totalities and resolve antimonies through the work of what Apollinaire called ‘la raison ardente’, instead of the dissociating and classifying of ‘la raison froide’. This creed provides the basis for Surealist poetic images, which unite elements habitually dissociated: thus, for example, Eluard both sings the poet’s power and negates the logical dissociation of things in ‘J’e´tablis des rapports entre l’homme et la femme j Entre les fontes du soleil et le sac a` boutons.’ Surrealist poetics seek less to do away with reason than to reinstate all that reason does away with, and the aim in lines such as Eluard’s is less to transgress old orders than to connect anew. For Artaud too the rationalistic order is seen as insubstantial in comparison to the potential richness of mental life: ‘la Toute-Penseé. Le merveilleux est a` la racine de l’esprit’ (i**. 32). But, despite positive reference to the marvellous, the dominant impression even in the most mainstream Surrealist texts Artaud wrote for La Re´volution surreáliste is of advanced entropy and of being dragged down into the ‘neánt’ that appears so frequently under his pen. The rationalistic inXection of our ideation of reality veils the inadequacy of our representations of it, for reason lends a false coherence and illusory higher dignity to a reality that, if truth be told for Artaud, is experienced by suVering bodies as a scattering, confusing welter of experience. The compartmentalization and ordering of experience within rationalistic language drains our representations of life of any vitality for Artaud, and this is true not just of the outside world but also of the linguistic subject. For Artaud, cognition is a supremely complex operation upon equally complex experiential material; rationalistic thinking loses all this complexity. Rationalistic language is, therefore, a major factor in Artaud’s sense of existential paucity. In texts of the mid-1920s he sometimes prescribes a vital dose of the unordered and the surreal. In a rare text where Artaud employs Surrealist stylistic devices he contrasts a mental state of surreal chaosmos to the sterility of mental experience once it has been ordered by ratiocination. Initially the text evokes the rich, dense experiential state prior to conceptualization: Une grande ferveur pensante et surpeupleé portait mon moi comme un abıˆme plein. Un vent charnel et re´sonnant souZait, et le soufre meˆme en e´tait dense. Et des radicelles inWmes peuplaient ce vent comme un re´seau de veines, et leur entrecroisement fulgurait. L’espace e´tait mesurable et crissant, mais sans forme peńe´trable. (i*. 51)

28


The correspondance of ‘charnel’ wind and ‘crissant’ space is not just poetic conceit: the experience described is one of free interplay that celebrates the many-meaningedness of immediate lived experience. The repeated ‘et’ conveys an almost trancelike participation in the rich multiplicity of pre-rational experience. But, once the higher intellectual faculties work on this interfused mass of brute experience, it is fractured into discrete elements, draining out the signiWcatory plurality: ‘quelque chose du bec d’une colombe reélle troua la masse confuse [ . . . ] toute la penseé profonde a` ce moment se stratiWait, se re´solvait, devenait transparente et re´duite’ (i*. 51). The poetic manifold is lost. Somewhere between the noisy over-signiWcation of chaos and the sterility of an order-ridden discourse Artaud posits a fragile poetic state that is a celebration of multiplicity and potentiality. A new, chaotic order is to elicit but not impose form on the miasma of experience, and at times Artaud seems to imply that surreal poetic diction might oVer the means of retaining the vital disorder of experience. There may be an element of provocation in Artaud’s imputing sonority and resistance, physical characteristics, to objects of consciousness, as there may in his describing mental space as ‘crissant’ (i*. 51). But this is not dictated purely by a taste for provocation. Artaud’s texts insist with some urgency on the need for a new state of autonomy in which he would be open to, yet not dominated by, the world. Such desires bring to mind how in Eluard’s poetry objects frequently acquire a simple yet powerful presence capable of inducing a childlike sense of plenitude. But with Eluard the object is always present to a distinct subject, the two existing in a harmonious state of equal ontological purity. Eluard is thus closer to Hofmannstahl’s idea of the poet as he who sees the total relatedness of things by acting as the centre and coordinator, the ‘silent brother of all things’. Artaud’s writing suggests the surreal might somehow abolish such a separation into subject and object, self and world. There is an almost pantheistic mystical strain that goes beyond existential fraternity in the desire ‘[s]e laisser emporter par les choses [ . . . et] pour cela avoir en soi le courant des choses, eˆtre au niveau de leur courant, eˆtre enWn au niveau de la vie au lieu que nos de´plorables circonstances mentales nous laissent perpe´tuellement dans l’entredeux’ (i**. 16–17). This mystical impulse is made explicit in ‘une re´volution surreáliste [ . . . ] vise a` la substance profonde et a` l’ordre de la penseé . . . Elle vise a` creér avant tout un mysticisme d’un nouveau genre’ (i**. 219). This ideal state of simple reciprocity with the world where the barrier between subject and object erected by the mind is not


29

yet in place would, Artaud suggests, generate a new reality: ‘au point ou` le monde devient sonore et re´sistant en nous, j avec les yeux de qui sent en soi se refaire les choses, de qui s’attache et se Wxe sur le commencement d’une nouvelle reálite´’ (i**. 16). There are moments in Artaud’s 1920s writing when it seems that the world is to be the making of the subject, and that, if the prophylactic of rationalism were done away with, then the subject might be fertilized by the world. The optimistic notes of early Surrealism can be heard, then, at times in Artaud’s writings. It is just that for him the ideal of surreality is something to be posited, not attained. Yet overshadowing the aYrmative faith in freeing the mind so that it might cognize in tune with reality is, for Artaud, the basic experience of cognitive stalling and the sense that consciousness is a void. ‘J’ai l’air bien aVreusement preóccupe´ de de´montrer que je ne pense pas’, writes Artaud nine months after the appearance of his correspondence with Rivie`re and a few weeks prior to the appearance of the equally selfanalytical L’Ombilic des Limbes and Le Pe`se-Nerfs, ‘mais je pense [ . . . ] qu’il vaut mieux eˆtre dans un e´tat d’abdication perpe´tuelle en face de son esprit’ (i**. 17). It is only by such an abdication of faith in intellectual prowess that Artaud can allow the outside world to take on a similar density within (‘le monde devient sonore et re´sistant en nous’ (i**. 16)) and so experience the ‘sentiment [des choses] et leur retentissement en moi: le retentissement au bout duquel est la penseé’ (i**. 16). It is noticeable, though, that Artaud’s texts tell of himself, not of the world. Despite comments on the need to connect afresh with the material world, he writes no Rimbaldian impressionistic texts of pure vision. If literary impressionism is a means of seducing essence from myriad circumstance, its multiplying of views brings the threat of annihilating the poet at the centre, and anonymity is a price Artaud is not prepared to pay. Artaud’s writing on rhapsodic illumination typically never goes beyond imagining it to actual enactment. The ideal of pure, simple co-revelation of self and world joins up here in Artaud’s writing with linguistic failure. The general feeling of his Surrealist texts is of trying to return back up the lines of thought underpinning the awareness necessary for writing, with the aim of capturing reality unmediated by any but the most simple concepts. Artaud insists that his writing is notes [ . . . ] mode`les [ . . . qui] s’adressent aux confus de l’esprit, aux aphasiaques par arreˆt de la langue. Que voila` pourtant bien des notes qui sont au centre de leur objet. Ici la penseé fait de´faut, ici l’esprit laisse apercevoir ses membres. Que voila` des notes imbećiles, des notes primaires [ . . . ]

30


Mais des notes Wnes vraiment [ . . . ] Ces notes qui me´prisent la langue, qui crachent sur la penseé. (i**. 47)

In the attempt to Xee the complacent emptinesses of culturally endorsed thought—the ‘beˆtise’ Artaud and Surrealism see in rational thinking— he deploys what he presents as a cognitively superior and (supposedly) artless failure. For Artaud, true, existentially dense and complex thought is pre-linguistic, and so unsayable and unwritable, but his ‘notes primaires’ might gesture towards what such thought could be like (and he rather smugly implies they do). It is by attending to the frictions between discourse and perceptual experience that the way may be opened to a new reality. Failure and loss become the hallmark of success and the basis of recuperation. Artaud deWnes the Surrealist revolution not just as a rejection of an inherited cultural and conceptual order but as a rejection of the fundamental ideas that underpin such orders: a faith in the grammaticality of reality and in the reliability and trustworthiness of cerebration: ‘Le fait d’une re´volution surreáliste dans les choses est applicable a` tous les e´tats de l’esprit, j [ . . . ] a` tous les e´tats du monde au milieu de l’esprit, j [ . . . ] a` tous les ordres de l’esprit. j Cette re´volution vise a` [ . . . ] la de´prećiation de l’esprit [ . . . ] j au deńivellement de la penseé’ (i**. 45). For Artaud the higher intellectual apparatus cudgels reality into its own form; he rails against the ‘Esprit-intimidation-des-choses pour les faire entrer dans l’Esprit’ (i*. 49). Such an attitude means that Artaud ‘doit admettre jusqu’a` un certain point une mystique surreáliste’ (i**. 46) to try to remedy the fact that ‘l’Esprit ne soit pas dans la vie et que la vie ne soit pas dans l’Esprit’ (i*. 49), and this leads to a dream of a work of art that would be ‘une porte simplement aboucheé avec la reálite´’ (i*. 50). Such complaints and aspirations are common to Surrealist poets writing in the 1920s. Even the image of the open door is part of the Surrealist topos, generally used to suggest the point sublime lying beyond it where contraries are magically resolved in a superior reality. But Artaud does not conWne himself to rejecting reason’s codiWcations on the basis of a gulf between mind and reality, and he parts company from his peers in complexifying his account of the barriers to authentic experience. His rejection of ratiocination has a diVerent thrust, since he places it in the context of a personalized account of the non-possession of thought; he thus insists on a second gulf, this time between thought and thinking subject. Once again, the idea of a doubling within consciousness is common to much Surrealist poetry. But for Breton, Aragon, and the practitioners of automatic writing, this distancing of self from self is a


31

positive phenomenon, providing the framework for dictation from the unconscious. So, if the Surrealist poet ‘ne croit a` l’eYcacite´ de l’esprite´peron, de l’esprit-guillotine, de l’esprit-juge, de l’esprit-docteur’, it is not the case that ‘il ne se reconnaıˆt aucune penseé [ . . . ] j Il de´sespe`re de s’atteindre l’esprit’ (i**. 46) for the ideal of recuperating the unconscious within consciousness precludes such a credo. The latent solipsism of such an attitude, as well as his estrangement from mainstream Surrealist poetics and philosophy, will become increasingly pronounced as he problematizes the relationship between thought and thinking subject. This solipsistic tendency is already evident in ‘A la Grande Nuit’, Artaud’s rejoinder to his expulsion from the Surrealist group (i**. 59–66). For him Surrealism is a war cry against the derisory signiWcance allotted to the individual and his thought: ‘Que chaque homme ne veuille rien conside´rer au dela` de sa sensibilite´ profonde, de son moi intime, voila` pour moi le point de vue de la Re´volution inte´grale’ (i**. 60 n.). This idea of changing reality by an inner revolution had been very much in the air in the last quartile of the nineteenth century with the fad for Vedic, Buddhist, and Cabalistic thought, and had been carried forward by the German Expressionists, who believed in ‘Revolution as an act of the spirit’ (in Lothar Schreyer’s words). It could also be taken as the watchword of Artaud’s writing career. By functioning at a higher level than that of the thinking subject, the Surrealist movement as personiWed in Breton abandoned, for Artaud, any claim to being truly revolutionary. If the aim is to ‘de´saxer le fondement actuel des choses, de changer l’angle de la reálite´’ (i**. 60 n.), this can, for Artaud, be eVected only by a radical reconceptualization and re-engineering of individual consciousness according to new, non-rationalistic principles. This total focusing on the inner self, however, leads Artaud to neglect the outside world in whose name this rethinking of subjecthood is initially undertaken. The withdrawal into inner space is Artaud’s early Kehre which sets his course on a reconceptualization of the self when he should, according to his own principles, be writing towards an interpenetration of self and world. (This interpenetration is announced at the end of his writing career on the dubious grounds that the world, perceived as too threatening to the integrity of the self, is redeWned and placed under the dominion of a self that subsumes and contains all reality.) Artaud’s gloominess about ideational consciousness leads to the ironic situation where, to escape from the narrow conWnes of the inherited idea of subjecthood, he shuts himself up in a lifetime’s redeWnition of the subject. By digging ever deeper into the diYculties of thought and widening the gulfs between thought and

32


reality, between thinking subject and thought—by distancing the meaning-making self from signiWer from signiWed from referent—Artaud can head only towards solipsism. So Artaud’s work becomes an endless commenting and theorizing about the paucity of thought and its many hiatuses, indefatigably reporting the losses attendant upon thinking. The Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re is famously not about its declared subject matter, the (negligible) literary merits of the poems Artaud sent to the Nouvelle Revue française for publication, but instead reports the blockages and losses he holds to be inherent to thinking. L’Ombilic des Limbes and Le Pe`se-Nerfs continue the attempt to give tongue, in fragmentary form, to the discontinuities of his mental life, taking the project forward to an endeavoured prise de conscience of thought-in-troubled-action. Artaud displays an obsession with the relationship between thinking subject and thought, and even texts that would not initially seem to be about thought—for example, his imaginary biographical sketches of Paulo Uccello (i*. 54–6; i*. 140–2; i**. 9–13)— are soon drawn into reXections about the complex relationship that exists between a thinking, writing subject Antonin Artaud who imaginatively projects himself into a thought-about subject Paulo Uccello. The complications inherent to thinking, to a world view founded on the separation of thinking subject from object of thought, are the staple constituent of Artaud’s 1920s writings. What, then, does he have to say about the inner fracture between subject and object of thought? Clearly, Artaud suggests that thinking is a far more complex matter than common parlance would suggest. His experience of thought is that it collapses at moments of great intellectual promise. These impediments to thought are described as amounting to an ‘eVrondrement central de l’aˆme, une espe`ce d’e´rosion, essentielle a` la fois et fugace, de la penseé’ (i*. 28) The commas here puncture the breathing of the phrasing, and this, together with the interwoven phonic patterning, expulse the term ‘penseé’ to the end of the sentence, where it sticks out awkwardly like some appendage on its prepositional stalk. He makes it clear that the problem is not that his wielding of language fails to do justice to the complexities of his thought. It is thought itself that is Xawed: ‘Je parle de la vie physique, de la vie substantielle de la penseé [ . . . ], je parle de ce minimum de vie pensante a` l’e´tat brut,—non arrive´ jusqu’a` la parole, mais capable au besoin d’y arriver’ (i*. 66). The raw material of mental activity introduces non-identity into thought; it is the very stuV of thought in its brute state that is to blame: ‘ce qui me caracte´rise est [ . . . ] une extinction dans la racine et dans l’œuf de toutes les forces en


33

nous ante´rieures a` l’esprit’ (i**. 167).11 Given that it is the brute stuV of thought that is lost, Artaud cannot know the modes of loss. Loss occurs in a no man’s land between nascent thought and consciousness of thought; it is in this sense that Artaud speaks of the ‘inconsciente minute’ at which loss occurs (i*. 42). Consciousness cannot be witness to the loss that it experiences on the limits of its domain, but it can testify that loss has occurred. There is an unnameable ‘quelque chose qui de´truit ma penseé [ . . . ] Un quelque chose de furtif qui m’enle`ve les mots’ undercutting thought (i*. 28). Artaud can but witness, with all that the term implies of enforced passivity, the ravishing of what language calls his thought, but which is revealed in its breakdown to be not fully his. He can know only the after-eVects of this action, can state only that ‘[j]e sais comment ça se traYque la`-dedans’ (i*. 30). The ‘ça’ cannot be named, the events cannot be speciWed (‘se traYque’); ‘ça se traYque’ is all Artaud can say or do about his alienation within thought. Given this inability to be aware of the functioning of his mind, the leading statement of Artaud’s early ars poetica—‘[l]a` ou` d’autres proposent des œuvres je ne pre´tends pas autre chose que de montrer mon esprit’ (i*. 49)—is all the more astonishingly ambitious. Surrealism insists of course on the fact that art is not a separate, specialized aesthetic discursive act but like any language act engages and expresses the totality of the personality. Beauty is thus irrelevant and replaced by authentic self-expression. In L’Ombilic des Limbes and Le Pe`se-Nerfs Artaud implicitly claims success for this project of collapsing writing and life onto each other and so revealing the mind as it is. And it is true that there is no Xavour of Wctionality, especially in Le Pe`se-Nerfs; Artaud sticks to his subject matter, himself, and the reader can feel, however misguidedly, that this is Artaud. The fragmented, notelike jottings seem to allow us to accompany Artaud as he observes his own thought, without any distance of literary artiWce. It is as if we were sitting in on his thinking, eavesdropping on his inner voice. But this very transparency and apparent immediateness is the strongest proof of the literarity guaranteeing communication. These texts are, as he says in a diVerent context, ‘des notes Wnes vraiment’—very sly writing.12 11 Since Artaud Wnds fault with the stuV of thought, not its functioning, the objection that the lucidity of his self-analyses belies the judgements of those analyses is pre-empted: ‘Ma lucidite´ est entie`re, plus aiguiseé que jamais’, he writes to his friend and psychoanalyst Dr Allendy, ‘c’est l’objet auquel l’appliquer qui me manque, la substance interne’ (i**. 145). 12 In the context of the Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re, Artaud’s evident desire to manœuvre Rivie`re into publishing his texts should lead us to be careful about reading the texts as Artaud’s pure voice. Despite claims to be conducting a ‘confession mentale’

34


Moreover, though the texts of L’Ombilic des Limbes and Le Pe`se-Nerfs might make an implicit claim to be striking right to the heart of thought, in fact they remain on the sidelines, commenting, describing, theorizing. The writing is far from guileless and far removed from automatism. Artaud does not show his mind but speaks of his ruminations about why thought is not the epiphany of vitality he imagines. We are never given the mind a` vif but instead reXections about Artaud’s past experience of thought: the present moment of thought is banished from the text. Nor does Artaud in fact tell of the impediments involved in the thinking processes: impediments are taken as given, so he concentrates on the after-traces of lost thought. The phenomenon that has inspired this intellectual and literary adventure is invisible: it is pre-text. Artaud’s early texts are haunted by a shadow of absence: ‘Je parle moi de l’absence de trou, d’une sorte de souVrance froide et sans images, sans sentiments, et qui est comme un heurt indescriptible d’avortements’ (i*. 69) where the echoes of a cliche´d decadent melancholy further desubstantialize any putative extra-literary referent. Thought, then, is doubly absent, since both thought and its loss are unknowable. This is why, after these early collections, Artaud’s texts become an unstoppable theorizing machine about a self that would not be subject to loss, a self that would be able to show itself. The fact that loss cannot be told paradoxically provides the stimulus to write. Loss becomes the Wrst condition of self-exploration through writing. Such an attitude underpins the Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re. The insistence on the interpenetration of art and life is, of course, in no way speciWc to Surrealist poetry. Proust’s great novel, the publication of which had started only ten or so years previously (in 1913), was intimately concerned with capturing the kaleidoscopic quality of lived selfhood in the work, and it was still sending shock waves through French, and indeed Western culture.13 But Artaud, rather than regarding writing as a way of attempting to capture the self, sees it rather as a way of theorizing about the impossibility of such an undertaking. Where other authors transpose the oft-frustrated quest to express the self into Wction, (i*. 27) it is more a case of vide me than mea culpa. Artaud’s tone swings from the toadying to the petulantly insulting, and he does not contain his glee when Rivie`re proposes to publish the correspondence. Artaud no longer takes weeks but replies by return of post with the glib grandiloquence of a prosateur: ‘votre ideé me plaıˆt, elle me re´jouit, elle me comble’ (i*. 40). It must not be forgotten that the Correspondance originated not as a literary text but as a correspondence, with all the desires and subterfuges of any such interaction. 13 Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, 4 vols., ed. Jean-Yves Tadie´ (Bibliothe`que de la Pleíade; Paris: Gallimard, 1987–9).


35

Artaud instead develops an imaginative (Wctive) theory that purports to account for the diYculties that beset the undertaking of self-expression. The kind of identity between art and life of which Artaud speaks is far more literalist, for he sees writing and existing as identical: the concern lest his thought ‘ne parvienne pas l i t t e´ r a i r e m e n t a` exister’ is described as ‘tout le proble`me de ma penseé qui est en jeu. Il s’agit pour moi de rien moins que de savoir si j’ai ou non le droit de continuer a` penser, en vers ou en prose’ (i*. 25). There is no distinction between existence as a thinking subject and writing. The ‘lambeaux’ of his meagre texts are valued not for aesthetic reasons—‘la litte´rature proprement dite ne m’inte´resse qu’assez peu’ (i*. 38)—but for existential reasons, since they are ‘les quelques manifestations d’existence spirituelle que j’ai pu me donner a` moi-meˆme’ (i*. 24). (In Le Con d’Ire`ne (1928) Aragon too explicitly states that writing is his only way of thinking.) In rejecting literary Wnality Artaud follows Surrealist practice that employs poetic form primarily to help emancipate the mind and thus reveal ‘la matie`re mentale’. But he goes further and, in a peculiar move, displaces his identity onto the page: the writing subject is to be one with, as opposed to just revelatory of, the existing subject. The underlying idea would seem to be that writing is the only means for self-knowledge, as the very failings of writing expose those aspects of his thought that are truly issued from his self and not mere borrowings from discourse. It is precisely and uniquely in the failure of writing that Artaud hopes to Wnd his mind. He fully exists only in writing and can fully know his self and his thoughts only in writing. Artaud’s later, dominant belief that he could change his identity and biology via writing (the corps sans organes to be delivered by the text) is therefore to be found in embryo form at the beginning of his literary career. The great value Artaud places on writing arises from its unique ability to provoke self-awareness in a way that the alterity of thought could seem to make impossible. This idea of the text as a work of apperception is, of course, one of the most important ideas of Surrealist theory and at the heart of the practice of automatism. In the Premier manifeste Surrealism is famously deWned as the means ‘exprimer, soit verbalement, soit par ećrit, soit de toute autre manie`re, le fonctionnement reél de la penseé. Dicteé de la penseé, en l’absence de tout controˆle exerce´ par la raison, en dehors de toute preóccupation morale ou esthe´tique.’14 It is thus an undertaking seeking knowledge of the true functioning of thought. As suggested above, the 14 Andre´ Breton, Manifestes du surreálisme (Collection Folio/Essais; Paris: Gallimard, 1985), 36.

36


idea of the duality of the self is common to Surrealist poetry, and Louis Aragon’s verse often displays a sense of the doubling that occurs in introspection, an experience that does not induce despair so much as intrigued self-observation: ‘J’ećoute au Wn fond de moi le bruit de mes propres pas s’e´tendre j J’entends ma propre chanson qui se fatigue de se plaindre.’15 For Breton the doubling of the self is an even more positive experience than it is for Aragon; he considers that the attendant shock plays a major role in the willed ‘de´se´ducation des sens’ that must be undertaken if true thought is to be discovered beneath the overlay of literary and philosophical thought structures. Doubling is, for Breton, the basis of self-knowledge: ‘Je veillais sur moi sur ma penseé,’ he writes conWdently.16 The Surrealist poet can speak of the alterity of the self with conWdence, since the activity of Surrealism was to allow the poet to embrace the totality of previously occluded mental forces: ‘l’ideé de surreálisme tend simplement a` la rećupe´ration totale de notre force psychique par un moyen qui n’est autre que la descente vertigineuse en nous, l’illumination syste´matique des lieux cache´s [ . . . ], la promenade perpe´tuelle en pleine zone interdite.’17 This descent into the self, even if described as ‘vertigineuse’, is evidently not perceived as dangerous: it is a ‘promenade’ that results in ‘illumination’. However, if Artaud is to gain self-knowledge through writing, it is not by tricking the unconscious onto the page by automatic writing or induced slips of the pen.18 If the Surrealists left themselves open to the charge that they allowed the unconscious to usurp the throne of reason, Artaud is far more circumspect and views the unconscious with suspicion as the repository of forces emanating from society. It is the way the mind works, or rather does not work, and not its hidden content, that interests Artaud. For Artaud the descent into oneself brings agony and paralysis: ‘Je souVre d’une eVroyable maladie de l’esprit’ (i*. 24).19 Whereas for the 15

Louis Aragon, Le Roman inacheve´ (Paris: Gallimard, 1956), 182. Andre´ Breton, ‘Les Attitudes Spectrales’, in Clair de terre (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 114. 17 Breton, Manifestes du surreálisme, 86. 18 It would seem that Artaud never tried his hand at automatic writing. As someone passionately interested in the self, it could be supposed that he would have thrown himself enthusiastically into any project susceptible of yielding such fruits as the Surrealists claimed for automatism. 19 An intriguing parallel suggests itself here to the Proustian narrator when he Wnds his artistic creation threatened: ‘tachant de trouver un sujet ou` je pusse faire tenir une signiWcation philosophique inWnie, mon esprit s’arreˆtait de fonctionner, je ne voyais plus que le vide en face de mon attention, je sentais que je n’avais pas de geńie ou peut-eˆtre une maladie ce´re´brale l’empeˆchait de naıˆtre’ (A la recherche du temps perdu, i. 170). Proust’s irony and lightness of touch tell of the world of diVerence between the two writers. 16


37

Surrealists writing was to reveal the syntax of the self, for Artaud this is an impossibly optimistic dream, since thought refuses to yield itself to inspection: ‘Ma penseé m’abandonne, a` tous les de´gre´s’ (i*. 24). He is interested not in opening up new vistas of the imagination but in avoiding the loss of any shreds of thought left to him. He is seeking to ‘exhausser mon abaissement, d’e´quilibrer ce qui tombe, de reúnir ce qui est se´pare´, de recomposer ce qui est de´truit’ (i*. 53). He claims the right to be prescribed opiates to counter his sense of loss and not for the exhilarating liberation of hitherto unexploited resources of his psyche (i*. 64–7). It should by now be clear that, whilst many of Artaud’s early writings are written from within a recognizably Surrealist theoretical framework, there is a signiWcant diVerence in perspective—perhaps a diVerence in temperament—between him and the major Surrealist poets. Where Eluard, Breton, Desnos act with a positive sense of liberating purpose, Artaud reacts negatively against self-dissolution. Breton’s suggested dictionary deWnition of Surrealism in the Wrst Manifeste du surreálisme (1924) is lyrically optimistic: ‘Le surreálisme repose sur la croyance a` la reálite´ supe´rieure de certaines formes d’associations ne´gligeés jusqu’a` lui, a` la toute-puissance du reˆve, au jeu de´sinte´resse´ de la penseé.’20 Artaud, on the other hand, outlines his personal project in terms of gloomy urgency: ‘Me mettre en face de la me´taphysique que je me suis faite en fonction de ce neánt que je porte’ (i*. 114). Artaud departs radically from Surrealist thought in his ontological pessimism. Being-in-the-world is not, for Artaud, a given, but something that involves great mental eVort: ‘Il y a des imbećiles qui se croient des eˆtres, eˆtres par inneíte´. j Moi je suis celui qui pour eˆtre doit fouetter son inneíte´’ (i*. 9).21 Artaud’s keen awareness of the problematics of consciousness means that he situates himself at a level ‘below’ that of lyric fancy. His mental world is taken over by an anguished awareness of its non-awareness. This kind of self-reXexive non-thought is in danger of becoming a hall of empty mirrors: ‘ma conscience re´duite a` un Wl me met, j non en puissance d’e´motions, de sensations, de penseés, d’associations, de vibrations quelconques de la sensibilite´ geńe´rale, et du moi, j mais en 20

Breton, Manifestes du surreálisme, 36. This quotation, although from the beginning of vol. i of the Œuvres comple`tes, does not date from the Surrealist period, being drawn from the Preámbule written in 1946. It is at a switch-point in the text where Artaud is moving from discussion of Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re to a discussion of his work in general. It does not seem extravagant, although it is not explicit, to take it as a synthetic reworking of the underlying ideas of the 1920s collections. 21

38


puissance d’angoisse’ (i**. 191). Artaud would appear to be caught on a spiral leading ever further away from the self and downwards into mental nothingness: ‘la conscience, renonçant a` lutter avec une clarte´, une e´lucidation pourtant nećessaire, et sachant les avortements qui la meńacent, redescend vers elle-meˆme’ (viii. 66).22 Writing is experienced as painful, a necessarily disjointed undertaking, and a lyrical despair lovingly crafted would be a travesty of his intimate reality. This is why Artaud is scornful of those who reproach him with his inability to write of ‘une belle douleur, d’angoisses remplies et charnues’ (i*. 84). Writing, for Artaud, has nothing to do with aesthetic felicity. Artaud could no doubt concur with that other arch-modernist, Samuel Beckett, and his gnomic ‘nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express [ . . . ] together with the obligation to express’.23 Both consider writing as an imperative but doomed metaphysical enterprise. Artaud’s pessimism stems from the faith he has in language. Just as he feels that his works are failures in comparison to his ideal of full and perfect expression of a subjacent, inner self, so he feels that language fails him because he attributes it with such extraordinary powers over reality. Once again Artaud is working within the framework of Surrealist thought here, the Surrealists displaying an ‘almost superstitious faith in language as magic incantation’, as Caws suggests.24 This belief in the magic potential of language transpires in his complaint that static inherited discourse will never capture the truth of reality: ‘Ce n’est que par un de´tournement de la vie, par un arreˆt impose´ a` l’esprit, que l’on peut Wxer la vie dans sa physionomie dite reélle, mais la reálite´ n’est pas la`-dessous’ (i**. 32), where the sudden Wring of the barely repressed jaunty rhythm and overstated internal rhymes are suggestive of the full-throated glee of late Artaud. Aragon shares some of Artaud’s ambivalence towards language. Like Artaud, he writes of the ways in which the poet may be alienated within his own discourse: ‘chaque parole [ . . . ] dit autre chose que ce qu’elle dit [ . . . ] tout vocable porte j Au-dela` de soi-meˆme une signiWcation de chute une force re´ve´latrice j Ou` ce que je ne dis 22 This is from a series of dispersed notes collected by The´venin under the title ‘Pages de Carnet. Notes Intimes’ (viii. 47–94). The text quoted here is dated by The´venin as 1932— hence seven or eight years after the majority of texts under discussion in this chapter. The ‘Pages de Carnet. Notes Intimes’ will be used quite extensively in the next chapter as important corroborating evidence for the interpretations put forward of Artaud’s late 1920s and early 1930s writings. 23 Samuel Beckett, Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit (London: Calder, 1965), 103. 24 Caws, The Poetry of Dada and Surrealism, 20.


39

pas perce en ce que je dis.’25 But if there is alienation within language for Aragon, the excedentary nature of language is ‘re´ve´latrice’. However diYcult it may be to express thought and however much language may betray the poet, Aragon, even though he maintains that there is no thought beyond language, does not experience this inescapable world of mutating meanings as imprisonment nor the misdirections of speech as alienation. Aragon delights in the metamorphosing world of language as a form of never-ending enchantment: Jamais je ne perdrai cet e´merveillement Du langage Jamais je ne me re´veillerai d’entre les mots.26

One of the rallying ideas of Surrealism is that in unconscious speech words lose their wrinkles. Language no longer functions as an oppressive superego and can be expressive of new thoughts. Automatism shows that the Xux of the inner mind is linguistic, and so, if at one level language is an alien social institution, at a deeper level it is a natural phenomenon expressive of the entire being. Artaud reacts very diVerently. Language, as the faculty of representing the real by a sign and of understanding that sign as being representative of the real, ought, on Artaud’s theory, to be capable of reorienting reality: ‘Il ne me faudrait qu’un seul mot parfois, un simple petit mot sans importance, pour eˆtre grand, pour parler sur le ton des prophe`tes’ (i*. 88).27 But such language is beyond him. This is why he considers his to be a twilight world of half aperçus and aborted thought trails, where the terms he employs are the nets that entangle him, pegging him down and preventing him from following his thought any further: Tous les termes que je choisis pour penser sont pour moi des t e r m e s au sens propre du mot, de ve´ritables terminaisons de mes mentales, de tous les e´tats que j’ai fait subir a` ma penseé. Je suis vraiment l o c a l i s e´ par mes termes [ . . . et] je ne les reconnais pas comme valables dans ma penseé. Je suis vraiment paralyse´ par mes termes, par une suite de terminaisons. Et si a i l l e u r s que soit en ces moments ma penseé, je ne peux que la faire passer par ces termes, si contradictoires a` elle-meˆme, si paralle`les, si e´quivoques qu’ils puissent eˆtre, sous peine de m’arreˆter a` ces moments de penser. (i*. 96)

25

Louis Aragon, Les Poe`tes (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 20. Ibid. 164. 27 Artaud’s belief in the power of language to alter reality is evident in the glossolalia (discussed in Chapter 4) that took over ever greater portions of his texts towards the end of his life. 26

40


In this passage, typically bordering on the prosaic yet combining a lowkey urgency with noisily staged complaint, Artaud writes of the boundaries language imposes on creative thought. His language does not go far enough, because it falls short of expressing the inexpressible (note the hiatus between ‘mes’ and ‘mentales’). The Surrealist theory of language holds the poetic image to be a means of knowledge because of its ability to create a universe of relationships between seemingly opposed objects. But Artaud goes further in his epistemic claims, placing impossibly high demands upon language as bearer of knowledge: insight must be insight into something beyond his ken, pushing back the frontiers of the expressible and the knowable. But the damagingly restrictive conceptualization of reality that suVuses inherited discourse is all Artaud has. Language is both an unattainable promise and a prison, and so Artaud experiences language as inevitable alienation, writing of ‘cette langue qui n’arrive plus a` de´passer son ećorce’ (i**. 57). Language, unable to break out and touch reality, must be turned back in on the mind to assault its own inadequacies: ‘voici maintenant le seul usage auquel puisse servir de´sormais le langage, un moyen de folie, d’e´limination de la penseé, de rupture’ (i**. 34). If language cannot bring new knowledge, it may at least destroy old illusions. When Artaud does move away from his theorizing and polemics to describe his experience of thought, it is striking how thoroughly the two realms of mental and bodily fuse.28 ‘Description d’un e´tat physique’ (i*. 58–9), overshadowed by a sense of disempowerment as Artaud lurches from description to aborted description, evokes burning pain, fear, bewilderment, straining, staggering, gasping, fatigue, fragility, numbness, fracturing, pressure, and rupture. It is a description not so much of a physical state as of the interfusion of mental and physical pain, a sophisticated phenomenology of pain. SpeciWcally physical details are immediately played out in the realm of the mind. The ‘muscles tordus’ are overshadowed in their twistedness by the impression that they are ‘a` vif’; the ‘engourdissement douleureux’ has no physical eVect but an extraordinarily powerful mental eVect ‘qui n’interdit aucun mouvement 28 There are frequent descriptions of physical pain, which, whilst they at Wrst glance appear to be associated with cognitive shortfalls, in fact refer to the physiological consequences of his attempts to come oV opiates. In a questionnaire Artaud completed in 1932 on admission to a detoxication programme he describes his experience of a cessation in the intake of drugs in terms of ‘froid intense, morsures dans les muscles, terrible emprise dans les lombes, toute la conscience au moment des paroxysmes re´duite a` l’e´tat d’un bloc de douleur criante’ (viii. 320). Care needs to be taken to prevent such descriptions skewing an account of Artaud’s theorizings.


41

mais change le sentiment interne d’un membre’ (i*. 58). Physical fatigue is described in terms of its eVect on mental life: ‘ne pre´sentant plus au cerveau que des images de membres Wliformes et cotonneux, des images de membres lointains et pas a` leur place. Une espe`ce de rupture inte´rieure de la correspondance de tous les nerfs’ (i*. 58). Artaud is of course regarded as the advocate of the carnal, but the body is valued only in so far as it is the locus of the mental and hence has the potential to take the mind hostage. If throughout his writing career Artaud emphasizes the body, his early texts show that this is because of its ability to induce self-alienation. Many early texts tell of how bodily suVering intrudes on the proper functioning of thought. Artaud’s thought is stolen with the complicity of what for him symbolizes incarnation, his marrow: ‘mes moelles [ . . . ] se plaisent a` ces rapts furtifs auxquels la teˆte de ma penseé pre´side’ (i*. 88). The anguish as the alienated thinking conscious self (‘la teˆte de ma penseé’) looks on is described in terms of immobility, lack of Xow, halted or suspended activity: ‘une congellation de la moelle, une absence de feu mental, un manque de circulation de la vie’ (i*. 69). Once the body is involved, it is not just a slowing-down of thought implicit in ‘[l]’Angoisse qui pince la corde ombilicale de la vie’ (i*. 67) or the summary of his problem as being that he thinks ‘a` un taux infe´rieur’ (i*. 66 n.). Thought is now petriWed because of the intrusion of the suVering body. The ‘grande ferveur pensante’ (i*. 51) has become ‘une sorte de vermine dure et dont tous les mouvements sont Wge´s’ (i*. 69). And the failure of thought is experienced not just as mental but also as bodily absence: ‘c’est le trajet nerveux de la penseé que cet eVritement atteint et de´tourne. C’est dans les membres et le sang que cette absence et ce stationnement se font particulie`rement sentir’ (i*. 117). Whilst the idea that there can be hiatuses in thought is commonplace, Artaud goes further, writing the absence of thought into the fabric of the body itself. The painful body intrudes upon the proper functioning of the mind to such an extent that the individual is determined: ‘jusque dans les ramiWcations les plus impenseés de son eˆtre irre´ductiblement de´termine´’ (i**. 27). Already in the 1920s Artaud is blaming the ill-adaptedness of his anatomy to his mind: ‘ce conditionnement de mes organes si mal ajuste´s avec mon moi’ (i**. 26), foreshadowing his late idea of the corps sans organes. The dispersing anatomy means that the self is victim to a ‘promiscuite´ obligeé des choses avec l’essence de notre moi [ . . . ] ce qui touche cet eˆtre [ . . . ] est devenu partie inte´grante de sa substance’ (i**. 55). Instead

42


of pristine reciprocity with the world, the subject is contaminated, sullied, and denatured. And already Artaud is associating this dispersive anatomy with God: ‘Il a dispose´ de moi jusqu’a` l’absurde, ce Dieu; il m’a maintenu vivant dans un vide de ne´gations, de reniements acharne´s de moi-meˆme. [ . . . ] Il m’a re´duit a` eˆtre comme un automate qui marche, mais un automate qui sentirait la rupture de son inconscience’ (i**. 27). Artaud’s view of the human condition is captured in this Wne phrase— ‘un automate qui sentirait la rupture de son inconscience’—evoking how identitary leaching is but dimly sensed. Artaud is so hypnotically paralysed by his awareness of his suVering body that it reduces him to a secondary status: ‘ce de´duit d’imbećillite´s, d’abdications, de renonciations et d’obtuses rencontres qui est le moi d’Antonin Artaud, bien plus faible que lui’ (i**. 21). But, if Artaud is unable to overcome this state of dispersal and paralysis, he is nevertheless aware of a latent, potential, stronger self: ‘ce moi virtuel, impossible, et qui se retrouve tout de meˆme dans la reálite´’ (i**. 21). The conditions of his existence might be such that he feels it impossible to actualize his latent capacities, but his underlying, repressed self is real all the same. One of the mainstays of Artaud’s world view is that there is an inner self, a plenitudinous ego-entity, and, if he complains that he does not possess his thought and language, it is the thought and language of this pristine, culturally untouched inner self. His everyday, public language self is less real, less authentic than this super-real, but virtual and unmanifestable self. The solipsistic bent to Artaud’s way of thinking leads him to equate authenticity with impossibility and virtuality. Artaud might insist that the diYculties he encounters in thought have nothing to do with questions of inspiration (i*. 24) and that ‘cette paralysie qui m’e´touVe est au centre de ma personnalite´ usuelle et non de mes sens d’homme pre´destine´’ (i*. 114–15), and such comments have been taken at face value, but the textual evidence against this begins here to look overwhelming. In particular, the frequent references to a new sort of truth to be found militate against the claim that his concern is with an everyday, public self. He must ‘penser d’une manie`re rare, rare, c’est-a`-dire essentiel, mieux cribleé que les autres’ (i**. 188). He is seeking pristine, nascent thought, ‘une sorte d’e´le´mentaire conscience. j Ce nœud de la vie ou` l’e´mission de la penseé s’accroche’ (i*. 113) and his writing is to be a ‘Pe`se-Nerfs’ (i*. 101) that will, he implicitly claims, supply ‘la geómetrie sans espace [ . . . ] la conWguration de l’esprit’ (i*. 102). Artaud states boldly and unequivocally that he is seeking


43

‘une ve´rite´ claire [ . . . ] Je vois dans le fait [ . . . ] de me lancer dans l’aYrmation d’une ve´rite´ pressentie, si aleátoire soit-elle, toute la raison de ma vie’ (i*. 113–14). Such a felt truth will arise, Artaud suggests, from his ‘sang’, from listening to an instinctual, pre-verbal knowledge of the body: je me jette sur une fausse piste indiqueé par mon sang. Je ferme les yeux de mon intelligence, et laissant parler en moi l’informule´, je me donne l’illusion d’un syste`me dont les termes m’ećhapperaient. Mais de cette minute d’erreur il me reste le sentiment d’avoir ravi a` l’inconnu quelque chose de reél [ . . . ] Sur les routes ou` mon sang m’entraıˆne il ne se peut pas qu’un jour je ne dećouvre une ve´rite´. (i*. 114)

Artaud believes that by dropping down beneath the level of intellectuality a new system or order of knowledge may reveal itself. A heightened responsiveness to the complex, messy experience of being alive and thinking could provide the framework for a new way of conceiving of himself, for ‘le grouillement imme´diat de l’esprit [ . . . ] s’ordonne suivant des lois qu’il tire de l’inte´rieur de lui-meˆme, en marge de la raison claire’ (i**. 54). It is by blocking out conscious thought to focus instead on an awareness of the ever-rumbling hubbub of the mind that goes on beneath thought, and the substratum of awareness of a functioning, breathing, blood-pumping body, that the syntax of the latent inner self might be discovered: ‘Je ne crois plus qu’a` l’e´vidence de ce qui agite mes moelles, non de ce qui s’adresse a` ma raison’ (i**. 52). By being responsive to the pre-verbal, pre-rational, instinctual life of bodily awareness, by placing himself ‘au-dessous de la penseé’, he will Wnd ‘un haut enseignement’ (i*. 118–19). Bodily knowledge will generate a new gnosis: ‘des choses capitales et peut-eˆtre bienfaisantes [ . . . ] des choses de ve´rite´ sur la vie, sur l’esprit, sur la reálite´ et l’irreálite´, sur toutes choses’ (i**. 167). BeneWcial truths are not traditionally associated with Artaud’s aims and aspirations, but this is no freak textual occurrence, an aberration from the man of ‘blows and bombs’29 and outlandish ideas; truth and truths are Artaud’s declared aim. So, although Artaud Wnds that his inner self is paralysed and trapped in the realm of the virtual owing to bodily and mental ill-adaptedness, he holds out the hope of recuperating this self through a simple bodily awareness. In Fragments d’un Journal d’Enfer (1925), a bleak homage to Rimbaud, Artaud laments the wreckage of the self and ‘mes nuages 29 Such is the subtitle to Stephen Barber’s biography of Artaud, to which reference has already been made.

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e´teints [ . . . ] mon immortelle impuissance [ . . . ] ce monotone cruciWement [ . . . ] ou` l’aˆme ne Wnit plus de se perdre’ (i*. 116–18), but the emphasis is in fact far less on the spiritual night of the soul than on the solid physical presence of the body: ‘J’ai le culte non pas du moi mais de la chair [ . . . ] Toutes les choses ne me touchent qu’en tant qu’elles aVectent ma chair, qu’elles coı¨ncident avec elle, et a` ce point meˆme ou` elles l’e´branlent, pas au dela`. Rien ne me touche, ne m’inte´resse que ce qui s’adresse directement a` ma chair’ (i*. 116). What interests Artaud is not what bodily experience can tell him about himself but the brute, immediate experience itself, the ‘point meˆme ou` [les choses] e´branlent [ma chair], pas au-dela`’.30 Although there is a strong negative strain to this collection of fragmentary paragraphs telling of Artaud’s creative breakdown, when he hits bottom he discovers a hope. For it is possible to make an ‘aYrmation d’une ve´rite´ pre´ssentie’, even if the truth he can aYrm is that his identity is inextricably linked to his abject Xesh: ‘Je suis homme par mes mains et mes pieds, mon ventre, mon cœur de viande, mon estomac dont les nœuds me rejoignent a` la putre´faction de la vie’ (i*. 117). And this aYrmation of the body is not an alternative, a fall-back position for someone who has despaired of thought. For Artaud a minute sensitivity to the body could allow the recuperation of his inner self and thought since the Xesh is also a thinking body, a ‘chair irrigueé de nerfs’ (i**. 52). By dropping down from the level where there is a split between thought and thinking subject to that of the ‘nerf ’, Artaud hopes to pass beneath his sense of alienation. If self-reXexive thought is not possible, a visceral self-awareness is, and it is at this level that he Wnds the possibility of ‘une reórganisation souveraine’ opens up and that ‘un nouveau Sens’—and the capitalization is eloquent—can be founded (i**. 53). It is at this level of pre-reXexive, body-anchored thought that he feels he comes closest to Wnding his personal, authentic tongue: ‘l’image ameneé par mes nerfs prend la forme de l’intellectualite´ la plus haute [ . . . ] un concept qui porte en lui la fulguration meˆme des choses, qui arrive sur 30 There is a striking parallel here with an 1890 text by the Norwegian poet Knut Hamsum on the sub-life of the mind: ‘They last a second, a minute, they come and go like a moving winking light; but they have impressed their mark [ . . . ] Secret stirrings that go unnoticed in the remote parts of the mind, the incalculable chaos of impressions, the delicate life of the imagination [ . . . ] the random progress of these thoughts and feelings; untrodden, trackless journeyings by brain and heart, strange workings of the nerves, the whisper of the blood, the entreaty of the bone, all the unconscious life of the mind’ (quoted in James McFarlane, ‘The Mind of Modernism’, in Bradbury and McFarlane (eds.), Modernism, 81–2).


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moi avec un bruit de creátion. Aucune image ne me satisfait que si elle est en meˆme temps Connaissance’ (i**. 52). If concepts are to be bearers of knowledge, they must be image-concepts that have inscribed within them the searing Xash with which objects burst in upon the body. These intellectual, nerve-produced image-concepts are the means of ensuring that ‘l’e´branlement de la chair participe de la substance haute de l’esprit’ (i**. 51). This ties in directly with the desire to eVace the barrier between subject and object, ‘eˆtre au niveau des objets et des choses, avoir en soi leur forme globale et leur de´Wnition du meˆme coup’ (i**. 17). For it is only by accepting to be a body among bodies that the true nature of things, their deWning form, can become known. Selfknowledge will bring with it knowledge of the world. Given that Artaud holds that the important truths of his existence reside at the level of bodily awareness and not mental activity, it is not surprising that the text that amounts to a creed of his early thought should be entitled ‘Position de la Chair’ (i**. 50–2). This bodily stance he adopts means that ‘[t]ous les syste`mes que je pourrais e´diWer n’e´galeront jamais mes cris d’homme [ . . . des] cris intellectuels, des cris qui proviennent de la Wnesse des moelles’ (i**. 50). For Artaud, the immediate physicality of the ‘lowest’ of expressions is greater than the greatest intellectual extrapolations, and the marrow, the epitome of Xeshly existence, displays an archetypally ‘mental’ characteristic of Wnesse. But it does not seem that Artaud is merely insisting on the obvious fact that he is both body and mind. The intellectual and carnal are intimately knit together: ‘Je refais a` chacune des vibrations de la langue tous les chemins de ma penseé dans ma chair’ (i**. 50). This is an extraordinary proposition, but one that must be taken seriously if the true extent of Artaud’s rejection of the thinking subject in favour of brute thinking bodies is to be properly appreciated. Artaud implicitly admits his creed is outlandish when he describes his ‘Position de la Chair’ as far removed from the commonsensical, the result of a ‘recherche enfouie dans les limbes de [s]a conscience’ (i**. 51). The insights gained are three times removed from the status of self-warranting evidence: ‘j’ai cru sentir des ećlatements, comme le heurt de pierres occultes’ (i*. 51, emphasis added). The sudden emergence of insight is compared to ‘la pe´triWcation soudaine de feux. Des feux qui seraient comme des ve´rite´s insensibles et par miracle vitaliseés’ (i**. 51). For Artaud insight is unpredictable and perhaps self-contradictory, since the petrifaction of Xames is here what vitalizes them. It is true that literarity here dominates exposition, but nevertheless this text is not just underlining the physicality of the mind and the

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corporeality of perception.31 Artaud is proclaiming the Xesh as the true homeland and hunting-ground of ontology and metaphysics: ‘la chair [ . . . ] doit me donner une me´taphysique de l’Eˆtre, et la connaissance de´Wnitive de la Vie’ (i**. 51). With Artaud ‘toute vraie connaissance est obscure’ (i**. 51), and his account of the Xesh borders on the paradoxical. It is in bodily awareness, Artaud suggests, that there is no distinction between subject and object of awareness, and this is what sets bodily awareness apart from mental awareness. The Xesh is the privileged site of unmediated, deWnitive knowledge, dependent on nothing other than itself, for it is illumined from within: Pour moi qui dit Chair dit avant tout appre´hension, poil he´risse´, chair a` nu [ . . . ] c’est-a`-dire connaissance directe, communication retourneé et qui s’ećlaire de l’inte´rieur. Il y a un esprit dans la chair, mais un esprit prompt comme la foudre [ . . . ] qui dit chair dit aussi sensibilite´ [ . . . ] c’est-a`-dire appropriation intime, secre`te, profonde, absolue de ma douleur a` moi-meˆme, et par conse´quent connaissance solitaire et unique de cette douleur. (i**. 51)

The Xesh is autonomous, is able, at the level of brute bodily awareness and bodily presence, to be the perfect mirror of itself. The Xesh is that most elusive of things, for Artaud; it is identical to itself. The ‘esprit dans la chair’ is as quick as lightning, so prompt and rapid there is no moment in which a gap may open up between the Xesh and the intellectual apprehension of the Xesh. In contradistinction to Artaud’s experience of thought, nothing can insinuate itself between the Xesh as sensor and the Xesh as sensed. It is the site of an ‘appropriation intime [ . . . ] profonde et absolue’ of oneself. In the body alone can Artaud experience true self-presence. Artaud, who is ‘a` la poursuite constante de [s]on eˆtre intellectuel’ (i*. 24), has no such problems with the ‘esprit dans la chair’ that oVers the possibility of ‘connaisance directe’, ‘connaissance solitaire’, ‘connaissance unique’ in the ‘vitalite´ nerveuse des moelles’. Artaud, as a man who has ‘qu’une occupation, me refaire’ (i*. 97), Wnds in the Xesh the possibility of eVecting self-identity and of joining up with the dolorous song of his self. Looking back on his involvement with the Surrealist group after his expulsion, Artaud acknowledged the important lesson he learnt from the 31 Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theories and their extensive relevance to Artaud’s emphasis on the corporeality of mental experience are examined in Jacques Garelli’s highly technical Artaud et la question du lieu (Paris: Corti, 1982). If Artaud’s expression of these ideas is more exciting than Merleau-Ponty’s, the latter’s exposition in works such as Le Visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964) is more convincing. Artaud is not a precursor, more of a distant herald.


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Surrealist embracing of disorder and non-plenitude: ‘Le surreálisme ne pouvait pas me rendre une substance perdue, mais il m’apprit a` ne plus chercher dans le travail de la penseé une continuite´ qui m’e´tait devenue impossible, et a` savoir me contenter des larves que mon cerveau faisait traıˆner devant moi ’ (i**. 67). He might not be able to bring about the mental revolution, but at least he knows that his jagged, abortive attempts to capture the complexity of his thought are of greater validity than any illusorily smooth lines. If the Surrealists sought to reunite subject and world by opening up reason to embrace the arational via ‘la raison ardente’, it is by embracing the pre-rational that Artaud would heal the self. That is not to deny the references to fertile illogicality and wilful arationality, ‘la logique’ as Artaud calls it in good Surrealist disregard for logic, ‘de l’Illogique’ (i*. 53). But such references are far from being the leading light of Artaud’s thought. They seem more the residue of a way of thinking rapidly left behind, trappings that sit well enough on his underlying philosophy but that also conceal its true nature. Whatever the respective merits of Artaud’s writing and that of his Surrealist poetic companions, Artaud is the greater and more adventurous theorizer. Artaud drops down from what he regards as the too high level of ‘esprit’, for it is not by liberating previously repressed forces of the psyche that he will attain a state of poetic rebellion that would celebrate the vast complexity of life. Instead he chooses to situate himself on the level of bodily awareness and develops what might be called a corporeal mysticism. Of course, mysticism is always corporeal in the sense that the mystic yearns for a fusion with the absent Divine body, but Artaud’s corporeal mysticism does not seek fusion between him and an absent transcendent body but instead seeks a state of simple reciprocity between his sensing body and other material bodies in the world. Whereas the direction in which the mystic seeks to move is in some sense ‘upwards’, Artaud’s ideas suggest instead a movement ‘downwards’. The ‘sur-reél’ is for Artaud the ‘sous-reél’. It is by accepting the downwards pull of the Xeshly body, Artaud decides, that thought may be brought to an intuitive awareness of the world and so attain an ‘intraduisible science’ beneath language. For Artaud, everything truly important happens at this sublinguistic level. This goes a long way towards explaining both the dominant tone of anguish of Artaud’s writing and the extremes to which he will increasingly push his language. Artaud recognizes that this places him in an almost untenable position: ‘c’est ma faiblesse a` moi,’ he writes to Jacques Rivie`re, ‘mon absurdite´ de vouloir ećrire a` tout prix’ (i*. 30), and the price he will pay as a writer who cannot place any true faith in his language

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will indeed be the high one of an ‘alieńe´’. The inner self—the pure egoentity untouched by discourse—is not available in language nor is his sense of loss of thought. This explains why the dramatic theories he will develop privilege gestures over words and why his new science of existence is grounded in bone and Xesh, ‘moelles’ and ‘chair’. He can tell neither of his loss nor of his new discovery because they are too intimately part of his bodily fabric: ‘Jamais aucune prećision ne pourrait eˆtre donne´ par cette aˆme qui s’e´trangle, car le tourment qui [ . . . ] la dećharne Wbre a` Wbre, se passe au-dessous de la penseé, au-dessous d’ou` peut atteindre la langue [ . . . ] Cette male´diction est d’un haut enseignement pour les profondeurs qu’elle occupe, mais le monde n’en entendra pas la leçon’ (i*. 118–19). This incommunicability of Artaud’s inklings into reality is the result of their source, his painful body. Pain is utterly incommunicable in its essence—‘il n’existe pas de sismographe humain qui permette a` qui me regarde d’arriver a` une e´valuation de ma douleur’ (i*. 67)—but closely associated with insight: ‘Je suis un homme qui a beaucoup souVert, et a` ce titre j’ai le droit de parler’ (i*. 30). Pain brings about a feeling of estrangement from a body perceived as hostile: ‘Sans une grande douleur il n’est pas de ve´ritable intelligence. L’intelligence est avant tout e´loignement, se´paration’ (i**. 211). The private lesson of pain teaches Artaud that his is a thinking body. The insistent will to work at a level lower than normal thought processes will characterize all Artaud’s writing. He accepts what others might view as the failure of his thought to accede to some normal operational level, and indeed actively seeks out this base level, regarding it as more revelatory than the heights of rationalistic endeavour: ‘Il faut avoir e´te´ prive´ [ . . . ] de la comple´tude consciente du nerf pour se rendre compte a` quel point le Sens et la Science de toute penseé est cache´ dans la vitalite´ nerveuse des moelles’ (i**. 50). It is a matter of paying greater attention to the mental terrain and so discovering more: ‘Mon esprit s’est ouvert par le ventre, et c’est par le bas qu’il entasse une sombre et intraduisible science, pleine de mareés souterraines, d’e´diWces concaves, d’une agitation congeleé. Qu’on ne prenne pas ceci pour des images. Ce voudrait eˆtre la forme d’un abominable savoir’ (i**. 49). Where Freud proposes an archaeology of the mind, Artaud proposes a geology that exposes the inner chasms and fault-lines. His seismograph of painful awareness will lead him ever further down into concepts and the mind, and all his work may indeed be seen as the ‘abominable savoir’ that results from his early ideas on thought, language, and body.

2 SELF-PRESENCE, THOUGHT, AND LANGUAGE L’ideé de la connaissance absolue se confondait avec l’ideé de la similitude absolue de la vie et de ma conscience. (i*. 131) We always express our thoughts with the words that lie to hand. Or, to express my whole suspicion: we have [ . . . ] only the thought for which we have the words.1

Maurice Blanchot, whose work on Artaud in the 1950s inaugurated the critical debate and still serves as the gateway to Artaud criticism, opens his Wrst Artaud article with: ‘Chaque penseé e´tait pour lui la plus grande souVrance, et ne rien penser, l’absence de la penseé, c’e´tait la pre´sence nue de la souVrance.’2 The critical heritage on Artaud’s early writings largely agrees that they are an exposition of a failure to think and a failure to write, overshadowed by a paralysing sense of physical pain. What primarily occupies Artaud, we are told, is his experience of loss of thought, an experience of suVering, paralysis, degeneration, absence, what Blanchot deWnitively dubbed, in his article of this name, ‘la cruelle raison poe´tique’. The title of this chapter might thus seem surprising, for, whatever Artaud says about thought and language, avid readers of criticism might say, it has little to do with anything as positive as selfpresence. Such an observation would be true if we take what Artaud says literally, yet, if we start to look more closely, the inherited view of Artaud’s early texts starts to seem unnecessarily restricted. For the picture of Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re, L’Ombilic des Limbes, and Le Pe`se-Nerfs cannot be maintained intact if we open up our reading to include his other occasional writings of the period. The originally uncollected ‘Textes surreálistes’ (mainly in volume i**, which appeared in 1976, after twenty years of critical reliance on the original Wrst volume), whilst clearly mining the same seam of ‘abominable savoir’ as the collected 1920s writings, nevertheless do so in a diVerent spirit. The emphasis is less on loss and is shifted more towards 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), para. 257. 2 Maurice Blanchot, ‘Recherches: Artaud’, La Nouvelle Revue française, 8 (1956), 873–81.

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self-presence, thought, and language

a ‘savoir’ (the phrase, tellingly, comes from the uncollected writings) and an ideal of wondrous plenitude to be constructed out of this loss. Yet, if this supplementary volume has itself been available for many years now, it has been largely used for corroborating evidence of the prevalent critical orthodoxy rather than for a re-evaluation.3 It will be seen that Artaud’s critique of thought and language is a way of theorizing about an implicit term of comparison that is his ideal: self-presence in thought and self-presence in language. As is apparent in the neglected occasional ‘Textes surreálistes’ and letters of the supplementary volume i**, Artaud’s account of thought loss is articulated around the idea of the virtual inner self and not around the nothingness of the self.4 However, before addressing the question of how best to take what Artaud has to say about thought, a certain number of preliminary remarks are called for about the peculiar nature of Artaud’s texts. Jacques Derrida has referred to Artaud’s ‘aventure (et par ce mot nous de´signons une totalite´ ante´rieure a` la se´paration de la vie et de l’œuvre)’.5 This idea of a seamless fusion between life and work is, as is generally recognized, one that Artaud announces as the guiding spirit behind his aesthetics: ‘Je ne conçois pas d’œuvre comme de´tacheé de la vie’ (i*. 49). This is especially apparent in the self-analytical imaginative theorizings of Artaud’s 1940s writings, but what matters here is to examine the eVect of the fusion of art and life in his earlier works, since it has gone unnoticed how this might change the way we choose to read them. In brief, the early texts on thought and language cannot be read as authorially guaranteed statements on a question, even though they appear to be so, but need to be seen as trials for possible answers. Schematically, Artaud unites ‘œuvre’ and ‘vie’ in two diVerent ways. First, the Artaudian text is about what it is like to be Antonin Artaud and 3 This situation started to change in the 1990s. Jane Goodall’s 1994 book (Artaud and the Gnostic drama) and Camille Dumoulie´’s 1996 introductory textbook (Antonin Artaud (Les Contemporains; Paris; Seuil, 1996)) make even-handed reference to the two volumes i* and i**. Yet, even here, it would seem the inherited view of pessimism is in the driving seat, with volume i** coming along for the ride. 4 One exception to this rule of critical neglect is Paule The´venin’s lengthy and littleknown article ‘L’Automatisme en question’, in Fabienne Hulak (ed.), Folie et psychanalyse dans l’expe´rience surreáliste (Nice: Z’E´ditions, 1992), analysing Artaud’s suspicious attitude towards automatic writing in particular and the unconscious in general. A signiWcant number of the passages quoted here may also be found in The´venin’s article. However, whereas The´venin uses these texts to trace the biographical and ideological complexities of Artaud’s relationship to Surrealism, the focus here is on the complexities of Artaud’s ideas about the thinking subject. 5 Derrida, ‘La Parole souZeé’, 261.


