Connaissance par les gouffres

FIRST EDITION. One of 66 numbered copies on Lafuma-Navarre pure rag paper, the second paper after 21 copies on Van Gelder Holland wove paper.

How is consciousness transformed by drugs? Henri Michaux explored this methodically, providing a description that would be confirmed and explained by neuroscientists forty years later. H. Michaux is neither a hippie nor a revolutionary, nor is he a tortured poet or a cursed artist, much less a drug addict. He even claimed to drink only water... He did not start taking drugs until the age of 55, for scientific research purposes and initially under strict medical supervision. Doses were always scrupulously chosen to maintain control over the experience and an observational capacity that would not dissolve into total confusion and madness. This experimental approach is at the heart of Connaissance par les gouffres (1961), a disconcerting and ambitious work intended to be at once a diary, a scientific treatise, a psychiatric case study, and, of course, a poetic work.