Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, better known as Antonine Artaud, was a French dramatist, poet, essayist, actor, and theatre director, widely recognized as one of the major figures of twentieth-century theatre and the European avant-garde...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth4 September 1896
CountryFrance
Antonin Artaud quotes about
theatre diligence cruelty
Cruelty in the theatre is unrelenting decisiveness, diligence, strictness.
order theatre passionate
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.
eye theatre battle
Before our eyes is fought a battle of symbols... for there can be theatre only from the moment when the impossible really begins and when the poetry that occurs on the stage sustains and superheats the realized symbols.
theatre brothels
There are those who go to the theatre as they would go to a brothel.
order break-through theatre
To break through language in order to touch life is to create or re-create the theater.
bombs language tyranny
With society and its public, there is no longer any other language than that of bombs, barricades, and all that follows.
men peyote psychedelic
In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the Peyote tells us, where to find it.
sarcasm chaos
Without sarcasm I sink into chaos.
would-be investigation faculty
A tainted society has invented psychiatry to defend itself against the investigations of certain superior intellects whose faculties of divination would be troublesome.
spiritual differences sensual
Squander your riches far from this unfeeling body to which no season, either spiritual or sensual, makes any difference.
soul world rotting
Destroy yourselves, you who are desperate, and you who are tortured in body and soul, abandon all hope. There is no more solace for you in this world. The world lives off your rotting flesh.
communication teeth language
All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggar's teeth.
magic trying speech
I am adding another language to the spoken language, and I am trying to restore to the language of speech its old magic, its essential spellbinding power, for its mysterious possibilities have been forgotten.
determination decision intention
Cruelty signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination,