eMONASH University. Library

Digitised by

COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA Copyright Act 1968 Notice for paragraph 135ZXA (a) of the Copyright Act 1968 WARNING

This material has been reproduced and communicated to you by or on behalf of Monash University under Part VB of the Copyright Act 1968 (the Act). The material in this communication is subject to copyright under the Act. Any further reproduction or communication of this material by you may be the subject of copyright protection under the Act.

Any un-associated work has been removed.

Do not remove this notice.

NEW YORK

Farra,·, Straus and Giroux

e ·-d£ 110RII A rl~'lu

l'n'Ilio A,"'audAI'IRin Ar1auflSELECTED WRITINGS

79-143303841'.9'12PQ2601.R677A28 1976.

Artaud, Antonin, 1896-1948.Selected writings.

Library 0/ Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

"On the Balinese Theater," "Mise en scene andMetaphysics," "The Marx Brothers," "The Theaterof Cruelty," "An End to Masterpieces," "AnEmotional Athleticism," "Oriental Theater andWestern Theater," from The Theater and Its Double,by Antonin Artaud, copyright © 1958 by Grove Press,Inc. Reprinted by permission of Grove Press, Inc.

Acknowledgment is made to The New Yorker, in whosepages Susan Sontag's Introduction originallyappeared in somewhat different form

Introduction © 1973, 1976 by Susan Sontag

Translated from the French, Oeuvres completes,© Editions Gallimard 1956, 1961, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1974

All rights reservedFirst printing, 1976Printed in the United States of AmericaDesigned by Loretta Li

Translation copyright © 1976 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.

ISO

Two paths seem to be open to the cinema right now, neither ofwhich, undoubtedly, is the right one.

On the one hand there is pure or absolute cinema, and on theother there is that kind of venial hvbrid art which insists on

.I

translating into more or less suitable images psychological situa-tions that would be perfectly at home on the stage or in the pagesof a book but not on the screen, since they are merely the reflec­tion of a world that depends on another source for its rawmaterial and its meaning.

It is clear that everything we have seen up to now that passesfor abstract or pure cinema is very far from meeting what seemsto be one of the essential requirements of cinema. For althoughthe mind of man may be able to conceive and accept abstraction,no one can respond to purely geometric lines which possess nosignificative value in themselves and which are not related to anysensation that the eye of the screen can recognize or classify. Nomatter how deeply we dig into the mind, we find at the bottom ofevery emotion, even an intellectual one, an affective sensation of anervous order. This sensation involves the recognition, perhapson an elementary level, but at least on a tangible one, of some­thing substantial, of a certain vibration that always recalls states,either known or imagined, that are clothed in one of the myriadforms of real or imagined nature. Thus the meaning of purecinema would lie in the re-creation of a certain number of formsof this kind, it would lie in a movement and follow a rhythmwhich is the specific contribution of this art.. Between a purely linear visual abstraction (and the play oflIght and shadow is similar to the play of lines) and the funda­mentally psychological film which relates the development of astory that mayor may not be dramatic, there is room for an

CINEMA AND REALITY

i~i!iilr~I!lillliillll!lillllli~!i004210130

ANTONIN ARTAUD

lSI

attempt at true cinema, of whose substance or meaning nothing inthe films that have been presented to elate gives any suggestion.

In heavily plotted films, all the emotion and all the humordepend solely on the text, to the exclusion of the images; with afew rare exceptions, all the thought in a film is in the subtitles,and even in films without subtitles the emotion is verbal, it re­quires the clarification or support of words, for the situations, theimages, the actions all turn on a clear meaning. We have yet toachieve a film with purely visual situations whose drama wouldcome from a shock designed for the eyes, a shock drawn, so tospeak, from the very substance of our vision and not from psycho­logical circumlocutions of a discursive nature which are merelythe visual equivalent of a text. It is not a question of finding invisual language an equivalent for written language, of which thevisual language would merely be a bad translation, but rather ofrevealing the very essence of language and of carrying the actiononto a level where all translation would be unnecessary and wherethis action would operate almost intuitively on the brain.

In the screenplay that follows, I have tried to carry out thisidea of a visual cinema in which even psychology is engulfed byactions. No doubt this screenplay does not achieve the absoluteimage of all that can be done in this direction; but at least itpoints the way. Not that the cinema must renounce all humanpsychology: that is not its principle-on the contrary-but itmust give psychology a form that is much more vital and active,and without those connections that try to reveal the motives forour actions in an absolutely stupid light instead of spreadingthem before us in their original and profound barbarity.

This screenplay is not the re-creation of a dream and shouldnot be considered as such. I shall not attempt to excuse its appar­ent incoherence by the facile subterfuge of dreams. Dreams havemore than their logic. They have their life, in which there appearsan intelligent and somber truth. This screenplay seeks the sombertruth of the mind in images which have issued solely from them­selves and which do not derive their meaning from the situationin which they develop but from a kind of powerful inner necessitythat casts them in a light of inescapable clarity.

The human skin of things, the epidermis of reality: this is theprimary raw material of cinema. Cinema exalts matter and reveals

011 TIle SeaslteU and the Cle"gY'lIan

152

it to us in its profound spirituality, in its relations with the spiritfrom which it has emerged. Images are born, are derived fromone another purely as images, impose an objective synthesis morepenetrating than any abstraction, create worlds which ask nothingof anyone or anything. But out of this pure play of appearances,out of this so to speak transubstantiation of elements is born aninorganic language that moves the mind by osmosis and withoutany kind of transposition in words. And because it works withmatter itself, cinema creates situations that arise from the merecollision of objects, forms, repulsions, attractions. It does notdetach itself from life but rediscovers the original order of things.The films that are most successful in this sense are those domi­nated by a certain kind of humor, like the early Buster Keatons orthe less human Chaplins. A cinema which is studded with dreams,and which gives you the physical sensation of pure life, finds itstriumph in the most excessive sort of humor. A certain excitementof objects, forms, and expressions can only be translated into theconvulsions and surprises of a reality that seems to destroy itselfwith an irony in which you can hear a scream from the extrem­ities of the mind.

ANTONIN ARTAUD