Review: 'Miserable Miracle' by Henri Michaux

Originally published in France in 1956 'Miserable Miracle' by Henri Michaux explores the author/artist's experiences with mescaline; an hallucinogenic drug originally derived from the Peyote cactus. Translated into English in 1963 by Louise Varese, this review has been written from the 2002 New York Review of Books edition and contains an introduction by Octavio Paz and includes addenda.

Henri Michaux (1899-1984) was a writer and artist born in Namur, Belgium. He traveled widely, through the Americas, Africa and Asia before settling in Paris, France. After the freak death of his wife in 1948 he began devoting himself to ink calligraphy drawings and, at regular intervals, he began taking mescaline.

During the post-war years, before the popularization of LSD, mescaline was being used as an experimental drug in clinical, artistic and intellectual circles. Its use spawned several literary explorations, most notably Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, a book that Michaux had already read before embarking on the publication his own book Miserable Miracle. He wrote three books about the mescaline experience of which this offering was the first.