Quotes from Antonin Artaud

A alma dos homens não está nas palavras. Amamo-nos mais quando não escrevemos porque todas as palavras são uma mentira. Quando falamos traímos a nossa alma. Bastava olharmo-nos. Sentirmos coisas, mas só o esforço que se faz para as exprimir já é uma traição.

And when we tell ourselves we have reached the paroxysm of horror, blood and flouted laws of poetry that consecrates revolt, we obliged to advance still further into an endless vertigo.

AcÅ£iunea teatrului, ca ÅŸi a ciumei, este binef?c?toare, c?ci impingându-i pe oameni s? se vad? aÅŸa cum sunt, le smulge masca, le descoper? minciuna, moleÅŸeala, nimicnicia, ipocrizia

Keiner hat je geschrieben oder gemalt, geformt, modelliert, gebaut oder erfunden, es sei denn, um der Hölle zu entkommen.

All preferments (of the emperor) were dependent upon the outstanding size of member of those recommended. He appointed as collectors of the five per cent inheritance tax a muleteer, an athlete, a cook and a locksmith.

At times all I would need is a single word, a simple little word of no importance, to be great, to speak in the voice of the prophets; a word of witness, a precise word, a subtle word, a word well steeped in my marrow, gone out of me, which would stand at the other limit of my being and which, for everyone else, would be nothing.

Heliogabalus enters Rome one morning in March 218, at dawn, to coincide almost exactly with the Ides of March. And he enters it backwards. In front of him is the [ten ton] Phallus, drawn by three hundred bare-breasted girls who precede three hundred bulls, torpid and tranquil after being given a very powerful soporific during the hours before dawn.

L'artiste qui n'a pas ausculté le cÅ"ur de l'homme, l'artiste qui ignore qu'il est un bouc émissaire, que son devoir est d'aimanter, d'attirer, de faire tomber sur ses épaules les colères errantes de l'époque pour la décharger de son mal-être psychologique, celui-là n'est pas un artiste.

Once arrived in Rome, Heliogabalus banishes men from the Senate and replaces them with women. To the Romans, this is anarchy, but for the religion of the menses, which originated the Tyrian Purple, and for Heliogabalus who administers it, it's only a simple restoration of balance.

To have a sense of the profound unity of things is to have a sense of anarchy, -and of the effort required to reduce things while restoring them to unity. Whoever has the sense of unity also has the sense of the multiplicity of things, of that dust of appearances through which one must pass in order to reduce and destroy them.

Pues mi ser es bello pero espantoso. Y sólo es bello porque es espantoso.

The force that builds up tidal waves, that makes the sea lap at the moon, that has lava rising from the depths of volcanoes; the force that shakes buildings and creates deserts; the force red and unpredictable that sends thoughts like so many crimes seething through our heads, and crimes innumerable, like lice; the force that supports and aborts life — these are concrete manifestations of an energy whose heavier aspect is the Sun.

El cine tiene, sobre todo, la virtud de un veneno inofensivo y directo, una inyección subcutánea de morfina.

Uzam, zaman, boyut, oluÅŸ, gelecek, ilerisi, varl?k, varolmay??, ben, ben olmayan, hiçbir ÅŸey ifade etmiyorlar bana.

Là ou ça sent la merde ça sent l'être. L'homme aurait très bien pu ne pas chier, ne pas ouvrir la poche anale, mais il a choisi de chier comme il aurait choisi de vivre au lieu de consentir à vivre mort. C'est que pour ne pas faire caca, il lui aurait fallu consentir à ne pas être, mais il n'a pas pu se résoudre à perdre l'être, c'est-à-dire à mourir vivant.

La matière ne me mangera pas, moi.

Antes de retornar à cultura, constato que o mundo tem fome e que não se preocupa com a cultura; e que é de um modo artificial que se pretende dirigir para a cultura pensamentos voltados apenas para a fome.

Les asiles d'aliénés sont des réceptacles de magies noire, conscients et prémédités.

Never tire yourself more than necessary, even if you have to found a culture on the fatigue of your bones.

I see in the act of throwing the dice and of risking the affirmation of some intuitively felt truth, however uncertain, my whole reason for living.

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others.

Don't tire yourself more than need be, even at the price of founding a culture on the fatigue of your bones.

Admittedly or not, conscious or unconscious, the poetic state, a transcendent experience of life, is what the public is fundamentally seeking through love, crime, drugs, war, or insurrection.

So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair.