I find To Have Done with the Judgement of God a really unsettling piece of work. Part of this discomfort is purely aesthetic; the delivery on the recordings is harsh and aggressive. Artaud and the other performers, make the full use of range, pitch and expression (even to the point where it sounds absurd). The whole delivery of the text reminds me of the scene in My Life and Times with Antonin Artaud, where Prevel is watching through the window as Artaud makes Colette, an actress, repeatedly recite 'there once was a King of Thule', whilst he shouts 'NO..the sound must squirt out' and 'make it vibrate until the fibre of life squeals'. The directions are obscure and hard to imagine, but i get the sense that if these commands were realised, even partially, the result would be similar to the performers deliveries in To Have Done with the Judgement of God.
In contrast, i find the content less unsettling, but i am almost certain that this a contextual issue. The themes that Artaud were dealing with, such as anti-religion, anti-state and anti-America, are sentiments that feature heavily in even our pop culture: we have grown desensitised to claims such as 'God is shit'. This said, i find it interesting that it seemed to be Artaud himself (and also the director of the station) who found it 'obscene, inflammatory and blasphemous', to the point where Artaud echoed the directors very words. Perhaps the broadcast is not a shocking as Artaud would have wanted? The themes are still relevant today however, and some quotes could even be directly applicable,
'I didn't know the Americans were such a warlike people'
'I tell you that they have reinvented microbes in order to impose a new idea of god'
Whether it is shocking or not, with it's clever mix of biblical and epic imagery such as the 'crosses of the earth' and 'the kingdom of black night' contrasting the more pedestrian and base images of 'coal' and 'shit', To Have Done with the Judgement of God, is a fantastically distorted piece of writing. What i find most interesting is this interview at the end with the unnamed man asking Artaud questions. A conclusion of this sort gives the entire piece of writing context, but it is important, in my opinion to remember that has to be taken as a character rather than Artaud himself- similar to the end of a Bright Eyes song (this time done more tongue in cheek and perhaps as a slight self parody?).
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/An-Attempt-To-Tip-The-Scales-lyrics-Bright-Eyes/D55A7C5807C5205448256C7D0007ABD2
Sorry for waffling on.
Matt
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I agree with Matt that 'To Have done With the Judgement of God' makes remarkably similar assertions to those of present day liberals and thinkers. The various themes, imagery and arguments vehemently oppose religious sentiments, positions of authority and capitalist societies. As noted, the aural recordings sound unpleasant: Artaud strikingly varies tone and pitch in order to make the experience unsettling. Rather than undermining the politically laden text, it appears to reinforce his ideologies because they too are of an extreme, unsettled and uncomfortable nature.
It is true that his concepts may well be less shocking to our socio-political situation for me are living in a world constantly questioning fundamentalism, nationalism and the roots of terrorism. Artaud, at a much earlier date, brings to the fore issues of significant importance today.
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