Artaud, Antonin - Naomi Greene (essay date 1967)
Naomi Greene (essay date 1967)
“Antonin Artaud: Metaphysical Revolutionary,” in Yale French Studies, No. 39, 1967, pp. 188-97.
[In the following essay, Greene traces Artaud's concept of language, his distinction between political and cultural revolution, and the changes in his thought regarding whether body or spirit has primacy.]
Albert Camus has written that there are fundamentally two types of revolution: one—characterized as revolt—is metaphysical; the other, political. A metaphysical revolutionary rebels against the limitations placed upon him by the very nature of human existence, against the laws governing life and death. Unlike a political revolutionary, involved with the problems of society, he concerns himself with only the most universal and unchanging aspects of human life. His quest is absolute, for he demands not a new or better society, but a radical change in life itself—a transformation of the human condition....
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