[a: Antonin Artaud|23378|Antonin Artaud|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1288988690p2/23378.jpg] is a very strange author at any period of his life, but at the very end of it - the final period that this book covers - he has truly descended into the depths of his own delirium. Electroshock and opium, schizophrenia untreated for years and the undernourishment and abuses that came from life in a series of uncaring asylums had reduced him to this: the unnerving artwork that dons the cover of this book and the ravings inside. Too often work from the final period of Artaud's life has gone untranslated, and largely denied any true regard. But is that a fair assessment?

What's to be found in this book is a man attempting to put his mind back together, and the strange ways in which he does so. This book is a cry for meaning, sometimes finding it, sometimes not, and the very alchemical act of attempting to create new languages, new ways of expression when all else was failing him.

While I would hesitate to recommend this book to anyone unfamiliar with Artaud, and indeed understand why this work has been ignored for as long as it has, I do think it has meaning. It has interest, and through the dregs of delirium at times there are passages that truly chill the bones. This is fascinating, very much of its time, and influential in ways that still haven't fully been understood in the development of the 60s artistic movements. Artaud lives on, at times in strange ways, and I'm sure of that he would have been - if not proud - then perhaps grateful. Grateful that even now we're still seeking to understand. ( )