Revolte contre la Poesie

Rodez: n.p. 1943.

First edition predating the trade edition by a year. 165x105mm. pp. 12. Typed and copied on a roneotype. Beige wrappers, stapled. Water-stained and some marking to the wrappers. This "hors commerce" edition was made privately by Artaud when he was a patient at the psychiatric hospital in Rodez, hence its home-made quality. It was followed in 1944 by a trade edition limited to fifty copies. This 1943 edition is extremely rare, OCLC recording only one copy, at the BNF where it is described as "Édition originale ronéotypée à quelques exemplaires hors commerce sur papier vergé destinés aux proches du poète".
From 1937 to 1948 (when he died aged 52), Artaud was a patient in various psychiatric institutions. His mental health had always been delicate and his work is hard, if not impossible, to understand without an appreciation of his struggles. Artaud is best known for his concept of "The Theatre of Cruelty" which has been described as "a primitive ceremonial experience intended to liberate the human subconscious and reveal man to himself". He wanted to strip away the artifice of traditional literature and explore a sort of mythic, pre-civilizational physicality. His interest in ancient cultures took him to Mexico where he was often reduced to a stuporous state (largely due to his addiction to opiates originally prescribed for his health) "cual momia" (like a mummy). And in 1937, he visited Ireland to return a walking stick which he believed was St Patrick's Bachall Isu, given to the saint by a hermit to whom it had been given by Christ. Artaud suffered a terrible breakdown in Ireland and was deported to France where he was admitted to hospital. He wrote throughout his short life - plays (he adapted Shelley's The Cenci), film scenarios, revolutionary manifestos, works of criticism. Some of his strangest, fiercest work dates from his final years when he was (involuntarily) undergoing ECT. Revolte contre la poesie dates from this period. It is unsettling - a strange mixture of religion, spirituality, sexuality, nature and magic though which a poetic "Verbe" (akin, it seems, to the Johannine Logos) subsumes the human "verbe" and transforms the poet into "la conception immaculée des choses".