Wise words. As I said in my review, it looks like what now would be
called schizophrenia. And yes, I have had too much personal connection
with madness to see it as anything but pitiably disempowering.
All the best
Alison
On 9/26/06, [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I would say more like Neitzche...in that he had no real
> base of power. Clearly, too, he was mentally troubled...
> Of course, there are those that say it's society's problem,
> never having lived in a household or next door to a mentally
> troubled person. Art is not inconsistent with madness. But
> madness is inconsistent with many things.
> Finnegan
>
> In a message dated 9/25/2006 7:14:19 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
>
> This week, a review of Artaud's Jet of Blood -
>
> ...Artaud envisioned a theatre was, at its core, religious: what he
> sought was an experience which, like the "chemical marriage" of the
> Alchemists, would resolve his warring dualities into a coherent whole.
> Sontag is correct when she points to the extremity of his "moral
> rigour", commenting that Oliver Cromwell and Girolamo Savanarola might
> well have approved the theatre he proposed.
>
> Certainly, Artaud shares with figures like Osama bin Laden or Pol Pot
> a singular and apocalyptic moral vision that seeks purification
> through destruction and violence. It is not hard to imagine Artaud
> following Stockhausen, who in a widely reviled remark shortly after
> the 9/11 attacks, called the destruction of the Twin Towers "the
> greatest work of art there has ever been!" "I am not a madman," Artaud
> said, late in his life. "I am a fanatic." Like all Artaud's
> self-diagnoses, this statement has the cold coruscation of truth.
>
> What, then, to make of competing claims for an "authentic" experience
> of Artaud? Outside a lunatic asylum, a war zone or a concentration
> camp, I am not sure whether there can be such a thing. It is possible
> to think of the theatrics of torture in Abu Ghraib - the posing for
> photographs, the obliterating of the human body, the totalising word,
> the sexual loathing - as the ultimate Artaudian theatre. Like many
> poets, Artaud was lamentably literal.
>
> I can't think of anyone who has taken Artaud's ideas in toto and
> realised them in the theatre; and in my heart, I can't imagine why
> anyone would want to. He is a catalyst and a provocation, rather than
> a model. Grotowski's actor-centred quest for sacred truth or Brook's
> aesthetic sensuousness are far too humane to be genuinely Artaudian.
> Making Artaud is, in many ways, also an unmaking of Artaud.
>
> More at http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>
--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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