Synopsis
Jet of Blood is roughly four pages long. It has sparse dialogue and extensive, surreal stage directions. The following synopsis is based on the English translations by George E. Wellwarth and Ruby Cohn (for the original text see Artaud's Oeuvres Completes d'Antonin Artaud vol. 1, pp. 74-81):
The play begins with no description of the scene or stage directions. The characters Young Man and Young Girl repeat the lines, “I love you and everything is beautiful”, “You love me and everything is beautiful,” to one another a couple of times in different, exaggerated tones of voice. After the Young Man declares that the world is beautifully built and well ordered, a sudden violent, chaotic spectacle ensues on stage. This includes a hurricane which separates the Young Man and Young Girl, two stars colliding, assorted things falling from the sky including temples, colonnades, alembics, live pieces of human bodies, three scorpions, a frog, and a beetle which fall slower and slower as they near the ground. The Young Man and Young woman run away, frightened.
The characters of the Knight and the Nurse (or Wet-Nurse) enter. The Knight is wearing a suit of armor from the Middle Ages and the Nurse has enormous swollen breasts. It is implied that these two are the parents of the Young Girl and are somehow related to the Young Man as well. The Nurse claims that she is watching the Young Man and Young Girl “screwing” and that it is “incest.” She throws pieces of Swiss cheese wrapped in paper at the Knight who picks them off the ground and eats them. The Nurse and the Knight exit.
The Young Man returns and describes his surroundings as the town square, naming the town’s characters as they appear on stage. The Priest asks the Young Man about his corporeal body, and the Young Man replies by turning the conversation back to God. The Priest says, in a Swiss accent, that he is less interested in God than in the “dirty little stories we hear in the confessional.” The young man agrees, and following there is another violent spectacle including an earthquake with thunder, lightning, and general panic. A giant hand appears and grabs the Whore’s hair, which bursts into flames. A Thunderous Voice says, “Bitch, look at your body,” after which the Whore’s dress becomes transparent and her body appears hideous and naked underneath. In turn, she bids God leave her and she bites the wrist of the hand, sending an immense jet of blood across the stage.
The lights come up and almost everyone is dead and scattered across the stage. The Young Man and the Whore are still alive and they are mid-coitus and eating each other with their eyes. The Nurse enters carrying the body of the Young Girl, which hits the ground and is crushed “flat as a pancake.” The Nurse’s chest has become completely flat as well. The Knight enters demanding more cheese and the Nurse responds by lifting her dress. The Young Man says, “Don’t hurt Mommy” as though he is suspended in the air like a marionette. The Knight covers his face as scorpions crawl out from the Nurse’s vagina. Depending on the translation, the scorpions swarm onto either the Nurse’s or the Knight’s genitalia, which swells up and bursts or splits, becoming glassy/transparent and shining like the sun.
The Young Man and the Whore run away. The Young Girl wakes up dazed and says the final line of the play, “The Virgin! Ah, that’s what he was looking for.”
The final stage direction is simply, “Curtain.”
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