Dean of the College Presents
Faculty Seminar
Selected Late Letters of Antonin Artaud, 1945-1947
Presented by Cole Heinowitz
The work of Antonin Artaud has had a profound impact on literature, performance, and the visual arts in the English-speaking world, yet much of the writing from his extremely prolific late period remains untranslated. This selection of letters from Artaud’s consummate work, Suppôts et Suppliciations, translated into English for the first time, provides readers with an arrestingly intimate view of Artaud’s final years. As Artaud himself describes them, the letters expose “the suffering body” behind his work and insist that this body is “a man and not a spirit.” Commenting on and elaborating key themes from his earlier writing, Artaud recounts his torture in asylums, his crucifixion two thousand years ago in Golgotha, his deception by occult initiates and doubles, and his intended journey to Tibet where, aided by his secret “daughters of the heart,” he will finally put an end to these “maneuvers of obscene bewitchment.” Artaud also explains his plan to rebuild the architecture of the human body, to create what he envisions as a body without organs—autonomous, absolute, and non-hierarchical—and, extending this idea to the visual arts, he argues that painting and drawing must wage ceaseless war against the limits of representation. Yet however wide-ranging the subjects these letters deal with, there is an unmistakable unity of purpose that permeates them: to resist at all costs what Artaud sees as a ubiquitous, malignant plot “to close the mouth of lucidity.”
For more information, call 845-758-7490, or e-mail [email protected].
Location: Olin Humanities, Room 102