From Cruelty to Theatre: Antonin Artaud and the Marquis de Sade

Abstract

From Cruelty to Theatre: Antonin Artaud and the Marquis de Sade Franco Tonelli It is well-known that Antonin Artaud includes in his proposed “ Theatre of Cruelty” an adaptation of a story by the Marquis de Sade. The name of this author among those who would permit Artaud to demonstrate on stage what, up till then, he had been able only to advocate, should not surprise us. Never in French literature has the term “cruelty” in all its meanings been illustrated better than in Sade’s work, which can properly be considered an “ anatomy of cruelty.” 1 However, Artaud’s choice raises two questions: first, why did he choose a short story instead of a play, since his “ Manifesto” is about the theatre? Second, to what extent did Sade’s work serve as a basis for Artaud’s novel dramatic concepts and projects? Here is the per­ tinent passage of the “ Manifesto” : A story of the Marquis de Sade, in which eroticism will be transposed, realized allegorically and given life by a violent exteriorizing of cruelty and a suppression of everything else.2 Artaud wants to show eroticism per se. He wants on stage a brutal stylization of the very essence of eroticism. He believes that Sade’s work makes this available to him in a state of absolute purity because there he can isolate eroticism in its original state without any moral, psychological or sociological contingency dissipating its primal origin­ ality. Eroticism becomes material for a theatre of cruelty to the extent that it permits the “ violent exteriorizing of cruelty and a suppression of everything else.” Artaud’s choice is clear. It implies a rejection of Sade’s theatre3 and emphasizes an undoubted paradox: the “divine” Marquis’ work which, in many respects, prefigures Artaud’s aesthetic and philosophic concepts, remains, in spite of everything, on the periphery of the latter’s artistic investigations, since Sade’s true theatre must be sought in his novels, tales, and dialogues. Sade’s theatre does not in fact manifest the same violence and original cruelty which characterize his novels. In his fiction evil is autonomous and nearly gratuitous, while in his theatre it exists only as a function of the plot which is always weakened and held in by certain implicit moral or didactic considerations. Thus, from time to time, appear pity, a feeling 79 80 Comparative Drama for justice, love of family, “voice of nature,” so many spurious virtues, vestiges of that repressed world of traditional virtue, which the author apparently had difficulty getting rid of. It follows that on the theatrical plane the vital energy of the drama (in Sade’s case, evil), capable of subjugating by its authenticity both actor and spectator in the course of a metaphysical experience which reveals the profound mys­ teries of life, is dissipated. The sublime degenerates into the ridiculous, the authentic into parody. The Play Oxtiern offers a striking example of this progressive dissipation of dramatic energy. Oxtiern or Les Malheurs du Liber­ tinage, a prose drama in three acts, was given in Paris at the Théâtre Molière in 1791. In this play, which is certainly one of his most appealing, only Oxtiern the protagonist is really a Sadian character: “ There is no more dangerous mortal in all the provinces of Sweden.” 4 Thus he is presented in the first act. He himself in the opening dia­ logue of the second act, which puts him in conflict with his friend and confidant Derbac, shows that he is a peer of the most celebrated libertines that Sade created: Derbac: . . . My poor Count, you are, indeed, what one would call a corrupt man. . . . Oxtiern: What do you expect, my friend? It was women who taught me all the vices I can use to make them miserable today. Derbac: What you’re planning is frightful. Oxtiern: From your point of view, I agree: because you are a subaltern creature, full of gothic prejudices . . . into which the beacon of philosophy has not yet been able to send its beams. (149-150) How could we fail to recognize in these short speeches the essence of the “philosophical” attitude of a Dolmancé of Philosophie dans le Boudoir or...