ARTAUD Antonin. - Lot 20

ARTAUD Antonin. 3 AUTOGRAPH LETTERS SIGNED to André ROLLAND DE RENÉVILLE. Paris December 18, 1931, [September 10, 1932] and October 16, 1932. 6 pages in-8 and 2 pages in-4 in ink, envelope retained. Three letters addressed to the poet-essayist André Rolland de Renéville, a close friend of René Daumal and Roger Gilbert-Lecomte mentioned in this correspondence. I'm told that you drew R. G. Lecomte's attention to a supposed scandal I made during his lecture. First of all, I find this unfriendly. Secondly, it's not true - I criticized the lecture for dotting the i's and crossing the t's a little too much, and for sounding a little academic at times... Read René Daumal's article in Les Cahiers du Sud. It is ravishingly mature in spirit. But I think that, important as it is, his idea that the arts are made to bring us back to the center of our intolerable solitude is a false idea. It's fascinating, but wrong. Besides, I suppose he means me when he talks about the desperate attempts being made here in principle to renew theater, music and the arts. In his letter of September 10, 1932, Artaud wrote his manifesto for the Théâtre de la Cruauté. The manifesto would begin as follows: the trial of the theater today is over, we need a theater that acts and that, cutting to the quick, is once again capable of wreaking havoc on us like an ancient ordeal. We can't go on prostituting the idea of theater, which is only worthwhile because of its atrocious magical connection with reality and danger... I've come up with another title that seems more applicable, or at least more accurate: the theater of the ordeal. In his last letter, Artaud notes the failure of his manifesto for the Théâtre de la Cruauté. You can never win by cheating yourself. The whole theoretical part, which I had worked so hard on and which I knew didn't fit in with my particular breath, with my personal way of exhaling my thoughts, was a failure. Artaud wrote two manifestos for the Théâtre de la Cruauté, the first in 1931 and the second in 1933, with greater success.