Ideograms in China
1975
First Published
3.82
Average Rating
56
Number of Pages
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.
Avg Rating
3.82
Number of Ratings
121
5 STARS
25%
4 STARS
41%
3 STARS
26%
2 STARS
6%
1 STARS
2%
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Author
Henri Michaux
Author · 16 books
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.
