Henri Michaux's Bras cassé : A "Fractured" Fairy Tale - Project ...
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Henri Michaux’s Bras cassé : A “Fractured” Fairy Tale
Judith Preckshot
L'Esprit Créateur, Volume 26, Number 3, Fall 1986, pp. 51-64 (Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/esp.1986.0026
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/526293/summary
[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]Henri Michaux’s Bras cassé:
A “Fractured” Fairy Tale
Judith Preckshot
Abrah! Abrah! A brah!
Le pied a failli!
Le bras a cassé!
Henri Michaux, “ Le G rand com bat” 1
GENERATION OF AM ERICAN YOUTH enjoyed comic revi
A sions o f traditional fairy tales in a special feature o f the Rocky
and Bullwinkle television cartoon show. These features were aptly
entitled “ Fractured Fairy T ales.” Although each parodied tale began
innocently enough, some key element was inevitably distorted so that the
tale took a turn away from the expected outcom e into the ironic or the
absurd: princesses complaining o f baseball-sized peas under their m at
tresses appeared as shrewish suburban housewives, and little pigs built
houses o f concrete block or reinforced steel that no wolf could ever blow
down. An obvious anachronism , this analogy between Henri M ichaux’s
writing and American cartoons of the sixties shall prove a useful, if light
hearted, model for the exam ination o f those prose texts in which the
m etaphor of fracture operates on both a symbolic and structural plane,
while a real fracture serves as the ostensible subject o f the story. Even
though references to classical fairy tales do not figure prominently in
M ichaux’s Bras cassé, the Biblical intertext o f the Fall does. And so, if
fairy tales are defined in the broad context o f sacred or profane parables
o f legend and myth, Bras cassé can be counted among such “ fairy tales.”
Read in a certain light, M ichaux’s autobiographic text suggests a new
dimension to the Biblical story of hum an error and its consequences. As
in any origin myth that accounts for m an’s exclusion from a hypothetical
paradise, the reasons for all events remain slightly mysterious and a step
beyond the scope of rational or scientific analysis. However, the gravity
o f this parable o f self-knowledge in Bras cassé is undercut by parody:
Bras cassé also recounts the more pedestrian tale o f a simple fall and
1. Henri Michaux, “ Le G rand C o m b at,” in Qui je f u s (Paris: Nouvelle Revue Française,
1927) and reprinted in Henri M ichaux, L ’Espace du dedans (Paris: Gallim ard, 1944),
p. 16.
V o l . XXVI, No. 3 51L ’E s p r it C réateur
broken right arm . Thus the spiritual remedy represented in the writing of
the text is paralleled by a detailed description of the medical treatments
M ichaux also underwent.
M ichaux’s texts often hinge on a tenuous connection between the
symbolic and the literal and risk at any given mom ent slipping from the
sublime into the pathetic or burlesque. The adventures o f M ichaux’s
eternally victimized Plume, often com pared to the pre-cartoon era
cinematic exploits o f Charlie C haplin’s irrepressible little tram p, are a
case in point: Plum e’s perpetual stage o f dislocation and physical loss
(his am putated finger) portrays comically the profound disorientation in
social spaces and general psychic disablement of his creator. Here, as
elsewhere in M ichaux’s writing, psychic fractures are concretized in
broken bones and lost limbs, and narratives which have as their mission
to rectify, correct, or mend these fractures take on the ills that they repre
sent: discontinuity, defectiveness or absence characterize narratives
which repeat and revise unconscious fantasies, “ fairy tales” o f wish-
fulfillment or magical retribution in which animals or otherworldly
creatures talk, inanim ate objects become mobile and take on a life of
their own, and astonishing m etam orphoses take place in imaginary land
scapes. But contrary to true fairy tales, M ichaux’s versions fail to
develop and conclude in the “ happily-ever-after,” o r—in academic
term s—according to a Proppian scheme o f narrative events which ends
in a successful resolution o f a problem atic situation.2
M ichaux’s narratives are creations o f a private imagination which
deviate from established norm s. While they may initially invoke struc
tures o f folk narratives, M ichaux’s tales remain defective; in their lack of
eventual plot development and self-defined characters, they also bear a
form al resemblance to the “ broken” narratives Paul Valéry envisioned
in Histoires brisées. In the prose poems published under this title, the
2. For an analysis o f this type, see Siegfried Schm idt’s essay on “ Plum e au restaurant”
in “ Théorie et pratique d ’une étude scientifique de la narrativité littéraire,” Sémi-
otique et narrative textuelle, ed. Claude Chabrol (Paris: Larousse, 1973), pp. 137-60.
