To end god’s judgment By ANTONIN ARTAUD Introduction By Victor Corti Tod. PB. In 1946, after nine years’ confinement, Antonin Artaud was at last allowed to leave mental hospital and he returned to live just outside Paris, He was in poor physical condition and, in con- Sequence of this and his supposed insanity, he did not return to ‘work in the Paris theatre. He nonetheless wrote with an energy which bespoke several years of forced literary inactivity. He gave some lectures and talks, one very notable one under the pa- twonage of his friend, Charles Dullin. However, despite his per- sonal liberation, not all Paris welcomed his return; some, such as André Breton and Surrealiss, had little respect for his genius, others, perhaps a little more staid, were frankly scared by his intransigent attitude. But in the ebullience which fol- lowed the Nazi retreat his works were eagerly accepted for publi cation. Very soon, many figures of the artistic world came to realize what they had long suspected about Artaud. He was one of their great poets. The French radio service also recognized this and he was commissioned to write a radio poem. Despite a serious physical relapse, he accepted and set to work with his old accustomed cenergy. In a short space of time, he had written To end god's judgment and his enthusiasm with the work knew no bounds. Each day he traveled in to the Paris studio to supervise the direc. tion of the recording; he even provided the sound effects himself. 6ANTONIN ARTAUD 37 His poem was not only a strong attack on religion but also on the scientific materialism of our age. Artaud was never content to write about poetic subjects, for he treated poetry, as indeed he treated every other form, as a part of his Theatre of Cruelty. But this poem is not only the Theatre of Cruelty, itis also a drawing together of many themes which recur in his writing. In fact, much of To end god’s judgment is not new work, and very little of it dates from 1947. The oldest part, which serves as the starting point for the exorcism of reasoned religion, is the “Tutuguri.” Artaud tells us that this existed at least in note form in 1986, the time of his pilgrimage among the Mexi can Indians. In it, he combines his love of primitivism with a subject very dear to such modern authors as Huxley and Michaux, that of visions seen under the influence of drugs. It appears likely that he wrote or rewrote this at Roder in the early 1940's when ‘editing his book about Mexico. ‘Also dating or resulting from his confinement is the sec- tion entitled “The Question is Raised Whether.” Here, Artaud drew on his own personal experiences at such repressive mental hospitals as VilleEvrard, universalizing them in accordance with his theme. In the section, “The Search for Fecal Matter,” he returns to a discussion in his correspondence with Jean-Louis Barrault, namely the fastening of theocracy on the weak will. In one particular letter, he tells Barrault how he returned to the religion of his youth with love; in another he castigates himself for having given in to such baseness. He who had fought against religion and theology all his life, how can he then have been so weak, he laments, to return to such a Cabala? The con- clusion of the poem is new work and a particularly fine exposi- on of the Platonic nature of much of the author's writings. It ends with a characteristically individual last stanza. The intro: ductory text is also new, as is all the material which treats of scientific subjects. Then, just before the broadcast, the authorities banned it, but Artaud continued to rework certain sections; he helped to organize the studio broadcasts of the work. While preparing the text for publication, he died of the cancer which had beset58 Tulane Drama Review the last years of his life. Perhaps the most fitting tribute to him and to this, his magnum opus, comes not from his own time but from an earlier period. For the pavilion in which he wrote To end god's judgment and in which he died was once also reputedly ‘occupied by another great poéte maudit, and perhaps the one ‘who resembles Artaud most, Gérard de Nerval. A Brief Textual History April, 1946. Artaud released from the mental hospital at Rodez. ‘May 26, 1946. Artaud in Paris; welcomed by all his friends. Goes to live voluntarily at a clinic at Ivry, just outside the capital ‘Writes incessantly; travels into town every day. July, 1947. Artaud suffers serious physical relapse. Fall, 1947. Fernand Pouey, director of dramatic and literary broadcasts of the French Radio Service (RDF) asks Artaud to ‘write a piece for radio. He accepts and writes 'o end god's judg- ment. December and January, 1947 to 1948. Despite his physical ex haustion, he travels to rehearsals each day, directing the produc tion and sound effects himself February 2, 1948, 10:45 p.m. ‘The poem is to be broadcast on the Paris network in the series, “The Voices of the Poets.” The cast is; Paule Thévenin, Maria Casarés, Roger Blin, and the author, February 1, 1948. The day before the poem is scheduled to be broadcast, Viadimir Porché, director of the RDF, stops the broad: cast. February 5, 1948, 6:30 p.m. Fernand Pouey invites fifty people to listen to a private studio broadcast of the poem. Among the audience are: Raymond Queneau, Roger Vitrac, Louis Jouvet, Max-Pol Fouchet, Father Laval, Paul Eluard, Jean Louis Bar- rault...the broadcast is enthusiastically received and Father Laval, a Jesuit priest, gives his approval on religious grounds.ANTONIN ARTAUD 59 Porché maintains the ban. Artaud is profoundly affected by the proscription of his work.t February 8, 1948. The RDF offers the text of the poem to the press for publication, No one takes them up on the offer, February 16, 1948. Artaud rewrites the first part of his poem, “Tutuguri.” February 23, 1948. A second private studio broadeast of the piece is given, but this time the audience reaction is less favorable. NYZA magazine is founded with the express intention of pub: 1g To end god's judgment. Campaign in press about ban. March 4, 1948. Artaud is found sitting at the foot of his bed; he has died during the night. An autopsy reveals death due to cancer. ‘March, 1948. NYZA edition of To end god's judgment published. April 30, 1948. K edition of the poem appears with variants, cut passages, articles for and against the piece, notes, addenda, Letter from Artaud to Fernand Pouey? ‘The overall production Lay-Out is as follo ‘opening text effects fade into text spoken by Maria Casarés dance of Tutuguri text effects (xylophones) the search for fecal matter (spoken by Roger Blin) effects and fighting between Roger Blin and myself the question is raised whether (text spoken by Paule ‘Thévenin) effects and my shout in the stair-well *Paule Thévenin, one of the cast, stated in an article written ten ars after the author's death that “for him this broadcast