René Émile Char (; 14 June 1907 – 19 February 1988) was a French poet and member of the French Resistance in World War II.

Biography

Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of the four children of Emile Char and Marie-Thérèse Rouget, where his father was mayor and managing director of the Vaucluse plasterworks. He spent his childhood in Névons, the substantial family home completed at his birth, then studied as a boarder at the school of Avignon and subsequently, in 1925, a student at L'École de Commerce de Marseille, where he read Plutarch, François Villon, Racine, the German Romantics, Alfred de Vigny, Gérard de Nerval and Charles Baudelaire. He was tall (1.92 m) and was an active rugby player. After briefly working at Cavaillon, in 1927 he performed his military service in the artillery in Nîmes.

His first book, Cloches sur le cœur (1928), was a compilation of poems written between 1922 and 1926.

Notable works

  • Ralentir Travaux (1930 – in collaboration with André Breton and Paul Éluard)
  • Le Marteau sans maître (1934)
  • Moulin premier (1936)
  • Placard pour un chemin des écoliers (1937)
  • Dehors la nuit est gouvernée (1938)
  • Seuls demeurent (1945)
  • Feuillets d'Hypnos (1946)
  • Le Poème pulvérisé (1947)
  • Fureur et mystère (1948)
  • Les Matinaux (1950)
  • Recherche de la base et du sommet (1955)
  • La Parole en archipel (1962)
  • L'Âge cassant (1965)
  • Dans la Pluie giboyeuse (1968)
  • Le Nu perdu (1971)
  • La Nuit talismanique (1972)
  • Le Bâton de rosier
  • Aromates chasseurs (1976)
  • Chants de la Balandrane (1977)
  • Fenêtres dormantes et porte sur le toit (1979)
  • Loin de nos cendres (1983)
  • 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.

Translations

Among the poets to translate his hermetic works into English are William Carlos Williams, Samuel Beckett, Richard Wilbur, James Wright, John Ashbery, W. S. Merwin, Cid Corman, Gustaf Sobin, Kevin Hart (poet) and Paul Auster. Translators into German have included Paul Celan and Peter Handke. Translators into Bulgarian include Georgi Mitzkov and Zlatozar Petrov.

Bibliography

  • Char, René (1992). The Dawn Breakers. Translated by Michael Worton. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Bloodaxe Books. .
  • Char, René (2010). Furor and Mystery & Other Writings. Translated by Mary Ann Caws; Nancy Kline. Boston, Massachusetts: Black Widow Press. .
  • Char, René (2014). Hypnos. Translated by Mark Hutchinson. Calcutta: Seagull Books & York, Pennsylvania: Maple Press. .
  • Char, René (2015). The Inventors and Other Poems. Translated by Mark Hutchinson. Calcutta: Seagull Books & York, Pennsylvania: Maple Press. .

See also

  • Le Mondes 100 Books of the Century, a list which includes Fureur et mystère

References

Further reading

  • New Translations of Rene Char, by Nancy Naomi Carlson in Guernica magazine
  • Translation of Congé au Vent