Jet of Blood
Encyclopedia
Jet of Blood also known as Spurt of Blood, is an extremely short play by the French Surrealist theatre practitioner
, Antonin Artaud
. Jet of Blood was completed in Paris, on January 17, 1925, perhaps in its entirety on that day alone. The original title was Jet de Sang ou la Boule de Verre, but the second half of the title was dropped prior to the first publication and production of the work.
(for the original text see Artaud's Oeuvres Completes d'Antonin Artaud vol. 1, pp. 74-81):
The play begins with no description of the scene or stage directions. The characters Young Man and Young Girl repeat the lines, “I love you and everything is beautiful”, “You love me and everything is beautiful,” to one another a couple of times in different, exaggerated tones of voice. After the Young Man declares that the world is beautifully built and well ordered, a sudden violent, chaotic spectacle ensues on stage. This includes a hurricane which separates the Young Man and Young Girl, two stars colliding, assorted things falling from the sky including temples, colonnades, alembics, live pieces of human bodies, three scorpion
s, a frog
, and a beetle
which fall slower and slower as they near the ground. The Young Man and Young woman run away, frightened.
The characters of the Knight and the Nurse (or Wet-Nurse) enter. The Knight is wearing a suit of armor from the Middle Ages
and the Nurse has enormous swollen breasts. It is implied that these two are the parents of the Young Girl and are somehow related to the Young Man as well. The Nurse claims that she is watching the Young Man and Young Girl “screwing” and that it is “incest.” She throws pieces of Swiss cheese
wrapped in paper at the Knight who picks them off the ground and eats them. The Nurse and the Knight exit.
The Young Man returns and describes his surroundings as the town square, naming the town’s characters as they appear on stage. The Priest asks the Young Man about his corporeal body, and the Young Man replies by turning the conversation back to God. The Priest says, in a Swiss accent, that he is less interested in God than in the “dirty little stories we hear in the confessional.” The young man agrees, and following there is another violent spectacle including an earthquake with thunder, lightning, and general panic. A giant hand appears and grabs the Whore’s hair, which bursts into flames. A Thunderous Voice says, “Bitch, look at your body,” after which the Whore’s dress becomes transparent and her body appears hideous and naked underneath. In turn, she bids God leave her and she bites the wrist of the hand, sending an immense jet of blood
across the stage.
The lights come up and almost everyone is dead and scattered across the stage. The Young Man and the Whore are still alive and they are mid-coitus and eating each other's eyes. The Nurse enters carrying the body of the Young Girl, which hits the ground and is crushed “flat as a pancake.” The Nurse’s chest has become completely flat as well. The Knight enters demanding more cheese and the Nurse responds by lifting her dress. The Young Man says, “Don’t hurt Mommy” as though he is suspended in the air like a marionette
. The Knight covers his face as scorpion
s crawl out from the Nurse’s vagina. Depending on the translation, the scorpions swarm onto either the Nurse’s or the Knight’s genitalia, which swells up and bursts or splits, becoming glassy/transparent and shining like the sun.
The Young Man and the Whore run away. The Young Girl wakes up dazed and says the final line of the play, “The Virgin! Ah, that’s what he was looking for.”
The final stage direction is simply, “Curtain.”
Some conventional interpretations of this unconventional text address the following themes:
Images of destruction are recurring in Jet de Sang, with Artaud starting the audience out with a simple, well-ordered world and repeatedly destroying it, using natural disasters, plagues, and storms to throw typical bourgeois characters into chaos and disarray. It is argued that the ruin left in the wake of this destruction is not the ultimate goal. “Despite its violent overturning of cosmic order… Artaud’s literary transgressions are always matched by cries for reunion with a oneness that has been lost,” (Jannarone, 42).
Since the original title of Jet of Blood was Jet de Sang ou la Boule de Verre, it is argued that Artaud may have written Jet of Blood in part as a parody of a one-act play by one of his contemporaries, a surrealist named Armand Salacrou
. La Boule de Verre has many apparent correlations with Jet de Sang. In both plays the four main characters are the Young Man, the Young Girl, a Knight, and a Nurse. In La Boule de Verre, as in Le Jet de Sang, the young couple exchanges declarations of love, then the couples disappear. The Knight and Nurse reveal they are the Young Girl’s parents as well in La Boule de Verre, and the Knight picks up candy wrappers instead of wrapped cheese. There are other associations between the characters in both plays, including the anachronism of the Knight, dependence of the Nurse (Wetnurse), fidelity of the Young Girl, and the idealism of the Young Man (Cohn, 315).
, Helen Weaver, and George Wellwarth.
The 1926 publicity blurb for Artaud’s Théatre Alfred Jarry listed the premiere of Jet of Blood in their season, however the production was never mounted. The first production took place almost 40 years after it was written, during the Royal Shakespeare Company
'Season of Cruelty' in 1964.
