The Jet of Blood ( French: Le Jet de Sang ) is an extremely short play by the French theater figure Antonin Artaud , founder of the Theater of Cruelty. The play was completed in Paris on January 17, 1925, possibly written in one day. The original title, “Blood Jet, or Glass Ball” (Jet de Sang ou la Boule de Verre), was shortened to publication and first production [1] .
Content
Characters
- Young man
- Girl
- Knight
- Nurse
- a priest
- Shoemaker
- Church watchman
- Dash
- Judge
- Greengrocer
- Giant's powerful voice
- Scorpio
Synopsis
Set out by Anthology of French Surrealism, 1994.
A boy and a girl confess each other their love. Suddenly, two luminaries collide in the sky. Parts of bodies and structures begin to fall, gradually slowing down, and in the end - scorpions, a frog and a scarab.
A knight and a nurse enter. The knight is dressed in medieval armor , the nurse supports huge, swollen breasts. The nurse sees the boy and girl and tells the knight that their daughter has incest. Then she throws pieces of Swiss cheese wrapped in paper at a knight who picks them up from the ground and eats. The nurse and the knight leave.
A young man appears and names several characters who also go on stage. The young man asks to return his wife. The priest asks what part of the body he most often refers to, and when he hears the answer “to God,” he begins to speak with a Swiss accent.
Suddenly night falls, an earthquake and a thunderstorm begin. Everyone runs in a panic, bumping into each other. A giant hand grabs the hair by a roll. The giant’s powerful voice says: “Bitch, look at your body”, after which the dress of the consolidation becomes transparent, and in response she bites the hand of God. A stream of blood pours onto the stage.
The light comes on, all the characters, except the youth and the half-brother, are dead. A fellow falls into the arms of a young man and asks to tell "how it happened to you."
A nurse enters, carrying the body of a young girl. The body falls to the ground and lies "as flat as a biscuit." The nurse’s chest also became completely flat.
A knight enters, demanding more cheese, the nurse in response lifts her skirt. The young man wants to run away, but freezes in place, like a puppet hanging on threads, and asks the ventriloquist to not hurt his mother. Scorpions crawl out of the vagina of the nurse, the knight covers his face in horror. The vagina swells, bursts, becomes transparent and sparkles like the sun. The dashboard and the young man run away. The girl gets up and says: “Virgin! Ah, that’s what he was looking for. ”
Interpretations
Some traditional interpretations of this unconventional text address the following topics:
- Cruelty (as described in Arto’s Theater of Cruelty)
- Creation of the world and its desecration by people
- Mockery of modern views in the objectification of inner life
- Inversion of innocence, love and a sense of security into depravity, lust and fear.
- Comparison of virtuous archetypes with their degenerate actions (for example, a knight and a priest).
- Blasphemy and human crimes against God
- Wrath of nature
- "Disease of the sky" [2]
Images of destruction are repeated: Artaud builds a simple, orderly world that he repeatedly destroys, using natural disasters, diseases and thunderstorms to plunge typical townspeople into chaos and disorder. Moreover, destruction is not the ultimate goal: "despite the violent violation of cosmic order ... literary transgression in Artaud is always accompanied by calls for reunion and lost unity [3] .
Based on the original title, “The Jet of Blood, or the Glass Ball”, Ruby Cohn believes that Artaud created a parody of the one-act play by one of his contemporaries, the surrealist Arman Salacre , “The Glass Ball” ( La Boule de Verre , 1924). In both plays there are four main characters: a young man, a girl, a knight and a nurse. Young people also confess their love and disappear. The knight and the nurse are the parents of a young girl, the knight collects paper candy wrappers. There are other associations between the characters of both plays, including the anachronism of the knight, the submission of the nurse, the girl’s loyalty and the boy’s idealism [4] .
Publications and productions
Written in 1925, The Jet of Blood was placed in a folder called The Three Novels (Trois Contes) along with the works of Paul les Oiseaux and Le Vitre d'Amour . Upon completion, the play was not mentioned in the published letters of Artaud and was not discussed by his friends or biographers. Despite this, Artaud included the play in the second book of L'Ombilic de Limbes , published by Nouvelle Revue Francaise . The play has been repeatedly translated into different languages, including Russian.
In 1926, the premiere of the play was to be held at the Alfred Jarry Theater, but it never took place. The first production was carried out by the Royal Shakespeare Company almost 40 years later as part of the Cruelty Season in 1964.
Notes
- ↑ Cohn, 1979 , p. 313.
- ↑ Cohn, 1979 , p. 317.
- ↑ Jannarone, 2004 , p. 42.
- ↑ Cohn, 1979 , p. 315.
Literature
- Benedikt, Michael; Wellwarth, George E. Modern French Theater: An Anthology of Plays. - New York: EP Dutton & Co., 1966.
- Cardullo, Bert; Knopf, Robert. Theater of the Avant Garde, 1890-1950: A Critical Anthology. - New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2001.
- Cohn, Ruby. Artaud's 'Jet de Sang': Parody or Cruelty? // Theater Journal. - 1979. - March 31. - P. 312-318.
- Jannarone, Kimberly. Exercises in Exorcism: The Parodoxes of Form in Artaud's Early Works // French Forum. - 2004. - February 29. - P. 36-53.
- Anthology of French Surrealism / Per. S. Isaev. - Moscow: GITIS, 1994.