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Although the Belgian-born poet and artist Henri Michaux (1899–1984) occupies a position in French literature that is in many ways unique, he nevertheless follows some of its traditions, especially its mistrust of “littérature”. Like Paul Verlaine, Michaux distrusted “l’éloquence”; with Arthur Rimbaud he scorned “la vieillerie poétique” (“poetic bric-a-brac”); and he and Jules Laforgue agreed that poets need to unlearn all that their forebears taught them to accept. After the Second World War, Michaux turned from poetry to painting, exasperated with the language of literature. Eager instead to recover the roots of writing, he looked to the pictorial quality of Chinese script, and the “scriptable” nature of Chinese art, for direction. In both, he discovered a desire for signification rather than imitation. As he put it in his account of a visit to Asia, Un Barbare en Asie (1933), Chinese painters are less interested in the density and weight of things than in their linearity, the degree to which they resemble their own “sign”.
Michaux’s interest in Chinese art was stimulated by this visit, but it
was in Paris that he met the painter Zao Wou-Ki (1920–84), whose pictures inspired the short illustrated sequence Lecture
par Henri Michaux de huit lithographies de Zao Wou-Ki (A Reading by
Henri Michaux of eight lithographs by Zao Wou-Ki, 1950). Two poems from
this sequence were published in French in the TLS in 1953. Michaux
points out how description can often reflect the internal rather than external – “The simple man never says: I am unhappy / he never says: we are
suffering … // He says: the trees are in trouble” – and he makes little attempt to infer meaning from what he sees. He
avoids equating his “reading” with authority, making clear that the scenes are
without a signature, as if without even an artist.
Sur deux tableaux d’un peintre chinois
1
Un vol d’oiseaux fonce sur la vallée
D’une bourrasque du ciel
d’un gros orage lenticulaire
l’escadrille surgit
Il y a un énorme blanc
dessus
dessous
de côté
partout
le blanc du deuil
Des arbres affairés cherchent leurs branches arrachées
qui éclatent des arbres affolés
des arbres comme des systèmes nerveux ensanglantés
mais pas d’êtres humains dans ce drame
L’homme modeste ne dit pas: je suis malheureux
l’homme modeste ne dit pas: nous souffrons
les nôtres meurent
le peuple est sans abri
Il dit: nos arbres
souffrent
2
Ce n’est pas étrange
une maison transparente
ni qu’elle n’ait qu’une solive et quelques poutres
ni que tout la traverse
que le fourmillement des poussières de l’air la traverse
Qui possède meilleure maison à présent?
Mais les arbres sont là
derniers compagnons
experts en l’art de la reviviscence
Une échelle auprès d’un mur
On veut donc encore arriver à quelque chose!
Cependant personne
à moins que ce terrain confus
couleur de mineral de fer (gare au travail!) ne soit troupeau humain
foule des absents d’eux-mêmes
foule des futurs encore mal-formés
Impossible en effet de saisir les visages
Il faut attendre
L’époque abonde
l’époque met au monde
Elle n’est pas encore
signée
HENRI MICHAUX
(1953)
Two pictures by a
Chinese painter
1
A
flight of birds drives up the valley
From a squall in the sky
and the high lenticular clouds
their squadrons surge
There is an immense whiteness
above
below
beside
around
white, the colour of mourning
The busy trees are searching for the branches
blown off the terrified trees
like blood-filled nervous systems
a play without
characters
The simple man never says: I am unhappy
he never says: we are suffering
our people are dying
they have no homes
He says: the trees
are in trouble
2
It is not unusual
this see-through house
nor the fact it has only a single joist and a few beams
nor that everything blows through it
that a cloud of swirling dust blows through it
Where will you find a better one?
There are the trees
its last companions
past masters of rebirth
There is a ladder against the wall
So someone is still doing something!
But who?
unless the uncertain ground
the colour of iron ore (mind where you tread!) is a human herd
a crowd of strangers to themselves
a gathering of unshaped futures
You cannot make out any faces
But wait a moment
The times are pregnant
About to deliver
All they need is a signature
Translation by Andrew
McCulloch
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