Artaud and His Doubles

Notes

notes INTRODUCTION 1. Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958), 86 (hereafter TD). [Throughout the book, works will generally be cited in the text proper after their first mention in the notes.] 2. “Fragments d’un journal d’enfer,” published originally in Commerce 7 (Spring 1926). It can be found in Oeuvres complètes d’Antonin Artaud, nouvelle édition revue et augmentée (Paris: Gallimard, 1976, 1*: 111–20 (hereafter OC). 3. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari evocatively call this kind of writing a “schizo flight” in, among other places, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Helen R. Lane, et. al. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983). 4. Originally published under the title “Une correspondance,” in La nouvelle revue Française, no. 132 (1 Sept. 1924). In Oct. 1927, it was published as Correspondance avec Jacques Rivière by Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française in the collection “Une oeuvre, un portrait,” with a portrait of Artaud by Jean de Bosschère (see OC, 1*: 21–46) 5. Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings, trans. Helen Weaver, ed. and intro. Susan Sontag (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 45 (hereafter SW). 6. A recent biography provides more details on his activities during this period: Florence de Mèredieu, C’était Antonin Artaud (Paris: Fayard, 2006). Also see Alain Virmaux, Antonin Artaud et le théâtre (Paris: Seghers, 1970). 7. This was driven home to me at the 2006–7 Bibliothèque Nationale Artaud exhibit. The section devoted to his film work projected excerpts from the films he acted in on about a dozen screens. Because of the angles of the exhibit and the reflective surfaces, you could, from at least one point in the room, see Artaud’s face on eight screens simultaneously, including close-ups of him inciting riots and revolutions, being burned at the stake and strangled, praying and preaching, and more. 8. “Auréolé de l’image du poète ‘fou’ ou maudit, il est devenu pour beaucoup un symbole du combat pour la liberté” (as phrased in the Quarto Gallimard edition, Artaud: Oeuvres, ed. Évelyne Grossman [Paris: Quarto Gallimard , 2004], in the chronology on p. 1764). 9. Martin Esslin’s widely read monograph on Artaud was published the same year and similarly stressed Artaud’s “presence” and “suffering.” See Antonin Artaud (London: John Calder, 1976), 2 and passim. 201 10. He has been called a “Martyr of Illogicality,” “Saint Artaud,” a prophet, and much more. For “martyr of illogicality,” see Wallace Fowlie, Dionysus in Paris (New York: Meridian, 1960), 207. “Saint Artaud” served, more recently, as the title of Philippe Sollers’s review of Artaud’s collected works in Nouvel observateur, no. 2080, Sept. 16–22, 2004: 57–58. 11. “La tendance générale était au lyrisme et à la vénération fanatique” (Alain Virmaux and Odette Virmaux, Artaud: Un bilan critique [Paris: Belfond, 1979], 119). Virmaux and Virmaux cite a list of extracts taken from journals soon after his death exhibiting this tendency, such as: “Il est l’homme le plus beau, l’homme le plus vrai, l’homme le plus généreux, l’homme le moins homme,” by Florence Loeb (Virmaux and Virmaux, Artaud: Un bilan critique, 120). This style created a myth of its own, as well as its backlash. Special issues of the periodicals K (nos. 1–2) and 84 (nos. 5–6) in 1948 consecrated to Artaud in this tone were countered by a controversial issue of La tour de feu (nos. 63–64, Dec. 1959) that attempted to “désacraliser” Artaud. This effort was met with an even more fervent counterattack: the issue itself garnered almost two hundred responses, some calling it, for example, “l’obscène repas” (Daniel Briolet, “Antonin Artaud et La tour de feu, une prédiliction de longue date,” in Artaud en revues, ed. Olivier Penot-Lacassagne [Lausanne: L’Age d’homme, 2005], 81–101, at 94). 12. Paule Thévenin, cited in Virmaux and Virmaux, Artaud: Un bilan critique , 120. 13. “Artaud n’était pas fou, il était juif. Comme Jésus-Christ” (Sylvère Lotringer, “Artaud était-il chrétien?” in Fous d’Artaud [Paris: Sens and Tonka, 2003], 13–38, at 38). My comments on Lotringer’s essay assume that his argument is meant in earnest. 14. “Est-ce que souffrir serait, finalement, penser?” (Maurice Blanchot, “Artaud,” La nouvelle revue française 4, no. 47 [1956]: 873–81, at 881). 15. “Artaud est la souffrance...