From the Desk of E.A. Poe (Section 38)

The previous Theatre of Hate post reminded me of avant-garde theater luminary & one-time surrealist Antonin Artaud’s Théâtre de la Cruauté or Theater of Cruelty & his treatise The Theatre and its Double so I was re-reading passages from it as I thought about how to finish off this weekend’s selections. I was in no mood to happily feature some chill-out Dub. In fact, I was feeling kinda the exact opposite. So I dragged out some Diamanda Galás. She's always salt in an open wound & definitely a proponent of the Theater of Cruelty.

In Artuad’s Theater of Cruelty: First Manifesto, he posits: 

     “Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle, the theater is not possible. In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds.”

In the section “Theater & the Plague” Artuad explains the role of the Plague Doctor & the birth of the Theater of Cruelty:

     “Over the poisonous, thick, bloody streams (color of agony and opium) which gush out of the corpses, strange personages pass, dressed in wax, with noses long as sausages and eyes of glass, mounted on a kind of Japanese sandal made of double wooden tablets, one horizontal, in the form of a sole, the other vertical, to keep them from the contaminated fluids, chanting absurd litanies that cannot prevent them from sinking into the furnace in their turn. These ignorant doctors betray only their fear and their childishness.”

     “The dregs of the population, apparently immunized by their frenzied greed, enter the open houses and pillage riches they know will serve no purpose or profit. And at that moment the theater is born. The theater, i.e., an immediate gratuitousness provoking acts without use or profit.”

Here, as a requiem for those dead or dying of AIDS, is a Plague Mass in Three Parts.

Diamanda Galás – Masque of the Red Death 2xCD re-issue, Mute 61588-2, 1993.
decryption code in comments

Disc 1 –

The Divine Punishment –

Deliver Me From Mine Enemies :

a -This Is The Law Of The Plague

b -Deliver Me From Mine Enemies

c - We Shall Not Accept Your Quarantine

d - Εξεαόυμε (Deliver Me)

e - Υιατί́́, Ό́́ Θξό́́ς?

f - Psalm 22 (Excerpt)

Free Among The Dead:

a - Psalm 88

b –Lamentations

c - Sono L'Antichristo

Saint of the Pit –

La Treizième Revient

Εξεαόυμε (Deliver Me)

L'Heautontimoroumenos (1857)

Artémis

Cris D'Aveugle (1873)

Disc 2 –

You Must Be Certain of the Devil –

Swing Low Sweet Chariot

Double-Barrel Prayer

Let’s Not Chat about Despair

Birds of Death

You Must be Certain of the Devil

Let My People Go

Malediction

The Lord is My Shepherd

Darkness & Decay & the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

NØ