The block of [Henri Michaux's] works written under the influence of drugs and usually referred to as the "mescaline cycle" is composed of five works. Misérable miracle (1956) represents Michaux's "first knowledge as an observer" … and consequently recounts the learning experience of a neophyte who successfully attempts to maintain an intellectual distance from the matter which he is studying. He carefully analyzes after the fact the effects of mescaline and attempts to give an approximation of the actual experience by typographical devices and by the reproduction of samples of the handwritten notes and designs which he composed in the state of intoxication. In L'Infini turbulent (1957) this distance is lessened; the result is a depiction of the initiatory stage in which the poet prepares himself, "like a priest," for the encounter with infinity, the "Great Whirlwind."… These two works then are primarily discursive and descriptive. Paix dans les brisements...