Based on a reinterpretation o f Vladimir P ro p p ’s scheme o f character functions as out
lined in M orphology o f the Folktale (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968) through
contem porary theories of narratology, Schm idt’s analysis breaks down because the
description o f narrative structures can only give a partial account o f a tale which
refuses to progress beyond the repetition o f an initial dram atic situation. His
approach, severely ham pered by its typological intent, begs for the supplem entary sort
o f interpretation which draws on semantics and frames o f reference both created by,
and exterior to, the text: a m ore complete reading is found in Jean-C laude M athieu’s
“ Légère lecture de P lum e,” in Roger D adoun, ed., R uptures sur Henri M ichaux
(Paris: Payot, 1976), pp. 101-57.
52 F all 1986PRECKSHOT
basis for narration is laid in evocations o f fictional heroes, such as tale-
telling A rabian princesses or Robinson Crusoes. But the embryonic plot
does not unfold as expected, and the narration finally sinks under the
weight o f progressively more inwardly-directed m editations o f the nar
rator, whose narcissistic reflections take him into greater isolation and
further from the predictable end to the story, indeed from any closure at
all.3
In Michaux, however, story telling and reflection are complementary
activities; the chain o f narrative events is not broken so much as con
tinually repeated or revised. M oreover, the initial telling and subsequent
retelling, which entails the intervention o f critical faculties, constitute a
(story of) fracture and its cure. Epreuves, exorcismes was undertaken by
Michaux as an exercise in àuto-catharsis, for it was conceived as a recrea
tion o f pain (épreuve) and a purging o f destructive influences (exor
cisme); in the postface to La N uit remue Michaux announces even less
ambiguously the therapeutic purpose behind his writing: “ P ar hygiène,
peut-être, j ’ai écrit «Mes Propriétés», pour m a santé” (N R , 193).4 In
earlier texts, fictional characters, M ichaux’s “ personnages-tam pons,”
acted as buffers anesthetizing the author against the physical or psychic
pains o f his own existential dilemmas. In later works, the fictional intent
is less pronounced: Michaux no longer hides behind third-person n arra
tion or a first-person narrator wearing the mask of a Plume-like persona.
Although Michaux identifies himself as the sufferer o f diverse ills, the
language of analysis which he brings to bear on painful experience at
moments fulfills the same function of distancing the writer from the
3. Fascinated m ore by the concept of fiction rather than its elaboration, Valéry writes in
the Preface to Histoires brisées that his distrust of the arbitrariness o f codified plot
structures, which imitate a linear representation—hence oversim plification—of
historical reality, prevents him from completing the story he has been tem pted to
begin: “ Au bout de peu de lignes ou d ’une page, j ’abandonne, n ’ayant saisi par
l’écriture que ce qui m ’avait surpris, amusé, intrigué, et je ne m ’inquiète pas de
dem ander à cette production spontanée de se prolonger, organiser et achever sous les
exigences d ’un art. Ici, intervient, d ’ailleurs, ma sensibilité excessive à l’égard de
l’arb itraire ...” (Paul Valéry, Œ uvres complètes II [Paris: Gallim ard, 1960], p. 407).
4. Pagination for references to M ichaux’s works will appear in parentheses; unless other
wise docum ented, the various editions will be identified as: EE: Epreuves, exorcismes
(Paris: Gallim ard, 1946); Faç: Façons d ’endormi, Façons d ’éveillé (Paris: G allim ard/
Le Point du Jour, 1969); M M : Misérable Miracle (M onaco: Editions du Rocher,
1956); N R : La N uit remue (Paris: Gallim ard, 1967); Pas: Passages (Paris: G allim ard/
Le Point du Jour, 1950); PI: Plum e, précédé de Lointain intérieur (Paris: Gallim ard,
1963). Bras cassé first appeared in Tel Quel, no. 9 (printem ps, 1962), pp. 3-15; a
revised and considerably lengthened version was published by Fata M organa (M ont
pellier, 1973) and reprinted in Face à ce qui se dérobe (Paris: Gallim ard, 1975), pp.
7-70. Page references in our text (designated: BC, xx) are to this last edition.
V o l . XXVI, No. 3 53L ’E s p r it C réateur
event recounted.5 Bras cassé, written in the later years o f M ichaux’s life
in response to an actual accident, is m arked by the presence, in equal
doses, of two competing discourses, both o f which are designed to be
therapeutic but serve to “ fracture” the text: the anesthetic o f fantasy
narrative and the (self)-analytical cure.
