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The actor is merely a crude empiricist, a practitioner guided by vague instinct.

Antonin Artaud

The true theater, because it moves and makes use of living instruments, continues to stir up shadows where life has never ceased to grope its way.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Instrument Live Shadow Theatre True Way
The race of prophets is extinct. Europe is becoming set in its ways, slowly embalming itself beneath the wrappings of its borders, its factories, its law-courts and its universities. The frozen Mind cracks between the mineral staves which close upon it.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Extinct Mindset Slow University Way Wrap
There is nothing like an insane asylum for gently incubating death.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

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

Death Poet Poetry Reading Worth Writing
Cruelty in the theatre is unrelenting decisiveness, diligence, strictness.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Cruelty Decision Strict Theatre
Excuse my absolute freedom. I refuse to make a distinction between any of the moments of myself.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Freedom Moments Myself Refusal
Leave the caves of being. Come. The mind breathes outside the mind. The time has come to abandon your lodgings. Surrender to the Universal Thought. The Marvelous is at the root of the mind.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Breathe Leaving Mindset Ourselves Surrender Time
In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Mindset Ourselves Present Skin State
We do not die because we have to die; we die because one day, and not so long ago, our consciousness was forced to deem it necessary.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Consciousness Day Death Force Necessary Ourselves Philosophy
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.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Act Affirmation Live Myself Reason Risk See Truth
Before our eyes is fought a battle of symbols, for there can be theatre only from the moment when the impossible really begins and when the poetry that occurs on the stage sustains and superheats the realized symbols.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Battle Beginning Eyes Impossible Ourselves Realize Stage Symbol Theatre
This is why true beauty never strikes us directly. The setting sun is beautiful because of all it makes us lose.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Beautiful Direction Lose True
And if there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Artistic Flame Hell Ourselves Time Victim
We must wash literature off ourselves. We want to be men above all, to be human.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Human Literature Ourselves
The fixation of the theater in one language–written words, music, lights, noises–betokens its imminent ruin.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Language Noise Ruin Theatre Writing
No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Built Exception Hell Paint Writing

The actor is merely a crude empiricist, a practitioner guided by vague instinct.

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The actor is merely a crude empiricist, a practitioner guided by vague instinct.

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