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the sense of alienation that he experiences as one of the basic facts of his existence.6 ‘Œuvre’ and ‘vie’ come together, then, in that Artaud’s texts are overtly his reXections on his life, not in the diarist’s mode, perhaps, but not in a sustainedly Wctionalized, transpositional mode either. They are, in a sense, confessional: they are lived fact, narrative and conjecture all rolled together. Second, and both more importantly and more oddly, the text is an ‘œuvre’ for Artaud in the sense that it is an act of labour in which he comes into being by writing. Elements of this are apparent in the self-analytical texts of the 1920s under discussion in this chapter, although the generative power of the text will not be most fully expressed until the 1940s texts in which Artaud claims to give birth to himself and a spiritual family. For Artaud, the text is not just an account of artistic consciousness striving towards full self-consciousness and of the labours involved in creating subjecthood: he goes further than this Romantic conception and equates the act of writing about self-identity with bringing self-identity about. The Artaudian text is implicitly empowered with the ability to change his life, and this not just in the comparatively incidental ways observed by Andre´ Gide. Nor is it a matter of replacing a stylized lyrical poetic self with a more intimate and authentic voice— Artaud goes far beyond the project of Gustave Kahn who sought to ‘ećrire son rhythme propre et individuel au lieu d’endosser un uniforme taille´ d’avance’.7 It is not a matter of saying more fully his self. Instead the text implicitly reconWgures the metaphysics of Artaud’s self and perhaps even his biology. Writing has something revolutionary and magical about it so that stating something is, in Artaud’s hybrid textual reality, equivalent to having performed it. It is important to insist on how extraordinary this is. If contemporary Surrealists aYrmed a direct link between subject and object—the basis of magical thought modes—and if Pe´ret could write ‘un commun deńominateur unit le sorcier, le poe`te et le fou, [qui] ne peut eˆtre que la magie’, this is a

6 There are, of course, exceptions to this statement: He´liogabale (1934) is about the life of the Roman emperor of that name, Le Moine (1931) is a retelling of Lewis’s tale, and Artaud’s most famous work, Le Theáˆtre et son Double (1938), is a polemical dramaturgical tract. There are also myriad minor, short texts, particularly from the 1920s, about contemporary cultural events (see volume ii). However, this is but a small fraction of Artaud’s œuvre; and the level of identiWcation between Artaud and He´liogabale is something he insists on in a letter to Jean Paulhan: ‘He´liogabale vit, je crois, jusque dans ses profondeurs, que ce soient celles d’He´liogabale personnage [ . . . ] ou celles d’un personnage qui est moi’ (vii. 152). 7 Gustave Kahn, ‘Pre´face sur le vers libre’, in Premiers poe`mes (Paris: Socie´te´ du Mercure de France, 1897), 3–38.

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matter of voyance and not of changing, as Artaud seeks to, the basic existential condition.8 Underpinning the Wrst idea that the work may fully say his experience is a surprising and naive belief in the possibility of language adequately saying reality in all its complexity. The second idea, that the text can change his existential conditions, is based on a belief in the generative power of language, a cornerstone of the Theatre of Cruelty (‘les mots seront pris dans un sens incantatoire, vraiment magique’ (iv. 121)) and a tendency that reaches its extreme point in Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre (1937), where Artaud’s word accords itself the power to act violently and magically across time and space: ‘qui dira que je n’ai pas vu ce que j’ai vu, je lui dećhire maintenant la teˆte’ (vii. 119). But, if the precondition for a successful enactment of the Artaudian aesthetic is a magical and all-saying language, he Wnds, as we have already seen, that the most fundamental aspects of his existence are incommunicable: they may be intuited but cannot be put into words. There is, then, a great tension at the core of Artaud’s ideas about the written text: his idea of the work as being one with life and of language dictating to reality is placed at one extreme of the spectrum of possible philosophies of language; and his idea of language as so Xawed that nothing of importance may be said about his inner experience is to be found at the opposite extreme of the spectrum. There is also a further sense in which we may choose to see the Artaudian text as an adventure combining life and writing. As suggested in the previous chapter, though Artaud’s texts might implicitly claim to be showing the living moment (‘je ne pre´tends pas autre chose que de montrer mon esprit’ (i*. 49)), they are in fact given over to abstract theorizing, although of a special kind. Artaud’s texts do not document any stream of consciousness and do not show the Xuctuating thought patterns of his living mind, but they do trace the fortunes of his thinking about his experience. His texts are not the transcription of a previously thought-out position so much as the space where Artaud does his thinking. If for Rimbaud poetry became a means of exploring the process of the perceiving mind as process, of capturing the gestation of the pre-poetic, something akin happens with Artaud, for whom writing becomes the means of exploring the process of the self-perceiving mind, making visible the emergence of raw self-analyses. In both cases there is a 8 Benjamin Pe´ret, Le De´shonneur des poe`tes; suivi de, la parole est a` Pe´ret (Paris: E´ditions Mille et Une Nuits, 1996).


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displacement of focus both inwards and backwards. Artaud’s texts take us into the workshop of his thinking and show us his theories, their energies, and their misdirections.9 What Artaud’s writings record is an ongoing adventure of thought. With the Artaudian text, the thinking is in the writing, which becomes a speculative exploration of unknown inner territory. Seeing Artaud’s texts as a work permanently in progress—a work site—explains why the systems Artaud builds are so aharmonious. Even the descriptions of the workings of his mind, the starting point for his speculations, are plain inconsistent. The frequent brief wordsketches of his sense of alienation might at Wrst seem to Wt well together thanks to a homogenous lexicon of abstract and spatial terms such as absence, inexistence, nothingness, abandonment, pursuit, and erosion, but on closer examination they show themselves to be mutually contradictory. Artaud says he suVers from mental dysfunction and from a radical non-functioning; his problem is temporary writer’s block and a chronic inability to partake in his own mental activity; it is not a question of inspiration and yet it is a question of reaching the upper echelons of his mind. Four consecutive pages of Le Pe`se-Nerfs oVer four diVerent descriptions of loss: ‘ces rapts furtifs’ (i*. 88), ‘[u]ne espe`ce de de´perdition constante’ (i*. 89), ‘la de´possession de ma substance vitale’ (i*. 90), and ‘[u]n impouvoir a` cristalliser inconsciemment’ (i*. 91). Furtive abductions, gradual leakage, dispossession of a vital substance and a powerlessness to crystallize thought, though referring to the same type of experience, cannot be made to Wt together as characterizations of the same phenomenon. Attempts to make sense of the three early collections as referring to a ‘maladie’ run into the problem that Artaud seems to be suVering from as many ‘maladies’ as descriptions of it. Perhaps the early collections are not really about an ‘eVroyable maladie’. Such conXicting deWnitions are no isolated example restricted to his writings on loss of thought, and great ingenuity, probably casuistry, would be needed to resolve the inconsistencies between Artaud’s divergent statements on a given subject. The technique of furnishing a series of descriptions in a state of obvious tension is so prominent a feature of Artaud’s writing, and becomes more and more common over the course of his career, that it seems better to work with it than explain it away. Artaud’s theories, or speculations, are permanently subject to the threat 9 This aspect of his writing is compounded by the fact that Artaud’s editor Paule The´venin controversially opted to publish all Artaud’s papers, including his notebooks. The work-in-progress style, unsurprisingly evident in his notebooks and correspondence, is also strongly in evidence in the texts written for publication.

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of gommage (and Artaud will later nurture an extreme technique of ceaseless erasure discussed in Chapter 5). This technique does important conceptual work under Artaud’s pen, for it allows the text to Xoat terms free of their moorings and buVet them about. Artaud’s disregard for contradiction leads to a technique of repetition-with-diVerence that vitalizes his writing and allows complex, luxuriant meanings to be built up.10 In the case of the conXicting accounts of ideational loss, the conclusion that may justiWably be drawn from the four incompatible characterizations quoted above is that Artaud is not documenting an experience of loss so much as stating that he experiences loss because his thought does not fully possess itself, is not constant, is not wholly vitalized, and does not display an instinctual ability to group ideas around a core. In other words, the deWnitions of loss do not report a failing but tell far more of Artaud’s point of reference: an ideal of selfpresent, dynamic thought.11 Artaud’s complaints about language, thought, and the body may most proWtably be viewed as a means of speculating about an implicitly invoked ideal. Before it be thought that the claims being made here for Artaud’s credentials as a thinker are being overstated, let it be made clear that it is certainly not being suggested that all of what he says about his experience of loss of thought is really a covert theorizing. A signiWcant proportion of Artaud’s commentaries do seem to refer to some real psycho-physical impediment. When he claims that ‘[s]’il fait froid je peux encore dire qu’il fait froid, mais il m’arrive aussi d’eˆtre incapable de le dire’ (i**. 188), the text is best taken as referring unproblematically to a (real or imagined) mental dysfunction, not reconceptualizing thought and language. Quite apart from such instances, it certainly is not being claimed that all the linguistic exuberance of the more speculative texts is really a fruitful conceptual reworking. Not infrequently the pleasures of language direct the course taken by what wears the mask of analysis. If there is method in Artaud’s extravagance, this does not mean extravagance is a persistently and deliberately adopted methodology. When, for example, Artaud states: ‘Ce sont les assises physiques, et 10 Post-Mallarmean poetry is often a poetry of erasure, where writing is conceived as a limiting process to be outwitted by form: language deWnes and form liqueWes and reintegrates. For Artaud form might liquefy, but this does not lead on to a reintegration. Erasure is not used to counterbalance deWnition but to compound instability. 11 There are further reasons for being cautious about taking the early Artaud’s statements at face value. In the context of his account of thought, the fact that he dropped the term ‘maladie’ after the Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re suggests he may have recognized it as a misnomer.


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physiques jusqu’aux racines meˆme de l’imponde´rable, de toute penseé, qui sont malades en moi’ (i**. 165) he is indulging in hyperbolic obscurantism. The supposed precision of ‘et physiques jusqu’aux racines meˆme de l’imponde´rable’ amounts to an abdication of analysis at what purports to be the heart of analysis. ‘Imponde´rable’, ‘indescriptible’, ‘insoupçonnable’, and cognates attract Artaud’s pen, but the claims to such uncanny, unsayable, unthinkable precision can only be bluster. He claims to be ‘celui qui a le mieux senti le de´sarroi de sa langue dans ses relations avec la penseé’, but, even were such a claim true, it could not authorize him to make the further claim that he is ‘celui qui a le mieux repe´re´ la minute de ses plus intimes, de ses plus insoupçonnables glissements. [ . . . ] Je suis celui qui connaît les recoins de la perte’, for such a claim is logically impossible (i*. 99). Boastfulness is one of the less pleasant characteristics of Artaud’s writing, and it is not until the 1940s that it is tempered by deadpan humour. Artaud’s writing might well engage with issues in challenging and original ways, but it is also shot through with literarity and a theatrics of self-display. If Artaud is a thinker, there are frequent moments when thinking is subservient to the joys of language. The bravura of many of Artaud’s self-analyses papers over the cracks, and, in fact, it is when he is despairing at those cracks that much of the real thinking is done. In fact the term ‘maladie’ pulls in two directions, for Artaud uses it to signal both the unpretty facts about thought’s true nature and to smuggle in an implicit comparison with what thought would ideally be (but which cannot by deWnition be stated, since it is linguistic inadequacy that makes this ideal unrealizable). The texts thus have not one but two gravitational centres: Artaud’s experience of thought and an ideal form that could circumvent or transcend the impediments inherent to everyday thought. These are not two discrete accounts but the reverse sides of the same coin, the documentary complaint necessarily invoking the speculative critique. The speculation about pure self-present thought needs, then, to be written back into the complaint of ill thought. It is the frame idea that brings the account of linguistic loss into new focus. The Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re nicely illustrates the dual work done by the idea of linguistic lack. In two oft-quoted, key passages where Artaud describes his experience immediately prior to loss of thought there are ambiguous undertones that have gone surprisingly unremarked. In the Wrst extract, Artaud oVers conXicting descriptions of what happens to his thought, and then describes what is lost in surprisingly positive terms:

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Il y a donc un quelque chose qui de´truit ma penseé; un quelque chose qui ne m’empeˆche pas d’eˆtre ce que je pourrais eˆtre, mais qui me laisse, si je puis dire, en suspens. Un quelque chose de furtif qui m’enle`ve les mots que j’ai trouve´s, qui diminue ma tension mentale, qui de´truit au fur et a` mesure dans sa substance la masse de ma penseé, qui m’enle`ve jusqu’a` la me´moire des tours par lesquels on s’exprime et qui traduisent avec exactitude les modulations les plus inse´parables, les plus localiseés, les plus existantes de la penseé. (i*. 28)

First, thought is said to be destroyed, that is, structurally altered but not annihilated. Second, Artaud says that a furtive something robs him of his words and so desubstantializes that thought. Structural breakdown and substantive dispossession are incompatible, and the fact that there should be this kind of self-contradiction already suggests that the account of how loss occurs (the insuZation by an other voice that Derrida identiWes in Artaudian inspiration, for example) is less important than what is lost. And indeed this lost thought is something far rarer and more precious than everyday thought, for it is the expressive form Artaud has found that exactly conveys the Wnest points about the essential characteristics of his thought (‘qui traduisent avec exactitude les modulations les plus inse´parables, les plus localiseés, les plus existantes de la penseé’). An accurate idea of the most intimate workings of the most tellingly existent forms of thought—nothing less than perfect apperception—is what Artaud claims to have lost. Something very similar is apparent in the second key passage, where Artaud describes the moment immediately prior to loss of thought: avoir en soi la reálite´ inse´parable, et la clarte´ mate´rielle d’un sentiment, l’avoir au point qu’il ne se peut pas qu’il ne s’exprime, avoir une richesse de mots, de tournures apprises et qui pourraient entrer en danse, servir au jeu; et qu’au moment ou` l’aˆme s’appreˆte a` organiser sa richesse, ses dećouvertes, cette re´ve´lation, a` cette inconsciente minute ou` la chose est sur le point d’e´maner, une volonte´ supe´rieure et mećhante attaque l’aˆme comme un vitriol, attaque la masse mot-et-image, attaque la masse du sentiment, et me laisse, moi, pantelant, comme a` la porte meˆme de la vie. (i*. 42)12

12 Compare the close of this passage to Nathalie Sarraute’s observation about how static language is unable to say the dynamic minutiae of tropistic activity: ‘A peine cette chose informe, toute tremblante et Xageolante, cherche-t-elle a` se montrer au jour qu’aussitoˆt ce langage si puissant et si bien arme´, qui se tient toujours preˆt a` intervenir pour re´tablir l’ordre—son ordre—saute sur elle et l’ećrase’ (‘Ce que je cherche a` faire’, in Nouveau roman, hier, aujourd’hui, ed. J. Ricardou and F. van Rossum-Guyon, 2 vols. (Paris: 10.18, 1972), ii. 37). Both writers underline the heavy-handedness of all language when it comes to holding the gossamer inner life.


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It is ‘richesse’, ‘dećouvertes’, ‘re´ve´lation’ that are lost. The ‘clarte´ mate´rielle du sentiment’, the ‘masse du sentiment’, are more than a feeling; they are feeling incarnate, the material stuV of thought. There is also a signiWcant ambivalence in the description of the attack upon thought as ‘comme un vitriol’. Littre´ lists ‘faire le vitriol’ as, for the alchemist, ‘se´parer le pur de l’impur de la pierre philosophale’. It would be unwise to read too much into this were it not that Artaud, like many French Surrealist writers, frequently drew upon alchemical imagery, and that further this attack places Artaud ‘a` la porte de la vie’, echoing Artaud’s aspiration to write a book ‘comme une porte ouverte [ . . . ] une porte simplement aboucheé avec la reálite´’ (i*. 50). Written in Wligree, then, into this account of loss of thought is a second, positive account where insight arises out of loss, a loss that might enable Artaud to sift impure forms of thought from pure expressions of his private inner self and so pass through the door poetry pierces in the prison of discursive practice into surreality. What the ‘maladie’ reveals, then, is that Artaud has an extraordinarily strong deWnition of what would count as thinking: he wishes to know ‘dans sa substance la masse de [s]a penseé’, to be so much one with it that he would be sensitive to and able to express its ‘modulations les plus inse´parables’ (i*. 28). He wishes to observe the minutest details of its structure. His impossible goal is to think in such a way that thought would be able to contemplate itself without this act of contemplation in any way altering the object contemplated (consciousness). This is the ‘re´ve´lation’, the insight that Artaud always Wnds slips beyond his pen. It is only by a comparison with this impossible union of thinking subject and thought that Artaud does not possess his thought. In a footnote to an open letter he explains: je n’appelle pas avoir de la penseé, moi, voir juste et je dirai meˆme penser juste, avoir de la penseé, pour moi, c’est maintenir sa penseé, eˆtre en e´tat de se la manifester a` soi-meˆme et qu’elle puisse re´pondre a` toutes les circonstances de la vie. Mais principalement se re´pondre a` soi. (i*. 65 n.)

The ideal kind of thought of which Artaud speaks is not just a process, a way of thinking, but the apprehension of that process by itself in its entirety. It must apprehend itself in all its ramiWcations, and this whilst in the throes of dynamically grasping after itself, to be truly thought. The kind of thought that Artaud desires would be perfectly present to itself without this presence introducing any split between observing and observed thought. It would be a form of thought where reXexive thought

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would so perfectly overlay non-reXexive thought that there would be no doubling within this self-reXecting thought: ‘penser [ . . . ] c’est se rejoindre a` tous les instants, c’est ne cesser a` aucun moment de se sentir dans son eˆtre interne [ . . . ] c’est sentir toujours sa penseé e´gale a` sa penseé’ (i*. 66 n.). But this ideal self-present thought is impossible, for it entails an inWnite regress where the observing consciousness always needs to be integrated into the Weld of observation by a meta-observer. Underlying Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re is the impossibility of fully saying this kind of selfconsciousness. What Artaud Wnds (but refuses to accept) is that thought cannot be immediately present to a thinking subject who would think about thought. Any willed, conscious attempt to think about selfconsciousness and simultaneously to think in a fully self-conscious way about this undertaking sends thought spinning in a void. The whole idea of a sought self-presence, whilst apparently invoking a unity, in fact resides on an inherent dualism that splits the self into observer and observed. The only way, for Artaud, to avoid this regression is for it never to get under way, for self-presence to occur not in conscious thought but (and his thought is vague and murky here) in the body, which unlike consciousness does not have the capability of self-reXexive awareness and so cannot set up the regressive process of doubling. This is the reason why Artaud hypothesizes about constructing identity out of bodily awareness and the ‘esprit dans la chair’ (i**. 51). The move away from the conscious ‘I’ towards the level of simple awareness means that Artaud seeks not to grasp the medium- or largescale currents of conscious thought but instead to convey a sense of its lowest-level ripplings. Artaud is in fact focusing on a level of mental activity similar to that which interests Sarraute, the region of unselected, unwilled, bodily-rooted Xuxes occurring beneath the level of the articulate self. Sarraute describes what she seeks to transcribe as the ‘mouvements inde´Wnissables, qui glissent tre`s rapidement aux limites de notre conscience’, which constitute ‘la source secre`te de notre existence’.13 Artaud describes it as ‘le grouillement imme´diat de l’esprit’, from which will arise ‘une nouvelle connaissance’ (i**. 54). He wishes to give tongue to the most language-shy truths of his self, such evasive qualities as density and sonority (i**. 145). If he views such nebulous impressions from the vantage point of reXection, the hubbub and the Xows that make them up are imperceptible. So, to be able to call his mental experience 13

Nathalie Sarraute, L’E`re du soupçon (Paris: Gallimard, 1956) 8.


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thought, it must meet two impossibly exacting criteria: he must usher into consciousness the Xeeting, language-shy, normally liminal activities of pre-consciousness, and he must further be conscious of his consciousness of this newly enlarged realm. It is only full, perfect, total selfpresence that Artaud is willing to count as thought. Even though so stringent an ideal of self-present thought is unattainable, Artaud speculates about the kind of language necessary to grasp it. To grasp self-present sub-thought would require language to be identical to thought, ‘cette fusion du mot et du terme, de l’expression avec la penseé’ (i**. 210) thus oVering a ‘vue synthe´tique expressive, imme´diate et spontaneé’ (i**. 194). This is the ‘nouveau langage’ of which he will write a decade later in Le Theáˆtre et son Double (1937), ‘dont la source sera prise a` un point encore plus enfoui et plus recule´ de la penseé’ and of which he admits that ‘la grammaire est encore a` trouver’ (iv. 106). It is so as to speak of the ‘grouillement’ that this more symbiotic, lower-level linguistic form is needed. For Artaud, the Wxity of language is incommensurable with the dynamism of the experience of the thinking subject and so deforms thought: ‘je pose en principe’, he writes in his ‘Deuxie`me lettre sur le langage’ in Le Theáˆtre et son Double, ‘que les mots ne veulent pas tout dire et que par nature et a` cause de leur caracte`re de´termine´, Wxe´ une fois pour toutes, ils arreˆtent et paralysent la penseé’ (iv. 106–7). This idea of language mutilating the dynamism of thought was already present in Le Pe`se-Nerfs: ‘Tous les termes que je choisis pour penser sont pour moi des t e r m e s au sens propre du mot, de ve´ritables terminaisons de mes j mentales’ (i*. 96). Artaud would be in full agreement with Sarraute’s view that language ‘asse`che, durcit, se´pare ce qui n’est que Xuidite´, mouvance’.14 For Artaud the rigidity of conceptual discourse disrupts and denatures the fragile Xows that occur on the edge of consciousness: ‘si par extraordinaire l’ideé est saisie elle s’eVondre, se dissout’ (i**. 161). Language is too rigid even to name what it is that it destroys. In pointing towards what it would say it actually puts paid to it: ‘le mot n’est fait que pour arreˆter la penseé, il la cerne, mais la termine’ (iv. 114). This imposition of stasis is mutilating when it is a matter of discoursing on conscious thought, and when it comes to discoursing on the kind of pre-linguistic inner self that Artaud would talk of it is fatal. Yet Artaud, typically, interweaves his destructive and constructive theorizing. He does not just rail against the static grid language places 14

Sarraute, ‘Ce que je cherche a` faire’, 37.

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over the dynamism of reality; he also theorizes about an experimental form of discourse that would be more apt to convey the entire realm of mental experience, taking in the very limits of its domain. Even in the denunciation of the crushing weight of language Artaud implies that language as a destructive force is a culturally speciWc development, hence one that could be overturned: ‘au point de vue de l’Occident [ . . . ] la parole s’est ossiWeé [ . . . ] les mots [ . . . ] tous les mots sont gele´s, sont engonce´s dans leur signiWcation, dans une terminologie sche´matique et restreinte’ (iv. 114). His new language will be capable of overthrowing this tyranny of stasis in favour of recreating the dynamic Xuctuations of the pre-verbal arena: ‘Il refait poe´tiquement le trajet qui a abouti a` la creátion du langage [ . . . ] toutes ces ope´rations par cris, par onomatopeés, par signes, par attitudes, et par de lentes, abondantes et passionneés modulations nerveuses, plan par plan, et terme par terme, il les refait’ (iv. 106). The new language able ‘englobe[r] la sensation et le terme’ (i**. 194), ‘refai[re] a` chacune des vibrations de [l]a langue tous les chemins de [l]a penseé dans [l]a chair’ (i**. 50) would, for Artaud, be capable of generating images that would reveal his inner reality. This is the prime function of images: to articulate a mute inner arena: ‘images [ . . . o]u` ma personnalite´ se retrouve, fait le tour d’elle-meˆme’ (i**. 145). Images are the key to insight for Artaud, and, given that he is seeking powerful insights, he is seeking images capable of doing the seemingly impossible: ‘Images Wxant de magiques situations de l’esprit. Magiques façons de l’esprit de se retourner au milieu des correspondances des pheńome`nes. Vue instantaneé de ces correspondances’ (i**. 170–1). The language Artaud requires would not only deWne each of the many diVerent perspectives that could be adopted relative to an idea, but would also, and at the same time as doing this work of deWnition, simultaneously yield the view from all possible vantage points. If language is unable to state the myriad Xuctuations of the unstatable inner self, perhaps images will be able to evoke it. The Surrealist inXuence is clearly present here, for the Surrealist image is a profoundly transgressive, magical act that, in Breton’s words, gives over the textual space to ‘la valeur e´motionelle des mots. Cette vie e´motionnelle des mots, tre`s loin de n’eˆtre que fonction de leur sens, les dispose a` ne se plaire les uns aux autres et a` ne rayonner audela` du sens que groupe´s selon des aYnite´s secre`tes’.15 Images hold out the possibility of making new meaning in which words break free of their 15

Andre´ Breton, Second manifeste du surreálisme (Paris: E´ditions Kra, 1930).


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limiting signiWcations. Just as Sarraute has recourse to metaphor to articulate the inarticulate pre-verbal experience of tropistic movement that occurs beneath consciousness, so Artaud theorizes about imageconcepts that would retain the authenticating vivacity of pre-reXective experience as a thinking subject, a vivacity debarred from expression in a static, rationalistic discourse. But without a new language this level of not quite verbal, not quite conscious activity buckles under the weight of Artaud’s words. He is tantalizingly aware of this activity, which always frustrates expression: ‘les images qui naissent au moment ou` le subconscient les enchaıˆne et va automatiquement leur donner forme, ces images, ces repre´sentations, ces formes s’amusaient [ . . . ] a` tantaliser l’esprit en se re´sorbant’ (i**. 181). The fact that this pre-conscious, pre-verbal realm makes itself felt in consciousness without ever becoming accessible to the gazing ‘I’ will eventually lead Artaud, in the later stages of his career, to think of the undermind as alien and hostile, an intruder in his mental space that seeks to usurp his place. In the 1920s, however, he is convinced that, if this labyrinthine undermind could be revealed by images, then an epiphanic full mental self-presence would result: ‘Dans ce de´dale de murailles mouvantes et toujours de´placeés, hors de toutes les formes connues de penseé, notre Esprit se meut, e´piant ses mouvements les plus secrets et spontane´s, ceux qui ont un caracte`re de re´ve´lation’ (i**. 38).16 Images, if they were ‘neés et non provoqueés’, would provide the means of articulating, hence knowing, this ‘re´ve´lation’ (i**. 146). But Artaud has an insuYcient knowledge of himself and so no such wellspring of self-validating images of his inner realm. Because of the ‘Wssures’ that open up in his images produced by ‘l’intervention de la volonte´’ he is aZicted by an absence de persistance [ . . . ] qui m’empeˆchant de prendre valablement et durablement conscience de ce que je suis [ . . . ] m’empeˆche aussi de garder pre´sentes a` l’esprit un certain nombre d’images types correspondant a` mes sensations et repre´sentations personnelles, et par conse´quent de prendre et de garder conscience de moi. (i**. 185–6)

16 This comes close to contradicting the statement made above that Artaud does not wish to recuperate the unconscious in consciousness. Artaud saw the Surrealist aim of revealing the unconscious as an attempt to reach new, wondrous ecstasies of achievement, whereas his desire to be at the same level as the ‘grouillement’ of the mind is more a way of coming to rest in a state of non-separation with the mind. His reference to images generated from the unconscious has nothing to do with liberation into the surreal. Instead his concern is with healing the ontological schism he feels characterizes his inner space.

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Without self-knowledge there can be no ‘images types’, but without ‘images types’ there can be no ‘conscience de moi’. The only images Artaud can Wnd are lacking in eVervescent spontaneity, since he has no language capable of being one with his thought, and so they are, in his judgement, useless inert simulacra. They are eYgies, not living images: Tout ce que je trouve comme images, ideés, on dirait que je le trouve par raccroc, que ce n’est qu’un ressouvenir colle´ qui n’a pas l’aspect de la vie neuve [ . . . ] elles n’ont plus de valeur, n’e´tant que des eYgies, des reXets de penseés ante´rieurement rumineés [ . . . ] non actuellement, et personnellement p e n s e´ e s . [ . . . ] C’est une question de vivacite´ fulgurante, de ve´rite´, de reálite´. (i**. 145)

To be bearers of knowledge images must, for Artaud, be born of his inner present and retain its manifold characteristics. Instead, his images are mere remembrances lacking the aVective illumination and energy of the lived moment. Unable to deploy his full latent linguistic battery Artaud is unable to become fully aware of himself: ‘je ne puis appeler a` moi toute ma re´serve inte´rieure, ećlairer a` volonte´ le champ entier de ma conscience’ (i**. 191). Deprived of the sort of intellectual spontaneity whereby all the aspects of thought would burst into and all be held by consciousness at one and the same time, ‘un mot, le mot essentiel, manque’ (i**. 202). In particular what is lacking is the aVective element that authenticates language by searing it with Xashes of personal reality (‘la fulguration des choses’ (i**. 52)) that would fulWl a similar authenticating function to the Barthesian petit fait vrai. It is ‘le tre´sor aVectif de ma sensation personnelle interne a` propos de cet acte, ou de cette image e´voqueé [ . . . ] la vibration aVective qui accompagne ce souvenir que je ne parviens plus a` e´voquer’ (i**. 192). For Artaud language ought to be forever remodulated by the lived instant if it is to be anything other than a paralysing, empty shell of words. To Artaud’s way of thinking this failure to be fully aware of all of his self is catastrophic, for this partial awareness does not oVer suYcient footing, he feels, for the ‘Re´volution inte´grale’ that was to bring about a diVerent form of reality (i**. 60 n.). With only a fragmented and incomplete awareness of his self and his thought, there is no possibility of a suYciently profound investigation: Je ne peux mener a` bout le travail de re´vision des valeurs, d’investigation intellectuelle profonde que je me suis propose´ et qui me paraıˆt eˆtre ma Wn, ayant l’impression que, meˆme dans le cas ou` je pense, je ne saisis qu’un coˆte´ de moi, une face superWcielle de ma penseé. (i**. 191)


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Apart from the pretension to be the new Nietzsche of Surrealism, what is striking here is that Artaud conXates insightful thinking with the ability fully to penetrate his own mental activity. This is an extreme idea: there are major unavowed premisses behind the idea that the only sure critical platform is constructed on a thoroughgoing unshakeable self-knowledge. Artaud is working according to Cartesian precepts in the desire to erect a world view from a purely Wrst-person perspective. In engaging—albeit from an aphilosophical position—with what may be broadly called Cartesian views, the tenor of Artaud’s project is at times suVused with philosophical idealism as the structural elements of the reviled world view are sucked into an undercurrent of his account. The desire for perfectly self-present thought, for example, may be seen as a correlative of Descartes’s pinning his faith on ‘clear and distinct’ ideas. What we have seen Artaud to be lamenting is not any loss within thought but the impossibility of self-present language and thought; hence in turn the irrealizability of his dream of manifesting a stock of inner potentialities, a nebulous ego-entity of which he is but dimly aware but which he calls his (true, inner) self. It is not just self-present thought that he cannot achieve, but what could be called total thought, thought that would be the summum of all he has been through time: he complains that it is impossible ‘m’envisager dans toute mon e´tendue externe, de retrouver de me´moire le tre´sor de toutes mes e´lucidations passeés, de faire renaıˆtre la masse globale de mes repre´sentations’ (i**. 192). Artaud yet again describes what he is seeking with a list of alternative characterizations, suggesting the unsayable totality at which he would aim. This total thought would amount to a self-enlightenment, a quasi-religious revelation of non-contingent truths about himself. At times Artaud goes even further in his claims for what it is he is seeking. It is absolute knowledge and absolute co-presence of subject and object of thought: ‘L’ideé de la connaissance absolue se confondait avec l’ideé de la similitude absolue de la vie et de ma conscience’ (i*. 131). It is absolute pure thought that eludes him whenever he feels on the brink of catching hold of it: ‘il s’agit de l’absolue penseé, c’est-a`-dire de la vie’ (i**. 146–7). Artaud’s ideal is an impossible extreme where there is perfect identity between subject and world and absolute identity between consciousness and self, and so, when he complains that ‘il n’y a plus de vue de l’esprit, d’image, de conception, d’aperception mentale possible’ (i**. 162), the epithets ‘whole, perfect, magical’ should perhaps be inserted before each of the terms of his grievance. He is complaining that he has not found the eidos of the self, the eidos of thought, and the eidos of life.

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Yet this feeling of loss is the spur to write. It is the impetus to Artaud’s project and not, as he implies, something preventing him from writing. Loss provides the basis for a new knowledge: ‘il me paraıˆt impossible que je n’aie pas quelque chose a` dire [ . . . ] c’est la notion de ce vide intellectuel particulier que je voudrais éclairer une fois pour toutes’ (i**. 183). His knowledge will not be knowledge of reality, but a secondorder knowledge of loss. It is nevertheless a powerful form of selfknowledge Artaud seeks, allowing him to step outside the perspective of inherited conceptual and lexical models to reveal pure, elemental thought: ce que je poursuis a` travers le trouble et les tiraillements d’une confusion e´perdue n’est rien autre chose que le fait de la penseé absolue. Ce que je cherche a` isoler et a` cerner, ce en face de quoi je veux me trouver au moins une fois dans ma vie est ce point de penseé ou`, ayant de´pouille´ les illusions et les tentations les plus communes du langage, je me trouve en face d’une utilisation absolument nue. (viii. 64)

Stark thought beheld and conceived with a minimum of distorting linguistic eVects is what loss is to reveal. There is no modesty about Artaud’s project, no trimming of his sails to Wt the wind of desolation sweeping through his inner void. Loss will allow him ‘[m]ettre a` nu les jointures de la conscience, j sentir ce que c’est l’esprit, j que l’agencement physico-intellectuel de l’esprit apparaisse tout a` coup a` nu, j montrant les lacunes, les liaisons fragiles de la penseé’ (viii. 69), where the lineation serves to set out all the more boldly Artaud’s ambition. Loss of thought oVers the possibility of knowing the very structures of consciousness for it is emptied of its clutter of thought: ‘Devant cet ećhec de la parole inte´rieure il [l’esprit] en revient a` une sorte de conscience pure’ (viii. 66). This idea that loss of thought may be used to reveal pristine thought is closely related to the idea that the painful body is potentially a source of insight; in both the unhealthy is the basis of a greater form of health. As Artaud observes: ‘Cette conscience que j’avais de moi-meˆme, de l’e´tendue de mon intime de´vastation, n’e´tait-elle pas une sorte de vision supe´rieure’ (i**. 213). It is from the depths of loss and not from the pinnacles of reason and self-possession that lucidity may theoretically be born. However, precisely at this moment of ‘conscience pure’, Artaud goes on to say, consciousness reveals itself to be not only ‘vide’ but also ‘de´substantialiseé’ (viii. 66). For Artaud, then, the diYculty in thought reveals the possibility of absolute thought, only to snatch away any hope of grasping it. Loss of thought is that which both prevents and provides the possibility of insight.


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So far, then, we have seen that Artaud seeks not just ideas, but ideas indissociably accompanied by all their inner ramiWcations, ideas and their complete aVective and experiential fabric as spun through time. And this as and when his mind reaches out to touch them. What would count as thought for Artaud is an experience that would take in, in its totality, all the many reXections and resonances that a cluster of thoughts has undergone in its passage in the mind. It is as if he desires the ability not just to capture the sparkle of a gem, but also to be able to apprehend in its entirety all the inner reXections and refractions between the inner faces of the stone, at the same time and in a movement of all-perceiving intuition: ‘il faut tenir compte des mille impressions internes, des mille froissements inte´rieurs dont la me´lodie, dont le tissu e´veille par associations inconscientes la penseé’ (i**. 165). Further, this insight must be cradled by a dynamic, ever-shifting linguistic optic: ‘Connaıˆtre ¼ le moment ou` l’on s’est infuse´ le sens a` travers les variations et les errements d’un langage mouvant et [ . . . ] plastique essentiellement’ (viii. 69). The fourfold reference to Xuidity is telling: the degree of linguistic dynamism sought is impossible. If we read Artaud’s texts in the light of such demands placed on knowledge and on thought, passages that would otherwise appear setpiece bravura may be seen afresh. For example, if we do not take into consideration the exceptionally strong emphasis Artaud places on language’s tendency to circumscribe, channel, and obstruct experience, then it would be tempting to take the following famous passage as the diatribe of one punch-drunk on his own rhetorical felicity: Tous ceux qui ont des points de repe`re dans l’esprit [ . . . ] tous ceux qui sont maıˆtres de leur langue, tous ceux pour qui les mots ont un sens, tous ceux pour qui il existe [ . . . ] des courants dans la penseé [ . . . ] —sont des cochons. [ . . . ] Et je vous l’ai dit: pas d’œuvres, pas de langue, pas de parole, pas d’esprit, rien. Rien, sinon un beau Pe`se-Nerfs. Une sorte de station incompre´hensible et toute droite au milieu de tout dans l’esprit. Et n’espe´rez pas que je vous nomme ce tout, en combien de parties il se divise, que je vous dise son poids, que je marche, que je me mette a` discuter sur ce tout, et que, discutant, je me perde et que je me mette ainsi sans le savoir a` p e n s e r . (i*. 100–1)

A text such as this might appear to be a dream of a ‘pure’, pre-linguistic form of thought where Artaud is blaming the tools of his writerly trade

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for his lack of precise wordsmanship. But this is neither a naive dream of a pre-Babel state nor mere bluster. It is true that this is in part a denunciation of scholasticism, but it is more than that. Insight, Artaud is saying, is extraordinarily fragile in comparison to language and what is commonly called thought is what destroys real thought. Insight arises from holding to mind the ‘tout’ about which one is not entitled to discourse and the ‘Pe`se-Nerfs’ that would allow Artaud to become one with his thought is essentially ‘incompre´hensible’. The linguistic subject lives in a Fallen state in Artaud’s opinion and so extreme patience and sensitivity are needed if one is not to be duped by words. The incompatibility between total, self-present thought and inXexible, inadequate language is the subject of the following passage, drawn from a letter of 1932, that is crucial to appreciating where the true emphasis lies in Artaud’s reXection on thought and language, but that has gone unremarked by Artaud criticism. The text borders on self-contradiction, Artaud suggesting that the dynamic totality of true thought is so complex and energized that it must be a mirage: ma penseé chaque fois qu’elle veut se manifester se contracte [ . . . ] l’expression s’arreˆte parce que le jet est trop violent, que le cerveau veut dire trop de choses qu’il pense toutes en meˆme temps, dix penseés au lieu d’une se prećipitent vers la sortie, le cerveau voit d’un bloc la penseé avec toutes ses circonstances et il voit aussi toute la multiplicite´ des points de vue auxquels il pourrait se placer et des formes dont il pourrait les reveˆtir, une immense juxtaposition de concepts tous, semble-t-il, plus nećessaires et aussi plus douteux les uns que les autres que toutes les incidentes de la syntaxe ne suYraient jamais a` traduire et a` exposer, mais a` bien analyser un e´tat semblable ce n’est pas par trop-plein que pe`che a` ces moments-la` la conscience mais par pas assez car cette juxtaposition grouillante, et surtout instable et mouvante est une illusion. (i**. 186–7)

Overwhelming potential—consciousness is instantaneously aware of the entire range of perspectives on and forms of a thought manifold—here drowns out the possibility of actual achievement; perhaps there is a slight Testeian element to Artaud’s problem after all. What Artaud is describing is not the workaday experience of thought, but a rare glimpse of an altogether richer form of thought that would be pregnant with unrealized insight. The enthusiasm driving along the expansive on-run of this sentence is unmistakable, and the striking similarity of rhythms mark it out as the positive twin of the far better known ‘avoir en soi la reálite´ inse´parable, et la clarte´ mate´rielle d’un sentiment [ . . . ]’ (i*. 42) quoted earlier. His thought may be ‘avorte´’, as he often says, but only in comparison to this ideal total thought. Yet here this ideal is dismissed


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as an illusion because such moments of anarchic intellectual ‘jouissance’ have resulted only in stillborn images devoid of their multifaceted inner resonances that made them so potentially revelatory. The ‘juxtaposition grouillante’ is no longer the stamp of immediacy from which a new ‘Connaissance’ will Xow but instead a sign of ‘relaˆchement, confusion, fragilite´’ (i**. 187). Artaud’s true point here, and one that he glosses over rapidly, is that ‘la syntaxe ne suYrait jamais a` traduire’ insight-laden thought, of which the essential features are its plurality and non-linearity. The play of the mind is too multiplicitous for the linear strictures of syntax, and it is because of the impossibility of translating such thought into language that the form of thought is found wanting. Such wonderful, total thought is, as Artaud concedes, an illusion, but not in the way the text implies: it is not illusory but an ideal. For Artaud, then, there is an incompatibility between the linguistic structures of the mind and insightful thought, and consciousness must be outwitted if thought is not to be denatured by taking on its alien garb: ‘Seules, dans le domaine du de´termine´, les phrases directement issues de l’inconscient arrivent a` s’e´panouir entie`rement. Mais si par hasard la conscience se re´veille [ . . . ] c’est alors que je me rends compte des obstacles qui s’opposent a` l’accomplissement de ma penseé’ (viii. 58–9). Any conscious, reXexive eVort on Artaud’s part sends thought scattering: De`s que si peu que ce soit une volonte´ intellectuelle intervient [ . . . ] de`s qu’on essaie de prononcer de façon lucide et claire quelqu’une de ces paroles inte´rieures [ . . . ] la maladie manifeste [ . . . ] on dirait qu’il suYt que l’esprit ait voulu jouir d’une ideé ou image inte´rieure pour que cette jouissance lui soit enleveé. (i**. 184–5)

The work of endowing the ceaseless Xux of words with clarity and lucidity is unrealizable, for it would mean rendering concrete the inherently Xuid. The intellect intervenes and hence damages the kaleidoscopic Xuidity that characterizes the pre-verbal image and that endows it with its primitive value. Jouissance and insight are impossible if sought. Deliberate, self-reXexive thought and self-presence are incompatible. The way things stand reXexive thought and mummiWed language preclude selfpresence, and so the text will not be able to articulate the wellsprings of Artaud’s inner self. Perhaps it is time to return to a question raised above concerning the status to be accorded to Artaud’s early texts in the light of their selfacclaimed fusion of life and work. Artaud’s texts need to be seen as both inside and outside the literary camp. And this is in fact true not just of the

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early writings under discussion here but, as will become apparent, of all his work. On the one hand, they are not literary Wction but a site where Artaud carries forward his theorizing. But on the other, they must not be taken as an exposition of a body of thought in which language is subservient to a guiding idea. Artaud tries out his ideas in his texts and frequently the writing carries him away from his idea—hence the jumpy syntax and forward-tumbling rhythms that characterize the long, expansive, and multi-directional sentences marking key moments in his texts. Artaud does not transcribe conclusions but does his thinking in his writing. His writing is a conceptual Wction, where insight is the potential gain. Frequently he makes extravagant claims about what he is seeking—he is not seeking to understand the complexities of thought but to discover ‘le fait de la penseé absolue’ (viii. 64)—and serious reXections are heavily coloured with literarity. Conceptual Wction, speculative theories, an adventure in conjecture—all such characterizations, whilst gesturing towards the kind of writing that Artaud habitually produces, fail to pinpoint the peculiar mixture of the poetic and the (anti-)philosophic that is his intellectual signature. If, then, the early writings about thought are diYcult, this is not purely a result of their highly abstract subject matter and the problematization of thought processes that Artaud carries out, but also and more importantly a result of the way Artaud does his thinking and the place in which he situates his discourse. His texts are positioned in a domain particular to him, one of the interstices between the theorizing of a conceptual system and the writing of a univers imaginaire. The concern with self-presence that may be detected in Artaud’s reXections on thought and language will inform and direct all his subsequent writing. It will be carried over to writings of the mid-1930s and Le Theáˆtre et son Double in the idea of the double, and beyond to his later account of a self-present God as the double of man. In Le Theáˆtre et son Double the theatrical double is the positive correlate to the negative doubling within self-alienation, and so will reveal ‘l’identite´ me´taphysique du concret et de l’abstrait’ (iv. 57), the quintessential, primary underpinnings of reality. Artaud’s thought relating to questions of presence has undergone a shift in emphasis from his early texts. In L’Ombilic des Limbes, Le Pe`se-Nerfs, and Fragments d’un Journal d’Enfer Artaud’s descriptions of his feeling of pain and ‘impouvoir’ are confessional outbursts in the Wrst person; with the idea of the Theatre of Cruelty, suVering is now to be performed. In the image of the preface, the actor’s body is to be a hieroglyph burning with metaphysical forces. The Theatre of Cruelty,


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then, brings forth secret violent truths: ‘faire venir au jour [ . . . ] cette part de ve´rite´ enfouie sous les formes’ (iv. 68), and, by identifying with these forces, it allows for the emergence of a new man who wields these forces to his own end: ‘rejeter les limitations habituelles de l’homme [ . . . faire advenir] la vie renouveleé [ . . . ] ou` l’homme impavidement se rend le maıˆtre de ce qui n’est pas, et le fait naıˆtre’ (iv. 14). At the heart of this theatrical vision is the idea of a non-representational language of bodily and spatial conWguration. By a controlled anarchy and dissonance Artaudian theatre is to decompose traditional signifying patterns, and by the rigorous deployment of multiple planes of sound, light, materiality, and movement somehow generate a new world of signs hewn out of the very stuV of life. Artaud’s ideas on performance are clearly inscribed within his search for a Surrealist poetic able to rewrite in renewed epic terms the basic thought modes and framework of existence. Already in his writings on Wlm in the late 1920s Artaud suggested that Wlm should expose the modalities of psychic drives, enacting ‘la ve´rite´ sombre de l’esprit’ (iii. 19). To this end he sought to disarticulate Wlmic language to the point where it shed intellectually recognizable syntax; ‘Cine´ma et reálite´’ even speaks of an anti-representational language that would ‘faire oublier l’essence meˆme du langage’ (iii. 19). In similar vein Le Theáˆtre et son Double calls for a theatre that would replace spoken language with a ‘langage physique [ . . . ] mate´riel et solide’ (iv. 36), and ‘Le Theáˆtre alchimique’ develops this idea of a regeneration of language, suggesting that, as the alchemist seeks to dissolve base matter to reconstitute it as gold, so true theatre seeks the puriWcation of base human language. More radically, ‘Sur le theáˆtre balinais’ evokes a ‘Parole d’avant les mots’ (iv. 57). This is not an ineVable original language but a signifying process in which poetry, no longer conWned to words, is realized in the Xesh of the performer, thus reworking Artaud’s idea of an ‘esprit dans la chair’. The Theatre of Cruelty has the same aim as the 1920s project of writing self-presence and it may legitimately be seen as an extension of Artaud’s earlier thought about alienation within discourse. Both have as their goal eidetic knowledge of principles that would allow for the reconstitution of the individual.17 With the Theatre of Cruelty Artaud 17 In her introductory essay to a selection of Artaud’s translated writings Susan Sontag argues that the images used in Le Theáˆtre et son Double echo his earlier writings about selfalienation so strongly that it may be read as a ‘manual on the reuniWcation of mind and body’ (‘Approaching Artaud’, in Artaud, Selected Writings, trans. Helen Weaver (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), p. xxxvi).

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takes as his starting point the conclusion of his thought in the early collections, that self-presence is impossible, and he suggests, perhaps despairingly, that co-presence with the dissipating forces that prevent self-presence will in an archetypally magical manner bear similar epistemological and ontological fruits. In the context of a discussion of the ways Artaud’s writings are overshadowed by the metaphysics they attack, Derrida observed that Artaud’s texts illustrate how all destructive discourses inhabit the structures they demolish.18 This interdependency is indeed one of the leading features of Artaud’s thought. More striking still than the parasitical relation of Artaud’s texts to orthodox metaphysics is the way that positive speculation and negative critique are inextricably bound up with each other within a given statement—a feature to be found throughout his writings. His account of an ideal of self-presence is conducted, as we have seen, by an account of the inadequacies inherent to thought and language. It is the idea of a ‘maladie’ that sets up a creative tension between his experience of self-alienation and a dream of self-presence with which he Wghts against that alienation. Driving Artaud’s writings on over twenty-six volumes is the gulf to be closed between his recorded experience, on the one hand, of loss, ‘impouvoir’, and the associated failure to eVect self-identity, and the vision, on the other hand, of human existence as one of perfect plenitude within a self-present intelligent body. It is paradoxical that writings springing from an aesthetic of total and perfect coincidence between life and the text should tend towards increasingly outlandish Wctions of a more authentic form of life culminating in the corps sans organes. And it is ironic that Artaud’s thought on thought shows him, the man who claims that his early works ‘roulent sur cette absence profonde, inve´te´reé, ende´mique de toute ideé’ (xii. 230), to be a true man of ideas. Only the idealist can write ‘ta penseé n’est pas accomplie [ . . . ] dans quelque sens que tu te retournes tu n’as pas encore commence´ a` penser’ (i*. 123). 18

Derrida, ‘La Parole souZeé’, 291–2.

3 ANGELIC BODIES, DEMONIC BODIES tout le monde fait de la magie [ . . . ] la conscience universelle est un crime perpetre´ par la masse imbećillisante des eˆtres contre quelques individus. (xiv*. 134)

In the many texts written in the last Wve years of his life Artaud continued to write about the issues at the heart of his 1920s writings. Over thousands of pages he insists, with an urgency surpassing anything to be found in the earlier work, that neither his body nor his self belongs to him. From his arrival at Rodez in 1943 to his death in 1948 he developed a rapidly mutating, fantastical theoretical framework to explain this sense of alienation. His body and self are said to be at the centre of an ontological war pitching Artaud against all reality, and they are stolen by his parents, by his past, by demons, by society. Most especially, he came to decide after a complex engagement with theology and theologically overseen philosophies of language, they are stolen by God, the archparasite who, to come into existence, must penetrate and possess Artaud’s body. As a cure to this alienation Artaud preconized an anatomical transformation that, by shutting down the Wssures and oriWces by which they gain entry, will ward oV these competitors for inner space. It might seem premature to suggest this extraordinary diagnosis of the human condition be taken seriously as intellectually digniWed ‘ideas’, but for the rest of this study Artaud’s 1940s writings will be examined as systems of thought of variable quality. His late writing is puzzling, and a good part of the puzzle lies in the impression of precarious coherence or near coherence they generate as conceptual systems. Any reading of them will soon run up against the question of what his thought might be, how it could Wt together, and how it evolves over time. Yet it could seem not just premature but foolhardy to suggest that we take seriously what will be called the early Rodez writings, those from the period dating from his arrival at the asylum in September 1943 to the second quartile of 1945 when he rejected his Catholic beliefs and started developing his better-known anti-God stance. This chapter, however, will chart Artaud’s writings from this period, during which his energy is

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angelic bodies, demonic bodies

directed, on the one hand, towards exposing his idiosyncratic and unstable theology, which prohibits all sexuality, and, on the other hand, explaining that he is imprisoned in an abject body, his daily movements surrounded by demons unleashed by groups of hostile ‘envouˆteurs’. He switches rapidly between the two positions, presenting himself as a saintly divine emissary inhabiting a pure, virginal body and a Fallen man who nevertheless yearns to leave behind his sexuated, demonized, Xeshly carcass. Angels and demons, abjection and puriWcation, theological enlightenment and magically induced metaphysical myopia are the stuV of his thought during this period. With the mature post-1945 texts written after his relinquishment of Christianity it is at least clear— despite their diYculty—that we are dealing with texts that, in their expression of the dissolution and dreamt-of reconstitution of subjecthood, are an exciting aesthetic and intellectual challenge. But the earlier Rodez writings seem less in the penumbra of delirium than wholly in its shadow. If there is some disagreement over the merits of such late Artaud writings as Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu or Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, there is an extensive consensus that the writings of 1943–5 are disappointingly woolly-headed and monotonous, and little more than the documentation of psychosis. The early Rodez writings, it is said, do not reveal the Artaud beloved of the critical avant-garde for his assault on the founding tenets of Western thought. They are but the dull and deluded outpourings of a Christian convert. It is true that the reaction on turning to the early Rodez writings after the earlier Wrst-person writings discussed thus far is likely to be bewilderment, and it can seem tempting to let Artaud’s biographer Maeder have the last word—‘A cette e´poque la philosophie d’Artaud e´tait, en termes psychiatriques, «un de´lire mal caracte´rise´», et elle est diYcile a` reconstituer car ses aspects changeaient a` de brefs intervalles’1—and then pass on to the more purposeful late Rodez and post-Rodez writings. It is also true that the early Rodez writings are of inferior calibre, and were it not for the great Wnal performances that came out of the other side of Rodez these texts of 1943–5 would be no more than curios. But, despite the outlandishness and volatility of his beliefs in these early Rodez years, and despite the disappointing quality of Artaud’s writing—frequently a tired pastiche of evangelic and mystic tropes—the material from the period 1943–5 contains many seeds of his later enigmatic ideas. The corps sans organes, for example, which will resist 1

Thomas Maeder, Antonin Artaud (Paris: Plon, 1978), 236.


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divine interference, may be traced, surprisingly, to theological ideas expounded during this period. It is, then, as this chapter shall suggest, by understanding the early Rodez period that the framework may be provided that allows for a sympathetic exploration of his mature thought. The Wrst and most simple point to make about the Rodez writings is that from 1943 to mid-1945 Artaud wrote hardly anything other than letters. The Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re had shown how Artaud could use an interlocutor to develop his ideas, for his habitual way of thinking is by refutation or magniWcation, and his letters from Rodez give the impression of searching for the form of a body of thought that has not Wnished evolving. If this thought is metamorphosing, we are nevertheless confronted with the basis of an entire world view far removed from orthodox ideas about life and the world. And the texts in no way hint that the extraordinary universe described in Artaud’s letters be taken other than literally. If subsequently Artaud will draw upon the ideas and images of these letters of 1943–5 to develop a textual universe that Xaunts its textuality as its most important and liberating feature, the early Rodez texts do not authorize this kind of sophisticated reading. They are a literal explanation of reality, and the honest way to read them is as an exposition of Artaud’s delirious world view. Yet it is also possible to go beyond questions of conceptual orthodoxy and perceive these texts in a diVerent light. What they may be seen to oVer, once we no longer focus on their conceptual extravagance, is a theological and philosophical system of real coherence and considerable economy, and this mental world is unexplored by criticism. What at Wrst seems a largely unordered and self-contradictory reality can be seen, once charted, as a systematized mytho-theological explanation of the sense of corporeal alienation evident in the early writings. It must be remembered that six years of writerly silence separate the journey to Ireland and subsequent internment from his arrival at Rodez, and many of the initially more surprising aspects of his thought may be traced to this period of Artaud’s life, of which there are but few publicly available records.2 Whilst his increasingly esoteric writings 2 Paule The´venin wrote in 1974: ‘Nous aurions aime´ reúnir en un tome les lettres ećrites de Ville-E´vrard, mais, dans l’e´tat actuel des recherches, cette correspondance aurait e´te´ par trop incomple`te. Toutes les lettres ećrites par Antonin Artaud n’ont pas e´te´ envoyeés; bien souvent elles [ . . . ] sont resteés dans des «dossiers me´dicaux» auxquels nous n’avons pu avoir acce`s, quand elles n’ont pas e´te´ sorties par la suite et ce´deés a` des collectioneurs’ (x. 267 n.). There is still no body of texts to which the Artaud critic may refer.

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dating from the years before his internment were informed by a highly unorthodox vision of reality, they gave no suggestion that his thought would develop in this manner. Even with hindsight the shift from the pagan esotericism to the Christian mysticism of Rodez can seem a rift in his thought, and to a certain extent Artaud’s heretical thought in the early Rodez texts has to be taken as given, as a new starting point for critical enquiry. Yet, if Artaud’s Rodez writings seem to spring from nowhere, they in fact share a largely unchanged framework with his writings from the 1930s. In both existence is conceived as an imprisonment—‘Le de´terminisme vaut sur tous les plans, l’homme n’est pas libre’ we can read in a 1933 notebook text (viii. 75)—and both are underpinned by a highly polarized dualism. He´liogabale (1934), Le Theáˆtre et son Double (1938), D’ un voyage au pays des Tarahumaras (1937), and Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre (1937) are each constructed, at times explicitly, around an interpretation of reality as a place of alienation from primordial unity, and all evoke the idea of an apocalyptic return to this unity.3 This idea is one of the core tenets of Gnosticism.4 For the Gnostic, the world, created by an evil demiurge, has a radically Xawed ontology that condemns man to alienation from his true self. In the Gnostic world there is an ongoing war of cosmic principles and the cycle of Creation will come to an end when this conXict is resolved and Xawed Being can then return to the primary unity of Non-Being (of God). Before we turn to the Rodez writings where the Gnostic inXuence is most visible, it is useful to examine the 1930s texts to see how they articulate Artaud’s sense of alienation, which undergoes a shift with the change of mode. In the 1930s Artaud largely abandoned the Wrst-person analytical fragment that was the favoured mode of his earlier writings, producing instead third-person modes: 3 The date given is of publication of Le Theáˆtre et son Double as a collection, but all the texts were written in near-deWnitive form by 1935. D’ un voyage au pays des Tarahumaras was the title of the 1945 edition (Paris: Fontaine) of his texts relating to his 1936 visit to the Tarahumara Indians. This was a collection of texts written in 1937 and partially edited at Rodez. Artaud continued to modify and expand his Tarahumara writing until the end of his life, and the later edition that appears in the Œuvres comple`tes is known under the slightly diVerent title Les Tarahumaras. 4 Jane Goodall’s Antonin Artaud and the Gnostic Drama presents Artaud’s writings within the framework of Gnostic doctrines (previously highlighted by Sontag as of special relevance to Artaud’s sensibility). However, she is arguably a shade quick to translate Artaud’s texts into the terms of Gnosticism, thus losing the speciWcities of his writing and ultimately drowning out the texts themselves, which are subjected to conceptual but not literary analysis. Further, whilst the framework to Artaud’s late thought deWnitely has a very important Gnostic element, that is not to say that his entire career may best be described as that of a modern-day Gnostic, and even within the late phase many other factors are at work.


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tracts, essays, Wctions, and prophecies. This move away from speaking in his own name coincides with an increasingly acute sense of ontological fracture, spurring him on to increasingly frantic attempts to say through art the underlying principle of reality. In Artaud’s 1930s writings, the idea of an apocalyptic resolution of dualism is developed not within a theological framework but within what he calls a ‘me´taphysique’, a vast term under his pen referring to any appeal to underlying principles of reality.5 Artaudian metaphysics draws upon a broad base of cosmogenic, esoteric, and mythic narratives and images; for example, He´liogabale, l’Anarchiste couronne´ retells the story of the anarchic, violent reign of Heliogabalus, the second-century Roman emperor and incarnation of the sun god, in a discursive framework drawn from alchemy and ancient solar religions. This kind of reliance on speciWc lexicons has led to Artaud being interpreted variously as an alchemist, an occultist, and a Gnostic. But, as Dumoulie´ shrewdly observes, Artaud employs the metaphors and thematics of such esoteric forms of knowledge without thereby reducing his metaphysics to the conceptual matrix from which he draws his language. ‘La «me´taphysique» de´signe la forme la plus haute de la poe´sie’, he suggests, and so in Artaud’s 1930s writings metaphysical borrowings are subservient to aesthetic considerations, not a jargon importing a ready-worked-out metaphysical framework.6 It would therefore be misguided to interpret the 1930s texts through a rigid Gnostic interpretative grid. For Artaud— even during his religious period at Rodez—theology is ultimately subservient to metaphysics, and religious thought oVers another discourse within which he can explore his feeling of alienation from reality. The use during the 1930s of ideas drawn from heretical and esoteric religions is best seen as borrowing and adaptation, not aYliation. It is only after Artaud’s religious crisis and internment that it is justiWable to refer to his thought as Gnostic, since only then is it set out in a speciWcally theological context. As suggested above, then, in the writings of the 1930s through to the mid-1940s Artaud employs new lexicons to work on the same ideas that occupied his 1920s writings. What is new in the 1930s texts is the overt and increasingly paroxysmal attempt to lift art up to the level of grand 5 Artaud frequently placed the word ‘me´taphysique’ between inverted commas, admitting the unusual usage made of the term (see, for example, the pugnacious apology for referring to ‘me´taphysique’ (iv. 35)); the provocative quasi-oxymoronic idea of a metaphysics of the Xesh examined in the opening chapter is a good example of his moving ‘me´taphysique’ away from its accustomed territory. 6 Dumoulie´, Antonin Artaud, 47.

