Mishaps, Perhaps by Carl Solomon

Author:Carl Solomon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-07-11T16:00:00+00:00

THE LUNATIC AND MODERN ART

("Le Seul Vrai Langage Est Incompréhensible")

...Artaud, CI-GIT

With the theories of Antonin Artaud, not his earlier works like THE THEATER AND ITS DOUBLE, but with his later post-psychotic works like VAN GOGH, THE MAN SUICIDED BY SOCIETY, the artist as a productive member of society is thrown overboard and Artaud-le-momo (or Artaud the Nut) emerges as hero of art and letters. Sub-normality and sub-reality are the theme and tone of the late Artaud and his followers. For Artaud and for Genet and even, to an extent, for Michaux, and for the Lettrists, neologisms, screams, belches, and the passing of wind are substituted for the written word.

Ridiculous as all this sounds, it has actually existed as a post-war trend in painting as well as in literature (in the ART BRUT of Dubuffet and others.) Call it latter-day Dada and you are well.

There is actually a literary tradition to back up this sort of thing. If you are a poet who had read late Artaud and wishes playfully to experiment, you are apt to be bound up in a straitjacket by the nearest psychiatrist and given no credit for your research until you get a scholarly article on the subject published in the Partisan Review.

Dada is dangerous today because the police, among others, don't understand what it's all about (being readers of the News and not of the Partisan, let alone of The Evergreen Review, or even of Poetry or even of Time) and probably mistake you for the dumbell you are attempting satirically to mimic.

To avant-garde poets, nay, extremely avant-garde poets, let me state that the FLICS of 196^ shoot first and do exegesis later.

For all of Ginsberg's fun-loving tone in HOWL (which was written for the author of this article) and for all of Kerouac's and Lamantia's and Corso's fun-lovingness, let me state that I am not serious and have never been serious about anti-literature.

I was first of all a student of English at Brooklyn College when a mild "PING-PONG OF THE ABYSS" episode occurred at the N.Y. Psychiatric Institute in 1914.9, and renounced all that to make good grades and to start over. But so intrigued were my local fans with the fun of going into a hospital and asking for a lobotomy that they forced me into the absurd role of lunatic-saint again and I could never get my much yearned for degree. Now I am released from a much more terrifying hospital and can't get a job or a degree (so much time has been lost, I am now 35 and hardly an enfant terrible.)

The upsetting fact is that I am a writer and not a paranoiac and go by Mann, Proust, and Eliot more than I do Artaud.

Somehow the legend of my "INFIRMITY" built up, is still building up, it is by this time documented by Dept, of Mental Hygiene records, fingerprints and photographs.

I am quite willing to renounce Dada, sub-normality, etc. but the ridiculous Art vs. Society war still rages in the pages of the Evergreen Review and elsewhere and I can't seem to get a hearing.

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