Fairy tales, as other works o f fantasy, have been recognized for their
therapeutic value either as tools for socialization, to reinforce norm ative
codes o f behavior, or as a means o f helping individuals resolve conflicts.
In The Uses o f Enchantm ent, Bruno Bettelheim extrapolates from his
work with severely disturbed children a functional application for fairy
tales. According to Bettelheim, fairy tales are allegories o f the growing-
up process which teach children about decision-making, personal initia
tive or self-reliance and can assist them in developing an independent
identity within a set social structure.
T hrough the centuries (if not millennia) during which, in their retelling, fairy tales
became ever m ore refined, they came to convey at the same time overt and covert meanings
—came to speak sim ultaneously to all levels o f the hum an personality, comm unicating in a
m anner which reaches the uneducated m ind o f the child as well as that o f the sophisticated
adult. Applying the psychoanalytic m odel o f the hum an personality, fairy tales carry
im portant messages to the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious m ind, on
whatever level each is functioning at the time. By dealing with universal hum an problem s,
particularly those which preoccupy the child’s m ind, these stories speak to his budding ego
and encourage its developm ent, while at the same time relieving preconscious and uncon
scious pressures. As the stories unfold, they give conscious credence and body to id pres
sures and show ways to satisfy these th at are in line with ego and superego requirem ents.6
Fairy tales thus provide the child with the necessary tools for understand
ing, and coping with, the as yet incomprehensible adult universe he must
eventually enter. By identifying with fairy tale heroes and heroines, and
reenacting their successes, the child learns vicariously to overcome adver
sities. He learns to decipher ambiguous adult com portm ent and to recon
cile the disparity in roles played by the parent who is alternately mean (an
“ Evil Stepm other” ) and caring (the “ Fairy G odm other” ). Bettelheim
asserts that “ Fairy tales can even show the child the way through the
thorniest o f thickets, the oedipal period” (p. 73).
5. For a m ore complete discussion o f the relationship o f writing to illness, see Virginia
La C harite’s catalog of M ichaux’s physical and psychological ills in “ The Poet as
Patient: Henri M ichaux,” in M edicine and Literature, ed. Enid Rhodes Peschel
(N.Y.: Neale W atson Academic Publications, Inc., 1980), pp. 140-46.
6. Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses o f Enchantm ent; The M eaning and Im portance o f Fairy
Tales (N.Y.: Vintage Books, R andom House, 1977), pp. 5-6.
54 F all 1986P reckshot
A m ajor limitation o f Bettelheim’s theory is its reductive application:
whatever its individual charm , each of the tales that Bettelheim analyzes
is shown to conform to an unchanging oedipal scenario.7 Bettelheim’s
interpretation o f the value o f fairy tales derives principally from F reud’s
theories o f infantile identity processes. But, occupied with establishing
paradigms for transitions from child- to adulthood, Bettelheim remains
insensitive to Freud’s more nuanced interpretation o f the relation o f ego-
enhancing day-dream fantasy and literature or the attention he gives to
the terms in which those fantasies a n d /o r dreams are expressed.8 In “ The
Occurrence in Dreams o f M aterial from Fairy Tales,” the one essay
which deals specifically with fairy tales, Freud treats fantasy literature as
a codebook for the interpretation o f dreams. The dream does not reenact
the fairy tale; it incorporates isolated elements from fairy tales that sug
gest a very skeletal narrative fram ework that will be fleshed out later by
an interpretation connecting units o f this universal lexicon (learned at an
early age through the reading or hearing o f fairy tales) with recent events
in the dream er’s life and chronic anxieties. Thus the fairy tale provides
the key to the patient’s neurosis and unlocks a parallel story.
The dream recounted very schematically in F reud’s essay is inter
preted through the tale o f Rumpelstiltskin and in the light o f the patient’s
previous revelations concerning personal traum as or relations with
family members. The dream text is as follows: “ She was in a room that
was entirely brown. A little door led to the top o f a steep staircase, and
up this staircase there came into the room a curious m anikin—small,
with white hair, a bald top to his head and a red nose. H e danced round
7. For a critique o f these shortcom ings, see Jack David Zipes, “ On the Use and Abuse o f
Folk and Fairy Tales with Children: Bruno Bettelheim’s M oralistic Magic W an d ,” in
Breaking the M agic Spell; Radical Theories o f F olk and Fairy Tales (London: Heine-
m an E ducational Books L td., 1979), pp. 160-82. Him self an avowed adherent o f the
Frankfurt School ideology, Zipes takes Bettelheim to task for the way in which his
orthodox Freudian approach leads him to oversimplify the relation o f literature to the
psyche, that is to reduce conflicts presented in fairy tales to those existing between
child and parents (oedipal) and to ignore the repressive aspects o f fairy tales com
m unicating norm ative values, which serve to “ violate the imagination o f both
children and adults alike” (Zipes, 164).
