A Sinister Assassin presents new translations of Antonin Artaud’s largely unknown final work of 1947-48, revealing new insights into his preoccupation with the human anatomy, sexuality, societal power, creativity and ill-will.
That last work - mostly undertaken at a pavilion in the grounds of a convalescence clinic in Ivry-sur-Seine, on the south-eastern edge of Paris - is the most extraordinary element of Artaud’s entire prolific body of work. It is the element now most enduringly inspirational, for artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers, choreographers, and others inspired by Artaud, through its fiercely exploratory and combative forms.
Drawing from extensive archival consultations of Artaud’s manuscripts, and from many original interviews with his friends, collaborators and doctors of the 1940s, this book brings together translations of the many manifestations of Artaud’s final writings: the contents of his last, death-interrupted notebook; his letters; his two final key texts; his glossolalia; the magazine issue which collected his last fragments; and the two interviews he gave to national newspaper journalists in the final days of his life, in which he denounces his work’s recent censorship.
Edited, translated and with an Introduction by Stephen Barber, A Sinister Assassin illuminates Artaud’s last, most intensive work, for the first time.