“Prophetic, Artaud already affirmed in his essay ‘The Theater of Cruelty’ (1938) the importance of recovering ‘the notion of a kind of unique language halfway between gesture and thought.’” Above: adapted illustration from ‘Artaud-le-Mômo,’ 1947, via Wikimedia Commons.
MÔMO is based on Antonin Artaud’s radical poetry book Artaud le Mômo[1] (section I below), which includes five short poems: “Le retour d’Artaud, le Mômo,” “Centre-Mère et Patron-Minet,” “Insulte à l’Inconditionné,” “L’Exécration du père-mère,” and “Aliénation et magie noire” (and the manuscripts contain many variations that were published afterwards in Dossier d’Artaud le Mômo [II–XVIII below]). Antonin Artaud — a famous French poet and playwright — wrote this book between July and September of 1946.
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