Antonin Artaud

Date of Birth:

4 September 1896

Antoine Maria Joseph Paul Artaud (4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948), better known as Antonin Artaud, was a French artist who worked across a variety of media. He is best known for his writings, as well as his work in the theatre and cinema. Widely recognized as a major figure of the European avant-garde, he had a particularly strong influence on twentieth-century theatre through his conceptualization of the Theatre of Cruelty. Known for his raw, surreal and transgressive work, his texts explored themes from the cosmologies of ancient cultures, philosophy, the occult, mysticism and indigenous Mexican and Balinese practices. Antonin was born in Marseille, to Euphrasie Nalpas and Antoine-Roi Artaud. His parents were first cousins: his grandmothers were sisters from Smyrna (modern day İzmir, Turkey). His paternal grandmother, Catherine Chilé, was raised in Marseille, where she married Marius Artaud, a Frenchman. His maternal grandmother, Mariette Chilé, grew up in Smyrna, where she married Louis Nalpas, a local ship chandler. Euphrasie gave birth to nine children, but four were stillborn and two others died in childhood. At age five, Artaud was diagnosed with meningitis, which had no cure at the time. Artaud attended the Collège Sacré-Coeur, a Catholic middle and high school, from 1907 to 1914. At school he began reading works by Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Edgar Allan Poe and founded a private literary magazine in collaboration with his friends. Towards the end of his tenure at the Collège, Artaud noticeably withdrew from social life and "destroyed most of his written work and gave away his books". Distressed, his parents arranged for him to see a psychiatrist. Over the next five years Artaud was admitted to a series of sanatoria. In 1916, there was a pause in Artaud's treatment when he was conscripted into the French Army. He was discharged early due to "an unspecified health reason" In May 1919, the director of the sanatorium prescribed Artaud laudanum, precipitating a lifelong addiction to that and other opiates. In March 1921, he moved to Paris where he was put under the psychiatric care of Dr Édouard Toulouse who took him in as a boarder. In 1937 after spending almost two years in Mexico, Artaud returned to France, where his friend René Thomas gave him a walking-stick of knotted wood that Artaud believed was the "most sacred relic of the Irish church, the Bachall Ísu, or 'Staff of Jesus'" and contained magical powers. Artaud traveled to Ireland, landing at Cobh and travelling to Galway, possibly in an effort to return the staff. Speaking very little English and no Gaelic whatsoever, he was unable to make himself understood. In Dublin, Artaud found himself penniless and spent most of his trip in "hostels for the homeless". After "several violent alteractions with the Dublin police" he was finally arrested after an incident at a Jesuit college. Before deportation he was briefly confined in the notorious Mountjoy Prison. According to Irish Government papers he was deported as "a destitute and undesirable alien". On his return voyage, Artaud believed he was being attacked by two of the ship's crew members. He retaliated and was put in a straitjacket; upon his return to France he was involuntarily retained by the police and transferred to a psychiatric hospital. Artaud spent the rest of his life moving between different institutions, depending on his condition and world circumstances. Source: Wikipedia.org