Miserable Miracle (New York Review Books Classics)

First Sentence

IN A STATE of great uneasiness, of anxiety, of inner solemnity.The world retreating in the distance, an ever increasing distance.-Each word becoming more and more dense, too dense to be uttered from now on, word complete in itself, word in a nest, while the noise of the wood fire in the fireplace becomes the only presence, becomes important, strange and absorbing its movements...In a state of expectancy, an expectancy that becomes with each minute more pregnant, more vigilant, more indescribable, more painful to endure ...and to what point can it be endure?

Description

"This book is an exploration. By means of words, signs, drawings. Mescaline, the subject explored." In Miserable Miracle, the great French poet and artist Henri Michaux, a confirmed teetotaler, tells of his life-transforming first encounters with a powerful hallucinogenic drug. At once lacerating and weirdly funny, challenging and Chaplinesque, his book is a breathtaking vision of interior space and a piece of stunning writing wrested from the grip of the unspeakable.-- Publisher description.

Subjects