8. O f particular interest is “ The Relation of the Poet to Day-D ream ing,” in which Freud
muses on the link between adult creative activities and the child’s fantasy creations,
hypothesizing that “ . . . imaginative creation, like day dream ing, is a continuation of
and substitute for the play of childhood” (p. 53). A nd while some writers may be
blessed with a fund o f spontaneous and original m aterial, m uch of w riters’ m aterial is
borrow ed, “ ready-m ade,” from collective childhood reminiscences preserved in
m yth, legend and fairy tale. Sigm und Freud, “ The Relation of the Poet to Day-
D ream ing,” in Character and Culture (New York: M acm illan/C ollier Books, 1963),
p. 42.
V o l . XXVI, No. 3 55L ’E s p r it C r é a t e u r
the room in fr o n t o f her, carried on in the funniest way, and then went
down the staircase again. H e was dressed in a grey garment, through
which his whole figure was visible,” 9 The little m an, “ who can perform
such extraordinary tricks” and is thus associated with Rumpelstiltskin, is
also said to resemble the husband’s father; this resemblance to the pater
fam ilias leads Freud to identify the little m an with a penis. Hence the
magical transform ation o f straw into gold that Rumpelstiltskin is said to
have perform ed would logically correspond to the translation o f the
seminal stream into a fetus. In Freud’s analysis, the translucent gray suit
worn by the little m an represents the diaphanous condom the dream er’s
husband supposedly used; the symbolic penis so “ clothed” can thus be
seen as stealing the unborn child from the dream er just as Rumpel
stiltskin threatens to take the child away from the princess o f the fairy
tale. The analogy with Rumpelstiltskin reveals a source o f aggravation—
the husband’s reticence to have a child. It is im portant to note that the
fairy tale does not shape the dream but acts as an intermediary inter
pretive grid to connect events immediately preceding the dream with
underlying thoughts or anxieties the dream er has not yet been able to
confront. It is also interesting that the initial association o f the dream
content with the Rumpelstiltskin tale is made by the dream er when she
notices the similarity between a phrase she had used earlier to vent her
frustration with her husband (“ I could tear him in tw o” ) to that occur
ring in the fairy tale: “ in his fury, [Rumpelstiltskin] tore himself in tw o.”
Thus a figure o f speech, rather than a specific story line, sets in m otion a
Rumpelstiltskin-like dream interpretation and furnishes the patient and
her analyst with the necessary elements for a sense-making narrative.
The purpose o f the rather lengthy detour from M ichaux is two-fold:
first, to suggest various ways to correlate fantasizing—be it creative
reminiscence or projection—with practical therapies; second, to show
how fairy tales—in their broad definition as folk narrative, legend or
m yth—supply the basic vocabulary o f the written fantasy, in short, a
“ language” instrum ental in configuring the dream interpretation or, as
in M ichaux’s case, the retelling of an actual experience. The fairy tale
intertext is called into play by textual or m etaphoric overlap that resides,
as we have learned from Freud, in the merest slip o f a phrase. In Bras
cassé the key phrase is “ un père punisseur,” which occurs at the start of
9. Sigmund Freud, “ The Occurrence in Dreams o f M aterial from Fairy Tales, op. cit.,
pp. 59-60.
56 F a ll 1986P reck sho t
M ichaux’s account o f his sudden and unexpected fall on an icy sidewalk
while he is out walking in a m ountain village. The cold, hard ground on
which the injured Michaux lies evokes for him “ un père punisseur et
intransigeant qui m ’eût guetté au retour de l’école buissonnière, une
sorte de père quasi instantaném ent revenu, cassant, borné, buté comme
personne et totalem ent incom préhensif” (BC, 12). W ith this phrase, the
specter o f the Biblical script rises to inform , and to divide, the text: the
story of a fall (and loss of the use o f his right hand) is doubled by that of
the Fall, o f m ankind’s disobedience and loss o f innocence; and a redis
covery o f a self out o f control, split into clashing left- and right-handed
personalities, corresponds to m an’s acquisition o f divine knowledge, as
recounted in Genesis, and the introduction to a universe rent by conflict
ing forces o f good and evil. However, this is where Bras cassé breaks
with tradition, for the road to recovery leads eventually to a dubious
salvation: the recovery o f the use of his right hand, which Michaux
describes ironically as a “ répugnante réincarnation.” Although Michaux
manages to pick himself up after the initial fall and make his way back to
his hotel room , he is beset by a series o f relapses as complications from
the injury set in. There is no way to redeem himself in the eyes o f the
Punishing Father, and M ichaux’s condem nation to what seems eternal
repetition of the original loss o f m oral and physical integrity through the
fall is expressed through a text which is itself fractured into a “ sinister”
narrative of the unconscious self and the rational self’s critical reapprai
sal. Only M ichaux’s irrational self, the “ être gauche—inculte— ,” got up
from the fall: “ Tout à l’heure, en secret, sur le lieu même de l’accident,
aussitôt après la fracture, quand je ne savais pas encore m on coude droit
cassé, l’esprit de m on corps silencieusement l’avait déserté” (BC, 15).
