Simon Leys - The Hall of Uselessness - Collected Essays

The answer to the puzzle was revealed to me only many years later, when the first volume of Michaux’s complete works came out in a Pléiade edition. There I learnt that from 1963 to 1972 Michaux had worked on a reissue of all the works he had published with Gallimard; and that with this in mind he had undertaken to revise, correct and rewrite a number of his old texts. This vast revision was disastrous overall (we shall see why in a moment) — but, alas, this was the version that the Pléiade editors chose to follow blindly[5] — forgetting, apparently, that the first duty of a literary editor is to exercise critical judgement, and that the first duty of a critic is sometimes (as D.H. Lawrence said) to keep a work out of the hands of its creator.[6]

The phenomenon of writers of genius who, late in life, cease to understand their own greatest achievements, who disavow and distort their own work, or set about recasting and mutilating it, is certainly alarming, but it is by no means unusual. Had his death not supervened, Gogol would have utterly ruined his Dead Souls by adding a frightful second part in the shape of a moral sermon. Tolstoy in his old age judged that he had been guilty of wasting his time writing a frivolous novel such as Anna Karenina , and that he would have been better employed producing religious propaganda. At the end his life, Henry James undertook to rewrite a number of his novels for a new edition of his complete works; a certain tortured verbosity which is often thought to typify his style is in reality the result of this late and unfortunate revision, which at the time elicited a horrified reaction from the New York critics: “One wishes Mr. James would demonstrate more respect for the classics, not least those that came from his own pen.” And Conrad, suffering in the twilight of his days from a veritable paralysis of the imagination, renounced the rich ambiguity of the great novels of his maturity. Even the creators of comic books may fall victim to this deplorable revisionitis: Hergé redrew all the Tintin s of the early part of his career, and in so doing killed all the verve and spice that had infused the graphics of the original plates.[7]

The greater a work’s originality and perfection, the greater its vulnerability to the risk of later ill treatment at the hands its creator. An inspired work is one which has by its very definition escaped its author; this creates the danger that the author will want to recapture it and strive maladroitly to regain control over it. No artist dwells on a par with his finest creations, and this gap can become a source of perplexity and hostility in him. It is not surprising, therefore, that in Michaux’s case it was A Barbarian in Asia —his masterpiece — that was the most cruelly manhandled by his revisions.

Michaux’s struggles with his rebellious child prodigy were initiated rather early. Discomfort was already apparent in the author’s new preface of 1945: “Twelve years now separate me from this voyage. It is there. I am here. .. It cannot be developed. Nor can it be corrected.”

In point of fact, however, Michaux was itching to correct it! His preface to the American edition (New York: New Directions, 1949) did not bode well. Although stupidity was never his strong suit, he was led to say stupid things. He bleated edifying platitudes quite beside the point: “Man needs a vast far-sighted aim, extending beyond his lifetime. A training rather than a hindrance for the coming planetary civilisation. To avoid war — construct peace.” Blah, blah, blah. (One is reminded of Chaplin, who, having had the genius to make The Great Dictator , felt the need to attach to it a long schmaltzy sermon addressed to every belle âme on the planet.) Finally, in the new edition of 1967, thirty-five years after Barbarian was written, Michaux could restrain himself no longer: this time he would take on the text itself and fix it once and for all. He began by writing a new preface in which he apologised for ever perpetrating such a work, one that “embarrassed and offended” him, that made him ashamed.

He would have liked, he went on, as a “counterweight,” to introduce elements that were “more serious, more thoughtful, more profound, more experienced, more educated.” But (thank the Lord!) the book put up a resistance. So what could be done? First of all, cut — cut more or less everywhere, removing all those disrespectful passages that Michaux now found shocking and intolerable. Later, in the wake of a last visit to Japan, Michaux edulcorated Barbarian even further for the new edition of 1989. For want of space, let me cite just a few samples of this self-censorship — instances chosen completely at random (I have signalled deleted matter by means of italics)[8]:

… Hindu religion [is] double-faced, one for the initiated, the other for fools. Humility is certainly a quality of the highest order; but not degradation.

The Hindu is often ugly, with an ugliness that is vicious and poor.

In France you tell dirty jokes and you laugh at them. Here [in India] you tell them, you absorb them without laughing. You follow them dreamily. You visualise the interplay of organs.

[The literature of] the Chinese which is almost devoid of heartbreak poetry, of complaint, has no charm whatsoever for the European, excepting a hundred or so librarians, who by dint of reading know nothing whatsoever about anything.

A Chinese general who does his business in his trousers, who begs the colonel to take his place in the battle, surprises no one. No one calls for his trousers to be displayed. Everyone thinks this quite natural. One day I saw five officers who were swearing to exterminate I don’t remember whom. They looked like rabbits.

[The Chinese: ] An old, old childish people that does not want to know what is at the bottom of anything, that has no principles, but “cases”; no law, but “cases”; no morals, but “cases.”

A Chinese prostitute is less obviously sensual than a European mother of a family. She immediately shows affection. She seeks to attach herself.

[In Japan] The men are ugly , without sparkle — they are sad, wasted and dry… The look of very little men, petty clerks without a future, of corporals, subordinates , servants of Baron X or of Mr. Z or of the papaland… little pig eyes and decayed teeth. The women… are stocky, short, for the most part solid, and all flank from leg to shoulder. The face is sometimes pleasant , but the pleasantness lacks purpose and emotion; the head is always so big, big with what? With emptiness? Why such a big head, for such a small face and still less expressiveness ?… The same in character as in appearance: a great indifferent, insensitive blanket, but a trifle touchy and sentimental (like soldiers) , laughing in little wild bursts like a servant girl . ..

A religion of insects, exactly the religion of ants, Shintoism with its famous cult of the anthill, an ant people .

[Japan is] a country… where a young girl who is not very rich is normally sold to a brothel keeper, to serve the multitude (as far as they have individuality!) Service, always service!

In the censored and rewritten version of 1989, Michaux felt it necessary to add a special note of apology at the beginning of the chapter on Japan, asking that he be forgiven for certain pages that he read “with embarrassment, even stupefaction in places. Half a century has elapsed, and the portrait is unrecognisable.” (In point of fact they were droll and glaringly true to life!) Michaux ends this preliminary note on a tone that is soothing and sycophantic, not to say insufferably priggish and patronising: “The Japan of that time, with its cramped, suspicious and tense feel, has been surpassed. It is clear that, at the far end of the earth, Europe has now found a neighbour.”