Antonin Artaud’s phrases are full of poetry and vitality, they are the result of a creator who has explored virtually all literary genres, although he has gained notoriety mainly as a poet and playwright; in fact, he is known as the creator of the cruelty theatre.
It can be said that any modern theatre is inspired by the philosophy created by this extraordinary French writer. Many of Antonin Artaud’s phrases speak precisely of theatre, but also of other human realities that he discovered through an existence of suffering.
- “I’ve been sick all my life and I ask nothing more to go on like this.
- Because the states of private life have always given me better clues about the plettiveness of my power than the beliefs of small bourgeois that health is enough” – Antonin Artaud -.
At the age of 4 Artaud suffered from meningitis that left him an enduring legacy, at the age of 9 his sister died suddenly and began a process of mourning that never fully surpassed, perhaps it was these difficult experiences that made him a writer of profound history. sensitivity and lucidity. Here are some of Antonin Artaud’s most memorable phrases.
“Living is nothing but hot questions. “
This is one of Antonin Artaud’s most beautiful phrases, we have in the same sentence the life and essential ignorance that defines it, we were born without knowing anything and we die knowing only a small part of all the subjects around us.
Artaud does not speak of this ignorance from an intellectual point of view, that is why he uses the word “burn”. All this, without knowing it, is a burning flame. We don’t know exactly where we came from, how far we are going, or why we are here.
“Cinema has the main virtue of a direct and harmless poison, a subcutaneous injection of morphine.
This phrase is an exaltation and a critique of cinema. Artáud was above all a man of theater and saw the rise of cinema with some skepticism. It seems to him that this screen mediation was credited with what was shown.
That’s why it gives ambiguous value to this art. He calls it morphine, which is both a harmful substance and carrier of some well-being, so he defined it as a harmless poison: it is inherently negative, but does not cause more serious damage.
Where it smells, it smells like it
Many of Antonin Artaud’s phrases reveal his intense and almost violent spirit; his childhood illness made him a nervous person who over time developed paranoid delusions.
That is why Artaud spent long periods in psychiatric hospitals. The featured phrase, even when said aggressively, reveals a very human message. Being is not only sublime, but also prosaic and vulgar.
“There is no evidence that the language of words is the best possible word. “
Antonin Artaud was also very interested in mystical phenomena, during his childhood and youth he devoted himself much to religion, then undertook a new spiritual research, which even led him to live with the Tarahumara community in Mexico.
His way of seeing life made him very sensitive to the most subtle phenomena, he connected deeply with the tarahumara despite the language barrier, perhaps that is why the phrase refers to the fact that words are just one of the many ways to communicate and communicate. generate understanding.
“I’m at the point where my life no longer touches me, but I have all the appetites and insistent illusion of being in me. I only have one job: redo ?.
Artaud was above all an explorer of the human spirit. After his stay in Mexico, he spoke about certain esoteric practices, such as Tarot, astrology and numerology, his obsession with these issues returned him to a state of extreme nervousness.
In 1938 he was deported from Ireland to France for “exceeding the limits of marginality”. He’ll be in psychiatric hospitals for nine years soon. It was a time of great suffering for him and confirmed his hatred of psychiatry, which he blamed. because of the damage done to many human beings.
Antonin Artaud died in 1943 after undergoing several electroconvulsive treatments that decimated him physically and mentally, and thanks to a group of friends he was able to spend his last three years away from psychiatric institutions.