News at Eleven: "I suffer from a frightful disease

of the mind," declared Antonin Artaud in 1923, referring in the same letter to his poems as "the shreds that I have managed to snatch from complete nothingness." Twenty-five years later, having endured psychological breakdowns, incarceration, and electroshock treatments, Artaud wrote a brief poetic statement intended to introduce a selection from the notebooks he had composed following his release from the Rodez asylum in 1946.

from The Brooklyn Rail: Art: The Agonist and the Ecstasy

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