PARTISAN REVIEW
into a primordial level out of the realm of conversation. In Artaud's
words, "It consists in giving the words about the same importance
that they have in dreams."
It is a question whether Barrault was more influenced by Artaud
or Artaud by Barrault. In his final chapter Artaud describes a Bar–
rault production: "The theater which opens a physical field demands
that this field be filled, that it be furnished with gestures, that
it
be
made to live magically in itself . . . that new relations be discovered
between sound, gesture, and voice. . . . It may be said that
this
is
the theater that J.-L. Barrault has created," and with this last tribute
he seems to appoint his friend to carry out his doctrines. Barrault
has, in fact, found a theater style which is, in a violently self-conscious
way, symbolic and ceremonious. Above all it is a theater built around
the actor. From the technical point of view, by the use of mime,
he has realized the "super-marionette" of Gordon Graig, who wished
to get rid of the natural voice and gesture and put the actor on an
unrealistic plane. But far from "eliminating" the actor, Barrault has
increased his importance: "The theater is not the meeting place of
dialogue, lighting, and gestures, but of voices, displacements, and
actions which, coming from a human being, constitute the true ma–
terial of dramatic art.... The actor contains three principal centers:
the spinal column, the lungs, and the heart. That is to say, he's an in–
strument which breathes and throbs and maintains permanently the
obsessive rhythm of a sorcerer." Sorcerer or priest? The medieval
mime, hero of the farces and soties, was condemned as as evil in–
fluence and forbidden Christian burial. The Greek mime, Stupidus,
wearing big ears and a phallus, immitated vile actions and appealed
to the baser instincts, yet he was gifted with the fool's golden mouth
and had much in common with the Greek chorus leader. But the
earliest origin of mime is
also
the origin of tragedy. The Dionysian
rituals made no distinction between comedy and tragedy, and the
sorcerer was the priest. "What does it matter," says Artaud, "if Bar–
rault has re-established a religious spirit through descriptive and pro–
fane means, since everything which is authentic is sacred?"
This return to a magic theater is significant. Artaud has described
the theater as
ufleau vengeur,"
an
uepidemie salvatrice."
"If
the
theater is essentially like the plague,
it
is not because it is contagious,
but because like the plague it is the revelation, the exposing, the push
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