should have nthe fist real play of the Theatre of Cruelty *K edition,60 Tulane Drama Review 9 endof text 10. final effects. TO END GOD'S JUDGMENT Kré pucte Kré pukte pek All must be lile drawn up. Kré to within a hair line pektile e explosive kruk order pte learned yesterday (you may think me behind the times, or perhaps it is only a false rumor, one of those nasty pieces of gossip which are spread between the sink and the latrines at those hours when the meals which are once more to be swallowed are put into pails,) learned yesterday of one of the most sensational official practices in American state schools which no doubt makes that country think itself in the forefront of progress. Apparently among the examinations and tests which a child is made to undergo when it first enters a state school, is the so-called test of the seminal liquid or sperm* which consists of asking this newly enrolled child for a little of its sperm in order to put it ina flask, "Tid. “K “Thi. jon: new paragraph.ANTONIN ARTAUD 6 and to keep it ready in this way for all attempts at artificial insemination which might take place. For the Americans are finding? they are more and ‘more short of hands and children,’ that is not workers’ but soldiers, and they want to make and produce soldiers? at any price and by any means. (with a view to all the planetary wars which might eventually take place and which would be intended to establish, by the crushing virtues of force, the superiority of American products and the results of American labor in all felds of activity and the ultimate dynamism of force. For, production is necessary, nature must be replaced wherever it can be replaced, a major field must be found, for human inactivity, the worker must have something with which to keep himself em. ployed, new fields of activity must be created, ‘or he will be finished by all the false manufactured products, byall the filthy synthetic ersatzes, where glorious nature can go hang, and make way once and for ever, and ashamedly, for all the triumphant replacement products. when the sperm from all the artificial inser plants Wil work wonders producing armies and warships no more fruit, no more trees, no more plants, ‘medicinal or not, and in consequence, no more foodstuffs, only a surfeit of synthetic results ... only a surfeit of synthetic products, in the smoke, tion62 Tulane Drama Review in the special fumes of the atmosphere, on the particular axes of the atmospheres drawn by force and by synthesis against the resistance of a nature which has never known anything about war except fear, ‘And long live war, eh? Because in so doing, this is war, isn’t it, which the Americans have prepared and are preparing thus step by step. ‘To defend this insane labor against all the competition which could not fail to arise everywhere, soldiers, arms, planes and warships are needed. Hence this sperm which it appears the governments of ‘America have had the nerve to consider for we have more than one enemy and who watches us, my son, wwe, the born capitalists, and among the enemi Stalin's Russia ‘hich is also not short of mailed fists. All this is all very well, but I did not know the Americans were such a warlike peo- ple....)! ‘To fight you must first be struck" and I may have seen many Americans at war, but in front of them they always had incalculable armies of tanks, planes, and warships which they used as a shield, I saw many machines fighting,}? but behind the men who drove them I only saw out into the void. 'K edition? from “with a view to all the planetary wars” to “but I did not know the Americans were such a warlike people” inclusive: The K edition ato includes «letter trom Artaud to'Pouey which shows that thi sen wan cao ofthe radio wit and ta the NYZA Eton teas printed ditectly trom the radio script handed o the pres by the Rbr m ® °K edition: new paragraph. “Rid.ANTONIN ARTAUD Faced with a nation which makes its horses, its cattle, and its donkeys eat its last remaining tons of real morphine so as to replace it with tons of ersatz smoke." 1 prefer a nation which eats its madness right out of the ground whence it springs up. I am speaking of the Tarahumaras who eat Peyotl right from the soil as it begins to grow,}° and who kill the sun to install the kingdom of black night, and who smash the cross $0 that the voids of space can never more meet and cross.17 In this way you are about to hear the dance of TUTUGURI TUTUGURI® ‘THE rite of the black Sun And below, as at the base of the bitter, cruelly desperate inclination of the heart, ‘opens the circle of the six crosses, very far down as if embedded in mother earth, torn from the unclean embrace of the sea which foams, the earth of black coal is the only damp place in this rocky crevice. ‘The rite is that the new sun passes through seven points, Before exploding at this mouth in the earth. ‘And there are six men ‘one for each sun * Toid, ™ Tid. = Tbid. * Toid. = [bid " K edition: TUTUGURL the rite of the Black Sun and below, a5 at the base of the bitter64 Tulane Drama Review and a seventh man who is the sun all dressed in black and red flesh. ‘Now this seventh man isa horse a horse wi a man leading him. But itis the horse which is the sun and not the man. At the ripping out of a drum and a trumpet wailing, strangely, the six men. ‘who were lying down ROLLED flush with the ground burst up one after another like sunflowers or, not suns, but turning earths, water lotuses, and each outburst is marked by the more and more gloomy and PENETRATING. drum beat ‘until all of a sudden we see galloping headlong towards us at dizzying speed, the last sun, the first man, ‘The black horse with a ‘naked man completely naked AND VIRGIN riding him, After leaping up they move forward in winding circles and the bloody fleshed horse shies and capers ceaselessly on the peak of its rock until the six menANTONIN ARTAUD 65 have completely finished encircling the six crosses. ‘Now, the major key of the rite is precisely THE ABOLITION OF THE CROSS Having finished turning they uproot the crosses from the earth and the naked man on the horse an enormous horseshoe steeped in a cut of his blood THE SEARCH FOR FECAL MATTER WHERE you can smell crap you can smell existence. ‘Man could quite easily not have shit, not opened the anal sack, but he chose to shit as he would have chosen to live instead of agreeing to live dead. Because in order not to crap, he would have to have agreed not to be, but he could not resolve to lose existence, that is to die alive. ‘The fact of being hhas something specially tempting in it for man and that thing is precisely66 Tulane Drama Review CRAP! (ROAR) To be you can let yourself go until you just exist, but to live, you must be someone, to be someone, you must have a BONE, not be afraid to show the bone, and to lose the meat by the wayside. Man has always liked flesh better than a