Artaud Research

Born in Marseille, France, on September 4, 1896

Died on March 4, 1948, in Ivry-sur-Seine, France
Son of a wealthy shipfitter and a mother from a Greek background
The death of his maternal grandmother deeply affected the young
Antonin. Bettina Knapp characterizes his summers with her in Turkey as
filled with a closeness and a calmness, a sense of belonging and an inner
joy, which contrasted with the tense atmosphere at home created by
an over-solicitous mother and an anxious father.
At age five he suffered a near-fatal attack of meningitis
During one of those summers in Turkey, when Artaud was almost ten, he
nearly drowned. While Antonin came close to death by drowning, many of
his siblings fared far worse
His mother gave birth to nine children, four out of the nine were stillborn
and two more died in childhood
Germaine was one of Artauds sisters who died early at seven months
old. Clayton Eshleman indicates that she died the day after the babysitter
slammed the child with such force that she perforated the babys
intestine.
Educated at the Coll'e du Sacr Coeur in Marseilles and at 14 founded a
literary magazine, which he kept going for almost four years
In his teens, he began to have sharp head pains, which continued
throughout his life
In 1914 he had an attack of neurasthenia and was treated in a rest home;
the following year he was given opium to alleviate his pain, and he
became addicted within a few months
Artaud's parents arranged a long series of sanatorium stays for their
temperamental son, which lasted five years, with a break of two months in
June and July 1916
He was inducted into the army in 1916, but was released in less than a
year on grounds of both mental instability and drug addiction
In 1918 he committed himself to a clinic in Switzerland, where he
remained until 1920
On his release, he went to Paris, still under medical supervision, and began
to study with Charles Dullin, an actor and director
He became seriously interested in the surrealist movement headed by
Andr Breton and in 1923 published a volume of symbolist verse strongly
influenced by Mallarm, Verlaine, and Rimbaud, Tric trac du ciel
(Backgammon of the Sky)
He broke with the organized surrealist movement in 1926, when Breton
became a Communist and attempted to take his fellow-members with him
into the party
He continued to view himself as a surrealist and in 1927 wrote the film
script for La Coquille et le clergyman, perhaps the most famous surrealist
film
In 1931, Artaud saw Balinese dance performed at the Paris Colonial
Exposition. Although he did not fully understand the intentions and ideas

behind traditional Balinese performance, it influenced many of his ideas

for theatre
Artaud received a grant to travel to Mexico, where he studied and lived
with the Tarahumaran people and experimented with peyote
Artaud also recorded his horrific withdrawal from heroin upon entering the
land of the Tarahumaras. Having deserted his last supply of the drug at a
mountainside, he literally had to be hoisted onto his horse and soon
resembled, in his words, "a giant, inflamed gum"
In 1937, Artaud returned to France, where he obtained a walking stick of
knotted wood that he believed belonged not only to St. Patrick, but also
Lucifer and Jesus Christ
He travelled to Ireland, landing at Cobh and travelling to Galway, in an
effort to return the staff, though he spoke very little English and was
unable to make himself understood
According to Irish Government papers he was deported as "a destitute and
undesirable alien". On his return trip by ship, Artaud believed he was
being attacked by two crew members and retaliated. He was arrested and
put in a straitjacket.
He proposed a theatre that was in effect a return to magic and ritual and
he sought to create a new theatrical language of totem and gesture - a
language of space devoid of dialogue that would appeal to all the senses."
"Words say little to the mind," Artaud wrote, "compared to space
thundering with images and crammed with sounds." He proposed "a
theatre in which violent physical images crush and hypnotize the
sensibility of the spectator seized by the theatre as by a whirlwind of
higher forces."
The return from Ireland brought about the beginning of the final phase of
Artaud's life, which was spent in different asylums
When France was occupied by the Nazis, friends of Artaud had him
transferred to the psychiatric hospital in Rodez, well inside Vichy territory,
where he was put under the charge of Dr. Gaston Ferdire
Ferdire began administering electroshock treatments to eliminate
Artaud's symptoms, which included various delusions and odd physical tics
The doctor believed that Artaud's habits of crafting magic spells, creating
astrology charts, and drawing disturbing images were symptoms of mental
illness
The electroshock treatments created much controversy, although it was
during these treatmentsin conjunction with Ferdire's art therapythat
Artaud began writing and drawing again
In January 1948, Artaud was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. He died
shortly afterwards on 4 March 1948, alone in the psychiatric clinic, at the
foot of his bed, clutching his shoe. It was suspected that he died from a
lethal dose of the drug chloral hydrate, although it is unknown whether he
was aware of its lethality
He called for "communion between actor and audience in a magic
exorcism; gestures, sounds, unusual scenery, and lighting combine to form
a language, superior to words, which can be used to subvert thought and
logic and to shock the spectator into seeing the baseness of his world."