A lthough M ichaux’s intellectual acuity does return later to set the story
o f the broken arm straight, he retains a sense of imbalance, having
shifted weight and consciousness a bit too far to the right.10
In an oft-quoted passage from the Postface to Plume, Michaux
describes the self as multiple, infinite, and only momentarily a “ position
d ’équilibre.” In M ichaux’s writings, this infinity of selves is often
TO. Michaux experiences the phenom enon o f “ losing one’s m an” (“ perdre son hom m e” )
when falling asleep. The loss o f consciousness is accompanied by a sensation o f lost
limbs, which are recovered upon waking and through the rationalizing properties of
language: “ C ’est en parlant que les jam bes repoussent, en utilisant des m ots. Les
m ots, le social, la réunion, le déplacem ent, la rencontre... au bout, il y a les jam bes”
(Faç, 234).
V o l . XXVI, No. 3 57L ’E s p r it C réateur
reduced to pairs o f oppositional selves variously represented as the right
side (“ l’endroit de m oi” ) and the wrong side (“ l’envers de m oi” ), the
waking self (“ l’homme de jo u r” ) and the sleeper (“ l’homme de nuit” ),
or the right(-handed) and left(-handed) selves. The co-presence o f both
sides o f being is a rare phenom enon, as Michaux first discovered while
learning how to dance: “ Il y a un homme gauche qui ne veut rien savoir
de mon homme droit et ne veut pas de son savoir-faire... malgré l’utilité
que ça présenterait” (Pas, 139). All o f these couplings pit a self generally
classified as rational or socialized against an irrational, anti-social, and
physically awkward being, whose child-like attributes are a constant
source of em barrassm ent for the other, more socially evolved half. In
Façons d ’endormi, façons d ’éveillé, for example, the unconscious left
half is qualified as “ pessim iste,” “ mauvais genre,” “ voyou,” “ retarda
taire,” “ infirm e,” and “ anti-éloquent.” The rational self, M ichaux’s
“ bras d roit” so to speak, has as its perennial task to rectify the errors
committed by the perverse “ être de gauche” ; the right self rewrites the
repetitive and often banal communications emanating from the uncon
scious. In Misérable Miracle, Michaux remarks how disturbing it is for
him to read, in a fully conscious state, notes penned “ gauchem ent” by a
right hand disabled by mescaline (M M, 16). In Bras cassé, the left hand
must take over the damaged right hand’s functions, and Michaux is frus
trated to reread his hospital experience, transcribed “ vermiculairement”
and in a hand which remains, like his underdeveloped unconscious,
“ informe, écolière, calme, mal fichue, sans caractère, sans impression-
nabilité.” W ithout privileging one realm of selfdom over the other,
Michaux is much reassured to recover a sense o f self along with the use of
his right hand: “ quoique l’écriture en soit contrariée et presque illisible,
elle me contient aussitôt et me trad u it” (BC, 67). Michaux is undoubted
ly captivated by the elusive and uncontrollable denizen of his inner
world, although his rhetoric seems to reveal a strong bias towards the
rational self. The bias is inevitable, given that the writing right hand has
the last word and can thus impose itself perfidiously on the other, trans
lating—betraying—the semi-literate unconscious.
The central text of Bras cassé is split into two sections. The first pre
sents a perverse vision painted from the perspective o f the left per
sonality, reduced by his infirm ity to the impressionable state o f a child.