Ruby Cohn's translation of Jet of Blood was the inspiration for Worship, the concluding scene of the stage play Gospel.
Theatre practitioner
Theatre practitioner is a modern term to describe someone who both creates theatrical performances and who produces a theoretical discourse that informs his or her practical work. A theatre practitioner may be a director, a dramatist, an actor, or—characteristically—often a combination of these...
, Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
. Jet of Blood was completed in Paris, on January 17, 1925, perhaps in its entirety on that day alone. The original title was Jet de Sang ou la Boule de Verre, but the second half of the title was dropped prior to the first publication and production of the work.
Characters
- A Young Man
- A Young Girl
- A KnightKnightA knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....
- A Nurse (Wet-Nurse)
- A PriestPriestA priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
- A Shoemaker
- A SextonSextonSexton may refer to:*Sexton , a self-propelled artillery vehicle of World War II*Sexton , a church or synagogue officer charged with the maintenance of the church buildings and/or the surrounding graveyard; and ringing of the church bells...
- A Whore
- A JudgeJudgeA judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
- A Street Peddler
- A Thunderous Voice
- A scorpian
Synopsis
Jet of Blood is roughly four pages long. It has sparse dialogue and extensive, surreal stage directions. The following synopsis is based on the English translations by George E. Wellwarth and Ruby CohnRuby Cohn
Ruby Cohn was a theater scholar and a leading authority on playwright Samuel Beckett...
(for the original text see Artaud's Oeuvres Completes d'Antonin Artaud vol. 1, pp. 74-81):
The play begins with no description of the scene or stage directions. The characters Young Man and Young Girl repeat the lines, “I love you and everything is beautiful”, “You love me and everything is beautiful,” to one another a couple of times in different, exaggerated tones of voice. After the Young Man declares that the world is beautifully built and well ordered, a sudden violent, chaotic spectacle ensues on stage. This includes a hurricane which separates the Young Man and Young Girl, two stars colliding, assorted things falling from the sky including temples, colonnades, alembics, live pieces of human bodies, three scorpion
Scorpion
Scorpions are predatory arthropod animals of the order Scorpiones within the class Arachnida. They have eight legs and are easily recognized by the pair of grasping claws and the narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back, ending with a venomous stinger...
s, a frog
Frog
Frogs are amphibians in the order Anura , formerly referred to as Salientia . Most frogs are characterized by a short body, webbed digits , protruding eyes and the absence of a tail...
, and a beetle
Beetle
Coleoptera is an order of insects commonly called beetles. The word "coleoptera" is from the Greek , koleos, "sheath"; and , pteron, "wing", thus "sheathed wing". Coleoptera contains more species than any other order, constituting almost 25% of all known life-forms...
which fall slower and slower as they near the ground. The Young Man and Young woman run away, frightened.
The characters of the Knight and the Nurse (or Wet-Nurse) enter. The Knight is wearing a suit of armor from the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
and the Nurse has enormous swollen breasts. It is implied that these two are the parents of the Young Girl and are somehow related to the Young Man as well. The Nurse claims that she is watching the Young Man and Young Girl “screwing” and that it is “incest.” She throws pieces of Swiss cheese
Swiss cheese
Swiss cheese is a generic name in North America for several related varieties of cheese which resemble the Swiss Emmental. Some types of Swiss cheese have a distinctive appearance, as the blocks of the cheese are riddled with holes known as "eyes". Swiss cheese has a piquant, but not very sharp,...
wrapped in paper at the Knight who picks them off the ground and eats them. The Nurse and the Knight exit.
The Young Man returns and describes his surroundings as the town square, naming the town’s characters as they appear on stage. The Priest asks the Young Man about his corporeal body, and the Young Man replies by turning the conversation back to God. The Priest says, in a Swiss accent, that he is less interested in God than in the “dirty little stories we hear in the confessional.” The young man agrees, and following there is another violent spectacle including an earthquake with thunder, lightning, and general panic. A giant hand appears and grabs the Whore’s hair, which bursts into flames. A Thunderous Voice says, “Bitch, look at your body,” after which the Whore’s dress becomes transparent and her body appears hideous and naked underneath. In turn, she bids God leave her and she bites the wrist of the hand, sending an immense jet of blood
Jet of Blood
Jet of Blood , also known as Spurt of Blood, is an extremely short play by the French Surrealist theatre practitioner, Antonin Artaud. Jet of Blood was completed in Paris, on January 17, 1925, perhaps in its entirety on that day alone...
across the stage.