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myth, which is the counterpart to the increasingly pronounced sense of linguistic and identitary alienation expressed in his writing. If one reads through Artaud’s 1930s writings, it is hard not to sense a feeling of increasing oddity. Already in Le Theáˆtre et son Double, supposedly an exposition of a dramaturgical theory, Artaud proceeds through a series of extended metaphors to set forth an inspired, unclear, and in fact impossible vision. For example, ‘Le Theáˆtre et la peste’ deploys plague imagery to evoke the violence and viscerality of Artaudian performance, and to suggest the devastating conceptual transformations a Theatre of Cruelty would unleash, resulting like the plague in either the death or healing of Western man.7 The stage is conceived as a space of metaphysical immediacy where the unsayable nature of things is realized in virtual form. Human existence is no longer represented on stage; instead its prime metaphysical energies would be made real and organized in bodies and space. Theatre, in fact, is to be the equal not of individual life but of the life beyond human individuality, of which human individuality is only a representation.8 By becoming the simulacra of a simulacra, theatre is to become metaphysics incarnate. Such a vision of theatre as myth, magic, and metaphysics has an extravagant grandeur bordering on the megalomanic. Behind the explicit images and narratives is a structuring Gnostic sensibility as may be seen in the famous Artaudian idea of cruelty. Cruelty, Artaud’s key notion, refers not to ‘sadisme’ and ‘sang’ (iv. 97), but to ‘les ideés me´taphysiques’ (iv. 100), the far larger idea of implacable necessities sempiternally operating at all levels of a reality of conXicting, primordial cosmic forces: la creátion et la vie elle-meˆme ne se de´Wnissent que par une sorte de rigueur, donc de cruaute´ foncie`re [ . . . ] Il y a dans le feu de la vie [ . . . ] une espe`ce de mećhancete´ initiale: le de´sir d’E´ros est une cruaute´ [ . . . ] la mort est cruaute´, la re´surrection est cruaute´ [ . . . ] Dans le monde manifeste´ et me´taphysiquement parlant, le mal est la loi permanente. (iv. 99–100)

7 A secondary automythographic line of reading identiWes Artaud with both poetry and plague: he becomes the scapegoat of Western culture, eVecting its magical recovery of true meaning at the cost of his own existence. This announces the logic of Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre. 8 Derrida identiWed this desired shift away from representation towards generative performance as the most subversive aspect of Artaud’s theories, for it amounts to a desire to jump clear outside the logic of representation and signifying processes. Indeed this desire to exceed representation is fundamental to his late poetry, which claims to dissolve the order of reality and recreate the body of the poet from the primal Xux of words.


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Human existence is literally cruelty incarnate, fundamentally marked by self-division. Cruelty is one of the underlying cosmic principles, and the very life force itself (‘le feu de la vie’) is tainted with cruelty, just as for Gnostics all matter is tainted by its origin in an evil demiurge. The Gnostic strain is made explicit when Artaud explains that he understands the word ‘cruaute´ dans le sens d’appe´tit de vie, de rigueur cosmique et de neće´ssite´ implacable, dans le sens gnostique de tourbillon de vie’ (iv. 98–9). A Theatre of Cruelty would vicariously live out the warring principles of the ontological order of cruelty, thus reuniting them in an apocalyptic dissolution of being: ‘C’est avec cruaute´ que se coagulent les choses, que se forment les plans du creé´ [ . . . dont] la face interne est un mal. Mal qui sera re´duit a` la longue mais a` l’instant supreˆme ou` tout ce qui fut forme sera sur le point de retourner au chaos’ (iv. 100).9 Theatre’s function is to be a virtual, apocalyptic enactment of the dynamics of metaphysical rupture: the way out of self-alienation is a dramatic orgy of self-alienation. This is a direct derivative of a major strain of Gnostic thought that preaches a transcendence of evil and return to originary non-being by homeopathically plunging into evil. Artaud’s other major works from the 1930s adhere to the homeopathic programme set out as the principle of the Theatre of Cruelty and aim at a reuniWcation of metaphysical forces by taking the underlying principles of reality to a frenzied paroxysm. Despite extensive historical and mythological research, Artaud’s He´liogabale is primarily a poetic projection of the view that had so heavily marked Le Theáˆtre et son Double of existence as a metaphysical drama; indeed, the work may legitimately be seen as the best approximation to the ideals of the Theatre of Cruelty. This is particularly so of the Wgure of He´liogabale: for instance, the torrential Xows of blood, sperm, and faeces circulating at his birth and death illustrate how he issues from, embodies, and returns to an anarchic unity transcending life. Artaud’s He´liogabale undertakes the ‘de´moralisation syste´matique et joyeuse’ (vii. 94) that pushes principles to their logical, anarchic conclusion. He instigates a carnivalesque travesty of the metaphysical order, plunging the Roman Empire into an orgiastic topsyturvy procession of sexuality. Dignitaries are appointed for the size of their member, the emperor delights in prostituting himself, and his triumphal arrival in Rome is a parody in which he walks backwards, his buttocks exposed, being symbolically sodomized by the city. This 9 The apocalyptic overtones to Artaud’s 1937 stance are already present here in these writings from 1932.

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sexual anarchy he unleashes is described as a theatricalized, metaphysical programme to unite the warring principles of Masculine and Feminine: Rien de gratuit dans la magniWcence d’He´liogabale, ni dans cette merveilleuse ardeur au de´sordre qui n’est que l’application d’une ideé me´taphysique et supe´rieure de l’ordre, c’est-a`-dire de l’unite´. [ . . . Il l’applique] avec un sentiment de perfection rigoureuse ou` il y a une ideé occulte et myste´rieuse de la perfection et l’uniWcation. (vii. 94)

Here the insistence on rigour brings to mind the deWnition of cruelty, and key moments in He´liogabale’s career are excessively dramatized, particularly his coronation and gruesome death. But the most signiWcant similarity with the Theatre of Cruelty is that He´liogabale operates on a virtual, abstract level. For example, he mimes castration in disguising himself as a woman and lending his bodily apertures to sexual penetration. He is not, therefore, the symbol of a refound unity but is double, both masculine and feminine, anarchist and king (the subtitle of the work is l’Anarchiste couronne´ ). He´liogabale thus operates according to the ambiguous logic of Le Theáˆtre et son Double and brings about an oscillation between masculine and feminine, order and violence, and is both victim and celebrant of a dramatized ritual of dissolution, transgression, and dispersal, turning life into a stage and, in the name of unity, letting slip the forces of anarchy. As such, it is possible to see He´liogabale as a prophetic announcement of the course Artaud was to follow at Rodez, for it is precisely by pursuing a tactic of maximum dispersal and dissolution of his identity that he aims to bring about a state of perfect, simple, textual (that is, once again, virtual) self-identity.10 During the mid-1930s Artaud’s view of reality as one of conXicting cosmic forces moved away from the choreographed formalism of He´liogabale towards a magic primitivism in which mind and cosmic forces are not yet separated and all elements of the cosmos are seen as an interrelated system. The metaphysical lies just beneath the surface of the physical, and, although this is threatening, implying as it does a return of 10 He´liogabale also extends a process at work in Artaud’s 1920s writings, where he had developed parallels and fusions between his writing self and historical Wgures such as Abelard and Uccello. In the context of writing a textual identity, it is most signiWcant that He´liogabale should be so strongly marked by incantatory cadences, hypnotic litanies, and complex rhythmic patternings. The oralization of Artaud’s prose, which comes to dominate his writing, is a technique of incorporating and identifying with his text and his textual alter ego. Increasingly Artaud sought to embody his metaphysics in textual alter egos, and He´liogabale projects this concern with self-writing onto a larger and more complex plane.


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the original cosmogenic violence, Artaud interprets the threat as a necessary dissolution before a return to unity. In tandem with this he came to conceive of his bodily self as the site for his Theatre of Cruelty, and in 1936 he left France for Mexico, hoping that there ‘le theáˆtre que j’imagine, que je contiens peut-eˆtre, s’exprime directement’ (viii. 287). The purpose of this voyage was to visit the Tarahumara, a North Mexican Indian tribe whose culture Artaud saw as exemplary of the organic primitivism necessary for a return to the metaphysical sources of existence. His writings about his visit tell the story of a frustrated odyssey in a mythic, hallucinatory landscape alive with divine forces: Le pays des Tarahumaras est plein de signes, de formes, d’eYgies naturelles qui ne semblent point ne´s du hasard [ . . . ] la Nature obstine´ment manifeste la meˆme ideé [ . . . ] des teˆtes de dieux connus apparaissent sur les rochers [ . . . ] tout un pays sur la pierre de´veloppe une philosophie [ . . . ] Il me sembla partout lire [ . . . ] une histoire de gene`se et de chaos, avec tous ces corps de dieux [ . . . ] cette Sierra habiteé [ . . . ] souZe une penseé me´taphysique dans ses rochers. (ix. 35–8)

Artaud presents Tarahumara culture as a perpetual reading and writing of a metaphysical dialogue with nature. They treat the landscape and their movement as inscriptions, and the opposition of cosmic forces, already disclosed in the landscape, is heightened by the marks they make on the environment; thus Artaud describes ‘arbres bruˆle´s volontairement en forme de croix, ou en forme d’eˆtres, et souvent ces eˆtres sont double´s et ils se font face, comme pour manifester la dualite´ essentielle des choses’ (ix. 38). Artaud’s hopeful insistence during his Surrealist days that ‘[a`] travers les fentes d’une reálite´ de´sormais inviable, parle un monde volontairement sibyllin’ (i**. 33) is now aYrmed literally of the warring cosmic principles emerging from the rocks and vegetation. The appeal to Artaud of this kind of primitive ontology and metaphysics lies in the fact that, if the cosmos is a smooth ontological continuum, then man partakes of the same essence as the gods and so potentially has the same magical, generative powers. To the Artaud of the late 1930s magical primitivism therefore promises victory over self-alienation. Until the end of his life Artaud reworked his Tarahumara texts in the light of his Xuctuating religious and metaphysical dispositions. The earlier texts interpret the Mexican rites as part of a universal esotericism (linking Atlantis to the Grail to the Rosicrucians to the Bible). Those written in the early 1940s develop a mystical Christian interpretation. A text written just before his death describes the Tarahumara rites as an act of provocation against a perverse God and homeopathic passage

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through abjection, resulting in the emergence of scarred yet autonomous man. The most important text is ‘Le rite du peyotl chez les tarahumaras’, which describes rituals involving the ingurgitation of a powerful hallucinogen, peyote, which Artaud expected to amount to a rebirth to himself: ‘Le Peyotl rame`ne le moi a` ses sources vraies’ (ix. 27), theoretically allowing him to be ‘reverse´ de l’autre coˆte´ des choses, et comme si une force terrible vous avait donne´ d’eˆtre restitue´ a` ce qui existe de l’autre coˆte´’ (ix. 25–6).11 Artaud identiWes peyote with perfect knowledge of the essence of things: ‘le Peyotl c’est l ’h o m m e non pas ne´, mais i n n e´ ’ (ix. 27). Once the god present in peyote has acted as a dissolvent for the self, the true, innate kernel-self will be revealed and Artaud will return to the other side of things. As Dumoulie´ argues, this is initially conWrmed in the rite by the Wgures Artaud sees the dancers making with their feet, which he describes as resembling the letters S, U, and J, the Wrst three letters of the word ‘sujet’ announcing imminent self-presence (ix. 22).12 But the inscriptions end on ‘une sorte de J qui aurait eu a` son sommet trois branches surmonteés d’un E triste et brillant’ (ix. 26). If there has been any dissolution of the layers of socio-cultural and linguistic accretions that smother his inner self, he is still only present to the ‘I’, the selfreXexive, linguistically constituted self. Instead of receiving a revelation of innate ontological truths, Artaud is still trapped by language. Once again Artaud’s hopes of self-presence are disappointed and he experiences the peyote rite as another aborted event, reminiscent of those described during the 1920s, when the possibility of eVecting self-identity was oVered only to be snatched away at the last moment by linguistic collapse. This sense of failure and distance from himself becomes ever more acutely expressed. If we progress through his 1930s works in chronological order, it is hard not to hear the note of increasing desperation to Artaud’s creed of apocalyptic unity. After the failure of a controlled opening-up to the forces of dissolution in the rites of the Theatre of Cruelty and of the Tarahumara Indians, the already wild tempo quickens and Artaud seems to hurtle towards frenzy, then madness. Identity dissolution is no longer hedged around by the security measures of ritual. With the eclipse of his hopes to discover the principle of reality by a theatrical enactment of metaphysical principles, Artaud places a Wnal hope in a cognitive epiphany theoretically to coincide with a paroxysmal 11 The idea is not, of course, unusual; others of his generation, such as Aldous Huxley and Henri Michaux, wrote of the existential qualities of hallucinogens. 12 Dumoulie´, Antonin Artaud, 88.


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destruction of the self. ‘Il fallait de´sormais que le quelque chose d’enfoui derrie`re [ . . . ] fuˆt tire´ dehors, et qu’il servıˆt, qu’il servıˆt justement par mon cruciWement’, Artaud writes towards the end of Les Tarahumaras; ‘A cela je savais que mon destin physique e´tait irre´me´diablement attache´. J’e´tais preˆt a` toutes les bruˆlures, et j’attendais les pre´mices de la bruˆlure, en vue d’une combustion bientoˆt geńe´raliseé’ (ix. 49–50). This idea of a Wery, apocalyptic revelation of the underlying principles of reality at the expense of his own identity is the basis of Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre, a series of short, fragmented oracular texts of anguished self-interrogation. Explicitly an apocalyptic reading of Tarot cards, it announces the destruction of the world in which Male will triumph over Female, overseen by a King mistaken by all for a madman. Through this vision Artaud announces an ambiguous cognitive epiphany coinciding with the annihilation of self and world. In a savage hymnlike chant prefacing the Tarot reading Artaud claims that the destructive, purifying force of Wre has removed him from reality: ‘Si l’on a fait de moi un buˆcher, c’e´tait pour me gue´rir d’eˆtre au monde. [ . . . ] C’est un vrai De´sespe´re´ qui vous parle et qui [ . . . ] a quitte´ ce monde j [ . . . ] en est absolument se´pare´ ’ (vii. 120–1). Yet, whereas in the preface to Le Theáˆtre et son Double Artaud had expressed the desire to be ‘comme des supplicie´s que l’on bruˆle et qui font des signes sur leurs buˆchers’ (iv. 14), contact with the incandescent metaphysical forces has resulted not in the union of self and signiWcation but in his separation from reality and the dissolution of his identity. Although the title of the work implicitly claims that the surrender of self to dissolutory cosmic principles has indeed resulted in a revelation, one that has allowed Artaud to free himself of ‘les formes ([ . . . ] toutes les formes) dont la de´lirante illusion d’eˆtre au monde a reveˆtu la reálite´’ (vii. 120), it is clear that this is a negative epiphany in which Artaud unblinkingly confronts his ontological alienation, his notbeing-in-the-world. Nevertheless, this dissolution is presented as a heroic act of the sort propounded in the Theatre of Cruelty—‘He´roisme: admettre l’e´pide´mie’ (ii. 160).13 Just as the plague symbolizes life for Artaud, so dissolution is a return to his innate state of existence: Voila` longtemps que j’ai senti le Vide, mais que j’ai refuse´ de me jeter dans le vide. J’ai éte´ laˆche comme tout ce que je vois. 13 This reference, of course, indicates that the quotation is not drawn from the text of Le Theáˆtre et son Double. It is, though, drawn from notes for a play dating from 1932, when Artaud was writing and delivering the lectures that were collected to form Le Theáˆtre et son Double.

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angelic bodies, demonic bodies Quand j’ai cru que je refusais le monde, je sais maintenant que je refusais le Vide. Car je sais que ce monde n’est pas et je sais maintenant comment il n’est pas. Ce dont j’ai souVert jusqu’ici, c’est d’avoir refuse´ le Vide. Le Vide qui était de´ja` en moi. (vii. 119)

But there is once again an ambiguous logic at work, for, if Artaud is now in some sense outside his previous state of alienation, this does not equate to self-presence. For all the cognitive claims made, and despite the hammering, visionary refrain—‘Qu’est-ce que cela veut dire? j Cela veut dire que . . . ’—that punctuates nearly every page of the text, the closing words of the preface to Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre belie the forced note of epistemological triumphalism. The elision with the principle of Being has not resulted in the self-presence for which the sacriWce of his identity is made: ‘Je ne suis pas mort’, the text records in a diminuendo, ‘mais je suis se´pare´ ’ (vii. 121). Already in relation to D’un voyage a au pays des Tarahumaras Artaud had written to Jean Paulhan that it must be published anonymously, that it must not even carry his initials, and that his name must disappear (vii. 178, 180). Similarly, Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre does not appear in his name but is signed ‘LE RE´VE´LE´ ’. This signature implies that, in writing under dictation from Being, Artaud becomes not just a conduit for Being but also Being itself, and, acceding to the capitalized status of the proper noun, He who is revealed. But this is not without its ambiguities, for writing Being has therefore eVectively expelled Artaud from his role as author and so forced him out of reality: Or, n’e´tant plus je vois ce qui est. Je me suis vraiment identiWe´ avec cet Eˆtre, cet Eˆtre qui a cesse´ d’exister. Et cet Eˆtre m’a tout re´ve´le´. Je le savais, mais je ne pouvais le dire, et si je peux recommencer a` le dire, c’est que j’ai quitte´ la reálite´. (vii. 120)

Knowledge has been bought at the price of existence in the world as an individual identity. Artaud has now dropped down from the heights of a nameable self to the state of ‘une irre´missible Brute’ (vii. 119), an unadorned and so, given the supreme value Artaud places on pristine original states, all-powerful bodily existence: ‘un corps qui subit le monde, et de´gorge la reálite´ ’ (vii. 120).

angelic bodies, demonic bodies 83 Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre announces that ‘UN CYCLE DE MONDE EST ACHEVE´’ (vii. 141), and it is tempting to see this as referring not just to the destruction of the world by Wre (the major revelation of the text) but also to a cycle of Artaud’s own work: ‘Il faut Wnir. Il faut enWn trancher avec ce monde’ (vii. 120). This idea of closure is apparent in one of the last letters he wrote before his internment, where he has the presentiment that he will soon appear under another name: ‘Je signe une des dernie`res fois de mon Nom, apre`s ce sera un autre Nom’ (vii. 209). He was arrested and interned before the month was out. When we next hear his voice, then, it is six years later and Artaud, now interned at Rodez and calling himself Nalpas, his mother’s maiden name, is setting out his Gnostic theology tinged with an apocalypticism brought over from the 1930s. The dominant feeling is still one of ontological exile, only now ‘l’Eˆtre’ has been renamed ‘Dieu’, and Artaud experiences his sense of alienation as banishment from divine plenitude. Simon Harel, in his psychoanalytic reading of Artaud’s later writings, makes the shrewd observation that the Rodez texts are ‘tout un questionnement sur le statut de «l’originaire»’,14 worrying away at the idea of a Divine origin as well as the many given facts of Artaud’s life, especially his name, his birth, and his mother tongue. Whilst at times Artaud perceives the origin as a state of plenitude to which he should return, in general he equates them to an original moment of separation, hence of doubling and alienation. The only unproblematically valued state is the pre-original, as already evident in a 1920s answer to a Surrealist questionnaire on suicide: je suis mort depuis longtemps, je suis de´ja` suicide´. ON m’a suicide´, c’est-a`-dire. Mais que penseriez-vous d’un suicide ante´rieur [ . . . ] qui nous ferait rebrousser chemin, mais de l’autre coˆte´ de l’existence, et non pas du coˆte´ de la mort. Celui-la` seul aurait pour moi une valeur. Je ne sens pas l’appe´tit de la mort, je sens l’appe´tit du ne pas être, de n’eˆtre jamais tombe´ dans [ . . . ] le moi d’Antonin Artaud. (i**. 20–1)

A pre-origin of a-Being is the only valued site, Artaud here writes. Birth is an imposed suicide from which the only possible respite would be a return to a before-time. The fact of an original moment means for Artaud that existence is thereby an exile from an original plenitude in a foreign, vitiated ontological state. An outside origin means, for Artaud, necessary ontological impoverishment. This newly important theme of 14 Vies et morts d’Antonin Artaud: Le Se´jour a` Rodez (Longueuil, Quoe´bec: E´ditions Le Preámbule), 84.

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the origin is a historicization of his previous thought about self-presence and self-identity: he is seeking a cause (and will Wnd a culprit) for his inability to attain self-presence. Artaud displays an obsessional need to attribute blame for his failure to realize this ideal and it is this that leads to an extraordinary interpretation of his life pitching demons and sexuality against God and angels. Artaud’s most immediate diYculty in the early phase of his return to writing at Rodez is to Wnd a place from which to speak in the midst of this ontological warfare. Enunciative positions were problematic for Artaud, as Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre shows. Eventually Artaud will have invested his voice with enough authority to feel able to speak in his own name—not only in the minor sense that he will be calling himself Artaud but more importantly in that he will construct an account that does not require outside support and substantiation, and even in the fullest sense that he will claim not to have inherited but to have forged the right to the name Antonin Artaud. But initially at Rodez he feels the need to anchor his voice and claims to be speaking in the name of God, insisting, in the letters dating from the beginning of his internment at Rodez, upon the absolute orthodoxy of his unorthodox, basically Gnostic views and presenting himself as the only true believer of a deliberately occulted doxa. This Gnosticism is no longer, in the early Rodez years, a fruitful metaphysical lexicon as it was in the 1930s and will become again once he starts dismantling its terminology in 1945. It has for the time being hardened into a theological framework circumscribing his thought. Gnosticism’s theology and metaphysics are a function of its distinctive, highly conXictual cosmogeny.15 According to Manichaean cosmogeny, before Genesis the two Principles of Light (God) and Darkness (Matter) were separate, but the latter desired to conquer the splendour of the former. To repel his adversary, God sent Primordial Man with an army that was eaten by the demons of Darkness. This initiates the mixing of the two cosmic Substances that underpins the inherent dualism of all Creation for the Gnostic. In a second moment of Creation, God kills some but not all the demons and creates the earth out of their bodies and excrement. After a series of further skirmishes the remaining demons consume their oVspring in order to concentrate within themselves all the stolen traces of divine Light, and they then copulate. The issue of this union is Adam and Eve, whose demonic function is to imprison the 15 The following account of the main ideas of Gnosticism is much indebted to Mircea Eliade, Histoire des croyances et des ideés religieuses, 3 vols. (Paris: Payot, 1978), ii. 353–76. The most complete form of Gnosticism is attributed to Mani (a d 216–77).


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remaining stolen parcels of Light. Humanity, then, is born as the result of a series of repugnant acts of cannibalism and sexuality, and retains the stigmata of this origin: the body, which is the animal form of the demons, and the libido, which pushes humankind to reproduce and so keep the divine Light imprisoned in human bodies. For the Gnostic his true being is a divine spark held captive by the body in a state of ontological exile from his homeland of Light. Birth is nothing short of a life sentence in a demonic carnal prison. The Gnostic therefore has a dual identity, being both an abject, demonic body and a divine inner spark. The reader of Artaud’s Rodez texts will recognize many of these ideas. Artaud holds himself to be the victim of occult cannibalism, proscribes all sexuality as inimical to God’s plan for the world, and regards the human body as prone to demonic ‘envouˆtement’ due to its very nature and anatomy. The idea of a double self in particular is one that is familiar from Artaud’s early writings where the everyday, socially constituted self is an aberration in comparison to an inner self banished to latency. The appeal Gnostic thought has for Artaud is simple: it holds out an ideal of self-presence in a world seen as a place of contamination. In other words, it corresponds exactly to the desires structuring Artaud’s earlier analyses of self-alienation. Given that in Gnostic thought God is removed from the world, this world is necessarily (not just incidentally) a place of selfalienation, and so Artaud’s engagement with Gnostic thought will mesh with and exacerbate his already extreme ideas about the exiling forces within thought, language, the body, and the self. Yet perhaps the most important feature for the development of his thought is that, on a Gnostic account, humanity is necessarily, if unwittingly, in a state of antagonism to God. This is an idea that Artaud will make much of later in his development of it into a very diVerent account where God makes covert attempts to control Artaud’s identity space. Artaud’s study of alchemy, Tarot cards, the Cabala, astrology and solar religions during the mid-1930s, all decadent hybrid Xowerings of Gnostic thought, would seem to have nurtured an underlying Gnostic sensibility that comes Wrmly to the fore in the early Rodez texts. Artaud’s theological pronouncements are indeed strikingly Gnostic, despite an explicit denial of any link to Manichaeism (so as to avoid being branded a heretic and thus abnormal (x. 40)). God is said to have lost his soul (NER 35) and it is man’s job to help Him recover it and so complete this cycle of creation (x. 30). At times Artaud’s Gnostic terminology is explicit: ‘l’Apocalypse de Dieu ne peut pas naıˆtre, he´las, si le Mal n’a pas acheve´ d’e´puiser la lumie`re qu’il avait voleé’ (x. 89) and ‘l’Antichrist et ses

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de´mons [ . . . ] ont fait la pathologie humaine’ (x. 83). The oscillation displayed by his letters during the early Rodez period over whether he inhabits a pure, angelic body or a demonic sexual carcass takes over the Gnostic account unchanged. Even incidental features of Gnosticism are drawn into Artaud’s world view: the Gnostic Primordial Man transpires in Artaud’s idea of the pre-Adamite and as his thought progresses he will identify ‘le caca’ as the fundamental essence of existence. The Gnosticism is not conWned to theology. There is a broad sensibility at work that leads Artaud to perceive existence as a cosmological drama in which diVerent ontological orders Wght out existence in a combat centred on him: he is ‘au centre d’une eVroyable bataille ou` le ciel et l’enfer ne cessent de se heurter a` toute heure’ (x. 21).16 Often Artaud’s letters explain it is Heaven and Earth that are moved to action in ‘la bataille occulte que le ciel depuis des e´ternite´s livre contre l’enfer’ and that is now concentrated around Artaud’s body (x. 19). At times divine Wgures appear in person to intervene in his favour as occurred in ‘l’horrible et merveilleuse bataille [ . . . quand] le ciel entier s’y est manifeste´ et que la Vierge Marie elle-meˆme y est apparue aux coˆte´s de Je´sus-Christ, et que le Saint-Esprit y a fait ećlater toute sa tablature de Xammes’ (x. 72–3). The Wery visions he describes are reminiscent of the apocalyptic prophecies of Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre, and this Xurry of divine and angelic activity is but a foretaste of greater violence he claims will come, for the world is (still) heading for dissolution: ‘les temps annonce´s dans l’Apocalypse de saint Jean sont proches’ (x. 22). A multitude of celestial armies, perhaps even led by the Christ, are said to be advancing on Rodez to reclaim him as their own (x. 52–3, x. 68; NER 40). Artaud’s letters are full of a Gnostic warring of principles tinged with megalomania. One of the most visible eVects of Gnosticism on the future development of Artaud’s thought stems from his engagement with Manichaean ideas on the body and the concomitant view of sexuality as inimical to unity. Much of Artaud’s letter space during the early Rodez period (and well beyond) is given over to denouncing all forms of sexuality, and, if this distrust of sexuality is nothing new, it is now taken to extremes under the inXuence of Gnosticism. In the 1920s he had found female sexuality abhorrent, reproaching his partner, Geńica Athanasiou, with what he 16 There are also frequent references to neo-apocalyptic battles led by Andre´ Breton to liberate Artaud in which whole sections of the population rose up in the various places where he had been interned only to be gunned down in their thousands by a brutal state as they sought to storm the place where he was being held prisoner and tortured (x. 70, 79, 84; NER 27–8, 43).


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saw as her translation of their relationship into terms dictated by her female sexuality (see the three ‘Lettres de meńage’ (i*. 103–8)). In the 1930s he explained in his letters to Marie Dubuc, a voyante with whom the haughty Artaud was unusually open, that he had left Cećile Schramme, brieXy his Wanceé, because of her ‘bestialite´ monstrueuse’, and that all women partake of ‘la meˆme immondite´ du corps’ and so of ‘cette brutalite´ sexuelle d’une femme’ (NER 171, 172).17 This long-standing sexual aversion is now rewritten in explicitly Gnostic terms: ‘la copulation sexuelle c’est prier mate´riellement le diable et lui donner de ce fait barre sur l’Ame preˆteé par Dieu [ . . . ] et s’y livrer c’est retarder [ . . . ] l’Ave`nement du Royaume de Dieu’ (x. 35–6). Artaud insists that ‘la Religion ve´ritable [ . . . ] veut la chastete´ inte´grale [ . . . ] de tout homme [ . . . ] hors du mariage e t DANS le mariage’, even at times going so far as to maintain that ‘la reproduction humaine n’a pas lieu par l’exercice de toute immonde copulation’ (NER 28). The pugnaciously anti-sexual stance continues even after he has abandoned the religious superstructure within which his previous distrust is transformed into this counterfactual extremism. Not only will he continue to exhort those around him to avoid all sexual contact (Jacques Pre´vel’s memoir of Artaud between his release from Rodez and his death in 1948 reveals with what urgent insistence Artaud attempted to forbid his acquaintances having any sexual relations); he will also, as set out in such texts as ‘Centre-Me`re et Patron-Minet’ and ‘L’exećration du pe`re-me`re’ (xii. 21–6, 33–54), come to deny his biological birth because of what he sees as the alienating consequences of having issued from a sexual act. Artaud’s defence of the religious orthodoxy of his ethic of total sexual abstinence seems tireless. He frequently insists that he is wholly chaste and ‘ancestralement vierge’ (x. 14), although this particular claim is in part attributable to the wish to counter the diagnosis that he was suVering from a hereditary syphilis and its implicit charge of insanity. The repeated insistence on the orthodoxy of his views on sexual activity deserves to be seen in the light of his leading claim that humanity is separated from Being, a claim Wguring under one guise or another from the Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re through Le Theáˆtre et son Double to Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre. Once God has been identiWed as the name of 17 In this same letter Artaud makes the fascinating statement: ‘quelque femme qui me revienne l’amour pour moi a Wni d’exister sur le plan ou` les choses se se´parent et ou` les eˆtres sont se´pare´s’ (NER 172). In 1945 the sexual drive is deWned as divisive: ‘libido sexuelle: coupure de l’homme et de la femme, de moi et des eˆtres, de l’eˆtre et de moi’ (xvii. 33). It is tempting to speculate that Artaud’s horror of sexuality arises from the separation, the doubling, of the sexes.

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Being, Artaud translates this separation into theological terms, presenting it as a forgetting of the true Will of God. Artaud’s faith cannot therefore be orthodox; were it to be so, the claimed separation of modern man from Being would have to be withdrawn or substantially reduced in scope. The oddness of all Artaud’s world views is at least partially written into their founding belief. For instance, his insisting that his sexual morality is the true, divinely underwritten orthodoxy, even though he also admits that it runs counter to ecclesiastical teaching, is an unlikely yet logical outcome of his belief that the world is ontologically Xawed and riven by metaphysical warfare, and it demonstrates the kind of longrange coherence to be found in Artaud’s thought even when his ideas are at their most unusual. Artaud’s hostility to all things sexual leads him to imagine that in a time of original unity there could have been no sexual diVerences. Given Artaud’s future status as seemingly androgynous creator of his ‘Wlles de cœur’, it is interesting to note that original non-diVerentiation should at this stage imply not androgyny but asexuality. The Fall, for Artaud, is quite simply the change from asexuality to sexuation (x. 61, 76–7). Prior to the Fall, reproduction occurred: ‘dans un sens diame´tralement oppose´ a` celui de la reproduction sexuelle qui est une infamie immonde fomenteé de toutes pie`ces par les de´mons’ (x. 34). Or rather there was a divinely overseen production in which ‘chacun [s’e´loigne] au plus loin de leur corps [ . . . ] et s’e´lanc[e] vers l’esprit de Dieu, aWn de lui demander de laisser ećhapper une forme’ (x. 35). Such details of Artaud’s rabid antisexualism would be of little signiWcance did they not contain the seeds of future ideas governing Ci-gıˆt and Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, his great Wnal collections of poetry. The idea that God is intimately involved in the production of a child will subsequently come to mean that His is the dispossessing presence at the moments of copulation and birth. Further, extrapolating from the idea of a demonic origin to sexuality, Artaud will conclude that the sexual organ is non-essential to human being. Already he is insisting on the need to redraw the human anatomy: ‘dompter le corps de l’homme, je veux dire maıˆtriser son Arche´-Type Sacre´ [ . . . ] ce corps Sacre´, dis-je, puisse se maintenir sans sexe’ (x. 36) and speciWcally: ‘l’e´limination irre´ductible de tout ce qui peut eˆtre sexualite´’ (NER 28). The Sacred Archetypal human anatomy is the conceptual forefather of the corps sans organes, whilst divine involvement in the creation of pre-Fallen humankind means that God is essentially (that is, when things corresponded to their archetype) implicated in the original moment of an individual life.


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Pushing further towards the origin beyond the moment of Creation Artaud writes of an ‘e´tat Pre´-Adamique’ when humankind existed in a form untainted by the weight of matter. This Pre-Adamite is man’s true state, and is closely associated with the idea of the angel, one of the key Wgures at Rodez in Artaud’s cosmic drama, for ‘les espaces sont peuple´s d’eˆtres en eVet mais ces eˆtres sont des Anges’ (x. 26).18 The angel plays an important role in Artaud’s thought because body and soul are enemies for the Gnostic Artaud, and he is looking to make one term subsume the other so as to end his self-alienation: ‘suis-je l’esprit d’un corps ou le corps de mon esprit, et que suis-je, moi qui pense ce de´bat entre le corps et l’esprit?’ (xi. 71). The angel is pure transparency, the emanation of its eidos, and, untainted by solid Xesh, is nothing but volatile, Xuidic energy. It is therefore one possible form of self-identity. Artaud oscillates between the desire to reduce everything to the body, and the desire to vaporize his Xesh and dissolve into such an abstract angelic Wgure. If Artaud’s letters show some hesitancy over whether to opt for bodyhood or angelhood, it is because, whilst it might seem that the angel represents self-presence, it is in fact an ambivalent Wgure. The angel is the reXection of God, the archetype of divine creation, but, as the Wrst being to emanate from the breath of God, the angel is also the primordial exemplar of alterity. The angel is the archetypal double. Initially Artaud favours angelhood. He Wgures in his letters as an angel struggling with evil forces, as do his friends whom he exhorts to adopt a chaste, seraphic life. On arriving at Rodez, Artaud was denying he was the man Antonin Artaud, but was rather his angelic continuation: ‘Depuis [la mort d’Antonin Artaud] Dieu a refondu son corps qui correspond occultement a` l’Arche´-Type sacre´ de l’homme [ . . . ] Dieu a envoye´ dans ce meˆme corps plusieurs Anges [ . . . ] et a` la Wn il a produit un Eˆtre [ . . . ] Cet eˆtre attend que sa douleur cesse pour s’en aller du Monde’ (x. 37). Artaud aspires to be a Xeshless angel in order to return against the current of time to a stage before all origins, to leave Creation behind and so reach a stage prior to alienation and exile. After rejecting Christianity, Artaud will still yearn for an archetypal existential form that will now be corporeal and human, not immaterial and angelic, but the underlying desire for an existential form allowing him to be one with reality will remain unchanged. In a typically Artaudian semi-paradoxical way, for extremes frequently meet in his image-concepts, the ultra-bodily corps sans organes has its part of angelic properties. 18 For a fuller discussion of the angel in Artaud’s writings, see Florence de Me`redieu, Antonin Artaud: Les Couilles de l’ange (Paris: Blusson, 1992), 57–88.

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These accounts of his more than human spiritual identity are supplemented by the multiple religious identities and aYliations to which Artaud lays claim. Given his sense of existential instability, the spiritual genealogies he invents are, unsurprisingly, numerous. He claims that the (defunct) Artaud was told ‘«Il paraıˆt que tu es Dieu.» Ce qui e´tait une erreur mais correspondait a` une ve´rite´ profonde’ (x. 38–9) and that Artaud was ‘le support corporel de Dieu sur terre’ (x. 70). The link with the Wgures of the Christian Godhead is made fully apparent in the appellation ‘Nanaqui le Saint-Esprit’ (NER 35), Nanaqui being a pet name given to Artaud by his mother. Artaud is also said to have been Saint Hippolyte (NER 29; x. 39, 70), no doubt due to the fact that Hippolytus was consecrated and reigned in opposition to the Roman pontiWcates. There is even a ‘Saint-Artaud’ (x. 57). The internment of Antonin Artaud and his subsequent death are determined by their parallels to the Christ: the defunct Artaud is portrayed as an innocent scapegoat who accepted his lot for the sake of humanity and whose suVering and death were occasioned by his religious mission (x. 37, 39, 66, 70; NER 28). This multiplicity of religious identities, whilst eloquent on the insecurity of Artaud’s identity, also shows him to be trying to Wnd an anchorage for his voice that would invest it with suYcient authority to act as the unique exponent of God’s will. The many Wctive recastings of his life and identity are a search for a powerful enunciative position from which to tell the true story of reality and so mount a challenge against the alienating forces at work in the world. These many religious identities are the early and disorganized stages of what will emerge as the leading strategy of constructing a new ever-shifting, ever-emerging mythic textual identity. The impulse to deWne himself in mythic and world-deWning terms is in fact already apparent in the early Rodez period. On arriving at Rodez Artaud had been calling himself Nalpas, his mother’s maiden name, leading to the widespread interpretation that this revealed, in Dumoulie´’s words, a ‘mouvement re´gressif, a` l’univers maternel’.19 But this prevalent interpretation does not explain why, despite the assumption of the name Nalpas, he repeatedly denied any parenthood with her: ‘Euphrasie Artaud [ . . . ] e´tait la me`re d’Antonin Artaud mais [ . . . ] elle a oublie´ la reálite´ mate´rielle et objective [ . . . ] et elle ne peut pas croire que je ne sois pas son Wls’ (NER 45). The problems for this interpretation are further compounded when he adds the factually correct information that 19

Dumoulie´, Antonin Artaud, 97.


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‘Euphrasie Artaud est une demoiselle Nalpas et qu’elle est neé a` Smyrne en 1870’ (NER 45). Even when naming her Nalpas he rejects any Wliation with her. Instead he informs Ferdie`re, the head psychiatrist at Rodez, that he has ‘une autre famille composeé d’un pe`re que s’appelle Joseph, d’une Me`re qui s’appelle Marie et dont le nom de famille est Nalpas’ (NER 45). The claim that his parents are named Marie and Joseph is not just a straightforward adoption of a Christic posture (although this is surely one of the connotations): Artaud’s full name is Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud. There is therefore already a hint of the claim that he is auto-generating. And what this suggests is that the adoption of the name Nalpas functions less as a return to the security of the maternal universe than it does, like the religious genealogies, as a means of asserting his autonomy.20 But in September 1943 the name Nalpas was relinquished, marking the end of a six-year period of extreme nominative, and hence enunciative, insecurity. Since Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre Artaud had not been speaking in his name. Yet it is worth underlining the perhaps obvious fact that this return to his name does not coincide with any clean break in the ideas structuring his textual universe, and Artaud carries over in its entirety the thematics he had developed as Nalpas. If, however, the mainstays of his thought are still in place, they are not quite so foursquarely present nor so assiduously defended. For example, though Artaud is still a believer, his correspondence is no longer organized around the explanation of his personal theology. Any theological formulations appear more as asides, formulaic pieties, than as the backbone of his writing. Artaud’s attitude to religion, if not his religious doctrines, is no longer that of a passionate, missionary heretic and is now closer to that of an assiduous devotee. One set of seemingly mad ideas Artaud carries over from his Nalpas days without any subsidence of the zeal with which he propounds them is his belief in demons and ‘envouˆtement’. Given the important conceptual work this idea and its descendants will perform in his later theorizings, it is worth examining it in more detail than it might initially seem to warrant. Artaud’s belief in ‘envouˆtement’ pre-dates his arrival at Rodez, and, if he does grudgingly relinquish his belief in demonic interference in reality after reverting to his name, he retains the underlying idea of attacks being made on the autonomy of his body. In its more digniWed (1945 on) 20 Grossman suggests that Nalpas is Wrst and foremost the name that symbolizes the rejection of all names, and in this context highlights the strong similarity between Nalpas and the line denying all Wliation drawn from Ci-gıˆt: ‘ja na pas j a papa-mama’ (xii. 99).

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guise, ‘envouˆtement’ comes to refer to all impediments encountered in the work of creating a new reality: ‘le but de ces envouˆtements est d’empeˆcher une action que j’ai entreprise depuis des anneés et qui est de sortir de ce monde puant et d’en Wnir avec ce monde puant’ (ix. 165). Indeed, he promotes this idea to occupy a lead role in his later thought where God is accused of existing vicariously by an ‘envouˆtement’ through which he displaces Artaud’s inner self from his body. But in the early Rodez period ‘envouˆtement’ is a literalist account of the magical doings of an evil society (x. 56): [j’e´tais] interne´ a` la faveur de [ . . . ] manœuvres d’envouˆtement [ . . . ] la magie, je dis magie au sens inte´gral du terme, avait une part capitale et unique dans ma situation, que mon internement e´tait une aVaire de magie et que c’e´tait par magie que les hommes [ . . . ] me maintenaient interne´, en prolongeant a` mon sujet [ . . . ] l’illusion que j’e´tais fou parce que ayant moi-meˆme a` me de´fendre par magie contre des agressions magiques occultes [ . . . ], j’en e´tais amene´ a` employer tout l’arsenal connu ou reínvente´ de la Magie Ce´remonielle Blanche la plus eYcace contre les de´mons. (NER 38–9, emphasis added)

‘Envouˆtement’, when it Wrst appears in Artaud’s letters, is a means of exculpation: his internment is the result of occult attacks, and so any defence he might deploy is ineVective, since the means of defence will be perceived as an indication of insanity. Such a concept seems an unlikely candidate for promotion to a central role in a serious account of the fundamental determining inXuences on the individual. This, however, is exactly what Artaud reserves for it in the major text Van Gogh, le suicide´ de la socie´te´ (xiii. 9–64), where he states that ‘l’homme moderne [n’a] jamais pu vivre, ni penser vivre, qu’en posse´de´’ (xiii. 21) and that ‘envouˆtement’ was deployed against Van Gogh because of the ‘insupportable ve´rite´s’ he pronounced by escaping the circle of ‘envouˆtement’ to ‘de´duire le mythe des choses les plus terre-a`-terre’ (xiii. 17, 18, 29). ‘Envouˆtement’ is therefore closely linked to Artaud’s truth-seeking art. By the time of the Wnal texts its meaning has shifted and it refers to linguistic and conceptual blinkers and, by extension, to an inability to step outside an inherited conceptual framework and its concomitant ruling as to what counts as reality. It is this sort of ‘envouˆtement’, Artaud suggests, that prevents man realizing that ‘la reálite´ est terriblement supe´rieure a` toute histoire, a` toute fable, a` toute divinite´, a` toute surreálite´’ and so prevents the fulWlment of Artaud’s life-long aim, a life-in-poetry (xiii. 29). At the early Rodez stage of its evolution, however, the idea of ‘envouˆtement’ is ensnared within Artaud’s hermetic personal belief-system. Nevertheless, the details Artaud’s letters provide on ‘envouˆtement’


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allow us to trace the development of his thought on corporeal alienation, for ‘envouˆtement’ is carried out by occult sexual acts and is directed against his body. He claims he is ‘envouˆte´’ by ritual masturbation: ‘pour la police française le cyanure de potassium n’est qu’un adjuvant car elle en de´tient un autre pour brimer les re´volte´s et servir les manœuvres d’envouˆtement occulte qui sont son arme principale [ . . . ] Et ce poison s’appelle le sperme, obtenu par masturbation r i t u e l l e [ . . . ] dans de sce`nes d’envouˆtement e´rotique de masses’ (x. 15).21 For Artaud all sexual activity sends down lubricious demons on him (x. 80), and so copulating humanity is demonic: ‘[l]es hommes [ . . . ] et je vous parle de l’humanite´ entie`re, sont a` l’heure qu’il est tous devenus des de´mons’ (x. 22). ‘Envouˆtement’ is a universal phenomenon. Artaud repeatedly denounces the sucking of his vital forces, the tasting of his self and of his bodily Xuids as he sleeps; indeed the reason he is interned is so that demonic humanity may feed oV his body: ‘le peuple français [ . . . ] maintient [ . . . ] un homme dans un Asile d’Alieńe´s a` seule Wn de s’alimenter sur lui-meˆme de ses humeurs se´minales et de ses excre´ments’ (x. 19). Littering his Rodez writings is the Wction that he is subjected to the salacious activities of the Parisian population ‘qui connaissent la mesure occulte de mon entre-cuisses a` mon cerveau, et s’oVrent le luxe de me gouˆter de loin avec leur langue et toute la lippue libido de la gourmandise d’accapareurs qu’ils peuvent y mettre, de me gouˆter en tastant, comme le fœtus d’un nouveau-ne´’ (ix. 176). This is a particularly luxuriant sexual ‘envouˆtement’ written with typical relish for enacting the content in the text—it is drawn from the slightly later, fullthroated Lettres de Rodez—and we can hear the salivating licking and sucking of the thick-lipped gourmands. Bound up with the account of ‘envouˆtement’, then, is the Wgure of the vampire, a predominant mode 21 Artaud’s traumatic experiences at the asylum of Sainte-Anne had led him to identify medication with poison, and he maintained to the end of his life that he had been subjected to many attempted poisonings administered by doctors in cahoots with the police (x. 14; xi. 212). The belief that he is subject to sexual rites of ‘envouˆtement’ can be traced to his journey to the Tarahumara plateau in 1936 when he saw Indians masturbating by the roadside, and, in a state provoked by the sudden cessation of his heroin intake, believed they were trying to bewitch him and make him turn back. Such an idea was probably reinforced by his experience at Ville-E´vrard. In Artaud et l’asile (2 vols. (Paris: Se´guier, 1996)) Andre´ Roumieux, who worked for many years at Ville-E´vrard, describes night-time in an asylum dormitory thus: ‘Des pets. Des rots. Le bruit e´touVe´ et prećipite´ de masturbations (a` vrai dire, les seules manifestations physiques que les malades peuvent exercer en totale liberte´)’ (i. 75). Artaud’s existence at Ville-E´vrard would seem to have been a period of multiple, often intense hallucination. It is easy to appreciate how the half-waking hallucinations of demonic presences and the background noise of masturbation came to be associated.

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of existence for Artaud. The myriad incubi and succubi of Suppoˆts et Suppliciations act vampirically, as will God, and humanity is said to ‘se nourrir de sa vie et de ses visce`res’ (x. 22). From its Wrst appearance in his writings, the vampire’s appetite is said to be directed towards the viscera, and this will lead to the project of creating the corps speciWcally sans organes that has no innards to attract vampiric attack. The Xesh, for the Gnostically inXuenced Artaud, is no longer the positively valued ‘chair irrigueé de nerfs’ (i**. 52) of his Surrealist theorizings but abject, contaminated by bodily humours and deWned by the (imagined) characteristics of the abhorrent place of its emergence into being: ‘la chair s’est pre´pareé pendant 9 mois au milieu du sperme et des excre´ments’ (x. 43). Whereas the angelic body is without Wssures and therefore immune to vampirism, Artaud, instead, Wnds himself in a body to which he does not have the freehold, as discourse means that others enter and manipulate his body at will: ‘Le corps ou` nous sommes n’est qu’un produit d’emprunt ou` nous sentons vivre avant nous la conscience de tout le monde, et nous y sommes comme dans un carrefour habite´ par tout le monde et ou` la conscience impure de tout le monde se pre´lasse comme dans une maison de rendez-vous’ (x. 51–2). The body connives with its own abjection and alienation, which is here at one and the same time corporeal and discursive. It would seem that the polysemy of ‘la langue’ is here at work. But Artaud’s literalist belief in the existence of demons obstructing and interfering in his daily existence soon shifts towards an account that employs theological imagery to explain an ontological phenomenon. He thus privileges the ‘body’ side of the ‘envouˆtement’ question over the demonic aspect. The many ‘faits injustes et inexplicables ou re´voltants de notre vie douleureuse a` tous’ are perhaps occasioned by ‘un proble`me religieux et moral’, but this is ‘lie´ a` nos muscles et a` nos nerfs’ (x. 188). ‘Envouˆtement’ is directly dependent upon physical anatomy and is possible only because the bodily structure is not impervious to the occult assaults of others. The very possibility of ‘envouˆtement’ is tied up with the sexuated body. The atmosphere of sexuality is so all-pervasive that even a pure sentiment ‘e´veille par correspondance et de´viation organique une vibration sexuelle abjecte qui a fait a` la longue que tout ce qui est du cœur a Wni par eˆtre axe´ sur le sexe’ (x. 228). Artaud is not just speaking Wguratively here as he himself underlines: the human anatomy has eVectively already undergone an organic transformation ‘de telle sorte qu’on dirait que c’est par cet instrument d’immondice que l’eˆtre humain a Wni par sentir et par penser’ (x. 228). The sexual organ has become


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mankind’s heart, brain, and sensory organs. In a sense man is ‘envouˆte´’ by his body. Artaud’s proposed anatomical transformation will only be a corrective to this ‘calcul de de´mons’ (x. 228). In the early Rodez period Artaud does not yet invert the value placed upon the body to perceive it once again as positive, but nevertheless the forerunner of the corps sans organes may be detected in his thought on the dual body, and the idea that the human body is other than it should be lays the foundation for the organless body of the later, body-aYrming texts. Even in the Wnal texts traces of the Gnostic hatred of the Xeshly body transpire in the desire to redistribute the human anatomy. Indeed, Artaud’s attitude towards the Xesh will not change; what changes is that, rather than aspiring to replace the Xeshly body with an angelic body, Artaud will decide to replace it with a material yet essentially non-Xeshly body. It might seem obvious but it has been insuYciently remarked that the body of the bodyaYrming texts is a Xesh-free body. The later redrawing of the human anatomy will be inspired by the lingering desire for an angelic body. The most important lesson that Artaud draws from his ideas on ‘envouˆtement’ and the body is that: ‘les hommes [ . . . ] ne sont plus a` proprement parler que des spectres, les spectres d’un autre, l’Autre qui n’est plus la` [ . . . ] spectres, c’est-a`-dire de´mons’ (x. 205). Men are but phantoms of a phantom, shadows of an absent Presence and so doubly removed from Being. If humanity is demonic it is not because of the abject sexual body but because of an essential absence. And the focus is moving from the sexuated body to the psychic structures in the search for the impediments to plenitude: On perd son aˆme a` la Wn a` vouloir s’obstiner a` vivre et a` lutter au sein d’un corps qui a e´te´ fabrique´ et reˆve´ abominablement par des de´mons, qui ne cessent pas de revenir reˆver en lui a` tout instant, contre nous et malgre´ nous, dans les teńe`bres de notre subconscient, ou, ce qui est pire, notre inconscient. (x. 208)

‘Envouˆtement’ is no longer a purely occult phenomenon but relates to the structures of the mind. It follows that, if Artaud is to achieve a state of plenitude, this state must be one of perfect, transparent, and total selfconsciousness. Artaud is returning to consciousness as the battleground on which the Wght for plenitude is to be waged. As this survey of his neglected letters of 1943–5 reveals, his Wnal poetry, whilst certainly Xowing out of the early frustrations with language and the desire to make the self co-extensive with the world, is signiWcantly inXuenced by the idiosyncratic religious doctrines developed as a Christian at Rodez. If the 1930s writings show a certain predisposition to

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apocalyptic and Gnostic thought modes, it is in the early Rodez texts that the thematic of the Wnal poetry is forged. It is these Rodez doctrines that present the body-sieve as an impediment to epiphanic plenitude, and the Gnostic elements to his thought that magnify the anti-sexual stance displayed in his earlier refusal to yield to ‘l’automatisme sexuel de l’esprit’ (i**. 53). From his Christian writings Artaud carries over the belief in an alternative archetypal bodily form as the key to plenitude and the idea that alterity is at the core of the subject’s psyche. As was apparent in the 1930s writings, Artaud is adept at employing esoteric discourse as imagery for exploring alienation, and, once he rejects the Christian faith, he will continue to use its thematic to frame his exposition of his sense of ontological paucity. From the unpromising material of his letters of 1943–5 setting out his extravagant religious doctrines, Artaud the alieńe´ draws his Wnal poetry, which, theoretically, both explains and ends his alienation.

4 CREATING IDENTITY AND MEANING Le verbe produit par les hommes est l’ideé d’un inverti enfoui par les re´Xexes. (ix. 122) Now suppose that belief in God has vanished: the question poses itself anew: ‘who speaks?’1

During the early Rodez period Artaud’s writing principally expounds his theologically dominated world view, and his letters treat mainly of angelic and demonic bodies and their relationship to his identity. But his correspondence is also concerned, at Wrst parenthetically but with increasing purpose over the course of 1944, with how a philosophy of language might Wt the theological superstructure. In Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re Artaud had raised doubts over whether language belonged to him or whether it was not ‘de´truit’, perhaps ‘enlev[e´]’, by a furtive presence in his mind (i*. 28), and the primary issue for Artaud becomes once again the proprietorship of language and meaning. Artaud initially conceives of language and meaning as the prerogative of God: God is the one truth, and so human meaning must be subordinate to the Divinity. This is a literally theological world where philosophy—and poetry as the highest exemplar of philosophical meaning-making—must tend towards without attaining the divine truth. Poetry is a digniWed branch of theology and the poet is the seer or ‘initie´’ whose poem is ‘un reXet d[’une] initiation transcendantale [ . . . ] dans la mesure ou` il n’a pas perdu la communication avec Dieu’ (NER 29–30). Hitching poetry to theological revelation in this way leads Artaud to aYrm his world narrative with conWdence, for his voice is anchored by speaking in the name of the absent God. But on the crest of this new-found conWdence in the authority of his voice he decides his speech no longer needs to be divinely underwritten, and so unhitches the two. For the Wrst time since the mid1930s he no longer needs to write under the aegis of an absent guarantor for whom he is the spokesperson. So, as Artaud’s Christian belief subsides over the course of 1943–4, he reasserts the right to create 1

Nietzsche, The Will to Power, para. 275.

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creating identity and meaning

meaning autonomously—indeed, as far as it is possible to tell, it would seem that the collapse in Artaud’s faith is due to the unacceptable status of poetic creativity in a divine universe that curtails his right to make meaning. The Word of God even perverts the idea of what authentic meaning might be, since it oVers a model in which the Creator leaves behind a doubling trace in which God beholds Himself. Creation and meaning are impossible in God’s universe. Gnostic accounts function by sealing God oV from the world, but Artaud reopens the frontiers between the human and the divine and Wnds God both a guilty and an omnipresent God. He recasts his earlier narrative of dispossession within thought and language, interpreting it in terms of his new idea of foundational determining forces of which the individual is habitually unaware (‘envouˆtement’), and so concludes that the reason it is not possible to write self-identity is because of the insidious presence of the Word in linguistic and mental structures. The logic of rebellion is thus turned back against the Gnostic rebellion that has led Artaud to his current beliefs. In so far as it preaches rebellion, Gnosticism is self-annulling, and Artaud, whatever the untidiness of the surface features of his thought, displays long-distance rigour in his appreciation of where the motive ideas of intellectual systems lead. Artaud decides then that poetry, by denouncing God, will oust theology and all discourses with claims to privileged epistemic status. Stylistically the writings of this intermediary questioning phase still lack the force of the Wnal aYrmatory writings, but it is here that the late Artaud unmistakably emerges. It is the point where the early magical–theological world view mutates into the late linguistic–conceptual antagonistic narratives of self-alienation. The seeds of contention between poet and Word of God are already present in his celebration of the Divinity as formulated in 1943 shortly after his arrival at Rodez. Whilst Artaud’s ideas during this period are predominantly Gnostic, there are two decidedly non-Gnostic ideas that with a shift in perspective easily lead Artaud to seeing the Word of God as alienating. One is Artaud’s claim that it is possible to be conWdent in human intellectual endeavour, since, though reason cannot ground itself by a demonstration of the ultimate validity of its operations, God, as creator of the universe, of its mysteries, and of curious humanity, acts as guarantor for human understanding and for the posssibility of there being meaning: De`s que l’on pense tout est myste`re et plus on pense plus le myste`re s’approfondit mais Dieu de toutes parts dans ce recul interne de la penseé en inWni et dans


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l’inWni a mis les plus suˆrs repe`res [ . . . ] Rien n’a de sens et qu’est-ce que c’est que le sens s’il n’y avait un Producteur InWni et sublime du Myste`re meˆme. (x. 25)

God’s presence within thought acts as a foundation, and so prevents it from disappearing into an unstoppable regress (echoing the concerns of Artaud’s early writing with the problem of the inWnite regress of reXexive consciousness). This slightly desperate formulation invokes God to prevent meaninglessness Xooding out over Artaud’s thought, but only at what will later be seen as the inadmissibly high price of sacriWcing the possibility of autonomous human meaning-making. Such total authority over meaning imposes repressive limits on the creative artist’s autonomy, and so Artaud will subsequently come to hold that the creator of reality is by deWnition in conXict with Artaud the creator of meaning. The second signiWcant non-Gnostic element appearing in Wligree in the passage above, and upon which he insists frequently, is that God is InWnite. The term ‘InWni’ becomes the favoured name of God, of whom it is said to be the deWning characteristic: ‘par de´Wnition Dieu c’est l’InWni’ (x. 45). Later this deWning characteristic of inWnitude will indicate that God preys on humanity, since, if He is inWnite, no barrier can be set up between God and man. Further, in literalist mode Artaud comes to interpret ‘InWni’ as indicating that God is incomplete; if He is to exist, He must therefore live vicariously through his creation. It takes only a slight shift of emphasis for this InWnite God beneWcially present within thought of the early Rodez writings to become the aggressive God usurping Artaud’s inner space of the mature texts. His redeWnition of God Xows from the dangerous ambiguities of earlier formulations. It makes sense once again to talk of the rigour of Artaud’s appreciation of deep structural ambiguities. Shortly after recognizing that his previous beliefs (and in particular the belief that he was called Nalpas) were delusional, Artaud announces his intention to unpack all his ideas: ‘J’ai l’intention maintenant que les choses vont mieux pour moi de me remettre enWn a` ećrire non pas tellement pour dire des choses aux autres que pour me les e´lucider a` moi-meˆme’ (x. 96); and in particular the rather odd trio: ‘Inconscient, InWni, E´ternel’ (x. 98). But the inherent mystery of this triad initially leads him to philosophize in strikingly pessimistic ways on the potential of human language, which he says is not just inadequate but inimical to the expression of truth. God’s inWnitely superior wielding of language makes a mockery of Artaud’s attempts to grasp the essence of terms, for such essences belong to an ontologically superior and humanly unattainable domain:

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Dieu seul quelque part la`-bas ou` les Eˆtres n’acce`dent pas a pu inventer les syllabes parfaites, «inventer», je veux dire faire dećouler ces syllabes de l’InWni. Et L’InWni q u a n d o n y p e n s e qu’est-ce que c’est.[ . . . ] de´terminer quoi que ce soit de ce qui touche a` une notion aussi insaississable et pure que celle de l’inWni, c’est le nier et le tuer. En fait ce n’est pas possible. L’InWni est une chose qui se manifeste, mais Dieu seul peut le manifester. Ce qui reste de l’InWni dans le langage n’est qu’un souvenir du Verbe de Dieu que quelques grands Mystiques et de rares tre`s grands poe`tes ont capte´. (x. 97–8)

This passage stands at a stylistic crossroads between the anguished selfinterrogation of Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre and the theatricalized rhetorical questioning of Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu: ‘L’InWni q u a n d o n y p e n s e qu’est-ce que c’est’ analeptically echoes the ‘Qu’est-ce que cela veut dire’ of the former and proleptically the ‘Et qu’est-ce qu’au juste [ . . . ]’ of the latter. There is nothing original in the ideas expressed here: such a theologically inXected philosophy of language is as old as Christian thought and is in no way speciWc to Gnosticism. But it is surprising to see Artaud accord so humble a role to poetry and Wnd even this is beyond its capacities, since the precise meanings of theological notions elude human language. And in fact the passage also stands at a turning point in the development of Artaud’s theorizings on language: the notion of the inWnite is still characterized here as ‘pure’, but the balance is clearly tipping towards the rejection of all abstract ideas with the suggestion that the notion is essentially ungraspable and even that assigning it any inherent meaning is impossible. In the 1947 text ‘La question se pose de . . . ’ abstract ideas will be dismissed as a freeXoating diVerential system where each term merely refers on to another in a round—and Artaud uses ‘l’inWni’ as the leading example launching his cycle of unanswered questions about what such notions could mean (xiii. 91–7). Whilst this text invites us to read the derivative status of language as authenticating the discourse of mystic poetry, the idea that human language is ‘un souvenir du Verbe de Dieu’, an echo or double of the Word of God, will in fact lead Artaud into battle against Him. For Artaud, as a consequence of his theology, has had temporarily to relinquish his dream of the 1920s and 1930s to make language elide with experience. It is God alone who can make language coincide with experience and whose syllables are one with His nature. All that even the greatest of poets can hope to do in the face of the inscrutable alterity of the Word of God is go some way towards echoing it. Even then the question remains: ‘a` quel point l’ećrivain a le droit de se croire le Maıˆtre du langage [ . . . ] jusqu’ou` peut-il croire les [les mots] avoir maıˆtrise´s


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quant a` ce qui est l’Absolu de l’Essence de ce qu’il a voulu leur faire signiWer, et de ce surtout qu’il a voulu lui-meˆme rejoindre’ (x. 98–9). The true, deep, intensely felt, personal, and at this stage no doubt divinely authenticated meaning, ‘l’Absolu de l’Essence’ of his meaning, might fail to be communicated and so still elude him. Artaud has lost faith in poetry’s ability to generate original meaning, a loss of faith induced by comparison to the potency of God’s Word. His Christian faith destroys his faith in even the most patiently prepared human utterances. Whilst God is in the picture, Artaud is condemned, by virtue of his humanity, to epistemic and linguistic inadequacy. Artaud’s hopes for the power of human language are at a low point. He is keenly aware of the inadequacy of his linguistic powers when he pits language against the idea of God: Je suis un ignorant. Je me suis cru longtemps suˆr du sens des mots, je me suis cru aussi jusqu’a` un certain point leur maıˆtre. Mais maintenant que je les ai quelque peu expe´rimente´s, il m’ećhappe. Pourquoi? Les mots valaient ce que je leur faisais dire, c’est-a`-dire ce que je mettais dedans. Mais je n’ai jamais pu savoir au juste jusqu’a` quel point j’avais raison. Lorsque je pensais a` un arbre, et que je prononçais le mot arbre, je sais que je ne commettais pas d’erreur, car le mot arbre de´signe quelque chose d’absolument objectif, une reálite´ mate´rielle inte´grale et duˆment caracte´riseé. Mais je ne sais pas ou` va mon esprit et ce que vaut ce qu’il me donne lorsque je pense a` l’InWni. (NER 64–5)

In this uncharacteristically analytic passage (of characteristically Wrm paragraphization) Artaud has no uncertainties about the way a word may indicate a concrete physical object. But he has no yardstick by which to ascertain the validity of his abstract conceptualizing, for abstract ideas, unlike trees, are not rooted in reality. It is he who makes abstractions mean what they mean—as Artaud’s syntax makes clear (‘il m’ećhappe’), it is not words that he cannot master but the ‘sens des mots’. So he might well have mastery over language, but this mastery is seriously incomplete and remains mere felicity of expression, for it secures no guarantee of meaning: ‘je me suis demande´ si les mots e´taient capables de dire tout ce que je voulais les faire dire, et si surtout j’avais le droit de penser qu’ils le disent vraiment et en fait’ (x. 97). For Artaud the problem is not the unknowability of metaphysical entities, but the dubious plasticity of abstract concepts that undermines any real signifying power they may have. Abstract thinking is a game of rational illusions.