In the second part, written years later, this narrative o f wondrous trans
formations is subjected to the scrutiny o f a m ature, analytical gaze,
which places greater trust in clinical observations than it does in fantastic
58 F a ll 1986P reck sho t
descriptions: unlike his unconscious counterpart, this second narrator is
not swayed by the magic o f fairy tales; he seeks a logical explanation for
all events. Additional afterthoughts appear in endnotes and further con
tribute to the reader’s impression that the second part should be inter
preted as a critical revision of the earlier narrative conceived during
M ichaux’s convalescent period. Although there are points o f overlap, the
two sections remain stylistically distinct, the unconscious narrator more
disposed to m etaphoric prose or poetic repetitions and the conscious
analyst more prone to scientific discourse. Both parts are preceded by a
preface which sets up, by way of analogy, a “ bifocal” opposition which
will be confirmed in the form al and metaphorical structures of the text.
There Michaux refers to experiments conducted by a Viennese professor
o f psychology involving “ des lunettes renversantes.” In these experi
ments, the subject puts on spectacles which reverse his perceptions o f left
and right and up and down; he is then asked to ride a bicycle. After a
period of readjustm ent, and many falls, the subject adapts to his inverted
vision only to undergo a repetition of the cycle o f disturbed vision and
falls once the glasses are removed. Michaux continues: “ Pareillement,
les souffrances physiques créent des perceptions déroutantes. Sensations
erronées, q u ’il fa u t rectifier, rectifier sans arrêt, chemin de délire si elles
deviennent trop fortes, excèdent la résistence, le potentiel de rectification
du malade, douleurs qui rendent intenable ou le corps ou la raison” (BC,
9). Michaux infers from an em piricist’s experiment a way o f dealing with
his own experience of physical and mental dissymmetry brought on by a
unilateral (one-eyed) order o f perception. The main texts o f Bras cassé
develop the optical m etaphor introduced in the preface: they create,
albeit sequentially, the illusion o f stéréovision, or “ vision critique
(physiquement critique),” by balancing the “ left m an’s” story, lacking
in “ stéréo-esthésie,” with the “ right m an’s” readjusting account.
The narrator o f the first part, henceforth known as the unconscious
narrator, is obsessed by images o f pain that objectify a particular quality
o f that pain. Persistently recurring images of burning, piercing, dull or
throbbing sensations besiege him, and the discrepancy between image
and reality that Michaux cannot manage to reduce by logical deduction
simply adds insult to the injury. For instance, a burning sensation in
M ichaux’s right arm evokes an image o f red-hot coals which is in
absolute discordance with what his eyes can see: a cool, white bandage.
The frustration and panic that he feels is carried out textually in repeti
tions which both intensify the impression and multiply images reifying
V o l . XXVI, No. 3 59L ’E s p r it C réateur
painful sensations: the burning pain that first manifests itself as fiery
coals becomes “ Feu. Feu. Feu incessamment répété” (BC, 27). It
appears once again, amplified: “ Feu. Feu. Feu. Feu incessamment répété”
(BC, 28). Burning pain then becomes piercing, cutting, biting pain, and
the grotesque sequence o f exaggerated repetition recommences: “ Des
chiens m ordent. Des meutes de chiens. Des vagues incessantes de chiens.
Des ruées de chiens ardents, impétueux et dont je ne puis parler à per
sonne, dont je dois, dans un pareil m om ent, me retenir de parler, faisant
comme s’ils n ’étaient pas là, comme si j ’étais au repos... tranquille, hors
d ’atteinte” (BC, 29). M ichaux’s whole register o f perceptions is out of
kilter, and this imbalance leads to increasingly exaggerated sensorial dis
cordances between sight and feeling: he is mistakenly convinced that a
piece o f furniture is attached to his shoulder in place o f his damaged
right arm —in spite of visible evidence that the arm is really an arm , and
not an armoire. His feverish imagination does not fix on any one p ar
ticular object but seems to shift from one image to another, as his dis
com fort increases or diminishes. An arm oire, a chest o f drawers, “ un
énorme maillon dans les cent kilos, maillon de ces chaînes à relever les
ancres de paquebot” (BC, 32)—all these objects connoting heavy weight
are marshalled by his im agination to communicate the leaden feeling the
suffering Michaux senses in his right arm.
While the unconscious narrator may pose the questions: why a heavy
chest (bahut)! why a chain link (maillon)? he does not pursue the
answers. “ En plein organique,” he is too occupied with living the experi
ence to engage in reflection. “ Réfléchir là-dessus plus ta rd ,” he notes
(BC, 35). “ Déclics. (Crampes. Non, pas toujours, pas vraiment cela.) Je
ne peux plus réfléchir” (BC, 38). The narration follows the path of least
resistance, linking images metonymically. Pain generates descriptive
sequences which are only kept from perpetuating themselves in a repeti
tive cycle by an abrupt shift o f focus, an evasive maneuver which shunts
the n arrato r’s imagination onto a similar, yet different, track. Barely
controlled by an uncomprehending narrator, the narration progresses
without making intelligible progress.
