Texty II

The second volume of texts by the French poet, playwright, theorist and actor, whose work grew out of the interwar avant-garde and had a strong influence on modern thinking about theatre and the understanding of authenticity in literary creation.

The surrealist period of Artaud's work is characterized by a vehement attack on the foundations of European civilisation and a desperate desire to report on his own inability to think and write, which later, in letters from the Rodez institute, turns into an attempt to show the repressive nature of the ruling order on the fate of an uncompromising artist, destroyed by so-called medical science. The relentless struggle with God, his own physicality and a hostile society culminates in the collection Minions and Tortures, where Artaud's language reaches the limit of intelligibility and his paranoid vision of the world reaches its peak. "I know a state outside the spirit, consciousness, being, I know that there are no longer words or letters in it, but one enters it through screams and blows."

Antonin Artaud (September 4, 1896 – March 4, 1948) was a French poet, playwright, theorist, and actor whose work grew out of the interwar avant-garde and had a strong influence on modern thinking about theater and the understanding of authenticity in literary creation. He suffered from meningitis in early childhood and struggled with progressive mental illness for the rest of his life. During his treatment, he was given opium preparations, which triggered his lifelong addiction to drugs. The exclusivity of his message lies in the effort to communicate in a way that could go deeper than is common in literature, while at the same time avoiding being locked into a system of ideas and language as an organizing and totalizing principle that keeps us only on the surface of knowledge. "The word only exposes the extent of our incapacity, our separation from reality." Therefore, it is necessary to subvert the rational form of the world by all means and communicate in a new language that will be able to reach not only the brain, but the whole body. The viewer or reader must be shaken in order for at least partial insight to occur.