René Char

René Char (June 14, 1907 – February 19, 1988) was a 20th century French poet.

Biography

Born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, he died in 1988, in Paris. In 1929 he met André Breton and Paul Éluard and joined the surrealist group but distanced himself gradually from the mid 1930s on.Char joined the Résistance in 1940. He wrote about these events in his prose poems "Feuillets d'Hypnos" in an extraordinary manner. In the 1960s he joined the battle against the stationing of Atomic weapons in Provence.

Better known works

* "Arsenal" (1929).
* "Ralentir Travaux" (1930 - in collaboration with André Breton and Paul Eluard).
* "Artine" (1930).
* "L'action de la justice est éteinte (1931).
* "Le marteau sans maître" (1934).
* "Moulin Premier" (1936).
* "Placard pour un chemin des écoliers" (1937).
* "Dehors la nuit est gouvernée" (1938).
* "Seuls demeurent" (1943).
* "le Poème pulvérisé" (1945).
* "Feuillets d'Hypnos" (1946).
* "Fureur et mystère" (1948).
* "Les Matinaux" (1950).
* "A une sérénité crispée" (1951).
* "Recherche de la base et du sommet" (1955).
* "La Parole en archipel" (1962).
* "Dans la pluie giboyeuse" (1968).
* "Le Nu perdu" (1971).
* "Aromates chasseurs" (1976).
* "Chants de la Balandrane" (1977).
* "Fenêtres dormantes et porte sur le toit" (1979).
* "Les voisinages de Van Gogh" (1985).
* "Éloge d'une soupçonnée" (1988).

Char's "Œuvres complètes" were published in the prestigious "Bibliothèque de la Pléiade", Gallimard, in 1983 with an introduction by Jean Roudaut. An augmented posthumous re-edition appeared in 1995.

Trivia

Among the poets to translate his hermetic works into English are included William Carlos Williams, Samuel Beckett, Richard Wilbur, James Wright, John Ashberry, W.S. Merwin, Cid Corman, Gustaf Sobin and Paul Auster; into German, Paul Celan and Peter Handke.

Char was a friend and close associate of Albert Camus, [ [http://www.citedulivre-aix.com/Typo3/fileadmin/documents/RendezVous/juin-juillet/Bulletin_Mejanes-juin_juill_2007.pdf juin_juill:Mise en page 1 ] ] Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot among writers, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Victor Brauner among paintersThe composer Pierre Boulez wrote three settings of Char's poetry, "Le Soleil des eaux", "Le visage nuptial", and "Le Marteau sans maître". A late friendship developed also between Char and Martin Heidegger, who described Char's poetry as "a tour de force into the ineffable" and was repeatedly his guest at La Thor in the Vaucluse. [ Rüdiger Safranski, Ein Meister aus Deutschland. Heidegger und seine Zeit, 1994. Ch.23.]

Further reading

*Ralentir Travaux: Slow Under Construction, Exact Change,U.S. 1992
* Selected Poems of Rene Char, New Directions Publishing Corporation 1992

References

External links

* [http://www.guernicamag.com/poetry/351/new_translations_of_rene_char/ New Translations of Rene Char, by Nancy Naomi Carlson in Guernica Magazine]

* [http://gmanka.blogspot.com/2006/04/leave-taking-of-wind-fields-of-mimosa.html/ Translation of Conge au Vent]