Henri Michaux's early publications reveal the same concerns of his later works: problems of communication, the absurdity of the self as a single unit, the subconscious as a means of knowledge, psychoanalysis, the deformation of shapes, the mechanism of things, the exploration of the fantastic to explain the everyday. His first work, Les Rêves et la jambe (Dreams and the Leg, 1923), deals with incommunicability and physical fragmentation…. The dream [as he maintained in this first work], because it disorients and distorts the conscious real, gives value to the experience of the conscious, a value that would in all probability have remained undiscovered except through the instrument of the subconscious, here the dream.

While this fascination with the dream and the subconscious may seem to border on Surrealism, Michaux does not share the Surrealist interest in the processes of the subconscious. On the contrary, he views the dream as a means of access to a terrain of man's existence: inner space which alone can explain—deductively and logically—how a self, a personality, is born and gains meaning. At no time does Michaux fully give himself over to the subconscious, just as he never adopts Surrealist practices such as automatic writing and dream recitation. For Michaux, the dream has a purpose; its utility lies in the experience of awakening…. Disengagement of the familiar—the leg, for example—and loss of shape are hallmarks of Michaux's repudiation of the world of reproduction; and, by 1923, his fascination with the problem of man's formation and subsequent formulation was established. (pp. 21-2)

Qui je fus (Who I Was, 1927) contains in germ form the various artistic adventures which Michaux has undertaken. In this volume of prose and free verse, he openly declares his war on form, externalizes inner conflicts, and confronts the problem of formation. As the title indicates, Qui je fus is the autobiography of a poet; for Michaux's first terrain of exploration is always the self. (p. 24)

Of especial interest in the poems of Qui je fus is Michaux's continued refusal to engage in anecdote. Anecdote implies agreement, decoration, submission, and habit; it is serious, devoid even of the emotion of dispute. Emotion is clearly Michaux's chosen terrain. To this end, spoofing, satire, words of motion and change, imaginary people and places, fantasy, whimsy, and other active modalities alter exterior signs which are easily recognized and accepted by the intellect in an effort to free the internal reaction. (p. 27)

With La Nuit remue [Night on the Move, 1935], Michaux's pattern of juxtaposing prose narratives with texts generically labeled "poems" is firmly established. Moreover, the section designated as "poems" is in quantitative terms smaller than the preceding prose renditions, while qualitatively the poems are summary capsules which contain the full impact of the potential suggested in the prose explorations. The prose texts pose various possibilities, while the poems demonstrate their realization. This distinction between formal prose and poetry continues to characterize Michaux's work. Night or potential—regardless of the written collection in question—stirs up poems. The unformed prose (unformed as unclassifiable except as opposed to a basic visual form called poetry) awakens the inner self and prepares the self for the onslaught of light. Poetry becomes the specific result of these inner activities, for it reacts against the mechanical, oppressive day. Prose, on the other hand, is nocturnal in its anticipation of means to counter the prevailing diurnal order, but poetry is what is agitated within at night in order to maintain the inner terrain of the self during the daytime of limitation, localization, and multiplicity.

Hence, the Michaux poem is a text of the inner self projected outward. It scorns and defies outer space, as it refuses to imitate the real and rejects all concepts of commitment to the real. Michaux's poetry is consistently identified by him as poetry. Consequently, the reader has no trouble recognizing stylistically and generically, even descriptively, the Michaux poem. The Michaux poem is diurnal; it has shape, prescribed limits, demonstrates awareness, and is mulitple in that it is either in free verse (in the widest sense of the term) or in prose. On the other hand, Michaux's prose cannot be described; it is night, and, as night, it is formless because it assumes all forms and all potentiality of form.

