Ideograms in China

by Henri Michaux, Gustaf Sobin (Translator), Richard Sieburth (Afterword)

Previously available only as a limited editon, Henri Michaux's Ideograms in China is now available as a New Directions paperback. Peerlessly translated by the American poet Gustaf Sobin, this long, beautifully illustrated and annotated prose poem was originally written as an introduction to Leon Chang's La calligraphie chinoise (1971), a work that now stands as an important complement to Pound and Ernest Fenollosa's classic study, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. Allen Ginsberg called Michaux a genius, and Jorge Luis Borges said that his work is without equal in the literature of our time. Henri Michaux (1899-1984) wrote  Ideograms in China  as an introduction to Leon Chang’s  La calligraphie chinoise  (1971), a work that now stands as an important complement to Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa’s classic study,  The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry . Previously available only as a limited edition,  Ideograms in China  is a long, gorgeously illustrated and annotated prose poem containing a very deep consideration of the world’s oldest living language. Poet Gustaf Sobin’s luminous English version beautifully captures the astounding and strange French original. For Michaux, the Chinese culture ranked as the world’s richest, a culture grounded in its written language, which bound China together through three millennia and across its enormous territories.  Ideograms in China  presents an oblique history of that culture through the changing variety and beauty of the Michaux looks into a dozen scripts––from ancient bronze vessels bearing ku-wen script to running script to standard  k’ai-shu  characters––and the poem carries the rhythms of someone discovering the soul of a civilization in its impression of ink on paper.

Includes "Signs in Action: Michaux/Pound" by Richard Sieburth as an afterword.

Genres: Poetry, China, Essays, France, Art, French Literature

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Henri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian poet, writer and painter who wrote in the French language. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism. Michaux travelled widely, tried his hand at several careers, and experimented with drugs, the latter resulting in two of his most intriguing works, Miserable Miracle and The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones.

Reviews

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Pisanje mora imati vrlinu krepljenja. Ono je vođenje." (35)

Ne morate imati Bartovo Zadovoljstvo u tekstu / Varijacije o pismu, da bi ovo hvale vredno Mišoovo delce doprlo do vas. Premda bi prvi pogled dao drukčiji utisak, ponajmanje je ovde reči o radosti susreta sa drugom, dalekom civilizacijom, već je posredi jedna neobična himna pismu kao nezamenljivom posredniku komunikacije, ali i kao komunikaciji po sebi. Sve to uz jednu zanimljivu okolnost - vrlinu neznanja. Mišo je pokazao kako često samo iz distance možemo imati određene uvide; oni koji znaju kineske ideograme, neće moći da dožive njihovu likovnost na isti način kao osobe sa strane. S tim u vezi, zanima me drugi pogled, koji sigurno postoji, samo nisam pronašao primer: kako bi kineski pisac gledao na druga pisma? Da li mu latinica deluje kao pirinač ili kao mrvice posle ručka ili kao sumnjive, nerazvijene kukice? Ne znam. Moja perspektiva ne može do toga da doskoči, ali želja je tu.

[Mariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every language is a parallel universe.

He sees a story that is its own bedtime. Ask footprints, a mutually repeating thumbprint. Aliving language. Time when their spoolers intended a new from their birth. But then the seeing land and land seen is covered by instinct of one recollecting without other. If you were there when it went down. If you could see one without you could keep them together uncrushed. But now it is time for self-absorption, back to invention. It's working, a contagion. Cast off secret cloaks and put on.... They outlive you. They won't wait for the cockroaches to scurry over your leftovers, to build shrine books on bones and crumbs. Back to life themselves, without you and with them. With you and without them, cockroaches before light. What they had meant always. clustered that they might end in ideas or unravel as poetry.

The hand should be empty, should in no way hinder what's flowing into it. Should be ready for the least sensation as well as the most violent. A bearer of influx, of effluvia.