land of bones. Because there was only the earth and the horns, and he had to earn his meat. there was only iron and fire. and no crap, and man was afraid of losing crap or rather he DESIRED crap. for that reason, he sacrificed blood. To have crap, that isto say flesh, where there was only blood and boney scrap and where there was nothing to be gained by being. but where there was only your life to lose. © RECHE MODO ‘TO EDIRE DIZA TAU DARI DO PADERA COCO At that, man withdrew and fled. ‘Then the beasts ate him. Toi, CRAP. (roar here)ANTONIN ARTAUD 67 Tt was not rape he consented to the disgusting meal. He enjoyed it. he even taught himself to act like an animal and eat at delicately. And where does this filthy abasement come from? Is it because the world is not yet organized, or because man's idea of the world is small and he always wants to keep it thus? It happened because man, one fine day, STOPPED his idea of the world. ‘There were two courses open to him: one, infinity outside, the other, the infinitesimal inside, And he chose the infinitesimal inside, where you only have to press the spleen, the tongue, the anus or the glans. And God, God” himself hurried the movement Is God a being? If he is one he is crap. Ifhe is not one he is not. Now he is not, only, like the emptiness which heralds all his forms ‘whose most perfect portrayal is the marching of an immeasurable number of crabs.68 Tulane Drama Review “You are mad Mr. Artaud, what about the mass?” renounce baptism and the mass. There is no human act, which, on the level of internal eroticism, is more pernicious than the descent of the so-called Jesus Christ on the altars. No one will believe me and I can already see the public shrugging its shoulders but the one named Christ is none other than he ‘who in front of crab God?" agreed to live without a body ‘even though an army of men ‘come down from a cross where God® believed he had nailed them long ago rebelled and cased in steel, in blood, in fire and bones, advances, railing agai in order to end GOD'S JUDGMENT. THE QUESTION IS RAISED WHETHER? WHAT is serious is that we know that after the order of this world there is another. What is it? Tid. = Ibid. eee: 2 Thi, “Bie question i ried whetherANTONIN. ARTAUD 69. ‘We do not know. ‘The number and order of possible assumptions in this field is precisely infinity 2 ‘And what is infinity? We do not know exactly. Itisa word WIDENING of our consciousness towards an inordinate, inexhaustible and inordinate feasibility. ‘And what exactly is consciousness? ‘We do not know exactly. Itis nothingness. Annothingness which we use to indicate when we do not know something in what way wwe do not know it and then wwe say consciousness ina conscious way but there area hundred thousand other ways. So what? It seems as if consciousness Toid., “infinity70 Tulane Drama Review is tied up with sexual desire and with hunger; but it could very well not be tied up with them, eis said, it could be said there are some who say that consciousness is an appetite an appetite for life; and immediately next to an appetite for life is an appetite for food, which comes immediately to mind; as if there were not people who ate without any appetite whatsoever; and who are hungry. As that also exists to be hungry ‘without any appetite; sowhat? So the void of feasibility wwas given me one day Tike a great fart A will let out; Dut I did not rightly know what the void was or feasibility and I experienced no desire to think about it.ANTONIN. ARTAUD 7 they were words invented in order to define things which existed or did not exist in the face of a dire urgent need: that of abolishing the mind the mind and its myth and to enthrone in its place the thundering demonstration Of this explosive necessity: distend the body of my deepest? night of internal void of my self which is night, naught, lack of thought, but which is the explosive confirmation that there is something, to make way for: my body. Really, to reduce my body to this stinking gas? To think I have a body because I have a sti which forms inside me? 18 Bas Ido not know but Tknow that2 Tulane Drama Review the void, time, magnitude, becoming, future, time to come, being, non-being, me, not me, are nothing to me; but there is one thing which is something, only one thing which is something, that I feel wants to COME OUT: the presence of my bodily pain, the menacing never ceasing presence of my body: so strong that I am beset with questions that I deny all questions, a points reached where I feel obliged to say no, NO then as far as denial and this pointANTONIN ARTAUD. 73 is when I am pressed when Iam pressured and Iam milked until there flows out of me food my food and its milk, and what is left? That Lam stifled; and I do not know if it is an action but in bombarding me thus with questions until abstraction and non-existence of the question Twas pushed so far that the idea of a body and being a body was stifled inme, and it is then I felt disgust and I farted through irrationality and excess and rebellion against my suffocation Because I was pressed as far as my body as far as the body and itis then Isshattered everything ‘because no one ever touches my body." Tulane Drama Review CONCLUSION’ and what use was this radio broadeast to you, Mr. Artaud? In principle to denounce a certain number of officially kept and recognised social obscenities: 1) this ejaculation®" of infantile sperm ‘gratuitously given by children with a view to the artificial insemination of unborn foetuses who will see daylight in a century or more. 2) to denounce, in this same American people which ‘occupies all the surface of the former Indian continent, a resurrection of the warlike imperialism of ancient America which caused the Indian people before Columbus to be trodden down by all their former humanizing. You are stating some very strange things there, Mr. Artaud. Yes, I am saying something strange That the Indians before Columbus were, contrary to all that has been believed, a strangely civilized people. and they had in fact known a form of civilization, based on the exclusive principle of cruelty. And do you know what cruelty is? Just like that, no, I don’t know. Cruelty is to root god out through blood and by blood wherever that brutish chance of man’s unconscious aninyal nature may be found, ‘Man, when he is not held in check, is an erotic animal, he has an inspired vibration wit a sort of throbbing, in him, "K edition from “Conclusion” to “They make them with god’s microbes” inclusive = “Emission” in the original; used by the author for its double mean ing, “radio transmission” and “bringing out.”ANTONIN ARTAUD 5 producing innumerable beasts which the early peoples universally attributed to god. Itmade what is called a spirit now this spirit which came from the American Indian is reap- pearing almost everywhere today under scientific