dublinka

Antonin Artaud's The death of Satan and other mystical writings fell into my possession by chance today. It's one of those rare, curious arcane poetic writings, from a half sane - half intoxicated writer, who sought to dissolve himself in the mythologies, rituals and conceptual artifacts of various world cultures. The whole short text (culled from notebooks and translated by Alastair Hamilton and Victor Corti) seems at first meaningless. Even to Artaud the ideas are difficult - one segment, is punctuated with 'what does this mean?' before he attempts further elaboration. But with repeated reading, a refined mysticism can sometimes be seen playing in the ruins of his desperate struggle with ideas. I'll try to hunt down a French text, but here are some quotes from the English text:


Power eats power:
Without war, no stability.

everything that stops us living is a mere refraction of Satanic thought, ruined by the ( ? ) of the human.

I struggled to try and exist, to try to consent to the forms (all the forms) with which the delirious illusion of being in this world had clothed reality.

A truly Desperate man is talking to you, who never knew the happiness of being in this world until he left it and became absolutely separated from it.

I knew it, but could not say it, and I can start to say it now, because I have left reality behind.