The infinite merging with the finite:
the labyrinthine poetics of Henri Michaux Cover Image

L’infini s’abouchant avec le fini : Ela poétique labyrinthique d’Henri Michaux
The infinite merging with the finite: the labyrinthine poetics of Henri Michaux

Author(s): JUSTINE PRINCE
Subject(s): Poetry, French Literature, Sociology of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: Henri Michaux; labyrinth; multiplicity; wandering;

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines how the figure of the labyrinth helps us to grasp the particular writing of Henri Michaux. Based on a reading of Déplacements, dégagements, it will show how the aesthetic experience of wandering arises from compositional processes of the multiple. This double perspective, both poetic and aesthetic, allows us to grasp the specificity of labyrinthine wandering, which suggests the infinite within a structure that is however finite. It is not the absence of any signification, but the multiplication and proliferation of significant data, that produces wandering. Confronted with this multiplicity, the reader is not confined to a passive state of reception, but actively projects a trajectory in order to give meaning on all his perceptual details, even if this meaning remains unstable.

  • Issue Year: 2024
  • Issue No: 37
  • Page Range: 29-45
  • Page Count: 17
  • Language: French
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