Antonin Artaud: Bottoming-out in 1936

[RonPrice]

BOTTOMING-OUT

Part 1:

 

In 1936, the Guatemalan poet and art critic Cardoza y Aragón, in self-imposed exile in Mexico City, met the also exiled French poet and dramatist Antonin Artaud. The image that Cardoza holds of the European traveler is definitive: "Antonin Artaud is just like 'El Desdichado,' 'The Wretched,' his brother Nerval." Cardoza adds, "The widower, the disconsolate, prince of Aquitania of the forbidden tower. The shadowy one, whose only star is dead and whose star-spangled lute bears the black sun of melancholy." Earlier, he would observe: "He came to Mexico in search of hope. Expelled from all parts, he lived bleeding, he lived atrociously, head in flames, the great master of misery."¹

 

The two are brothers in exile. The Latin American, after living in European metropolises and traveling through the world, will return to his origins to finally settle, not in his own country, but in a neighboring country on the continent where he first saw the light of day. The European, despairing of the decadence of the Old World, left in search of Mexican politicians, to regenerate the West. He had just adopted another European country, Ireland, from which he was finally expelled to his homeland and once there, to a hospice.

 

The journeys of the modernists let them vaguely see, through a mixture of irony and apathy, great and symbolic gestures of goodwill. Cardoza will say of Artaud and indirectly of himself: "In desperation, he confused the New Continent with a new content. There is something there, but not enough for his absolute need. Much of Europe also died in us."² -Ron Price with thanks to ¹Luis Cardoza y Aragón, "Antonin Artaud," Poesías completas y algunas prosas (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1977), p. 603, and ²idem, p. 607.

 

Part 1.1:

 

Antoine Artaud was born in 1896 in Marseille, France, and died in 1948 in a psychiatric clinic. His mother gave birth to nine children, but only Antonin and two siblings survived infancy. When he was four years old, Artaud had a severe case of meningitis, which gave him a nervous, irritable temperament throughout his adolescence. He also suffered from neuralgia, stammering, and severe bouts of clinical depression. Artaud has been cited as a profoundly influential figure in the history of theater, avant-garde art, literature, and other disciplines. His work proved to be a significant influence on the Theatre of the Absurd, particularly the works of Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett, and helped inspire a movement away from the dominant role of language and rationalism in contemporary theater. Artaud was an influence, and continues to be, on many writers and artists, directors and playwrights, indeed, creative people from many disciplines.

 

Part 2:

 

Civilization was bottoming-out

back then in ’36; it was going

down to the depths in stages:

WWI, WW2, and an ongoing

tempest that was shaking the

world to its very foundations,

with humanity gripped in the

clutches of a hot devastating

power, and smitten by those

evidences of its ever resistless

fury. The continent-peninsula

was on the brink of chaos, and

some said its spectacle of total

decadence was drowning the souls

of its inhabitants.¹

 

...And so it was that a long Plan was

about to be launched that would in the

course of the next century or two,

take the world by storm by sensible

and insensible degrees: the destruction

of the world & its people would long

continue having arrived, by degrees,

as far back as the last half of the 19^th

century: the most great convulsion!²

 

¹ In a literary magazine published in 1931, and quoted in The Stanford Humanities Review, Vol.7.1 by Silviano Santiago in his essay “The Future in the Stars, the Present in History: Artaud vs. Cárdenas”.

 

² Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day is Come, Baha’i Publishing Trust, New Delhi, 1976, p.1.

 

 

Ron Price

8/8/’15.

Edited August 8, 2015 by RonPrice

[swansont]

 

 

¹ In a literary magazine published in 1931, and quoted in The Stanford Humanities Review, Vol.7.1 by Silviano Santiago in his essay “The Future in the Stars, the Present in History: Artaud vs. Cárdenas”.

 

 

!

Moderator Note

 

A) Your whole first section looks like it was lifted from The Stanford Humanities Review

http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/7-1/html/santiago.html

 

You have been warned about plagiarism before.

 

B) Is there a point to all this? This is a discussion forum.

 

[RonPrice]

I footnoted my quotations, swansont. A discussion could come from: (i) those interested in Antonin Artuad, a controversial figure who had years of psychiatric illness, (ii) those interested in the decline of civilization beginning as far back as 1914 and, (iii) several other aspects of my post. Those not interested in the content of my post can, of course, post no response.-Ron Price, Australia

[swansont]

I footnoted my quotations, swansont.

 

Your footnote indicates where you got the part in quotes, but you lifted the entire passage.

 

Your first two footnotes are lifted from that source. The fact that you have three footnotes each labeled "1" and "2" (as well as your formatting differences) indicates that you simply copy-pasted the material, and you provide no links to the various sources.

A discussion could come from: (i) those interested in Antonin Artuad, a controversial figure who had years of psychiatric illness, (ii) those interested in the decline of civilization beginning as far back as 1914 and, (iii) several other aspects of my post. Those not interested in the content of my post can, of course, post no response.-Ron Price, Australia

 

You posted this in Psychiatry and Psychology, so the discussion should pertain to that topic, and you should be the one raising an issue to discuss. If all you want to do is post things for people to read, do that on your blog. If you post here you need to follow the rules, or else we will show you the door.