앙토냉 아르토와 정신병원

Abstract

Antonin Artaud, a poet of cruelty, suffered from mental illness for life. He has been suffering from mental illnesses such as meningitis in his early days and neurosis since his youth. His writing and artistic activities can not be separated from psychosis. Artaud did not stop writing despite being in custody at a psychiatric hospital. It was the only means of communicating with the outside world as a patient of chronic disease. His morbid state and existence, his dissatisfaction with the absurdity of the world, and mysticism. In psychiatry, this obsession with art therapy is referred to as graphomania. After his expulsion from Ireland, Artaud was transferred to the psychiatric hospital of Sotteville-lès-Rouen in October 1937; then, interned at Sainte-Anne in Paris in April 1938 and finally transported, placed in a straitjacket, to the psychiatric hospital of Ville-Évrard, in the suburbs of Paris, in February 1939. He remained there for four years, until his death. Providential transfer to Rodez in February 1943. Providential, because Ville-Évrard had proved to be a real “deathbed”. The patients fell like flies with being reduced to famine. Today, research on Artaud is continuing in many fields. The texts he had produced are still subject of decryption. Especially, writings confined in psychiatric hospitals are read not only in literature, art, but also in psychiatry. In particular, the writings and paintings of Artaud raise the problem of absolute solitude of human mind, despair of language, manifestation of social maladjustment. The extraordinary world is dominated by poets like Artaud, fantasists, madness owners, and neurotic patients. Their mysterious persuasive powers have given birth to religion and art, and will open a new future. If they say their creative inspiration is poetry, it will at some point come into contact with mental illness. That is the case with Artaud. This study explored writing as a mental illness of this sick-Artaud, the detention of the hospital, and the release of poets.