Contradictions and Dualities in Artaud and Artaudian Theater: The Conquest of Mexico and the Conquest of Peru

Contradictions and Dualities in Artaud and Artaudian Theater: The Conquest ofMexico and the Conquest of Peru PETER L. PODOL In her "Introduction" to his Selected Writings, Susan Sontag offers the following assessment of Antonin Artaud's influence on the theater: "Upon that art, theater, he has had an impact so profound that the course of all recent serious theater in Western Europe and the Americas can be said to divide into two periods - before Artaud and after Artaud. No one who works in the theater now is untouched by the impact of Artaud's specific ideas about the actor's body and voice, the use of music, the role of the written text, the interplay between the space occupied by the spectacle and the audience's space."I Despite the frequent difficulty ofproving a direct influence, or establishing that an aesthetic or philosophical concept is truly original, Sontag's somewhat hyperbolic statement would probably not provoke any strenuous objections on the part of most critics of the modern theater. However, the contradictions, ambiguities and extravagances in Artaud's writings, as well as the whole mystique surrounding the "mad genius" posthumously converted into cult hero for our modern counterculture, do interject an element of dissonance and perhaps even doubt into the picture. It is therefore not entirely surprising that a noted Artaud scholar such as Naomi Greene should arrive at a very different conclusion from Sontag's. She states that: Far from lacking recognition, Artaud's influence on the theater may actually be overrated for two reasons. The first of these is that a number of his ideas were hardly new. Nietzsche had demanded that the theater play a metaphysical role years before Artaud spoke of "cosmic cruelty." And in the early part of the century, theoreticians of the theater such as Gordon Craig and Adolphe Appia stressed the important role that sight and sound should play in the theater. But although Artaud did not create new theatrical concepts, he had the undeniable genius to make them come alive in the burning language of poetry. ... The second reason is less arguable: Artaud's ideal theater was essentially unrealizable.2 This critical dialectic echoes a broad range ofantitheses and contradictions in Artaud and Artaudian Theater 519 Artaud as a human being and as a theoretician of the theater. His inner struggle with himself and with his thoughts permeates all of his writings, both critical and creative (indeed, in the case of Artaud, the traditional distinction between those two realms of expression is virtually obliterated). The identification and analysis of some of those dialectical forces in The Theater and Its Double as a whole and in his scenario The Conquest of Mexico specifically will serve to provide further insight into Artaud's unique vision of the theater. Finally, the range of possibilities for Artaudian theater, examples of which frequently embody additional antitheses, will be demonstrated through a brief consideration of two works inspired by The Conquest ofMexico: Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun and Claude Demarigny's Cajamarca. The construction of a critical theory, in the case of Artaud, appears to be synonymous with the act of communicating intense existential pain and frustration. Artaud's theories reflect his perceived inability to make language express his innermost feelings and concerns. Paradoxically, his analysis of the obstacles that prevented him from satisfactorily translating his thoughts and feelings into poetry is itself so poetic and of such high quality that it was immediately published in the very journal that had rejected his early poems. Contradiction thus emerged as a central mode in Artaud's personal and artistic life, and its manifestations have been countless. The metaphor equating the theater with the plague captures dynamically a central dialectic in his theories: regeneration, spiritual healing and metaphysical renaissance are to be effected through destruction and the power of evil. Medical imagery plays an important role in Artaud's writing, leading to his central concept of "cruelty": the theater must perform metaphysical surgery on its audience. Artaud's own anguished desire to free himself from his body and all of its biological functions is reflected in the terminology and spirit ofhis central thesis about the function...