aspects which only show up the grip of morbid infectiousness, show up the state of vice, but of vice which swarms with diseases for, you may laugh as much as you wish, what were called microbes, are god and do you know what the Americans and the Russians make atoms with? they make them with god’s microbes. —You are raving, Mr. Artaud. you are mad. —Tam not raving Tam not mad tell you microbes were reinvented so as to impose a new image of God. Away has been found of bringing God back again and to make him acceptable on the basis of his new microbicity. This nails him to the heart where men love him best, under the guise of sick sexuality, in that sinister form of morbid cruelty he wears at times when he wishes to tetanize and madden humanity as at present. He uses the spirit of purity of a consciousness remained open like mine to asphixiat with all the false forms he spreads universally through space and it is thus that Artaud the Sick Kiddo can appear as a madman. What do you mean, Mr. Artaud?76 Tulane Drama Review I mean that I have found a way to be rid of this monkey once and for all and that if no one believes in God any longer, every one will believe in man all the more. Now it is man we must decide to emasculate at this time. How so? How so? no matter how one tries to understand you, you are mad, ‘mad enough to be tied up. By putting him once more, but the last time, on the autopsy table so as to reconstitute his anatomy, say, 0 as to reconstitute his anatomy. Man is sick because he is badly made. ‘We must decide to lay him bare so we can scratch this insect for him, which itches him to death god and with god his organs for you may bind me if you wish but there is nothing more useless than an organ. ‘When you have given him a body without organs then you will have freed him from all his automatisms and returned him to his true freedon then teach him to dance backwards again as in the frenzy of the dance halls and that reversal will be his proper place. ANTONIN ARTAUD. Draft Variants” First draft pahertin Toid., “god, * Tbid., page 30 and following.ANTONIN. ARTAUD tara tara bulla rara bulla ra para hutin 7 towards a pub ertsin this contracts piercing putinah and chokes itself high pitch ke tula Okitula this relaxes: akara dalin oskitar janentsi/metera ‘a metera muentsi a mouta mutela marutela a mruta mertsi he whose bones hurt like mine has only to think like me he will not join me in spirit by way of the void for what is the use of joi and not joining him in body? To join a being in spirit is to remove oneself even further from joining him one day in body. But he whose bones hurt like mine and who thinks deeply about me does not see which house falls which tree burns on his path. but the house falls, and the tree burns and one day he will become aware of it; he whose gums hurt like mine73 Tulane Drama Review and who thinks of me the space which separates us turns to dust narrows down and becomes smaller and it is he the space who goes blind and not me; and one day he will become aware of it? WHO? WHO? but the void which will feel smaller, muscles tied and at bay; he whose teeth all hurt, all his teeth missing like me he will not see himself suddenly be but itis the void which will feel far from him and from me; and which will be ashamed to exist and to be, to be the void when we are there! ‘Then what will this void do modestly? ‘This old piss will have to go yu du idd arto do when dou do dat dou take the spirits oud the air then you are not yet kued dou still beleev in zpirits. ‘Me tell you that de lif is sick de lif is very sick yur go tu de black markid to the show, to the horsemeat butcher, you line up for hours for the show in winter in the rain to see stupid films. and during that time since the ages of ages On the disgusting slopes of the Caucasus, of the Carpathians, of the Apennines and of the HimalayasANTONIN: ARTAUD, 79 brutish beings dance they dance the dance of pus and blood, of dead lice, the dance of the dirty vitals, they dance to take that and that away from you in short, the dance of sex. Do you want more sex do you not want any more sex at all itisall sex an dats de whole question let god go or let god stay that is the question which is raised. ‘They dance the dance of the foulest rub of the probroad with the woebroad and. of the union of ron and saun mi do not understand wat dat means it means that the principle of sexual fertilization which for centuries has been raised by the tongue, the spleen and the feet must now be settled, because it is the question of god’s leaving or his being. upheld which is raised on the colic of our humanity. ‘because god is all the microbes from out of the obscene dances of the grim races and the question is raised to know if we are going to continue to let them dance —and danz —mi deed no kno and wat doo idd matur. Conclusion the feet bellies shoulders80 Tulane Drama Review hands elbows knee-caps teeth, which go boua boua bouala bouraca bourtia and which draw the beasts from the and which release the beasts into the air which some see and others do not and these beasts which crap there and there are god all that there and what do you find on god after that I find that I do not understand —well one does not see the beasts they are microbes of the dance of the dead in which, since the ages of ages the races of races never cease indulging on the slopes of the Himalayas of the Carpathians, of the Apennines and of the Caucasus the beasts which come out of the feet, the shoulders, the spleen, of the liver during the dances of the depraved pigs which the races do not give up and which they push that way and that way, and that makes an earth which breeds —which breeds -yes which boils which seethes anyhow and goes and fertilizes dead limbsANTONIN ARTAUD al it fertilizes them with sick things and then no one has ever understood what use organs were by looking at them closely —1o there we are, I thought up a theatre of cruelty which dances and shouts so as to make the organs fall to sweep all the microbes out and in the crackless anatomy of man from which all that is crannied was made to fall to make good health rule without god. idz a fairy story i¢s.a Utopia but first start dancing damned monkey you dirty sort of European Macaque you are, you never learnt to raise your leg. (here the other man shouts and protests and the broadcast ends there) NOTE ‘There is nothing I loathe and detest as much as this idea of a play, of a performance, thus of appearance, of unreality, attached to all that is produced and that is shown, an idea which for example has saved the mass and has made it acceptable to innumerable groups of beings who would not have accepted it without that, this idea that the ‘mass is only a play, an apparent performance which does not exist and is useless and there is the other argument, that is, rid of its apparent and