The Cry? The Scream? the poem, the painting… and why most of them end up in asylum?
Posted on: March 10, 2023
By: Antonin Artaud
The Cry
The little celestial poet
Opens the shutters of his heart.
The heavens clash. Oblivion
Uproots the symphony.
Stableman the wild house
That has you guard wolves
Does not suspect the wraths
Smoldering beneath the big alcove
Of the vaults that hang above us.
Hence silence and darkness
Muzzle all impurity
The sky strides forward
At the crossroad of sounds.
The star is eating. The oblique sky
Is opening its flight toward the heights
Night sweeps away the scraps
Of the meal that contented us.
On earth walks a slug
Which is greeted by ten thousand white hands
A slug is crawling
There, where the earth vanished.
Angels whom no obscenity summons
Were homeward bound in peace
When rose the real voice
Of the spirit that called them.
The sun lower than the daylight
Volatilized all the sea
A strange but clear dream
Was born on the clean earth.
The lost little poet
Leaves his heavenly post
With an unearthly idea
Pressed upon his hairy heart. (From fright? the heart grew hair?)
Two traditions met.
But our padlocked thoughts
Lacked the place required,
Experiment to be tried again. (Running out of places where colonial powers did Not leave at peace for alternative experiments?)
Adonis Diaries 
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