Henri Michaux, Richard Sieburth (translator) · 1930 · EPUB · Calibre ID 5489
Resurfaced in The Averaged Self (2026-09-27).
Role in the triad
The machine run backwards: a particular who never becomes universal; the name thins into initials and the author declares the self an averaged persona.
Why this book
The indefinite title stages the particular/universal problem; plume = pen, the writing tool personified, which then took over its author (‘Votre Plume’); the 1938 Postface (‘An averaged “self,” a crowd movement’) inverts Breen’s persona machine.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “Extending his hands from his bed, Plume was astonished not to feel the wall: “Well, he concluded, the ants must have eaten it away…” And he went back to sleep.” (I, A Peaceable Man)
- “Of the two it is always the object who’s in charge.” (XIII, Buddha)
- “He who is firm is a man. But he who is soft is without limits. He takes on every form, he is born everywhere. Truth be told, he’s the Buddha.” (XIII, Buddha)
- “Misfortune, my great plowman.” (XXX, At Rest in Misfortune)
- “There is no single self. There are not ten selves. There is no self. SELF is but a point of equilibrium. … An averaged ‘self,’ a crowd movement. In the name of the many, I sign this book.” (Postface, 1938)
- “not imposing enough or universal enough to assume outright allegorical significance” (Sieburth, Afterword)
Themes
absurd · Chaplin · heteronym · Kafka · names and initials · nominalism · pen/feather · personification · self as crowd