I want this what he writes of a calligrapher as a landscape painter.
I don't care if he is right. I half assed learning some kanji a long time ago. I didn't try hard enough to forget the work as a dancer would spite their sweat and tears. Yours now free. It seems right to me the flowing of strokes, though, in my uncomprehending vision. Syllable composing. But learning cursive as a child thrilled me too. My hands would not keep up with my brain, whatever the ink scars said. I would watch foreign films and Liv Ullmann's Swedish would be as familiar to me as someone I'd learned their clues. Lots and lots of movies. My favorite part of Michaux's A Barbarian in Asia is when he's describing their speech as he would music. What if you lived by a river's rushing long enough to imagine their tears or rain. It didn't do anything to stop me from trying on Gong Li's laugh on my own face to see if I believed it was true that their laughter didn't mean what it is said that it means to me. I feel like this is the kind of it's really cool anyway and the what ifs doesn't take away. Michaux has other books I haven't got yet. But it looks like ideogram people. Could be cave men; nerds candies thinking out of the box; flies find out what would it would be like to trade places with butterflies pinned under glass. Phonetic motions.

Included is an essay by Richard Sieburth "Signs In Action: Michaux/Pound". I was happy about this because I was intrigued by Ezra Pound's belief in ideogram meanings since reading ABCS of Reading a couple of years ago. Pound and Ernest Fenollosa believe in a moving picture. I get the appeal in two signs together not making a third but a suggestion of what is between them. A tree a tree, a husk a husk. I don't want the "metaphor on its face" but that wasn't what I took out of what I read. When I look at pictures that suggest relations it is when my savage fork make spoon feeding goes ..... and silence poetry is what I call it (just now. Don't want to call it anything). I don't know about Chinese characters as the pictures at all. (When I was a kid I loved M the best. Sesame Street was the best show ever. Every letter meant a lot of things. Near and far.) Theories don't stick with me. I read once that dyslexics in English might not be dyslexic in Chinese. Nabokov heard words in colors and songs that not everybody could hear without him. When I don't have my glasses on I will see the E at the top and none of the symbols lined in obscurity on the bottom. They can become like that dance you forgot was work. I am attracted to Michaux's calligraphers tracing in behind the calm stroke their crescent hearts. I don't know at all that I'd see it too. I don't know I wouldn't have to go out of body experience from the words to find out what is between.

[Ozge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wang Wei, yağmur ve karın dalgalanmasını keşfetmiştir. Su=kopma imgesi, biçimden yoksun. Kaligraf da yeryüzünün tuzu.

[Mehmet · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Yazı yazma isteği uyandıran kitaplar listesi" yapılsa "Çin’de İdeogramlar" ilk sıralarda yerini bulur. Kim bilir kaçıncı okuyuşum. Üstelik bu kitaba doyamamışım ki yedeğini de almışım. Yazının en iyi dostu kâğıt, kâğıdın hakkını veren yayıncı da Norgunk.

[susan haris · Rating 3 out of 5]

"To abstract means to free oneself, to come disentangled". Enjoyed reading this short poem and the accompanying essay that connects Pound and Michaux. According to them, every language is a parallel universe and calligraphy is an amplification. It sounds like it could be making the language out to be exotic but actually it is all very convincing.

[SirriCan · Rating 3 out of 5]

teoride desen zehir gibi pratik dersen sallanmakta
bazen ben hümanistim diyor bazen rasyonalist oluyor
değişik bir psikoloji bir felsefe ideografi
ideog, ideog, ideografi.

[EIJANDOLUM]

“Vibrant certainty
its touch so fine, making a sign
peak, abyss on the same line.”

[Victor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Text & translation is a 5, afterword a 3. The book is short so I split the difference.

[James Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an interesting little poem/essay that seems like it could only be written by a French Modernist. Michaux explores the idea and progression of the Chinese character in poetic prose that at times turns into stark verse. Read in conjunction with Fenellosa/Pound's The Chinese Written Character As A Medium for Poetry (and in fact, one of Pound's final acts was an attempt at translating Michaux's text) this tiny gem brings the poetry of the ideogram into full focus. Sobin's translation is brilliant and swift, and the afterword by Richard Sieburth is illuminating.

[Myhte]

All contact cut, now, with the beginnings.


There was a time, however, when the signs still spoke, or nearly; when, already allusive, they revealed - rather than simple things or bodies or materials - groups, ensembles, situations.

What won out was the pleasure of remaining concealed. Thus the text, henceforth, covert, secret: a secret between initiates.

full of moons and full of hearts, full of doors, full of men who bow, who withdraw, grow angry, and make amends.


another destiny awaited the chinese...

[reading woman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A semiotic and deeply poetical exploration of Chinese calligraphy--absolutely sublime!

[João Moura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michaux era um gajo com tanta imaginação e pinta que até tornava o mandarim e a caligrafia assim numa coisa para o interessante, antes de se fechar o dia e ir dormir...