Henri Michaux (1899–1984)

The brain is not the mind.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., just shaking off the effects of ether, convinced that he had come across ‘the one great truth that underlies all human experience,’ staggered to his desk and wrote: ‘the smell of turpentine prevails throughout.’ Henri Michaux, repudiating omniscience in the aftermath of one of his mescaline trips, expressed irritation at the overmany shades of pink.

A superbly imaginative writer of preternatural psychological insight, Michaux show more initially maintains that he is separate from the drug and its effects, an objective witness of “the retinal circus,” the mad vibrating motions of cascading images. He is amused by the urge to make proclamations “about what I did not know or care.” But. Over the course of the journals both writer and reader are drawn nearer and nearer to “the insufferable winds of mind,” mental speed and rhythm accelerating beyond control. The self banished by the incessant mingling of tiny rivulets, swarmings, fractured barriers. Cats high up in the trees, the absurdity of Argentina. After inadvertantly dosing himself with six times the usual amount, he undergoes an “experiment in schizophrenia,” developing in his mind a fascination with the aberrant, the desire to shove a stranger off a great height, or to throw himself under a train just pulling in to the station. Four weeks later he is still recalibrating his mental equipment, recuperation hastened by drumming a rhythm on the wooden bedframe, and mountains. He feels himself as a fallen leaf, returning to the tree.

In a series of addenda written decades after his experience with mescaline, Michaux attempts an answer to the question of whether the effects ever really wear off. The kind of unconventional insight apparent in these pages suggests that the effects last a long strange time. show less

There is a revealing moment in “Major Ordeals of the Mind” when a hallucinating Henri Michaux confesses to avoiding a female friend who would be concerned and disappointed about his continued drug experiments. At another moment, two of his friends walk into the middle of his trip, linger briefly failing at their interactions before deciding to leave him in perplexing solitude. These events take up less than half a page of Michaux’s book and he does not offer any other context on his show more life. Accordingly, the remainder of his narrated experiences are accessible to anyone with an interest in drug experiences and their effects on consciousness.

Michaux’s careful and honest observations seem universal—freed of personal baggage and purged of cryptic references—and they are often hilarious, “it was a biscuit wrapping, nothing more. I know that perfectly well. It was also a disturbing, annoying, deceptive being, capable of anything.” His descriptions of dissociation, anxiety, nervousness and disrupted thought (chapters 1-4) moved quickly and resonated best with me. The second half of the book is at once more focused on those with permanent mental problems (primarily schizophrenics) and more absorbed with powerful, transcendent and appalling hallucinations. These were perhaps less universal experiences—though I am in no position to judge. For example, his cosmic launch into outer space and his explanation of losing touch with his body parts, was—for me—less accessible and because of that, less interesting (in the way that a stranger’s dreams are). Chapter 7 however, should not be missed; its discussion of a “table” made by a schizophrenic sheds more light on people with that misfortune than anything else I have read.

I was only skimmingly interested in his bizarre mystic system (“The Four Worlds”) that glorifies the movement from eroticism through fear, towards love and into contemplation. On the whole, the book reads with unusual speed and the first half of it is memorable, revealing, accurate and entertaining. It is fun to see someone so motivated and earnest struggling as all of the world’s small obstacles turn into major ordeals. show less

Michaux was a painter and a poet, so his travel journals are not really about itineraries or the procession of local charms. Instead, we get impressions, short notes, snippets of verse—

Between innocent houses and livid houses.
A slow traffic of blood clots.
And the pregnant, the police, these are the real lepers.

arranged in short sections, with headings

Suña, Friday, March 2 at dawn
5th hour
eating
17th hour
Guadalupe
the next day
a little later
somewhat later
a little later
in the show more pirogue suffering

He describes his writing as ‘an impossible bazaar, with no bread.’

He does not trust exoticism; it plays tricks on us. In Quito, the details all seem to be at work on their own without any concern for the whole. He notices most what is missing. There is no place to stand, no place to turn.

His horse seems to wonder if this is really his country, with this wind. Michaux takes ether. A bird in the jungle mimics the sound of a cork torn off a bottle of champagne. Michaux impossibly tries to keep his mind off of it.

Along the Rio Napo there are vampire bats. During the night drops of blood are falling from the hammock above. You must, whenever possible, go on to the stop ahead, no matter how silly it looks; don’t wait where you are. The tropics cannot be discussed matter-of-factly.

Michaux went to Ecuador in 1927 as ‘a man who knows neither how to travel nor how to keep a journal.’ But he did write about his trip, if not in any conventional way, and there are pleasures in the reading of it. show less

"Il serait bien extraordinaire que des milliers d'événements qui surviennent chaque année résultât une harmonie parfaite. Il y en a toujours qui ne passent pas, et qu'on garde en soi, blessants. Une des choses à faire : l'exorcisme. Toute situation est dépendance et centaines de dépendances. Il serait inouï qu'il en résultât une satisfaction sans ombre ou qu'un homme pût, si actif fût-il, les combattre toutes efficacement, dans la réalité. Une des choses à faire : show more l'exorcisme. L'exorcisme, réaction en force, en attaque de bélier, est le véritable poème du prisonnier. Dans le lieu même de la souffrance et de l'idée fixe, on introduit une exaltation telle, une si magnifique violence, unies au martèlement des mots, que le mal progressivement dissous est remplacé par une boule aérienne et démoniaque - état merveilleux ! [...] Pour qui l'a compris, les poèmes du début de ce livre ne sont point précisément faits en haine de ceci, ou de cela, mais pour se délivrer d'emprises. La plupart des textes qui suivent sont en quelque sorte des exorcismes par ruse. Leur raison d'être : tenir en échec les puissances environnantes du monde hostile." Henri Michaux. show less