Collected Works: Volume One

by Antonin Artaud, Alastair Hamilton (Translator), Victor Corti (Translator)

Collection of plays, letters, and essays. The first volume of the "Collected Works" contains the important correspondence with Jacques Riviere, and Artaud's extraordinary explorations of consciousness and creativity in Umbilico Limbo and Nerve Scales, as well as essays on life and death, suicide, drugs, lunacy, religion and art, poems, manifestos, the terrifying short play The Spurt of Bloodletters and other material. This important volume is essential to an understanding of the art and theater of our time and will give endless pleasure and information to its readers. Translated and with an introduction by Victor Corti.

Contents:
Correspondence with Jacques Rivière --
Umbilical limbo --
Nerve scales --
Art and death --
Unpublished prose and poetry --
Cup and ball --
Seven letters --
Appendix.

Genres: Poetry, Plays, Nonfiction, Literature

247 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

French surrealist poet and playwright Antonin Artaud advocated a deliberately shocking and confrontational style of drama that he called "theater of cruelty."

People better knew Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, an essayist, actor, and director.

Considered among the most influential figures in the evolution of modern theory, Antonin Artaud associated with artists and experimental groups in Paris during the 1920s.

Political differences then resulted in him breaking and founding the theatre Alfred Jarry with Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron. Together, they expected to create a forum for works to change radically. Artaud especially expressed disdain for west of the day, panned the ordered plot and scripted language that his contemporaries typically employed to convey ideas, and recorded his ideas in such works as Le Theatre de la cruaute and The Theatre and Its Double .

Artaud thought to represent reality and to affect the much possible audience and therefore used a mixture of strange and disturbing forms of lighting, sound, and other performance elements.

Artaud wanted that the "spectacle" that "engulfed and physically affected" this audience, put in the middle. He referred to this layout like a "vortex," a "trapped and powerless" constantly shifting shape.