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But this is not just a form of radical nominalism, for there is a whispering behind this passage, clearly heard in the last line, that maybe his thought on the subject of God is ‘envouˆte´’, oVering unveriWable ideas from an unknown source. In a letter of 1944 Artaud writes to Andre´ Gide of ‘l’aVreux combat que nous avons tous eu a` mener autour et au-dessus de la litte´rature [ . . . ] cet envahissement d’asphyxie que ne cessent d’ope´rer sur nous les reálite´s ultra-conscientes ou sous-conscientes’ (x. 191). Artaud is alert to the way meaning is subject to forces exerted by linguistic and conceptual codes, and to the impossibility of stepping outside these codes to ground meaning. In a world that is not of his creation and a language that comes with hidden baggage, Artaud Wnds that real meaning, meaning that would act as a secure place from which he could speak purely in his own name, is unattainable. It might be thought that the paucity and subservience of the poetic word to the Divine Word would soon lead Artaud to rebel. But, even though the tensions between poetry and religion are so great that the poet can lay no claim to meaning in comparison to the Word of God, Artaud does not initially conceive of a conXict between the creative artist and the Creator. On the contrary, religion and poetry are said to cohabit and even blend in his ‘ideés [ . . . qui] sont les ideés d’une conscience Religieuse et d’une conscience d’un Poe`te’ (NER 57). Artaud claims that those who see his behaviour as evidence of insanity are failing to perceive that it arises from ‘une Attitude [ . . . ] a` la base meˆme de toute Re´ligion et de toute Poe´sie’ (NER 55). Religion and poetry share the same basic impulse and the same capitalized status. Poetry is serenely placed under the aegis of religion; indeed, poetry must accept to be the handmaiden to religion for the human word, unlike the Divine Word, cannot capture the essence of reality: ‘la` ou` la poe´sie qui n’est qu ’humaine ne fait que nous inspirer le regret d’une chose qui n’existe pas, la poe´sie de Dieu donne en nature et en fait ce que les reˆves ne font que’promettre’ (NER 48–9). Artaud tranquilly recognizes that, whereas human language cannot fulWl its cognitive promise and human meaning is haunted by absence, God is the archetypal poet whose poetry is reality. Yet the subservience of poetry to religion does not in fact mean that the claims Artaud makes for poetry are humble. On the contrary, it means he draws his authority from the Divine Word and so his theologically guaranteed poetry is on a superior plane to socially endorsed discourse. The Christian poet bathes in the reXected glory of his God of truth, and so the chiming of his poetic word with the Word of God— however great the qualitative shortfall may be—is in fact part of Artaud’s


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process of investing his voice with authority. Thus, when the validity of his speech is denied, Artaud accuses society of failing to take into account the religious framework and divine inspiration that (for the religious Artaud of the period) inform the poetic act. For Artaud ‘on ne traite pas un poe`te comme un homme ordinaire’ (NER 82), because that would reside on a misprision of the poetic undertaking, which is to act as a Xashpoint where man may know the transcendent: Me traiter en de´lirant c’est nier la valeur poe´tique de la souVrance qui [ . . . ] bout en moi devant les merveilles du monde de l’esprit [ . . . ] Tout poe`te est un Voyant. C’est de son illuminisme que Rimbaud a tire´ les Illuminations et la Saison en Enfer. Et William Blake avait vu dans le monde mystique de l’Esprit l’objet de toutes les visions merveilleuses [ . . . ] je conside`re comme une re´voltante impie´te´ de traiter de de´lire les images que je me forge du ciel. (NER 96)

If the marvellous and the mystical cannot transpire in life they can transpire in poetry, and so the poet must be given free rein to follow his images without any imputation of delirium. The inXuence here is double, Gnostic and Surrealist, for both privilege a form of voyance. The Surrealist poetic act, aiming to reconcile self and world, seeks to go beyond the current world to perceive the original state of man (and to this extent Surrealism is a form of Gnosticism). Both thought modes seek a hieroglyphic key to the world and have as their ideal the intuition of a point supreˆme where all antinomies are resolved into Unity. The poet and the Gnostic are to see la`-bas (in the Rimbaldian sense) and the value of their intuition is a function of the depth of insight into this beyond, and thus a function of its subversion of the ordinary vision of the world. It must perforce seem delirious. So, whereas previously the attempt to provide a secure anchorage for his voice had been conducted by an assertion of his true orthodoxy in matters religious, it is now as both writer and believer—and increasingly just as writer—that Artaud disputes the authority of social discourse. It is because of society’s refusal to appreciate that the poet lives according to aesthetic principles, Artaud claims, and more speciWcally because of his attempt to make his aesthetic come, quite literally, to life, that he is interned: ‘Si j’ai e´te´ interne´ il y a huit ans et maintenu interne´ depuis huit ans, c’est du fait d’une action patente de la mauvaise volonte´ geńe´rale qui ne veut a` aucun prix que M. Antonin Artaud, ećrivain et poe`te, puisse reáliser dans la vie les ideés qu’il manifeste dans les livres’ (ix. 165–6). Artaud is making general claims about the attempt to inject life with poetry (the key Surrealist aspiration to transmute life into a

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poetic rebellion against rational control systems—to make life an ongoing process of mythopoeisis) more than he is making speciWc claims about his beliefs: ‘je n’admets pas que le poe`te que je suis ait e´te´ enferme´ dans un asile d’alieńe´s parce qu’il voulait reáliser au naturel sa poe´sie’ (ix. 175–6). In this context his madness is only the creative madness of Surrealism: ‘Philippe Soupault qui rećlamait dans l’une de ses œuvres un crime gratuit, et Louis Aragon qui arreˆte´ sur les Champs E´lyseés devant un lampadiare e´lectrique cultivait un e´tat volontaire d’hallucination e´taient des fous avec tous les autres Surreálistes’ (NER 54). Because he is interned, his speech is judged psychotic if it deviates from the social norm, even though it might be better judged as a fusion of the religious with the surreal, an Orphic voyance: ‘S’il [a psychiatrist] avait vu Robert Desnos se livrer ici a` ses improvisations me´diumniques dans une cellule il les aurait qualiWeés de logorrheés, comme il ne cesse de me dire que toutes mes ideés et mes perceptions du Merveilleux et de l’Occulte sont du de´lire’ (NER 50–1). In such statements Artaud is not making the predictable claim that his insanities are true; he is claiming society interprets his speech in the wrong discursive framework and so judges it by inappropriate criteria. He claims to be operating in the sphere of truth and not of social praxis. He thereby claims that his voice has a superior epistemic authority to that of his judges, not on the grounds that what he says is true, for, as he realizes, society will always declare his lone voice wrong, but because he is concerned with fundamental truths where society is concerned only with orthodox, socially determined truths. Artaud claims to operate in a superior reality. Continuing this process of investing his voice with authority, Artaud complains that he is denied the right to articulate his experiences, which are so similar to those revered by the society that has interned him. Society is unprepared to admit within its ranks those who would live out their lives in accordance with the ideas expressed in its most cherished books: Cela est beau dans les livres et de´licatement gouˆte´ par le dilettantisme des lecteurs mais aYrme´ par un homme comme moi comme vrai cela vaut l’internement [ . . . ] aWn de lui enlever toutes ces ideés folles de l’esprit. Mais vous divaguez, mon enfant, nous allons vous gue´rir de votre eˆtre. Le merveilleux n’est pas de ce monde et nous l’y avons jamais vu. (x. 235)

In this passage, stylistically foreshadowing the later texts and particularly Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu in its ironic self-accusation of madness and its image of hypocritical dainty eating (mouths and orality Wgure


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prominently in his late texts), Artaud is contemptuous of society and its anti-poetic discourse. He is now able to adopt another’s voice, not to replace his but to mimic social discourse. He is trying to bring about the professed aspirations of society and make manifest his ‘eˆtre’ but is held to be mad for so doing. Society, which extols self-expression and the Surrealist value of the ‘merveilleux’ in books, would eradicate them in Artaud’s life, he who had proclaimed at the outset of his career that he abhorred the artiWcial distinction between life and work. What is at stake here is the status and control of meaning. For Artaud, society and culture asphyxiate critical creativity and the poetic. His attempt to redeWne culture, weighting it towards the creative and the poetic as opposed to the political and the socio-economic, and to live according to this conception of a rejuvenated culture is certiWed as insane by the society he had been trying to awaken.2 Anyone who would undertake a truly revolutionary critique of society encounters its inertia, and subsequent condemnation for it confers maximal signiWcance to political and ideological debate, which are only incidental to changing the human condition in Artaud’s view. For the Artaud of the Lettres de Rodez (written for publication in late 1945) these fail to engage with the foundational concepts that actually determine the way we live: ce monde servile, asphyxiant d’idiotie [ . . . ] qui se complaıˆt dans cette asphyxie. Les gens sont beˆtes. La litte´rature, videé. Il n’y a plus rien ni plus personne, l’aˆme est insane [ . . . ] tous les corps sont repus, les consciences re´signeés [ . . . ] il n’y a plus qu’une immense satisfaction d’inertes [ . . . ] de serfs de l’imbećillite´ [ . . . ] de serfs aussi plats que cette lettre ou` j’essaie de manifester mon exaspe´ration contre une vie meneé par une bande d’insipides qui ont voulu a` tous imposer leur haine de la poe´sie [ . . . ] dans un monde inte´gralement embourgeoise´, avec tous les ronronnements verbaux des soviets, de l’anarchie, du communisme, du socialisme, du radicalisme, des re´publiques, des monarchies, des e´glises, des rites, des rationnements, des contingentements, du marche´ noir, de la re´sistance. (ix. 166)

There is no possibility of a truly revolutionary critique of Western culture but a mere pretence, the ‘ronronnements’ of a self-perpetuating and irrelevant political sideshow that Artaud typically delights in listing and excoriating. It should be remembered that Artaud’s break with the Surrealist movement was occasioned by a disagreement about whether 2 In a series of conferences given in Mexico in 1936 prior to his departure for the Sierra Tarahumara, Artaud had portrayed the Surrealist movement as just such an attempt to create a rejuvenated, renovatory, base-level culture (see Messages Re´volutionnaires (viii. 137– 263), especially pp. 141–68, 189–92, 225–8). What he describes reads better as a sketch of his activity than of 1920s French Surrealism.

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a true revolution could be in any degree political, Artaud arguing that the true revolution was necessarily of the mind. He still seeks some such revolution and this can be occasioned only by a conceptual shift in what it is to be a human being. Literature and social debate, bogged down in a self-satisWed and replete imbecility, are blind to such revolutionary issues. This stupefying self-deception means that, as a seeker for truth, Artaud is cast out by the interning word of society, and Artaud is always quick to sing the superiority of his quasi-mystical search for deep truths in comparison to the humdrum aspirations of material realism: des envouˆtements ont lieu, jour apre`s jour dans tout Paris, pour m’empeˆcher de sarcler mon aˆme, d’en reprendre l’oriWce enfoui, que toute religion a eu le puYsme de dećlarer frappe´ d’interdit, on ne continuera plus a` me dire, et nul ne viendra me dire ici que je suis fou de rechercher ce dictame corporel de l’aˆme, matie`re magique de poe´sie. Car c’est de quoi on m’accuse et c’est pourquoi je suis depuis huit ans interne´, et que j’ai e´te´ mis en camisole, empoisonne´, et endormi a` l’e´lećtricite´, c’est pour avoir voulu trouver la matie`re fondamentale de l’aˆme. (ix. 175)

The three deWnitions Artaud gives of his aim (‘reprendre l’oriWce enfoui [de l’aˆme]’; ‘rechercher ce dictame corporel de l’aˆme’; ‘trouver la matie`re fondamentale de l’aˆme’) all imply the discovery of a secret, foundational truth about the soul.3 Artaud’s poetry is beneWcially to reveal the essential ontological principles of existence and heal their schisms. Mythopoeisis is the only revolutionary force, yet mythopoeisis is unacceptable if its fruits are presented as reality. But it is not just in relation to the superWcial level of socially endorsed debate that Artaud claims to be speaking weightier truths. He claims that he is thinking and working at a deeper, more personal, and therefore (for him) more revolutionary level than philosophers and thinkers traditionally engage with. It is because of the diYculties of thinking at such foundational levels, Artaud claims, that he has recourse to poetry to implement his ideas. His approach is necessarily idiosyncratic, but this idiosyncracy will lead to greater ontological authenticity: ‘Nous ne sommes pas [ . . . ] sur le ve´ritable plan du monde, et j’ai sur ce point une ideé que les autres hommes n’ont pas [ . . . ] faire tomber par dessins ou` poe`mes un pan complet de la mauvaise conscience et permettre aux aˆmes d’aboutir enWn a` [ . . . ] la vie vraie sur le plan de la terre vraie’ 3 It is also noticeable that all three unite physical characteristics with the soul, and thus postulate a fundamental ontological unitarism towards which Artaud hopes to move as he leaves behind alienation and doubles in favour of simplicity and self-identity. And poetry is presented as magical and healing, for ‘dictame’, though it looks like a derivative of dictare, in fact refers to a medicinal plant balm.


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(xi. 81). Artaud will continue to insist on the superior epistemic status of his knowingly eccentric approach to truth, provocatively choosing after his release from Rodez asylum to present his source of inspiration as a hearing of voices: Je n’ai jamais vu la vie comme les autres la voient. Entendre des voix, comme on le dit de certains, n’est pas une hallucination ni un de´lire, cela indique des sens un peu plus aiguise´s que la normale et c’est tout, cela indique qu’on n’est ni sourd ni aveugle alors que tout le monde est aveugle et sourd. (xiv**. 193)

By this late stage (this passage was written in 1946) Artaud will have become so conWdent in his own voice that he is able to taunt social orthodoxy by grouping himself with a band of fellow insane seers (Nerval, Van Gogh, Nietzsche).4 The ‘monde volontairement sibyllin’ (i**. 33) and the ‘grouillement imme´diat de l’esprit’ (i**. 54) now make audible sense, Artaud claims, and his conWdence in his newly forged authority will be such that he will play the role previously imposed on him—the madman. But at the early Rodez stage Artaud is keenly sensitive to the delusional status imputed to his ideas, and retorts that a true poet is always viewed as insane by society since his ideas are necessarily unorthodox and since, as a poet, he endows images with the force of reality thanks to his command of language: Qu’est-ce qu’un poe`te sinon un homme qui visualise et concre´tise ses ideés et ses images plus intense´ment et avec plus [ . . . ] de vie que les autres hommes et qui par le verbe rythme´ leur donne un caracte`re de fait [ . . . ] et il n’y a pas un charbonnier ou e´picier, fournisseur dans la vie, de l’un de ces poe`tes qui ne l’ait juge´ en son cœur comme un maniaque ou comme un fou. (xi. 11–12)

It is quite probably true that poetic images are frequently presented with the force of fact (which Artaud revealingly attributes to rhythm, which comes to be one of his major poetic concerns) and that poets are cursorily judged to be in some sense mad, but Artaud would not readily have his images considered as merely poetic images, and hence of only nebulous 4 There remains, however, a certain ambiguity: in his late poetry Artaud cherishes the notion to be absolutely new and absolutely unrenewable. He therefore determines to work with devices deriving from nothing and begetting nothing. This implies a break with literary continuity, but, just like Rimbaud before him, Artaud is very careful to supply himself with an ancestry of fellow seers.

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epistemic value. Artaud defends his images not as images but as truths. God-serving poetry is accorded the highest epistemic status, and, when Artaud severs the link between theology and poetry, its status will not be diminished but enhanced. Artaud plays the philosopher, whilst at the same time employing interpretational structures that are more commonly associated with poetry. Artaud’s implicit deWnition of poetry is a form of thought apt to apprehend and convey truths that fall outside the remit of other forms of enquiry. The challenge to orthodox patterns of discourse and the associated investment of his voice with authority is of great importance to Artaud and he accords himself great linguistic freedom at the most unpromising moments. In late 1943 Artaud undertook Wve translations of English texts at the instigation of Ferdie`re, one of which was of a chapter of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1867).5 Although Artaud states that the translation of Carroll will be done ‘en demeurant tre`s pre`s du texte’ (NER 64), what he actually produces is a dissolution and re-creation of the original. Given that the translation is undertaken for Ferdie`re, the guardian, given Artaud’s status as internee, of linguistic norms, it is all the more signiWcant that Artaud does not opt for the greatest readability. The most celebrated example of this unbridled creativity is the translation of the Wrst stanza of Carroll’s ‘Jabberwocky’, in which Artaud’s text breaks rapidly out into linguistic excess. Although one of Artaud’s prime concerns in his letters of the period is to demonstrate to Ferdie`re that he is in full possession of his intellectual faculties, he produces a text of which Gilles Deleuze was able to observe: ‘de`s le troisie`me vers [ . . . ] nous sommes dans un autre monde et dans un tout autre langage. Avec eVroi, nous le reconnaissons sans peine: c’est le langage de la schizophreńie.’6 However contentious this judgement may be, it is true that the third line has no correlate in the English and seems to be in danger of becoming unstoppable, only to be checked as linguistic anarchy threatens: ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

Il était Roparant, et les vliqueux tarands Allaient en gilroyant et en brimbulkdriquant Jusque-la` ou` la rourghe est a rouarghe a rangmbde a rangmbde a rouarghambde:

5 Jean-Michel Rey’s, La Naissance de la poe´sie: Antonin Artaud (Paris: E´ditions Me´tailie´, 1991) is devoted to unpacking the implications for his later work of the translations Artaud undertook. Despite many judicious observations, Rey tends to overstate the case for their importance. 6 Deleuze, ‘Le Schizophre`ne et le mot’, 733.

creating identity and meaning All mimsy were the borogoves And the mome raths outgrabe.7

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Tous les falomitards étaient des chats-huants Et les Ghore´ Uk’hatis dans le Gr a b u¨ g -e uˆ m e n t (ix. 140)

It is reasonable to recognize, on the one hand, that this is an extraordinary linguistic performance, but to rebut, on the other hand, any attempt to ring-fence this as the language of schizophrenia.8 It may just as readily be seen as the language of liberation. Not only does Artaud refuse to employ the phonetic pool of modern French, but in the extra third line he renders his version all but unpronounceable. He thereby frees himself from the French language and from its norms. By so thoroughly exceeding the act of translation, Artaud asserts his linguistic autonomy. The twin impulse towards disorder and order already observed in the passage on Uccello is apparent in new ways here: the disorder of the text, which seems almost to submerge the writing, is in itself revelatory of the desire to transcend orthodox discourse. Artaud outperforms the original, proving his linguistic potency and thus implicitly claiming the right to write untrammelled by orthodox linguistic rules and conceptualizations. When the Artaudian text starts to mount its challenge against the Word of God (instead of social doxa), it is once again delivered through linguistic creativity, this time in the glossolalia Artaud injects into his writing and which he uses with increasing frequency until the end of his life.9 For Artaud the appeal of glossolalia lies in its being essentially performative with implicit claims to act directly on reality, something Artaud clearly wishes: ‘toute Poe´sie Reélle’ is said to amount to ‘des Actes de Magie Vraie’ (NER 58). The word is to transcend the space of writing, and the generative power of glossolalia makes it not just magical but thereby a challenge to the Word of God. The Divine Word is language that creates, and Artaud’s glossolalia, by assuming similar generative aspirations, both emulates and rivals it.10 The glossolalia 7 Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass: and What Alice Found There (London: Macmillan, 1948), 116. 8 For a devastating reply to Deleuze’s annexing of Artaud’s writing to the realm of the schizophrenic, see Paule The´venin’s magisterial article ‘Entendre/Voir/Lire’ in her collection of articles Antonin Artaud, ce de´sespe´re´ qui vous parle (Fiction & Cie; Paris: Seuil, 1993), 200–10. 9 For a wide-ranging and in-depth discussion of Artaud’s poetics and its inXuence on his ideas, see Evelyn Grossman, Artaud/Joyce: Le Corps et le texte (Paris: Nathan, 1996), in particular pp. 155–99. Artaud’s glossolalia is discussed on pp. 175–91. 10 In other words, it is because Artaud in some sense takes the opening verses of Genesis (1. 3–26) as expressing literally a fundamental truth, and because, having rejected Christianity, he

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heralds the emergence of Artaud the oracular poet-philosopher whose word will eVace and build a world, revealing a desire for a language that could bring about creation on his terms in a new Genesis. Glossolalia is a way of going beyond the limits of the sayable, and so arguably owes as much to Artaud’s madness as to his poetic maturation. But, though Artaud’s glossolalia initially seems simply an instance of magical speech, it soon evolves into something more signiWcant. Frequently the text functions as an echoing chamber where a multitude of resonances and deformations, condensations and displacements, may be seen and heard. Grossman quotes for example ‘e menin menila j ar menila j e inena imen’ (xiv**. 31) and perceives here traces of the terms anima, ennemi, amen, hymen. Another facet of Artaud’s glossolalic word-play, at least as it develops over the Wnal years of his career, may be seen in lines such as: ‘je suis intelligible j seti lisible j stari minible j moni tanible’ (xxiii. 363–4), where ‘seti lisible’ needs to be heard as a fusion of the question in the popular language Artaud frequently aVects—c’est-ti lisible?—and as the negative reply c’est illisible.11 Such a strategy prevents the text being reduced to a meaning and so recuperated by a reader; for Artaud glossolalia is associated both with a return to speech and with a being rid of language—it thus unites in the same speech act the birth and death of the word, creating without leaving any trace. This is perhaps the prime reason for Artaud’s recourse to it. Generally divided into the categories of religious and pathological, glossolalia is especially associated with the quest for an adamic, preBabelian language; this corresponds with the fact that it is in 1943, when searching for a divine language, that Artaud started employing it. Glossolalia is an essentially oral practice, a speaking in tongues, and so its literary variants—for instance, the expressive sound poetry of the Russian futurists Khlebnikov and Kruchonykh exempliWed by the meaningless ‘dyr bul shchyl j ubeschur j skum j vy so bu j r l ez’—are not strictly glossolalia.12 Nor should glossolalia be associated too rapidly with the phonic poetry of Dada, though it seems plausible that there be some holds onto this truth, that his texts move further and further away from the material facts of reality. 11 Quoted and analysed in Grossman, Artaud/Joyce, 156, reference given (xiii. 363–4) inexact. See Grossman, Artaud/Joyce, 188–9 for further examples of such a strategy. 12 Quoted by G. M. Hyde in his article ‘Russian Futurism’, in Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.), Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930 (London: Penguin, 1991), 265. Hyde argues that the aim in this text, drawn from The word as such manifesto, is that sonic powers should make their impact without any intermediate conceptualizing process. It is thus clearly diVerent from Artaud’s tongue of fragmented linguistic debris.


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Dada inXuence on Artaud. Whilst varied, the aims of Dada phonic poetry are clearly diVerent from Artaud’s. The German Dadaist Richard Huelsenbeck employed savage rhythms to ‘drum literature into the ground’;13 Dada co-founder Hugo Ball, if mystical, seems to have sought a pure language uncontaminated by all meaning; the poet-painter Schwitters seems to have been interested primarily in the plastic eVects of disposing words about a page. In all cases this phonic poetry is inXuenced by Marinetti’s theories of ‘words at liberty’, and the aim is to free words from literature. For Artaud glossolalia is to do with possessing language, not liberating it. Further, the poetic experimentation of the futurists, dadaists, and other avant-garde writers of the early twentieth century make fun of language by dissolving it into sound; if Artaud’s late writings are indeed concerned with linguistic fun, his glossolalia is not. Artaud’s glossolalia is both phonic and graphic, and as such Grossman suggests it is reminiscent of the hieroglyphic theatrical language of Le Theáˆtre et son Double and a veritable spatialization of language. It therefore serves to short-circuit the linearity of discourse and strictures of syntax. This explains Artaud’s disappointment with the recordings of his glossolalia for the radio broadcast of Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu, where it is subject to the linearity of enunciation, and only heard, not seen. Artaud’s glossololia is destined not to be read so much as produced and created by the reader, who must allow his ear and eye to react to the rhythm, as he underlines in a letter to Henri Parisot: ‘mais cela` n’est valable que jailli d’un coup; cherche´ syllabe a` syllabe cela ne vaut plus rien’ (ix. 172). It needs to be read, heard, seen, and expressed simultaneously in all its discordance. It is only on the page that the hesitations and play-oVs between eye and ear take place, making the words dance.14 When it Wrst appears in his writing, however, glossolalia seems to function primarily as a means of emulating the generative power of the Word of God. And this is true not only of Artaud’s glossolalia, where this jealous emulation is at its most evident; it is equally true of Artaud’s theorizings. The Word of God is magical, enunciation amounting to securing the truth of that speech, and Artaud develops an account of the Word of God that is equally to become true by the very fact of its 13 Quoted in translation in Robert Short, ‘Dada and Surrealism’, in Bradbury and McFarlane (eds.), Modernism, 296. 14 Artaud here beneWts from Symbolist poetic thought, where the poem is animated by the eye, not the voice. As Vale´ry put it: ‘Longtemps, la voix humaine fut base et condition de la litte´rature [ . . . ] Un jour vit ou` l’on sut lire des yeux sans e´peler, sans entendre, et la litte´rature fut tout alte´reé’ (‘Litte´rature’, Tel quel, quoted in Clive Scott, ‘Symbolism, Decadence and Impressionism’, in Bradbury and McFarlane (eds.), Modernism, p. 207).

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formulation. In ‘Re´volte contre la poe´sie’ (ix. 121–3), a short, dense, and opaque text that is largely unknown, God is said to be present within language and so at the very centre of the (linguistically constituted) subject. Artaud states that ‘le Verbe’ dupes and determines the writer, dictating the rules regulating poetic composition: ‘Le poe`te qui ećrit s’adresse au Verbe et le Verbe a ses lois. Il est dans l’inconscient du poe`te de croire automatiquement a` ces lois. Il se croit libre et il ne l’est pas’ (ix. 121). Whenever the poet speaks, he is the puppet of the ‘Verbe’ pulling the strings of his unconscious—mimicked here by the upswell of the facile binary rhythms and overstated rhyme of the closing word of each sentence (‘lois’, ‘lois’, ‘pas’). Entry into the linguistic order is bought at the price of ceding autonomy to ‘le Verbe’. If ‘le Verbe’ is taken to mean God, this means that God dupes the artistic creator into believing he is free to mean as he wills, whilst actually determining the artist’s activity. The ambivalence towards the Word of God previously evident is giving way to a more straightforwardly contestatory attitude. The dual meaning of ‘Verbe’ is exploited in what will become a characteristic technique of connotative destabilization: ‘Il y a dans les formes du Verbe humain je ne sais quelle autode´voration de rapace ou` le poe`te, se bornant a` l’objet, se voit mange´ par cet objet. j Un crime pe`se sur le Verbe fait chair, mais le crime est de l’avoir admis’ (ix. 122). On the one hand, ‘le Verbe’ refers here to the linguistic order that englobes the poet and that is a travesty of the extralinguistic reality it cannot tell. On the other hand, it can also refer to God, who subjugates the poet who would speak of Him, and who should never have accepted to be incarnated, to be the Word made Xesh (for the Xesh is, by Gnostic deWnition, abject). It is by playing on the dual meaning of ‘Verbe’ that Artaud suggests the characteristics of language are imputable to the ur-speaker, and that God, by his continuous intervention in language, determines Artaud. True poetry must therefore be an anti-Logos, written against both language and the inaugural Divine Word—and Artaud’s glossolalic writing is a prime instance of this strategy. The basic idea here in ‘Re´volte contre la poe´sie’ of the writing self being determined by deep mental structures is of course a reworking of a leading idea of a poet he nominates to his group of spiritual brethren. Rimbaud might at times take the celebrated duality of the self (‘C’est faux de dire: Je pense. On devrait dire: On me pense’)15 to imply the radical newness of the ‘Je’, but equally it may imply the self is utterly 15 Letter to Izambard, 13 May 1871, in Arthur Rimbaud, Œuvres comple`tes, ed. S. Bernard and A. Guyaux (Classiques Garnier; Paris: Bordas, 1991), 346.


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determined. As Georges Poulet comments: ‘Tantoˆt Rimbaud se saisit luimeˆme comme se creánt [ . . . ] sous la forme d’une puissance de´terminante [ . . . ] Tantoˆt, au contraire, il se perçoit comme le re´sultat direct de cet acte de´terminant. Alors [ . . . ] il lui semble eˆtre de´termine´ par une force de´miurgique non spećiWeé.’16 But Artaud, unlike Rimbaud, privileges the negative experience of determination, not the epiphanic one of the writing self as auto-generating, and so, despite the extensive common ground between the two, Artaud’s ideas move along a very diVerent path from Rimbaud’s. They share the desire to invest the poetic voice with demiurgic powers, as well as the ambition seamlessly to fuse the text with inner experience so that the writing self is volatilized and becomes cosubstantial with the textual world. But, although Artaud writes of investing his voice with demiurgic powers, he does not enact this in the text, unlike Rimbaud’s poetry, which, by creating the new mental worlds of Illuminations, fulWls the demiurgic act in the realm of imagination. Artaud only theorizes about a magically powerful kind of writing and viliWes the Creator but never goes beyond the ranting and the theorizing to evoke the experience of his projected textual world. He writes of what will happen once he has gained victory over God and once language is his, but his planned mental universe is always an elsewhere to be revealed in an unspeciWed future. His texts oVer a conceptualization of a mental world, not a poetic universe. One of the most important lessons Artaud takes from ‘Re´volte contre la poe´sie’ is that he is locked into antagonism with God. Whereas Rimbaud places his emphasis on emulating the demiurge and it would be incidental were this to undermine His pre-eminence, Artaud subsequently places the full weight of his emphasis on dispossessing God of His generative powers. Where Rimbaud is a Creator of mental worlds, Artaud is a writer of imaginary theorizings and in his phantasmal conceptual system endeavours to write God out of existence and to establish himself as the unique Creator—in a notebook of 1945 we can read ‘que Dieu ni personne [ . . . ] ne fasse une autre creátion a` coˆte´ de la mienne’ (xv. 201). Artaud’s megalomaniac aim is to theorize and rant against God until, somehow, He is pushed out of existence, allowing Artaud’s univers imaginaire to become a self-fulWlling prophesy. Artaud and Rimbaud start from the same ideas—the self is other, the poet is to be a second Prometheus stealing Wre back from God—but Artaud writes as though he takes them literally. With Artaud they are no longer 16 Georges Poulet, La Poe´sie éclateé: Baudelaire/Rimbaud (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980), 118.

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metaphors inspiring an aesthetic but truths that mean that reality must be mythically reinterpreted as a Wght between self and Divine Other. Artaud is starting to deWne his position as essentially adversarial. He will be the enemy of God, of language, of poetry, and, because of God’s presence within language, of his own sense of self for the linguistically constituted self covertly bears God. A constant in Artaud’s conception of poetry since Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re has been that writing should subordinate aesthetic considerations to capturing the self, but the contamination of the self by alienating language means that poetry is now thought of as a Wght against the structures of the self: ‘une e´meute contre le moi et les conditions ordinaire du moi’ (ix. 130). Artaud no longer thinks there are occasional breakdowns in his expressive capacity; instead language is at all times alienating because of the hidden principles ‘le Verbe’ smuggles into the subconscious. Writing the self in a pure form is thus not possible: ‘Il est le Wls de ses œuvres, peut-eˆtre, mais ses œuvres ne sont pas de lui, car ce qui e´tait de lui-meˆme dans sa poe´sie, ce n’est pas lui qui l’y avait mis, mais cet inconscient producteur de la vie qui l’avait de´signe´ pour eˆtre son poe`te et qu’il n’avait pas de´signe´, lui’ (ix. 121). If the poet can be said to be the ‘Wls de ses œuvres’ (precisely what Artaud would wish), he is not thereby auto-generating, for he is not the only producer of his works (see once again the over-marked assonances, here focusing on ‘lui’). The train of thought here follows the pattern of the Gnostic idea that, by reproducing, humankind is reinforcing its own ontological prison and so prolonging its alienation from plenitude. This structure is now exported from sexuality to aesthetics: by writing Artaud allows the alterity within him to consolidate its hold, for he thereby acts as the midwife to another (‘l’inconscient producteur de la vie’). Artaud might believe he is creating himself by writing, but he is in fact acting as the channel through which the other who has inWltrated the poet’s identity structures continues to create himself. God’s antagonism to the poet is therefore not just a rivalry over the right to create meaning but more importantly a hijacking of the generative properties of Artaud’s poetic text. Any apparently successful speech can no longer be thought of as being in the poet’s name, but instead belongs to a lazy God for whom the poet is the unwitting stand-in. God has displaced Artaud. Artaud might endeavour to invest himself in the text, but ultimately this fails and he is consumed, as he puts it, or subsumed by language, the language that bears God’s imprint. This is the ‘autode´voration [ . . . ] ou` le poe`te [ . . . ] se voit mange´ par [l’]objet’ (ix. 122) blamed on ‘le Verbe’. Since it is not himself that he has been


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creating but another, Artaud’s life project of identity creation via the text is not just Xawed but actively damaging; ‘la parole dont on a oublie´ les myste´rieuses possibilite´s’ (iv. 107) of Le Theáˆtre et son Double shows its mysterious powers to be dangerously ambivalent. As a result of the dangerous alterity in language and in the linguistically constituted subject, Artaud would seem to be compelled to conclude that the self must in fact never appear in writing. However, he manages to stop short of abandoning his project to write the self whilst accepting that the self must not appear in the text. He does this by banning speciWcally the representation but not the creation of the self in writing. Creation according to the Divine model is unacceptable to Artaud, for God created man in his image, and therefore created his own double; as Artaud writes in a notebook six months after ‘Re´volte contre la poe´sie’: ‘Le crime de Dieu est d’avoir voulu regarder la vie ou` il savait qu’elle n’e´tait plus et qu’il n’e´tait lui-meˆme qu’un spectre et de s’inte´grer dans la re´presentation pour se voir vivre ailleurs qu’il n’e´tait’ (xv. 322). Creation that involves this sort of reXexivity is deemed in ‘Re´volte contre la poe´sie’ to be unchaste, and the linguistically constituted subject, which is created reXexively, is revealed as operating under Divine licence: ‘Le producteur inconscient de nous-meˆmes est celui d’un antique copulateur qui s’est livre´ aux plus basses magies et qui a tire´ une magie de l’infaˆme qu’il y a a` se ramener soi-meˆme sur soi-meˆme sans Wn jusqu’a` faire sortir un verbe de ce cadavre’ (ix. 123). Artaud refuses to have any reXexive relationship between himself and his artistic creation: ‘Donner son soi a` son poe`me, c’est risquer aussi d’eˆtre viole´ par lui. Et si je suis Vierge pour mon poe`me, il doit rester vierge pour moi’ (ix. 122). If the poem were to expose his self, Artaud would lose his autonomy, since the self would be sullied by a God-infested language. A similar logic is at work in the paradoxical ideal that emerges in the Rodez notebooks of a form of writing that, whilst creating and expressing the self, would not oVer an incarnation of the self: ‘je ne me donne pas a` qui veut me prendre parce que je n’ai pas de me a` donner, mon me est toujours un autre’ (xvi. 196). This is one of the fundamental paradoxes of Artaud’s Wnal texts: they are to give birth to a new identity but must never express that identity, and this is why Artaud imposes the principle that his project of creating the self through writing must be dynamic. He tries to forestall a reXexive awareness of what he has been creating—that is, he tries to prevent re-cognition. Artaud’s challenge is to be simply. To be, to be fully aware of that state of being as and when he experiences it, but never to be reXexively aware of it as an object of consciousness: ‘je ne

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suis pas le possesseur de mon corps mais mon corps lui-meˆme qui parle et agit et ne pense pas’ (xiv**. 222). Artaud is chasing after an impossible simplicity, a state not dissimilar to mystic fusion with the other except Artaud wishes to fuse with himself: ‘La fameuse dimension totale est de devenir en simple homme aussi fort que tout l’inWni’ (xiv**. 178). ReXexive being (and its attendant parasites) must be left behind if Artaud is to attain self-identity: ‘Les eˆtres sont cette vie parasitaire virtuelle qui s’est creéé en marge de la vie vraie j et qui a Wni par avoir la pre´tention de la remplacer.’17 The self—the limited self-deWning ‘I am me’—is to be destroyed through a seemingly endless series of deformations and nearrepetitions in the text that prevent the reproductions of doubles and indeed create ever new variants: ‘les teńe`bres de ce d’ou` le moi a e´te´ tire´ [ . . . sont celles] non de moi mais de Je, non [ . . . ] Je n’a pas de moi et ce n’est pas moi, c’est non. Et quant au re´volte´ e´ternel contre Je ça non, Je le creusera dans le ça par le non [sic]’ (xvi. 169), where the repetitive rhythms almost make the text a chant of exorcism. The idea of a being underlying the brute fact of experience is a Wgment of reXexive thought: ‘L’eˆtre est faux j L’homme est faux j [ . . . ] Les eˆtres ont invente´ la vie j et ils l’ont greVe´ ensuite j sur l’arbre mort qui e´tait tout.’18 17 ‘Les eˆtres sont’, 84, 5–6 (1948), 103. Such statements are legion in Artaud’s 1944 notebooks: ‘moi le refus e´ternel de l’eˆtre’ (xv. 107), ‘l’eˆtre ne me touchera jamais et je n’y entrerai pas mais la question se posera toujours pour moi d’eˆtre’ (xvi. 247), or ‘J’existe mais pas devant ce qui est car il n’y a rien que moi et ce n’est pas un eˆtre car l’eˆtre est un e´tat d’existence qui empeˆche mon existence a` moi’ (xvii. 45). It would be unwise to consider Artaud’s thought as amounting to a doctrine of being, but, as Steinmetz remarks, it is certainly the case that the ontological substantive ‘eˆtre’ dominates the notebooks. Under Artaud’s pen ‘eˆtre’ belongs to two feuding semantic families. On the one hand, it can mean the most terrible imposition on the subject: ‘Il faut a` tout prix sortir de cet eˆtre et de l’eˆtre [ . . . ] il faut se de´barrasser a` tout prix de tous les eˆtres et de tout eˆtre’ (xvi. 243). On the other hand, though less frequently, it can mean a possible access to authenticity: ‘Le principe de l’eˆtre c’est d’eˆtre un eˆtre et de n’eˆtre quelque chose et soi-meˆme qu’en tant qu’eˆtre’ (xv. 322). But the one does not replace the other, nor does one meaning take over for a particular text. The two coexist within the same text, sometimes even the same sentence or highly charged proposition: ‘L’homme est le Double de l’Eˆtre’ (xv. 240), for instance. This refusal to let words be pinned down by the logic of the excluded middle is reminiscent of Nietzsche. The apparent sense is forever being dispatched with and replaced by another, only the many senses reside uneasily side by side, energizing the writing and endowing it with its own peculiar rhythm. Being is, of course, what Artaud’s texts are all about—being Artaud. But after examination of ‘eˆtre’ in the Cahiers de Rodez, preliminary conclusions suggest that Artaud’s engagement with the term was perhaps more rhetorical than conceptual, with ‘eˆtre’ functioning primarily as a shorthand term for God and the God-given universe. It is hard to discern any ‘high’ thought in such observations as ‘[l]’eˆtre est une crapule’ (xvi. 61). It would, however, be exciting if further work were to reveal richer patternings in Artaud’s use of the term, for, given the predominance of the term, it could provide new lines of reading. 18 Artaud, ‘Il fallait d’abord avoir envie de vivre’, K, 1–2 (1948), 129.


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This—the idea that expressing the self in writing reduces it to a static object, to the self-same, instead of a dynamic subject—explains why it is that Artaud writes at such length in his notebooks against the notion of being. It is only if the writer-creator can avert the introduction of reXexivity and create without being doubled that the work can avoid being a representation: ‘Je ne veux pas me reproduire dans les choses, mais je veux que les choses se produisent par moi’ (ix. 123). The poet must produce, but not reproduce, a self that must not represent itself to be reseen: ‘Je ne veux pas d’une ideé du moi dans mon poe`me et je ne veux pas m’y revoir, moi’ (ix. 123). It is only by Wnding a form of writing that is not an ‘aVreuse re´gurgitation’ of ‘l’ideé du moi’ that Artaud will Wnally be able to Wnd ‘ce non-moi ou` nous [nous] voyons tels que nousmeˆmes’ (ix. 130). This, of course, has major implications for Artaud’s project, and needs to be associated with the increasing insistence on the body. Whereas Artaud’s 1920s texts lament the impossibility of being aware of himself as a thinking, living body, his late texts show him to be fundamentally opposed to any such attempt. If there is the brute fact of consciousness and the brute fact of bodily existence, any attempt to ‘hold’ these states to mind as opposed to manifesting them makes the category mistake of taking them to be objects of consciousness as opposed to existential states: ‘je n’ai pas de double ni d’ećho qui me suive, je n’ai pas d’esprit ou` je me juge devant moi [ . . . ] Et je n’ai jamais eu de moi qui ait pu se retourner contre moi parce que mon moi est inse´parable de moi mon corps’ (xviii. 141). Bodily existence is something that can be experienced, but if ‘held’ in consciousness then that which is essential to bodily experience, its unmediated presence, is irretrievably lost: ‘l’esprit a toujours voulu comprendre le corps alors que le corps s’est toujours refuse´ a` toute penseé et tout esprit, j la conscience perçoit le corps mais l’esprit ne peut pas le de´Wnir’ (xvi. 86–7). Hence Artaud Wnds himself in the position where he wishes to create himself, but cannot have any idea of what that self is. He must create without awareness but with purpose: ‘Ne jamais se reconnaıˆtre eˆtre soi-meˆme, faire des eˆtres peut-eˆtre, soi jamais j [ . . . ] Je n’ai d’ideé ni du moi ni du soi’ (xvi. 26), for any idea of a created self would introduce reXexivity and hence alterity. Poetry, then, is to be the means by which Artaud induces the emergence of a future self-identity from the wreckage of discourse, or, as he puts it in ‘Re´volte contre la poe´sie’: ‘Je ne veux pas eˆtre le poe`te de mon poe`te, de ce moi qui a voulu me choisir poe`te, mais le poe`te creáteur, en

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re´bellion contre le moi et le soi’ (ix. 121). In a companion text to ‘Re´volte contre la poe´sie’ called ‘Antigone chez les Français’ (ix. 124–6), Artaud writes of the need to bury the ‘moi’. He compares himself to the dramatic heroine and wonders: ‘Ai-je assez marche´ au supplice moi-meˆme pour avoir le droit d’ensevelir mon fre`re le moi [ . . . ] dont je n’ai jamais pu faire ce que je voulais parce que tous les moi autres que moi-meˆme, insinue´s dans le mien propre comme je ne sais quelle insolite vermine, depuis ma naissance m’en empeˆchaient’ (ix. 124). The self, Artaud suggests, is and always has been penetrated and controlled by others. For the creator, the self and the ‘I’ are limits imposed upon his free creativity: ‘Le moi et le soi sont ces e´tats catastrophiques de l’eˆtre ou` le Vivant se laisse emprisonner. [ . . . ] Aimer son moi, c’est aimer un mort’ (ix. 123). Poetry must take the future as its axis, not the present. The self is always already past, gone, and should be buried, and if it transpires in the poem it is a revenant. To avoid this doubling, this loss of self-presence in poetry, Artaud must rebel against the self and against being—against the order of stasis, of identity, of the self-same—which is to be perpetually destroyed, making way for the ever-emerging manifestation of Artaud’s creative life force: ‘je suis la force qui brise l’eˆtre non en l’acceptant un temps pour le tuer, mais le supprime toujours, e´ternellement’ (xvii. 42). This, for Artaud, is the only way to be truly creative, to create self-creating poetry. So for Artaud the linguistic self is a subterfuge of the ‘inconscient’, which is named as the individual’s greatest enemy and source of alienation. In what could be a motto for his entire career, he depicts himself in a letter of 1944 as struggling with his mind: ‘moi qui au milieu de l’abdication geńe´rale de conscience a` laquelle nous assistons pre´sentement, me suis accroche´ de toutes mes forces aWn de ne jamais laˆcher prise’ (x. 220). This refusal to ‘laˆcher prise’ of his ‘conscience’ is motivated by the fact that he considers that humankind has never paid suYcient attention to the inner workings, the inner drama of the psyche: ‘les hommes [ . . . ] n’ont jamais eu le courage de descendre au fond du drame de leur conscience’, unlike him who ‘n’a jamais eu d’autre penseé que de percer a` jour le drame de sa conscience, aWn d’apprendre aux autres a` distinguer pour les de´truire tous leurs ennemis inte´rieurs’ (NER 95). Artaud is returning to the project of elaborating an imaginative ‘abominable savoir’ of subconscious structuring forces. His imaginative accounts of the hidden components of philosophical and theological concepts and the ubiquitous, unrecognized determining inXuence these


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hidden components are said to exert might seem fanciful, but the project is serious.19 At the close of the early Rodez period Artaud describes his work as ‘des notes psychologiques personnelles qui tournent autour de quelques remarques que j’ai faites sur les fonds de l’inconscient humain, ses refoulements et ses secrets ignore´s meˆme du moi habituel’ (xi. 18). For Artaud actions are not just dictated largely by unconscious impulses; these impulses are in their turn subject to determining forces of which we are blithely unaware. In Fragments d’un Journal en Enfer he had expressed the conviction ‘[s]ur les routes ou` mon sang m’entraıˆne il ne se peut pas qu’un jour je ne dećouvre une ve´rite´’ (i*. 114), and this would seem to have come true at the least expected moment, as an internee at Rodez: ‘Voila` sept ans que je vis en face de moi-meˆme et loin de tout. Et je ne sais plus ce que les gens aiment qu’on leur dise, mais je connais par contre toutes les ve´rite´s qui crient en moi, et de plus en plus chaque jour’ (xi. 21). For the underlying truth that fuels Artaud’s Wnal writings is that the individual is ill and this illness is a fundamental aspect of his existence, dating from his emergence into being: ce ne sont pas les peuples en masse qui sont malades mais l’homme individuel [ . . . ] il n’est pas diYcile de dećeler dans les consciences qui nous font face la pre´sence d’un ver rongeur [ . . . ] Car ce sont toutes les armeés du moi fuyant de l’homme qui pie´tinent dans la conscience de tous. Mais cela l’homme orgueilleux et fe´ru de lui-meˆme ne veut jamais le reconnaıˆtre, et il ne sait pas quel Esprit diVe´rend de jour en jour l’occupe, et que se croyant fe´ru de lui-meˆme c’est toujours d’un autre et de l’Autre en ve´rite´ qu’il est fe´ru. Et cet Autre non seulement n’est pas lui mais son ennemi le plus obstine´. (xi. 22)

Consciousness harbours an alien parasite that feeds oV the self. The individual’s consciousness is not his but a carrier for the consciousness of others. Artaud, however, is now in a position to reveal the hostile ‘Esprit diVe´rend’ within the human mind that prevents self-identity and selfpresence: ‘Ma conscience a` moi ne changera pas, je sais que je suis au centre d’une guerre interne sur laquelle j’ai essaye´ de jeter des lueurs au 19 Indeed, under the pen of deconstructionist theorists a not dissimilar (but less fanciful and megalomanic) project is regarded as intellectually digniWed: just as Derrida reads the ambivalence of a concept such as Plato’s pharmakon (in ‘La Pharmacie de Platon’ (in La Disse´mination (Paris: Seuil, 1972)) ), so Artaud reads the ambivalence of Christian culture’s inaugural Word of God. Such broad similarities between the Artaudian and the deconstructionist project explain in part the appeal of Artaud to Derrida and other theorists. Artaud’s approach is both more earnest and more ludic.

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temps de la correspondance avec Rivie`re, et cette guerre de l’aˆme au milieu du moi je n’ai cesse´ depuis sept ans de l’ećlairer’ (xi. 23). The answer will be supplied by examining the fundamental structures underpinning existence, and so returning to the source of the problem: ‘Pour comprendre sa propre vie il faut aller la chercher a` la source et donc devenir a` soi-meˆme son propre creáteur’ (x. 27). Artaud is now ready to develop his condemnatory account of the origin that will allow him to become fully autonomous. The baulking against the restrictions placed on the poet’s meaning-giving rights in a world of Divine provenance has led Artaud to the overriding concern of the Wnal phase of his intellectual trajectory, to dismantle the conceptual framework of Being that grants genesic authority to the Divine Word, to wrest meaning from the Logos and so ‘en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu’. But, as Nietzsche observed, we shall not be rid of God until we are rid of grammar.

5 WRITING DOUBLES Je suis un simple et je n’ai jamais de doubles en moi. (xvi. 277) Words make the uncommon common.1

In early 1945 Artaud Wnds his aspirations as poet and thinker can no longer be accommodated within a Christian theology, and this marks the opening of the Wnal phase of his writing career. Later, he pinpoints the moment of his rejection of Christianity as ‘ce soi-disant dimanche de la Passion ou` j’ai jete´ la communion, l’eucharistie, dieu et son christ par la feneˆtre et me suis dećide´ a` eˆtre moi, c’est-a`-dire tout simplement Antonin Artaud un incre´dule irre´ligieux’ (xi. 120). But Artaud, if now an ‘incre´dule’, is not ‘irre´ligieux’. For Artaud God most certainly still exists, be it as transcendent Being or as inexpungible creation of the linguistic apparatus of the mind. It would therefore be misleading to talk of the late Artaud texts as atheist; he becomes, rather, an anti-theist concentrating all his energies on writing against God. It is precisely so that he may, as he writes, be ‘simplement Antonin Artaud’ that God must be expunged from the ontological framework of reality. And it is the rejection of pro-God theologies that sets in motion the drive that Artaud maintains to the end of his career to eradicate from the self all that is other. Coinciding with the swing from a pro-God theology to an anti-God stance is a huge creative upsurge. Artaud starts to draw the dissected, perforated bodies that have generated much interest in the past decade and to Wll exercise book upon exercise book with notes. He continued to write copiously, some might say compulsively, until his death three years later and the Cahiers—divided into the Cahiers de Rodez (xv–xxi) and the Cahiers de retour a` Paris (xxii–xxv)—run to over 4,000 pages. Although the Cahiers are fragmented, discontinuous, unstructured jottings, the post1945 material intended for publication is drawn directly from their pages, at times with only minor reworkings or synthesis.2 The Wnal works are the public retelling of the private battle waged in the Cahiers. 1

Nietzsche, The Will to Power, para. 810. For instance, the opening section of Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, ‘Fragmentations’, is a selection of scattered fragments lifted straight from the Cahiers (see xiv*. 236 n.). 2

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The function of the great outpouring of the Cahiers is to free Artaud from God and his ‘suppoˆts’, and so they are the front line in the Wght for identity and hence also of the development of his thought. But they are a dauntingly large and diYcult set of texts and are among the most messy reads in twentieth-century French letters. Steinmetz makes an important observation in relation to the Cahiers du retour a` Paris that applies to all Artaud’s notebooks: ‘Veut-il [Artaud] repre´senter, redire ce qui lui passe par l’esprit ou bien cela se creé-t-il au bout de sa plume, sans qu’il y ait une pre´-penseé me´diate? L’abondance de ces pages laisse supposer non pas un automatisme, mais un entraıˆnement scriptural ou` la main meˆme est tireé en avant par l’exigence de l’ećriture.’3 The Cahiers texts do indeed frequently appear to be a spontaneous fusion of thinking and writing. Closing the gap between text and life has become even more important to Artaud now that he explicitly wishes to end self-alienation by forging a new self-identity through the text itself. Artaud’s Cahiers have moved away from the text as a medium of self-representation to the text as means of self-creation; but this performative function they supposedly eVect, if the leading principle of Artaud’s poetics, compromises the possibility of their intelligibility. Artaud’s texts have long worked against the traditional abstract concepts of the Western world view, and in the private space of the Cahiers he can operate heedless of the constraints imposed by an implied reader. He is free to push to an extreme his strategy of reworking the semantic space of terms by stylistic complexity, and makes the Cahiers diYcult to read even by the standards of his other writings. In addition to their problematic supposed function and stylistic techniques, the Cahiers are repellent, not merely in culturally speciWc terms of good literary taste, the writing dripping with lower bodily Xuids, but more importantly in terms of their readability, with what can feel like a magnetic repulsion pushing the concentration of even the best-intentioned reader away from the closed meaning-world of the text. This is a factor of their hermetic content, their Xouting and dissolution of syntax, and the diYculty in attributing the text to secure enunciative positions. Their repellence is further heightened by the boredom they will, at some stage in their 4,000 pages of spirallings and loopings, induce. The reader is exposed to many hundreds of pages where Artaud appears to be carried uncontrolledly along on a wave of rhetoric and hatred against God, or in which he orchestrates, with the assertiveness of a monomaniac, a phantasmic 3 Jean-Luc Steinmetz, ‘Hapax’, in Signets: Essais Critiques sur la poe´sie du XVIII e au XX e sie`cle. (Paris: Jose´ Corti, 1995), 278.

