Jacques Derrida & Paule Thevenin - The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud

the secret art of Antonin Artaud

Jacques Derrida & Paule Thévenintranslation and preface by Mary Ann CawsThe MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

Originally published by Schirmer/Mosel Verlag, Munich, 1986 © Schirmer/ Mosel, München and Jacques DerridaPreface © 1998 Mary Ann Caws This translation © 1998 Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe photographs of Antonin Artaud in this book were taken by Georges Pastier in 1947.All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means(including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.This book was set in Stuyvesant and Giovanni by Graphic Composition, Inc.Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thévenin, Paule.[ Antonin Artaud. English]The secret art of Antonin Artaud / Jacques Derrida and Paule Thévenin; translated by Mary Ann Caws. p. cm.Abridged translation of. Antonin Artaud. 1986. With new illustrations by Georges Pastier.Thévenin's name appears first on the original edition.Includes bibliographical references.ISBN 0-262-04165-0 (hardcover: alk. paper)1. Artaud, Antonin, 1896-1948 -- Criticism and interpretation. 2. Portrait drawing, French. 3. Portrait drawing --20th century -- France. 4. Drawing, French. 5. Drawing -- 20th century -- France.I. Derrida, Jacques. II. Title. NC248.A72T4713 1998741′.092 -- dc21 97-44637

Each time I happen to recall -- nostalgically -- the surrealist rebellion asexpressed in its original purity and intransigence, it is the personality of AntoninArtaud that stands out in its dark magnificence, it is a certain intonation in hisvoice that injects specks of gold into his whispering voice. . . . Antonin Artaud: Ido not have to account in his stead for what he has experienced nor for what hehas suffered. . . . I know that Antonin Artaud

saw

, the way Rimbaud, as well as Novalis and Arnim before him, had spoken of

seeing

. It is of little consequence,ever since the publication of

Aurelia

, that what was

seen

this way does notcoincide with what is

objectively visible

. The real tragedy is that the society towhich we are less and less honored to belong persists in making it an inexpiablecrime to have gone over to

the other side of the looking glass

. In the name of everything that is more than ever close to my heart, I cheer the return to freedomof Antonin Artaud in a world where freedom itself must be reinvented. Beyondall the mundane denials, I place all my faith in Antonin Artaud, that man of prodigies. I salute Antonin Artaud for his passionate, heroic negation of everything that causes us to be dead while alive.André Breton, "A Tribute to Antonin Artaud," pp. 77-79, in

Free Rein (La Clédes champs)

, trans. Michel Parmentier and Jacqueline d'Amboise ( Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 1995)

Contents

Preface: Derrida's Maddening Text: AR-TAU

· Mary AnnCaws ·ix

The Search for a Lost World

· Paule Thévenin ·1

To Unsense the Subjectile

· Jacques Derrida ·59

preface: Derrida's maddening text: AR-TAU

Mary Ann CawsOnly the title of the original publication of Paule Thévenin and Jacques Derrida'scommentary on Antonin Artaud's art is simple:

Antonin Artaud: dessins et portraits. Everything else is of a complication you can really sink your mind into. Derrida's

text, "Forcener le subjectile"-- an expression that forces, incarcerates, and maddensin a touch of unfathomable genius -- deals fathoms deep with what underlies a text like that of Artaud himself, so visually, verbally, heroically mad. It sets out to further a frenzy, to unsense completely, to set things askew -- forever.

The language is already layers deep in strain: since this volume was to appear first inGermany, and originally only there (Munich: Schirmer/ Mosel Verlag, 1986) and notin France, Derrida's French text, prepared for German readers, addresses, in footnotesand asides, the difference between the Latinity of French and the anti-Latin nature of German: "How will they translate this?" "German has no way of saying . . ." "You arereading in German here. . . ." As the French version leaves those strains in, so does theEnglished version, deliberately: the strain contributes to the depth. Derrida's Frenchstruggles with Artaud's peculiar language, as with the predicted German reception tohis struggle; just so, the translator into English struggles with both, against and alongwith the otherness, I might say the foreignness, of Artaud himself.To be sure, his mother tongue is not mine, but he did not want it to be his either,lashing out as he did against anything reeking of the "fathermother." Just as thestrangeness, the foreignness of Artaud's language, even before Rodez, exacerbates theserious gap between original and translation(s), it enables Derrida to find, to force andfrenzy and unsense the underlying support of canvas, paper, text: this subjectile of which the initial passage speaks at such length and in such difficult depth. It ismarvelously and strictly unbearable.Derrida warns against anyone trying to speak like Artaud, in order to "understand"him. His own speaking here is addressed toward what underlies both language and artlike a support, at once the subject-he and the subject-she: this so-called "subjectile"which is his subject, and which is not to be translated. Which will, says Derrida, never cross the border of French. Which is both male and female, and at the same timeserves as birthing table for text and canvas, as the mater/matrix/pater, whose double-sensed

couches

signal at once the labor of birthing, and the layers and layersunderpinning what we hear and see and call by the name of art. The subjectile is in

couches

, literally giving birth, and in layers, prehistoric, historic, and posthistoric. If itis having birth pangs, so is this text, so long to come to English. The subjectile ismultiply contrarian: matrix and fiend, belying, birthing, and betraying. The text of

Derrida

is no less frenzied than that of Artaud, inscribed in the surface and theundersurface, the subjectile of his drawings and portraits cast as spells. The best thetranslator can hope for is not to break the spell.Under this spell, any address or skill risks a sudden turn into what Artaud calls"maladresse," a very serious awkwardness, seriously taken and received -- as in God'sown mistakenness: "

la maladresse sexuelle de dieu

." The rather more straightforwardtext of Paule Thévenin describing the history of Artaud's art and drawing up the list of its naming, and the text of Derrida, brilliantly inscribed in the name of this madnessoutpoured, originally made up this most justly maddening

catalogue irraisonné

for anexhibition of frenzy. The project calls for a rendering that can espouse AR-TAU'swilled self-projection past his name and language, past any mother tongue at all.This book should be read, says Artaud of his writing, like a musical score. "We won't be describing any paintings," says Derrida. And indeed, this text will read like a

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