214
PARTISAN REVIEW
and when I am the boat, you can well believe how I take in water all
over, and when things get desperate, be sure I become captain, I try
to display an attitude of sangfroid, but I am without hope, and
if
in
spite of everything we are saved, then I am changed into a rope and
the rope breaks and
if
a life boat is smashed right at that moment I
am all its planks, I sink and become an echinoderm that lasts no
more than a second, for, disabled in the midst of enemies of whom I
know nothing, they catch me at once, are devouring me alive with
those white and ferocious eyes that are found only under water, under
the salt sea water which makes all my wounds smart. Oh! who will
leave me be for a bit? But no,
if
I do not budge, I rot where I am,
and
if
I budge it is to undergo the blows of my enemies. I don't dare
make a move. Just then I throw myself out of joint to become part
of a grotesque mass with a defect of equilibrium which is revealed
only too soon and too clearly.
If
I always changed into animal form, and there were no help
for it, I should at last have accustomed myself, since it is always more
or less the same behavior, the same principle of action and reaction,
but I turn into things too (and even things would be bearable), but
I am such artificial and impalpable combinations. What a to-do when
I was changed into lightning! There you must be quick, I who al–
ways drag and never know how to come to a decision.
Ah! if I could only die once and for all. But no, I am always
found good for some new being and yet I only pull boners and lead
it promptly to its destruction. No matter, I am immediately given a
new one where my prodigious incapacity can prove itself anew.
And again and again, without respite. There are so many animals,
so many plants, so many minerals. And I have already been everything
so many times. But these experiments do not help me. Becoming
ammonium hydrochlorate again for the thirty-second time, I still
have a tendency to behave like arsenic, and, changed once more into
a dog, my night-bird habits always show up.
Only rarely do I see something without experiencing this very
special feeling ...
ah
yes, I have been THAT ... I don't remember
exactly. I feel it. That is why I am particularly fond of Illustrated
Encyclopedias. I turn over the leaves, I turn over the leaves and I
often find some satisfaction, for there are some pictures of several
creatures that I have not yet been. That rests me, that is delightful,
I say to myself: "I might have been this too and this and that has
been spared me." I heave a sigh of relief. Ah! a rest at last!
HENRI
MICHAUX
(Translated
by
Richard Ellman)
