Here Lies preceded by Indian Culture collects two of Antonin Artaud's foremost poetic works
from the last period of his life. He wrote both works soon after his release from the
psychiatric hospital of Rodez and his return to Paris and they were published during the
flurry of intensive activity and protests against his work's censorship. The Indian Culture is
the first and most ambitious work of Artaud's last period. It deals with his travels in Mexico
in 1936 where Artaud sets aside his usual preoccupations with peyote and the Tarahumara peoples
sorcerers to directly anatomize his obsessions with gods corporeality and sexuality. Here
Lies is Artaud's final declaration of autonomy for his own body from its birth to its imminent
death won at the cost of multiple battles against the infiltrating powers amassed to steal
that birth and death away from him. Both works demonstrate Artaud's final poetry as a unique
amalgam of delicate linguistic invention and ferociously obscene invective. Here Lies preceded
by Indian Culture was translated by the award-winning translator Clayton Eshleman widely seen
as the preeminent translator into English of Artaud's work with its profound intensity and
multiply nuanced language. For the first time since its first publication this bilingual
edition presents the two works in one volume as Artaud originally intended. This edition also
features a contextual afterword by Stephen Barber.
