Heliogabalus · Or, the Crowned Anarchist

Heliogabalus · Or, the Crowned Anarchist
Authors
Artaud, Antonin
Publisher
Solar Books
Tags
philosophy , classics , writing , religion
ISBN
9780971457805
Date
1934-04-01T00:00:00+00:00
Size
0.54 MB
Lang
en
Downloaded: 46 times

Translated into English for the first time, this novelized biography of the 3rd-century Roman Emperor Heliogabalus is simultaneously Artaud's most accessible and his most extreme book. Written in 1933, at the time when Artaud was preparing to stage his legendary Theatre of Cruelty, Heliogabalus is a powerful concoction of sexual excess, self-deification and terminal violence. Reflecting its author's preoccupations with the occult, magic, Satan, and a range of esoteric religions, this account of Heliogabalus' reign invents incidents in the Emperor's life in order to make the print of the author's own passionate denunciations of modern existence.

Heliogabalus is Artaud's greatest and most revolutionary masterpiece: an incendiary work that reveals both the divine cruelty of the Roman Emperor and that of Artaud himself. -- Stephen Barber