I’ve always despaired a little with surrealism: it seemed to run out of energy so soon after it began. I think that a part of the problem was that it seemed to be very symbolic and, well conscious, and grounded in theory, so what it presented was almost like an anthropological report of the subconscious. When I looked at it portrayed back to me, it reminded me of what it must be like to read a report of your strange and remarkable civilisation, dictated in fragments over telephone to a writer of potboilers, hidden somewhere within London literary society.

For the real depth, I’ve always found illustrators like Austin Spare more forthcoming. (There’s surprisingly little of his “automatic” sigil-form illustration on the web).

So I was overjoyed to find a similarly engaging book in Heffers today: 50 Drawings to Murder Magic by Antonin Artaud in English translated side-by-side facsimile. A short poem of intent is followed by ambiguous and semi-automatic sketches, with a real coherence and shared structure. Most are little more than scribbles, but have real subconscious grip. I can see it being a real source of inspiration.

As he writes of his drawings:

merely commentary / on action that / has really occurred / merely a limited / figuration / on the paper / of a rush of feeling / that has occurred / and magnetically / and magically worked its effects.

Interestingly, I now see that one of my favourite dramatists, Heiner Müller, used Artaud as inspiration. This suggests that I should might Caryl Churchill, too, whose work I’m not aware of.