168 - Henri MICHAUX. Ritaline. Paris, Sunday, August 24 [1958].

Henri MICHAUX. Ritaline. Paris, Sunday, August 24 [1958]. Autograph manuscript in pencil, 8 pages in-8 (21 x 13.4 cm) mounted on tabs and bound in a single volume in brown half-maroquin in the Bradel style, with a slipcase (Atelier Laurenchet). Important autograph manuscript. Written in an evidently disjointed and telegraphic style, these pages were produced under the influence of two doses of Ritalin, the first at 5:40 p.m. and the second half an hour later. For several hours, Michaux observed himself and noted the changes in his physical and mental perceptions. Some words and passages have been crossed out or underlined in colored pencil. The first word is “enthusiasm,” a term that recurs several times, and many of the notes concern spatial sensations (“I had arrived where there are no limits at the crossroads of time/moment—space”), physical sensations (regarding the color of the water), or mental ones (“the shame of having thought so small,” “to contemplate is to be assimilated”). Michaux evokes a purification of himself, of the “filth” and “trifles” of his memory, “without compromise, without comparison, without being chosen, as if I had been chosen / without surface, without witness / without peelings”… On the last page, underlined in red and blue pencil: “pure, free from alteration.” In the 1950s and 1960s, Henri Michaux experimented with the effects of various psychotropic substances, including mescaline, as well as psychostimulants such as Ritalin, the brand name for methylphenidate. Unlike mescaline, which can cause visions and hallucinations, the active ingredient in methylphenidate stimulates the central nervous system and affects attention span.