The true story of Jesus-Christ: Three Notebooks from Ivry (August 1947) - Antonin Artaud

In these three notebooks, translated for the first time, entitled The True Story of Jesus-Christ, Artaud will rage against the idea of the false Christ, and with considerable humor, create an alternative history of the crucifixion, that which he suffered at Rodez, because of his total rejection of all authority.

Artaud is both a martyr and a furious christ who does not believe in God; he is a body without organs, born of himself, not “begotten” of nothingness. Artaud imagines himself as this furious christ, who underwent multiple electroshocks, suffered daily abuses, starvation, and terror. Artaud suffered not as the Christ in the scriptures, which to him is a false story, but as an actual martyr on the cross, “on a poorly hewn tree trunk crossed with a plank to suspend me there with nails, and whose body when I was dead was thrown into a heap of manure.”

Edited, translated and with an Introduction by Peter Valente, The True Story of Jesus-Christ shows Artaud’s complicated obsession with Jesus Christ and his refusal to accept common belief systems. For Artaud, the story of his crucifixion at Rodez was silenced; he is now the furious christ, without organs, the one who actually suffered and who, with his daughters of the heart yet born, will revenge himself on the world.

Publisher: Infinity Land Press

Published: March 2023

Format: Hardback

Pages: 172

Dimensions: 190 x 148mm