theatrical semblance, the mass is on the contrary a show which is useful, (the mass contains one of the most effective means of real action in life, but the masses do not know it, or that82 Tulane Drama Review this means of action is sinister, that itis erotic and dark, for we speak of the black mass, but it is the principle and meaning itself of the mass to be black and there is no white mass every mass which is said is one more sexual act in freed nature) Having said this, I will return to this idea that this whole broadcast was only made in order to protest against the so-called principle of appearance, of unreality, ofa play, anyhow, inexorably tied to all we show, as if by this fact we wished to socialize and at the same time paralyze the monsters, having those possibilities of explosive combustibility too dangerous for life dangerous for life channeled off into the stage, the screen or the radio, and which in this way are turned aside from life, the present day unconscious is full to the brim, people are tired of carrying within them something they paw over and press down ceaselessly, because they have been forbidden to do it, to speak about it and to show it. And the police of the initiated, who without knowing it have for centuries been pushing life towards its destruction, but who have the nerve to push it there by themselves, have orders to turn aside into the theatre, the cinema the radio as well as the mass, a certain thing for which I have been confined 9 years as I wanted to say it and I will ay it 1 will say it, this certain thing, which gives the causes of epidemics, famines, plagues, war, ete.ANTONIN: ARTAUD 83 Extract from a letter to Mare Barbezat The new Tutuguri Iam writing for you is heavy with a bloody experience Thad not had in 1936. This bloody experience is that T have just had 3 attacks here and I was found swimming in my blood, a ‘whole pool of blood, and the Tutugt Lenclose is the result: TUTUGURI Created for the outer glory of the sun, Tuluguri is a black rite ‘The Rite of black night and of the eternal death of the sun. No, the sun will never return and the six crosses of the circle to be passed through by the planet are there in reality only to block its path. For we do not fully know, we do not know at all here in Europe how much of a black sign the cross is, we do not fully comprehend the “salivary power of the cross” ‘or how the cross is an ejection of saliva placed on the words of thought. In Mexico the cross and the sun go together, and the leaping sun is that turning phrase which takes six beats to arrive at day, the cross is an abject sign which substance must burn, why abject? because the tongue which salivates the sign is abject, and why does it salivate the sign? ‘To anoint it. not anointed, inted at the moment of ‘No sign is holy or sacred if it Now is not the tongue itself p anointing it?a Tulane Drama Review does it not place itself between the four cardinal points? Thus the appearing sun must jump the six points of the abject phrase to be saved, to which it will make a sort of transference on a lighting scale. For the sun really appears level with the crosses but like a bolt of lightning, which we know will not forgive. Te will not forgive what? ‘The sin of man and the village thereabouts, and for this reason for several weeks before the rite fone can see the whole Tarahumara race expurgate themselves, wash and clothe themselves in clean and white garments. And the Day of the Rite and of the overwhelming apparition has at last arrived. Tt is then that six men are lain flush with the ground in their white clothes, the six men regarded as the most pure in the tribe. ‘And each one is considered to have espoused a cross. One of those crosses made from two sticks tied together with a dirty rope. And there is a seventh man standing who carries upon him a cross attached to his hip, and in his hands ‘a strange musical instrument, made of strips of ‘wood added together, piled one on top of the other, and which give out a sound between bell and cannon, And one certain day, at sunrise, the seventh Tutuguri begins the dance by striking one of the strips with a dark black iron mallet. ‘Then we see the cross men, sprung up as if out of the ground, advance jumping in a circle and each, of them must encircle the cross seven times without however breaking the overall circle I do not know if itis because the wind rises, or ifa wind rises from this ancient music which still persists today, but one feels as if whipped by a gust ofANTONIN ARTAUD night, by a breath risen from the vaults of extinct humanity which comes to show its face here, a painted mask, Be pure and chaste, it seems to say. Be virgin also. Or I will open my Gehenna for you. And the Gehenna also opens. ‘The drum of the seventh Tutuguri has taken on an agoi throb: itis the crater of a volcano at the height of its eruption. The strips seem to break under the sounds like a forest struck down under the blows of a fantastical woodcutter. And all of a sudden what was expected happened: sulphurous vapors, lilyshaped, emerge bunched from one point of the circle which the six men have traced, which the six crosses have enclosed, and from under the vapors a flame, an immense flame all of a sudden lights, and this immense flame boils. 1c boils with an unheard-of noise. Its interior fills ‘with stars, with incandescent corpuscles; as, if the sun in coming brought a celestial system with it. ‘And now the sun has taken its place. has taken form in the middle of the celestial system. It has, suddenly located itself as it were atthe center of a tremendous, explosion. or the corpuscles Gaming ike the soldiers86 Tulane Drama Review of a warring army have thrown themselves upon one another, in exploding. Then the sun has become round. And one sees an igneous ball on the same axis as the natural sun, since it is sunrise, climb and jump from cross to cross. ‘The six men opened their arms, not to form the ross, but with their arms stretched before them, as if they ‘wished to receive the ball, which, turning around each rooted cross, does not cease to deny itself For the drum is a wind, it has become like wind-borne music whence an army could quite easily advance. And so ‘There is at the borders of noise and the void, for the noise is so loud thatit calls before it only the void, there is an intense stamping. Measured rhythm. ‘of a marching army, or the gallop of a maddened charge. ‘The fiery ball has burnt the six crosses; the six men their arms stretched forward and who saw the thing coming are all six of them exhausted and slavering And the galloping noise grows mad, ‘And at the horizon of the crosses can be seen as it were a bolting horse which advances with a naked man on it for the beat of the rhythm was 7. Now there are only six crosses. And in the woody drum of the seventh Tutuguri always an introduction of