The lights come up and almost everyone is dead and scattered across the stage. The Young Man and the Whore are still alive and they are mid-coitus and eating each other's eyes. The Nurse enters carrying the body of the Young Girl, which hits the ground and is crushed “flat as a pancake.” The Nurse’s chest has become completely flat as well. The Knight enters demanding more cheese and the Nurse responds by lifting her dress. The Young Man says, “Don’t hurt Mommy” as though he is suspended in the air like a marionette
Marionette
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a manipulator. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms...
. The Knight covers his face as scorpion
Scorpion
Scorpions are predatory arthropod animals of the order Scorpiones within the class Arachnida. They have eight legs and are easily recognized by the pair of grasping claws and the narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back, ending with a venomous stinger...
s crawl out from the Nurse’s vagina. Depending on the translation, the scorpions swarm onto either the Nurse’s or the Knight’s genitalia, which swells up and bursts or splits, becoming glassy/transparent and shining like the sun.
The Young Man and the Whore run away. The Young Girl wakes up dazed and says the final line of the play, “The Virgin! Ah, that’s what he was looking for.”
The final stage direction is simply, “Curtain.”
Themes and Interpretation
Artaud presents a fantastic temporal spectrum of creation and destruction speeded up and slowed down, like a phonographPhonographThe phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
record. Associating gluttony and lust, sex and violence, even innocence and swinishness, The Spurt of Blood attacks the senses with bizarre sights and sounds as it reaches toward our subconscious impulses and fears. (Cardullo and Knoff 2001, 377)
Some conventional interpretations of this unconventional text address the following themes:
- Cruelty (as described in Artaud’s Theatre of CrueltyTheatre of CrueltyThe Theatre of Cruelty is a surrealist form of theatre theorised by Antonin Artaud in his book The Theatre and its Double. "Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle," he writes, "the theatre is not possible...
) - The creation of the world and its desecration by people, especially women
- Mocking of contemporary attitudes while objectifying inner life
- The inversion of innocence, love, and security to depravity, lust, and fear
- Juxtaposition of virtuous archetypes with their degenerate actions (e.g. the Knight and the Priest)
- Blasphemy and human transgressions against God
- The wrath of nature
- The dangerous fascination of women
- “Le mal du ciel” or “heaven-sickness” (Cohn, 317)
Images of destruction are recurring in Jet de Sang, with Artaud starting the audience out with a simple, well-ordered world and repeatedly destroying it, using natural disasters, plagues, and storms to throw typical bourgeois characters into chaos and disarray. It is argued that the ruin left in the wake of this destruction is not the ultimate goal. “Despite its violent overturning of cosmic order… Artaud’s literary transgressions are always matched by cries for reunion with a oneness that has been lost,” (Jannarone, 42).
Since the original title of Jet of Blood was Jet de Sang ou la Boule de Verre, it is argued that Artaud may have written Jet of Blood in part as a parody of a one-act play by one of his contemporaries, a surrealist named Armand Salacrou
Armand Salacrou
Armand Camille Salacrou was a French dramatist.He was born in Rouen, but spent most of his childhood at Le Havre, and moved to Paris in 1917. His first works show the influence of the Surrealists....
. La Boule de Verre has many apparent correlations with Jet de Sang. In both plays the four main characters are the Young Man, the Young Girl, a Knight, and a Nurse. In La Boule de Verre, as in Le Jet de Sang, the young couple exchanges declarations of love, then the couples disappear. The Knight and Nurse reveal they are the Young Girl’s parents as well in La Boule de Verre, and the Knight picks up candy wrappers instead of wrapped cheese. There are other associations between the characters in both plays, including the anachronism of the Knight, dependence of the Nurse (Wetnurse), fidelity of the Young Girl, and the idealism of the Young Man (Cohn, 315).
Publication and Production History
When Jet of Blood was written in 1925, it was included with Artaud’s other writings Paul les Oiseaux and Le Vitre d’Amour in a folder labeled Trois Contes. After its completion, Jet of Blood was not mentioned in Artaud’s published letters, nor was it discussed by his acquaintances or biographers. Despite this apparent omission, Artaud included the play in his second book L’Ombilic de Limbes, published by the Nouvelle Revue Francaise. There are several published translations, including English translations by Ruby Cohn, Victor Corti, Lawrence FerlinghettiLawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
, Helen Weaver, and George Wellwarth.
The 1926 publicity blurb for Artaud’s Théatre Alfred Jarry listed the premiere of Jet of Blood in their season, however the production was never mounted. The first production took place almost 40 years after it was written, during the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
'Season of Cruelty' in 1964.
Ruby Cohn's translation of Jet of Blood was the inspiration for Worship, the concluding scene of the stage play Gospel.
External links
- Jet of Blood an edited video of a workshop presentation of Jet of Blood. It does not contain much of the dialogue or the script.