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choreography of maimed bodily parts. Whilst it would be worse than wearisome to catalogue the illisibilite´ of the Cahiers, an unbalanced portrait of the late Artaud writings would emerge were not their diYculty and their frequent incomprehensibility underlined. There are twelve thick volumes of notebooks and only four comparatively thin volumes of material intended for publication, and it would give an erroneous image of late Artaud if mention were not made of the noisy clusterings of illisibilite´ that have to be muted in order to perceive his texts as a loose conceptual system. Artaud’s notes abound with passages resembling the following: ‘La libe´ration par l’e´tat cœur: profus. j L’e´tat verte´bral he´patique de libe´ration: e´tant-eˆtre rećlame´ plus que le profus, j mais le profus ne vient-il pas de l’insoupçonne´ ine´tendu: poumon-gorge. j L’eˆtre extreˆme e´tendu est manifeste´ par le non-e´tendu gouVre croix derrie`re la croix cœur du christ Roi’ (xv. 41). Though clearly unreadable, the unreadability is largely that of somebody else’s shorthand. Whilst such paratactic fragments heavily laden with nouns may be seen to carry out a semantic destabilization by their phonetic patternings (here ‘croix’, ‘cœur’, and ‘christ’), it is hard to discern much more of critical use. What further needs to be recognized, however, is that even written out ‘in full’ it seems unlikely this would make the kind of sense that could shed light on Artaud’s thought. The spatial, corporeal, and theological realms collide and the resultant textual debris is too hermetic and dense a symbolic world. Much of the illisibilite´ of Artaud’s Cahiers stems from this combination of hermeticism and ellipsis. It is surprisingly rare, given the general climate of the Cahiers, to encounter syntactically well-behaved yet illisible fragments such as: ‘Ri Douzes Kha Khor Elida est la marche des eˆtres consciences nieés par la Xamme qui les preće`de comme le prećisant preće`de le prećise´ qui le suit mais meurt en prećise´ pour ne pas rejoindre le prećisant qui le tue dans l’inWni’ (xvi. 292). In general the Cahiers texts stand somewhere between the unreadable and the not fully readable. It would be possible, perhaps, to say what sort of work the text is doing, even though it might not be possible to follow an elaboration and unfolding of meaning from unit to unit. The Wrst major conceptual cluster that such passages speak of is the body, which often Wgures in concentrated groupings of abstractions and substantives: ‘Qui par le cœur de la teˆte au ventre soigne l’esprit fuyant qui veut toujours avoir une teˆte et prend l’esprit re´volte´ de cette teˆte et le rame`ne aux clous des sous-pieds par la croix du vide des tibias croise´s’ (xvi. 158). A second major clustering concerns the Wgures of Christianity, with

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Artaud enacting a drama between the members of the divine family and himself that is unintelligible to the outside reader-spectator: ‘Le SaintEsprit de Dieu et de la vie me retenait de manger par le cu de la sœur putante de Dieu.—On la verra puter.—Car elle me conseillait de mourir de faim dans ce corps-ci sous pre´texte que Dieu se refait par loi du temps alors que moi, Dieu, je ne me refais que par volonte´’ (xvi. 154). If each sentence is comparatively well behaved in such passages—the third sentence, with the exception of the slippage in enunciative position from ‘me’ to ‘Dieu’, is unproblematic—they do not give rise to the kinds of meaning of lisible texts. The droning complexities of this new anti-theology occupy even more of the Cahiers de Rodez than the anatomic redistributions, with statements such as the following to be found page after page: ‘C’est la Sainte-Vierge qui est le Pe`re-Me`re et non Dieu Pe`re E´ternel qui est Lucifer et Satan et Je´sus-Christ est la lumie`re e´ternelle du christ Pe`re. j C’est sur l’Enfer de Je´sus-Christ que Satan se faisant en Pe`re a fait le Pe`re’ (xv. 50). This is clearly not illisible, but the rapid volte-faces and Xuctuations in this anti-theology and in the kaleidoscopic human anatomy make it too great an eVort to follow their evolution. This is not a matter of readerly laziness but a fact about Artaud’s Cahiers: at some stage the reader will give up or get lost. They reserve moments of excitement and fun for the reader, but especially frustration—a fact that should not be lost from sight even when arguing for their worth. Frequently the Cahiers texts are a freewheeling churning out of semimeaningful, semi-incantatory phrases yoking together the two dominant themes of Christianity and the body (‘Je ne suis pas le christ e´leve´ par refus au-dessus du charnier mais le charnier en marche e´ternelle luimeˆme, j une invertissante. j Les aˆmes des pierres dans le pied droit avec le gauche par-dessus j les aˆmes du cœur du pied gauche avec la droite par-dessous j sont l’aˆme de ce qui doit monter et non la chair Xuidique de l’inWni qui veut toujours les contenir’ (xvi. 237)). Even though it is being argued that Artaud’s ideas on God and the body spearhead his mythopoeisis, the convoluted dramas of the negative mysticism and of the anatomical redistribution played out in the Cahiers may safely be edited out of the intellectual history traced here. Not only is it unnecessary to follow the details; it is only by standing back from the Cahiers that the evolution of Artaud’s thought is discernible. Near illisibilite´ should not automatically be taken as evidence that Artaud has lost control of his writing. In the dossier of Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, the apotheosis of Artaud’s late thought drawn from his Cahiers, he

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notes that even this collection of writings—destined for publication and described in the preamble as written to ‘permettre au lecteur de mate´rialiser vraiment le de´bat’ of his ‘aventure’ (xiv*. 10), and hence one might deduce clear—is illisible: ‘type du livre emmerdant absolument impossible a` lire, j que personne n’a jamais lu de bout en bout, j meˆme pas son auteur’ (xiv**, 234). Despite this self-accusation it is rare to Wnd unreadable passages in the texts intended for publication, and those allowed into Suppoˆts et Suppliciations are carefully inserted at speciWc points: ‘Ce qui est bien non dans la philosophie, mais dans la marmite de pommes frites, carreé peut-eˆtre et avec le manche’ (xiv*. 14). It is the word ‘philosophie’ that draws forth nonsense as Artaud enacts his opinion of the discipline. This controlled injection of unmeaning fulWls a deXationary, ludic role, frequently turned back against Artaud’s own (authorially backed) statements: ‘Ils ont souZe´ des termes de cire morte sur les corps re´prouve´s des eˆtres et en ont fait des re´tentions stupe´Wantes, qui, avant de naıˆtre, n’e´taient pas, mais qui, j insuline par insuline, j se sont crues eˆtre, j et pourtant l’artichaut branle au manche quand c’est la vierge qui fait caca’ (xiv*. 14). Indeed, the self-accusation of illisibilite´ may most proWtably be regarded in just this light, as a pre-emptive deXation of any burgeoning pretences to the kind of intellectuality that Suppoˆts et Suppliciations persistently attacks. Although outright illisibilite´ and nonsense are rare, the tendency of the text to erupt in anti-sensical crescendos amounts to an inner, rhythmic compulsion. The following passage typically works through a process of continuous sliding or movement of aposiopesis, an opening of the chain of meaning staving oV completion. Here the comparison with Mallarmean syntax is useful. Mallarme´ does away with the ‘direction personnelle enthousiaste de la phrase’ (as he describes it in Crise de vers), destabilizing the sentence and challenging rather than anticipating resolution. But the meanings with which the Mallarmean line is pregnant are able to coalesce in the black spaces at the end, or as he puts it in ‘Sur Poe’: ‘L’armature intellectuelle du poe`me se dissimule et tient—a` lieu— dans l’espace qui isole les strophes parmi le blanc du papier: signiWcatif silence.’ With Artaud, it is precisely in the noisy on-run of his prose that syntax is destabilized and erasure mobilized, where there is no blank space for mental exercise to collect and draw together meanings, and not in his poetry. Artaud’s writing gets carried away on its own power to create meaning in deWance of norms, and an unchecked jouissance in its right to untrammelled linguistic performance can draw Artaud’s prose to the limits of the intelligible and frequently beyond:

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Ce sie`cle ne comprend plus la poe´sie fećale, l’intestine malheur, de celle, Madame Morte, qui depuis le sie`cle des sie`cles sonde sa colonne de morte, sa colonne anale de morte, dans l’excre´ment d’une survie abolie, cadavre aussi de ses mois abolis, et qui pour le crime de n’avoir pu eˆtre, de jamais n’avoir pu eˆtre un eˆtre, a duˆ tomber pour se sonder mieux eˆtre, dans ce gouVre de la matie`re immonde et d’ailleurs si gentiment immonde ou` le cadavre de Madame Morte, de madame ute´rine fećale, madame anus, ge´henne d’excre´ment par ge´henne, dans l’opium de son excre´ment, fomente fama, le destin fećal de son aˆme, dans l’ute´rus de son propre foyer. (ix. 174)

This excerpt from the Lettres de Rodez is typical of Artaud’s late writing. There is the infantile delight in naming lower bodily Xuids and processes, the eruption of anti-sensical material dictated by phonological echo (‘fomente fama’), and a characteristic crescendo of rant. Sentences such as this scorn the unfolding of sense; instead the sentence gathers pace and rhythm in its pitch and roll from one linguistically self-indulgent aside to another, until all possible scraps of linguistic pleasure have been derived as pace, intonation, and the sentence sink to a close. Delight in naming lower bodily functions is not just an incidental if eventually aggravating feature; more importantly it leads to confusion in Artaud’s poetics. In the Lettres de Rodez Artaud develops an ideal of a ‘poe´sie fećale’ (ix. 174). Excretion is, of course, in Freudian terms a death of the body to itself, and for Artaud death may exercise a positive, dissolutory power: ‘La mort est une eńergie intrinse`que, un e´tat qui fait crouler l’eˆtre’ (xiv*. 123). Hence: ‘la poe´sie fećale, l’intestine malheur [ . . . ] Madame Morte [ . . . ] madame ute´rine fećale’ (ix. 174) may be suggestive of a positive incarnation and digestion of words by the poet, who supposedly dissolves and reconstructs language along new, personal lines.4 But yet, defecation is a prime instance of doubling—the two opening lines of one of Artaud’s most powerful late poems, ‘Le Theáˆtre de la Cruaute´’ (xiii. 107–18), reads: ‘Connaissez-vous quelque chose de plus outrageusement fećal j que l’histoire de dieu’—and it is hard to see how the indirect association of the fecal with the positive forces of dissolution and incorporation can outweigh the doubling connotations of the terminology. Although it is possible to eVect a partial reconciliation of ‘la poe´sie fećale’ with the rest of his ideas, it would nevertheless seem that—here as elsewhere—Artaud’s desire to shock takes over and undermines his thought. 4 Elsewhere Artaud writes of the need to take language into the body and literally incorporate it if words are to yield their secret alchemy of meaning: ‘des ope´rations d’alchimie si l’on peut dire salivaire que tout poe`te au fond de sa gorge fait subir a` la parole [ . . . ] avant de les re´gurgiter’ (ix. 129–30).

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Indeed, an uncharitable view would see infantilely iconoclastic and taboo-Xouting ranting as the normal Artaudian mode of discourse. Some rants can be a delight to read for their inventive playfulness: je ne puis admettre que des groupes d’envouˆteurs pris a` toutes les classes de la socie´te´ se disposent sur certains points de Paris aWn de chercher a` inXuencer et impe´rer ma conscience a` moi, Artaud, eux, repasseurs, blanchisseurs, droguistes, e´piciers, marchands de vins, manutentionnaires, employe´s de banque, comptables, commerçants, Xics, me´dećins, professeurs d’universite´, employe´s d’administration, preˆtres enWn, preˆtres surtout, religieux, moines, fre`res convers, c’est-a`dire incapables, inaptes, tous fonctionnaires de l’esprit, un esprit appele´ par les catholiques le saint-esprit et qui n’est que l’issue anale et vaginale de toutes les messes, de tous les chreˆmes, de tous les viatiques, de toutes les beńe´dictions, de toutes les e´le´vations, de toutes les extreˆme-onctions sans compter les ablutions et le nard rituellement bruˆle´ des brahmanes, les torunoiements des derviches, les rosaces inchristeés parce qu’ incrusteés des cathe´drales, les croisements rotuliens avec les talons sous les fesses des boudhas, et les invocations intranaturelles des lamas. (ix. 167)

Anybody who has heard the 1947 recordings of Artaud reading his texts can imagine the venomous rumblings, the imperious scorn of ‘moi, Artaud, eux, . . . ’, the meticulous, busy-lipped diction heightening an almost voluptuous pleasure in gleefully listing the disgusting practices of the enemy, and the playful black humour savoured in rolling such verbal gems as ‘rosaces inchristeés parce qu’incrusteés’ or ‘croisements rotuliens’ over the tongue. But this is rant at its best, and in the Cahiers it is rarely accompanied by the rhythmic power, gleeful caprices, linguistic inventiveness, and tight-reined rhetorical control brought forth here. Regardless of the invigoration felt on reading such a passage, it is soon superseded by one of annoyance as Artaud returns to his bugbears for page after page of stultifying denunciation. And yet, once we clear aside the distractions created by the dispersive and excedentary pressures of Artaud’s writing, we can see at the heart of all his Wnal texts a desire to systematize and conceptualize his sense of alienation. The basis of Artaud’s Wnal writing is that, on the Wrst level, he holds his true self to have been displaced by the presence of God within himself. Further, the negative theology spearheads a more general revisionary movement, and so, on a second level, Artaud Wnds that not just God but all terms used to structure a sense of self block the emergence of the latent inner self his pen has been running after since his earliest texts. In Les Tarahumaras the linguistic self was found to be illusory, a name masking a void, and Artaud now further suggests the inner self is absent

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too: ‘les de´Xagrations informuleés du moi sont le tre´pignement psychique d’un semis, la ponctuation eVusive d’un souZe, les nueés vibratoires d’une ombre, l’introuvable tempo d’un vide dont le moi fait ses convulsions’ (xv. 16–17). Artaud is chasing the cloud of a shadow, the lost tempo of a void. The formless, unrealized expressive potential of the authentic self (‘les de´Xagrations informuleés du moi’) that he would wish to make manifest (‘tradui[re . . . ] les spasmes geńe´siques d’une penseé en pleine formation’) cannot even be gestured towards other than in the most ethereal metaphors (‘la ponctuation eVusive d’un souZe, les nueés vibratoires d’une ombre, l’introuvable tempo d’un vide’). It is this essential ephemerality of the inner self that causes Artaud’s project to expand to such voluminous proportions, for any manifested form of selfhood may be denounced as an alien impostor. He takes this idea of the illusory nature of the self and combines it with that of determining forces existing unnoticed, because so ingrained, within the mind, to decide that, if the self is empty, anything that seems to lend form and substance to its empty space must be an alien ‘envouˆteur’: ‘il y a dans le cœur plus de dix milles eˆtres, et j e n’est qu’un eˆtre et il y en a d’autres mais les hommes ne le comprendront jamais’ (xi. 92). Taken to its conclusion, the idea of the nothingness of the self means that any notion used to refer to and thus Wll out identity space is, in Artaudian language, a double, a hostile entity existing parasitically within his identity space. Writing thus becomes endless. The reXexive, linguistically constituted ‘j e ’ is only the most obvious artiWcial construct, riding above many other unrecognized alien forces. All discourse about the self that treats it as having features and presence is a deceptive myth for Artaud, and it is by revealing and thus dislodging alien doubles that he will be able to reassume his true position at the centre of himself (and thus his true status as the unique creator of his world: ‘que Dieu ni personne [ . . . ] ne fasse aucune creátion a` coˆte´ de la mienne’ (xv. 201)). For Artaud, then, the way to reacquire his latent creative force is to write the doubles out of himself. The Cahiers aim to do just this. In the past they have been taken as symptomatological products of a psychotic state, yet their undeniable extravagance must not be allowed to preclude an appreciation of the very real conceptual work they perform. Close consideration of the Artaudian aesthetic shows that what at Wrst sight looks like an uncontrolled pouring forth of words may more fruitfully be seen as a way of writing through alienation. If the early Rodez phase of Artaud’s development proceeds by writing about language, with the rejection of

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pro-God theologies he starts to write against language—to work on the linguistic medium itself and through it on the inherited conceptual orthodoxy. Talk of their psychotic status is a useful shorthand term for reminding us of their many frictions with orthodox interpretations of reality and of the many threats to communication posed on each page of the Cahiers; but it must be bracketed out if we are to see beyond their hostility to orthodox discursive practices and appreciate the extent to which they elaborate a mythic system. The primary feature of language Artaud must combat, other than the fact that it is in the hold of God, is its stasis: On ne parle pas le mental [ . . . ] et on ne le parle pas en français. Silence aux voix. La ve´rite´ ne se suppute pas dans l’esprit. On vit ses e´tats de ve´rite´, on ne les discute pas. Parce que l’esprit ne peut pas les atteindre et que le Verbe n’est pas assez rapide pour les enregistrer tous. [ . . . ] L’e´tat qui manifeste le tout n’est pas discursif, et il ne supporte pas le discursif. (xv. 261)

This poetics of living rejects language for the sake of being able to express everything all at once. Life itself is to be the fully expressive new work and lived bodily experience to become the medium for epistemic advances. This is an overreaction to Artaud’s misgivings about the diachronicity of syntax Wrst formulated in the early texts. Language is still thought of as ill-adapted to the lightning Xash apprehension of reality by what in the past he called the ‘esprit dans la chair’. Further to this shortfall between language and ‘e´tats de ve´rite´’, Artaud claims repeatedly in the late texts that there are dangerous lacunae in the linguistic fabric. Even as late as 1947, once he feels he has mastered language, he is still complaining that it cannot say the most important: ‘assez de plaisanteries et de sornettes, et assez de tartuVeries, mais assez surtout de j de quoi, bordel de dieu? j Ici un mot me manque qui m’a manque´ dans la vie chaque fois que j’ai voulu accuser une certaine chose.’5 Somehow (that is to say, in Artaudian terms, owing to the intervention of divinely wielded determining forces) language is unable even to gesture towards the most dangerous forces arrayed against the individual. Language cannot name the ‘ennemis inte´rieurs’ because for Artaud it is in the depths of language that they lurk. By allowing these forces to remain invisible, language is the greatest threat to self-identity. Rilke famously described poetry as a wrestling with words and meaning. For the modern poet, writing is a hauling and straining in an 5 Artaud, ‘La confe´rence au Vieux-Colombier: Histoire većue d’Artaud-Moˆmo (extraits)’, L’InWni, 34 (1991), 3.

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obsessive attempt to say the unsayable. Far removed from the overXow of self-expression, it is a stretching beyond. Such a conception of poetic travail seems, however, anaemic in comparison to Artaud’s ideas about forging a new expressive medium—a Sisyphean undertaking: ‘Je dois donc dire que depuis trente ans que j’ećris je n’ai pas encore tout a` fait trouve´, j non pas encore mon verbe ou ma langue, j mais l’instrument que je n’ai cesse´ de forger’ (xiv**. 29). His ideas about language are familiar from the early writings, but there is a change in textual practice. Previously, Artaud had invoked the possibility of a private language adequate to expressing the inner self; his theorizing now implicitly rules this out. All discourse is inimical to truth, Artaud says, which may be lived but not told. Yet, in a mismatch between theory and fact typical of Artaud, whereas when he had theorized about a private language there had been no attempt to forge such a tool, now that it is ruled out his texts bear witness to a sustained attempt to forge just such a private language. It is when Artaud’s ideas on language, which have clearly come to an impasse, call for silence that his writing rises to a crescendo of voluminousness and volubility. And yet, despite the inconsistencies between fact and theory, the ideal of non-linguistic expression does serve to indicate the essentially non-linguistic characteristics with which Artaud will endeavour to imbue his writing (as far as such a self-contradictory thing is possible). In his writing Artaud tries to emulate the dynamism and non-representationality of life, countering linguistic stasis by a strategy of textual motility. The Cahiers texts in particular are exemplary of the strategy of motility (the word is Artaud’s) and of Artaud’s emergent bewildering style. There are a variety of techniques used to make his writings diYcult, but that mark them neither as illisible nor as straight psychotic products. In particular Artaud goes to extreme lengths to disrupt syntax. One recurrent trick is to transform a verbal into nominal syntagm: ‘ne pas toucher a` l’eˆtre, j or le ne pas toucher a` l’eˆtre’ (xvii. 61). This disarticulation is provoked by the inadequacy of language to express the new principles he is formulating. However, it becomes less of a trick than a tic exerting ever greater forces upon syntax: as we move through the Cahiers we move from the internal discord of ‘Le je ferai . . . ’ (xvi. 170) towards the cacophony of ‘Le que les souWs me tinrent . . . ’ (xxiv. 77). Whereas initially this reliance on verbal syntagms results from the diYculties of expression, it becomes a signatory device—employed even if it impedes meaning, as when he ends a sentence ‘par contre j le que je suis seul a` avoir corps et savoir ce que c’est que l’eˆtre et qu’il n’existe pas’

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(xxvi. 17)—to indicate that he has taken over the language and made it his own. Another means of indicating that language is being individuated and made Artaud’s is the many neologisms that stud the Cahiers and the poetry. Often Artaud’s neologisms are not meaning-bearing but instead Wgure as a hiatus in meaning: ‘Je suis stombal, je n’ai rien devant moi, je ne suis pas encore’ (xx. 38). Here, language has not yet been suYciently dominated for Artaud to be able to state his meaning in orthodox terms—not even suYciently dominated for him to be able to formulate a meaning. The neologism marks his refusal to capitulate to a readymade language and its stateable meanings. That Artaud should create deliberately unintelligible neologisms is indicated by his occasional portmanteau creations—‘dramnatif’ (xxi. 362) or ‘abdominable’ (xvi. 278)— that stand out for their limpid intelligibility and striking synoptic powers.6 Syntactic and semantic heresy are, for Artaud, the order of the day. Language must Wnd a new aesthetic more in tune with the inner forces of words that are normally repressed by grammatical rectitude: ‘les mots sont cacophonie et la grammaire les arrange mal’ (xviii. 115). Finding a language is a matter of allowing words unrestrained by linguistic orthodoxy to act under the impulse of their inner forces. Artaud’s linguistic experimentation is thus very diVerent from futurist poetry that attacked grammar and syntax whilst privileging the phonic and pictorial qualities of language, precisely in order to break open the encysted word to reveal the vibrant meaning within. The experiments of Khlebnikov’s ‘Exorcism by Laughter’ (1910), where he takes the Russian word for laughter and makes it perform extraordinary acrobatics as diVerent inXexions build up words from this root, are an experiment in morphology, not semantics, where the aim is the discovery of new harmonies. If in their Slap in the Face of Public Taste manifesto Khlebnikov and Kruchonykh declare their loathing for inherited language, it is in favour of a regeneration for ‘the word is making new’.7 Artaud’s experiments are part of his battle to appropriate language, and their playfulness is more sombre. He seeks not vibrant new meanings and harmonies but to combat linguistic determination and alienation. Linguistic pleasure is not Artaud’s aim here.

6 The examples of nominalized verbal syntagms and neologisms are borrowed from Grossman, Artaud/Joyce, 192–6. 7 Quoted in G. M. Hyde, ‘Russian Futurism’, Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.), Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930 (London: Penguin, 1991), 264.

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Perhaps the most seemingly psychotic textual technique in the Cahiers is the multiplication of enunciative positions. Artaud’s texts speak in the name of God and Satan, of a mythical group of daughters he claims to be creating, even of ontological categories such as the mind or the body (‘Moi le corps’ (xv. 187)), or bodily part shot through with onomastic traces (‘J’ai e´puise´ l’aˆme de l’homme Antonin Artaud, j’e´puise maintenant l’aˆme ignoble de Dieu.—Et je l’e´puiserai jusqu’a` l’os car je suis le taraud des os’ (xvi. 160)). Even an argument for the positive work done by motility has to recognize that this multiplication of enunciative positions also multiplies the diYculties the texts are working through. Lending his position as speaking subject may be experienced as an infraction against his integrity and so actively foster the ‘envouˆtement’ by the doubles in whose name he is speaking (whereas it is, of course, meant to Xush them into the open). Artaud lays himself open to the danger of becoming dispossessed of his own place and hence his own name, which is no longer his and his alone. As a result his name becomes a linguistic object that may be submitted to the same forces as any other linguistic object, hence the recurrent onomastic play on the name ‘Artaud’. The proper name is only a Xagpost by which he may indicate the place from which he is speaking, and the frequency with which the syntagm ‘Moi, Antonin Artaud’ occurs in his writings, whilst indicative of his delight in self-naming, also indicates how ‘Artaud’ has to be continually reappropriated. Yet, if Artaud opens up the self to the threat of dispossession, his voice is never wholly subsumed to any of the transitory speaking subjects, for, if he takes up a variety of enunciative positions, he does not reduce himself to these positions: ‘Je suis le Pe`re, le Wls, l’esprit, Lucifer, la vierge, et l’antechrist, j ils sont moi, mais je ne suis pas eux [sic]’ (xvi. 317). Even as he gives over his enunciative space to the other, the subjacent authentic self preserves its integrity as well as its primacy. Artaud grants the other speaking time, through him, in his place. This is a diVerent logic from Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre, where, by yielding his enunciative position, Artaud had sought to become one with ‘Eˆtre’. But, if the logic has changed, the technique of relinquishing his enunciative position is still thought of as unleashing a transformative energy, allowing him, in particular, to acquire the power of the Divine Word to which he gives voice. It is to God and His satellites that Artaud most frequently lends tongue, and at any moment the voice of the shifting, shifty Divinity can well up from beneath Artaud’s other concerns: ‘Je suis chaste un

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temps, baiseur un temps, christ un temps, antechrist un temps, neánt un temps, merde un temps, con un temps, vit un temps, eˆtre un temps, cu un temps, dieu tout le temps [sic]’ (xvii. 184). Of Artaud’s works it is the Cahiers that come closest to mysticism, albeit a negative mysticism of invective, for it is here that his voice is most Wrmly and extensively quelled to allow God to condemn Himself by confessing his desire for Artaud’s body. Elsewhere Artaud speaks for God; in the Cahiers he acts as what we might, aptly, call His ventriloquist. But throughout the authentic self may be identiWed by its impassioned anti-theological discourse, for Artaud is the privileged denouncer and prime adversary of God: ‘c’est bien mon eˆtre a` moi qui ne supporte pas Dieu: l’abıˆme de l’inWnite´ qui s’est toujours heurte´ a` mon existence personelle d’eˆtre e´tant’ (xv. 142), where the double formulation ‘eˆtre e´tant’ enacts Artaud’s derivative status in a Divine universe. So it is that he develops his own parodic litany of invective: ‘Canaille de canaille de Dieu, innommable fuyard du ciel, intronise´ exećrable de l’eˆtre’ (xv. 26). Goodall has remarked on how the names of the protagonists evolve with this antagonism. The name of God initially gathers a multiplicity of epithets—‘Dieu Rien Ine´tendu’, ‘Dieu l’inde´Wni’, ‘l’Indicible Pater Non-Etre’—until the name becomes eVaced behind the epithets—‘l’indicible non-eˆtre avant l’eˆtre’, ‘le nondivisible indivise´ Diviseur’. These epithets unite opposites until the Wgure of God unites with His opposites: ‘Dieu le Mal’, ‘Dieu le Pe`re criminel’, ‘Dieu de´mon’, ‘le Pe`re Lucifer Satan Dieu’.8 These multiple renamings carry out a work of redeWnition, for, by calling God names, Artaud denies Him His autonomy and, inversing their respective roles, allows Artaud to deWne Him. This multiplication of enunciative positions and of names, if disconcerting, is not the most disruptive textual strategy of the Cahiers. The Cahiers de Rodez are even more striking for their reliance upon just a few terms, which provokes a large-scale instability. Rey has drawn attention to this ‘re´pe´tition intensive’, where insistent reworking causes a blur around certain keywords.9 Sets of metaphysical and ontological terms (especially ‘eˆtre’ and terms relating to the self) are worked repeatedly until, as a result of the pressures exerted by their many, rapidly changing contexts they become semantically malleable. What is even more destabilizing, their semantic space is so frequently refashioned that meaning is perpetually under threat of imminent erasure. The overall eVect is that the conceptual landscape is restructured over the course of the Cahiers by 8

Goodall, Artaud and the Gnostic Drama, 185.

9

Rey, La Naissance de la poe´sie, 33.

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the cumulative eVect of gradual, actively pursued slippage and erosion of meanings. This intensive repetition can also be deployed on a local scale where, by combining continual slight deformations with syntactic Xuidity, the signiWcation of a set of terms is rendered volatile: C’est que ce n’est pas moi mais ce qui en moi fait l’esprit, l’aˆme, le cœur et le corps, ce n’est pas le moi-meˆme, ni le soi, ni le lui, ni l’autre, et ce n’est pas Dieu, ce sera autre chose parce que je le veux car c’est Je.—Et mon je, a` moi, ici, et pas le preće´dent car c’est dans la lutte de Je a` Je que Je suis et je garderai pour moi pour l’instant sans Dieu ce 3me Je qui supprimera les 2 autres parce que, avant la lutte de Je a` Je par moi, il n’y avait rien que moi sans moi. (xvi. 167)

This sentence is striking for its jerky, switching, frenetic leaping from one term to another as Artaud pounds the semantic space of ‘je’ and ‘moi’. Equally the preponderant negatives carry out a continual gommage of the volatile meanings of identity terms. By employing repetition in conjunction with erasure the semantic Welds develop in complexity. Each term becomes less a Xag marking a spot in the semantic landscape than a signpost, gesturing towards its evolving, dense, complex conceptual space and its nomadic pre-history. In the above quotation the cumulative complexity of the fragment Xoats the terms ‘je’ and ‘moi’ free from Wxed meanings, volatizing any sense of identity. Both Artaud’s terminology and his self are in the melting pot—the melting pot of the Cahiers. However, this process of working and reworking on terms can move out of control as the force pushing Artaud’s pen across the page—the scriptural impulse Steinmetz refers to—takes over. The kneading and moulding of a term can become a compulsive battering so that semantic plasticity gives way to linguistic excess. The above quotation continues: ‘Et sans dans l’expulsion de ce moi de moi que j’interviendrai contre la loi e´ternelle de Dieu car si Je: pue, c’est accidentel [sic]’ (xvi. 167). The dissolution of terminology and syntax can easily give way to an inXux of unmeaning. Deformations, echoes, and a sheer pounding of terms are actively used by Artaud to expose the dangerous presence of several referents within apparently unitary referential Welds. For example, he habitually works on the term ‘moi’ in the light of the duality of the self, switching back and forth between the everyday and the pure, latent self that are referred to by the same term: ‘je ne suis plus moi-meˆme et je n’ai pas encore mon moi mais c’est moi qui ne l’ai pas et non un autre qui l’a parce que mon moi ne peut que remonter de moi’ (xvii. 74). Artaud is eager to reveal this diVerence-within-identity of the semantic Weld of terms. He seems to

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hold that this kind of multiple referentiality (of non-polysemic terms) goes unnoticed and that this is why language exerts powerful determining forces, for multiple referentiality impedes lucid self-awareness. Here, the fact that we have a sense of self in everyday experience hides the fact that this is not the real self of which we have a rather murkier sense. Linguistic confusion encourages existential laziness. A sentence such as the one quoted relies on the double usage, and Artaud does his best to exacerbate this kind of duality within terms. Hardening a dual usage into a polarity, Artaud makes it clear how far he is from attaining the kind of selfhood to which he aspires, whilst at the same time holding out the promise of eventual success. When he uses the term ‘moi’ to refer both to his current, alienated self and to the inner, authentic self, it is made clear that, despite its alterity, the self remains the self, and so bringing forth the inner self is dependent upon Artaud’s will. In other words, this double usage of ‘moi’, whilst accommodating his current alienation, gives Artaud full autonomy (‘mon moi ne peut remonter que de moi’). This technique of exposing and reinforcing multiple referentiality, applied to the terminology of the self, allows for an ongoing creation, distortion, and erasure of the fabric of Artaud’s identity space. In the previous example Artaud uses the same term in diVerent ways at diVerent stages in a sentence without any ambiguity, and this double usage of terms performs the speciWc work of introducing autonomy into the realm of alienation. But more frequently Artaud fosters ambiguity in order to destabilize meaning and so create a favourable climate for the emergence of a diVerent way of thinking. He is master in the art of sentences that demand a dual reading, one of which may Xirt destabilizingly with the paradoxical, for example: ‘je crois que rien ne veut plus rien dire’ (xxiv. 9). Does this refer to the absence of meaning in life, or to the meaninglessness of negation (see the outburst in ‘La question se pose de . . . ’: ‘non, k n o n k alors a` la ne´gation’ (xiii. 96))? Either way the world of abstract meanings is up for grabs. This kind of semantic instability is characteristic of all Artaud’s late work. Though employed widely, it is most frequently trained on philosophical and theological targets. For example, the idea of an identity-secure person is played and punned upon by Artaud in the following passage of typical ‘double-think’, to adapt a Joycean expression, drawn from his correspondence. Artaud is here deliberately ambivalent, for ambivalence is infectious and destabilizes the semantic locality: Il y a une orthodoxie qui croit en l’existence e´ternelle d’une personne situeé entre le corps et l’esprit et qui fait de l’un et de l’autre des symboles de son ambivalente

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capacite´. Moi je crois qu’avant d’eˆtre quelqu’un il faut n’eˆtre d’abord personne, et je ne crois pas a` la Personne de Dieu et je ne veux pas de la Personne de Dieu. Il y a un e´tat sans personne ni Dieu et qui est la douleur infuse d’une croix qui n’est pas l’eˆtre d’une croix mais sa puissance d’ećarte`lement, sans de´Wnition d’esprit, de personne ou de croix. (xi. 71–2)

Artaud controls the ambivalence of language to brush away the notion of personhood: ‘avant d’eˆtre quelqu’un il faut n’eˆtre d’abord personne’ may be read in two ways. The Wrst would be: before being somebody, one has Wrst to be nobody; the dissolution of identity is necessary prior to reconstitution as authentic personhood. The second, depending upon the homophony of ‘n’eˆtre’ and ‘naıˆtre’, would be: before being somebody, one has Wrst to be born as ‘personne’. This in turn plays upon the polysemy of ‘personnne’: birth thrusts us into a form of existence as ‘personne’ and what characterizes this state is that we are both nobody and person—that is, human existence is the locus of division from the moment of birth. Having thoroughly destabilized the term ‘personne’, Artaud contaminates another, ‘Dieu’, not so much by the multiplicity of meanings as by the energized climate of instability. The ‘Personne de Dieu’ refers, on the one hand, to the embodiment of God, the mingling and thus negation of the ontological hierarchy. But, on the other hand, it also refers to the non-existence of God. It can therefore be read as a refusal to believe either in the Incarnation or in the non-existence of God. Putting these two together Artaud would be insisting that, if God is present in the world, it is not because He was made Xesh and so must be because he stole bodies. Polysemy and ambiguity make a nonsense of the concept of ‘personne’, and, by contamination, of ‘Dieu’. Once these two concepts are left behind by the passage, what is left is the ‘e´tat sans personne ni Dieu et qui est la douleur infuse d’une croix’, the autonomous, free, suVering body (the body, for Artaud, is the cross on which human existence is hung). This is the indeWnable, solitary state of authentic existence as a sentient, conscious physical entity. Standing back, it may be seen that this technique of forcing ambiguous multiple meanings onto a term allows Artaud to reveal hidden, thus alienating, connotations. Here—and it is worth insisting that most of the Cahiers writing is not this purposeful—‘personne’ and ‘Dieu’ are found to be, or made to become, dangerously related. Large associative swathes of the term ‘personne’—all those aspects of personhood contaminated by divine inXuence—will therefore be excised from its semantic Weld, leaving a pared-down version of the concept. What Artaud is doing to concepts could be compared to what he announces he is doing to the human

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body: cutting out the alienating innards to create hardened blocks that leave no room for parasitic alienating forces. This technique of remodelling the connotative space of terms by strong, localized pressure means the text combines its destructive and constructive modes of thinking. He Xoats terms in syntactically ambiguous sentences, so that they are lifted clear from traditional moorings and driven to generate new associative networks by the excedentary forces of the poeticized propositions. This process of rethinking concepts poetically, whilst it can lead to stormy texts, may also be found in apparently calm passages, where the criss-crossing undercurrents barely ruZe the surface: pour eˆtre le corps qui a voulu se de´tacher du de´sir d’avoir corps, il a d’abord fallu se de´tacher du reˆve et de l’image de son corps, mais il ne suYt pas de s’en de´tacher en esprit il faut s’en de´tacher en corps, c’est-a`-dire que le corps du de´tachement est un corps qui sert a` buter contre le corps qu’on reˆve. (xi. 72–3)

It is in such apparent benign and muzzy-headed ramblings, where Artaud’s writing seems to be churning in a void, that much of the semantic destabilization takes place. It is not, of course, always as clear as in this passage, but care must be taken not to dismiss the many aesthetically unexciting passages in Artaud’s notebooks and correspondence—this passage is drawn from the Wrst letter Artaud wrote after his rejection of Catholicism—as guV. The body willing to be shorn of the desire for incarnation is, because of the pressures exerted by the past history of the terms and the syntax of the sentence, highly ambiguous. It could, Wrst, be the post-Christian body that is no longer deWned as the obverse of a mystic body of Christ; or it could, secondly, be the body that Xouts the givens of human biology and anatomy; in a third reading, it could refer to the body untouched by sexual desire. Or, there again, it could, and will, become a combination of these: a virtual Xeshless body a` venir deWned by its essential autonomous plenitude. This new body is to come about by a detachment ‘du reˆve et de l’image de son corps’. This could, Wrst, mean from God (frequently designated ‘le Reˆve’) and the God-given image of the body. Or, if the syntax is read diVerently and the ‘en’ of ‘s’en de´tacher’ refers to ‘de´sir d’avoir corps’, then to create the new body involves purging the existent body of its sexual urge. If we take a wholly diVerent line of reading through this sentence, ‘le corps qui a voulu se de´tacher du de´sir d’avoir corps’ could be read as referring to God (Artaud elsewhere condemns God for shying away from the pain indissociable from bodily existence). In this case the ‘corps du de´tachement’, God, opposes ‘le corps qu’on reˆve’, the virtual body to

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be imaginatively created, in which case Artaud would be denouncing (as he does elsewhere) the jealous God who is opposed to relinquishing his monopoly on (body) creation. Supporting evidence for all these readings may be found in other texts of the period and it would be unwise to rule any out. Instead, they need to be all heard at once. By breaking the rules of univocal rational discourse, the text is able to imply an alternative conceptualization that is not deWned but only gestured towards. Here Artaud takes three terms: ‘corps’, ‘esprit’, ‘de´tacher/de´tachement’. The third term either deWnes the relationship that currently exists between the Wrst two—the mind/body split—or else indicates what must be brought about—the divorce between mind and body must be taken to its extreme until one term, deprived of meaning, is subsumed by the other in which all meaning is then invested. Artaud is therefore writing both of what is and of what should be, of the actual and the virtual. The destructive and constructive modes of thinking are bound together and this contributes to the unpindownable nature of Artaud’s thought, something that, as we shall see shortly, Artaud values most highly in his constructive thinking. In his writing on concepts Artaud is clearly not doing philosophy, but it is equally clear that his texts are performing conceptual work on philosophical and theological terms. The textual pressures force the language of philosophy to erupt, submerging a concept in latent linguistic energies. This poetically energized writing unleashes forces within what had seemed stable terminology. For instance, Artaud splits words up and imagines of what they may be composed, forcing new connotations on them and so debunking concepts that, to his way of thinking, have been overprivileged. This must surely be derived from the wordgames played by Artaud and Michel Leiris in the 1920s where the word-play fulWlled a speculative role; to take one example, ‘causalite´’ broken down into ‘cause-alite´’ suggests the illness of causal thinking. There are especially strong parallels with Leiris’s Glossaire, j’y serre mes gloses (1925), a fantastic lexicon based on the potential analogies between the physical and phonic qualities of words and their meanings. In the following example Artaud deXates the lofty pretentions of the idea of consciousness by insisting that, for all the knowledge and prestige of conscious thought, it may be also the embodiment of paralysing stupidity, of division, and the locus of sexual appetites: tu ne le savais pas, tu n’e´tais pas con-sciant, tu es con et Sciant,

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tu es inconscient, tu sais dans l’inconscience, nous savons dans le con de la science, nous sommes des cons et des Sciants, nous sommes devenus conscients. (xviii. 72)

This technique, if not dissimilar to that of post-structuralist criticism, is far more ludic. The text Xags itself as playful, not philosophical: the eVect of this passage is not to put the con back into science but to destabilize our scientia with its conneries. Linguistic play is a serious technique of joyous subversion. The dynamism of Artaud’s writing allows his poetically injected prose to run circles around philosophical terms. The consequence of this kind of dismantling of philosophical terminology is to conWrm how meaningless, for Artaud, abstract ideas are. As he writes in ‘La question se pose de . . . ’, one of the Wve texts of the justly famous Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu: Ce qui est grave est que nous savons qu’apre`s l’ordre de ce monde il y en a un autre. Quel est-il? Nous ne le savons pas. Le nombre et l’ordre des suppositions possibles dans ce domaine est justement l’inWni! Et qu’est-ce que l’inWni? Au juste nous ne le savons pas! C’est un mot dont nous nous servons pour indiquer l’ouverture de notre conscience vers la possibilite´ de´mesureé,

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A similar impatience with metaphysical concepts is at work behind the wonderfully ludic encyclopaedic list in Suppoˆts et Suppliciations cataloguing the downfall of rationalism and biology, anchored around ‘pas d’ontologie’ and going on over four pages (xiv**. 13–16). Artaud is not a poet doing bad philosophy, but a poet subverting the static terms and thought strategies on which the philosophical endeavour has based itself. Our ways of thinking about reality are connotatively charged with the idea of Wxity, but dynamism, Xux, volatility, and ephemerality characterize human existence. For Artaud, philosophical discourse goes wrong from the outset. Conceptual systems must not therefore be too ordered: ‘l’ineptie de vouloir Wxer un axe, et mettre un axe a` la base de tout’ (xi. 90). Fixity, stability, and the idea of immutability have become bound up with the idea of philosophical, hence ontological truth (and ‘eˆtre’ is the prime example). But these characteristics are the characteristics of God, and so traditional ways of thinking about reality are, even in their methodology and aspirations, still the handmaiden of religion, propagating Divine characteristics as true, this-worldly characteristics as Xawed. Once the anti-philosophical and anti-theological eVect of Artaud’s strategy of motility is appreciated, the view that his late texts are the unreadable manifestation of a psychosis is no longer tenable in any full-blooded form. Given the carefully orchestrated conceptual work they perform, the psychotic condition that accompanies them can no longer be held to impugn their credentials as worthy of serious critical

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consideration. Language is indeed frequently pushed to the point where semantic breakdown is imminent. Yet if, as we have seen, this may on occasions take Artaud’s texts into the realm of the illisible, we have also seen that motility is part of a two-pronged strategy seeking, on the one hand, to exploit the tensions within conceptual structures and, on the other, to underscore the almost unsayable nature of what he would say. Artaud writes against syntactic and semantic orthodoxy because thinking authentically within a conceptual system out of kilter with experience requires it. Trying to rupture conceptual systems from within, Artaud’s texts must be diYcult if they are to be successful. Both the diYculty of Artaud’s writing and the subversive energy it generates are particularly evident in the following passage, where he is labouring to elucidate his ideas about ‘eˆtre’ in deWance of an inherited terminology of essences and principles: Car l’eˆtre en tant qu’eˆtre apparaıˆt si l’on veut apre`s le principe de son essence d’eˆtre ce que son principe est, il est la ve´rite´ de cette essence mais il ne peut eˆtre conduit a` eˆtre par l’essence: essence: ce qui est sorti de son principe, il ne faut donc pas d’essence pour eˆtre mais du principe viride. Le principe de son eˆtre est d’eˆtre, mais l’eˆtre de son eˆtre ne doit pas apparaıˆtre [ . . . ] dans un commandement a` eˆtre par essence car l’eˆtre n’est pas immanent dans l’essence mais son essence est de n’eˆtre que par viride combat entre le principe insondable et son essence d’eˆtrete´, entre le rien et sa nature d’eˆtrete´, entre le promoteur sans eˆtre et le principe de son eˆtrete´, [ . . . ] et je ne me satisferai pas de l’eˆtre type que je suis et je ne me de´barrasserai pas seulement de ce qui est devant moi, mais je plongerai en moi-meˆme dans toute ma volonte´ aWn de la connaıˆtre comple`tement et de savoir ce qui est son essence, sa substance, sa composition et ce que je suis, moi, eˆtre, en face d’elle parce que mon eˆtre n’est pas venu d’un principe, mais il a fait tous les principes, fuˆt-ce meˆme celui de l’eˆtrete´. (xvi. 35)

On Wrst and even on subsequent readings, this typical passage might appear to be going confusedly round in circles, but by dint of hard reading it is possible to follow the development of ideas. Detailed analysis shows that, far from spinning around the term ‘eˆtre’ in uncoordinated motion, this passage is straining to express new ideas in an exhausted terminology. Being (the passage is referring to authentic, inner being) is made manifest in accordance with its essence (‘l’eˆtre en tant qu’eˆtre apparaıˆt [ . . . ] apre`s le principe de son essence’). But there is nothing

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in the essence of this inner being to make it emerge—in other words, existence is not immanent in its essence (‘il est la ve´rite´ de cette essence mais il ne peut eˆtre conduit a` eˆtre par l’essence’). Therefore the inner self cannot be relied on to come into being unaided; what is needed is a welling-up of the life sap (‘il ne faut donc pas d’essence pour eˆtre mais du principe viride’).10 Even though the true nature of this latent, inner being would be fully realized only were it to exist, it must not be forced into existence (‘Le principe de son eˆtre est d’eˆtre, mais l’eˆtre de son eˆtre ne doit pas apparaıˆtre [ . . . ] dans un commandement a` eˆtre par essence’). This is because the fact of existence is not immanent, as seen above, in its essence (‘l’eˆtre n’est pas immanent dans l’essence mais son essence est de n’eˆtre que par viride combat’). In the next phase Artaud is saying that, if this inner being cannot be willed into existence, it must be drawn into a life-endowing combat (‘par viride combat’). The combat is to be between the non-being of God (‘le principe insondable [ . . . ] le rien [ . . . ] le promoteur sans eˆtre’) and the inner being itself (‘son essence d’eˆtrete´ [ . . . ] sa nature d’eˆtrete´ [ . . . ] le principe de son eˆtrete´’). It is, in other words, by combating God that the latent inner self will be able to Xourish and pull itself up by its own bootstraps. (The fact that God is referred to in terms resembling those used to refer to the inner self (‘principe’, ‘sans eˆtre’) reveals God’s similarity to the inner self. This in turn suggests that, if God is so similar to the inner self, it is, perhaps, because he exists vicariously by stealing its place, and also that, were it not for God, man would be godlike. This is the sort of mingling of terms by which Artaud redraws his world view.) Artaud continues that, though he has said that an appreciation of principles is insuYcient, he nevertheless needs to know in full the underlying nature of his being (‘connaıˆtre comple`tement [ . . . ] ce qui est son essence, sa substance, sa composition’) so as to know how he stands in relation to it (‘ce que je suis, moi, eˆtre, en face d’elle’). A certain amount of abstraction and theorizing is necessary to know how he is progressing. But then again, if his being accords to a principle, this is not because it is derived from a principle (‘mon eˆtre n’est pas venu d’un principe’). On the contrary, principles are derived from being (‘il a fait tous les principes, fuˆt-ce meˆme celui de l’eˆtrete´’), and so the role to be played by abstract comparisons between where he now stands and his latent self must not be overstated. Equally, this reinforces Artaud’s position as the ontological centre of creation, even the principle of ‘eˆtrete´’ being derived from ‘[s]on eˆtre’. Summarizing, élan vital and 10 The coinage ‘viride’ would seem to be forged from ‘viril’, with the associated emphasis on upwards movement and verticality, and ‘viridite´’, greenness.

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élan vital alone will allow the latent self to be made real. Metaphysical principles are irrelevant, and so Artaud must limit his theorizing to elucidating what precepts will encourage this dynamic upsurging of existence that would conWrm his position at the very centre of reality. It could, of course, be objected that there is no need for Artaud to work in so tortured a fashion through this speciWc conceptual framework of essences and principles when early twentieth-century thought had developed new ways of thinking about ontology. But this objection would miss the most important point (as would the plausible answer that Artaud was not au fait with philosophical developments). For Artaud, the passage through a time-worn philosophical vocabulary has little to do with accurately expressing philosophical ideas, and everything to do with exploring the incompatibility between the philosophical framework that moulded the Western tradition and his own, life-given sense of what being is. It is a question not of philosophy but of revealing the alienating eVects of the tradition that exerts pressures on the individual through the cultural doxa and its stereotypes. Artaud’s late thought could hardly be described as ‘logical’, but the extreme stylistic complexity is a strategy formulated in response to a rigorous thinking-through of the ramiWcations of his views on language. Language is not only utterly inadequate to the task he would have it fulWl of revealing his inner reality; it actually denatures his existence as a conscious, sentient, physical being. Words are, for Artaud, incredibly powerful. Not just the generative Word but even human language exerts hidden structural forces on reality (quite apart from the overt modelling of reality it conducts). For Artaud it is by dislocating syntax and the smooth unfolding of meaning that it may be possible to see through words and force them to disgorge their hidden constituents. Artaud writes to expose doubles and alienating forces within inherited discourse. But any subsequent writing of a new textual identity poses new threats of doubling owing to the alienation inherent in a linguistically constituted self. Artaud suggests that abstract ideas give rise to doubling, yet in writing about a new identity he cannot but employ them. He chooses to anchor identity in the body because it is the obverse of the abstract, but in passing from corporeality to writing bodily identity there is precisely the kind of abstraction that Artaud wishes to avoid. (To be logically consistent he would have to be silent, but then he would not be able to theorize about self-identity and so would run the danger of falling into something worse than lucid alienation, the brutish alienation he imputes to the mass of humanity.) Writing doubles (in Artaudian terms) if it leaves any trace of the writing self behind. The reason, for

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example, there are so many negative deWnitions of who and what Artaud is in the Cahiers is because they prevent the emergence of any deWned, doubleable, identity. Negation can even at times become the deWning characteristic of the textual self: ‘mon extreˆme conscience non de moi mais de Je, non [ . . . ] Je n’ai pas de moi et ce n’est pas moi, c’est non. j Et quant au re´volte´ e´ternel contre Je ça non, Je le creusera dans le ça par le non’ (xvi. 169). But yet one of the aims of the Artaudian text is to write the self. This forces Artaud’s theorizing to deWne the writing self as the epitome of dynamism if it is to avoid doubling and respect the programme formulated in ‘Re´volte contre la poe´sie’ (‘Je ne veux pas me reproduire [ . . . ] Je ne veux pas d’une ideé du moi dans mon poe`me et je ne veux pas m’y revoir’ (ix. 123)). The kind of textual self Artaud is looking to create is a dynamic emptiness without any Wxed characteristics; to redeploy the famous image that closes the introduction of Le Theáˆtre et son Double, the self is to be a hieroglyphic, semaphoric self that is consumed by its own burning creative drive. This is an identity that must never actually appear in the text: ‘moi j’ai toujours existe´ dans le non-lieu, hors eˆtre, hors condition’ (xvii. 186). For Artaud, it is because the terms available to him are derived from theologically tainted linguistic frameworks that the linguistically constituted self is alien. The deep, latent inner self beneath the level of language should, therefore, remain free from alienation on one of two conditions: either if it is not formulated in God-tainted terms, should it prove possible to develop such simple language; or if the textual identity is never given any (alienating) form. What Artaud’s texts show him to be doing is employing the second strategy—the new textual identity is forever announced but never achieved—whilst working on the Wrst strategy. He does not, therefore, fall foul of his indictment of language, but only at the cost of condemning his texts to perpetual theorizing and prophesizing. So the imperative ruling his writing is to tend towards the authentic self in a process of ever-deferred self-creation. This is an impossible project, for it is only by eVacing what he creates and starting forever afresh that he can avoid producing new alienating doubles: Moi qui ne vois jamais l’action et la creátion que dans un dynamisme jamais caracterise´, jamais situe´, jamais de´Wni, ou` c’est l’invention perpe´tuelle qui est la loi . . . .

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je ne peux pas vouloir que des e´le´ments apparaissent, des principes, des essences, . . . . ou surtout D E S Eˆ T R E S .11

Breton insisted that art be a constantly destructive and revivifying force rejecting its own discoveries as persistently as it rejects normal modes of thought, and Artaud takes this and extends its sphere of application from aesthetics to the self.12 Given that Artaud’s writing is a self-writing, perpetual invention becomes perpetual self-invention. Dynamism is not reserved for destructive work; it is integral to the ongoing, constructive project of creating a dynamic, non-doubling identity. Not only must this project never slacken its pace; it must produce a perpetually sharpened creative hunger: ‘moi je ne suis jamais fatigue´. [ . . . ] Ou` vais-[je]? A l’absolu. Qu’est-ce que c’est? Une croix ideále qui tourne pour lancer encore plus loin celui qui l’a atteinte. [ . . . ] Quand elle tourne que se produit-il? Il se produit que la creátion passeé se de´tache et tombe dans le neánt’ (xvi. 83). The inner logic of Artaud’s project therefore compels his writing to erase and relaunch itself. The logical impossibility of creating a Wnished, dynamic identity means that he must repudiate all he has created and repeat the attempt to reach this goal time and time again. By sticking so rigorously to his indictment of language, his writing becomes an unstoppable theorizing machine that must never describe the identity it is constructing, and indeed the great oddity of the thousands of pages Artaud amasses to create his identity is that they never touch upon the one thing that brings them into being. There is no textual trace of a new identity, and it is this that lends them their phantasmal air. Artaud’s late writings, and particularly the Cahiers, may be seen as a work-site. They are a work-site in which he aims to take hold of himself against the hold of God and of the illusory entities used to people the empty space of the self. Given that it is not just Christian and scholastic philosophy but all metaphysics that is re-evaluated, it would seem that all 11

‘Notes pour une «Lettre aux Balinais» ’, Tel quel, 46 (1971), 17. This derives from Dada thought. Dada took to a diVerent order the Expressionist attempt to try to evolve a language capable of conforming to reality. Through asyntactic and non-referential language Dada declared the inability of language qua human construct to adequate to protean reality. Where Expressionism desired a once-for-all inner revolution, Dada is committed to a permanent linguistic revolution—a process of running to stay on the same spot. (For fuller discussion of this idea see Robert Short, ‘Dada and Surrealism’, in Bradbury and McFarlane (eds.), Modernism, 292–310.) The Dada inXuence seems strong here, Artaud advocating a perpetual writing against. 12

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inherited metaphysical concepts, for Artaud, either imitate the pattern of the conceptual model of God or else implicitly invoke God. In either case, all abstract concepts are stigmatized for having shared a framework with the concept ‘God’. Once he has rejected pro-God theologies Artaud therefore writes against ideas of an innate, abstract self-substance, which, for him, foster man’s status as the expelled derivative and hence negative term of a divine/human dichotomy. His Wnal texts are an ongoing process of identifying and naming the alien, abstract doubles hidden ever more deeply in discourse. It is by working on language and making it his own that Artaud will be rid both of God and of God-tainted systems. So, if the major targets of the Cahiers are God and ontology, both are to be destroyed through language. This means that leading an assault on language and its alienating pretences is of overriding importance: ‘il faut frapper en tous sens pour le fait de frapper, sans viser un point ou attendre une harmonie mais en brute, toute ideé et tout eˆtre [ . . . ] toute ideé et tout concept’ (xvii. 102). Once Artaud has decided that abstract ideas are doubles, then the extremist tendency of his thought leads him to jump from one end of the spectrum to the other and pin his hopes upon the physical: ‘la re´volte du corps contre le Principe’ (xv. 18). Hard textual facts about a corps neuf will, theoretically, replace theories and abstractions, for, as he writes in an early notebook: ‘Il faut faire les choses plus simplement et plus terre a` terre’ (xv. 218). In Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu, having reconquered a certain degree of ontological and stylistic simplicity, Artaud will write of the need: [ . . . ] supprimer l’ideé, l’ideé et son mythe, et [ . . . ] faire regner a` la place la manifestation tonnante de cette explosive nećessite´: dilater le corps de ma nuit interne, du neánt interne de mon moi qui est nuit, neánt, irre´Xexion, mais qui est explosive manifestation qu’il y a quelque chose

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a` quoi faire place: mon corps. (xiii. 94)

As we read through the Wnal phase of Artaud’s career we Wnd a move away from abstract identity concepts towards the physical—or, rather, to be precise abstract, conceptual reinventions of the physical—as the basis for authentic selfhood. But, in order to carry out his radical simpliWcation of existence, Artaud passes through extreme textual complexity. Not only does he explore all that is not simple, all the terms that prevent him from being simply himself; he also invents a most abstract and complex set of concepts of physicality with which to articulate his pared-down ontology. So, whilst the exorcism of language undertaken in his late writings is to allow Artaud Wnally to say what he has to say, the strategies he employs imperil communication and his writing drifts towards a solipsistic idiolect. The repeated battering and gommage of semantic and connotative Welds of key terms is supposedly an exhumation of hidden metaphysical components that must be cut oV at the root if they are not secretly to shape his ideas. But actually Artaud is forcing new connotations onto terms. Although his verse and prose are increasingly sparse, Artaud does not simplify and pare down language; he does exactly the opposite, bogging his key terms down with ever larger meanings. Artaud’s style is here typical of a general tendency of Modernist thought modes that, though associated with chaos and fragmentation, do not characteristically see things fall apart so much as fall together, resulting not in disintegration but in superintegration. Artaud is not stripping language of the accretions it has acquired by contamination with the Western tradition but creating an unwieldy, onto-theologically saturated language that, in the Cahiers at least, can lumber tediously and become entangled in its own connotative baggage-train. Admittedly, his deformations of inherited language in his Wnal poetry, such as ‘Ja’ for ‘Je’ or ‘Jizi-cri’ for ‘Je´sus Christ’ (both to be found in ‘Ci-gıˆt’ (xii. 75–100)), are more successful in allowing him to develop streamlined concepts: here, for instance, ‘Ja’ allows Artaud to distance the new self from the critique of self-entities, and ‘Jizi-cri’ underlines the overlap between the incarnated God and language. But in the Cahiers the attempt to write against inherited discursive forms forces his writing towards the incomprehensible. Yet it is by breaking with linguistic orthodoxy that Artaud works on words themselves. Writing against the ready-madeness of orthodox discourse, he forces terms to disclose (or so he sees it) their plethora of

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tacit connotations, which are actually hidden determining forces that, functioning collectively, push thought into unwanted channels. This, at least, is what it can look like from within the Artaudian world. From outside, the Artaudian text may be seen to be bonding new, invented negative connotations to the major terms of Western thought—God, self, being—whilst claiming to uncover them. It is true that the new connotations are derived by privileging messier areas within a conceptual Weld (for example, the ambiguity at the heart of Christianity over the status of the body), and so Artaud’s claims to be telling the true, underlying story of reality are not pure unfounded delusion. If from outside the Artaudian world we might choose to see this as a conjuring-up of phantasmal connotations, from the inside it does have its own strangely compelling logic, and, if we choose to eschew viewing Artaud’s ideas as hard philosophical fact, we can still admire his prestigious skills of conceptual and linguistic legerdemain. But whatever view we choose to take, the diYculty of Artaud’s writing needs to be recognized as an attempt to write against the linguistic and conceptual models of the world within which he Wnds himself caught and so free his inner experience from their contaminating inXuence. The diYculty may equally be occasioned by the attempt to write a new, alternative identity that is non-alienating, and hence, for Artaud, nonrepresentational. But in both its liberating and its creative mode, the near illisibilite´ of much of Artaud’s Wnal writing is an index of its subversive energies and its intellectual earnestness. The Artaudian text plays recklessly with language in the midst of its most extraordinary conceptual leaps, and it is truly unsettling in allowing the pleasures of language to supersede the unfolding of lines of thought as the guiding force within the text. It is this reinjection of literarity into the very heart of existential crisis that makes Artaud’s writing so subversive. This is true of all Artaud’s writing from Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re to Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, but it is especially so of the Cahiers. Artaud has always regarded writing with suspicion because of its representationality, and the famous ‘Pas d’œuvre’ of Le Pe`se-Nerfs (i*. 100) is now the guiding principle of his writing, for writing doubles. The attempt to write through the doubles of the self and to prevent writing doubling the writing self might well produce texts that dance with the devils of unmeaning and psychosis. But Artaud holds that out of these tortured texts new meaning can arise: ‘On peut inventer sa langue et faire parler la langue pure avec un sens hors grammatical mais il faut [ . . . ] qu’il vienne d’aVre’ (ix. 170). It is only, Artaud believes, by passing

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through the alienation of language and writing a poetry of loss that he will be able to forge a non-alienating form of writing. This new writing might well be cacophonous and Xirt with the illisible, but for Artaud this is an indication that language is being used authentically: ‘Car les mots sont cacophonie et la grammaire les arrange mal, la grammaire qui a peur du mal parce qu’elle cherche toujours le bien, le bien eˆtre, quand le mal est la base de l’eˆtre, peste douleur de la cacophonie, We`vre malheur de la disharmonie, pustule escharre d’une polyphonie’ (xviii. 115). We should not, of course, take Artaud’s judgement of his work unquestioned. But, as this chapter has argued, if the cacophony of Artaud’s writing is at times deafening, his discordances are fruitful.

6 A GOD-RIDDEN ARTAUD e t q u ’a s - t u f a i t d e m o n c o r p s , d i e u ?1 It has never occurred to anyone to regard his stomach as a strange or, say, a divine stomach.2

‘[L]a hideuse histoire du De´miurge,’ Artaud writes in one of his Wnal texts, ‘on la connaıˆt.’3 The Artaudian story of the Demiurge is indeed the best-known aspect of his late writings thanks to Derrida’s magisterial article ‘La Parole souZeé’, in which a battery of quotations illustrates what has come to be recognized as the predominant idea of Artaud’s late texts, that God stole his place and body at birth. Yet, if Artaud’s ideas are well known, Derrida’s critical performance has attracted more attention than Artaud’s own short-breathed textual performances, and critics who pay attention to Artaud’s late writings conWne themselves to the territory opened up by the Derridean reading.4 Goodall has argued strongly against the tendency of post-structuralist readings to use Artaud’s texts as grist for their own theoretical mills, and suggests that they keep his texts at a long arm’s length and treat them as symptomatic, not literary products. Yet she arguably goes too far in rehabilitating them (as indeed do the readings of the post-structuralist thinkers). Artaud’s texts are presented as a corps-a`-corps with a heretical Gnostic theology, and so one of their most important features is lost, for the writing against God seems not just hermetic and abstruse (as her claim that they are primarily a modern reinvention of the Gnostic tradition suggests), but frequently crazed. He does not seem to be engaging unsettlingly with a theological system so much as cobbling together a personal system using bric-a-brac drawn from the Gnostic tradition.

Artaud, ‘L’eˆtre a des e´tats innombrables’, 84, 5–6 (1948), 107. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, para. 559. Artaud, ‘Je n’admets pas’, 84, 5–6 (1948), 108. 4 Derrida was the Wrst to draw attention to Artaud’s writings from Rodez, sixteen years before his notebooks were published in 1981. The sacrosanct status enjoyed by this article in Artaud criticism is in part attributable to the fact that his article provided, for a generation of critics, a rare foretaste of the Cahiers. 1 2 3

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The story of the thieving God has become too familiar a part of the late-Artaudian period for its forceful coherence, as well as its oddity, to be readily appreciated. And, though Artaud’s account of a thieving, hostile God has, since Derrida, been recognized as a rich seam of the late Artaudian period, the great wealth of texts that fall outside the remit of this ground-breaking article remain virtually unexplored. By surveying the details of the story of God, especially the unmined seams of the notebooks and correspondence that allow us to follow the overall scheme of Artaud’s ideas as they develop, this chapter suggests there are numerous variants of his anti-God account and how they might Wt together.5 It also seeks to go beyond previous readings by focusing on the work performed by Artaud’s word-craft. But, though it is possible to discern an underlying current of thought in Artaud’s anti-theology and antiphilosophy, the critical desire for unity and coherence should not blind us to the fact that Artaud’s late writings are fragmentary, selfcontradicting, and frequently but a small step away from the arational. Whilst Gnosticism has clearly left its stamp, Artaud’s writings are not comfortably heretical but extravagantly abnormal in their unorthodoxy or anti-orthodoxy, and a reading that glosses over this will miss something essential to the peculiar late-Artaudian world. As a step towards isolating what this extravagance might consist in, it is useful to compare Artaud’s texts with those produced by a famously psychotic mind entertaining ideas similar to his. Freud’s celebrated case history of Judge Schreber has meant that a belief in the predatory sexual activity of God is especially closely associated with psychosis. And when it is added that it is not just as victims of Divine sexual aggression that Artaud and Schreber share common ground, but also in their interweaving of the ideas of God and fecality, then it might seem that Artaud’s internment texts must indeed be classed alongside Schreber’s as the products of a psychotic state. But it would be overly hasty to condemn Artaud’s texts on the basis of explicit propositional content, for the status implicitly accorded by the two to their textual pronouncements shows the two bodies of writing to be of a diVerent order, Schreber’s simply psychotic, Artaud’s a more complex mixture of the extravagant with the playful and the linguistically inebriated. Artaud’s style and textual strategies are integral to the 5 Artaud also writes extensively and with great enmity about organized religion and its rites, particularly in his later texts such as Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu (see, especially, the dossier (xiii. 229–96)). This remains an unexplored area of his writing, but regrettably could not be adequately addressed within the conWnes of this present study.

