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Antonin Artaud

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Famous Antonin Artaud Quotes

“And there, sir, lies the entire problem, to have within oneself the inseparable reality and the material clarity of feeling, to have it in such a degree that the feeling cannot but express itself, to have a wealth of words and of formal constructions which can join in the dance, serve one's purpose—and at the very moment when the soul is about to organize its wealth, its discoveries, this revelation, at the unconscious moment when the thing is about to emanate, a higher and evil will attacks the soul like vitriol, attacks the word and image mass, attacks the mass of feeling and leaves me panting at the very door of life.”

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Book:Collected Works: Volume One
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“Que les poètes morts laissent la place aux autres. Et nous pourrions tout de même voir que c'est notre vénération devant ce qui a été déjà fait, si beau et si valable que ce soit, qui nous pétrifie, qui nous stabilise et nous empêche de prendre contact avec la force qui est dessous, que l'on appelle l'énergie pensante, la force vitale, le déterminisme des échanges, les menstrues de la lune ou tout ce qu'on voudra.”

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Book:The Theater and Its Double
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“Insane asylums are deliberate and premeditated receptacles of black magic, and it is not only that doctors encourage magic with their untimely and hybrid therapies, it is that they practice it. If there had been no doctors there would never have been patients, no skeletons of the diseased dead to butcher and flay, for it is through doctors and not through patients that society began. Those who live, live off the dead. And it is likewise necessary that death live; and there is nothing like an insane asylum for calmly incubating death, and for keeping dead people in incubators.”

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Author:Antonin Artaud
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“Il y a dans toute poésie une contradiction essentielle. La poésie, c'est de la multiplicité broyée et qui rend des flammes. Et la poésie, qui ramène l'ordre, ressuscite d'abord le désordre, le désordre aux aspects enflammés; elle fait s'entre-choquer des aspects qu'elle ramène a un point unique : feu, geste, sang, cri. Ramener la poésie et l'ordre dans un monde dont l'existence même est un défi a l'ordre, c'est ramener la guerre et la permanence de la guerre; c'est amener un état de cruauté appliqué, c'est susciter une anarchie sans nom, l'anarchie des choses et des aspects qui se réveillent avant de sombrer et de se fondre a nouveau dans l'unité. Mais celui qui réveille cette anarchie dangereuse en est toujours la première victime”

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Author:Antonin Artaud
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“Aslında intiharı aklım almıyor. Yaşamdan, şeylerle bizim varlığımızın özünün bu çirkin ama önlenemez karışımı olan yaşamdan zor kullanarak kopmayı anlıyorum ama bu işin kendisi, bu kopuşun serüven yanı, çekmiyor beni. Uzun zamandır ölüm, benim için bir değer taşımıyor. Anlamıyorum, insanın bilinçli bir biçimde, kendinde neyi yıkabileceğini; kendi istemiyle ölse bile. Varlığımızın içine Tanrı'nın yaptığı baskındır sözkonusu olan; işte bu varlığımızla kendi varlığımızı yıkmak sorunu çıkıyor karşımıza. Varlığımızla ilişkili bir şey var ve bu, varağın maddesel yanının tümleyicisi durumundadır ama o öldü diye kendisi de ölmemektedir. Yaşamın bu altedilmez egemenliği, doğanın bu yapışkanlığı, reflekslerin ve akılalmaz, gizli uzlaşmaların oyunuyla giriyor yaşamımızın özüne, olanak bırakmadan bizim girmemize. Hangi yönden kendime bakarsam bakayım anlıyorum ki devinimlerimin hiçbiri, düşüncelerimin hiçbiri, benim değil. Bir gecikmeyle hissediyorum yaşamı, umutsuzlukla farkediyorum ondan kopmadığımı.”

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Book:Yaşayan Mumya
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“For the lost are lost by nature, all your ideas of moral regeneration will make no difference, there is AN INNATE DETERMINISM, there is an undeniable incurability in suicide, crime, idiocy, madness, there is an invincible cuckoldry in man, there is a congenital weakness of the character, a castration of the mind.”

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Author:Antonin Artaud
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“These terrifying forms which advance on me, I feel that the despair they bring is alive. It slips into this nucleus of life beyond which the paths of eternity extend. It is truly an eternal separation. They slip their knives into this center where I feel myself a man, they sever those vital ties which bind me to the dream of my lucid reality.”

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Book:Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings
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“The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood. This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid.”

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Book:The Theater and Its Double
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“[Nietzsche's] definition of cruelty informs Artaud's own, declaring that all art embodies and intensifies the underlying brutalities of life to recreate the thrill of experience ... Although Artaud did not formally cite Nietzsche, [their writing] contains a familiar persuasive authority, a similar exuberant phraseology, and motifs in extremis.”

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Author:Antonin Artaud
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