void always that introduction of void: that hollow beat, ahollow beat, a sort of exhausting emptiness between the strips of cutting ‘wood, void which calls the trunk of manANTONIN ARTAUD 87 the body of man cut into in the fury (no: in the fervor) of things inside, ‘There where under the void lide the noise of the great bells in the wind, the tearing of naval guns, the how! of the waves in the elements’ storms; in short, the advancing horse carries on it the trunk of a man, of a naked man who brandishes ot a cross, but a stick of iron wood, bound toa gigantic horseshoe through which his whole body passes, his body cut with a bloody slash, ind the horseshoe is there, like the jaws of an iron collar, which the man had taken at the slash of his blood. Lory-surSeine, 16 February 1948. ‘To Louis Jouvet 15 April, 1931 Dear Sir, Although the Alfred Jarry Theatre no longer exists, I am still, fe, unluckily for me, and I find myself in difficult straits at present. I urgently need work and 1 thought you would not be past helping me. You can see from the roles I created in the films which parts could safely be given to me, but I hoped you would hhave something else. You are familiar with my attempts at production, as you had the opportunity of venting harsh criticism on them! Let people88 Tulane Drama Review think what they like about them, they sought to express a present day state of mind, similar to the one I express in my writing. This state of mind exists, has ruled and nourished all literature for the last ten years. I am not asking you to finance a production ‘of mine at your theatre, using methods which have been censured. by present-day ideas. I am asking you for the chance to use my directorial ability with your company in a restricted field. In practise, this would seem feasible to me as follows. I would not, think of directing plays for you, from here I can already see your scornful smile, the shrug of the shoulders which just the idea of this produces. I need to expand”; my inactivity weighs me down and it seems truly monstrous to be kept down as a simple per former: I would accept those parts entrusted to me, but besides them Iam sure you could find and entrust me with an interesting job in your theatre if you looked for one with diligence and kindness. You could have me rough out settings and make the first cuts in scripts. Then pethaps I would be allowed to make observations at rehearsal which would prove useful, to exercise a critical faculty which would help polish a work. These are only suggestions. Therefore with this idea in mind and so you can judge for yourself what I can do T am sending you: a) a production plan for Strindberg’s Ghost Sonata b) a short spoken mime play. This mime play is already sold {0 someone so it is really no longer mine, although I am its author, but is unpublished and needs to be staged. I think it gives a fairly accurate picture of my ideas, not on mime, but on theatre. I believe it would make an interesting curtain raiser. T await your reply and hope you will consider my request. 1 remain, yours very sincerely, ANTONIN ARTAUD PS.—Please read the schemes I have submitted to you carefully, and let me know what impression they made on you when you read them. ‘A deliberate pun for Jouver's benefit. “Bouffe meaning "to expand’ (the feld of one’s activities) and, hhas the double slang, “to eat.”ANTONIN ARTAUD 89 Please understand the spirit in which 1 am writing to you. What I need is a helping hand, to allow me to exercise my abil- ity, which I do not think is without interest, and if one admits Ihave something to say, t0 let me start mumbling it. 1 am much easier to get along with than they say, and I only want to agree and I beg you to believe in the urgency of the help I am asking you for. Anyhow, thank you. THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. A mime play by ANTONIN ARTAUD Set A recess cut into a great black frame. The recess measures almost the full height of the stage. A great red curtain, which hangs down to the floor and rolls out in huge tufts, fills all the back of the recess from top to bot- tom. The curtain is set diagonally and is left—(seen from front of house). Downstage, a table with great solid legs, and a high wood chair, The curtain, harshly lit from above and below—is cut down the middle; and when drawn aside a great red light can be seen: in there is the operating theatre. Characters Doctor Pale. Isabelle: small town girl, bored. She cannot imagine love as- suming any other form than this frigid doctor—and love leaves her unsatisfied. Her desires, unconscious yearnings, are conveyed by vague sighs, whimpers and moans.90 Tulane Drama Review Plot In one corner of the house is the doctor's experimental labora tory. Harlequin, who noticed Isabelle long ago and desires her, will enter the house by means of one of these experiments— ‘ostensibly to be used by the doctor for a more or less sadistic experiment. ‘The latter is searching for the philosopher's stone. Isabelle has a sort of dream during which Harlequin appears to her, but she is separated from him by the very wall of un- reality through which she seems to see him. We watch one of the doctor's experiments on stage in which Harlequin loses his arms and legs one by one, in front of Isabelle, who is terrified. In her, horror is mingled with the first attrac: tions of love. Harlequin, left alone for a moment with Isabelle, makes her pregnant, but surprised by the doctor in the midst of their erotic labors, parallel with the doctor's experiments and sadistic works, they hurry the pregnancy and bring the child out from under Isabelle’s dress. It is a perfect, scaled-lown dummy of Doctor Pale who cannot doubt his parenthood when he sees himself reproduced thus in his wife's child Development Dr. Pale is in the midst of a veritable massacre of dummies in one corner of the set, chopping them up with an axe, like a woodeutter or a butcher. Isabelle, at a table downstage, starts writhes and despairs. Each blow echoes deep in her nerves. Her convulsions and shudders occur in total silence: she opens her mouth as if to ery out but we hear nothing. From time to time, hhowever, one of her yawns ends up in a sort of drawn out hoot Having finished his diabolical task, the doctor appears on the fore- stage holding a stump which he examines; at a given moment he seems to test its non-existent pulse; then he tosses it aside, rubs his hands, shakes himself, snorts, dusts himself off, raises his head and sniffs. A sort of mechanical smile relaxes his features and distends his face: he turns to his wife who is upstage, imitating his movements like a vague, barely suggested, distant echo. WhenANTONIN ARTAUD 1 the Doctor smiles, so does she (always a silent echo), she gets up, moves towards him.