In the second part o f Bras cassé, a lucid, analytical narrator seeks to
explain these movements, if only by analogy to other observed
phenomena. In one case, he bases his interpretation on an animal
behaviorist’s observations: Why does a new-born goose attach itself to
the first moving object it sees, which will henceforth be its mother? “ En
moi aussi peut-être la première image qui m ’était venue à l’esprit, celle de
60 F a ll 1986P r e c k s Ho t
bras-bahut, par sa seule priorité avait bouché la voie à d ’autres qui eus
sent été plus adaptées” (BC, 53). While simple chance may play a role in
the selection o f the “ arm -chest,” the quality of the pain rules out exotic
images. Michaux goes on to explain his choice of the m undane and
relatively featureless chain link over more visually complex objects; he
notes that an overturned camping trailer (remorqué), for instance, does
not lend itself to m onotonous reduplication, thus to a faithful represen
tation o f uninteresting and unabating physical discom fort: “ M onotones,
uniformes, porteuses uniquem ent de souffrance répétée, sans autre
message que celui-là, indéfiniment repris, mes sensations appelaient une
image inchangée” (BC, 57). Michaux suggests that there is another
reason underlying his preference for the chain link, and that is his
impression of being “ chained” to his bed o f suffering. M oreover, the
chain describes the narration itself, which can be seen as a concatenation
o f non-events leading to erroneous conclusions on the part o f the uncon
scious narrator.
The analytical narrator is less interested in the images themselves than
in the mechanisms that generated them , and he doubles—rectifies—
unconscious fabulation with the language o f scientific discourse. At
times, his vocabulary is impregnated with a systems analyst’s jargon. He
attributes the mental confusion of his convalescent self to “ centres de
réception sensorielle surchargés,” and compares himself to an
“ ingénieur en face d ’un ordinateur insuffisam m ent program mé, mais
toujours tranchant et définitif, que dépité il voit devant lui donnant et
redonnant infiniment des réponses erronées” (BC, 52). In his trouble
shooting role, the analytical narrator reexamines the tall tales told by the
unconscious, analyzes data, and rewrites the fairy story before he files
this episode o f his life away as a learning experience. The emphasis the
analytical narrator places on learning counterbalances the unconscious
n arrato r’s preoccupation with his fantasy creation. He tacks on a moral,
supplementing the unconscious n arrato r’s incomplete fairy story with the
socializing message common to cautionary tales. While the unconscious
narrator gives, in Bettelheim’s words, “ conscious credence and body to
id pressures,” the analytical narrator “ show[s] ways to satisfy these that
are in line with ego and superego requirem ents” (see note 6). The moral
lesson drawn by the unconscious narrator’s self-appointed censor coin
cides with what both ageless philosophies o f the Orient (Purusha-
Prakriti) and new occidental sciences teach, namely, that in order to
attain self-knowledge personal asymmetry should be stressed more than
Vol. XXVI, No. 3 61L ’E s p r it C réateur
perfect balance: the alternating m anifestations of the self known through
its antinomical definitions (left-right, inside-outside, irrational-rational,
id-ego) permit the complex, bilateral self to function in quasi-harm ony
without compromising the essentially distinct properties of conscious
and unconscious selves. M ichaux advises: “ Accentuer l’asymétrie, et non
pas la réduire, voilà ce qui im porte, q u ’il faudrait enseigner et que doit
apprendre, (pour le réussir mieux que moi), toute personne qui cherche à
se connaître” (BC, 70). In this revelation Bras cassé does not diverge
from the m ajor thrust o f M ichaux’s writing; it merely continues his life
long inquiry into the processes of conscious and unconscious thought.
Thoughts, M ichaux writes in the Postface to Plume, are only “ con
trariétés du ‘m oi’, pertes d ’équilibre (phase 2), ou recouvrements
d ’équilibre (phase 3) du mouvement du ‘pensant’. Mais la phase 1
(l’équilibre) reste inconnue, inconsciente” (PI, 218).
The perfect equilibrium that Michaux refers to as phase 1 can be con
ceived as a state o f grace which is not only not recuperable (a lost Eden),
but also perhaps non-existent. It is in the passage from phases 2 to 3, i.e.,
between the fall and the recovery, that the illusion o f the wholeness
(phase 1) is simultaneously glimpsed and lost. These breaks in conscious
ness, reflected in the discontinuities o f thought (and textual) patterns,
open the self to (self-)knowledge. M ichaux confirms his condem nation to
existential imbalance before the fact in the epigraph to the first part of
Bras cassé. He suggests that instability is located in m an rather than in
his environment; he complains that while window, wall, trees, m ountain,
sky and earth seem to have all stayed put, he has somehow lost his place:
“ mais moi je ne peux regagner ma place.” Furtherm ore, his recovery
plunges him once again into a state o f disequilibrium, and once again on
the verge o f falling from one less than paradisiac state into another.
