"The artist, unlike the scientist or even the social scientist, ponders the jack-in-the-box surprises brought on by plague, sensing that the mix of intimate sexuality, violence, scapegoating, and public health is ultimately a cogent mix, requiring us to rethink our categories and norms." -- Arnold Weinstein of Brown University, Block Island, Stockholm and Brittany

My Uncle Max used to scream "A plague 'o both your houses!," when he played Shakespeare's Mercutio. Then, inebriated offstage, he'd often repeat the line in a whisper, adding "Especially if you own more than one abode." I'm just now starting to appreciate what his subtextual smirk was all about.

January 13, 1947, Antoine Artaud lectured at Jacques Copeau's historical Theatre du Vieux Colombier to a full house, packed with personalities one would die to meet. Andre Breton, Albert Camus, Andre Gide, Henri Michaux, many maniacal fans and my Uncle Max were among those who mingled.

Jingled bells. I've been hearin' them from the moment I heard departing Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson say that he worries "every single night about a possible terror attack on the food supply."

And Artaud --his words that night (a mere year before his death) have been ringing loud and clear too...many mercis to my Uncle Max's translations when I was a teenager.

He sat down with me and shared his notes the day Camus died...trying to caution me, first, about the importance of safe driving. (1) Now...I pass them on to you in the hope that you'll listen to unhinged reason.

In response to TT's clarification that only "a very minute amount" of imported food is tested at ports and airports (in spite of recent dramatic increases in such measures), Bush neither criticized nor implied that the food supply is safer than what was asserted.

Are you starting to hear any bells?

Artaud never shut up about Balinese dramatic art and the orphic mysteries that preoccupied 19th century Stephane Mallarme. Giraudoux and Chekhov never quite cut it for him; he was always trying to incorporate the frantic and frenetic emotional violence that he found in Vincent Van Gogh's paintings. He ran from Sartre and Anouilh into the arms of Maeterlinck and Alfred Jarry. And he went out of his mind.

In a good way.

"A dramatic presentation should be an act of initiation during which the spectator will be awed and even terrified--and to such a degree that he will lose control of his reason. During that experience of terror or frenzy, instigated by the dramatic action, the spectator will be in a position to understand a new set of truths, superhuman in quality." So says an excellent online rundown of Artaud's attitude. (2) The underlined italics are mine.

Terror. Now we can return to TT...and Bush's feeble response. And start thinking about a proper response from my readers. That'd be you.

My most recent article, "No Angels in America: Bashing the Gay Play" (http://www.counterpunch.org/oxman12042004.html), touches upon various writers who have contributed thoughts related to plagues. I mention Ingmar Bergman, Camus, Defoe, Dickens, (Angels in America's) Tony Kushner, and 'ole Oedipal Sophocles. (3) I left out the very edible Artaud.

I had my reasons at the time. But...I can no longer hold back.

In the lead essay of The Theater and its Double, Artaud's "Theater and the Plague" delineates the various nooks and crannies of what comes down (and goes up!) when a plague infests/invigorates a community.

We find an obedient and virtuous son killing his father. But we also find a lecher becoming pure. Whereas a warrior who had previously defended the community with his life sets buildings ablaze in very unheroic fashion, a "miser throws his gold in handfuls out the window."

Uncle Max underscored how Artaud believed that a plague wasn't just a somatic phenomenon; he contrasted Camus treatment (in his The Plague) with the spirtual and...mysterious elements which Arnold Weinstein hints at in passing in his glorious study. (4)

In Weinstein's "Plague and Human Connection" chapter, he notes that Artaud wrote about the Viceroy of Sardinia who dreamed of a plague visiting his kingdom, viruently infecting one and all. Once awake he learns that "a ship, the Grand-Saint-Antoine, coming from Baghdad, has asked for permission to dock."

Permission denied! Interesting details follow as it goes on to infect others, but the focus here should be on the questions Weinstein poses: "Are dreams a viable form of knowledge? Did the plague 'contact' the viceroy?" Peripherally, I think it's fascinating that Baghdad figures in here. Personally, I LOVE this injection of Current Events.

At one point in history the transmission of plagues was not visible, and all sorts of attribution was considered. Artaud, however, is not bogged down by bacteriology. In fact, he revels in what he describes as a plague's "revelatory power." Plagues speak.

According to A Scream Goes Through the House, "he claims plague as a kind of 'patron saint' for the theater, plague as the perfect analogue for the stage, plague as a desirable moment of truth, causing 'the mask to fall,' revealing 'to collectivities of men their dark power, their hidden force,...." Artaud, as per Weinstein, "sees the virulence of plague as beneficial for the theater because it renews contact with the Dionysian and the divine; at the risk of sounding perverse, it would seem that plague...clears the air, cleanses our sights, removes the dross, exposes our true relations." (5)

Beneficial to theatre...and a boost to humanity perhaps. (6)

The Bush push on the prospect of biological warfare --which is virtually zero-- should be welcomed with open arms. For it's not just bodies that are about to be buried, but societal norms, delusions...if they ever are to die. For with this controversy over whether or not we're troubling over truffles enough as they trek over our borders, we may be witnessing the only opportunity we'll get...to see this so-called civilization come apart at the seams.

During our lifetimes. If we survive.

According to Uncle Max's notes, Artaud would tell us that we've already been visited by The Plague, but that its form is too insidious to provide the benefits we might desire.

That while we have succumbed to the typical plague-related phenomenon of blaming "the folks across the water" for our devastated lives (on paranoid cue), the positive radical changes usually hallmarking communal catastrophe...will not be forthcoming with the status quo.

No.

It would appear that the rich people who can afford to eat those decadent rich candies, filled with chocolate, butter, sugar and liqueur (all of which have their own horror stories to tell), are going to have to bite into something new first...to bring about something sweet for all of us. Something refreshing, revitalizing. Who knows? Perhaps we'll all get a taste.

Bush better than Bubba on buboes? (7) You bet. Jingles all the way.

I hear a plague calling me.

Call me Tiresias, if you like, I think I'm simply all maxed out.

NOTES:

(1) On January 4, 1960, Camus was killed in an automobile accident while returning to Paris with his friend and publisher Michel Gallimard. He was only forty-six years old and had written as recently as 1958, "I continue to be convinced that my work hasn't even been begun." Adding to the tragic irony was the fact that Camus had intended to return to Paris by train until Gallimard convinced him to change his mind. The return half of a rail ticket was found unused in his pocket. Uncle Max never let me forget that Camus' "The Stranger" was published the year I was born AND the irony of Camus' “I know nothing more stupid than to die in an automobile accident.”

(2) http://www.theatrehistory.com/french/artaud001.html

(3) I am much indebted to Arnold Weinstein's writings about what he calls plague-texts.

(4) Arnold Weinstein, A Scream Goes Through The House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 224.

(5) Ibid., p. 225.

(6) Artaud claimed that a new kind of civilization was needed, one that would consummate a break with the sensitivity and the logical mentality of the nineteenth century. Thunderingly, he denounced his age for having failed to understand the principal message of Arthur Rimbaud.

(7) "We're a large country, with all kinds of avenues where somebody could inflict harm," said Bush, asked about the issue after an Oval Office meeting with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. "We've made a lot of progress in protecting our country, and there's more work to be done, and this administration is committed to doing it." I'm sorry, Bubba couldn't top that, in spite of his beyond-bad biological warfare record. Well,....


Richard Oxman, a former Professor of Dramatic Art, is now a Food-for-Thought Specialist. He can be reached at dueleft@yahoo.com, if he's not out downing something/someone decadent at one of the overpriced restaurants in Los Gatos, California.