[Michaux's Qui je fus] consisted of prose stories, aphorisms and poems; and contained most of the stylistic features that characterize subsequent writings:—verbal humour and ingenuity; all almost Rabelaisian gusto in using words and inventing new ones; a tone at once half-playful and profoundly serious; frequent and abrupt changes from violent direct attack, and prophetic imprecations in the biblical manner, to the deceptive tranquillity of statements pitched in a completely different key; and, in addition, an inexhaustible range of fantasy and imagination….

Most of Michaux's preoccupations, which he later develops as subjects or themes, or as an endless pattern of relationships, are also evident [in Qui je fus]: the one and the many; the slowness of speech and the rapidity of thought; immobility and metamorphosis; unusual customs and beliefs; the façade or mask, and what it conceals and reveals; the origins of things and of human beings; and, above all, the relationship between the body and its inhabitant, or rather its inhabitants. (p. 41)

Among the richness and strangeness of his literary explorations, the stories in Un Certain Plume come almost as an interruption, an interlude of light relief even, in the perpetual self-questioning and self-searching. Yet this slight work is usually singled out by critics for special and, one might say, affectionate mention; and it is as 'the author of Plume' that Michaux has become best known. This is perhaps not surprising, for he is one of the few poets who (like Baudelaire with Samuel Cramer, and Valéry with Monsieur Teste) have created a figure at once autobiographical and imaginary, personal and universal—the kind of figure that we sometimes loosely describe as legendary or mythical. In the work of Henri Michaux, Plume is the only character. In that sense he is unique, while at the same time being as representative of our own age as the dandy-hero was of the age of Baudelaire.

Plume has often been compared with Chaplin, and there are many resemblances between the two figures. It seemed indeed not unreasonable to suppose that Chaplin might even be the inspiration of Plume, for Michaux's interest in the cinema, and in particular in Chaplin's films, was intense in the years before the publication of Un Certain Plume. (p. 42)

The arrangement of [the] Plume stories cannot be compared with the 'architecture' of Les Fleurs du Mal, nor with that of the Teste cycle. They are simply a collection of stories which the author has added to, grouped, and modified so as to produce an interesting and varied sequence. And the changes Michaux made in the text show that he was mainly concerned to cut out anything explanatory, such as subtitles and epigraphs; to tone down incidents that tended to be sentimental, melodramatic or gratuitously violent; and to achieve a concrete and dynamic presentation. By elimination, compression and under-statement he made the stories not only more incisive, but also more humorous—and more sinister. In their final form they are the stories of a writer who has travelled a long way since he admired the stiff and artificial 'style rêve' of Franz Hellens's Mélusine. They are not all equally successful, but at least five are minor masterpieces that relate Michaux to Rabelais, Voltaire, Swift, Poe and Kafka.

As the name suggests, Plume is a slight, diminutive creature, a kind of anti-hero, the 'little man', the pilgrim in a materialistic and hostile world. In many of his later works Michaux shows the absurdity of life indirectly, through the kaleidoscopic pictures of his imaginary worlds; but in these stories he shows it in a more direct and realistic manner. Plume is presented as a recognizable person, with certain normal characteristics. He is a Dane, young, in perfect health, married. And he moves in a recognizable if topsy-turvy world—he travels in a train, eats in a restaurant, dances, is ill and goes to hospital.

The interest and the humour of the stories spring from incidents and situations, from Plume's adventures and misadventures, and not from his character, which neither changes nor develops. He is composed of extremes of timidity and aggression, an emotional equipment that invariably causes him to be at odds with life and to behave abnormally; and it is this that provides the grim humour, and emphasizes the terrifying contrast between the weakness of the individual and the power of society…. [Whatever] he does, whatever precautions he takes, however he behaves, whether he meticulously seeks to avoid trouble, as in Plume à Casablanca, whether he talks too much, as in Plume au restaurant, or too little, as in Un Homme Paisible, whether he acts like a Brobdingnagian or a Lilliputian, he is always at fault, always in difficulty, always apologizing. His very anxiety to do right leads him to do wrong; and his timidity, passivity and self-effacement are so extreme, or of such an unusual nature, that they too are seen as acts of aggression and provoke in others a chain of violent reactions. (pp. 43-5)

The insistence on [Plume's] courage and stoicism, which at times are even touched with hope, is important. It is generally assumed that Michaux's world is as confined, as hopeless, and as tragic as that of Kafka; but … he has also written 'pour en sortir', has repeatedly proclaimed his 'inétouffable espérance.'… (p. 45)

From a long and serious account which Michaux gave me of his life, it was clear that Plume represented many aspects of his creator's character, in particular the inability to be, or seem to be, like other people, to conform, to live 'normally'; and also the whole gamut of conflicting feelings, attitudes, and states of mind which accompany that inability and protestation. (pp. 45-6)

When I asked [Michaux] if he thought he would revive Plume (as Valéry did Teste) and write about him again, he said he thought not; for Plume … belonged to the past. He no longer needed Plume; he had evolved, and was now, he believed, a different person. This remark referred more especially to the change in himself and his writings since 1956, when he had begun to experiment with mescaline and other drugs. He seemed quietly proud of these experiments from both an aesthetic and a moral point of view. Mescaline had, after all, inspired four unusual books, Misérable Miracle, L'Infini Turbulent, Paix dans les brisements …, and Connaissance par les gouffres, and these works were, he insisted, evidence that he had carried something through to a conclusion, and that he had at last assumed full responsibility for his 'voyages en soi'.

When one recalls some of the reasons that Michaux has given for writting—to arouse, to provoke, to attack, to defend, to keep at bay the hostile forces of the world, to escape, to exorcize, to search, to find, to invent, to examine the invisible, to extend the means of self-exploration, to re-establish relationships, to be truth's musician, to encompass the whole of 'la médiocre condition humaine'—one realises that he could not long be content with anything as slight and as rigid as a 'character'. This invention of a character was in fact a warning, for it meant, as Michaux himself said, that he was perilously near to becoming a writer, a professional writer. But there were other reasons why he rejected the first and the only character he had created. When Michaux invented Plume, he was in a relatively light-hearted mood, and had begun to do something other than write about himself, his malaise or mal. He had discovered a character—a temporary refuge—and was able to amuse himself … by projecting his emotions on to Plume. But this half-real and half-imaginary figure, was at best a compromise in whom Michaux was neither fully expressed nor satisfactorily disguised. He needed a more complete escape or a more complete self-fulfilment. Plume did not serve either of these purposes, and he now belongs to the past of someone, febrile and ever-changing, who has admirably defined himself by the title of one of his first books Qui je fus. (pp. 47-8)

[The fluid, mobile attitude that Michaux's recent work expresses which has] taken him into new and uncertain realms where literature and science, pathology and psychology meet, has prevented, or perhaps saved, him from becoming attached to any literary movement or school. Declarations such as 'La volonté, mort de l'Art', and his firm allegiance to that 'copain de génie', Lautréamont, may suggest affinities with the Surrealists; but he clearly owes more to Baudelaire than to any other single writer of the last hundred years. He has not the same stature as a poet, but he has surpassed his great predecessor in one minor domain—writings inspired by drugs—for his mescaline texts are more authentic and more valuable as human and literary documents than the Paradis Artificiels…. Michaux is, in fact,… a significant and central figure, standing in much the same relationship to our nuclear 'civilisation' as Baudelaire did to the age that saw its beginnings in the Industrial Revolution. (p. 48)