An exhibition of Antonin Artaud’s paintings occurred on July 4, 1947, at the Galerie Pierre in Paris. Artaud had arranged an event on the first night but it was not a success and so he prepared a second event and decided that it would only by invitation only. He prepared the text, “Theatre and Science” for this second event which occurred on July 18; it was a great success but for Artaud this was not enough: two days later her told Jacques Prevel that, “in spite of everything I was disappointed. I believe that in order to make all these people understand something, I would have to kill them.” Indeed, he added a postscript to “Theatre and Science” in which he wrote: “I would have had to shit blood through the navel to achieve what I wanted.” This theatre of extreme action was not to be realized in a space populated by the indifferent masses, even when they seemed to understand his work. But, all the same, the text remains as a powerful evocation of what needs to be done to achieve the “true organic and physical transformation of the human body.”
Theatre and Science
True theater has always seemed to me to be the exercise of a dangerous and terrible act,
in which, moreover, the idea of theater and spectacle is eliminated,
as well as that of all science, religion, and art.
The act of which I speak aims at the true organic and physical transformation of the human body.
Why?
Because the theater is not this scenic parade where a myth is virtually and symbolically developed
but this crucible of fire and real meat
where anatomically by trampling on bones, limbs, and syllables,
bodies are remade,
and the mythical act of making a body
presents itself physically and naturally.
If you understand me correctly, you will see here a true act of genesis where it will seem to everyone absurd and humorous to invoke the plane of real life.
Because no one at this time can believe that a body can change except through time and in death.
But I repeat, death is an invented state
and that it lives only for all the cowardly sorcerers, the gurus of nothingness to whom
it benefits and who for several centuries have been feeding on it
and live in the state called Bardo.
Apart from that the human body is immortal.
It’s an old story that needs to be brought up to date by saying something that offends people.
The human body only dies because we forgot to transform and change it.
Apart from that it does not die, it does not crumble to dust, it does not pass through the tomb.
It is an ignoble facility of nothingness that religion, society, and science have thus obtained from the human consciousness to lead it at a given moment to leave its body,
to make it believe that the human body was perishable and destined after a short time to go away.
No, the human body is imperishable and immortal, and it changes, it changes physically and materially,
anatomically and obviously,
it changes visibly immediately, if one is willing to take the material trouble to change it.
There once existed an operation that was less magical than scientific
and that the theater has only touched upon,
by which the human body
when it was recognized as evil
was passed,
transported,
physically and materially,
objectively and, as it were, molecularly
from one body to another,
from a past and lost state of the body
to a strengthened and heightened state of the body.
And for that it was enough to address all the dramatic, repressed, and lost forces of the human body.
Now this is indeed a revolution,
and everyone calls for a necessary revolution,
but I don’t know if many people knew that this revolution would not be true until it was physically and materially complete,
until it turned towards man,
towards the human body itself
and so they would finally decide not to ask it to change.
But the body has become filthy and evil because we live in a filthy and evil world that does not want the human body to be changed,
and who knew how to release
from all sides,
at the right points,
its occult and tenebrous chorus to prevent it from changing.
That’s how this world isn’t evil on the surface only
but because underground and occultly it cultivates and maintains the evil which caused it to be and gave birth to all of us from the evil spirit and amid the evil spirit.
It is not only that the customs are rotten, but also that the atmosphere in which we live is materially and physically rotten with real worms, obscene appearances, poisonous spirits, infected organisms, that one can see with the naked eye if you have for a long time, acridly and systematically suffered from it like me.
And it is not a question of hallucination or delirium, no, it is a question of this adulterated and verified elbowing of the abominable world of spirits of which every imperishable actor, every uncreated poet of breath has always felt the shameful parts corrupt his purer impulses.
And there will be no possible political or moral revolution as long as man remains
magnetically possessed,
in his most elementary and simplest organic and nervous reactions,
by the sordid influence of all the dubious centers of initiates
who warm themselves in the incubators of their psyche
laugh as much at revolutions as at wars,
certain that the anatomical order on which is based both the existence and the duration of the present society
can no longer be changed.
Now there are in the human breath leaps and breaks of tone, and from one cry to another abrupt transfers by which openings and impulses of the entire body of things can be suddenly evoked, and which can liquefy or support a member, like a tree leaning against a mountain in the forest.
Now the body has a breath and a cry by which it can take hold of the decomposed depths of the organism and visibly transport it to those radiant high planes where the superior body awaits it.
It is an operation where
in the depths of the organic cry and the launched breath
pass all possible states of blood and humors,
all the struggle of the bone splinters and shards of the visible body, against the false monsters of the psyche, of spirituality, and of sensitivity.
There were undeniable periods in the history of time when this physiological operation took place and where human evil never had time to develop its forces and release them as today it does its monsters resulting from copulation.
If on certain points and for certain races, human sexuality has come to a dark point, and if this sexuality releases corrupted influences,
terrible bodily poisons
which presently paralyze all the efforts of will and sensibility,
and make any attempt at metamorphosis
and definitive, integral revolution impossible,
it’s been centuries now
since a certain operation of physiological transmutation has been abandoned,
and the true organic metamorphosis of the human body,
with its outrage,
its material ferocity
and its magnitude,
casts into the shadow of a lukewarm psychic night
all the psychological, logical or dialectical dramas of the human heart.
I mean that the body possesses breaths, and that the breath possesses bodies whose palpitating pressure, the terrible atmospheric compression, render vain, when they appear, all the passionate or psychic states that consciousness can evoke.
There is a degree of tension that crushes, and an opaque thickness, a super compressed repression of the body which leaves far behind all philosophy, all dialectics, all music, all physics,
all poetry
all magic.
I won’t show this to you tonight, since it requires several hours of progressive practice to begin to demonstrate it,
moreover, space and air are needed,
above all, it requires equipment that I don’t have.
But you will certainly hear in the texts that will be spoken,
coming from those who recite them,
cries and outbursts of a sincerity which are on the path to this entire physiological revolution without which nothing can be changed.
Antonin Artaud
This reading took place this evening, Friday, July 18, 1947, and sometimes I almost brushed against the opening of the heart tone.
I would have had to shit blood through the navel to achieve what I wanted.
3/4 of an hour, for example, striking with the poker[1] on the same point, while drinking from time to time.
Peter Valente is a writer, translator, and filmmaker. He is the author of twelve full length books. His most recent books are a collection of essays on Werner Schroeter, A Credible Utopia (Punctum, 2022), and his translation of Nerval, The Illuminated (Wakefield, 2022). Forthcoming is his translation of Antonin Artaud, The True Story of Jesus-Christ (Infinity Land Press, 2022), a collection of essays on Artaud, Obliteration of the World: A Guide to the Occult Belief System of Antonin Artaud (Infinity Land Press, 2022), and his translation of Nicolas pages by Guillaume Dustan (Semiotext(e), 2023).
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[1] The paragraphs following the signature were probably added in the hours following the reading at the Galarie Pierre. Antonin Artaud had used his knife, a hammer, and a poker while chanting the text.
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