A Certain Plume [Paperback]

A bilingual edition of the most famous of Henri Michaux's poetry collections, now in a new translation from the French.

The figure of Plume preoccupied the great Belgian poet Henri Michaux throughout his career. Plume, meaning feather or pen, is a character who drifts from one thing to another, losing shape, taking new forms, at perpetual risk from reality. He is a personification of the imagination as subject to innumerable pratfalls and disgraces, and yet indestructible for all that. In this new bilingual edition, with translations by Richard Sieburth, the entire Plume cycle appears for the first time in English in the form in which Michaux originally published it.“Plume is a modern pilgrim, continually on the quest, in a world which resembles ours but also appears to be the set of a nightmare slapstick. And Plume resembles us as much as he resembles K., Jack Wilton, Charlie Brown, Shuman the Human, the Man Without Qualities, and all those seekers who, when they finally get a chance to address the wise one, are rewarded with a resounding slap in the face.” —Luc Sante

“Monsieur Plume, the sardonic, off-beat, off-center reflection of his author, a character equally indebted to Charlie Chaplin and Franz Kafka, is back. Sieburth’s stunning translation gets all the subtle humor, all the wacky absurdity, and all the tragicomic pathos of Michaux’s original. An essential moment in absurdist aesthetics and a sheer delight to read.” —Cole SwensenHenri Michaux(1899–1984) was born in Namur, Belgium, and educated at a Jesuit school in Brussels. He contemplated entering the priesthood, turned to medicine, and then, choosing exile instead, enlisted as a seaman in the merchant marine. Michaux’s travels in the Americas and Asia
inspired his traveloguesEcuador(1929) andA Barbarian in Asia(1933), the latter soon translated by Jorge Louis Borges and Sylvia Beach. Elóˇ