Michael Eales

Dreams Like Enigmatic Paintings Michael Eales

Henri Michaux, Belgian poet, writer and painter, finally published his Dreams Like Enigmatic Paintings (En revant a partir de peintures eigmatiques) in 1972. The text is a series of dreamscapes which came to him having seen a few of Magritte's paintings. It is not an interpretation of Magritte, but a logical continuation of Michaux's own work in poetic form. Michaux's style of writing has the intimacy of a dream journal, and yet the distance of a chronicler of dislocation. He is not comfortable to read, not only in the form of his writing, but also in the psychotic edginess of his narrative. I have tried to maintain this balance in my translation, avoiding the temptation to save the reader from undue ease. Michael Eales has an MA in Literary Translation