Henri Michaux : Poetry, Painting and the Universal Sign

Henri Michaux is widely recognized as a major twentieth-century French poet and painter. Although his fascination with universal languages has attracted critical attention, it has up until now been treated as a marginal concern. This study argues that Michaux's ideas on universal languages are central to an understanding of his works. - ;Henri Michaux is widely recognized as a major twentieth-century French poet and painter. Although his fascination with universal languages has attracted the attention of several of his critics, it has up until now been treated as a marginal concern. Henri Michaux: Poetry, Painting, and the Universal Sign argues that his ideas on what might constitute a universal language are central to an understanding of his works. It suggests that both his ambivalent articulation of his
relationship to the languages and literary traditions of his native Belgium and adoptive France, and his efforts simultaneously to exacerbate and subvert the differences between words and images, are rooted in Enlightenment theories of the relationship of the self to nature and its language

Rigaud-Drayton's study makes a substantial and original contribution to the study of this complex artist, exploring the intricate relationships between word and image in his poetry and paintings, and his quest for a single, unifying language or sign. - ;There is much to explore in this excellent book, not least Michaux's own exemplary investigation in and through rhetorical form of culture and ideology. - Timothy Matthews, French Studies;Margaret Rigaud-Drayton has performed and invaluable service by examining Michaux's contradictions and paradoxes ... a subtle and provocative book ... The secretive and elusive Michaux emerges from this excellent study with a much more tangible grandeur. - John Taylor, The Times Literary Supplement

Keywords: POETRY / General POE000000