Henri Michaux contre la littérature : Violence et faiblesse de la création littéraire dans l’imaginaire poétique de Michaux

Abstract

In his uncertainty between various fields, Henri Michaux was led to a hybrid form of writing. His interest in man’s interior life, dreams, and any kind of fancies, free and meaningless as they might appear, found expression in an original mix of queer and amusing elements. In his career he chose to put himself in an ambiguous and ineffable zone, firmly evading any field or genre definition, constantly maintaining a sort of suspicion towards the act of writing. Michaux did all this from the time of his first works, mixing prose and poetry, anger and softness, anguish and humor, private feelings and the brightest theoretical analysis in a hybrid, unique, and unmistakable text. For this reason, we propose finally defining Michaux’s style as counter-literature, mainly because his entire body of work is a radical criticism directed towards the literary canon.