Artaud, Antonin - Ten Years That The Language Is Gone... (1997)
Uploaded by
leroi77Artaud, Antonin - Ten Years That The Language Is Gone... (1997)
Uploaded by
leroi77Ben Sonnenberg
Jean Stein
[Untitled]
Author(s): Antonin Artaud, Clayton Eshleman and Bernard Bador
Source: Grand Street, No. 60, Paranoia (Spring, 1997), pp. 245-250
Published by: Jean Stein
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25008187
Accessed: 04-11-2015 09:26 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Ben Sonnenberg and Jean Stein are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Grand Street.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Wed, 04 Nov 2015 09:26:27 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-U
*91% 4% a
La'. a'
- 4 - V -
This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Wed, 04 Nov 2015 09:26:27 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
ANTON IN ARTAUD
Ten years that the language is gone,
that there has entered in its place
this atmospheric thunder,
this lightning,
facing the aristocratic pressuration of beings,
of all the noble beings
of the butt,
cunt, of the prick,
of the lingouette,
of the plalouettee
plaloulette
U. pactoulette,
of the tegumentary trance,
of the pellicle,
racial nobles of the corporeal erotic,
against me, simple virgin of the body,
ten years that Ionce again blew up theMiddle Ages,
with its nobles, its judges, its lookout,
its priests above all,
its churches,
its cathedrals,
its vicars,
itswhite wafers.
How?
With an anti-logical,
anti-philosophical,
anti-intellectual,
anti-dialectical
blow of the tongue
246
This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Wed, 04 Nov 2015 09:26:27 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
with my black pencil pressed down
and that's it.
Which means that I themadman and themomo,
kept 9 years in a lunatic asylum for exorcistical and magical passes and because
I supposedly imagined I'd found amagic and that itwas crazy,
one must believe itwas true,
since not a single day during my 3-year internment at Rodez, Aveyron, did the
Dr. Ferdiere fail at I0:30 A.M., the visiting hour, to come and tellme:
Mr. Artaud, asmuch as you may wish, Society cannot accept, and I am here the
representative of Society.
If Iwas mad inmy magical passes, what did it thenmatter to Society which
could not feel attacked or injured and had only to despise and neglect me.
But theDr. Ferdiere presenting himself as a defender of that Society and
entrusted to defend itmust have recognized my so-called magical so-called
passes since he was opposing me with Society,
I therefore say that the dismissed language is a lightning bolt that Iwas
bringing forth now in the human fact of breathing, which my pencil strokes
on paper sanction.
And since a certain day inOctober I939 I have not written anymore without
drawing anymore either.
But what Idraw
are no longer subjects fromArt transposed from imagination to paper, they are
not affective figures,
they are gestures, a verb, a grammar, an arithmetic, awhole Kabala, and one
that shits to the other, one that shits on the other,
no drawing done on paper is a drawing, the reintegration of a strayed sensibility,
it is amachine which has breath,
itwas first amachine which at the same time has breath.
It is a search for a lostworld
and one that no human tongue integrates
and the image of which on paper is even no more than a tracing, a sort of
diminished
copy.
For the realwork is in the clouds.
247
This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Wed, 04 Nov 2015 09:26:27 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Words, no,
arid patches of a breath which gives its full
but therewhere only the Last Judgment will be able to decide between values,
theevidences,
as far as the text is concerned,
in themoulted blood of what tide
will I be able tomake heard
the corrosive structure,
I say hear
the constructive structure,
therewhere the drawing
point by point
is only the restitution of a drilling,
of the advance of a drill in the underworld of the sempiternal latent body.
But what a logomachy, no?
Couldn't you light up your lantern a bit more, Mr. Artaud.
My lantern?
I say
that look ten yearswith my breath
I've been breathing hard forms,
compact,
opaque,
unbridled,
without archings
in the limbo of my body not made
and which finds itself hence made
and that I find every time the io,ooo beings to criticize me,
to obturate the attempt of the edge of a pierced infinite.
Such are in any case the drawings with which I constellate allmy notebooks.
In any case
thewhore,
oh thewhore,
it's not from this side of theworld,
248
This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Wed, 04 Nov 2015 09:26:27 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
it's not in this gesture of theworld,
it's not in a gesture of this veryworld
that I say
that Iwant and can indicatewhat I think,
and theywill see it,
theywill feel it,
theywill take notice of it
through my clumsy drawings,
but so wily,
and so adroit,
which say SHIT to this veryworld.
What are they?
What do theymean?
The innate totem of man.
Gris-gris to come back toman.
All breaths in the hollow, sunken
pesti-fering
arcature
of my true teeth.
Not one which is not a breath thrownwith all the strength
of my lungs,
with all the sieve
of my respiration,
not one which does not respond to a real physiological activity,
which is not,
not its figurative translation
but something like an efficacious sieve,
on thematerializedpaper.
249
This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Wed, 04 Nov 2015 09:26:27 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
I am, it seems, a writer.
But am Iwriting?
Imake sentences.
Without subject, verb, attribute or complement.
I have learnedwords,
they taughtme things.
Inmy turn I teach them amanner of new behavior.
May the pommel of your tuvepatten
entrumene you a red ani bivilt,
at the lumestin of the utrin cadastre.
This means maybe that thewoman's uterus turns red,when Van Gogh
themad protester of man dabbles with finding theirmarch for the
heavenly bodies of a too superb destiny.
And itmeans that it is time for awriter to close shop, and to leave
r/S~vI thewritten letter for the letter.
April I947
TranslatedfromtheFrenchbyClaytonEshleman,with BernardBador
250
This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Wed, 04 Nov 2015 09:26:27 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
