Heliogabalus and other texts

Zhupansky Publishing House continues to introduce the Ukrainian reader to the French poet, actor, playwright and theater theorist Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), an extraordinary figure of French literature, theater and cinema of the 20th century.

The first part of the publication presents a poetic and philosophical novel-biography of the Roman emperor Heliogabalus.
Considerations about matter and consciousness are combined with comparisons of cosmogonies and religions, metaphysical reflections on love and freedom, unity and separateness, poetry and anarchy.

Among the desert landscapes of Syria, we immerse ourselves in the atmosphere of the ancient city of Emesa with its mysterious cults and rituals, where the deities of the Sun and the Moon, male and female, merge together. It is in these cults of the religion of the Sun that the primordial anarchy and freedom are hidden, which became decisive in the life of Heliogabalus. And although the author depicts a real figure from the history of Ancient Rome, Heliogabalus himself appears as one of the alter egos of Antonin Artaud himself, as an emblematic figure of his Theater of Cruelty.

The second part opens with Artaud's landmark essay "Van Gogh, Suicide by Society", awarded the Saint-Beau Award. Other "doppelgangers" of Artaud are presented in letters about Gerard de Nerval, Lautremont, Baudelaire and Coleridge.

The publication concludes with an afterword by Roman Osadchuk "The Doubles of Antonin Artaud". All the works of Antonin Artaud in this edition have been translated into Ukrainian for the first time.