There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.
ANTONIN ARTAUDWritten poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others.
More Antonin Artaud Quotes
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Life consists of burning up questions.
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Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life.
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Cruelty signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination.
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I myself am an absolute abyss.
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When we speak the word ‘life,’ it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach.
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The actor is an athlete of the heart.
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Don’t tire yourself more than need be, even at the price of founding a culture on the fatigue of your bones.
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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.
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I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this–I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain.
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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.
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I do not like detached creation. Neither can I conceive of the mind as detached from itself. Each of my works, each diagram of myself, each glacial flowering of my inmost soul dribbles over me.
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If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.
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This is why true beauty never strikes us directly. The setting sun is beautiful because of all it makes us lose.
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Squander your riches far from this unfeeling body to which no season, either spiritual or sensual, makes any difference.
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Poetry is a dissociating and anarchic force which through analogy, associations and imagery, thrives on the destruction of known relationships.
ANTONIN ARTAUD