A Barbarian in Asia
Language: English
Pages: 198
ISBN: 0811222136
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A wild journey to the East narrated by a writer who is “without equal in the literature of our time” (Jorge Luis Borges)
Henri Michaux (1899–1984), the great French poet and painter, set out as a young man to see the Far East. Traveling from India to the Himalayas, and on to China and Japan, Michaux voices his vivid impressions, cutting opinions, and curious insights: he has no trouble speaking his mind. Part fanciful travelogue and part exploration of culture, A Barbarian in Asia is presented here in its original translation by Sylvia Beach, the famous American-born bookseller in Paris.
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Half dozen love postures of which I had had a very hazy notion up till then. These statues are placed in evidence right on the exterior; the child who does not understand has only to ask the meaning, but it is usually obvious. All actions are sacred. One thinks of them without being detached from the All. The sexual act, even these very European words themselves, are already sins, infection, beastliness, human mechanism. The Hindu is never apart from his sexual organ;7it is one of the centers.
Psychic science as to seek the ecstatic union by means of the Moslem, Christian, Buddhist, etc., technique. ‘And he succeeds in doing so.’ A man traveling for the first time in India, with not much time to spare, should be very careful not to spend it on the railway. Twelve thousand kilometers are not unusual—nor are they obligatory. He will regret that the intellectuals from whom he might get some excellent information live in the cities, he will regret it, but he will not linger there. And.
Monkey is restful for the horse. As for the monkey, it would be glad to spend a quiet night. (A monkey who sleeps among its own kind is always on the qui vive.) Thus, one monkey is more enlivening for the horse than ten or so horses. If one only knew what the horse thinks of the monkey at this moment, quite probably it would say: ‘Ah . . . dear me, I’m not so sure.’ Knowledge does not progress with time. Differences are overlooked. You compromise. You come to an understanding. And you cease to.
Full of drunkards. They zigzag everywhere in the street. The Burmese, at the age of four, smoke already, little girls as well as little boys, and not cigarettes, but big, dirty, strong cigars, ‘cheroots.’ The Indo-Chinese take opium. The Koreans take opium and morphine. The Chinese and the Japanese are fond of toys, of the artificial, of well-being, of lanterns, of artificial lighting, of dwarf or cardboard trees. They are nocturnal. Their cities are alive at night. He has the peace that.
Absolutely bare interiors sometimes there is a great red ewer, like a patriarch enthroned. The Chinese characters on Japanese posters are thin, drawn with fine strokes. On the Chinese posters, the characters are pot-bellied, real tumblers, like a hippopotamus’ bottom, and stand crushed down one on top of another, with a burlesque, heavy self-assurance, like the gravest and the most disturbing notes of the double-bass. No city has gates as massive as those of Pekin. You must really get it into.