アルトーへのアプローチ

by Susan Sontag

Antonin Artaud kuului 1900-luvun suuriin teatterinuudistajiin, ja hänen ajatuksensa "julmuuden teatterista" ovat antaneet huomattavia vaikutteita mm. Jean Genet'lle, Ionescolle, Jerzy Grotowskille ja Peter Brookille. Artaud'n esseissä, runoissa, proosateoksissa ja näytelmissä esiintyvät teemat - ruumiin kieli, magia, kapina "kirjallisuutta" vastaan, eksoottinen kiinnostus ei-länsimaisiin kulttuureihin, skitsofrenian arvonnousu, taide "koettelemuksena" ja yleisöön kohdistuvana väkivaltana - ovat olleet myös oman aikamme taiteen lähihistoriassa muodikkaan ajankohtaisia.

Lihan estetiikka on kriittinen kokonaiskatsaus tämän taiteen suuren kapinallisen ajatteluun. Kirsikko Moring käsittelee jälkisanoissaan Jouko Turkan suhdetta Artaud'n esityksiin.

Tankobon Hardcover

First published May 19, 1973

About the author

Susan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933, grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles. She received her B.A. from the College of the University of Chicago and did graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard University and Saint Anne’s College, Oxford.

Her books include four novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America; a collection of short stories, I, etcetera; several plays, including Alice in Bed and Lady from the Sea; and nine works of nonfiction, starting with Against Interpretation and including On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, Where the Stress Falls, Regarding the Pain of Others, and At the Same Time. In 1982, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published A Susan Sontag Reader.

Ms. Sontag wrote and directed four feature-length films: Duet for Cannibals (1969) and Brother Carl (1971), both in Sweden; Promised Lands (1974), made in Israel during the war of October 1973; and Unguided Tour (1983), from her short story of the same name, made in Italy. Her play Alice in Bed has had productions in the United States, Mexico, Germany, and Holland. Another play, Lady from the Sea, has been produced in Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Korea.

Ms. Sontag also directed plays in the United States and Europe, including a staging of Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the summer of 1993 in besieged Sarajevo, where she spent much of the time between early 1993 and 1996 and was made an honorary citizen of the city.

A human rights activist for more than two decades, Ms. Sontag served from 1987 to 1989 as president of the American Center of PEN, the international writers’ organization dedicated to freedom of expression and the advancement of literature, from which platform she led a number of campaigns on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers.

Her stories and essays appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary publications all over the world, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Art in America, Antaeus, Parnassus, The Threepenny Review, The Nation, and Granta. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages.

Among Ms. Sontag's many honors are the 2003 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the 2003 Prince of Asturias Prize, the 2001 Jerusalem Prize, the National Book Award for In America (2000), and the National Book Critics Circle Award for On Photography (1978). In 1992 she received the Malaparte Prize in Italy, and in 1999 she was named a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government (she had been named an Officier in the same order in 1984). Between 1990 and 1995 she was a MacArthur Fellow.

Ms. Sontag died in New York City on December 28, 2004.

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very fun and very challenging read about an infinitely passionate artist (poet, philosopher, director etc etc etc.). A couple of Artaud’s concepts that I enjoyed reading the most were about the limits of our bodies, minds, language, society and morals, the transformative effect of violence/trauma in the theatre and how this can free us. For me, Sontag did a really good job vocalising a man that emphasised how difficult his theories were to put into words. She also discusses his personal life alongside some of his major works, so you can watch how his ideas were influenced by his visits to other societies and by his own mental health; when he is hospitalised for schizophrenia, it’s as if his mind opens and becomes his own theatre (him being both the actor and audience) for the struggles he was facing with his art.

Another reason Artaud is difficult to put onto paper is because of his idea of a total art, a interdisciplinary performance using different forms and methods. Rather than describe how he thought this could be produced, it’s probably easier to say that the biggest problem Artaud faced when trying to create a total art was the limits of the mind. To transform his ideas (his mind) into matter he required the body, language and other things, all of which he considered under-qualified.

Because it was impossible to conceptualise these ideas into language, he tried various different methods of theatre. Deciding whether any of his attempts were successful is where it becomes more difficult: not being able to put his methods into matter or language means the same for its achievements, reaching the transcendence he desired means doing so in silence (or at best unintelligibly). When Artaud, to reach that level of wisdom, must abandon language and dualism of mind-body, there is no (discovered) way to live there or even record that he encountered it; as Sontag puts it, ‘the project transcends the limits of the mind’.

Interestingly, Artaud was also part of the Surrealist movement but eventually rejected it for its interest in Communism and politics generally. I think a reason Artaud rejected the politicisation of his own art was because he saw himself and his ideas in the definitions of madness (madness is defined in language which is, of course, political). To Artaud, society defined madness through language which meant society defined its artistic limitations through politics, so defining himself by this same system doesn’t make a whole lot of sense - he felt tormented by the limits of his mind and he saw the same limitations imposed by politics on his art and how it could be expressed. In 1925 he wrote, “all individual acts are anti-social” and this sums up the choice he had: to own his anti-social ideas and the ‘madness’ that came with them, or to have his aim of radical change dissolve into society and its politics. Sontag sums it up well by saying ‘madness is the logical conclusion of the commitment to individuality when that commitment is pushed far enough’.

However, for me, it’s quite difficult to decide whether Artaud really opposed his ideas and theories becoming widespread. He spent so much of his work (writings primarily) describing how violent and painful it was to have his mind be outlawed and, even to himself a lot of the time, inaccessible to most existing (Western) art forms. Then, he devotes himself to creating the Theatre of Cruelty - art authenticated by real suffering - which sounds like a great way to exhibit his pain and offer it to others. Maybe I just need to read some more, but it never seems like he wants to completely shield the way his madness and genius correlate, perhaps even that he tried to share it.

I enjoyed reading parts of/about Artaud’s bodies of work because so much of it cancels itself out. I have to use language to read his words, then use it again to understand and then again to try and think about it, all whilst a large proportion of his art speaks of his hatred for language’s restrictions. He was considered (and saw himself) as completely anti-social but you still have to conceptualise his ideas within your politics (and/or society). Instead, if you try to detach his work from language and view it as he often did, as actions in theatre, you’re met with, as he was, the task of moulding body and mind (when you’ve just read 60 pages on how the body is the mind as matter, this is pretty hard). Despite all this, and even without having to agree with any of them, his ideas plant a little (or big) seed of creativity and Sontag does a great job of helping conceptualise how Artaud’s ideas may have changed art, as well as how it’s impossible to visualise what that would look like. Artaud couldn’t even satisfy his own ideas in his own theatre, so I’m happy to cop out here and finish this with the way the book finishes the essay:

“Like Sade and Reich, Artaud is relevant and understandable, a cultural monument, as long as one mainly refers to his ideas without reading much of his work. For anyone who reads Artaud through, he remains fiercely out of reach, an unassimilable voice and presence.”

[Miika · Rating 5 out of 5]

METAFYSIIKKA PALAA SIELUIHIN IHON KAUTTA

[Orçun Güzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not expect an interpretation of Artaud’s texts from the writer of “Against Interpretation” and I was right: In this 65 pages essay, Sontag is not trying to focus on what Artaud wrote but instead, she is trying to focus on Artaud himself. As the title implies, she is “approaching Artaud”, like approaching to a madman in the neighbourhood. And there is a long distance between world and Artaud, society and Artaud, other surrealists and Artaud - even there is a distance between his own mind and Artaud (wait, what?). Sontag did a great job with this ambitious yet easily readable article.