In one sense, Michaux's separation of prose and poetry goes counter to contemporary writing which tends to fuse genres and which claims that all writing is a poetic, unformed compository and repository of the best of human creativity. Such a concept of the role of poetry in the modern world is, indeed, alien to Michaux's universe of inversion which repudiates confrontation with the real, but which at the same time finds no salvation in the imagination. If anything, Michaux is a poet-actor, never a poet-spectator, who uses the imagination as a means to discover the attitude of offensive action which makes diurnal (or real) existence bearable. He never pretends to ennoble or even better the human condition. His sole effort is directed towards resistance and self-protection. Only the unformed night or prose can arm man sufficiently to oppose the spectacle of day. (pp. 47-8)

The need to establish and recognize a true base is clearly presented in several texts [of La Nuit remue], which describe and interpret the significance of some pencil drawings made earlier. This text represents Michaux's earliest known example of writing on his own plastic art as a means to reveal the inner self countering the real. None of the sketches evoked can be said to be authentic reproductions of outer space…. But each sketch is a form of intervention through the imagination. (pp. 49-50)

Every text since 1923 is in some way directed towards the liberation of the pure self and the expression of its outward projection. Consequently, all forms—verbal and visual, written and painted—abound in his work. The usage of multiple modes of expression is inherent to Michaux's view of the multiplicity of man; there is no set definition of man, just as there is no set definition of what constitutes a text. While Michaux's adoption of every form of expression may indeed give rise to his being labeled a practitioner of non-generic writing and a destroyer of form, such a description tends to ignore the actual structural pattern which his non-generic technique creates. All modes, written and plastic, are not merely part and parcel of the Michaux universe; they are the Michaux universe, a universe which denies referentials and creates energy where there was no energy….

Energy is the power of self-generation of the space within. The invention of energy is what constitutes and defines art for Michaux…. His written and plastic experiments deliberately incorporate elements from known forms of expression (prose poem, verse poem, fable, story, diary, essay, aphorism, dialogue, sketch, portrait, water color, landscapes) in order to displace representative forms, to permit the birth of form, to create energy—art. (p. 76)

For Michaux, the creation of energy, its release, and the generation of motion in the space within are evidence of life itself. In his post-war works,… Michaux continues to exorcize the stagnation of outer reality with a vocabulary of change, movement, speed, circulation, power, provocation, mutation, expulsion: motion. Whereas up to the end of the war his work is dominated primarily by visual and auditory imagery, after the war his texts increase in motile images. The concentration of active words on the one hand produces texts which aggressively attack the situation of outer space in a release (exorcism) of inner dynamism. These verbal attacks are further marked by terms of negativity and dissolution…. On the other hand, the matter-of-fact tone which accompanies these combative terms gives a detached quality to Michaux's war on the paralysis of reality. His injection of invective is countered by his objective direction of rage…. The attack on the structure of the real does not create confusion. On the contrary, it eliminates disorder by uncovering the unity of inner terrain. Life is, indeed, in folds which must be straightened out (La Vie dans les plis) [Life in Folds, 1949], just as facing bolts and locks to the inner domain (Face aux verrous) [Facing the Locks, 1954] provoke the need for ways to open them, and the revolt against the hostile situation (Quatre Cents Hommes en croix) [Four Hundred Men on the Cross, 1956] leads to the counter-anger of resistance. It is not being which is the focal point of Michaux's work, but the passages of being.

The five major sections of La Vie dans les plis are characterized by passage, not by a movement from one given point to another, but actual movement itself. The plis are constantly yielding to the force of energy in an on-going disclosure of the elasticity of inner space. Unfolding the difficulties of the outer situation eliminates the "pleats" or "wrinkles" caused by the real world and reveals in their place the harmony of inner terrain. Michaux's very choice of the term plis reflects the plasticity which he finds to be the salient characteristic of man's essence. Plis does not refer to flexible objects, but, paradoxically, it is a flexible term, which can be applied to physiological traits (wrinkles, the bend of an arm, the hollow of a leg), to the physical condition of inanimate things (folds, marks from a pleat), to geological features (underground undulation), even to performance (tricks in cardgames); in addition, plis can be used to indicate a protected covering or an obstacle, and it can also be an independent object: a letter or an envelope. All these meanings can be applied to Michaux's La Vie dans les plis, for it is the all-inclusiveness of the term, as its appearance in the plural further suggests, which reveals man's ability to respond to the situation, master it, and ultimately refuse it. (pp. 93-4)

Michaux finds that the oppressiveness of outer space lies in its structure of fixed forms, which so dictate man's acts, thoughts, and language, that they affect man's very essence. But refusal to accept the structure of the real and its inherent stasis is only the first step in opening the locks to the inner self, which consists of on-going passages of involuntary, albeit frequently conflicting, impulses, desires, and appetites. The movements within represent man's power to effect change; his multiformity and fluctuating instincts contradict the conformity of his environment. These inner gestures of the unformed (multiform) are the responses of natural energy which function in the world.

