The Arlanapoulos Letters

Cycladic Press (2025)

“I am not Mr. Artaud

I have francised my name; it is in reality ARLANAPOULOS.

I am a Greek national, born in Smyrna (Asia Minor) on 20 September 1904…”

---

The topic of “greekness” in the life and work of Antonin Artaud has been largely unexplored. In these letters, written on Artaud’s return to France after his disastrous journey to Ireland, illuminate precisely the strains of hellenism in his lineage, writing and thinking. Artaud’s grandmothers were born in Smyrna, and his mother also spoke Greek, often calling her son “Nanaqui” (Νανάκι), a diminutive that Artaud sometimes used to sign his correspondence and writings. Scattered throughout the glossolalia of Artaud’s late period are words with Greek roots, and he even titled one of his drawings “coutí anatomy” from “κουτί” (box). The alter-ego of Antoneo Arlanapoulos was therefore only half-invented, and represents a psychic excavation of parts of himself at a point in his life that was marked by mental collapse.