Michaux perceives himself (the self) as drawn by an evil genie into a
downward-spiralling destiny, much like his alter-ego Plume, “ guidé par
un ennemi im placable,” or like the tragi-comic hero of another anec
dote, a victim o f bad luck. The anxious preacher of that anecdote is
prevented from concluding his sermon by fall after unlucky fall, the first
o f which occurs during a m om ent o f distraction in a public urinal. “ Une
pensée le traverse. Le faux pas se fait et voilà une jam be de cassée”
(“ P recher,” P I, 23). Each fall (or m oral lapse?) distances this symbol of
m oral rectitude from the redem ption he advocates so unsuccessfully. For
such as he, “ left” souls caught in the “ right” position (or vice versa),
paradise has indeed been lost; more im portantly, salvation (phase 1) has
62 F a ll 1986P reckshot
been eclipsed by the flight from one difficult state of consciousness to the
other one.
Michaux holds happy solutions in suspicion; he qualifies happiness as
“ bête” and pure joy as a neutralizing drug which robs him o f his per
sonality: “ Là où je suis, la Joie n ’est pas. O r donc, elle se substitue à
moi, me rince de mes attributs et quand je ne suis plus q u ’un gaz, q u ’est-
ce q u ’un gaz peut faire? Ni originalité ni lutte. Je suis livré à la joie. Elle
me brise. Je me dégoûte” (AT?, 115). Joy is an intrusive, depersonalizing
force that “ breaks” M ichaux. Like the intense physical pain Michaux
describes in Bras cassé as an irreducible “ m atière prem ière,” joy also
reduces him to the same prim al responses that escape rational under
standing. Strong emotions or violent physical sensations upend conven
tional reality—just as the “ lunettes renversantes” perturbed the vision of
the Viennese doctor’s bicycle-riding subjects—so that the self is viewed
from an unaccustomed angle, inside out and undistinguished by other
than universally hum an traits. The absence o f a possessive adjective in
the title Bras cassé indicates clearly that it is not M ichaux’s arm in the
sling, but everyman’s arm: “ Com ment associer quelqu’un à une frac
ture, à une péritonite, à un cancer?” he queries (BC, 67). And it is par
ticularly this generalizing effect o f the injury which troubled Michaux
enough to attem pt to reclaim that arm through the therapy of textual
self-examination.
Heightened emotional states “ vaporize” the individual, levelling him
to the common ground of the id; escape from any such state is therefore
immensely salutory. M ichaux finds this release in falling, for, however
fearsome the consequences, falling is accompanied by a real, if transi
tory, sense o f well-being:
On n ’est vraim ent bien que quand on tom be. En l’air, à 3.000 mètres en l’air, on passe
quelques secondes délicieuses. Même on est si bien que l’on ne se sent pas particulièrement
bien. Simplement, on est bien. Si on avait les yeux bandés et l’ignorance entière de ce qui
vous arrive et de l’immense culbute, l’on en aurait même rien à dire sauf bien, bien!
(Pas, 15)
Ironically, the fall and redem ption are practically coequal. Synchronized
with a pallid and short-lived experience o f paradise, the mom ent o f the
fall brings its reward along with the punishment: escape from one
punishing state o f (un)consciousness to the other.
M ichaux’s writing is characterized by perpetual mobility and dis
continuity. But the ever-changing narrative perspective that “ fractures”
V o l . XXVI, No. 3 63L ’E s p r it C réateur Bras cassé is not limited to fairy tales, or even to Michaux: it is also the m ark of a m odern spirit that rejects the impoverished visions o f familiar plots based on popular myths o f the “ happily-ever-after.” While Bras cassé is literally “ fractured” by the double and self-negating point of view its author takes, one might say that much of this century’s literature is also—in some larger sense—defective: as formal conventions o f story telling are violated, so is a conventional order o f values subverted. The wave o f the poet’s wand which should correct reality with healing fancies o f utopias only breaks the spell cast by those idealistic fairy tales to reveal an unm endable fracture of hum an existence: Abrah! A bras! A bracadabra! “ Le pied a failli! Le bras a cassé!” University o f M innesota 64 F all 1986
You can also read
