I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this--I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain.
Antonin ArtaudRead
Not once more will/I be found with beings/who swallowed the rail of life//And one day I found myself with beings/who swallowed the nail of life/-as soon as I lost my matrix mamma,//and the being twisted under him,/and god poured me back to her/(the motherfucker).
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a desire to escape the mediocrity of existence and return to the nurturing aspects of life.
In this quote, Artaud expresses a profound dissatisfaction with the state of human existence, particularly how some individuals consume life without truly experiencing it. He contrasts the idea of being 'swallowed by the rail of life' with a yearning to return to a more authentic and nurturing existence ('matrix mamma'), highlighting the tension between a harsh reality and the need for deeper connection and understanding.
Themes
LifeExistenceAuthenticityWisdomReturnConnection
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophical discussion about the meaning of life, this quote could serve to illustrate the struggle for authenticity.
More from Antonin Artaud
All quotes βCruelty in the theatre is unrelenting decisiveness, diligence, strictness.
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I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat.
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If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.
Antonin ArtaudRead
It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior.
Antonin ArtaudRead
A real theatrical experience shakes the calm of the senses, liberates the compressed unconscious and drives towards a kind of potential revolt . . .
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