—A long erotic labor begins. As she knows no one else but the doctor, she draws on him for her happiness. The actress must show a mixture of disgust and resignati the impulse of her movement towards him, Behind her coaxings, her flirtations, she shows silent rage, her caresses end in slaps, in scratches. She pulls his moustache with sudden, unexpected move ‘ments—rains blows on his stomach, steps on his toes as she stands to kiss his lips. ‘Towards the end of this sadistic love scene, a sort of period military march bursts out—a man enters facing upstage, seeming to introduce someone else, in fact, himself. While he stands facing ‘upstage, he talks and makes a short introductory speech. Seen from the front, this character is dumb, as the result of an ex. periment. But in himself, this character is two-sided: —one side, a sort of bandy-legged monster, a hunchback, squinting, one-eyed cripple, who trembles in all his limbs as he walks. —the other, Harlequin, a fine young man who straightens up. from time to time and throws out his chest when Doctor Pale is not looking. A horribly high-pitched and grating voice in the wings com- ‘ments on all the main situations. At the start of the play, when Isabelle uttered her desperate hoots, this voice was heard, as if it came out of the Doctor's mouth, and we saw the Doctor spring on stage for a moment and mime the following words, mouthing them and making the appropriate gestures: “HAVE YOU FINISHED INTERRUPTING MY WORK? SHE IS COMING!” then return to his all-red room. Harlequin says the following words when he introduces him. self: “LHAVE COME Increasing the length of pause TO HAVE THE after each part of the sentence, PHILOSOPHER'S STONE in a quavering and sing-song TAKEN OUT OF ME.” voice. ‘A short pause after: I have come2 Tulane Drama Review —long after: stone —longer still and indicated by ‘a stop in movement on: of me In a hoarse tone of voice, delivered from the back of the throat but at the same time high-pitched: the voice of a hoarse eunuch. When the Doctor and Isabelle sce (and hear) this, they let go ‘of one another slowly. ‘The Doctor all tensed in a grotesque attitude of scientific curiosity, like a giralfe or heron, with an exaggerated craning forward of his chin. (On the other hand, Isabelle, who is dazzled by the appearances of Harlequin, assumes the form and pose of a weeping willow: she mimes a sort of dance of ecstasy and astonishment; sits, brings her hands together, holds them out in front of her with timidly charming and moving gestures. ‘This scene could be played in slow motion with a sudden lighting change. Harlequin, monstrous and bandy-legged, trem- bles (slowly) in all his limbs, the Doctor advances (slowly) to: wards him, mad with joy and scientific curiosity, puts his hand on Harlequin's collar, and pushes him into the wings towards his experimental laboratory—while Isabelle, who, with sudden rap- ture, has felt all the wonders of true love, faints slowly. ‘A few moments pass after which we see the Doctor push the real Harlequin on stage; we sense he has discovered the ruse and amuses himself by chopping off his legs, arms and head with an axe, Isabelle stands terrified in one corer of the set, loses con: sciousness, as well as the strength in her limbs, but she does not fall. ‘Then the Doctor, dead-tired, falls asleep. Harlequin, who has fallen to the floor, finds his arms, his legs and his head and crawl- ing along, advances towards Isabelle. “The Doctor is slumped on the table and has partly hidden him- self behind the red curtain, with only his head showing and his legs dangling. He snores loudly. A violently erotic scene ensues between Isabelle and Harlequin, in which Harlequin lifts upANTONIN ARTAUD 93 Isabelle’s dress (she is finally seated center stage) and slides his hand towards that part called in the posters of the period: “THE MUFF” ‘The gesture is only vague, as the Doctor wakes up, sees them, and a tremendous roar "OMPH" bursts from the wings, a mono- syllable which the Doctor says each time he is in the grip of vio- lent emotion. Harlequin and Isabelle hurry the pregnancy and as the Doc- tor, now completely awake, approaches, they show him a dummy of himself—which Isabelle has just pulled out from under her dress. He cannot believe his eyes, but, faced with the child’s likeness, he gives in, and, while Harlequin hides behind Isabelle, the scene ends in the married couple embracing, ‘When they hurry to make her pregnant, they do it with many ‘gestures, while shaking each other like sieves. Harlequin’s limping entrance is done to music, using limping and halting period music (a military march, if so desired played on wind instruments: trombone, bagpipe, clarinet, etc.) ‘When they pull out the child, a cry is whispered in the wings: “THERE SHE Is!” ‘This cry could be replaced by a deafening whistle, something like the noise made by a trench torpedo, ending in an enormous explosion, ‘An intense light strikes the dummy at this instant, as if to make it catch fire. This cry of the Doctor's, “OMPH," is a sort of roar of joy, the roar of an ogre. Its direction and volume could be made differ- cent for each of his entrances.4 Tulane Drama Review ‘The sentence: “HAVE YOU FINISHED INTERRUPTING MY WORK?” etc,, must be spoken with quivering exasperation, building tre ‘mendously on the last syllable of the word “work,” like a frantic ‘man who is working himself up excessively. When they make the woman pregnant the two players must pause while they show panic; each one touches his head, heart, stomach, belly, in turn and rhythmically, then they put their hands on one another's heads and hearts, hold one another's shoulders as if each one wanted the other to witness what is happening to him—and finally they make one another jump in the air, using their stomachs as if they were trampolines and shaking each other in the air like sieves in a gesture copied from the act of love. SYMBOLIC MOUNTAINS, “Symbolic Mountains” is from Artaud’s ‘The ‘Tarahumaras, The wild Mexican mountains and their drug-taking tribes in spired Artaud to magnificent flights and exerted the profoundest influence on him. While the Balinese theatre provides the form of Artaud’s work, the Tarahumaras and their rites are the thematic matter expressed by that form.