Facing the locks of form in Face aux verrous, Michaux turns to what he describes as "écriture directe" ("direct writing"): words themselves are locks, fixed by others in outer space for external confrontation. According to Michaux in his 1951 postface to Mouvements, words are fixed thoughts and reflect the architecture of the irritating situation. It is not sufficient to unstructure the situation, unless at the same time certain approaches to the situation—thoughts, words—are also eliminated. Consequently, he initiates a new language of new signs. (pp. 98-9)

It is significant that Michaux purposefully violates his chronology of composition and publication by placing Mouvements at the beginning of the [twelve-part Face aux verrous] in order to emphasize thinking in signs as the way to overcome obstacles (verrous) to the space within. It is also important to note that the original publication of Mouvements marks simultaneously a decrease in Michaux's poetic productivity and an increase in his interest in painting. (p. 99)

Mouvements is, perhaps, Michaux's most inclusive work in terms of generic expression. Its composition is multiform: sixty-four pages of "taches" ("ink blots"), seven pages of a free verse poem, and a two-page postface. Moreover, it has two companion pieces. The first is the 1954 essay, "Signes," in which Michaux places Mouvements in the perspective of his own search for a new language; the second is a work of art, Par la voie des rythmes (Along the Path of Rhythm, 1974), which is entirely wordless, yet not wholly a work of painting. In fact, the "toile-poème" which Mouvements inaugurates finds its fullest expression in Par la voie des rythmes, which is composed solely of the signs ("taches") which conquer the inadequacy of language. (pp. 99-100)

One of the frustrating aspects of Michaux's years of drug experimentation is his recognition of a dependency factor. Even years later, he is not free from the effects of drugs…. Access to a glimpse of the Absolute is tarnished by the need for an external stimulant, which reduces self-mastery. Yet effective dispersal of self-consciousness under the influence of drugs does reveal a dynamic inner space which counteracts external situations. Cognizant of man's history of fascination with dreams as a means of transforming his relationship with the world, Michaux undertakes an exploration of dreams as a possible terrain for responding to outer space exigencies. Written with the same detached scientific style which characterizes his drug texts, Michaux's dream studies … offer a dispassionate analysis of the various categories of dreams. But, unlike his drug texts, the opening pages of this work are marked by skepticism as to the subject matter at hand. Admitting his own reluctance to relate and explain his dreams, Michaux confesses that it is the optical quality of the dream experience that leads him to undertake such an examination. In other words, Michaux informs his reader quickly and from the outset that there are no possible affinities with the Surrealist attitude towards dreams. (pp. 122-23)

For Michaux, the dream world is dependent upon the affective memory of the dreamer…. While dreams may be revelatory, they do not offer any new discoveries, a conclusion already drawn from the drug experiences…. [He fails] to discern any creative possibility in dreams: the images tend to be prosaic because they are directly related to regular images in his own life. On the other hand, he is struck by the magical rhythm which characterizes daydreams … and, in contrast, reinforces the mediocrity of his dreams and their lack of movement.

Dreams reflect the ordinary events of daily life. While they may change the order of the events and even confuse them, they remain part of the order of the material real world. (p. 124)

[In his] prose study, Face à ce qui se dérobe (Facing What is Disappearing, 1975), Michaux returns to the problem of referential structures which so characterize outer space that they tend to modify inner space. Because this work is based on the same displacement-replacement pattern which identifies Emergences-Résurgences, Face à ce qui se dérobe may be said to represent a résumé of Michaux's written passage from rupture to reassembly. (p. 130)

[In that work, contemplation] emerges as the final ring in Michaux's spiral…. By facing what is disappearing (limits, forms, recognizable shapes), Michaux also suggests what is appearing, for exorcism of the parts does not destroy; it displaces and rearranges them. The final return to base is the regaining of self-sovereignty, the ultimate Michaux destination in his artistic adventure. While perhaps only the design of the mandala adequately expresses the experience of the absolute, nevertheless, Michaux's work captures through a continuous pattern of disintegration and reintegration the substance of life in all its forms. The design of destiny is the contemplation of human expression of self in all its possibilities: prose, painting, poetry. (pp. 132-33)