• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.129-146
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• 2011

Despite the ubiquity of love in the work of Sarah Kane, the theme has been overshadowed by the violence that characterizes her early plays. This essay differentiates Kane from her contemporary "in-yer-face" playwrights, arguing that violence in Kane operates as a means of securing love. Antonin Artaud's concept of cruelty, often (mis)understood in a physical sense alone, provides a clue to the nature of Kane's violence and its relation to love. The essay focuses on Cleansed and Crave, both written in 1998, one about love's redemptive possibility, the other about its pure impossibility. What makes Cleansed hopeful is its violence that works as love's obstacle, creating the illusion that once it is removed love would be possible. The absence of violence in Crave on the contrary lays the illusion of love bare, making it Kane's most despairing play. Kane's oeuvre draws a trajectory of love from hope to despair; as a whole it stages the impossibility of love. To love the other requires the relinquishing of the self, making love logically impossible by depriving the verb of its subject. Love, if possible, would offer the bliss of unity, tearing out the constraint of the Symbolic Order. Kane's only alternative is death, as is expressed in Crave and 4.48 Psychosis.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.45
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• pp.219-243
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• 2016

The life of Antonin Artaud exactly reproduces a very cruel drama. He lived in constant anguish and suffered from severe mental pain. This research will trace his thoughts in his writings while he was a prisoner of language. Artaud was a poet filled with anxiety about language, things, being, and thought. Whenever he tried to explain the mystery of being by means of mundane language, he experienced psychological agony. His poetic thoughts began to break down, because of his identity loss. Nevertheless, he was destined to grasp the world through language. Artaud had suffered from mental illness during his youth. His mental illness was associated with his difficulty in creating poetry. In this research, the letter, Correspondance avec Jacques $Rivi{\grave{e}}re$, is analyzed. The poet refers to "the collapse of the spirit's core, and the erosion of the fundamental thought that slips away" to convey his linguistic incompetence. Hereafter, he constantly demonstrated anxious mental symptoms. Even though he became mentally deranged, he maintained his consciousness, as is apparent in his writings. Also, his spiritual belief is reflected in his mental uneasiness. While he was traveling through the Tarahumaras area in Mexico, he was obsessed with its primitive belief in the Peyote rituals, and he immersed himself in performing them. His unchristian belief was the product of his mystical personality. Until his last breath, he did not give up writing. Artaud's mental derangement does not mean lunacy, but if one insists in calling it so, that is a metaphor. His derangement comes from his refusal to accept his limitations and from his aspiring to regard his body in the same light as his intellectual perceptions. His intellect could manifest more easily when his mind was elevated to the extreme. Artaud's lunacy is no different from that of a profound philosopher. The lives of poets who suffer from mental derangement are more poetic than the lives of those who do not. Artaud's atypical emotions provide a way of to measure our own limitations, helplessness, and resignation. His scream is nonsegmental but different from that of a mental patient. That difference is why people are interested in his works and wish to delve into his writings.