Des lignes de fuite vers le moi : Henri Michaux

Abstract

Since the very beginning, Henri Michaux’s poetry has investigated the topic of being, namely its definition, its extent and its boundaries, through the instrument of writing. According to the poet’s vision, human being is “multiple, complexe et d’ailleurs fuyant”; as a consequence, poetry, whose main objective is “questionner, ausculter, approcher le problème de l’être” (Passages), cannot but witness this protean and elusive tendency. Therefore, in the context of a poetic production focused on the theme of the escape, the self, “[qui] est et se voudrait ailleurs, essentiellement autre”, shall overflow its physical and linguistic boundaries, dissolving into many “lignes de fuite”/ “convergence lines” (Deleuze-Guattari), which represent the real issue treated in Michaux’s poetry. As we hope to demonstrate by the analysis of some pages of Plume, La Vie dans les plis, Face aux verrous, the escape and moving of the self, including its body and identity, are not the result of arbitrary imaginative work, but the most suitable poetic strategy allowing the reader to grasp the real objective of art, that is to say the inexhaustible longing for self-understanding, as well as understanding of others.