Rene Char
René Char 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.
His first book, Cloches sur le cœur was published in 1928 as a compilation of poems written between 1922 and 1926. In late November 1929, Char moved to Paris, where he met Louis Aragon, André Breton, and René Crevel, and joined the surrealists. He remained active in the surrealist movement through the early 1930s but distanced himself gradually from the mid-1930s onward. Throughout his career, Char's work appeared in various editions, often with artwork by notable figures, including Kandinsky, Picasso, Braque, Miró, Matisse and Vieira da Silva.
Char was a friend and close associate of Albert Camus, Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot among writers, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Nicolas de Staël, Georges Braque and Victor Brauner among painters. He was to have been in the car involved in the accident that killed both Camus and Gallimard, but there was not enough room, and returned instead that day by train to Paris.
The 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.
“I believe in the magic and in the authority of words”
“Desire, desire which knows, we draw no advantage from our shadows except from some veritable sovereignties accompanied by invisible flames, invisible chains, which, coming to light, step after step, cause us to shine.”
“There is only the one like me, the companion man or woman, who can wake me from my torpor, set off the poetry, hurl me against the limits of the old desert for me to triumph over it. No other. Neither sky nor privileged earth, now things which set you to trembling. Torch, I only waltz with that one.”
“How did writing come to me? Like bird’s down on my windowpane, in winter. Just then there rose in the heart a struggle of firebrands, which has, still now, not ended.”
“Avec celui que nous aimons, nous avons cessé de parler, et ce n'est pas le silence.---Gdy z osobą kochaną przestajemy mówić, nie zapada cisza.”
“Eternity is not much longer than life.”
“The poet advises: 'Read me. Read me again.'He does not always come away unscathed fromhis page, but like the poor, he knows how to make use of an olive's eternity.”
“In my land we don't question someone who has been touched deeply.There is no malign shadow over capsized boats.”
“Children and geniuses know that there is no bridge, only the water that lets itself be crossed.”
“With my teethI have seized lifeUpon the knife of my youth.With my lips today,With my lips alone...”
“A poet should leave traces of his passage, not proof.”
“A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.”
“I believe in the magic and authority of words.”
“discipline comme tu saignes!”
“celui qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égard ni patience”
“No man, unless he be dead in living, can feel at anchor in this life.”
“Impose ta chance, serre ton bonheur et va vers ton risque. À te regarder, ils s'habitueront.”
“How can we live without the unknown before us?”
“Midnight is not in everyman's reach.”
“Cheat at this game.”
“Lucidity is the wound closest to the sun.”