Artaud, Brecht, and the Creation of Myth

http://www.patheos.com/blogs

http://www.gandalf.org/

http://suite101.com/article/introduction-to-norse-mythology-ragnarok-a112486

http://www.logoi.com/pastimages/king_arthur.html

http://ashtheviking.blogspot.com

Reading Artaud's "No More Masterpieces," I found his vision of the theater both compelling and offensive. It was compelling because of his honesty in seeking to create something that is most difficult and cruel for himself, and yet capable of powerfully affecting anyone. But maybe because I am personally and professionally rooted in text, and very old text, I had instinctive misgivings about his blanket statement that words are dead after they have been uttered: "the masterpieces of the past are good for the past; they are not good for us."

But even as a person devoted to very old things, I like Artaud's insistence on creating art that is alive, breathing and beating and sweeping people up, and I recognize that Old English manuscripts don't ordinarily do that anymore. Still, I think there is a way to make living art without dispensing with form and structure and past in the way he suggests.

Artaud talks about theater as a reflection of magic and rites, which put people in touch with a more profound state of perception. When he uses the word 'actively' he glosses it as "magically, in real terms." Maybe what he is seeking as a way to vivify performance and make it truly performative and effective and transformative is the power of myth, which is what animated the original texts and what continues to animate and move us today.

The myths of the past still retain something of their power for those who can enter into them imaginatively and historically, but the myths of the present are exponentially more powerful. They are the narratives that form our identity both consciously and unconsciously, and they tap into the primal, ritual part of ourselves that Artaud seeks to awake. They are the vibrations through the snake's belly.

To see the dead myths of the past living again, you only need to look at the way the old symbols and images and stories are reused, modified, and retold in art, literature, drama, politics, religion, and everyday life. Words are dead when they have lost their connection with living myth, but like a spirit leaving a body, the myth is endlessly reincarnated and born again. It is not the theater that Artaud imagines or describes in this article, but possibly it is a theater that would satisfy his desire for magic, ritual, and an understanding of ourselves that is profound and transformative.