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development of his ideas, as seen above, and this test-case comparison with Schreber brings out the essential quality of Artaud’s writing. The neat, modest, exact, tight-lipped prose of Schreber is fully at the service of presenting facts with a minimum of fuss, even in a comparatively heated moment such as the following: But now what follows reveals the full perWdy of the policy that has been pursued towards me. Almost every time the need for evacuation was miracled up in me, some other person was sent [ . . . ] to the lavatory, in order to prevent my evacuating. [ . . . ] And thereupon comes the question: ‘Why don’t you sh——?’ to which the brilliant repartee is made that I am ‘so stupid or something’. The pen well-nigh shrinks from recording so monumental a piece of absurdity as that God, blinded by His ignorance of human nature, can positively go to such lengths as to suppose that there can exist a man too stupid to do what every animal can do—too stupid to be able to sh——.6

The prose is level headed, patently sensible, displaying a judgelike equanimity and nice sense of decorum lightly touched with sardonic hyperbole. Schreber’s text serves as a crucial reminder that Artaud’s texts are unusual not simply for expressing similar ideas but especially for their sheer linguistic exuberance and for revelling in their accusations. Thrown by the extravagance of what the Artaud text says about God, readers have found it all too easy to overlook the inventive rhetoric of anger and thrusting linguistic forcefulness that are the truly astonishing things about the Artaudian text. It is equally easy to overlook the carefully controlled, Xuid gracefulness of their anti-rational, sideways switches from focal point to focal point that cock a snub at conventional, unidirectional unfolding of meaning. Pleasure in linguistic performance and the undermining of the ethos of high thought fuse seamlessly. The Artaudian text, with its impish, mock magisterial sounding-oV and gleefully precise scansion, is hot-blooded in its desire for linguistic jouissance: Connaissez-vous quelque chose de plus outrageusement fećal que l’histoire de dieu et de son eˆtre: s a t a n , la membrane du cœur la truie ignominieuse de l’illusoire universel qui de ses te´tines baveuses 6 Schreiber, quoted in Sigmund Freud, The Penguin Freud Library (London: Penguin, 1979), ix. 158.

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ne nous a jamais dissimule´ que le Neánt? (xiii. 107)

Artaud’s texts take great linguistic pleasure in themselves, savouring their own Xavour on the tongue, drawing out their pleasure of accusing God into the lengthy mouthfuls of ‘outrageusement’ and ‘ignomineuse’ with all the greedy sensuality of a debauched logophile. It is as if all the libidinous desire Artaud denies the body were transferred to juicy linguistic performance. Indeed his writing is not just desire-driven but saturated with linguistic gluttony and self-pleasure. The Artaudian text Xaunts its literarity and delights in working on the linguistic medium, pausing at the end of each line to appraise its own linguistic agility. This word-fun is not incidental—not only does it mark the text’s opposition to high-minded intellectuality (in a way reminiscent of the word-play of Derrida, who interestingly fails to pick up on the fun of Artaud); it is also the very hallmark of Artaud’s later writings. Criticism has managed to quell subversive Artaudian mischief from its portraits of his texts, but mischief is crucial to late Artaud, both the most striking characteristic for the reader of his Wnal poetry collections and an integral part of the strategy of motility and self-creation: ‘Je suis un eˆtre humoristique e´ternel et c’est moi. [ . . . ] Cela ne veut pas dire que je doive toujours apparaıˆtre sous l’eˆtre d’Artaud ni jamais. Ce n’est pas de tout mon eˆtre vrai. C’est ma caricature’ (xv. 150). Just as Jacques Vache´ used umour as a shock treatment to cauterize corrupted forms, Artaud uses a deadpan ‘humour absolu concret mais de l’humour’ (xiv*. 105) as part of the process of taking hold of reality and making it his object. As with Surrealist humorists, Artaud’s revolt against the world goes hand in hand with a subversion of discourse and of the expressive modes that impose that reality. Pleasure in linguistic performance therefore drives not just a poetic but also a general existential stance. But linguistic agility implies control, and this is as much in evidence in Artaud’s late poetry as linguistic indulgence. In Artaud’s world of collapsing conceptual systems and hate-driven writing there is a potential for disastrous non-diVerentiation. The Cahiers show how an underlying impulse of Artaud’s writing is towards alarmingly distended sentences eVacing boundaries between semantic units. But in the poetry, writing is kept on a tight leash, and it is common to Wnd lines of a solitary word. In the stanza quoted above, the material is cut into gobbets of quasi-independent sense units and the text refuses to explicate precise

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relationships between the lines. The lineation imposes structure on a sentence that Artaud can thereby aVord to leave syntactically and semantically fuzzy without endangering its lisibilite´. This is typical of Artaud’s late poetry in which long and short lines take on equal importance, and the expansion and contraction of stanzas establish sets of equivalencies that cut across orthodox values. An extreme example of this is in the poem ‘Interjections’ (xiv**. 11–25), where the word ‘m o i ?’ is used as a complete stanza (xiv**. 20) and is hence of equal signifying weight to a subsequent stanza of 15 lines and 284 words fulminating against ‘envouˆteurs’ (xiv**. 24). Lineation is but one structure-provider, and Artaud’s text sets up complex weaves by alliterative echoes (‘truie’, ‘te´tine’); by rhyme (‘cœur’, ‘ignomineuse’, ‘baveuses’); by syntactic echoes generating semantic alignments (‘que l’histoire de dieu’, ‘que le Neánt’ and ‘de son eˆtre’, ‘de l’illusoire universel’); as well as secondary networks of aesthetically pleasing recurrence such as lines starting with the deWnite article or a relative pronoun. Artaud’s poetry combines phonological and syntactic eVects to generate a well-deWned, structured Xux of true aesthetic power and to redraw concepts forcefully. Between Schreber and Artaud lies, in Barthesian terms, all the distance between an écrivant and an écrivain. Artaud’s anti-theology is not, then, what would normally be called a body of thought but poetry about Artaud and about God that is hostile to inherited onto-theology. What is more, it is composed of fragmentary remarks scattered through nineteen volumes of writing (ix–xxvi). Most frequently these remarks burst forth on a crescendo of rant against the body, against the mind, or, towards the end of his career, against birth. It is rare to Wnd any moderately prolonged articulation of his ideas on God; they tend to be brief poisonous interjections, and, when the comments do extend over more than a few lines, their bulk is normally composed of a rhetoric of hatred that spins round on itself. The general impression is of a persistent background noise against God that only occasionally crackles into the sustained fulminations Derrida’s article have made famous. The ‘hideuse histoire’, if strongly present, is not the centrepiece of Artaud’s late writing (Derrida cannot be held responsible for the reactions of his readers, but Artaud is nevertheless a victim here of Derrida’s success). The struggle with God is the underlying fabric of Artaud’s text, usually covered with his concerns about mind, body, name, birth, identity, genealogies, and the plethora of topics Artaud draws into his search for an autonomous textual self. The negative theology has to be understood as one part of a far broader dissolution

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of orthodox ways of thinking that is the primary concern of the Cahiers and Wnal poetry. An important neglected feature of Artaud’s thought on God is that it is initially developed through a privileging of the hidden spaces of the undermind.7 Though he oVers a melodramatic portrayal of mental processes hijacked by hostile transcendental forces, it nevertheless serves to integrate his complaints against God into a system. The tendency to dramatize cerebration is familiar from his early writings, as is the claim to unearth deep Xaws within the psyche. A general feature of Artaud’s thought is a desire for depth and complication springing from his ambition to discover mythic truths, with their status secured by their profondeur in the depths of time or self. The intellectual vanity discernible in the desire to discover profound truths by a pioneering exploration of uncharted depths is apparent in the Wrst pages of the Cahiers, where Artaud lays down a statement of intent in characteristically selfimportant and enticingly mysterious terms: ‘Il ne s’agit plus d’un voyage au Pays des Tarahumaras ou en Irlande, mais d’un voyage plus chaotique et dramatique et qui [ . . . ] n’en traduit que mieux les spasmes geńe´siques d’une penseé en pleine formation, en pleine essence, a` ce point crucial de l’explosion mentale ou` les mots du Verbe ne sont pas encore issus, ni de´ja` ne´s’ (xv. 11). However rousing a note of promised high drama Artaud might strike here, his ideas on the mind are far less concerned with the potential purity of pre-verbal thought than with the denaturing of thought by ‘le Verbe’. Whereas in the texts of the 1920s and 1930s Artaud had pursued an ideal of pure thought for its truthcapturing properties, he now thinks in terms of liberating his mind from the multitude of alienating forces that besiege it. Purity has become equated to a paring-down. In typical fashion, the decision to explore the undermind amounts to its successful completion. The Cahiers oVer no phenomenological investigations into mind or self, only dramatized ‘revelations’. These inventive theorizings suggest that the many outside forces exerted upon the self are not impersonal but ‘eˆtres’, agents acting to fulWl their own desires. Attaining selfhood is therefore not just a matter of maintaining the integrity of the self in the face of the centripetal forces that arise from 7 The redeWnition of mind and self as porous is clearly logically prior to a diagnosis that alienation results from God’s inWltration of Artaud’s inner space, but it is unclear in Artaud’s writings which leads to the other. The anti-theology and the anti-philosophy emerge and develop in tandem, and the two are still evolving in the Wnal texts of 1947 (Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu, Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, Artaud le Moˆmo).

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the desiring, perceptual interaction with the world. These dispersing forces are presented as scavenging agents scattering the self in a ‘bataille entre le moi et le non-moi’ (NER 100). Artaud adds that these inner, alien agents camouXage their presence by acting as if they were the natural, non-alien substructures of the self: ‘cet eVarant proble`me du moi qui ne veut jamais se rendre a` lui-meˆme, lui-meˆme, parce qu’il ne cesse pas d’eˆtre sans le savoir attire´ par l’intrusion envahissante des choses, de toutes les choses, qui ne sont pas lui et qui en lui essaient de se faire prendre pour lui’ (NER 100). Conscious experience opens the door to devious agents that, masquerading as the self, pollute and supplant it. Abstract determining inXuences—the inevitable eVects of the desiring and perceptual projections of self into world that are the basic stuV of human experience—are thus presented by the Artaudian text as willing, desiring, hostile, cunning agents bent on feeding on his consciousness and identity. Artaud entertains an impossibly purist ideal of what would constitute undetermined consciousness, for any interaction with the world that aVects his sense of self is, eVectively, proscribed. Forces exerted on the individual by the fact of being a consciousness in the world are transformed by Artaud’s text into covert protagonists that install themselves in his inner space and establish a stronghold in his unconscious: ‘l’inconscient responsable des choses [ . . . ] voudrait bien que nous le prenions toujours pour de l’inconscient alors qu’ [ . . . ] en dehors de nous il sait tre`s bien d’ou` il vient’ (xi. 48). The true reason Artaud has no access to the unconscious is, he decides, because it is not really part of him. Instead, it is either the consciousness of a speciWc other (God), or a collective consciousness composed of the nexus of edicts, taboos, and other determining forces issuing from society. In either case, this presence within him seeks to further the propagation of its own sphere of inXuence at the expense of Artaud’s autonomy. ‘L’inconscient’ is the term slipped into Artaud’s tongue to mask the presence of the other who, by this trick, installs himself unnoticed within the mind and so enjoys unchallengeable, as unsuspected, dominion: ‘cet inconscient qui serait, paraıˆt-il, notre maıˆtre et qu’on nous refuse le droit d’accuser parce qu’on nous dit que par nature il est de «l’inconscient»’ (xi. 48).8 Artaud transforms the world of cerebration into a dramatic scenario in which a defenceless, 8 The whole is reminiscent of Artaud’s account of ‘envouˆtement’, and in particular of a variant he had developed near the beginning of his time at Rodez: ‘une forme d’envouˆtement particulie`re qu’on appelle l’envouˆtement en oubli pour l’enlever [ . . . ] de la conscience de [ . . . ] l’envouˆte´ (x. 85). Unconscious activity is coming to be another name for ‘envouˆtement’; in both cases the other takes hold of the self and also of the possibility of being aware of this disappropriation.

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virginal pure self is oVered up to a hellish army of malevolent societal and transcendental forces that assail it from without and displace it from within. Artaud’s picture of everyday conscious activity is of the self deprived of existence between the tyrannical linguistic ersatz ‘I’ and the equally tyrannical and alien unconscious. But, despite all the alienating forces arrayed within the mind, and despite the emphasis he famously places on the body as the locus of identity, Artaud does not downgrade the mind’s importance as a constituent of identity. Having made the integrity of mental activity seem a chimera, he bluntly declares the need to eradicate the unconscious: ‘Je n’accepte pas l’inconscient, je n’en veux absolument pas en moi’ (xv. 23). A simple, non-alienating form of consciousness—the form of consciousness that can be expressed only in the new form of God-purged language his texts imagine—is to expand over the whole inner space, and, when speaking as the reconstructed Artaud, he lays claim to just such an unlimited consciousness: ‘je suis le maıˆtre absolu de ma conscience et de mon inconscient et je fais ce qui me plaıˆt sans attendre d’ordre ou de conseil de quelque force, de quelque esprit, ou de quelque eńergie ou sollicitation interne que ce soit’ (xvii. 44). Full, unchallenged consciousness is claimed for the textual identity despite the alienating and fragmenting forces let slip against Artaud by the outside world and by God. Or, put diVerently, when Artaud is imagining in his texts what it would mean to be wholly undetermined, it is clear this would entail being without an unconscious, and so, when speaking in the name of the textual subject (the Wgure Antonin Artaud), he states that in this his textual universe the unconscious does not exist. Artaud’s consciousness is to Wll, permeate, and infuse his entire world, and this is conceivable only if he creates that world—that is, in the world of the text. But, instead of this imagined pure, omnipresent self-identity, the conscious self for Artaud is an empty vessel Wlled by parasitic entities the individual mistakes for himself: ce qui croit toujours eˆtre l’eˆtre en reálite´ ne l’est plus et [ . . . ] le moi en se vivant soi-meˆme ne sait pas que c’est son propre vampire qui tient la place qu’il n’a plus. Le double du theáˆtre c’est la vie, mais le double du moi et de l’eˆtre est une essence imperceptible qui [ . . . ] induit l’eˆtre humain a` ne vivre que sur le principe inconscient des eYgies, des statues morales toutes mouleés et toutes faites, c’est-a`-dire sans lutte avec les myste`res de son esprit. Il est persuade´ de penser et vouloir et il ne s’aperçoit pas que c’est l’autre qui pense, sans meˆme lui demander son avis ou son choix [ . . . ] or tout cela c’est l’ennemi, c’est l’autre car le moi c’est le non-manifeste´, le vide. (xi. 45–6)

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In a passage such as this, many of Artaud’s most characteristic stylistic devices are to be found: the preference for reXexive and looped structures to describe the self (‘le moi en se vivant soi-meˆme’), a similar syntactically inelegant insistence on the word ‘eˆtre’, and the high frequency of binary structures (‘des eYgies, des statues morales’; ‘c’est l’ennemi, c’est l’autre’; ‘le non-manifeste´, le vide’). Artaud’s prose reenacts the process of doubling it decries. But this passage is unusual in combining two accounts of alienation, writing both of the socio-linguistic determination of the individual, and of the overarching ontological alienation that is a given of human existence in a divine universe.9 Artaud makes no distinction here between the vampirism of his identity by doubles, a metaphysical practice, and the internalization of discourse. Both quash the possibility of autonomy and both have the same duping eVect, viz. ‘ce qui croit [ . . . ] eˆtre l’eˆtre [ . . . ] ne l’est plus’. A collective or divine other directs Artaud’s conscious existence, and, under this outside control, the self is unaware that it brings about its own eclipse. Both the individuated consciousness (the ‘moi’) and the bedrock conscious being (‘l’eˆtre’)—the socio-linguistic being and the metaphysical entity—are crowded out of existence by an ‘essence imperceptible’, which will later be named as God but which here is also social doxa. In the Rodez period, this socio-linguistic account normally plays a secondary role to divinely imposed alienation, and it is only in such postinternment texts as Van Gogh, le suicide´ de la socie´te´ that it acquires equal prominence. Nevertheless, if more characteristic of the late poetry, Artaud fulminates in the Rodez writings against man’s cowardly refusal to assume his full freedom and creativity and vents his anger at the intellectual laziness of man when it comes to enquiring into his own constitution (‘les myste`res de son esprit’). Instead of grappling with existence, man allows ready-made ideas to take over his nature. Man, for Artaud, does not put his name to his own life but stumbles along in a minimally conscious state, unthinkingly interpreting his own existence through the conceptual apparatus of the inherited world view, and so the self, unenquiringly submitting to social doxa, has become a shadow yielding its place to the other. For the self to exist independently of this omnipresent other requires a continually renewed tussle with the mind: ‘le moi devant chaque penseé doit se me´riter et se gagner lui-meˆme’ (xv. 19), but man has instead relinquished his space to an automaton, mummiWed usurper-self: ‘[l’homme] aime mieux que l’automate des 9 The link between the two, other than the contamination of the individual by alterity, is God as ‘le Verbe’.

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limbes me`ne l’œuvre de son propre soi’ (xv. 20). Although ideas of limbo are generally associated in the Artaudian text with the authentic self banished to a form of sub-existence, here the ‘automate des limbes’ is the socially inculcated self that reduces the subject’s experience of his own subjecthood according to that which is readily sayable and thinkable. Artaud therefore concludes these opening remarks of his Wrst notebook with the announcement of ‘la grande guerre qui sauvera notre identite´’ (xv. 20) to be waged against the mind, against orthodox discourse, against alienation within language, against God, and, most importantly, against what passes as the self: Nous croyons eˆtre nous et nous ne le sommes plus parce que nous ne nous apercevons pas que ce qui faisait notre moi a e´te´ ravi dans les e´toiles par celui meˆme qui se choisit en nous et que nous prenons comme le summum de nousmeˆmes, alors que c’est dans ce summum de nous-meˆmes, dans cette eńerge´tique ineVable du moi qui nous me´duse [ . . . ] qu’a lieu cette deńaturation [ . . . ] avec une rapidite´ si subtile, un tour de passe si instantane´ que l’escamoteur a su se dissimuler en nous-meˆmes, eˆtre nous et penser pour nous. Et nous ne sommes plus que ses propres porteurs. (xv. 20)

The substance of the self has been taken over by another. Our cherished selves are actually not us at all; rather, they put themselves forward as ours whilst violating our space (‘notre moi a e´te´ ravi [ . . . ] par celui meˆme qui se choisit en nous et que nous prenons comme le summum de nous-meˆmes’). This occurs in a domain outside our ken (‘dans les e´toiles’) and our lucidity is paralysed (‘me´dus[e´]’) and cannot put what happens into words. Artaud is convinced of his displacement from his own centre by the forces of alterity, and this alienation explains why what we commonly take for the self is unsayable, an ‘ineVable du moi’, for it is not us at all. The high-level, mentalizing, reXexive, conscious self that we normally designate when we speak of our own self—what Artaud later mockingly calls ‘Monsieur Moâ’, though even here the mockery is partially directed against his own writing, which names the authentic Artaud le Moˆmo (Mo-nsieur Moˆ-a)—is actually, it would seem, only the most advanced outpost of the other entrenched in the unconscious. Artaud continues the above passage with reference to subtlety, tricks, and an ‘escamoteur’, and his account changes from a thick version of socio-linguistic alterity to the rather diVerent proposition that alienation occurs because of the intervention of a thieving other. The key closing lines of this description strongly echo the texts of Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re in their choice of terms, with the major diVerence that now it is not words that are lost but the substance of the self that is

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actively stolen. In a page—a page that stands at the head of the Cahiers— man’s laziness in resisting the denaturing of thought by inherited discourse has been transformed into a usurper self, disguised as our own highest manifestation, who precedes and displaces us until it is taken as our highest reality. The account of divine theft of Artaud’s self (and, by extension, his later account of body theft) is built on the foundations of general socio-linguistic determination that has occupied him for some time, but it is also generated by the redeployment of images originally used twenty years earlier to describe Artaud’s particular sense of words volatizing at the touch of his mind. It is ironic that the leading idea of one complaining of the determining force exerted by the other within language should in fact be nourished and moulded by his own past words. For from here it is but a small step to state that it is ‘Dieu qui me vampirisait’ (xv. 251). All that needs to be done is to equate God with the unconscious (‘notre inconscient: dieu’ (xi. 90)), and He thereby falls under the critique of the undermind. Under Artaud’s pen, God revels in the inescapable control He thereby exercises over Artaud’s mind: ‘l’esprit qui avait bu ma conscience voulait toujours re´gner a` la place du moi et me disait: Tu n’a pas d’aˆme, ni de de´termination puisque je suis, moi, Dieu, ton de´terminant’ (xvi. 283). God reigns supreme in Artaud’s mind, always in position, unfailingly ready to catch Artaud’s Xow of experience and put it to His own use. This Divine presence not only controls Artaud’s mental space; in drinking the Xow of Artaud’s consciousness He lives Artaud’s life in his place, for: ‘Au-dessus de la psychologie d’Antonin Artaud il y a la psychologie d’un autre j qui vit, boit, mange, dort, pense et reˆve dans mon corps’ (xiv**. 71). God has taken over from where Artaud should be; He has become Artaud’s self. On the evidence of the Cahiers, though this does not transpire in the texts intended for publication, the basic reason behind the redeWnition of God as Artaud’s inner colonizer is that He is bodiless and so in need of a place to bring Himself into existence.10 For Artaud, all existence in the world, including God’s, is conceivable only with a bodily support: ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est pour un eˆtre que d’eˆtre? C’est avoir corps et se sentir corps dans l’espace’ (xv. 160). There is no such thing as a necessary being (the Scholastic deWnition of God), only incarnate being:

10 By the time of the Wnal texts, Artaud’s account has taken on a life of its own and God has acquired a body. In the most famous of the passages referring to the theft of his body by God, Artaud describes how ‘ce corps j qui poursuivait [ . . . ] le mien j [ . . . ] naquit j par l’e´ventration de mon corps’ (‘Je n’admets pas’, 108–9).

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l’eˆtre n’a pas de corps, c’est l’homme, . . qui a un corps, l’eˆtre n’est qu’un mot. (xiii. 283)11

But the God of the Western tradition is by deWnition bodiless (as Artaud reminds himself: ‘l’Eˆtre Absolu n’a pas de corps’ (xv. 160)) and so must take possession of human bodies if He is to exist in the world. God, and the host of non-physical entities that do His handiwork, of which the soul is only the most obvious instance, are nothing other than metaphysical vampires: to feed their existential appetites they take possession of an identity space and thereby its bodily support. All that is not incarnate is therefore a threat to integrity: ‘Croyant se vivre eux-meˆmes [les mois] ils ne s’apercoivent pas que c’est leur vampire, leur ennemi, cet autre qui s’est toujours voulu eux-meˆmes et qui n’ayant pas de corps a pris le leur pour eˆtre, qui tient la place ou` ils s’imaginent encore vivre’ (xv. 19). Mental space and physical space are, for Artaud, indissociable, and this is why the account of God’s possession of the mind so rapidly spreads out into the charge that God steals Artaud’s body. If ‘le Verbe’ exists in the mind, it thereby exists in the body. So, to schematize the shifts in Artaud’s thought, the account of God as prime agent of doubling arises from a mythologization of socio-linguistic determination that culpabilizes God because of His status as ‘le Verbe’. The Wrst step of the anti-theology therefore concerns only God’s invisible presence within the linguistic order. The second step is a hostile interpretation of the concept ‘God’, where Artaud privileges the disembodied nature of God over the necessity of His existence and in this way hardens the account of Divine shadowing into one of Divine body-theft. Here it is both mind and body that are aVected. Artaud would seem to arrive at his extraordinary reinvention of God as body thief by something akin to the following, typically unreasonable logic: to wield power in this world God must be in this world, and to be in this world, he is, Artaud decides, dependent upon mankind’s making room for Him in their lives, and this making room for Him is actually a question of lending one’s identity space to God. All space, including mental space, is also physical space, and so God exists in the human body. So the story of God, though a formidably 11 By this stage God has been demoted to a lower-case letter (‘dieu’). By extension, when He is referred to as Being Artaud uses the lower case. Therefore this quotation refers both to general and to the Divine being.

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extravagant univers imaginaire, retains the Wrm imprint of traditional theological and philosophical ideas, and the account of Divine vampirism may be arrived at by something resembling a process of extrapolation from these orthodox ideas. It is, for Artaud, a matter of calling things by their proper name, not a matter of mud slinging, to state that God is ‘le voleur e´ternel’ (xv. 177), for He has only ever existed by dispossessing humanity. By a further slippage typical of Artaud’s thought process of highly selective (thus unchecked) exaggeration, the cupidity of God is such that He does not just wish to possess Artaud’s space but actively desires to replace Artaud: ‘Dieu est autre chose, il est ce qui veut eˆtre soi’ (xvi. 169). The struggle to possess Artaud’s body space is a matter of life or limbo, since neither Artaud nor God can exist fully without that space. God’s existence is, therefore, not just contingent on others; He can exist only at the expense of human existence: ‘Dieu n’a jamais rien fait pour moi que de m’enlever la vie pour la donner a` ses passions’ (xv. 211). Artaud is left only a form of existential residue: ‘L’eˆtre en soi sorti lui de moi-meˆme non-eˆtre n’a jamais voulu autre chose que me donner a` manger ses excre´ments et me faire vouloir les manger’ (xv. 98). This idea is further exaggerated, until Artaud’s God is not just a thieving other but a libidinous vampire who ‘nous de´sire pour nous avaler et nous reprendre notre moi’ (xv. 146). God’s libidinous desires may be directed towards a brutish, crapulent sexual possession of Artaud’s body: ‘dieu a dit [ . . . ] je trouverai bien [ . . . ] le moyen de resurgir a` [s]a place [ . . . ] apre`s avoir bite´, glotte´, j luthe´, lime´’ (xiv**. 12); or alternatively towards lodging in Artaud’s pudenda and thus both satisfying His desire for abjection and, by the erotic rites He practises on Artaud, threatening Artaud’s virginal purity: ‘j’ai invente´ cela, moi, eˆtre, d’avoir instaure´ cet infaˆme, qui est de prendre place dans ton propre cu, j [ . . . ] moi j prince dans ton vit’ (xxv. 211). The origins of the negative theology, God’s performative language and inadvertently alienating presence within Artaud’s language, have been left far behind. God is now the perpetrator of demonic, salacious aggression on Artaud’s defenceless body. But why should Artaud, once he relinquishes his Christian beliefs, develop so complicated a negative theology rather than simply drop God from his world view? It seems a perverse and cantankerous way of thinking (and smacks of the persecution complex from which he was diagnosed as suVering). It is largely attributable to the fact that, though Artaud rejects the idea of a benevolent God, he still retains many of the thought patterns of Gnosticism, in particular the idea that alienation in the world may be traced to a catastrophic beginning. Only the

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catastrophe is no longer the cosmogenic but his personal origin. Especially in the texts written for publication after his release from Rodez, birth is presented as a Wght for possession of the infant’s body: celui qui naıˆt ne se croit pas seul a` naıˆtre, car il voit combien d’autres . . . . essayent . . . . de se faire, a` cette occasion, un corps. (xiv**. 21–2)

By now it is not just God but God and the many ‘eˆtres’ that sweep along behind him who seek to come to life in the infant’s body. God has become a multiple being, and when Artaud asks himself: ‘qu’est-ce que dieu?’, the answer is: ‘Le consortium du rassemblement universel j de toutes les paresses j et de tous le laˆcheˆte´s.’12 This sprawling, multiple, allthieving bully of a God pillages and ravishes human bodies. His existence resides upon an ‘inneíte´ voleé’,13 and this essential ‘unbornliness’ means he has to steal Artaud’s birth. The true story of Artaud’s origin is: [ . . . ] celle de ce corps qui poursuivait (et ne suivait pas) le mien et qui pour passer premier et naıˆtre se projeta a` travers mon corps et naquit par l’e´ventration de mon corps dont il garda un morceau sur lui aWn de se faire passer pour moi-meˆme . . . [ . . . ] se sachant irrecevable et voulant vivre quand meˆme a` tout prix [le De´miurge] ne trouva rien de mieux pour être que de naıˆtre au prix de mon assassinat.14 12 13 14

Artaud, ‘L’eˆtre a des e´tats innombrables’, 107. Artaud, ‘Main d’ouvrier et Main de singe’, K, 1–2 (1948), 3. Artaud, ‘Je n’admets pas’, 108–9.

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By the time he writes this in 1948 it is clear the divine displacement of Artaud is no accident but a deliberate pursuit, which is enacted in the syllables hurriedly jostling one another to squeeze into the rhythm (‘qui poursuivait (et ne suivait pas) le mien’). The stepping page layout of ‘aWn j de se faire passer’ underlines the methodical intent driving towards the purchase of ‘eˆtre’ at the price of ‘assassinat’, both of which are set into relationships of equivalence by their indentation to birth (‘naquit’) and masquerade (‘de se faire passer’). Given that God can exist only by sexually possessing Artaud’s body or by inWltrating it, he is compared to an avaricious and lazy parasite: ‘Dieu est un microbe intelligent et qui hait l’eˆtre et ne veut jamais payer pour eˆtre lui alors qu’il faut toujours payer pour eˆtre soi’ (xvi. 167). Being means being body and God has refused to undergo the suVering of bodily existence, delegating bodily suVering to humankind, as the reprise of ‘pour eˆtre . . . pour eˆtre’ insists, whilst reaping the ontological beneWts for himself. The list of accusations against the cowardly God who prefers to sneak into this world as an immaterial parasite in Artaud’s body goes on and on, running from the earliest Cahiers to the latest texts of Suppoˆts et Suppliciations. Artaud Wnds that God is always present: ‘le parasite dieu est sur moi et me suit, j et me suit, partout ou` suppura ma vie’ (xiv**. 12). He is an ineradicable (‘et me suit, j et me suit’) doubling menace and the alpha and the omega of Artaud’s problems: ‘mon ennemi Premier et Dernier c’est Dieu [ . . . ] le non-eˆtre qui veut toujours se reposer dans son inexistence de laˆchete´’ (xv. 267–8). The Gnostic origins and (comparatively) careful theologizing have been all but overwritten, and Artaud’s negative theology has taken on a life of its own. His thought propels itself forward to ever more provocative and blasphemous ideas and displays a calculated recklessness with regard to what socio-cultural orthodoxy deems may and may not be said. God aVords Artaud the ideal topic to contravene cultural edicts and be as indecorous as possible. This is evident when Artaud expands the story to claim that, once God has taken hold of Artaud’s body, He takes up residence in his rectum: La main de singe [ . . . ] . . . . [ . . . ] n’a jamais voulu travailler, mais vivait du prix de ma douleur entie`re que dans mon grand coˆlon elle ramonait . . . . que dans sa paume elle retient,

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en ramenant du cimitie`re, tout c’que t’avais dans le derrie`re. (xiv**. 65)

Veering towards a semi-sensical taunt of playground rhythms and rhymes, the Artaudian text compounds the crimes against good taste, and the texts are all the more provocative for the conjunction of blasphemy and puerility. But beneath this surface of what can now, like Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God, seem outmoded shock tactics and facile sacrilege, is an important issue at stake: the right to invent the story of God according to Artaud. In the textual universe plotted out in his late writings, the concept ‘dieu’ may be redeWned at will, in such a way as to guarantee the eventual autonomy and independence of the textual identity (the Wgure) Antonin Artaud.15 Equally, in terms of Artaud’s reconceptualizing of onto-theological categories, the importance of these insulting deWnitions of God as parasite, microbe, thieving monkey, and even, in Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu, as pubic louse (xiii. 86), lies not in their common viliWcation and belittling of God, but in the fact that the parasitism of God implies that He is ontologically secondary: ‘c’est l’eˆtre qui t’a fait Dieu et non toi, avant lui tu ne l’e´tais pas’ (xv. 26). God’s bodiless nature has, by a process of slippage and inference, come to mean that Artaud is First Principle. This sort of intensely imagized conceptualizing is highly characteristic of the later Artaud. A property of an abstract concept is foregrounded and overly weighted in comparison to the other properties of that concept. In this instance, the fact that God is not incarnate is taken to be His deWning characteristic. Then an imagistic interpretation based on a conceptual leap is established. God is not incarnate, so He needs and desires to have body, a body, Artaud’s body. The overly weighted property of not having body thus slips to God being a parasite. Then the implications of this Wrmly established image are spelt out: if God is a parasite, then His existence depends upon the body of others, and so the body is ontologically prior to the transcendent Godhead: ‘Mon corps [ . . . ] eut toujours toute primaute´ sur l’esprit et l’intelligence de Dieu’ (xv. 198). By implication, this means that Being in the world is ontologically prior to divine 15 Although the blasphemy of Suppoˆts et Suppliciations can seem now puzzlingly overzealous rather than shocking, at the time it caused the book to be turned down by its agreed publisher, as The´venin writes: ‘Devant [ . . . ] la violence du contenu qui, nous le tenons de sa propre bouche, a provoque´ chez lui une crise de conscience religieuse, Louis Broder renonce a` le publier’ (xiv*. 231 n.).

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being: ‘Dieu est une Faculte´ de l’eˆtre et non pas l’eˆtre une creátion de Dieu’ (xv. 321). And, if God exists through man and not man through God, then this implies that it is the human mind that subtends and supports the reality that God claims to be of His making: ‘C’est l’homme [ . . . ] qui pense, qui fait, qui invente et qui trouve, c’est l’esprit de l’homme qui peut tout, celui de Dieu n’est que son suceur’ (xvi. 317). By this process of gradual conceptual slippage God Wrst becomes Artaud, and Artaud then takes on the status and powers of God: ‘C’est moi, j l’Homme j qui serai le juge j en Wn de compte j c’est a` moi j que tous les e´le´ments j du corps et des choses j viendront s’en re´fe´rer j c’est l’e´tat de mon j corps qui fera j le Jugement Dernier.’16

This is Artaud’s typical way of thinking where, if each shift from one analogy to the next seems comprehensible, the aggregate slippage is extravagant (this explains why the reader feels the coherence to be eery). God has become Artaud’s double, not just in the sense that He exists in this world by a ghostly overlaying of Artaud’s space, but in the sense that He resembles Artaud, or rather is what Artaud should have been. It is not man who exists in God’s image, He exists in Artaud’s image: [ . . . Dieu] n’a d’autre issue, pour vivre, que de vivre en reXet de moi, me jouant cette entourloupette ensuite, de me dire: «C’est toi qui doubles, c’est toi le double et non pas moi.» (xiv**. 70)

The unsubtle repetition of ‘vivre’ and dual usage of ‘double’ as noun and verb, linked phonically to the nasty little trick, turn God’s behaviour into a gauchely obvious move. But why should Artaud set up God as his double as opposed to his usurper? Once, following Goodall’s lead, the Gnostic conception of God is taken into consideration, then the logic behind this suddenly comes into focus. In the Gnostic Gospels the original God is deWned as primordial self-presence: ‘He alone is the one who knows himself as he is [ . . . ] and has the ability to conceive of himself, to see himself, to name himself, he alone is the one who is his own mind, his own eye, his own mouth, and who is what he thinks, what he sees, what he speaks.’17 These feats of mental, cognitive, and bodily self-coincidence are precisely what Artaud plans for his textual identity. ‘C’est moi’, 84, 5–6 (1948), 131. Quoted in Goodall, Artaud and the Gnostic Drama, 9. From ‘The Tripartite Tractate’, trans. Harold W. Attridge and Dieter Muller, in The Nag Hammadi Library, ed. James M. Robinson (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988), 58–103. 16 17

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By claiming, or imagining, that God stole his place at birth, all that needs to be done to attain perfect self-presence (for his textual identity) is to reappropriate in his own name the identity space and associated attributes that are his by right. DeWning the God of his textual universe as He who steals Artaud’s place is therefore an indirect way of securing the authentic Artaud’s self-identity, for it makes perfect self-presence (the textual) Artaud’s true, original nature. Artaud invents an account of his original moment that in one bold stroke both explains his alienation and guarantees his self-identity (that is, the self-identity of his textual identity). On the one hand, then, Artaud’s God is removed from the textual reality, a ‘non-eˆtre’. On the other, God is very much present in this textual world, inWltrating Artaud’s body, taking possession of it in order to bring Himself to life. The ambivalence of God’s status is not speciWc to the Cahiers, in which Artaud is working out his ideas on God, but runs through to the latest texts intended for publication. It is never deWnitively settled whether God is the First Principle or a parasite dependent upon Artaud to have any existence, although, given that Artaud’s writings are supposed to fulWl the function of eradicating God from their textual universe, his parasitism is increasingly emphasized over his primacy. At times God is at the heart of a superior, other-worldly untarnished Being, Artaud expelled into vitiated this-worldly reality (‘pourquoi m’a-t-il expulse´, moi. L’Autre, l’e´ternel Alieńe´ de Tout qui ne touche a` rien et a` quoi rien ne touche’ (xv. 239)). Far more frequently, Artaud is at the heart of a prized this-worldly being, and so God tries to vampirize Artaud in order to acquire ontological presence. At yet other times, God successfully steals Artaud’s position at the heart of this-worldly being, and Artaud is banished to a netherworld. Finally, at times God is allowed foursquare presence within this-worldly reality, but this contaminates Him with the abjection and alienation inherent to this-worldly existence; in this case God insanely abandons his place of perfect selfpresence and so becomes the object of Artaud’s scorn. God, then, is at times bodiless, and at times vicariously incarnate; at times cowardly sheltering in a transcendental haven, at times resplendent in the halo of transcendentally guaranteed self-presence; at times a blundering and inept thief prowling around outside Artaud’s space, at times the furtive usurper gleefully evicting Artaud into ontological outer darkness. Artaud’s accounts of God are many and contradictory, but He is at all times and in all places responsible for Artaud’s sense of alienation. And what needs to be retained is that the variations do not undermine the indictment of God; they render it universal.

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So, despite all the viliWcation of God and the many pronouncements declaring the absolute necessity of being rid of Him, Artaud maintains God in his textual universe. Artaud cannot get rid of God without depriving his thought of its supporting structure, and so ironically Artaud’s ideas on God depend parasitically on the theology they desecrate. This is one of the fundamental tensions controlling Artaud’s later thought, which is a heroic eVort (or so it seems from inside Artaud’s textual world—from the outside it seems hugely laboured) to free himself from conceptual dependency on God. The conceptual tentacles of God have bonded with so much of the Western world view that it is a supreme undertaking just to identify and isolate His presence. God is so insidious a threat for Artaud, He has inWltrated Himself so extensively and subtly across the conceptual landscape that Artaud can only gesture towards the sort of textual world it would be if God were ever eradicated at some future time. Not only is God a parasite in bodies; He is a parasite in conceptual frameworks: Pourquoi dieu? Parce que cette ideé n’a cesse´ de s’e´vertuer a` impregner la conscience humaine [ . . . ] comme un ećran entre moi et moi. (xiv**. 199)

God is so ever-present as to be almost invisible, and the only way that Artaud can detect His presence is by the fact that he has not yet achieved self-elision and self-closure—that there remains something between ‘moi’ and ‘moi’. This is why half of the 2,000 or so Rodez notebook pages are given over to a new revelation of the alienating God. Whilst it would be generally admitted that the concept of ‘God’ has placed its seal on our world view, Artaud takes this with a new seriousness. If the removal of God is always something to be done and never something Artaud claims to have done, this is no inconsistency but instead the most important point about God’s removal: it is an unthinkably radical project. Just as the identity that Artaud is creating is perpetually deferred, so is the doing-away with God: ‘Je ne veux pas que Dieu descende dans l’homme mais que l’homme e´limine Dieu toujours’ (xv. 219, emphasis added). The one cannot occur without the other: ‘Je n’ai pas de ligne vraie ou fausse, ma ligne est de tuer Dieu e´ternellement [ . . . ] Cela est mon ideé me`re’ (xv. 49). The labour of self-creation is one with that of being rid of God. And, by deWnition, Artaud can never get beyond the stage of announcing that he is writing ‘pour en Wnir’, for otherwise he

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would be compelled to provide a textual representation of his self (and representation is precisely what deWnes the vitiated order of Divine being). The elimination of God and manifestation of the self are inseparable in Artaud’s textual activity—or performance—and such a dual conception of writing as an eradicating and a creating shifts the emphasis away from the production of a textual object, helping Artaud to conceive of his end-goal as something to be deferred and staved oV. This is why even the postscriptum of the collection of texts of the same name is couched in that peculiar Artaudian tense that one might call the prophetic future (xiii. 118). In the light of the rather hysterical propheticism, how is Artaud’s account of God’s thieving and vampiric activity to be taken? Certainly his thought exceeds anything that belongs to the disciplines of philosophy or theology. In the following example a simplistic parody of syllogistic thinking is combined with an even more infantile delight in transgressing linguistic taboos: La` ou` ça sent la merde ça sent l’eˆtre . . . Dieu est-il un eˆtre? S’il en est un c’est de la merde. S’il n’en est pas un il n’est pas. Or il n’est pas. (xiii. 83–5)

Artaud takes a primitive pleasure in besmearing the conceptually complex realm of theology with the scatological. Yet, if the language and the adaptation of philosophical and theological ideas may be crude, it would be a mistake to deny that the Artaudian text engages conceptually with theology. As we have seen, Artaud exacerbates, by a process of exaggerations and associative thinking, one of the most fundamental tensions within Christianity: the primacy accorded to the Incarnation, on the one hand, against the removal of God from the abjecting realities of corporeality, on the other. But equally, once the basic conceptual enquiries have been conducted in the early Cahiers, it is important to recognize that it is rhetoric and language that drive Artaud’s thought along. Even though the invention of systems of ideas and imaginary philosophies of being can seem an unliterary undertaking, it is just as great a mistake to neglect the high literarity of Artaud’s texts and see them as merely

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delusional metaphysics. The Cahiers fuse word-wielding and conceptwielding, and the Wnal collections play with the resultant notions, do so for the earnest purpose of writing a new myth of the self, yet subvert their own pretensions. Late Artaud is seriously playful. Artaud’s late texts, and particularly his writing against God, subvert classiWcation. They go against our expectation that serious works be staid in their language and wear their serious status with dignity. The sheer pleasure the texts take in violent language and in rolling in ‘la merde’ set them apart from standard speculative thinking about big existential questions. Artaud does away with the garde-fous deployed by theorizing, for to his way of thinking they mean we cannot forget that the text is never, however brave its speculations, anything greater than (armchair) philosophizing. Artaud, on the contrary, makes his imaginative speculations feel real. On the whole, the best working hypothesis is to consider that Artaud’s texts do not truly purport to describe reality (that is, elaborate a delusional philosophy), but rather are concerned with working out an imaginary and dramatized textual world and presenting this as if it were reality (that is, inventing a Wctional philosophy). The text might present the ideas on God as real, but this is not evidence that Artaud believes himself to be describing reality. On the contrary, it shows that this is a textual world where his word is indisputably law. The Cahiers oVer a textual universe, not a journal intime of Artaud’s delusions, and the anti-God account is the central plank of the univers imaginaire elaborated in the Cahiers as a habitat for an equally imaginary textual identity. ‘Artaud’ and ‘God’ do not purport to point to extratextual entities but are instead somewhere between character names and concepts structuring the mythic, textual world of Artaud’s writing. Unless we make room for the textual fun and games within our reading, we are liable to a fundamental misprision of Artaud’s texts. If these are narrative and conceptual systems, they are not doctrines but ludic Wctions compelled towards extravagance and rhetorical overwriting. This hypothesis seems to hold good for most of the time, and yet Artaud’s ideas on God still eventually Wnish by resisting attempts to inscribe them within the realm of imaginative but ultimately reasonable discourse. The very realness of the anger against God places a question mark over whether Artaud is indeed theorizing or whether he is not simply ranting and raving against a real God who, in reality, does indeed assault and steal the living Artaud’s body: [ . . . ] tu as voulu me faire baiser, dieu?

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et le rond de tes basses fesses bougre d’anus de vieil anus trou tonsure´. Bougre de vieil anus tonsure´, et le rond de tes basses fesses, et le cercle de ton aˆme en perce bougre de vieux tonneau perce´ et le cercle de ta raleure, ton aˆme de tonneau perce´, l ’a m e que tu voulus me reWler de fond de ton anus en perce bougre de vieux trou tonsure´ et le rond de tes basses fesses.18

And so on. Hatred takes on an incantatory power and the text gets caught up in its own cycle and epicycles of invective. The text is as if hypnotized by the enemy God it has conjured up and becomes a psalm of denunciation, a cycle of permutations on its own furious rhetoric as Artaud succumbs to the force of his own Wctions. What starts out as a rewriting of the concept ‘God’ becomes an unstoppable pouring-out of hatred and contempt for a Divine Being, and the literary invention of an imagined textual world gives way to a hurling of abuse at an imagined adversary. Although for most of the time Artaud’s texts are an angry, contemptuous refusal of conceptual orthodoxy and ideational unimaginativeness, the urge to spit out his anger and provocations is never far from taking over. A carefully choreographed conceptual war dance opposing ‘Artaud’ to ‘God’ threatens to subside into a phantasmal slanging match between the ‘real’ Artaud and God. There is, then, an ambivalence to Artaud’s story of God. On the one hand, it is possible to see it as both well grounded in Artaud’s thought about the self and making a fair point that the concept ‘God’ has exerted a determining inXuence over the development of Western thought on questions of identity, and so, overall, as a carefully plotted attack launched from the realms of theology against traditional ways of thinking of identity. On the other hand, there are moments when the text presents the damning story of God as hard facts about reality. Artaud repeatedly and subversively zigzags back and forth across the zone separating radical thinking from phantasmal self-delusion. Artaud’s writing against 18

‘Main d’ouvrier et Main de singe’, 4–5.

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God is a conceptual and a rhetorical system where rhetoric increasingly takes over from conceptualizing. Nevertheless, the ideas display a surprising and unnerving coherence of thrust, despite their many extravagances and contradictions. Yet again, despite this coherence, the extravagances eventually prove too strong and Artaud’s texts leave behind anything to which one would reasonably subscribe even as a ludic metaphor for feelings of ontological lack. Perhaps Artaud’s writing against God is best seen as a form of metaphysical myth, conducted with a frenzied rhetoric of abjection. It combines a high conceptualizing mode with an unsophisticated desire for profanity, mingling the sacred with eZuvia and faeces, and this Xitting between high and low modes constitutes a challenge to the ethic of Western thinking. But, despite the greedy delectation it takes in naming God’s depraved activities with a mincing, false prudishness, and despite the voluptuously gleeful savouring of rolling the language of ‘caca’, ‘cu’, and ‘sperme’ on the tongue, Artaud’s writing against God is not a purely linguistic performance. Its ludic narrative theorizings build an imaginary world through which Artaud is vicariously to know self-identity by hewing structures of his own out of the Xux of language. More striking ultimately than the ideas, though, is the balance struck by the writing between diVerentiation and blurring, which dissolves and reconstitutes conceptual structures in a poetic solution.

7 A SIMPLE ARTAUD Je suis ce que je suis et je me sers de la voix de ce corps pour parler, pour l’instant j’en ai une autre, vous l’entendrez bientoˆt (xvi. 54) Perhaps light feet are even an integral part of the concept ‘god’.1

Of all Artaud’s images, it is that of his ideal existential state, the corps sans organes, that has proved the most intriguing to critics. Deleuze and Guattari, for instance, in their challenge to received Freudian opinion L’Anti-Œdipe (1972), accord it such prominence that it is honoured with the iconoclastically lower-case acronym cso. The mould-breaking corps sans organes, if less widely known than Proust’s time-bridging madeleine or Sartre’s world-disintegrating tree root, has, like these, migrated from French literary studies to general cultural discourse. Nevertheless, what Artaud has to say about the corps sans organes has been only hastily examined, even by Artaud criticism. It has outgrown its author and the speciWc environment of his late poems, which are selectively interpreted in order to tally with the iconoclastic work the image is made to do. Artaud’s admirers have been quick to acclaim the corps sans organes as a truly revolutionary act of conceptual deWance in the face of the squeamishness of Western culture when it comes to the undigniWed facts and sheer messiness of bodily existence. Artaud is a pioneering champion of the body, they say, reintroducing the shit, sperm, blood, and urine of bodily existence back into discourse about identity. This prevalent view of Artaud as anarchiste couronne´ of abjection and straighttalking, unabashed writer of the visceral and the Xeshly, Wnds conWrmation in the Xood of bodily Xuids that circulate as copiously in his Cahiers as they did around the life story of He´liogabale in the extraordinary Wrst line of that eponymous Wction: ‘S’il y a autour du cadavre d’He´liogabale [ . . . ] une intense circulation de sang et d’excre´ments, il y a eu autour de son berceau une intense circulation de sperme’ (vii. 13). Further evidence for this view is aVorded by the numerous and varied anatomical redistributions that Artaud details in his textual labour pains set out in the 1


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Cahiers, and, as if this were not suYcient corroboration, a cursory glance at Artaud’s drawings reveals a nightmarish gallery of disjointed, holed, suVering bodies. But things are rarely this clear-cut with Artaud’s writings, and the misconception that sees the Artaudian text as an unambiguous celebration of inner bodily Xows is symptomatic of the fact that his later writings are more talked about than read. The corps sans organes is certainly the centrepiece of the late poems. It makes its enigmatic appearance in Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu,2 yet the seven-eighths of Artaud’s observations on bodily existence are to be found in the summative Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, written between mid-1946 and late 1947. This extraordinary collection is composed of three parts: an opening 40 pages of brief snippets drawn from the Cahiers; 100 pages of letters written mainly from the asylum of Rodez; and 150 pages of poems.3 These are the peak of Artaud’s interpretation of reality and it is here that his ideas on God, alienation, ‘envouˆtement’, motility, and the body are poetically fused. Despite the tensions within each unstable notion, in Suppoˆts et Suppliciations Artaud elaborates a larger account hovering above them, centred on the idea of an auto-generating, dynamic, simple body. The texts frequently contradict each other about the new body, a consequence of the ambivalence of the earlier ideas from which it issues, and, whilst it is possible to discern a comparatively stable pattern of ideas on a corps sans organes, the picture that emerges has many incoherences. Yet, irrespective of its complications, the presence of the corps sans organes is—with the exception of Van Gogh, le suicide´ de la socie´te´—felt throughout all Artaud’s major late works, directing his writing on other topics and lending an elastic architecture to his system of ideas. Yet, whilst it is clearly true that the body is ever-present in Artaud’s Wnal creative phase, it is not so clear that he is celebrating and aYrming it. Certainly the Artaudian text revels in an orgy of vilifying descriptions of the abject human body: it is a ‘sale carne galeuse, bondeé de rats et de vieux pets’ (xiv**. 54), composed of ‘[l]a viandasse de carne grayasse’ (xiv**. 107), little more than a leaking assemblage ‘fait de viande et de sperme fou’ (xii. 78). It is a ‘sale corps, pourri, tare´, plein de sarcoptes, j vert de pustules’ (xiv**. 54), equivalent to ‘la barbaque j bien crotteé et 2 The expression ‘corps sans organes’ appears only once (xiii. 104), but Artaud writes at some length in this collection about a new conception of the body. Corps sans organes has become the accepted term for the new body Artaud conceives in his Wnal texts. 3 His Cahiers contain a far greater wealth of writing on the body than Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, but in the notebooks it is primarily an imagining of the speciWcs of the new anatomy, whereas the late poems oVer reXections on the implications of bodily existence for selfhood.

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mireé j dans le cu d’une poule j morte et de´sireé’ (xii. 29), reduced to sphincters and Xeshly tumescences: ‘Cette langue entre quatre gencives, k cette viande entre deux genoux, j ce morceau de trou’ (xii. 14–15). This is shock writing of the Wrst order, writing the nasty unwritten facts about the sexual, digestory, death-bound workhouse body back into literary discourse. But this Wlthy, diseased, oriWce-ridden, libidinous lump of putrid, smelly Xesh convulsed by a cataract of abject Xuids is not at all what Artaud has in mind when he puts forward the body as the locus of identity. This, rather, is the way he characterizes the God-given deWling body: ‘Dieu [ . . . ] a fait cet ignoble corps traıˆtre qui m’empoisonne depuis toujours’ (xvi. 202), causing his sense of alienation. The body in which Artaud Wnds himself (or rather fails to Wnd himself) treacherously allows God to inWltrate and steal it, and so, whilst Artaud does indeed write at length and with great provocative force on the lower bodily functions and their attendant liquids, he does not glorify them. Lower bodily functions and Xuids are instead associated with the dispossession of his identity to which the corps sans organes is the supposed remedy. Artaud is in fact deeply prudish about bodies: he might insist on the messiness of bodily existence, on sexualization, on excretion, and on the lowly Xuidic sub-life of the body, but he cannot bring himself to accept that bodily life is like this. Instead he follows tradition in considering this sub-life to be abjecting, and his texts, however much they enjoy touting bodily Xows, actually banish it from the perfect bodily state. The corps sans organes, whilst undoubtedly body, is a very unbodily kind of body. If we turn to his texts, we Wnd it is a body stripped bare, disembowelled and rendered dumb to the solicitations of the senses, a body without Xesh and oriWces, and in the closing stages of his writing it even tends towards an impervious surface with no depth or innards. The body as a pure, virginal surface through which nothing passes is far removed from bodily experience. It seems to have more in common with transcendental noumena than with incarnate existence. The littering of initially puzzling statements where Artaud speaks, for example, of the need: ‘aller vers l’insurrection e´ternelle aˆme corps, et corps en corps par aˆme, aˆme sur aˆme comme corps sur corps’ (xi. 101) make more (rhetorical) sense once the marked kinship between soul-like entities and Artaud’s new bodily form is appreciated. The account that sees Artaud as glorifying lower bodily Xuids and the wondrous Xeshliness of human existence does not stand up to scrutiny. He is horriWed by it and at times wishes instead for the body to become soul: ‘L’aˆme est corps, et le corps est aˆme aussi, mais non de coˆte´ limitable du corps, mais de celui illimite´ de l’aˆme’ (xi. 101).

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Although Artaud might not deify the body in the way commonly supposed, he does deify it in a far more literal sense: ‘Il faut que Dieu arrive a` eˆtre parfait non comme Dieu mais comme un homme [ . . . ] j Mais l’homme Dieu ne ressemblera en rien a` celui de cette terre car il sera inWniment plus dense et plus vrai’ (xv. 320). The new body is not just a soul-like body, it is a Godlike body in its ontological density and authenticity. Artaud’s body is to take over the role of archetypal existence. And, whilst this Godlike status is to be generated by a new corporeality, the kind of identity to which Artaud aspires within this new bodily form is most strongly characterized by its ethereality and purity. Artaud’s idea of a new body Xows from his account of God’s theft of his body, and the true crisis provoked by this body-theft is not the abjection it imposes on Artaud’s body, but the fact that it denatures his consciousness and leaves no room for him to bring his inner identity to fruition. In other words, the bodily crisis triggered oV by God’s theft of Artaud’s body is incidental. The true issue at stake in Artaud’s account, both for him and for God, is identity. So, despite extensive talk about bodies, they are in fact valued only for what it is possible to do in them, not valued in themselves. The stolen body is only a support structure, not the prize. What counts is consciousness. If the human anatomy is to be reconceived, it is, then, for the sake of purifying and so potentially becoming one with consciousness. But the body-soul of this man-God, the corps sans organes, lies far in the textual distance. Instead, in the early Cahiers, which work through the initial act of rebellion against God, Artaud exists in a divinely created body, and, although it is made in God’s image, this oVers no promise of plenitude, given His shadowy bodily status: ‘le De´miurge [ . . . ] n’ayant pas encore reálise´ le corps absolu du soi-meˆme [ . . . a] impos[e´] le meˆme supplice d’absence a` un corps mal reálise´’ (xv. 159). The human body is incapable of supporting the kind of pure, self-present consciousness to which Artaud aspires and instead pollutes him with abject biological givens: ‘la conscience du caca que ce corps fait par Dieu ne cesse de de´gager en me meˆlant, moi, conscience, a` la douleur de cet homme et de ce corps. Car moi, conscience, je suis dans ce corps, et je le hais’ (xvi. 177). A divide has opened up between mind and body such that, speaking from the enunciative position of the one, Artaud can take the other as an object of hatred. Being body in the conditions imposed by God is a matter of suVering (for Artaud bodily existence is tantamount to a cruciWxion: ‘[l]a croix charnelle’ (xv. 243), ‘la croix corporelle’ (xvi. 11)), and suVering, by making Artaud perceive his body as a separate object,

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acts as a barrier to perfect self-consciousness: ‘Le corps pour moi a toujours e´te´ un mur entre la conscience et moi’ (xvi. 132). But the distance that has opened up between his body and himself is ultimately attributable to something seemingly innocent lying behind the overt cause of doubling into pain-imposing body and suVering consciousness. To Artaud’s mind, doubling is actually generated not by pain, which is only a catalyst, but by cerebration. Once the raw material of existence is thought about, its force and value are lost: ‘les ideés, les notions et les conceptions n’existent pas, mais [ . . . ] la vie, la vie existe’ (xv. 241). The body is something that is lived and felt, it frames and informs all consciousness, but, once the fundamental experience of being body is verbalized and conceptualized, then the most important thing about bodily existence, the fact that in lived experience Artaud has an unmediated awareness that he is his body and that he is co-extensive with his body, is lost. In an uncharacteristic, tamely philosophical and stylistically Xat passage of Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, Artaud clearly sets out that alienation from the body originates in the distancing from the object of experience inherent to all abstract thought: Quand ma main bruˆle, elle bruˆle. Il y a le fait que ma main bruˆle, lequel de´ja`, si j’y pense, est, comme fait, tre`s menace´, avoir le sentiment que ma main bruˆle, c’est entrer dans un autre rayon, si j’ai l’ideé que ma main bruˆle, je ne suis de´ja` plus dans ma main mais en e´tat de supervision. (xiv**. 80)

If Artaud complains about the impossibility of living, and claims he is prevented from living, he is referring to the almost impossible task of just living, of having bodily experiences and sensations and not having them in such a way as to perceive them as in any way distinct from him. It is the same quasi-mystical strain as his Surrealist writings exhibited in the desire ‘avoir en soi le courant des choses, eˆtre au niveau de leur courant, eˆtre enWn au niveau de la vie’ (i**. 16–17). Yet, while Artaud decries the fact that there is a distance between his consciousness and his body, consciousness nevertheless remains the most precious good: ‘Je ne laisse jamais aucune conscience se perdre’ (xv. 170). What Artaud desires is not observational consciousness that treats his life as something distinct from what he is, but to feel life itself, to be aware of himself as existing. For Artaud, ‘[s]eules les sensations d’eˆtre sont vivantes’ (xv. 241). But to have this kind of awareness of himself as a living, existing thing requires that

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he drop down beneath the high-level, mentalizing consciousness that can conceive of a self or a being to which that existence belongs. It is a matter of extirpating abstract consciousness so as to allow for a simple awareness in which there is a perfect fusion of consciousness and body. But, Artaud complains, the human mind and human body are too cluttered by abstract ideas and entities for him to feel he can fully be himself: ‘tout est en trop, tout est ce trop qui ne cesse de charger l’existence, j l’existence elle-meˆme est une ideé de trop’ (xiv**. 80). It is only when he is aware of himself as living body, and aware of nothing further to this, that Artaud Wnds his consciousness untouched by the outside world. It is therefore only in this state of rudimentary bodily awareness that Artaud feels he is able to recuperate himself in a simple experience of being alive and so arrive at an intense experience of self. What is needed, then, is to do away with everything that is not irreducibly, inalienably himself: Oublier tout ce qui n’est pas moi, moi tout seul au-dessus de toute existence [ . . . ] et dans la douleur de cette interne tuerie voir ce qui ne pourra pas ce´der. [ . . . ] Quand l’inte´grale virginite´ de moi sans moi par moi sans moi me sera revenue dans ce carnage, alors sans rien ni personne je me reposerai. (xv. 157–8)

To exist fully Artaud believes he must reduce himself to his essential features without which he would not be himself any more. The aim is to Wnd what he is in his purest, hence most complete state of ‘inte´grale virginite´’, and to do this he must get rid of the idea of himself as having a self (‘l’inte´grale virginite´ de moi [i.e. Artaud] sans moi [i.e. an entity called a ‘‘self’’]’). And, for rhetorical good measure, he must repeat the same process on the pristine, concentrated, selXess core Artaud to which he has reduced himself (‘[la] virginite´ de moi sans moi [ . . . ] par moi sans moi’). Artaud repeats elsewhere that not just the examined but also the examining self needs to be destroyed: ‘bruˆler jusqu’a` ce que l’ideé du corps disparaisse [ . . . ] Je bruˆle [ . . . ] le moi du bruˆlant et du bruˆleur’ (xv. 47–8). Paring down his identity is an ongoing process that can never end. Each dismantling self will always have to be worked upon in turn by the even more simple self it has created. Artaud’s project will always be overshadowed by its own erasure, for he is aiming at ever greater simplicity and at the lowest level idea possible of what he is. It is a calculus of identity where the self tends towards zero. In this context of a self degree zero Artaud writes of an ideal state in which there is no distance between bodily existence and awareness of that existence:

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L’homme [ . . . ] ne s’est jamais veću soi-meˆme, il n’a jamais veću son soi-meˆme, comme un feu qui vit tout un corps dans l’e´tendue inte´grale du corps [ . . . ] dans un espace absolu de corps. [ . . . L]’homme qui ne se vit pas tout soi-meˆme commet a` chaque instant l’erreur de croire eˆtre ce soi-meˆme, esprit, ideé, conception, notion, qui Xotte dans un point du corps, au lieu d’eˆtre lui-meˆme son corps et a` tout instant tout son corps. (xi. 103–4)

It is because man does not identify wholly and perfectly with his body that he has duped himself into believing he is self or mind. But there is no such self-entity dissociable from the fact of incarnate existence. For Artaud, if one is truly to be, one must at every moment consciously be an all-englobing non-diVerentiated awareness of and so identiWcation with all one’s body. Once again the image of Wre, with its connotations of purging and purity, is used to describe the kind of identity Artaud desires. Fire is also, in Artaudian terms, an ever-changing manifestation of its principle and thus an elision of the creative and the destructive, and, since it destroys itself in the instant of its manifestation, Wre cannot be doubled. If earlier Artaud wrote that: ‘La vie est de bruˆler des questions’ (i*. 49), now that he is alert to the loss of vitality in ideation and so has had ‘[a]ssez, assez et assez avec les questions’ (xii. 233), it is as if the earlier statement were truncated, equating life with spontaneous conXagration. What Artaud aspires to is a total, perpetually self-renewing awareness of the body. Just as the theological tradition presents God’s mind as sustaining and supporting all reality in a perpetual creative act, Artaud’s theorizings present awareness sustaining and supporting all his body in a perpetual creative act.4 Artaud’s desires for consciousness take on vast proportions. But, instead of being an incandescent body, man experiences his body only in fragments and so is unable to be all his self at one and the same

4 The kind of total bodily awareness Artaud aspires to might perhaps be intimated thus. It is possible, with an act of concentration, to zoom consciousness in on, say, the Wngertips of one hand and feel the pumping blood, the pull of gravity, the inner warmth, the nervous spasms that traverse them. That is to say, not so much any sensory experience as the feeling of ‘(being) Wnger’. What Artaud is talking about would seem to be this eavesdropping on the minutiae of the body on a grander scale. This mental experiment would have to be taken to the greatest possible pitch where one was no longer aware of oneself as aware of one’s Wngertips but, and this would seem impossible, had instead fully projected consciousness into them. This experiment would have to be extended, and this would seem just as impossible, to all the body. And, Wnally, this total identiWcation with the totality of the body would have to be so dynamic as to create and destroy itself in each moment of passing experience. As far as one can surmise, the kind of bodily self-identity or simple pure selfpresent existence Artaud dreams of would seem to be of this order.

