The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud

The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud. By Jacques Derrida and Paule Thévenin. Translation and preface by Mary Ann Caws. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998; pp. xviii + 157. $25.00 cloth.

Neither Derrida nor Thévenin is a stranger to the subject of Artaud. Derrida's article on "The Theatre of Cruelty" in Writing and Difference is an incisive deconstruction of Artaud's theatrical position, and Thévenin's work was informed by her friendship with Artaud and her work as former executrix of his literary estate. Mary Ann Caws provides an English translation of their 1986 joint volume, Antonin Artaud: Dessins et portraits, which highlights the importance of art in Artaud's oeuvre, as allegory, metaphor, and therapy for theatre as part of culture. Thévenin's text is pure and occasionally idolatrous, Derrida's a wrestling match with language, already beaten into submission by his subject, and twisted even further by translation. Shockingly, the successors to Artaud's estate continue to demonstrate extraordinary myopia and refused Caws permission to publish any artwork to accompany her translation. A book about Artaud's art without the art: Art(audian) irony. For a truly sumptuous edition of this book, check out the French edition published by Gallimard.

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