French dramatist, poet, essayist, actor, theatre director, and one of the most significant artistic figures of the twentieth-century, Antoin Artaud, died on this day, March 4, 1948, in a lunatic asylum just outside of Paris. Below is one of his poems titled, Cry, published in 1925.
The little celestial poet
Opens the shutters of his heart.
The heavens clash. Oblivion
Uproots the symphony.
Stableman the wild house
That has you guard wolves
Does not suspect the wraths
Smoldering beneath the big alcove
Of the vaults that hang above us.
Hence silence and darkness
Muzzle all impurity
The sky strides forward
At the crossroad of sounds.
The star is eating. The oblique sky
Is opening its flight toward the heights
Night sweeps away the scraps
Of the meal that contented us.
On earth walks a slug
Which is greeted by ten thousand white hands
A slug is crawling
There where the earth vanished.
Angels whom no obscenity summons
Were homeward bound in peace
When rose the real voice
Of the spirit that called them.
The sun lower than the daylight
Volatilized all the sea
A strange but clear dream
Was born on the clean earth.
The lost little poet
Leaves his heavenly post
With an unearthly idea
Pressed upon his hairy heart.
Two traditions met.
But our padlocked thoughts
Lacked the place required,
Experiment to be tried again.
Head on over to Patti’s Smith Subsack page where she performs a “little song, derived from a poem imagining the death of Artaud.” It’s well worth your time.
“Two traditions met.
But our padlocked thoughts
Lacked the place required,
Experiment to be tried again.”
Powerful and relatable words! Such a shame that a brilliant mind had to die in an asylum.
Powerful, and heartbreaking.