Antonin Artaud

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Antonin Artaud was born on the 4th September 1896, On March 4th, 1948 Artaud

died, alone in his pavilion, seated at the foot o

Antonin Artaud was born on the 4th September 1896, On March 4th, 1948

Artaud died, alone in his pavilion, seated at the foot of his bed,

holding his shoe. Theories suggest that he died from a lethal dose of

the drug chloral, although whether or not he took it knowing it was a

lethal dose is not known.

Artaud was described as a madman and his credentials as one are

impeccable. By age 21 he had already suffered a bout of meningitis,

hereditary syphilis and a nervous breakdown. Furthermore, he spent

approximately 15 years of his life inside various mental institutions.

(I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the

obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a

psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to

hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat).

Max Ernst - Surrealism and Painting (1942)Surrealism

Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one

proposes to express, either verbally, or in writing, or by any other

manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the

absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic

and moral preoccupation.

Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the

belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously

neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the

disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all all

other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving

all the principal problems of life."

Artaud’s book in which he collected essyas/theories on theatre was

named “Theatre And Its Double” I don’t really have an opinion on why

he entitled his book this, maybe he believed real life was much like

the theatre very dramatic.

Artaud’s theatre of cruelty was artaud’s attempt to revolutionalize

theatre as well as freee the mind and spirit form the grip of culture.

Not by sadism or by causing pain, but by a violent, physical

determination to shatter the false reality, which he said “lies like a

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