Address to the Pope

by Antonin Artaud

The Confessional, it is not you, oh Pope, it is us, but understand us and let catholicity understand us.

In the name of the Country, in the name of the Family, you urge the sale of the souls, the unrestricted kneading of bodies.  

We have entered our souls and we have enough paths to cross between our souls and ourselves and enough distance to cover than to put all your masturbating priests and that heap of rash doctrines which support all the eunuchs of mundane liberalism between them and us.

As for your God, catholic and christian, who, just like all other gods, conceived all evil

1.           You have him in your pocket.
2.      We don’t have anything to do with your canons, index, sin, confessional and clergy, we are thinking of a new war, a war on you, Pope, dog.

Here the spirit confesses to the spirit.

From top to bottom of your Roman masquerade, the part which triumphs is the hatred of the soul’s immediate truths, against these very flames which burn even inside the spirit. There is no God, Bible or Gospel; there are no words which can stifle the spirit.

We are not a part of this world. Oh Pope, confined inside the world, neither earth, nor God speaks through you.  

The world is the soul’s abyss, warped Pope, Pope foreign to the soul. Let us be immersed in our own bodies, leave our souls within our souls. We don’t need your knife of enlightenment. 

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First published in  'La Révolution surréaliste' (issue 3, April 1925). 
Translated by Ray Dunkle.