Storms Under the Skin, by Henri Michaux
The Book Office is delighted to present the book of the week: Henri Michaux's Storms Under the Skin, published by Two Rivers Press.
This translation of selected poems between 1927 and 1954 by Jane Draycott spreads Henri Michaux's wonderful work. This Belgian-born writer, hailed by Allan Ginsberg as a 'master' and 'without equal in the literature of our time' by Borges.
This collection includes poems and prose-poems from Plume and Les Emanglons, and poems written on the eve of World War II. Nevertheless, Henri Michaux's influence are wider than war: his trips to Asia and Oriental influence were a major influence, as well as French poet Lautréamont and his job as sailor.
One of his major character is 'Plume' a peaceful man whose inner space reflects on the richness of cultural and spiritual life. Indeed, Henri Michaux always insisted that he wrote to discover himself, his inner self: exterior events are thus considered only as a mean to achieve this quest. The world is complicated, the world is adverse, the world is dangerous: to survive, Michaux's self has to move constantly, in his style as well as in his works for he started painting after a while.
What best book to read could you have for the winter? Stay inside, and experience storms under your skin...
Not sure yet? Read this beautiful extract translated by wonderful Jane Draycott: it was difficult to choose...
"Dragon"
[...]
It was because things were going so badly.
September '38, a Tuesday. All things compelled me
To take this strangest of forms for the sake of my life.
In this way I took up the fight for myself
while Europe still hesitated: I set forth as a dragon
against the forces of evil, against the panoply
of endless paralysis in the face of events, against
the ocean-voice of mediocrity who sudden, vast
significance has once more dizzyingly been unmasked.
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