Antonin Artaud’s Hyper-Negation

The second installment in a three-month commentary column for Jacket2 is up. Here’s an excerpt:

“The  poem ‘Cry,’ published in 1925, begins
The little celestial poet
Opens the shutters of his heart,
The skies collide. Lethe
Uproots the symphony.

Here, in some of his earliest work, Artaud introduces the idea of doubling. The skies are multiple; the poet is simultaneously within the sky, of the sky, and he collides with the sky. He is both contents and container. Or rather, the sky collides with what’s inside the celestial poet’s heart. The external sky crashes into his internal sky. Whatever lyric is left becomes uprooted, ungrounded, dislocated by oblivion. Artaud’s work documents his own void. His work is a hyper-negation. It’s full of paradox and contradiction because he’s attempting to communicate what cannot be put into words. The abyss is a negative property.”