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time. For Artaud, this lack of perfect, total body-consciousness precludes the possibility of eVecting absolute identity with and in the body: il est tantoˆt genoux et tantoˆt pied, tantoˆt occiput et tantoˆt oreille, tantoˆt poumons et tantoˆt foie, tantoˆt membrane et tantoˆt ute´rus, tantoˆt anus et tantoˆt nez, tantoˆt sexe et tantoˆt cœur, tantoˆt salive et tantoˆt urine, tantoˆt aliment et tantoˆt sperme, tantoˆt excre´ment et tantoˆt ideé, je veux dire que ce qui est le moi ou le soi n’est pas axe´ sur une perception unique, et que le moi n’est plus unique parce qu’il est disperse´ dans le corps au lieu que le corp soit rassemble´ sur soi-meˆme dans une e´galite´ sensorielle absolue, et ne compose pas une perception d’absolu. (xi. 103)

It is, Artaud suggests, only if man is able to become a homogenous (and adrogynous) perceptive block that self-identity will be feasible, since any distanciation or abstraction from the rudimentary feeling of being body allows alterity to inWltrate the space opened up between experiencing self and experienced bodily existence. Otherwise consciousness and, for Artaud, by implication the self are not unique but dispersed, fragmented, and multiple. So it is not the body per se but a fusion of body and mind that is to be created: ‘On ne se´pare pas le corps de la conscience ni la conscience du corps’ (xvi. 315). Instead of an agglomerative ‘esprit dans la chair’ (i**. 51), as he had termed it in his texts of the 1920s, Artaud is now an absolute (a word that appears frequently in this context) unitary ‘esprit-chair’ or ‘conscience-corps’. And, in order for Artaud fully to be this conscious body, he must jettison all idea of higher-level identity constructs of ‘moi’ and ‘soi’ and aYrm his existence as an intelligent body: ‘Dećide-toi a` eˆtre non le corps ou` tu te sens eˆtre [ . . . ] mais une perception corporelle’ (xvi. 84). So, whilst Artaud persistently portrays the body as a seething mass of animal appetites rooted in a putrescent, other-infested Xesh, it is a very diVerent body shorn of the accretions of self and high order, mentalizing consciousness that Artaud can fully possess: ‘il ne me reste plus que le corps vide qui me porte et c’est ce corps qui est moi et non la conscience qui nage devant, le cœur, les sens, l’aˆme, la conscience, tout cela est a` tout le monde, il n’y a que notre corps qui soit a` nous’ (xv. 282).5 The lesson of the Cahiers is that the only basis for self-identity is an emptied, minimal body. When we turn from the comparatively analytic theorizings of the early Cahiers to the late poems, the ideas of the notebooks have been transmuted into Xamboyant images structuring a strange new world. In his 5 Admittedly there is some tension between this passage and the ideal of body consciousness, but what is rejected here is the ‘conscience qui nage devant’, the consciousness separable from the body.

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poems Artaud deWnes his new world in deWance of conceptual orthodoxy, and the physical object of the body has become the alpha and omega of Artaud’s new litany: ‘Du corps par le corps avec le corps depuis le corps et jusqu’au corps’ (xiv**. 12). It is the body that is omnipresent: Il n’y a pas de dedans, pas d’esprit, de dehors ou de conscience, rien que le corps tel qu’on le voit, un corps qui ne cesse pas d’eˆtre, meˆme quand l’œil tombe qui le voit. Et ce corps est un fait. Moi. (xiv*. 17)

The text enacts the excision of the superXuous accretions, tending in shortening sentences and lines towards the aYrmation of the single, talismanic word ‘Moi’. The textual Artaud simply is his rewritten body. This possibility of full identiWcation with the body means that it oVers the hope of perfect, full intensity self-identity. Of the reconstructed body that Artaud is writing towards he can say: Entre le corps et le corps il n’y a rien, rien que moi. Ce n’est pas un e´tat, pas un objet, pas un esprit, pas un fait, encore moins le vide d’un eˆtre, absolument rien d’un esprit, ni de l’esprit, pas un corps, c’est l’intransplantable moi. Mais pas un moi, je n’en ai pas. Je n’ai pas de moi, mais il n’y a que moi et personne, pas de rencontre possible avec l’autre. (xiv**. 76)

The core Artaud is co-extensive and one with the body, sandwiched into the very fabric of the body (‘Entre le corps et le corps, il n’y a rien, j rien que le moi’). This core ‘moi’ (not to be confused with the abstract idea of a self entity) is ‘pas un esprit [ . . . ] pas un corps, c’est l’intransplantable moi’: it is not mind, nor in fact is it the body, but just self-identically closed on itself in a tautological loop (‘moi. j C’est [ . . . ] moi’). Experiencing this bodily self invokes no abstract ideas and is inseparable from the fact of being Artaud, and cannot, therefore, be possessed by the other. The inherited concept of the self cannot oVer this kind of

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guaranteed undoubleability to Artaud, as the self is attributable to a subject, hence potentially distinct from that subject, hence stealable. The self is not just superXuous; it is dangerous if thought of as something over and above and separate from the body, which is why Artaud insists that he is ‘pas un moi, j je n’en ai pas’. The textual subject is not distinct from his body: ‘je ne suis pas le possesseur de mon corps mais mon corps luimeˆme qui parle et agit et ne pense pas’ (xiv**. 222). He is simply acting, signifying body, not an agent or a mind. In the kind of rudimentary performative body stripped of mind and self, he is alone and so untouched by alterity (‘pas de rencontre possible avec l’autre’). Only Artaud can be aware of his own bodily existence. This is the inalienable bedrock to being Artaud. The overarching complaint of Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, that ‘Au-dessus de la psychologie d’Antonin Artaud il y a la psychologie d’un autre j qui vit, boit, mange, dort, pense et reˆve dans mon corps’ (xiv**. 71), stops short of stating that the other feels Artaud’s bodily sensations. The other might control Artaud’s body and Artaud’s consciousness, but it cannot inWltrate Artaud’s awareness of his body. This is his and his alone. In three collections of texts written after his release from Rodez, Artaud le Moˆmo, Ci-gıˆt, and the lengthy Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, his body may at times be portrayed as pure self, but far more frequently it is an unclean object wracked by the salacious gourmandism of his metaphysical vampires. What starts out as Divine possession: Et la sainte beˆte intelligence de dieu a dit: Et moi je suis une bonne beˆte en face de tout ce corps d’Antonin Artaud, . . . . qui n’en occupe qu’une petite partie, et qui s’en ira. (xiv**. 12)

is ampliWed from a speciWc act of aggression to a general feature of existence as hordes of unspeciWed beings gleefully speak through Artaud’s pen to tell of his dispossession: Que fais-tu la`, Antonin Artaud? Oui, que fais-tu la`? Tu nous geˆnes. Et a` la Wn sors de ton corps, c’est a` nous a` tenir ta place. (xiv**. 71)

The generalized hostile presence within Artaud’s body has in the past functioned as a metaphor for the overbearing role played by society in

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shaping Artaud’s existence, but any such putative rationale is swamped when this idea of the internalization of social doxa is translated into an orgy of erotic activity in which the other takes control of Artaud’s bodily processes. A rhetoric built around sex, digestion, and excrement and driven by the primitive pleasure of besmirching the sacred with the abject now takes over, as God is said to exist vicariously through Artaud’s lower bodily processes, controlled by the cavorting of God with his henchmen within Artaud’s body: [dieu] ne vit, que d’eˆtre boulotte´ au milieu d’Artaud, masturbe´ au milieu d’Artaud, rappele´ en esprit dans Artaud, par la penseé abdominale et le coı¨t, draine´ le long de la colonne œsophagique d’Artaud, ravive´ par l’orgasme et l’expulsion excre´mentielle anale des aliments d’Artaud, rendu pre´sent par l’acte de pulation a` deux appele´ la co-pulation, non d’Artaud, mais d’un et de l’autre, du microbe un et de l’autre au milieu du sexe d’Artaud. (xiv**. 121)

‘Artaud’ is no longer an identity but an object convulsed by the insistent and greedy sensuality of mauvais esprits, as the text repeats his name in a chant of aggressive enmity. Any patient thinking that may have led this far is outweighed by the rhetorical storm of eroticism and abjection as the Artaud body (it is too alien to be called Artaud’s body, the text designating it impersonally as ‘d’Artaud’) ejaculates, expels, and squirts liquids around inside it. Much of the provocative force of Artaud’s later texts comes from this reiWcation of the body, his making it an undigniWed and largely alien object subject to the ravages of a hostile world. The emphasis on bodily liquids is associated with God’s original act of criminal aggression. A tidal wave of bodily Xuids is one of the deWning characteristics of Artaud’s birth: ma naissance a e´te´ une lutte horrible . . . . j’ai nage´ dans un Xeuve de pus . . . . [qui] fut creé´ sur place et jete´ vers moi pour m’empeˆcher de passer.6 6

‘Je n’admets pas’, 111.

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The deluge of Xuids is presented as hostile to Artaud, and in general his bodily Xuids are portrayed as treacherous for they are highly desirable. The life-Xuids that course within him are drained oV by leech-like parasites that attack his sleeping body: Oui, toute la terre envouˆte Artaud pour vivre et elle ne vit que de la mort quotidienne d’Artaud, de son sommeil de chaque nuit; pendant lequel elle se recharge a` bloc un peu plus chaque nuit de tout ce qui fait la vie: souZe, sang, sperme, salive, sećretions internes, bile, . . . . humeurs. (xiv**. 131)

The perpetrators of vampiric ‘envouˆtement’ feast on all Artaud’s bodily Xuids, but the blood, sperm, saliva, bile, and humours, whilst the sustenance that causes others to inhabit his body, are also very much part of Artaud. So much so in fact that they are isolated from the rest of the text on a line to themselves like the supreme term ‘Artaud’. It is because others do not have the same capacity as Artaud to seal up their Xuids within their body that they are said to have to replenish their vital forces by stealing his: ‘qui a trop gaspille´ de son sang, de son sperme, de sa salive, ou de la morve de son nez, j c’est dans Artaud qu’il vient refaire son beurre’ (xiv**. 142). And Artaud’s bodily Xuids really are vital, in both senses of the term: ‘le monde ne continue qu’a` cause de mes pertes de moelles et de sperme’ (xi. 105). It is by siphoning oV the life force of his bodily Xuids, and in particular their structuring (‘moelle’) and generative (‘sperme’) potential, that the world is sustained. Even the most disgustingly abject of Artaud’s abject Xuids is of such value that the world is hungrily waiting to consume it: ‘la bouche de l’actuelle race humaine n’est-elle pas, suivant le cadastre anatomique du corps pre´sent, ce trou d’eˆtre situe´ juste a` la sortie des he´morroı¨des du cu d’Artaud?’ (xiv**. 153). Artaud’s metaphor of the possession of the body by the Other has mutated, and the urge to Xout literary taboos on eZuvia have the whip hand over the exposition of

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the determining forces exerted on the individual by social and conceptual orthodoxy. Artaud’s texts have left the path of rethinking identity and deWantly bedeck themselves in Xuidic mess. In one of the high points of Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, the Artaudian text details the licking, sucking, probing, and draining of his body as it is assailed from within by a multitude of alien tongues: [ . . . ] les eˆtres n’ont jamais oublie´ comment approcher Artaud par magie, comment lui puiser sa salive dans la bouche, et sa merde dans son coccyx, et son sperme sous son pubis, comment, de quelles lippes creuses tourner la nuit autour de son lit, de quelle ouverture des te´guments, de quelle dilation monstrueuse des pores, de quels sanieux ećorchements des tissus sous les te´guments, faire ventouse sur tout ce qui est lui pour le sucer jusqu’a` l’e´puisement, et c’est ainsi qu’Antonin Artaud sent suppurer ses testicules . . . . C’est ainsi qu’on avale Artaud, qu’on le pompe, qu’on le de´fe`que, qu’on le le`che. (xiv**. 143)

Such writing is a pleasure in the mouth. This is Artaudian writing of the highest calibre, wending between the Latinate, anatomical language and foul-mouthed familiarities in a muscular equilibrium, and in its busymouthed, thrusting-lipped diction re-enacting the act of physical and metaphysical inner fellation it denounces. All Xuids taste equally good to the vampires who leave no tissue unturned in their search for this abject ambrosia, and the text follows their ferreting with an almost sensuous delight in detailing his inner rape, the deferral and then crescendo of their attack being captured in the rhythmic shifts conducted by the lineation from ‘comment, de quelles lippes’ to ‘faire ventouse’. Artaud’s body is described from afar as a dispenser of lower bodily liquids to be drained at will, an object to be swallowed, licked, and ignobly masturbated and made to excrete. But why, for reasons other than provocation, should Artaud hold his bodily Xuids to be of such value? According to one strain of Artaud’s thinking, anything that has been held within the body is of value, since it is by being held in the body that things may be fully possessed and all traces of alterity removed.7 But this does little to explain why bodily 7

This was certainly Artaud’s opinion about purging language by salivary operations.

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Xuids, which are presented as abject in the most forceful terms, should now be said to be of great and vital value. For Artaud it is a fact that his body and its Xuids are of primordial value, as conWrmed in its ‘envouˆtement’: ‘c’est parce que mon corps est bon qu’il est toujours aussi minutieusement visite´’ (xiv**. 141), and it is not possible to piece together the ideas behind his Wnal writings unless this extraordinary supposed fact is granted. The text suggests that it is because Artaud’s body is the unique origin and locus of all value that he is subjected to the libidinous infractions of the incubi and succubi that crowd around his existence: Et c’est donc comme pre´venu d’eˆtre dieu et d’avoir par conse´quent un corps unique et le corps d’ou` tout est sorti que j’ai e´te´ ainsi poursuivi, que j’ai e´te´ ainsi envahi et mordu, par des hordes de parasites (d’esprits), de microbes, d’ignobles intrus e´rotiques du cu, de vampires lippus ou barbus, et par eux lime´, rabote´, raˆpe´, tondu, pompe´, suce´, pioche´, perce´, troue´. (xiv**. 136)

Artaud, not God, is the unique origin of existence, as proved by the fact that God had to take hold of Artaud’s body to come into existence, and this is why his body is besieged: Et non comme dieu, mais comme, e´tant, moi, ce corps unique, d’ou` tout, meˆme dieu, fut sorti, que j’ai e´te´ viole´ a` vie, insulte´, oVense´, sali, pollue´, crotte´, salope´, jour et nuit, depuis que je vis. (xiv**, 137)

Whether it be, then, because he is mistaken for God (‘comme pre´venu d’eˆtre dieu’) or because he is known for who he is (‘non comme dieu, mais

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comme [ . . . ] moi’ since ‘dieu de son vrai nom s’appelle Artaud’ (xiv**. 138)), he is sullied by a universal act of possession directed against him. In either case all value originates in his body: since Artaud is the author, the Creator of his textual world, his is therefore ‘le corps d’ou` tout est sorti’. Yet the text does not legitimate this restriction in our interpretation to speciWcally imagined, textual worlds. The text presents it as given that Artaud’s body is the origin not of a mythic, textual world but of the physical universe, and at times is adamant that it is not a question of imagined but real bodily facts: ‘je ne me gue´rirai pas d’une fuite du corps [ . . . ] par la penseé d’un autre e´tat de corps mais par la souVrance dans la douleur du corps’ (xv. 205). This conXation of the world of text with the world tout court, and the resultant expansion of his narrative from a metaphor for determining forces within the individual to a literal account of vampiric pollution and consumption, are among the most troubling features of Artaud’s late writings. Artaud’s text indulges in a mythologization of epic proportions, then takes its myths as facts. The simple fact that his vampirized body is the archetypal life force is reXected in the simplistic rhymes and dittyish rhythms from which Artaud weaves his verse texture. Whether it be an even-toned roll-call of disgusting practices detailed in the Wrst of the above passages, which takes its time to indulge in its controlled syntactic repetitions and phonic echoes (‘que j’ai e´te´ ainsi poursuivi, j que j’ai e´te´ ainsi envahi et mordu’), or the gabbling of the second, his verse sweeps the reader along by its oracular conviction in its own truthfulness. The disarming simplicity of the verse structure lends the texts a peculiarly compelling logic and forcefulness. There is also a strong element of malice and provocation here, as there is throughout Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, and the text clearly takes a complicitous pleasure in listing the humiliations to which Artaud’s body is subject. But, notwithstanding the gaiety and gleeful black humour, notwithstanding the fact that Suppoˆts et Suppliciations is driven by the desire to invest life with metaphysical implications, notwithstanding the fact that it is, through its mythologization and epic overtones, the textual enactment of the Theatre of Cruelty,8 the central claim that his body is overrun by vampires is not rationally explicable. Claiming that the body is the central fact of existence and that his body is the centre of his world is one thing; claiming that his body is controlled, abused, and consumed by humanity and God quite another. And by Suppoˆts et Suppliciations the 8 In which Artaud is still interested, but as text, not play. This is apparent in the choice of the title ‘Le Theáˆtre de la Cruaute´’ (xiii. 107–17) for a text denouncing God and the Godgiven body in Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu.

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central fact of Artaud’s univers imaginaire is that he is vampirized and possessed in one great movement of imposed alienation: viole´, tondu, pompe´ a` fond par toute l’insolente racaille de tous les empafre´s d’e´trons qui n’eurent pas d’autre boustifaille pour vivre que de bouVer Artaud. (xii. 17–18)

The body has become a lump of vulgar tasty Xesh, ravaged by innumerable parasites that prick and suck and eat it from within. The extraordinary assertive aplomb with which his texts repeatedly hammer out this fact is equalled by the similarly unshakeable conviction that ‘Artaud’ is the supreme value, a term of such strength that it can appear in isolation, a complete expression in its own right that needs no qualiWcation and that can bring all statements to unanswerable closure. ‘Artaud’ has become the word that rises up from beyond the cosmos: ‘[les inite´s] ećoutant [ . . . ] le gouVre l’inWni [ . . . ] disent avoir entendu en eux monter les syllabes de ce vocable: j a r -t a u ’ (xiv**. 138). The abjection of Artaud’s body and the investment of Artaud’s name with all value progress together, as both name and body become central objects in his textual world. The vampirized eZuvial body that is nevertheless the site of supreme value is one of the structuring tensions in Artaud’s late texts. All that is associated with bodily humours, with Xuids, with the Xesh, is regarded as the essence of deWlement and pollution, yet it is precisely because these eZuvia are a powerful life force that the other seeks to consume them, and this ambivalence lends dramatic tension to Suppoˆts et Suppliciations in what could otherwise become an overly ritualized narrative. Artaud’s attempt to write an ending to this vampirization leads to the project of imagining a hardened, desiccated body that would oVer nothing of value to the multifarious ‘envouˆteurs’. Once all that is Xeshly and liquescent is written out of the body, then the true, inalienable body will emerge: ‘sous la disparition Xuidique du corps il resterait un corps osseux’ (xv. 289). Sperm, faeces, saliva, mucus are to be eradicated from his body because of their value, and so this hardened body will no longer limply oVer itself up to the desiring attentions of God and humanity. It is as part of this project of drying out the body that Artaud preaches the eradication of bodily organs. Organs treacherously tempt the other

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into his space, since they secrete the bodily Xuids on which his vampires delight to feed: ‘Les organes n’ont e´te´ faits que pour donner a` manger aux eˆtres’ (xiii. 287). Equally it is the organs that assimilate the outside other with the personal within, be it a (physical) digestive assimilation or a (mental) perceptual assimilation. Organs allow the non-self to force itself upon the self, and so Artaud blames them for his alienation: L’homme est malade parce qu’il est mal construit. Il faut se dećider a` le mettre a` nu pour lui gratter cet animalcule qui le de´mange mortellement, dieu, et avec dieu ses organes. (xiii. 104)

The project of recuperating a self-suYcient body necessitates the redrawing of an anatomy viewed as a set of functions inducive to self-loss. The deliberate ambiguity of ‘ses organes’ underscores the fact that it is God who is responsible for the imposed torturous bodily form: ‘une croix’, as Artaud writes elsewhere in Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu, ‘ou` dieu croyait l’avoir depuis longtemps cloueé’ (xiii. 86). The deferred appearance of the term ‘dieu’ after the polysyllabic ‘animalcule qui le de´mange mortellement’, and its repetition, place it in a position of prominence equalled by the placing of ‘organes’ at the chute of the dissecting 1–4–3 rhythm. ‘Dieu’ and ‘organes’ are brought into syntactic and rhythmic partnership. The corps sans organes, by which man will be ‘de´livre´ de tous ses automatismes et rendu a` sa ve´ritable liberte´’ (xiii. 104), is a way, then, of being Wnally free from God’s inXuence, the means ‘en Wnir avec dieu’—it could have been called the corps sans dieu. Like the God who imposes them on the human anatomy, organs are parasitic. They occupy a place within the body that should not belong to them: Le corps est corps, il est seul et n’a pas besoin d’organes, le corps n’est jamais un organisme, . . . . tout organe est un parasite, il recouvre une fonction parasitaire destineé a` faire vivre un eˆtre qui ne devrait pas eˆtre la`. (xiii. 287)

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It is not just the organs but the whole idea of an organism that is to blame for the impossibility of closing up the body, for organisms are by deWnition composed of separate parts and so do not present an impenetrable front to the outside world. Artaud’s body, though, is self-identical (‘Le corps est le corps’) and a single unit (‘il est seul’). What Artaud’s texts are doing with the image-concept of the corps sans organes is not so much suggesting that the body be changed as that the way it is conceived be rethought from a very diVerent perspective. Instead of being thought of as an assemblage of parts, it needs to be taken as an irreducible whole, as this is, within Artaud’s world of vampires and doubles, the prerequisite for full identity. In Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu Artaud is writing, inter alia, against academic disciplines and their conceptual dissection of reality. It is here that he rails against the deep meaninglessness of abstract terms that are no more than ‘des mots j invente´s pour de´Wnir des choses j qui existaient j ou n’existaient pas’ (xiii. 94); it is here that he parodies syllogistic thinking (‘Dieu est-il un eˆtre’ etc. (xiii. 86));9 it is also here that he parodies psychology (xiii. 92) and scholarly prudence: ‘On dit, j on peut dire, j il y en a qui disent [ . . . ]’ (xiii. 93). And the corps sans organes is in large part a provocatively anti-scientist image. The sheer folly of it is a way of ridiculing rationalist discourse for what Artaud perceives as its blindness to greater truths, in the same vein as the self-accusations of madness in Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu (‘Vous de´lirez, Monsieur Artaud j Vous eˆtes fou. [ . . . ] De quelque coˆte´ qu’on vous prenne vous eˆtes fou, mais fou a` lier’ (xiii. 103–4)) are supposed to function as indications of the superior breadth of his vision, which is capable of integrating and transcending ‘narrow-minded’ (rational) criticism. For Artaud the most important fact about the body is that it is not just another object in the world, and so, whilst susceptible to scientiWc enquiry, this misses out the metaphysical fact that it is what the individual is. The corps sans organes is a deliberate nonsense and primarily a rebellion against a culture that sees life devoid of its mythic and metaphysical grounding. In ‘Van Gogh, le suicide´ de la socie´te´’ (xiii. 13–64) Artaud compares two diVerent modes of investing reality with value: the ‘Western’ mode of elevation, and a truer mode of descending so far into physical objects that their metaphysical dimension is intuited: [ . . . ] Gaugin pensait que l’artiste doit chercher le symbole [ . . . ] aggrandir les choses de la vie jusqu’au mythe, 9

See Chapter 6.

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alors que Van Gogh pensait qu’il faut savoir de´duire le mythe des choses les plus terre-a`-terre de la vie. En quoi je pense, moi, qu’il avait foutrement raison. (xiii. 29)

The corps sans organes, like the vampirized eZuvial body it replaces, is just such an instance of earthy myth, brute metaphysics, and violently antiintellectual language. The organless body might well be an attack on the metaphysically thin vision of rationalism, but the image exceeds this function and takes on a life of its own, as Artaud constructs a supporting nexus of ideas derived from this central image. The sort of body that would grant him autonomy in his textual world from the host of bodiless assailants is one that is hard, dry, and without any oriWces, organs, or other means of contact with the outside. The corps sans organes is characterized by its perfect closure on itself: ‘teˆte, rate, foie, poumons [ . . . ] rentrera en eVet en moi de ma teˆte a` mes pieds’ (xv. 332). The body is to be folded back on and assimilated by itself. This implies that nothing is to be lost from this body, including the bodily Xuids that are the preferred sustenance of the ‘envouˆteurs’: ‘Ne perdez pas une parcelle de vos excre´ments, de votre urine, de votre sperme, de vos crachats’ (xx. 63). The body is to let nothing escape, as otherwise it will oVer part of what has constituted it and hence its physical integrity to the alienating contact of the outside world.10 The new body is, therefore, a body without any openings and even one that cannot be conceived in terms of boundaries, for boundaries need defending against sullying ingress and doubling egress: ‘rien qui soit dehors ou dedans j et surtout pas la bouche d’eˆtre’ (xii. 100). The mouth is particularly alienating, since it is both the oriWce by which physical objects are admitted into the body and the bodily exit for language, which ought to be kept secure within the body, so ‘ouvrir la bouche c’est s’oVrir aux miasmes’.11 Just as the written text doubles Artaud, so speech exposes him to a similar threat of loss of control over that which was his (his ideas, himself as manifested in his speech) and thus a loss of 10 As Julia Kristeva reminds us in Pouvoirs de l’horreur: Essai sur l’abjection (Paris: Seuil, 1980) excrement, as fundamentally impropre, is not a part of the subject. Artaud’s insistence on retaining excrement within the body, although therefore initially surprising given his preoccupation with expunging all traces of alterity from the body, may be seen as a means of incorporating all that is non-self within the body, thus making the impropre his own and so no longer a threat to pure integrity. 11 ‘J’e´tais vivant’, 84, 5–6 (1948), 102.

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autonomy. The mouth is therefore for Artaud the fullest example of an alienating oriWce, for it introduces both physical and mental alienation: Alors, pas de bouche! Pas de bouche pas de langue pas de dents pas de larynx pas d’œsophage pas d’estomac, pas de ventre pas d’anus Je reconstruirais l’homme que je suis.12

The digestive tract is to be expunged along with the mouth as the primary means by which objects enter and leave the body. The alimentary canal is, according to Artaud’s way of thinking, a hole running right through the centre of the body, an inhabitable empty tube that runs through but is not his body, which could even be the fault-line along which his body separates.13 It is not just to be sealed up, for, whilst that would prevent alienation either by potentially doubling extrusion of self into world or by the alienating intrusion of world (and God) into self, that would not remove the threat of an inner cleaving. Unlike head, spleen, and lungs, which are to be assimilated, the digestive tract is therefore to be expelled: ‘quant a` l’abdomen, il sera rejete´’ (xv. 332). The body is to disembowel itself by excreting out its innards, or rather its inner voids. Such ideas follow a recognizable if extravagant logic. But in what it has to say about the means of creating this new bodily form, the Artaudian textual world takes a step further away from normal ways of thinking and follows a logic of paradoxes. It is on this topic that some of his most extraordinary and outrageous writings are to be found. Inconsistently, the closed body is to be created precisely by opening the bodily oriWces to excrete the alimentary canal, which is incompatible with closure. Even more problematically, the abjecting God is to be eradicated by abjectingly expelling Him through the oriWces through which he committed his original infraction: ‘Je vais reáliser le principe meˆme du pećhe´ qui est de blasphe´mer Dieu et de le rejeter de soi, de le chier [ . . . ] de le pisser, de le branler, et de l’expulser par le vit’ (xvii. 70). Although the logic of monistic philosophies of identity means that 12 13

Ibid. These problems may be inferred from the late texts, although they are not spelt out.

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rejection of an idea might be described as a bodily act, the text takes a savage delight in underlining the physical and demeaning nature of the (r)ejection of God. Artaud seems to be writing not of a means of establishing the writing subject as an unambiguously monistic identity, but of a supposedly physical act of excreting and ejaculating God. Metaphor is shading into delusion. And this bodily ejection of God, quite apart from the extravagance of the metaphor, sits uncomfortably with Artaud’s earlier condemnation of God, for one of the weightiest charges levelled against Him is that He creates fecally by means of expulsion. It is because the world, removed from the Godhead, is ‘l’eˆtre expulse´ de Dieu’ (xv. 61) that Artaud is able to ask the rhetorical question: ‘Connaissez-vous quelque chose de plus outrageusement fećal j que l’histoire de dieu’ (xiii. 107). Expulsion is the primordial crime: the original separation that occurred in cosmogenesis meant that, if the Divine realm was (by deWnition) one of archetypal, pure, self-identical Being, the created world must by contradistinction be one of alienation, a ‘mamtram fausse´, j tartre encrouˆteé d’un ancien crime’ (xii. 41). It can seem paradoxical that Artaud writes of the need to be free of the original creative crime by adopting the Creator’s methods, and to end abjection by abject means, but it is one of the structural features common to all areas of Artaud’s thought that to be rid of something involves a homeopathic immersion in that something. In this particular instance the fecal expulsion of God is warranted by the claim that God, the ‘main de singe’, has lodged Himself in Artaud’s rectum (xiv**. 65) and so Artaud must ‘sorti[r] les teńe`bres de Dieu de mes teńe`bres anales’ (xvii. 19) before he closes up the body. This is why Artaud has no choice about the most apt way to create himself but must do so by excretion, even if that involves an aping of God’s original creative crime: ‘c’est la question du de´part de dieu ou de son maintien qui se pose dans la colique de notre humanite´’ (xiii. 250). But, whilst Artaud’s ideas on fecality strain logic, it is possible to account for them, at least in part, by reference to his ideas on the fecal status of text and language. What Artaud identiWes as the fecality of language is the result of language issuing from the mouth, the opening of the inner sewer: ‘la bouche [ . . . ] j trou d’un e´gout fore´ de dents’ (xii. 100). And this fecality of language means that the written text is a fecal object too; as early as Le Pe`se-Nerfs Artaud was referring to his texts as abject objects that had fallen away from his body: ‘raclures de l’aˆme’ and ‘dećhets de moi-meˆme’ (i*. 94). This is why Artaud compares loss of fecal matter to a loss of the soul: ‘L’anus est toujours terreur, et je

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n’admets pas qu’on perde un excre´ment sans se dećhirer d’y perdre aussi son aˆme’ (ix. 169): the text is the product of what he is, and so is both fecal and insuZated with the soul. In so far as it is possible to rationalize Artaud’s claim that his lower bodily Xuids are vampirized, it is this idea of the fecal text that provides the model. Abject bodily Xuids are valued because the abject has become a term of approbation: if the abject text is valued, then so too by extension are abject Xuids. The valued abject Xuids are vampirized, since the necessarily abject text is primarily an object to be consumed, and so too, therefore, is the physically abject. But in which case, it could be objected, why should Artaud wish to purify the body? This is because the body is rendered impure not by the presence of messy Xuids but by the presence of the other in search of those Xuids. For Artaud, impurity is strictly a matter of contamination by foreign bodies. The vampirized abject body is a semi-literalist cashing-in of the image of the detrital text. So, returning to Artaud’s curious statements about creating the corps sans organes by excretion, when he writes Pas de philosophie, pas de question, pas d’eˆtre pas de neánt, pas de refus, pas de peut-eˆtre, et pour le reste crotter, crotter. (xii. 40)

this may be understood as a provocative way of referring to the need to write. Plunging into abjection is a polyvalent metaphor for plunging into writing. Excretion refers to the eradication of God and to the act of writing, and it is a pleasing conjunction, for an author whose prime textual aim is to be free of God, that the two activities should come together under the same term. The expanding semantic Welds of ‘crotter’, ‘merde’, and cognates allow Artaud to speak of his textual ambitions, to criticize and sully God, to suggest his superiority, and to work outside conceptual and linguistic orthodoxy all in the same breath: ‘Je ferai quelque chose de la merde tandis que Dieu n’a jamais fait que de la merde de tout’ (x v . 229). There is also a signiWcant part of scandalizing; the Wrst line of the resoundingly unsophisticatedly titled ‘Centre pitere et potron chier’ reads: ‘Ce qui importe ce n’est pas de savoir comment eˆtre, mais comment bien faire caca’ (xiv*. 48). But this rather self-admiring relish for the inconvenable is mixed in with a more serious belittling of intellectuality. Bodies are more important than ideas for creating an identity, Artaud’s texts are saying, and our identities are composed of

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the waste matter of the past: ‘Vivre c’est e´ternellement se survivre en remaˆchant son moi d’excre´ment’ (ix. 175). However uncomfortable our culture may be with the idea, creativity is not the noble activity traditionally portrayed. Artistic artefacts are created by bodies ex-pressing. So, if the new body is to be created by fecal methods, the fecality resides in the act of writing, and the corps sans organes itself is as far removed from fecality as imaginable; when writing in the name of his new identity, Artaud insists to the point of paroxysm on his cleanliness: ‘Je suis pur. j Je suis pur. j Je suis pur. j Je suis pur. j Je suis pur. j [ . . . ] Je ne ferai plus jamais caca’ (xiii. 273). And yet, even though there is a strong metaphoric link in Artaud’s text between fecality and textuality, which leads to much of what initially seems delusion and infantilism, this still fails to explain the whole story. When Artaud writes approvingly of fecality, this must, to a signiWcant extent, be taken literally. The great frequency with which Artaud bedecks his texts with the language of excrement is out of proportion if fecality is only a provocative metaphor for textuality. And, whilst it is possible to discern the inner logic in portraying eZuvia as valued objects of consumption, the insistence on naming diverse bodily Xuids has nothing to do with this logic. It is simply a delight in naming the unspeakable. It is, therefore, unsurprising to Wnd Artaud elevating the actual physical stuV of excrement in his late texts to the supreme ontological state transcending distinctions between the most intensely bodily and the most ethereal: ‘caca est la matie`re de l’aˆme [ . . . ] Le souZe des ossements a un centre et ce centre est [ . . . ] Kah-Kah [ . . . ] le souZe corporel de la merde’ (ix. 174). Although derived from taking literally the Wgurative equation of loss of excrement to loss of soul, this exceeds any metaphoric reference to textuality and speaks instead of metaphysical theories. The word ‘caca’, strewn through Artaud’s Cahiers and late poems, takes on a talismanic force similar to that of his name: ‘le supreˆme terme Ca-Ca. j Je veux a` tout instant eˆtre ce supreˆme terme’ (xx. 453). For substantial sub-themes of his later texts to Wt together in an overall picture, Artaud’s pronouncements on excrement and the excretory functions need to be taken literally. For example, in Suppoˆts et Suppliciations Artaud repeatedly claims that his rectum is possessed and controlled by the Other: ‘L’anatomie ve´ritable [ . . . ] n’arrive pas a` progresser parce que tout le monde a mis son veto dans le sphincter anal de ses fesses’ (xiv*. 138). It is because of this that Artaud cannot evacuate those bodily parts infested by the Other. Alternatively, the text suggests, it is because the Other occupies Artaud’s inner space, the inner workshop of the

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rectum, that he is unable either to reincorporate that which has previously been outside his control or to hold back the products of his body: ‘Je veux porter mes refoulements dans mon cu, moi, Antonin Artaud, mais toi, eˆtre, c’est dans le mien que tu veux les porter. C’est-a`-dire me les faire porter, engrosser et incuber’ (xiv*. 50). The Other brings himself to birth by a fertilizing sodomy of Artaud, and at the same time blocks the space needed to create his new unsullied body. In this claim that he cannot develop his closed textual identity because of the controlling presence of the Other blocking the birthing chamber of the rectum, Artaud has unambiguously overstepped the boundaries of rationality. His texts, when read literally on the excretory processes, as they must be in the light of some of the Wnal poems, are no longer a rethinking of the world in terms that are startling yet nevertheless amenable to interrogation about a recognizable reality. It is now a hermetic textual system that can no longer be thought of as a commentary on an extra-textual world. From this stage on in the evolution of his ideas Artaud’s late poems are removed from a common, shared reality and become ever more so. Whereas it has thus far been possible to discern a plastic system of ideas driving the metaphors from which the textual world is generated, and even insights into the limited freedom of the culturally determined individual, his univers imaginaire now becomes wholly imaginary, untethered to a generalized human condition. If up to this point it has been possible to see his ideas as idiosyncratic metaphors for reality, now, as he develops these idiosyncratic perspectives further, their reality index is lost and the Artaudian text moves into a personal, phantasmal realm. The reader may continue to applaud its ever bolder linguistic performances, admire the internal architecture holding the image-concepts together, and appreciate that it is a mind-defying act of rebellion against the whole tenor of Western thought about the individual; but dialogue with the ideas peters out. It may be analysed as a cryptic literary artefact spawned of Modernism pushed to an extreme, but no longer as a dramatization of insights into dark corners of the human condition. Two points that might at Wrst seem to anchor the isolated textual world in an extra-textual world are insisted on ever more frequently and urgently: that the author of these texts is Antonin Artaud and that Antonin Artaud is his body: ‘Moi je suis Antonin Artaud, j je ne crois a` rien qu’a` mon corps souVrant’ (xiv**. 175). In the fullest expression of Artaud’s late world, Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, a negative deWnition of ‘un corps’ in which Artaud lists all the abstract concepts he is not, closes on the hammering aYrmation:

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.

et des coups, des coups des coups, des coups, des coups, et ça. (xiv**. 16)14

The body is taking on a giant structuring role, nearly every page of Suppoˆts et Suppliciations reWning Artaud’s self-deWnition as body. In this textual world he is continually forging himself into a forceful body of blows and nothing else other than the signatory unsayable ‘et ça’, which both ludically undermines self-deWnition and thereby earnestly insists on the impossibility of saying the self. But, if it is incontrovertible that Artaud is Artaud and has a body, this does little to bestow any reality on the texts. The very insistence on these two points is symptomatic of the extent to which the textual world is removed from reality, and shows that the Artaudian text is not actually stating facts but deWning a future reality: Moi, Antonin Artaud, homme de la terre, c’est a` moi 14 It is worth quoting the humorous yet serious list of all those ideas that will not enter into consideration in this new identity. It shows the great work undertaken by Artaud in his Wnal texts, and acts as an index to everything his new body is not: ‘un corps, j pas d’esprit, j pas d’aˆme, j pas de cœur, j pas de famille, j pas de familles d’eˆtres, j pas de le´gions, j pas de confre´ries, j pas de participation, j pas de communion des saints, j pas d’anges, j pas d’eˆtres, j pas de dialectique, j pas de logique, j pas de syllogistique, j pas d’ontologie, j pas de re`gle, j pas de re`glement, j pas de loi, j pas d’univers, j pas de conception, j pas de notion, j pas de concepts, j pas d’aVects, j pas de langue, j pas de luette, j pas de glotte, j pas de glandes, j pas de corps thyroı¨de, j pas d’organes, j pas de nerfs, j pas de veines, j pas d’os, j pas de limon, j pas de cerveau, j pas de moelle, k pas de sexualite´, j pas de christ, j pas de croix, j pas de tombeau, j pas de re´surrection, j pas de mort, k pas d’inconscient, j pas de subconscient, j pas de sommeil, j pas de reˆves, j pas de races, j pas de genre j maˆle ou femelle, j pas de faculte´s, j pas de principes, j pas d’attributs, j pas d’actes, j pas de faits. k Pas d’avenir, j pas d’inWni, j pas de proble`me, j pas de question, j pas de solution, j pas de cosmos, j pas de gene`se, k pas de croyance, j pas de foi, j pas d’ideé, j pas d’unite´. k Pas d’anarchie, j pas de bourgeoisie, j pas de partis, j pas de classes, j pas de re´volution, j pas de communisme, j [ . . . ] pas d’analyse, j pas de synthe`se, j pas de dedans, j pas de re´serves, j pas d’exsudat, j pas de sueur, j pas d’inspir, j pas de zone, j pas d’irradiation, j pas de physiologie, j [ . . . ] pas d’organisme, j pas de psychologie’ (xiv**. 13–15). Artaud is against everything: family, religion, spirit, rationalism, ideation, language, biology, mind, intellectuality, society, anything that enters or leaves the body, and he is even against that which he himself has deWned himself as (bone).

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a simple artaud a` dećider maintena . . . de la taillade . . . que mon corps dans l’avenir il sera.

. .

(xiv**. 17)

In this textual world the repeated self-naming as ‘Artaud, homme’ or ‘Artaud, un corps’ is a way of drawing the concept-character ‘Artaud’ and the new concept ‘corps’ or ‘homme’ ever closer. This is particularly evident in: ‘Artaud, un corps [ . . . ] puisque son moi est tout son corps j et qu’il est lui-meˆme ce corps’ (xiv**. 191), in which both ‘Artaud’ and ‘corps’ are disassociated from the writing subject and appear in the third person (as they predominantly do in Artaud’s late poems). They have become objects in the textual world to be constituted and delimited. This is redeWnition, not common ground on which reader can meet poet. And Artaud’s textual world continues to slip even further from the reader’s grasp, for, although the texts make frequent reference to a prophesied textual future, this future is presented as unattainable. The pervading impression of Artaud’s late texts, both of the Cahiers and their immense cry of refusal of a ‘nature matrice comme moule de son corps de´ja` fait’15 emitted from the pit of Artaud’s being, and of the proliferating fragments of Suppoˆts et Suppliciations and Artaud le Moˆmo, is one of unendability. Artaud’s texts in fact write this unendability into their system of ideas, since there is no possible closure to the project of writing a dynamic identity that must always be a leap ahead of the doubles that pursue it. Even in the heights of self-aYrmation, Artaud presents the body as something to be worked and reworked: Je suis cet insurge´ de corps . . . . [ . . . qui puise sa dureé] dans le beˆchage toujours plus arrie`re et plus retire´ du corps. (xiv**. 84)

The plenitudinous identity ‘Artaud’ arises from an ongoing work of rebellion against the way the body is conceived in which the body’s 15

Artaud, ‘Je hais et abjecte en laˆche’, 84, 8–9 (1949), 280.

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inner space is repeatedly worked over. The process of self-birth is unendable: ‘une conscience [ . . . ] bien rameneé sur sa propre matie`re, et qui n’en Wnira plus de pilonner son fond’ (xii. 153); and this continual self-deWnition and redistribution of the body is the function of the Cahiers. In the late writings the depths and inner gulfs of the body have become bottomless and so the body can never be fully reconquered. Changing his metaphor from space to energy, Artaud writes of the need to keep the Wres of suVering stoked even once he has burnt oV the cancerous growths of God and doubles so that the created body is destroyed and surpassed in the moment of its creation. Artaud’s promised space is one where the incandescent body must be kept at boiling point: ‘Ce qui me distinguera des autres est que j’aurai un corps plus souVrant [ . . . ] et plus bruˆlant’ (xv. 141). This metaphor of the new body as a self-consuming Wre is itself reworked so that the body is energized to the point of explosiveness: [ . . . ] le corps actuel n’est qu’un plaquage de petite envergure applique´ sur l’ećorce de l’arbre terrible qui n’a pas cesse´ de monter et bientoˆt aura atteint son fatal de´veloppement. Alors ce sera l’explosion terrible qui fera peter au loin l’armeé des poux car la raison d’eˆtre de l’existence n’a pas encore e´te´ prononceé ou eńonceé.16

The enunciative act by which Artaud will bring the (textual) body into existence will rip through (his textual) reality, and the old world order will be sent scattering by the cataclysmic formation of Artaud’s new conceptualization of the body. Metaphors are no sooner established in the Artaudian text than they become the basis for a new, further, Xight towards epic mythologization. Images are worked and reworked in the way advocated for the body as the climate of Artaud’s textual world tends towards ever greater forcefulness and physicality. In this textual world moving with increasing speed and self-conWdence towards myth and irreality, all Artaud’s thought is orchestrated by the dominant image of the corps sans organes. The most important thing about 16 Artaud, ‘Il fallait d’abord avoir envie de vivre’, K, 1–2 (1948), 130. The rationale behind this image of ‘l’arbre terrible’, found in the Wnal texts of late 1947 and 1948, is that the tree, like Artaud, is constituted primarily by a massive trunk and is thought of as having no organs or inner voids. It is an example of the ‘simple’, self-suYcient existence Artaud prizes.

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the new body is its perfect closure on itself: ‘Je suis ferme´, bloque´, j je suis blinde´ a` la langue de l’eˆtre’ (xiv**. 223). As a hard, closed block, it will be immune to the sexual and vampiric incursions of God and Other. Selfclosing and self-hardening will make Artaud’s body both sexually and physically impenetrable and impregnable: ‘tout mon corps impossible a` percer’ (xiv**. 142). This hardening is an embodiment of the essence of corporeality that will result in ‘un ultra-corps’ (xvii. 19) purged of everything non-bodily, ‘un corps [ . . . ] entie`rement a n t i - s p i r i t u e l ’ (xiv**. 198). And yet, as this process of imagining the hard, closed body gathers momentum, the corps sans organes, the supposedly most bodily of bodies, becomes less and less recognizably body. It is not just stripped of mind, soul, and organs; it is stripped right down to its skeletal essence: ‘je suis [ . . . ] un cliquetis d’os particuliers sans viande’ (xvi. 215), and this skeleton is further reduced to a minimal body of bones: ‘Un os dur dans le front, j un os dans la colonne, j un os au diaphragme, j un os au pectus j avec l’ideé d’os au milieu’ (xvi. 189). Then the corps sans organes loses even these last vestiges of bodyness and becomes a wooden structure with fewer and fewer chinks: ‘je suis un morceau de bois [ . . . ] reprenant les morceaux de corps tombe´s pour les reclouer l’un sur l’autre toujours plus e´troitement et de plus pre`s’ (xiv**. 84), an ever denser agglomeration of wood, brick, and metal: ‘une maçonnerie reélle de poteaux, de boıˆtes, de briques et de clous’ (xiv**. 198). Having hardened to the point of becoming mineral, the body then becomes so hard and dense that it collapses in on itself and loses all volume: ‘le corps j c’est s’entasser, s’e´paissir [ . . . ] le corps est absolument opaque ¼ sans profondeur’ (xiv**. 197). Conceptual limitations are ignored as the body both becomes spatially inWnite: ‘c’est l’intrusion absolu de mon corps, partout’ (xiv**. 76) and dwindles to a point, nothing but a superheavy concentration of energy: ‘Je suis un bloc de feu plus dur et plus dense que tout corps et qui rame`nera les choses au crible de sa densite´’ (xvii. 39). The corps sans organes is a body only in name. It has become a massive, incandescent new space of will and energy that engulfs the entirety of the world. It is endless, bottomless, inWnite, a black hole of a body in terms of its super-density and spatial contradictions, and in the way it swallows up all Artaud’s writing. The most adventurous of Artaud’s Wnal poems were written in autumn 1946 and collected under the title Artaud, le Moˆmo (Ci-gıˆt, though not part of this collection, is part of the same creative upsurge). These slender texts represent a peak of linguistic experimentation, and in them Artaud creates highly individuated, densely interwoven, mesmeric sound

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textures by combining standard words with a personal language halfway between neologism and glossolalia (‘C’est la toile d’araigneé pentrale, j la poile onoure j d’ou-ou la voile, j la plaque anale d’anavou’ (xii. 13–14)). But this linguistic inventiveness, striking though it is, is less striking than the ambition of Artaud’s ideas. His previous imaginative theorizings on bodily existence and on determinism swell to an unexpected fullness of amplitude that exceeds even that of Suppoˆts et Suppliciations. Whilst the corps sans organes is, from the Wrst, a means of escaping God’s hold, in Artaud le Moˆmo the new body suddenly bursts onto the textual stage in all its irrepressible autonomy. The text loudly proclaims in its slightly otherworldly tongue the autogenesic irruption of new from old body: Non la membrane de la vouˆte, non le membre omis de ce foutre, d’une de´pre´dation issu, mais une carne, hors membrane, hors de la` ou` c’est dur ou mou. Ja passe´ par le dur et mou, e´tendue cette carne en paume, tireé, tendue comme une paume de main exsangue de se tenir raide. (xii. 14)

Dovetailing intricate phonic echoes with straight repetition (‘Non [ . . . ] vouˆte, j non [ . . . ] foutre’), this writing takes on a rare assertiveness and self-belief. Crafted sound patternings—‘omis de ce foutre j d’une de´pre´dation issu’ transfers all its phonic emphasis, by the sharpening of the i-ou into i-u, onto the keyword ‘issu’—lend a logic to the text that generates a climate of new, aYrmed order. This sense of aYrmation is furthered by the rhythmic switches that roar out the text’s allegiances in ‘mais une carne, j hors membrane’, and that hammer out its hostilities in the monosyllabic pile of ‘hors de la` ou` c’est dur ou mou’. Artaud’s birth is associated with bodily humours because of the tidal wave of bodily Xuids that beset him at the moment of his birth, and also because liquescence is the deWning characteristic of the foetal environment (‘la chair s’est pre´pareé pendant 9 mois au milieu du sperme et des excre´ments’ (x. 43)), so the hard body denies biological birth. In a body held so taut that the humours have been pressed out of it, Artaud has

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moved beyond the God-given order of soft, rounded, clinging Xeshliness into his world of hard, uncontained, angular meatiness that is re-enacted in the jagged verse texture and new-found muscularity of language and Wnality of tone. The tumescence, an illusory hardness, of the penis, and the vampiric, englobing softness of the vagina and womb (see again the ‘nature matrice comme moule de son corps’ (emphasis added)) belong to an inferior order of existence that Artaud has sloughed oV along with orthodox vocabulary. Instead, in Artaud le Moˆmo, Artaud lives up to his new self-given name and rails mockingly against all genealogies:17 ni de me`re, ni de pe`re inne´, n’e´tant pas la viande minette qu’on copule a` patron-minet. (xii. 23)

The saturation of these lines with ‘in’ and ‘ni’, mimicking the false daintiness of the progenitors, thrusts the ‘copule’, which dispels their aura of innocence, into phonic prominence. But this is not just an overturning of his biological origin and genealogy, it is a rebellion against all origins and against the idea of inneity in favour of self-creation. Parents and God blur into one hostile force, since all origins impose a determining past history, for ‘qui est donc Patron-Minet? j C’est dieu’ (xii. 139). Artaud here refuses both masculinity and femininity: he is neither passive, consumed, female ‘minette’ subjected to the incursive ravages of what he has elsewhere called ‘la langue de l’eˆtre’, nor issued from a sexual act that enshrines patriarchy (‘patron-minet’). Instead Artaud transcends distinctions being male and female, creator and progeny: Moi, Antonin Artaud, je suis mon Wls, mon pe`re, ma me`re, et moi. (xii. 77)

Self-generation allows Artaud to rise above time and logic, and the new ‘Antonin Artaud’ to be closed in a loop of self-identity between ‘Moi’ and ‘moi’. Artaud presents this dual movement of paring down the body and its expansion to Wll all space and time as: ‘une terrible e´volution simple’

17

Momos, Greek God of raillery and mockery.

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(xiv**. 160). It is a movement away from all dualisms that is unsayable and always just over the horizon: Voila` cinquante ans que je pense autre chose de ce que je fais et que ce que je vis. Assez Assez avec l’homme et la femme, le maˆle et la femelle. Les choses sont une. Assez avec la dualite´. Et assez avec l’existence et la vie. Les choses n’ont pas commence´ par le maˆle ou la femelle, l’homme ou la femme, elles n’ont pas commence´ encore (xiv**. 152)

It is supposedly a countdown towards ever greater simplicity in which he frees himself of the Godhead and of doubles and so Wnds oneness, and beyond oneness a simple identity degree zero: ‘plus de trinite´, de doubles, j l’unite´, la simplicite´’ (xvi. 123). But this quest for simplicity leads to extraordinary extravagance. The simplicity of existing free from all determination leads to the paradox of being undeWned to the point of being nothing: ‘ce que je suis est sans diVe´renciation’ (xiv**. 76), whilst explicitly not being nothing: [ . . . ] moi, simple Antonin Artaud, . . . ja na pas a papa-mama, nature, esprit ou dieu, . . . ou corps ou eˆtre, vie ou neánt. (xii. 99–100)

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The corps sans organes is the product of paradox, a conceptual and linguistic game in which extreme simplicity of lineation is combined with a simplicity of diction (‘ja na pas j a papa-mama’), a myth of a newly innocent and whole state that overwrites the old, abstract, anticorporeal identity myths. It is, by deWnition, irrepresentable and undeWnable: ‘Je suis un eˆtre inde´Wnissable dans un e´tat, e´tatiWer, c’est me de´truire.’18 In the quest to escape the prison house of the sayable and accede to the ‘ordre de non-de´termination totale, j irre´vocable et absolue’ (xiv*. 89), Artaud writes himself out of the realm of the conceivable: he is neither body nor being nor life nor nothingness. ‘Moi, simple j Antonin Artaud’ can only be negatively deWned as like nothing on earth, exceeding space, time, and language: ‘sans alpha ni ome´ga’ (xiv*. 17). Artaud’s writing on the body, whilst proclaiming ever more loudly how pure and simple a bodily state the corps sans organes is, eventually attains such convoluted abstract realms that it shades towards the incomprehensible. Artaud delights in and underlines this unintelligibility of the corps sans organes: ‘ce simple: [ . . . ] L’analphabe`te indećrottable du simple qui est homme et ne comprend pas’ (xiv*. 17). Artaud’s great textual journey has reached its end in the outer reaches of language and the conceivable, amidst the detritus of the mother tongue that, as he writes of the body, he nails ever tighter together, fulWlling the promise of the rallying cry for the conceptual revolution he had decided on at the beginning of his career in ‘L’activite´ du Bureau de recherches surreálistes’: ‘que les coprolaliques m’entendent, les aphasiques [ . . . ] tous les discre´dite´s des mots et du verbe, les parias de la Penseé’ (i**. 47). In this world of great contradictions much is lost. Artaud’s early rhetoric has been ampliWed to the point where it has become a law unto itself, to be heard in all its manic, frenetic energy but in which the contradictions cannot and, for Artaud, should not be resolved, as his ideas take to their heels over the horizon of the intelligible: [ . . . ] je suis inintelligible et je n’entre jamais sans inintelligible attache´ comme un nouveau corps a` l’aisselle de mes pieds morts, et ils carapatent les pieds qui pensent, ce n’est pas de la penseé mais de la panse. (xiv**. 109) 18

Quoted by Steinmetz in ‘Hapax’ (p. 280). No detailed reference to Artaud’s texts is provided.

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Both the ‘nouveau corps’ and the text become the embodiment of motility in these late poems where his ideas really take Xight. There is a grandeur of vision to the late poems as Artaud’s contradictory and extravagant ideas fuse with enormous uplifting energy. Yet, equally, this textual system is so large in its aspirations and so sprawling in the conceptual terrain it seeks to make its own that all semblance of normality is left behind. Artaud’s Wnal writing on the body tumbles ahead of itself fuelled by its own rhetorical energy in a fuite en avant. And yet ultimately it is precisely this second Xight—the Xight from reality—that is constitutive of the textual identity, for this has to leave all normal identity behind. Flying up and away from reality, Artaud’s writing is built on the essential loss of all writing: ‘Voila` 30 ans et plus que j’accuse un manque, un manque de fond a` ma parole aux abois’,19 and it is at the heart of this loss that it snatches its paradoxical victory, gesturing towards the unwriteable identity and aYrming the superiority of life to language: [ . . . ] on ne dit rien, mais [ . . . ] on se bat . . . . nommer la bataille c’est tuer le neánt, peut-eˆtre. Mais surtout arreˆter la vie . . . On n’arreˆtera jamais la vie. (xii. 236)

19

Letter to Arthur Adamov, 26 October 1947, Nouvelle Revue française, 413 (1987), 115.