—V.C. ‘The land of the Tarahumaras is full of signs, forms and natural effigies seemingly conceived not by chance, but as if here the omnipresent gods wished to manifest their power through these strange autographs where the form of man is hounded on all sides. There is certainly no lack of places on earth where Nature, seized by a sort of rational whim, has sculpted human forms. But here, it is a different matter: for Nature has wished to ex: press itself over a race's entire geographic compass.ANTONIN ARTAUD 95, Strangely, those who journey through, as if struck by uncon- scious paralysis, close their eyes and ignore everything. Now if Nature, by a strange whim, suddenly shows a man’s body being tortured on a rock, at first one might consider it only a whim, and a meaningless whim, But when, in the course of days on horse- back, the same rational magic is repeated and Nature obstinately expresses the same idea; when the same piteous forms reappear, when the heads of known gods appear on rocks whence a death theme emerges with man its inexorable victim—and when forms now grown less obscure and further emerged from fossilized ‘matter, those of gods who have always tortured man, correspond to his spread-eagled form—when an entire land develops a philosophy in stone parallel to man’s; when we know that early ‘man used sign language and we find this language enormously magnified on crags, surely we can no longer only consider this a whim and a meaningless one at that. If the greater part of the Tarahumara race is aboriginal, and if, as it claims, it fell from the skies into the Sierra, we could say it fell into previously prepared Nature. And such Nature wished to think as man. Just as it evolved man, so it also evolved the rocks. I saw this naked and tortured man pinned to a rock and sun: vaporized forms worked on him; but, although in the same light, Ido not know what miracle of sight caused the man above to re- ‘main whole T cannot say in what way either the mountains or myself were haunted, but I saw a similar optic miracle at least once a day during this periplus through the mountains. Perhaps I was born with a tormented body, deceptive as are the vast mountains; but a body whose obsessions are useful: and. in the mountains I realized it is useful to be obsessed with count- ing. I did not miss counting one single shadow when I felt it turn around something; and it is often in adding up shadows that I climbed to strange places. In the mountains I saw a naked man leaning out of a huge window. His head was just a large hole, a sort of round cavity where, according to the hour of day, the sun or the moon ap- peared in turn. His right arm was extended like a staff and his Teft also like a staff but bathed in shadow and bent.96 Tulane Drama Review ‘One could count his ribs, seven on each side. In place of his navel a radiant triangle shone, made of what? I could not say. As if Nature had chosen this part of the mountains to bare its, hidden quartz Now, although his head was empty, the jaggedness of the sur rounding rock lent him a distinct expression which the light caused to differ from hour to hour. This right arm stretched forward, edged with a beam of light, id not indicate an ordinary direction. ... And I sought what it heralded! It was not quite noon when I encountered this vision; I was on horseback, moving rapidly. However, I was able to grasp that I was not dealing with sculpted forms but with a specific play of light, which combined itself with the outline of the rocks. ‘This figure was known to the Indians; it seemed to me by its composition and by its structure to obey the same rule which all these cloven mountains obeyed. In line with its arm was a village surrounded by a rocky perimeter. ‘And I saw that all the rocks had the shape of women’s busts ‘on which two breasts were perfectly outlined. I saw the same rock which cast two shadows on the ground repeated eight times; twice I saw the same animal's head carry. ing its likeness which it devoured in its jaws; dominating the village I saw a sort of huge phallic tor and at its summit three stones and on its outer face four holes; and I saw all these forms become reality little by little, in accordance with their rule. Everywhere I seemed to read a story of birth in war, a story of igenesis and chaos with all these bodies of gods carved like men and these truncated human statues. Not one form left unbroken, not one body which did not appear to me the result of a recent massacre, not one group where I was not obliged to read the struggle which divided it I found drowned men, half swallowed by stone, and on the crags higher up, other men busy pushing them back. Elsewhere, a statue of Death, immense, held in its hand a small child. In the Cabala there is 2 music of Numbers, and this music which brings material chaos down to its first principles, explains,ANTONIN ARTAUD 97 by a sort of grand mathematics, how Nature regulates itself and directs the birth of forms, which it brings forth from chaos. And all L saw seemed to me to obey a number. The statues, forms and. shadows yielded numbers 3, 4, 7, 8, which always came up. The truncated busts of women were 8 in number; the phallic tor, I have already said, had three stones and four holes; the vaporized forms were 12 in number, etc. I repeat one may say these forms are natural, granted; but their repetition is unnatural. And what is even less natural, is that the Tarahumaras repeat the forms of their land in their rites and dances. And these dances are not conceived by chance but they obey the same secret mathematics, and have the same regard for the subtle play of Numbers which the whole Sierra obeys. Now the Tarahumaras have sown this haunted Sierra, which breathes metaphysical thought in its rocks, with signs, with per- fectly conscious, rational, planned signs ‘At each bend in the road one sees spontaneously burnt trees in the form of a cross or in the form of beings, and often these beings are double and face each other, as if to reveal the essential ‘duality of things; and I saw this duality reduced to its first prin- ciples in a sign whose +] form was enclosed by a circle, which ap- peared before me branded on a huge pine tree; other trees bore lances, clovers and thistle leaves surrounded by crosses; here and there, in narrow gorges, in ravines blocked by falls, lines of ansated Egyptian crosses stretched out in rows; and the doors of the Tarahumara houses displayed the sign of the Mayan world: ‘two opposing triangles whose vertices are joined by a staff; and this staff is the Tree of Life which passes through the center of Reality. Thus, traveling through the mountains, these lances, these crosses, these clovers, these verdant hearts, these beings which face one another and which oppose one another to indicate their eternal war, their dissension and their dualism, awoke strange memories in me. I suddenly remembered that in History there were Sects whose men carried signs on them, carved in jade, ‘wrought or engraved on iron and who enchased these same signs on rocks. And I am starting to believe this symbolism conceals a98 Tulane Drama Review Science. And it seems strange to me that the primitive Tara- humara people, whose rites and thoughts date from before the Flood, could have already possessed this Science long before the appearance of the Legend of the Holy Grail, long before the Rosicrucian Sect was founded. Translations by VICTOR CORTI ‘The text of To end god's judgment is @ Editions Gallimard, Paris, and used with their permission.