Artaud
The Theatre of Cruelty

November 18th, 1947

The body is the body,

alone it stands

and in need of no organs,

organism it never is,

organisms are enemies of the body,

things done

happen all by themselves

with the support of no organ,

organs are parasites always,

covering parasitic functions

designed to make a being live

who shouldn't be.

while these at the outset condemned

have not to existence a claim.

 

Reality is yet unconstructed for the

legitimate organs of the human body

are still to be composed and set.

 

Created was the theatre of cruelty,

to accomplish this arrangement and undertake,

with a new dance of man's body, the disruption

of this world of microbes

which is but clotted nothingness.

 

The theatre of cruelty wants a dance

of eyelids coupled up with elbows and kneecaps

and femurs and toes,

and wills it seen.