CONCLUSION

je suis moi, moi; c’est moi, moi, moi, qui suis la` devant, et non un autre, devant le fond en re´bellion de l’autre qui n’est pas l’autre de mon moi (xiv**. 70) Language depends on the most naı¨ve prejudices.1

Reading Artaud demands considerable acclimatization and a certain reticence of judgement. His texts must not be approached purely as testimony to the dissolution of subjecthood if we are to perceive their many and surprisingly unremarked literary qualities, and neither must we conclude too precipitately where their heart is, for Artaud writes pluralist, not univocal, narrative and conceptual systems. When one Wrst opens his earliest adult publication, Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re, it seems that Artaud is describing a psycho-biological dysfunction, and it is only after one has read further into the Œuvres comple`tes that it becomes clear that Artaud’s characteristic way of writing is to adopt a high dramatic tone for even the most everyday subjects. Artaud is known for the originality of his analyses of inner states in which down-to-earth descriptions of the painful body are intercalated with fanciful abstractions, and critical emphasis has traditionally been placed on the straighttalking, unliterary nature of these confessional self-analyses. Artaud undoubtedly does write the pain, grinding panic, and tedium back into mental processes with striking openness, but this is not in fact the dominant tendency at work. From the opening pages Artaud’s writing is striking for the way he dramatizes mental and bodily self-analyses with a peculiar intensity, even dramatizing his questioning of the conceptual and linguistic frameworks within which this introspection is conducted. In the writings of the middle period the drama has become high epic couched in the esoteric terminology of opposing cosmic forces (male and female, Wre and water, 1


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and so on) mobilized to describe Artaud’s sense of inner lack. And the late writings take this epic drama to still higher levels, with ‘Artaud’ and ‘dieu’ the names of the two cosmogenesic principles slugging it out in a primeval struggle over the ontology and authorship of reality. A great uplift of dramatic energy turns dry questions about the resistance of inherited language and conceptualizations to the expression of a more intense, authentic (sur)reality into mythic narratives in which thieves and vampires stand in for linguistic frustration and existential disappointment. This dramatization of conceptual questioning obscures the thinking, yet Artaud’s texts are nevertheless, in a sense, a conceptual system. They build a plastic theory of selfhood (couched in particularized form as a new Antonin Artaud) out of Artaud’s intuitions into questions of (un)freedom, (non-)identity, and self-expression. But this theorizing is conducted by the writing of imaginary universes, so the systematizing is in the Wrst instance governed not by conceptual but by narrative demands. And in Artaud’s imaginary universe the logic snarls up, for he is actually creating not one imaginary universe but two. And this is the crux to understanding his late texts. Artaud transposes his self-intuitions into a mythologized world view and, to right the catastrophic wrongs of which he is the victim in this mythic world of alienation, he invents an obverse mythic world of plenitude in which he is the victor. This is not just the case in the Wnal writings but includes his writing on thought in the early texts. But the mythic world of alienation and the prophesied world of unity created as a counter-myth are neither separated nor separable. They are the weft and warp from which the textual fabric is created, and Artaud shuttles rapidly between them. Their opposing claims mean that Artaud’s univers imaginaire is an unsettling combination of extensive coherence and, when the narratives clash, irresolvable self-contradiction. The resultant instability of Artaud’s imaginary textual worlds is heightened by their verbiage and the fact that conceptual terms are reshaped and connotatively refashioned by semi-ludic word-play, with the accidents of language therefore structuring his imaginary conceptual systems. This is true of all Artaud’s writing, but nowhere is it truer than of his postChristian texts, where Artaud plays and puns his way through what could otherwise be dogmatic assertions that his only reality is that of animal physicality. In this way he invests the basics of everyday life with metaphysical dimensions whilst at the same time stripping his mythic epic of the earnest intellectuality associated with existential redeWnition. The ludicity is of equal weight to the metaphysical Wctionalizing. In ‘La question se pose de . . . ’ (1947) a ‘gaz puant’ building up inside his body

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is the ‘seule chose j qui soit quelque chose’ (xiii. 95), beating oV space, time, being, and the self into the realms of irreality: l’espace, le temps, la dimension, le devenir, l’avenir, l’eˆtre, le non-eˆtre, le moi, le pas moi, ne sont rien pour moi. (xiii. 95)

The ‘grand pet’ (xiii. 93) by which Artaud ‘[a] tout fait ećlater’ (xiii. 95) becomes the triumphal proof of the bold, excedentary, all-transcending nature of Artaud’s explosive identity: Je suis Antonin Artaud et que je le dise comme je sais le dire imme´diatement vous verrez mon corps actuel voler en ećlats et se ramasser sous dix milles aspects notoires. (xiii. 118)

One of the most typical of Artaud’s dramatizing processes is at work here as he plays on two meanings of the term ‘explosive’. A bodily expulsion of gas is transformed into what he calls the thundering manifestation of his uncontainable world-breaking and world-making force. Rarely has so much been generated out of hot air. Artaud’s theorizing is couched in a language that shies away from humdrum accuracy and that privileges the structure-providing role played by verbal pyrotechnics and prestidigitation. In his early writings grandiosity and imagistic exaggeration are already part of the textual bent, and when Artaud Wnds his Wnal, fullthroated voice, his attempt to go beyond the already-said and the readily sayable to express what he believes are the fundamentals of human existence builds to a crescendo of hammering linguistic power that in a collection such as Artaud le Moˆmo can veer towards noise. Artaud’s writing

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blurs the distinction between literary epic and conceptual reworking. His text moves in an interzone between the poetic and the (anti-)philosophic and the further one reads, the more explicit becomes the poeticization and mythologization of ontology and metaphysics. The text plays hard and fast with language in the midst of its world-shaking existential crises, and it is the poetic legerdemain redrawing concepts that makes Artaud’s writing so subversive. But the dramatization and heavy literary topspin Artaud gives to his existential questioning result in a picture of reality so exaggerated that it slides towards the incomprehensible. Not only does Artaud theorize in the Wrst person; his speculative leaps take him to extreme and dramatic positions. Rather than saying that the concept ‘God’ has fashioned the way the Western tradition has thought about metaphysics, Artaud claims God forces him to consume His faeces, which then mutates into the obverse mythic image of God squatting in Artaud’s rectum. Artaud’s later textual performances Xit confusingly between inventive attempts to say deeply sensed truths and splurges of infantile linguistic naughtiness. Beyond the vanity that leads him to conduct conceptual enquiry in terms of mythic narratives about his life, there is much that is ‘high’ thought. Yet, even the high thought about existential paucity can seem Ximsy, for, and this is one of the great ironies of Artaud’s writing— despite the sophisticated, sharp-eyed distrust of the inXuence of inherited linguistic modellings of reality—his two overarching ideas seem built upon cliche´s. At the heart of his ‘high’ thought is an amazingly simple conXation of the metaphoric with the literal: a ‘gut feeling’ about metaphysics leads to a metaphysics that revolves around the guts, and a ‘body of writing’ becomes a body created by writing. It is this conjunction of abstract intellectualizing, on the one hand, with primitive taboo-Xouting and simplistic literalism, on the other, that is so unnerving. Artaud’s conceptual work is neither the fanciful oddity it can seem nor the hard-core rewriting of metaphysics it pretends. His writings challenge conceptual orthodoxies and unenquiring acceptance of foundational ideas in novel ways, and it is Artaud’s ideational strategies (Surrealist in their anti-rationalism and ludicity) rather than the resultant systems that are most revealingly disturbing. The irritation Artaud’s writing provokes arises from his dual iconoclasm: his refusal to accept the cherished notions of the Western tradition, and especially his refusal to go about his questioning of these notions in the sanitized, decorous mode of intellectual endeavour. But, if it is hard to maintain one’s equanimity in the face of Artaud’s wilfully wild and at times dishearteningly simplistic writing,

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his texts can also be highly enjoyable. Dumoulie´ has recently issued a useful corrective in drawing attention to the important role humour plays in his late writing (what Artaud calls his ‘humour absolu concret mais de l’humour’ (xiv*. 105)), which, in the great demands of forbearance the Artaudian text places on the reader, is all too easily overlooked. But, if one is willing to submit to the mesmeric verbosity of Artaud’s late writings, they can be both exhilarating and eerily compelling. The result of this peculiar combination of the sophisticated and the primitive and of the earnest and the ludic is to diminish still further the precarious stability of Artaud’s imaginary conceptual system. But, if the primitivism and the excessive nature of Artaud’s textual performances work against the coherence of his late writings, this coherence is not completely undermined. Patterns do emerge in each of the phases of Artaud’s thought, which, whilst not models of precision conceptual planning, are suYciently well established for it to make sense to talk of his ideas as a world view (or a parody of a world view?), even if not consistent enough (quite independently of the extravagance of its content) to call it a doctrine or a position. As we have seen in the closing two chapters, for instance, in Artaud’s Wnal thought about the corps sans organes conceived so as ‘en Wnir avec dieu’, the various impulses of previous ideas achieve full amplitude as they are drawn together into a Xuid, at times turbulent system, in which the incoherences and contradictions actually energize his writing and lend it a remarkable and supposedly literal gutwrenching urgency. Indeed, this reading has been primarily concerned with establishing an analytic portrait of these mutating patterns through the major phases of development of Artaud’s thought, and to present them speciWcally in terms of both their core structures and their irreducible complexities. We have seen how Artaud’s early writings on thought, language, and body implicitly invoke an ideal, self-present form of consciousness; how his earlier Rodez writings chart his passage through and adaptation of Gnostic thought, which provides the root of his two major ideas of the body as a barrier to epiphanic self-plenitude and of the cosmogenesic word as a domineering overlord stamping out the poet’s autonomy; and we have seen how in his Wnal writing he spins a mythic interpretation of subjecthood from the earlier Rodez material. We have also seen that, for all its rebarbative verbiage, the Rodez writing—including the Cahiers— cannot be dismissed as unworthy of critical attention nor as of only secondary importance. The Rodez writing does Xirt with unreason, and Artaud’s ideas on the constraints on the linguistic subject’s freedom

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are heavily overwritten with a rhetoric of hatred and anger that can turn round and round on itself. The late poems that grow out of the Rodez writing do indeed tend towards hermetic textual systems untethered to a recognizable, shared human reality, and the Wnal writing on ‘dieu’ is no longer a dramatization of insights but a phantasmal conceptual world feeding oV its own metaphors and sinking into puerility and frenzy. But, nevertheless, the very linguistic exuberance, inebriation, and inventiveness show the late Artaud to be a true écrivain, for, once the antiphilosophic work is taken into account, the psychotic colourings no longer impugn their literary credentials, since it is the very extravagance of the textual strategies that does the work on discourse. Not only do the Rodez writings merit reading; they are, as has further been argued, essential to understanding the later poems of the lesserknown collections Artaud le Moˆmo, Ci-gıˆt, and Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, which, in the light of the Rodez material, may be re-evaluated. Thus the other major concern of this study has been to demonstrate that it is only when the textual speciWcs of Artaud’s passage through his idiosyncratic Gnostic theology are brought back into the critical picture that the conXicting forces at work in his most puzzling later images may be appreciated, allowing the most diYcult late poems to be meaningfully integrated into an overall analytic portrait. But the late poems themselves are not merely some post-Gnostic codicil; they are of a wholly diVerent order, and need to be approached as free-standing works making sense in their own right. What we have seen, then, is that early writing links to Rodez writing links to late poems in a process of what may legitimately be called intellectual development. Most critics argue that any coherence of Artaud’s work lies in the preoccupation with selfwriting, and it is this alone that lends what unity there is to his fragmented works; I would venture to suggest that his Œuvres comple`tes display not just a weak homogeneity, but a genuine, if uneven, process of development in which his thought mutates according to its own inner logic into mature systems. The most striking thing on coming to the Wnal texts is their exacerbatedness and diVerence of feel. The late conXagration of his writing switches mood and register to such an extent that we seem to be entering a new world. Yet, the more they are studied, the more it becomes clear that there is a logic to their evolution. It is evident that the thinness of his sense of identity that is central to Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re, L’Ombilic des Limbes, and Le Pe`se-Nerfs is still Artaud’s major preoccupation in Artaud le Moˆmo and Suppoˆts et Suppliciations, but what is less immediately

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clear is that the writing of this existential paucity in the early texts in terms of language, body, and consciousness informs all his later thought. Artaud’s early writings not only deWne the terrain; they eVectively establish the framework in which he continues to work over the course of his entire career. And, what is more, in the early writings the dominant idea that moulds his ideas on consciousness and the body is the conviction that linguistic infelicities result in a catastrophic incompatibility between his texts and the truths he wishes them to articulate. The failure of language to say life results in deformations and lacunae of such signiWcance in verbalized thought that the metaphysics implicit in his texts is a travesty of the metaphysics they were theoretically meant to convey. And it is precisely this idea of writing creating the wrong kind of metaphysical constructs that continues to dominate the development of Artaud’s thought. Not only, then, does the framework of language, consciousness, and the body persist; the relative importance of these three major elements stays unchanged. Even the conXuence of these early ideas with his religious ideas at Rodez does not profoundly alter the direction they are taking but only invigorates their development. The inXuence of the early texts is so strong in fact that when, as explored in the previous chapter, his late poems suggest that the verbalization of bodily experience introduces distance between body and self, he is reworking the idea analysed in the Wrst chapter—to wit, the impossibility of writing the Xuctuating bodily-rooted sub-life that is, for him, the substratum of all consciousness and all identity. Artaud’s early ideas appear in increasingly dramatized form, and this dramatization means that they become more extreme. Yet, despite the seeming discontinuity, many of the principal features of the textual world of the Wnal poetry issue from the matrix of his early writing. The initial impetus that sets the vast theorizing machine of Artaud’s writing rolling is the crucial realization that his failure to put his sense of who he is into words actually carries an important metaphysical lesson. Linguistic failure tells him that sayable selfhood has little or nothing in common with the inner self, the plenitudinous ego-entity he senses within. And, by extension, this suggests that all that may be said in the inherited discursive mode must be viewed with extreme suspicion, for the problem is not one of Wnding the right words but that the right words are not to be found. The inherited language necessarily brings with it a metaphysics and an ontology, and Artaud’s starting point is the realization that these inherited conceptual foundations do not correspond at all to the metaphysical truths he feels are implicit within his intuited inner

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self. At Rodez the same idea reappears in newly dramatized form with the repeated insistence that the inherited conceptual orthodoxy is not just incompatible with but actively hostile to the metaphysics he carries within him. That discourse is imbued with metaphysics is not an unusual idea (though the determining strength Artaud attributes to invisible discursive forces is less usual), nor is the idea that we have a somehow more authentic self that vainly struggles to emerge in discourse. What is far more unusual here is the idea that, although we are trapped in the metaphysical presuppositions of language, we nevertheless hold an alternative within us, since an inner self is a veritable object-lesson in an unsurpassably authentic metaphysics. Metaphysics is not an abstract discipline but something of which the individual has direct, instinctual knowledge, what he calls in his early writings the metaphysics of the Xesh or the truths of the blood. Expressing this intuited, gut-felt inner metaphysics is the task all Artaud’s writing seeks to perform. But this task is necessarily impossible, since Artaud’s belief that there is such an instinctual metaphysics is based on his profound, informative dissatisfaction with any utterance that touches on matters metaphysical. For Artaud, language is both utterly unable to say experience, and an incredibly powerful force moulding human reality. The inadequacy of language is made all the more serious by the world-making power he attributes to it, for it opens a rift between discursive reality and a metaphysical surreality immanent in lived experience, and he writes over twenty-Wve years and twenty-six volumes of the loss that occurs in telling and its implications for the human condition. Language, as a representation of the world, is founded on the absence of that which it presents again and so, as he will write near the end of his career, is ‘un double qui de´gage par projection un son pour un signe, un sens pour un son, un sentiment pour un signe d’eˆtre, une ideé pour un mouvement’ (xiv**. 30). For Artaud, language, as representation, is devoid of reality—‘Il n’est rien que j’abomine et que j’exe`cre tant que cette ideé [ . . . ] de repre´sentation, j donc de virtualite´, de non-reálite´’ (xiii. 258)—and so is a void, nothingness. There is therefore a literal sense in which Artaud can claim in his seminal letter of 1947 to Peter Watson that ‘je n’ai jamais ećrit que pour dire que je n’avais rien fait, ne pouvais rien faire, et que faisant quelque chose en reálite´ je ne faisais rien. Toute mon œuvre n’a e´te´ batie et ne pourra l’eˆtre que sur ce neánt’ (xii. 236). This idea that all truth and vitality stream out through language is the crux of his letters to Jacques Rivie`re, is at the heart of his idea of a theatrical language of direct, sensory impact, lies behind the glossolalia and linguistic deformations of the late

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writings, and is the basis of the superiority accorded to acting bodies over talking mouths in his Wnal ideas about the most authentic form of existence. The loss that occurs in representation is the spark Artaud uses to set Wre to the very foundations even of the inherited world view: j’accuse [ . . . ] un manque de fond a` ma parole . . . . c’est la raison d’eˆtre elle-meˆme du langage et de la grammaire que je de´saxe et je la de´saxe de telle façon et sur un tel plan qu’il en apparaıˆt la nećessite´ d’une nouvelle agonie humaine . . . . et d’une ideé nouvelle de la nećessite´, de la pre´sence, du vide, de l’essence, de la dureé.2

Whilst a preoccupation with language and its structuring of the world is characteristic of the Modernist text, Artaud typically take this to extremes. If human language builds the world, the wrong language builds the wrong world, Artaud (contentiously) says over and again. Language fails to say human experience, and, if language fails, then for Artaud the most basic concepts—causality, being, identity, time—are to be built all over again. Given Artaud’s precept that authentic existence is indissociable from expressing selfhood, his belief in the erroneousness of the linguistic and conceptual lexicon means that life must be a continual creative eVort to think in new ways. Or, as Artaud expresses it in typically adversarial terms: ‘Je hais et abjecte en laˆche tout eˆtre qui ne veut que se sentir vivre et ne veut pas avoir travaille´ a` vivre.’3 Throughout his career Artaud warns of the dangers of conceiving of existence according to terms laid down by inherited discursive resources. This is apparent in the complaint in Le Pe`se-Nerfs that he is penned in by language, and it underlies his idea of ‘envouˆtement’ articulated in Van Gogh, le suicide´ de la socie´te´, where the bewitchment denounced is that of dominant discourse limiting the thinkable. But this extraordinary power of language also means that it oVers potential redemption from his sense of existential lack. Writing is 2 3

Letter to Arthur Adamov, 26 October 1947, pp. 115–17. ‘Je hais et abjecte en laˆche’, 278.

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not just to reveal the self, but actually to make real for the Wrst time the repressed, inner self that cannot be manifested in inherited conceptual and linguistic frameworks. Writing the self is not a matter of giving expression to who he is—to a pretextual self—it means creating a textual construct called Antonin Artaud. A rejuvenated language and a vitalized identity are indissociable, and refashioning language is tantamount to reimagining the self. All Artaud’s linguistic experiments, from the writing of consciousness and its pain and blackouts of the early texts, to the savage, skeletal linguistic dance of the late writings, are part of the lifelong attempt to make the pulse of his writings beat as one with the extralinguistic inner self he intuits within. The inadequacy of the inherited language is only part of the problem. The more fundamental problem that Artaud identiWes in his early writings on consciousness and language is reXexivity. From Wrst to last Artaud is concerned with a prise de conscience of who he really is, but the irresolvable problem with a prise de conscience is that it resides on a doubling of the subject into a subject and object of consciousness. As Artaud writes in 1924: ‘penser a` soi-meˆme [ . . . ] Qu’est-ce que Moimeˆme? [ . . . ] creuse[r] un proble`me impensable [ . . . ] Se voir, et ignorer que c’est lui-meˆme qui se voit’ (i**. 9). Self-consciousness is supposed, for Artaud, to bring perfect self-presence and so plenitudinous self-identity, but reXexivity and identity are distinct properties, so apperception in reXexive self-consciousness is in fact of no avail in the creation of whole, simple selfhood.4 Whereas identity entails indissociability, reXexive structures are founded on a dissociation. This distance between same and same creates a disjuncture where there should be identity. As Artaud will write at Rodez: ‘pourquoi se prendre quand on est [ . . . ] Vouloir se prendre c’est s’eˆtre e´loigne´ [ . . . ] et se ramener’ (xv. 124). ReXexive selfconsciousness leads away from, not towards, identity. The attempt to think the self cannot bear the promised fruits of self-presence for selfreXexive thought creates an internal schism within consciousness. ReXexivity thus brings the very possibility of self-writing into question. At Rodez, Artaud returns to this idea of a doubling occurring in reXexive consciousness and explores it with renewed vigour. Artaud repeatedly deWnes himself in his Cahiers as non-reXexive, as he who cannot observe himself: ‘Je suis Celui qui ne me voit pas moi’ (xv. 158). His rejection of the idea of a reXexively constituted self leads to the 4 My idea here is an extension of Grossman’s discussion of Artaud’s use of the personal pronoun in the Cahiers de Rodez, during which she evokes Ricœurs’s ideas on the diVerence between reXexivity and identity (Artaud/Joyce, 157).

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collapse of all traditional ideas on identity, for, if Artaud is an unsayable ‘Celui’, then the idea of a subject-entity becomes redundant. It is this doubling inherent to reXexivity that is at the heart of his rejection of the ‘moi’, for non-reXexive consciousness has no need for a self-entity to which consciousness belongs, it just is: ‘ne jamais revenir sur soi-meˆme pour s’interroger ou se penser [ . . . ] la conscience [ . . . ] est soi-meˆme sans moi’ (xvii. 47). And the collapse provoked by the crisis of reXexivity spreads, for, once the idea of a self as subject of consciousness is done away with, then this implies that he has no consciousness, if consciousness is taken to be something separate from the body: ‘Je n’ai pas de mental re´Xećhissant. j [ . . . ] Je n’ai pas de moi. j Je suis un eˆtre corps’ (xviii. 286). The total identiWcation with the body that Artaud claims in his late writings is the extreme to which the Xight from reXexivity takes him. The problem of reXexive consciousness and the idea of the monistic intelligent body as the centre of a diVerent metaphysical order both come from the writings of the 1920s, and the explosive expansion of his ideas of doubling in the late texts is an unpacking and extrapolation of early ideas. A similar energizing and expansion occurs at Rodez to Artaud’s ideas on language. The early complaints about word-theft, as has been argued, covertly articulate Artaud’s ideal of a form of language symbiotic with even the most nebulous and ephemeral of conscious experiences. But, at Rodez, Artaud returns to the speciWc form in which he had expressed this idea in his early writings and draws out the previously implicit conclusion that he does not enjoy unchallenged possession of his mental space. He now takes the presence of the inherited, reality-structuring linguistic hermeneutic grids even more seriously and sees this as implying that all language-users are present within him and inXuencing his thought. In particular, he interprets the Divine attributes of ‘inWnite´’ and ‘inneíte´’ literally and concludes that God, to exist, must exist within the individual. The two forms of alienation and disempowerment— socio-linguistic determination and Divine presence—are linked by God’s status as ur-speaker. And so Artaud concludes that in accord with the early belief that the sayable, thinkable self is an illusion, behind the mask of the self of thought and language lurk humanity but especially God. The early account of the inadequacy of language and the resultant inaccuracy of our ideas about the self have been more and more boldly written, until linguistic and ideational determining forces are so great (and the self so Ximsy) that metaphysics has to be rethought and traditional ideas of mind and self discarded.

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The fact is that Artaud has a most extraordinary view of language, and he is oV the scale of the Modernist linguistic crisis. At the outset of his career his judgement that language was utterly inadequate to saying experience and imposed a deeply erroneous metaphysical framework, whilst on the scale of established philosophies of language, was already extreme. But, by the time of the late texts, Artaud’s earlier judgement seems tame and cosily upbeat. His proclaimed attitude towards language is now somewhere between hatred and horriWed despair: Les ideés me font horreur, je n’y crois plus . . . . . [ . . . ] vraiment je ne crois pas aux mots ni aux ideés remueés par les mots, et dans les mots, eˆtre ne veut pas plus dire pour moi ou m o i n s que ne pas eˆtre, et rien ne veut plus rien dire pour moi, et le silence d’ailleurs non plus et encore moins. . . . . [ . . . ] j’ai aussi, et nul ne me croira sans doute, la haine intestine de la poe´sie. (xiv**. 28)

But, for Artaud, silence, as he suggests, is not an option. His gut hatred of writing is not just an intense hatred; it is the hatred dictated to him by what I have called his gut metaphysics, and the urgent need to manifest this instinctual metaphysics means it must be put into words if Artaud is to be free of invalid empty discourse. The subject is splayed on the rack of discourse, rent asunder by alterity, and so inherited discourse is something that must be fought against with all the force he can muster in what his texts portray as a heroic corps-a`-corps: ‘les ideés que j’ai je les invente, en les souVrant moi-meˆme, pas a` pas et pied a` pied, je n’ećris que ce que j’ai souVert mesure par mesure de corps’ (xi. 104). Language and poetry have to be fought again and again, and victory can never be had: Je vous le re´pe`te je n’ai jamais pu vivre, penser [ . . . ] ećrire . . . . . [ . . . ] on ne dit rien, mais on souVre, on de´sespe`re et on se bat, oui, je crois en reálite´ qu’on se bat . . . . . Mais sortira-t-on sur [ . . . ] le terre-plein d’apre`s la bataille. [ . . . ] Jamais. Le combat a repris plus bas, alors quoi? L’escharrasage a` pe´rpe´tuite´? Le raclement inde´Wni de la plaie. La labourage a` l’inWni [ . . . ] (xii. 236)

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conclusion

His writing, as he puts it, must time and again reinfect his never wholly purged language with devastating, gangrenous scabs that must be scraped and scoured to expose the putrid underbelly of discourse. Writing, for Artaud, means violence and repeated violence at ever deeper levels of self and language—violence against discourse, and even physical violence. At the end of his life Artaud famously dictated his works whilst pounding a wooden block sliced from a tree trunk with a hammer (and the blocks were soon destroyed and had to be replaced). This kind of violence appears in the texts themselves in which Artaud claims he wields language as a physical weapon: Les mots que nous employons on me les a passe´s et je les emploie, mais pas pour me faire comprendre [ . . . ] alors pourquoi? C’est que justement je ne les emploie pas, en reálite´ je ne fais pas autre chose que de me taire et de cogner. (xiv**. 26)

All Artaud’s writing may be thought of as a ferocious ‘No!’ hurled at ready-made discourse, and by the post-Rodez writings this refusal is so conWdent in its own integrity and rightness that the Artaudian text becomes rabid with destructive rage and claims to use language in non-linguistic ways. Just as Artaud claims that his new body signiWes without thinking, so ‘le ton fort, et bien releve´, sur lequel rebaˆtir un monde et une autre reálite´’ (xii. 151) communicates without representing. Language-usage is no longer an ideational act for Artaud, but as physically real and as destructive in its eVect as his blows pulverizing blocks of tree trunk as he declaims his poems. Post-Rodez this kind of identiWcation of textual with physical acts, the descendant of the aesthetic aim of making text and life one that Artaud set himself in the 1920s, comes to dominate his writing. Stylistic devices and the rough-handling of language will result, Artaud claims, in a body that incarnates the force and violence of the text: Qu’est-ce que la motilite´? C’est le pouvoir de se faire soi-meˆme corps en fonction d’une volonte´ de rapacite´, de bestialite´, de brutalite´ 5

‘Notes pour une «Lettre aux Balinais»’, 10–11.

conclusion de force.

219

5

One of the great oddities of Artaud’s Wnal writings is that the abstract is repeatedly ruled out from his textual universe, yet he writes of a space to be generated by writing that Xouts all consideration of what is real and in which he claims to embrace and contain all contradictions. The abstract and thaumaturgic nature of his writing increases in direct proportion to the repudiation of all that is abstract and non-worldly: Je connais un e´tat hors de l’esprit, de la conscience, de l’eˆtre, et qu’il n’y a plus ni paroles ni lettres, mais ou` l’on entre par les cris et par les coups. Et ce ne sont pas des sons ou des sens qui sortent, plus des paroles mais des c o r p s . Cogne et foutre, dans l’infernal brasier ou` plus jamais la question de la parole ne se pose ni de l’ideé. Cogner a` mort et foutre la gueule, foutre sur la gueule, est la dernie`re langue, la dernie`re musique que je connais, et je vous jure qu’il en sort des corps et que ce sont des c o r p s anime´s. (xiv**. 30–1)

Artaud speaks of his textual universe a` venir as a kind of limbo in which language and existence have been left far behind, but paradoxically this liminal, quasi-transcendent realm is one in which all that exists is physical bodies. And, as violent text theoretically Xows into insurgent corporeality, so the narration of bodily violence and abjection is to create yet more aharmonious and unchoreographed performances in which textual style and bodily realities fuse. ‘Le style c’est l’homme’, Artaud writes, ‘et c’est son corps’ (xxi. 130). As the distinction between violent texts and simple bodies is washed away by the creative upswell of the post-Rodez years, the many paradoxes of Artaud’s writing are heightened: he claims not to speak and think, when he is frenziedly writing ever more extraordinarily abstract texts; language becomes the very emblem of alienation, yet he writes what he claims is an autonomous identity; the supposed simplicity of the textual identity is secured only at the price of being utterly inconceivable; life and art are supposedly one, but Artaud substitutes textual reality for existential reality. In the imaginary textual universe of his writings,

220

conclusion

self-creation and self-destruction become inseparable and self-writing goes hand in hand with linguistic play: ‘C’est moi, moi, l’auteur de mon corps, qui le de´sincarne et le dećharne pour le remanger obstine´ment’ (xiv**. 87). A process of linguistic recycling can cut out the inner syllable of a word, and in Artaud’s closed textual world this operation on the text is a virtual, magic operation cutting down the body. Artaud’s body is now one with language, for language has swallowed up any extralinguistic reality. As Artaud’s texts dance oV over the horizon of the comprehensible, the following lines on the dance of Artaud’s new body come to mind: —Ce´ des histoires, a` premie`re vue, c’est une utopie, mais commence d’abord par danser, bougre de singe, espe`ce de sale macaque Europeén que tu es. (xiii. 280–1)

Artaud does indeed tell the story of his utopia, a utopia where text is truth, and we might well choose to decide that in his Wnal texts he is just aping around with the European intellectual heritage. If earlier Artaud played hard and fast with language at moments of crisis-driven thinking, by the end his poetry strives to be hammering force dissociated from thinking, but Artaud is nothing if not a conjuror with words, and out of this violent assault on the French language he crafts texts of an astounding, sophisticatedly primitive, forceful beauty, and shows himself to be a virtuoso, mesmerizing verbalist.

BIBLIOGRAPHY primary texts Artaud, Antonin, Œuvres comple`tes, ed. Paule The´venin, 26 vols. in progress (Paris: Gallimard, 1956– ; rev. edn. 1976– ). —— ‘La confe´rence au Vieux-Colombier: Histoire većue d’Artaud-Moˆmo (extraits)’, L’InWni, 34 (1991), 3–49. —— Nouveaux Ećrits de Rodez (L’Imaginaire; Paris: Gallimard, 1977). —— Lettres a` Geńica Athanasiou (Paris: Gallimard, 1969). —— ‘Notes pour une «Lettre aux Balinais»’, Tel quel, 46 (1971), 10–34. —— ‘Les eˆtres sont’, 84, 5–6 (1948), 103. —— ‘L’eˆtre a des e´tats innombrables’, 84, 5–6 (1948), 107. —— ‘Je n’admets pas’, 84, 5–6 (1948), 108–14. —— ‘C’est moi’, 84, 5–6 (1948), 131. —— ‘Main d’ouvrier et Main de singe’, K, 1–2 (1948), 3–5. —— ‘J’e´tais vivant’, 84, 5–6 (1948), 102. —— ‘Je hais et abjecte en laˆche’, 84, 8–9 (1949), 280–4. —— ‘Il fallait d’abord avoir envie de vivre’, K, 1–2 (1948), 128–31. —— Letter to Arthur Adamov, 26 October 1947, Nouvelle Revue française, 413 (1987), 115–18. —— Pour en Wnir avec le jugement de dieu, enregistrement radiophonique d’Antonin Artaud, Maria Casare`s, Roger Blin, et Paule The´venin, produced by Reńe´ Guignard, February 1948. Cassette released with Alain and Odette Virmaux, Antonin Artaud: Qui êtes-vous? (Lyons: La Manufacture, 1986).

biographies Barber, Stephen, Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs (London: Faber and Faber, 1993). A biography of great verve. Hahn, Otto, Portrait d’Antonin Artaud (Paris: Le Soleil Noir, 1968). Stirring stuV: polemical apologia and passionate upsurges of counter-cultural enthusiasm. Maeder, Thomas, Antonin Artaud (Paris: Plon, 1978). Excellent research on the internment years more than outweighs any inexactitudes relating to the earlier years. Pre´ vel, Jacques, En compagnie d’Antonin Artaud (Paris: Flammarion, 1974). An interesting document by a contemporary witness of Artaud’s Wnal years in Paris. Roumieux, Andre´ , Artaud et l’asile, 2 vols. (Paris: Se´guier, 1996).

222

list of works consulted secondary

This selection includes only recent works or those that contributed directly to the ideas put forward here, the most influential being marked with an asterisk. Audiberti, Jacques, ‘Le Salut par la peau’, Revue K Nume´ro double Antonin Artaud, 1–2 (Paris: June 1948), 62–4. Bersani, Leo, ‘Artaud, Defecation and Birth’, in A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1976), 259–72. *Blanchot, Maurice, ‘Recherches: Artaud’, La Nouvelle Revue française, 8 (1956), 873–81. *—— ‘La Cruelle Raison poe´tique’, Cahiers de la Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, 22–3 (1958), 66–73. Repr. in L’Entretien inWni (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 432–8. Both articles are indispensable for examining Artaud’s early writing. Bonardel, Françoise, Antonin Artaud ou la Wde´lite´ a` l’inWni (Paris: Balland, 1987). An idiosyncratic esoteric reading. Bouthors-Paillart, Catherine, Antonin Artaud: L’Enonciation ou l’e´preuve de la cruaute´ (Paris: Droz, 1997). Charbonnier, George, Essai sur Antonin Artaud (Paris: Seghers, 1959). The Wrst full-length study; the at times insightful analyses are imperilled by a mimicking of the Artaudian style, something characteristic of early Artaud criticism. Cortade, Ludovic, Antonin Artaud: La Virtualiteé incarneé: Contribution a` une analyse compareé avec le mysticisme chre´tien (Paris: Harmattan, 2000). Costich, Julia F., Antonin Artaud, Twayne’s World Authors Series, 492 (Boston: Twayne, 1978). Deleuze, Gilles, ‘Le Schizophre`ne et le mot’, Critique, 255–6 (1968), 731–46. Repr. in Loqique du sens (Paris: E´ditions de minuit, 1969), 101–14. —— and Guattari, Fe´ lix, L’Anti-Œdipe: Capitalisme et schizophreńie I (Paris: E´ditions de minuit, 1972). *Derrida, Jacques, ‘La Parole souZeé’, Tel quel, 20 (1965), 41–67. Repr. in L’Ećriture et la diVe´rence (Paris: Seuil, 1967), 253–92. The article that deWned the Weld for future Artaud studies, even though many were slow to follow up Derrida’s lead into the later writings. *—— ‘Le Theáˆtre de la cruaute´ et la cloˆture de la repre´sentation’, Critique, 230 (1966), 595–618. Repr. in L’Ećriture et la diVe´rence (Paris: Seuil, 1967), 341–68. —— ‘Forcener le subjectile’, in Antonin Artaud: Dessins et portraits (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), 55–105. *Dumoulie´ , Camille, Antonin Artaud (Les Contemporains; Paris: Seuil, 1996). The most level-headed of the introductory works, Wlling a crucial gap in Artaud criticism. —— Nietzsche et Artaud: Pour une éthique de la cruaute´ (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992). *Durozoi, Ge´ rard, Artaud, l’alieńation et la folie (the`mes et textes; Paris: Larousse, 1972). Interesting for the attempt made by a traditional philosopher to read Artaud.

list of works consulted

223

Floc’h, Katell, Antonin Artaud et la conqueˆte du corps (Paris: Dećouvrir, 1995). Garelli, Jacques, Artaud et la question du lieu (Paris: Corti, 1982). Gasche´ , Rodolphe, ‘Self-Engendering as a Verbal Body’, Modern Language Notes, 93 (1978), 677–94. Gauthier, Xavie` re, et al., Artaud: Communications et interventions du colloque de Ce´risy, juin-juillet 1972 (Paris: 10/18, 1973). Important for the interest generated as a result of the collaboration of prominent members of the Tel quel group. *Goodall, Jane, Artaud and the Gnostic Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). A new departure in Artaud studies for its vision of Artaud as engaging in intellectual work. Gouhier, Henri, Antonin Artaud et l’essence du theáˆtre (Paris: Vrin, 1974). *Grossman, Evelyn, Artaud/Joyce: Le Corps et le texte (Paris: Nathan, 1996). Particularly interesting on the poetics of Artaud’s Rodez writing. *Harel, Simon, Vies et morts d’Antonin Artaud: Le Se´jour a` Rodez (Longueuil, Que´bec: E´ditions Le Preámbule, 1990). A psychocritical reading of the Rodez material of sturdy reasonableness, penned in by adherence to a Lacanian framework, never fully transcending medical theses to develop literary theses. Hort, Jean, Antonin Artaud le suicide´ de la socie´te´ (Geneva: E´ditions Connaıˆtre, 1960). Jacob, Carol, ‘The Assimilating Harmony: A Reading of Antonin Artaud’s He´liogabale’, Sub-Stance, 17 (1977), 115–38. Jenny, Laurent, La Terreur et les signes: Poe´tiques de rupture (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), 209–67. Kauffman, Vincent, Post Scripts: The Writer’s Workshop, trans. Deborah Treisman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 96–106, 141–6. Kelley, David, ‘Antonin Artaud: ‘‘Madness’’ and Self-Expression’, in Peter Collier and Judy Davies (eds.), Modernism and the European Unconscious (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 230–45. Knapp, Bettina L., ‘Mexico: The Myth of Renovatio’, Sub-Stance, 50 (1986), 61–8. Kristeva, Julia, ‘Le Sujet en proce`s’, in Artaud: Communications et interventions du colloque de Ce´risy, juin–juillet 1972 (Paris: 10/18, 1973), 43–108. Repr. in Julia Kristeva, Polylogue (Tel Quel; Paris: Seuil, 1977), 55–106. Masson, Andre´ , ‘Artaud, lui-meˆme’, Cahiers de la Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, Antonin Artaud et le theáˆtre de notre temps, 22–3 (Paris: May 1958), 9–10. Mauriac, Claude, L’Alitte´rature contemporaine (Paris: Albin Michel, 1958), 42–68. *Me` redieu, Florence de, Antonin Artaud: Les Couilles de l’ange (Paris: Blusson, 1992). Valuable for its clear exposition of the alchemical imagery of Artaud’s writing. Pierssens, Michel, Savoirs a` l’œuvre: Essais d’episte´mocritique (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1990), 109–19. *Rey, Jean-Michel, La Naissance de la poe´sie: Antonin Artaud (Paris: E´ditions Me´tailie´, 1991). A contentious thesis that does much to provoke reXection on the importance of the early Rodez material.

224


Scarpetta, Guy, ‘Artaud ećrit ou La Canne de Saint Patrick’, Tel quel, 81 (1979), 66–85. Sellin, Eric, The Dramatic Concepts of Antonin Artaud (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). *Sollers, Philippe, ‘La Penseé e´met des signes’, in L’Ećriture et l’expe´rience des limites (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), 88–104. Interesting for the upbeat reading of Artaud’s early texts on thought. *Sontag, Susan, ‘Approaching Artaud’, introduction to Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings, trans. Helen Weaver (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), pp. xvii–lix. A masterly critical introduction. Shattuck, Roger, ‘Artaud Possessed’, in The Innocent Eye (Toronto: Collins, 1984), 169–86. Steinmetz, Jean-Luc, ‘Hapax’, in Signets: Essais critiques sur la poe´sie du xviii e au xx e sie`cle (Paris: Jose´ Corti, 1995), 275–88. Stout, John C., Antonin Artaud’s Alternate Genealogies: Self-Portraits and Family Romances (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1996). An interesting book analysing Artaud’s use of biography as a medium for self-creation. The´ venin, Paule, Antonin Artaud, ce de´sespe´re´ qui vous parle (Fiction & Cie; Paris: Seuil, 1993). —— ‘L’Automatisme en question’, in Fabienne Hulak (ed.), Folie et psychanalyse dans l’expe´rience surreáliste (Nice: Z’E´ditions, 1992), 35–73. Vidieu-LarrØre, Francine, Lecture de l’imaginaire des œuvres dernie`res de Antonin Artaud (Caen: Lettres modernes Minard, 2001). Virmaux, Alain, and Virmaux, Odette, Artaud, un bilan critique (Paris: Belfond, 1979). —— Antonin Artaud: Qui êtes-vous? (Lyons: La Manufacture, 1986). White, Kenneth, Le Monde d’Antonin Artaud (Le Regard Litte´raire; Paris: E´ditions Complexe, 1989).

special reviews Cahiers de la Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, 22–3 (1958). La Tour du Feu, 63–4 (1959). Obliques, 10–11 (1976). Europe, 667–8 (1984).

other works to which reference is made Aragon, Louis, Le Roman inacheve´ (Paris: Gallimard, 1956). —— Le Con d’Ire`ne (Paris: Rene´ Bonnel, 1928). —— Les Poe`tes (Paris: Gallimard, 1969).


225

Beckett, Samuel, Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit (London: Calder, 1965). Bradbury, Malcolm, and McFarlane, James (eds.), Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930 (London: Penguin, 1991). Breton, Andre´ , Manifestes du surreálisme (Collection Folio/Essais; Paris: Gallimard, 1985). —— Second manifeste du surreálisme (Paris: Editions Kra, 1930). —— Le Revolver a` cheveux blancs (Paris: E´ditions des Cahiers Libres, 1932). —— ‘Les Attitudes Spectrales’, in Clair de terre (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). Carroll, Lewis, Through the Looking Glass: And What Alice Found There (London: Macmillan, 1948). Caws, Mary Ann, The Poetry of Dada and Surrealism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). Che´ nieux-Gendron, Jacqueline, Le Surreálisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984). An intellectually lively introduction to Surrealist thought. Derrida, Jacques, ‘La Pharmacie de Platon’, in La Disse´mination (Paris: Seuil, 1972), 69–198. Durozoi, Ge´ rard, and Lecharbonnier, Bernard, le Surreálisme (the`mes et textes; Paris: Larousse, 1972). Eliade, Mircea, Histoire des croyances et des ideés religieuses, 3 vols. (Paris: Payot, 1978). Contains a useful discussion of Gnosticism (ii. 351–76). Foucault, Michel, Histoire de la folie a` l’aˆge classique (tel; Paris: Gallimard, 1972). Freud, Sigmund, The Penguin Freud Library, trans. from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey, 15 vols. (London: Penguin, 1979), ix. Hyde, G. M., ‘Russian Futurism’, in Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.), Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930 (London: Penguin, 1991), 259–73. Kahn, Gustave ‘Pre´face sur le vers libre’, in Premiers poe`mes (Paris: Socie´te´ du Mercure de France, 1897), 3–38. Kristeva, Julia, Pouvoirs de l’horreur: Essai sur l’abjection (Paris: Seuil, 1980). McFarlane, James, ‘The Mind of Modernism’, in Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.), Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930 (London: Penguin, 1991), 71–94. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Le Visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964). Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1968). —— Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Pe´ ret, Benjamin, La Parole est a` Pe´ret (New York: E´ditions Surreálistes, 1943). —— Le De´shonneur des poe`tes; suivi de, la parole est a` Pe´ret (Paris: E´ditions Mille et Une Nuits, 1996). Poulet, Georges, La Poe´sie éclateé: Baudelaire/Rimbaud (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980).

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Proust, Marcel, A la recherche du temps perdu, 4 vols. under the general editorship of Jean-Yves Tadie´ (Bibliothe`que de la Pleíade; Paris: Gallimard, 1987–9). Rimbaud, Arthur, Œuvres comple`tes, ed. S. Bernard and A. Guyaux (Classiques Garnier; Paris: Bordas, 1991). Sarraute, Nathalie, ‘Ce que je cherche a` faire’, in Nouveau roman, hier, aujourd’hui, ed. J. Ricardou and F. van Rossum-Guyon, 2 vols. (Paris: 10.18, 1972), ii. 25–40. —— L’E`re du soupçon (Paris: Gallimard, 1956). Sheppard, Richard, ‘The Crisis of Language’, in Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.), Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930 (London: Penguin, 1991), 323–36. Short, Robert, ‘Dada and Surrealism’, in Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.), Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930 (London: Penguin, 1991), 292–310. ‘The Tripartite Tractate’, trans. Harold W. Attridge and Dieter Muller, in The Nag Hammadi Library, ed. James M. Robinson (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988). Vale´ ry, Paul Œuvres comple`tes, ed. J. Hytier, 2 vols. (Paris: Pleíade, 1957– ).

INDEX ‘A la Grande Nuit’ 31 abjection 77, 94, 126, 176, 219 corps sans organes and 175, 188–91, 194–5 fecality 126, 193–5 God and 112, 162, 172, 183, 192–3 identity and 173, 174–5, 194–5, 208 language and 193 soul and 193–4, 195 Tarahumara rituals 79–80 vampires and 183–6, 188–9, 191, 194 writing and 194–5 abstractness/abstract concepts 100, 101, 139, 146–7, 165 doubling and 143–4, 146 Adamov, Arthur 3 ‘Adresse au Dalaı¨-Lama’ 26 n. 10 ‘Adresse au Pape’ 25, 26 n. 10 alchemy 2, 4, 57, 69, 75, 85 alienation 53, 81, 82, 128, 177 God and 158, 162, 167 language and 40, 74–6, 158, 159, 219 mouth and 191–2 poetry and 96 self and 71, 143 vampires and 188–9 see also self-alienation alterity 8–9, 10, 89, 117 aˆme (soul) 106, 161, 171, 175 and abjection 193–4, 195 angels 89, 94 ‘Antigone chez les Français’ 118 Apollinaire, Guillaume xi, 27 Aragon 24, 26, 30–1, 36, 104 Le Con d’Irene 35 on language 38–9 L’Art et la Mort 26

Artaud, Euphrasie 90–1 Artaud le Moˆmo 3, 182, 198, 200–2, 208 asexuality 88 astrology 85 l’Atelier 1 Athanasiou, Geńica 86–7 Au pays des Tarahumaras 74, 82 Audiberti, Jacques 22 n. 3 automatism 30–1, 34, 35, 36, 39, 50 n. 4 Ball, Hugo 111 Beckett, Samuel 38 Being 74, 82, 95, 165–7 God as 87–8 being 116–17, 141–3, 160–1, 165–7: see also existence Bersani, Leo 6 Bilboquet 20 n. 2 birth 83, 85, 87, 136 birth imagery 51, 163, 164, 183, 196, 201 Blake, William 103 Blanchot, Maurice 5, 6, 49 blasphemy 165 Blin, Roger 3 body 43, 137–8, 174, 175, 182, 185, 187–8, 195 anatomy 88, 94–5, 123, 124 awareness of 14, 43–4, 46, 47 and consciousness 176–8, 179–80 definition of 196–8 and existence 45–6, 160–1, 186, 187 God and 137–8 identification with 117, 179–80, 181 and identity 143–5, 157 and suffering 40–1 theft of, by God 40–1, 71, 150–1, 160–5, 170–1, 175, 176, 183 see also corps sans organes

228

index

Breton, Andre´ 24, 26, 30–1, 145 and Artaud’s expulsion from Surrealism 25 on language 60 Second manifeste 26–7 self, doubling of 36 Bureau de recherches surreálistes 25, 26 Cabala 85 Cahiers 132–3, 155 abjection in 173–4 Cahiers de retour a` Paris 121, 122 Cahiers de Rodez 116 n. 17, 121, 124 existence in 160–1 God in 176 identity and 122, 143–5, 180, 198–9, 215 illisibilite´ of 122–5 style in 121–6, 128–31, 133–4, 147–8, 153–4, 169–70 cannibalism 84–5 Carroll, Lewis 108–9 Caws, Mary Ann 38 Les Cenci 3 ‘Centre-Me`re et Patron-Minet’ 87 Christianity 74, 123–4 rejection of 71, 97–8, 121 Ci-gıˆt preće´de´ de la culture indienne 3, 88, 91 n. 20, 182, 200 consciousness 28–9, 37–8, 64, 95, 119, 156–7, 215–16 body and 176–8, 179–80 and loss 33 and self-consciousness 58–9 unconscious and 30–1, 61 corps sans organes 41, 70, 88, 89, 95, 173 abjection and 175, 188–91, 194–5 God and 72–3, 176, 189, 210 simplicity of 199–201, 204 vampires and 94, 188–9 writing and 16, 35, 174

Correspondance avec Jacques Rivie`re 4, 9, 20–1, 33 n. 12, 206 and consciousness 58 and thought 32, 34, 55–6, 73, 159 creativity 8, 21 cruelty 4, 76–7, 78 Dada 24, 110–11, 145 n. 12 death 77, 126 Deleuze, Gilles 6, 16 n. 18, 108, 173 demons 71, 84–6, 91, 94, 95 deportation 3 Derrida, Jacques 5, 6, 50, 56, 70, 76 n. 8, 154 L’Ecriture et la diffe´rence 7 ‘La Parole Souffleé’ 4, 7–11, 150 ‘Le Theáˆtre de la cruaute´ et la cloˆture de la repre´sentation’ 7 determinism 74 doubles/doubling 68, 78, 117, 148–9, 157–8, 166, 177 abstract ideas/abstraction and 143–4, 146 angels and 89 reflexivity and 215–16 and self 35–6, 85, 128, 134–5 and speech 9 drawings 3, 121, 174 Dreyer, Carl 1 dualism 74, 75 of Gnosticism 84–5 of metaphysics 8 of writing 169 Dubuc, Marie 87 Dullin, Charles 1 Dumoulie´, Camille 11 n. 15, 17, 50 n. 3, 75, 80, 90, 210 Eluard, Paul 27, 28 envouˆtement (bewitchment) 91–5, 98, 132, 156 n. 8, 184, 186, 214 and anatomy 85, 94–5 vampires and 93–4, 184

index erasure (gommage) 53–4, 133–4, 147 ‘L’exećration du pe`re-me`re’ 87 existence 119, 177–9, 182, 213–14 body and 45–6, 160–1, 186, 187 of God 166 see also being experience 27–8 fecality 126, 193–5 film 69 fire imagery 81, 86, 178, 179, 199 Foucault, Michel 6 Fragments d’un Journal d’Enfer 43–4, 68, 119 France, Anatole xi Freud, Sigmund 11, 48, 151 Gance, Abel 1 Gasche´, Rodolphe 14 n. 17 Gide, Andre´ 51 glossolalia 39 n. 27, 109–11, 200–1 and Word of God 109, 111 Gnosticism 74–7, 83, 84–6, 98, 150, 162, 166 dualism of 84–5 Manichaean cosmogeny 84–5 and self-presence 85 and Surrealism 103 God 42, 216 and abjection 112, 162, 172, 183, 192–3 and alienation 158, 162, 167 as Being 87–8 and body 137–8 and body, theft of 40–1, 71, 150–1, 160–5, 170–1, 175, 176, 183 and corps sans organes 72–3, 176, 189, 210 as Demiurge 150, 176 elimination of 168–9 existence of 166 infinitude of 99 and language 97, 99–101, 111–12 and meaning 97–9

229

as Non-Being 74 parasitism of 164, 165, 167, 168 (r)ejection of 192–3 as thief (le Voleur) 9 n. 12, 10, 150–1 and thought 99 as vampire 160, 161–2 le Verbe (Word of God) 98, 100, 102, 109, 111–12, 114, 155, 158 n. 9, 161 gommage (erasure) 53–4, 133–4, 147 Goodall, Jane 11, 50 n. 3, 74 n. 4, 133, 150, 166 Grossman, Evelyn 91 n. 20, 110, 111 Guattari, Fe´lix 6, 173 Hamsum, Knut 44 n. 30 Harel, Simon 83 Heidegger, Martin 23–4 He´liogabale 2, 51 n. 6, 74, 75, 77–8, 173 Hofmannstahl, Hugo von 23, 28 Huelsenbeck, Richard 111 humour 55, 127, 153, 197 n. 14, 210 Hyde, G. M. 110 n. 12 identity 58, 122, 134–5, 176, 180, 198–9, 202–4, 215 and abjection 173, 174–5, 194–5, 208 body and 143–5, 157 dissolution of 80, 81–2, 135–6 mind and 157 religious 90–1 textual 78, 157, 166–7, 170, 196, 205, 219 theology and 171 see also self-identity illness (maladie) 7, 53, 54 n. 11, 55, 57, 67, 70, 119 imagery: of birth 51, 163, 164, 183, 196, 201 of fire 81, 86, 178, 179, 199 of labour 173–4 metaphors 12, 22, 61, 75, 76, 195, 196, 199 of plague 4, 76, 81

230

index

images 60–2, 199 impouvoir 8–9, 53, 68, 70 L’Infini (the Infinite) 99–100 inneity (inneíte´) 9 n. 12, 37, 163, 202 insight 66, 67 internment 3 Ireland 3 Kafka, Franz 23 Kahn, Gustave 51 Khlebnikov, Velimir 110, 131 knowledge 82 concepts and 44–5 flesh as site of 46 and loss 64 see also self-knowledge Kristeva, Julia 6, 12 n. 16, 191 n. 10 Kruchonykh, Alexei 110, 131 labour imagery 173–4 language 5–6, 7, 23–4, 38, 62, 128–9 and abjection 193 and alienation 40, 74–6, 158, 159, 219 ambiguity of 136–7 ambivalence of 115, 135–6 anti-representational 69 Aragon on 38–9 Artaud and 38, 39–40, 47–8 Breton on 60 Dada and 145 n. 12 as destructive force 59–60 failure of 22, 24, 212, 213, 214 fight with 217–18 God and 97, 99–101, 111–12 illisibilite´ of 122–5, 148–9 inadequacy of 215, 216–17 linguistic crisis 9, 23 linguistic performance, pleasure in 12, 54, 125, 131, 152–3 linguistic play on philosophical concepts 139–42 neologisms 131, 200–1

philosophy of 97, 100 playful 11–12 power of 52, 143, 214 private 130 rant 12, 126–7 rationalistic 27 and reality 59–60, 143 repetition 133–4 and representation 213–14 saturation of 147–8 and self-identity 129 stasis of 129–30 Surrealism and 38, 40, 60 syntax, disruption of 130–1, 143 and thought 59, 66 word games 138–9, 207 see also imagery Leiris, Artaud and Michel 138 Lettres de Rodez 93, 125–6 Littre´, Emile 57 loss 34, 37, 205 and consciousness 33 and knowledge 64 of thought 33, 34, 49–50, 53–4, 55–7, 64 Lucas de Leyde 4 Lugne´-Poe¨, Aure´lien Marie 1 madness 104–5, 107, 190 Maeder, Thomas 72 magic (magie) 38, 51–2, 78, 79, 92, 109 maladie (illness) 7, 53–7, 67, 70, 119 Mallarme´, Ste´phane 125 Manichaeism 84–5, 86 marginality 21–2 Marinetti, F. T. 111 meaning 97–9, 102 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 46 n. 31 le merveilleux 25, 27, 104–5 metaphors 12, 22, 61, 195, 196, 199 metaphysics and 75, 76 metaphysics 7, 10, 78–9, 209, 217 dualist 8

index and inner self 212–13 and metaphors 75, 76 theatre and 76–7 theology and 75 mind 155–7, 158 Modernism 4, 147 Le Moine 51 n. 6 mouths: and alienation 191–2 see also orality mysticism 28, 47, 74, 133 names 75, 83, 84, 90–1, 132, 133 neologisms 131, 200–1 Nietzsche, Friedrich 120 Daybreak 49 The Will to Power 1, 20, 97, 121, 150, 173, 206 Non-Being 74 La Nouvelle Revue Française 20, 32 Les Nouvelles Re´ve´lations de l’Eˆtre 2–3, 52, 76 n. 7, 84, 132 reality in 74, 81–3 L’Ombilic des Limbes 2, 23, 26, 32, 33–4, 49, 68 orality 93, 153, 172, 184–5 the Other 184, 195–6, 200 ‘Pages de Carnet. Notes Intimes’ 38 n. 22 pain 40–2, 46, 48, 49, 68, 177: see also suffering parasites and parasitism 119, 128, 164, 184, 188 of God 164, 165, 167, 168 organs as 189 ‘Paul les Oiseaux ou la Place de l’Amour’ 17–18, 26 n. 9 Pe´ret, Benjamin 51 personhood 136–7 Le Pe`se-Nerfs 2, 26, 32, 33–4, 148, 193 impouvoir 9, 68

231

language 59, 214 loss in 53 plague imagery 4, 76, 81 poetry (sonority, intonation, intensity) 5–6, 100–1, 103–5, 114, 180–7 and alienation 96 Artaud and 106–8 lineation 153–4 and religion 102–3 and self-identity 117–18 style in 153–4 and theology 97–8 and truth 108 ‘Position de la Chair’ 45–6 post-structuralism 6–7, 150 Poulet, Georges 113 Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu 18, 111, 146–7, 165 corps sans organes 174, 189–90 ‘La question se pose de . . . ’ 139–40, 207–8 Pre´vel, Jacques 87 primitivism 78–9 Proust, Marcel 34, 36 n. 19, 173 rant 12, 126–7 reality 27, 28–30, 74–5, 80–3, 207 language and 59–60, 143 recordings 111, 127 reflexivity 215–16 religion: and poetry 102–3 solar 2, 85 see also Christianity; God; theology repetition 133–4 representation 76, 117 language and 213–14 ‘Re´volte contre la poe´sie’ 112–13, 115, 117–18, 144 La Re´volution surreáliste 2, 25, 26, 27 Rey, Jean-Michel 133 Rilke, Rainer Maria 129

232

index

Rimbaud, Arthur 43, 52, 103, 112–13 Rivie`re, Jacques 2 Roumieux, Andre´ 93 n. 21 Sarraute, Nathalie 56 n. 12, 58, 59, 61 Sartre, Jean-Paul 173 schizophrenia 108–9 Schramme, Cećile 87 Schreber, Judge 151–2 Schreyer, Lothar 31 Schwitters, Kurt 111 self 1, 71, 128, 143, 155–6, 158–60, 181–2 creation of 115, 117, 118 destruction of 43–4, 116–17 doubles and 35–6, 85, 128, 134–5 inner self 42–3, 44, 48, 50, 127–8, 141–2, 212–13 writing of 34–5, 114, 144–5, 214–15 self-alienation 68, 71, 77, 79, 85, 122, 143 self-consciousness 6–7, 215 consciousness and 58–9 self-identity 70, 98, 116, 181, 215 angels and 89 and language 129 and poetry 117–18 textual 78, 167 writing and 51 self-knowledge 45, 62–3, 85, 134–5 writing and 36–7 self-presence 49–50, 80, 83–4 and alienation 82 Gnosticism and 85 thought and 58–9, 63, 68 separation 87–8 sexuality 77–8, 84–5, 86–8, 93, 94–5 silence 21 solar religions 2, 85 solipsism 31–2, 42, 147 Sollers, Phillipe 6 Sontag, Susan 6, 69 n. 17, 74 n. 4 soul (aˆme) 106, 161, 171, 175

and abjection 193–4, 195 Soupault, Philippe 104 speech 9, 39, 191–2: see also glossolalia; recordings Steinmetz, Jean Luc 116 n. 17, 122, 134 suffering 40–1, 68, 136, 164, 199: see also pain suicide 83 Suppoˆts et Supplications 3, 4, 19, 72, 88, 121 n. 2, 140 body in 174, 177, 182, 185, 187–8, 195, 196–7, 198 illisibilite´ of 124–5 vampires in 94, 185, 187–8 Surrealism 20 n. 2, 24–31 Artaud and 2, 24–6, 30–1, 46–7, 104 Artaud’s break with 105–6 Artaud’s expulsion from 25 duality of self 35–6 and Gnosticism 103 and interpenetration of art and life 33, 34, 103–4 and language 38, 40, 60 and madness 104 Premier manifeste 35, 37 Second manifeste 26–7 and speech 39 Surrealist Research Centre 25, 26 Symbolism 111 n. 14 Tarahumara Indians 93 n. 21 rituals of 3, 79–80 Les Tarahumaras 3, 81, 127 Tarot cards 2–3, 81, 85 ‘Textes surreálistes’ 23, 49, 50 ‘Le Theáˆtre alchimique’ 69 Theáˆtre Alfred Jarry 1 Theáˆtre de l’Œuvre 1 ‘Le Theáˆtre de la Cruaute´’ 126 ‘Le Theáˆtre et la peste’ 76 Le Theáˆtre et son Double 4, 5, 21–2, 51 n. 6, 68, 76–7, 144

index ‘Deuxie`me lettre sur le langage’ 59 and language 59, 69, 115 and reality 74 ‘Sur le theáˆtre balinais’ 1 Theatre of Cruelty 5–6, 52, 68–70, 76–9, 81, 187 theology 71–3 and identity 171 and metaphysics 75 poetry and 97–8 The´venin, Paule 3, 38 n. 22, 53 n. 9, 73 n. 2, 165 n. 15 ‘L’Automatisme en question’ 50 n. 4 thinking 52–3 and writing 35 thinking subject: and object of thought 31–2 and thought 57, 58 thought 31–7, 42–3, 47–8, 73, 159 body-anchored 44 definition of 65 failure of 41 God and 99 ideal 57–8, 66–7 and insight 66, 67 language and 59, 66 loss of 33, 34, 49–50, 53–4, 55–7, 64 as pre-linguistic form 30, 65 self-presence and 58–9, 63, 68 and suffering 41 and thinking subject 57, 58 total 63, 67 translations 108–9 Tric-Trac du ciel 20 n. 2 truth: Artaud and 42–3 and poetry 108 Uccello, Paulo 17, 32 umour 12, 153

233

unconscious 156, 157, 160 consciousness and 30–1, 61 undermind 61, 155, 160 univers imaginaire (imaginary universe) 15, 68, 113, 170, 187–8, 196, 207 Vache´, Jacques-Pierre 12, 153 Vale´ry, Paul 21, 111 n. 14 vampires 158, 187–9 and abjection 183–6, 188–9, 191, 194 and alienation 188–9 and corps sans organes 94, 188–9 and envouˆtement 93–4, 184 God as 160, 161–2 Van Gogh, le suicide´ de la socie´te´ 21, 92, 158, 174, 190–1, 214 Un ventre fin . . . 26 n. 9 le Verbe (Word of God) 114, 155, 158 n. 9, 161 and glossolalia 109, 111 poets and 98, 100, 102, 111–12 violence 217–19, 220 Vitrac, Roger 1 Word of God (le Verbe) 114, 155, 158 n. 9, 161 and glossolalia 109, 111 poets and 98, 100, 102, 111–12 writing 35–8, 52–3, 129–30, 148–9, 217–19 and abjection 194–5 and corps sans organes 16, 35, 174 duality of 169 failure of 35 of self 34–5, 114, 144–5, 214–15 and self-identity 51 and self-knowledge 36–7 and thinking 35

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