Watchfiends & Rack Screams: Works from the Final Period

[a: Antonin Artaud|23378|Antonin Artaud|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1288988690p2/23378.jpg] is a very strange author at any period of his life, but at the very end of it - the final period that this book covers - he has truly descended into the depths of his own delirium. Electroshock and opium, schizophrenia untreated for years and the undernourishment and abuses that came from life in a series of uncaring asylums had reduced him to this: the unnerving artwork that dons the cover of this book and the ravings inside. Too often work from the final period of Artaud's life has gone untranslated, and largely denied any true regard. But is that a fair assessment?

What's to be found in this book is a man attempting to put his mind show more back together, and the strange ways in which he does so. This book is a cry for meaning, sometimes finding it, sometimes not, and the very alchemical act of attempting to create new languages, new ways of expression when all else was failing him.

While I would hesitate to recommend this book to anyone unfamiliar with Artaud, and indeed understand why this work has been ignored for as long as it has, I do think it has meaning. It has interest, and through the dregs of delirium at times there are passages that truly chill the bones. This is fascinating, very much of its time, and influential in ways that still haven't fully been understood in the development of the 60s artistic movements. Artaud lives on, at times in strange ways, and I'm sure of that he would have been - if not proud - then perhaps grateful. Grateful that even now we're still seeking to understand. show less

Including the fabled text “To Have Done with the Judgment of God,” this collection compiles the scatalogical writings of Artaud's final yearsClayton Eshleman's translations are the finest and most authentic which have yet been made from Artaud's writing. Artaud's final work is his strongest and most enduring, and this collection has been wisely selected and magnificently realized. Artaud is being taken into the 21st century." –Stephen BarberAmong Antonin Artaud's most brilliant works are the scatological glossolalia composed in the final three years of his life (1945–48), during and after his incarceration in an asylum at Rodez. These represent some of the most powerful outpourings ever recorded, a torrent of speech from the show more other side of sanity and the occult. In this collection, the most complete representation of this period of Artaud's work ever presented in English, and the first new anthology of Artaud published in the US since Helen Weaver's 1976 Selected Writings, cogent statements of theory are paired with the raving poetry of such pieces as “Artaud the Momo,” “Here Lies” and “To Have Done with the Judgment of God.” These are translated with drama and accuracy by Clayton Eshleman, whose renditions of Vallejo and Césaire have won widespread acclaim, including a National Book Award. show less