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[defines a madman as] a man who preferred to become mad,in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor.

Antonin Artaud

Like all magic cultures expressed by appropriate hieroglyphs, the true theater has its shadows too, and, of all languages and all arts, the theater is the only one left whose shadows have shattered their limitations.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Art Culture Expression Language Limitation Magic Oneself Shatter Theatre
You are quite unnecessary, young man!
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Man Necessary Quite Young
I know each conversation with a psychiatrist in the morning made me want to hang myself because I knew I could not strangle him.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Conversation Hang Morning Myself
All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggar’s teeth.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Beggar Language Talk True
Those who live, live off the dead.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Death Live One Liner
The actor is merely a crude empiricist, a practitioner guided by vague instinct.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Guide Instint Practice
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.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Angel Human Live Need Pain Strength Swallow Understand
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.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Form Fragile Life Reach Surface Talk Word
I am a man by virtue of my hands and my feet, my belly, my heart of meat, my stomach whose knots reunite me to the putrefaction of life.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Hands Life Man Myself Virtue
If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Destroy Myself Suicide Togetherness
Excuse my absolute freedom. I refuse to make a distinction between any of the moments of myself.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Freedom Moments Myself Refusal
Poetry is a dissociating and anarchic force which through analogy, associations and imagery, thrives on the destruction of known relationships.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Destruction Force Image Poetry Relationahip Thrive
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
So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Asylum Greatness Protect Protection Refusal Society
The idea of a detached art, of poetry as a charm which exists only to distract our leisure, is a decadent idea and an unmistakable symptom of our power to castrate.
ANTONIN ARTAUD

Art Ideas Mistake Ourselves Poetry Power
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

[defines a madman as] a man who preferred to become mad,in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor.

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[defines a madman as] a man who preferred to become mad,in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor.

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Popular Authors

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