"We can no longer continue prostituting the idea of theatre, which has value only through a magical, terrible connection with reality and with danger. [...]
Posed in this way, the question of theatre must awaken general attention, it being understood that theatre, through its physical aspect, and because it requires expression in space—the only real expression in fact—allows the magical means of art and speech to be exercised organically and in their entirety, like renewed exorcisms. [...]
That is to say that, instead of returning to texts regarded as definitive and sacred, it is important above all to break theatre's subjection to the text and to recover the notion of a unique language situated halfway between gesture and thought."
Posed in this way, the question of theatre must awaken general attention, it being understood that theatre, through its physical aspect, and because it requires expression in space—the only real expression in fact—allows the magical means of art and speech to be exercised organically and in their entirety, like renewed exorcisms. [...]
That is to say that, instead of returning to texts regarded as definitive and sacred, it is important above all to break theatre's subjection to the text and to recover the notion of a unique language situated halfway between gesture and thought."
Antonin Artaud, First Manifesto of the Theatre of Cruelty, in The Theatre and Its Double
Wherein it is seen that Igniatius, suspended halfway between gesture and thought, finds himself a reluctant prisoner of a theatre in which he struggles and balks at playing the role assigned to him, writing in a language that belongs to him alone, and where the question of imposture becomes less moral than ontological...
Igniatius's Notebook
People sometimes speak of imposture as though it were a lie. I am no longer certain that I understand things in that way. When I was younger, I believed that an author was someone who made up stories. Today, I am no longer entirely sure what an author is. I am not even sure whether this ignorance should be regarded as a weakness or as a beginning.
For a long time, I literally told stories from drawings. I sometimes said that I had found them. That was true. But I also sometimes said that they were not mine. That was true as well.
Today I could say that they were mine.
That would still be true.
These three statements contradict one another only if one imagines that an author is a proprietor.
I am no longer certain that stories belong to anyone. When I look at a drawing long enough, something begins to appear. I am not speaking of the drawing itself. I am speaking of what it provokes.
A diffuse feeling... an emotion, an uneasiness, a memory without a memory, a presence whose origin I could not explain. Then I begin to tell a story. But I do not tell what I know. I tell what the drawing makes me experience.
And in that moment I ask myself: who is speaking?
I do not know. Is it the drawing... or me... or someone situated between the two, or beyond them? I do not know.
I know only that something is seeking a form.
Perhaps that is what I have always called a story.
Someone might object that I invent.
That may be true. But invention is not necessarily the opposite of truth.
When one draws a face, one does not add a face to the world. One makes visible a presence that had remained confused.
Perhaps stories operate in the same manner.
So I do not lie when I tell them. Nor do I merely describe. Rather, I attempt to follow a movement.
There is a word that returns often: witness.
I like that word.
A witness is not necessarily one who understands.
A witness is one who remains... beside.
He attends... in the double sense of the term.
He attends what appears... and he assists what appears.
He keeps it company long enough for something to be transmitted. I would like to be that kind of witness... but I must acknowledge a difficulty.
I never remain perfectly still. No one can.
At the very moment I begin to tell the story, a slight displacement occurs. One word calls forth another.
An image transforms itself. A memory mingles with a drawing. An emotion alters a sentence. A forgotten detail returns. I believed I was bearing witness... and I discover that I am participating.
Very little. Barely at all. Yet enough for the story to change direction slightly.
The parrots in my stories know this problem well.
People imagine that they merely repeat.
Yet if one listens carefully, they always deviate.
They introduce differences so small that they first resemble mistakes. Then those mistakes become passages. Perhaps we are all like that.
Neither entirely authors... nor entirely witnesses... nor entirely characters. We receive something... and we transmit it. And within that interval, almost despite ourselves, a slight transformation takes place. If there is an imposture, perhaps it does not reside in that transformation.
It would begin, rather, when one of us claimed to be the origin. When someone were to say:
"This belongs to me..." or "This comes entirely from me." I distrust such assertions. They seem to me stranger than the stories themselves.
For each time I attempt to trace a sentence, an image, or a narrative back to its origin, I encounter other voices, other readings, other meetings, other drawings, and it is as though the origin retreats in proportion to my approach.
I do not know, therefore, whether I am the author of the stories that, almost despite myself, I tell.
I know only that they have passed through me.
And sometimes, when I reread them long after having written them, I discover them almost as though they had been written by someone else.
That strangeness no longer troubles me.
It is perhaps the most faithful signature of their provenance.
