René Char

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René Char (1907 - 1988)

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

Born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse departement 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 the Provence.

Among the translators of his hermetic poems are Paul Celan, Peter Handke and Susanne Dubroff. Char was a friend of Albert Camus.

The composer Pierre Boulez wrote three settings of Char's poetry, Le Soleil des eaux, Le visage nuptial, and Le Marteau sans Maitre.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] English

This Smoke That Carried Us: Selected Poems of Rene Char, Translated by Susanne Dubroff, White Pine Press (NY) 2004

Book review of Susanne Dubroff's translation of René Char, by Luis Ospina.

This week saw the launch of the 9th annual “Printemps des Poètes” in France. It is a two-week national festival of poetry-related events during which EVERYONE is invited to get involved. And people do. As with the “Fête de la Musique” (now copied by several countries in Europe), where people get together and play their instruments in city squares, etc. The main inspirational theme for the Poetry Spring Festivities mentioned above is the title of a long text by René Char, “Lettera Amorosa” (interpreted by the festival as love letter or love poem, take your pick..). The poet is under the floodlights because this year marks the beginning of the René Char Centenary. There is a prestige national committee -duly inaugurated by the Minister of Culture- entrusted with the task of organizing official activities over a twelve-month period beginning on René Char’s birthday June 14th.

University Departments of French Literature across North America (as well as in other English-speaking countries) looking for a way to highlight the Char Centenary would do well to order, for use by their students, Dubroff’s bilingual edition of selected poems by Char. The book can serve as a very enriching working tool. Over and beyond the contact established with Char’s poetry (regardless of the level at which THAT takes place), the book can be used, for example, as an “exercise” handbook with which to test the students’ knowledge of spelling in French: the French version has innumerable errors, easy to spot, or not (we shall be submitting an article subsequently to list some of those mistakes). All corrections done by students could then be “validated” through comparison of the original text as found in the Pléiade Oeuvres Complètes, or in the other corresponding collections of Char poems published by Gallimard.

On the translation work itself, we might begin by saying the obvious: no one knows better than the translator of great poetry that the work accomplished will almost always be, at best, an approximation. Capturing a poet’s personal universe is the destination. But getting there is another problem. And translators can tell many anecdotes about their discoveries and misadventures while trying to handle the wealth of possibilities and nuances that the highest poetry can offer.. With a great poet such as René Char, the task of remaining faithful to and rendering what is said in French while, at the same time, “protecting” and respecting the musicality, the poetry if you wish, of the target language –English-, represents a monumental task. And Dubroff pulls it off, here and there. That in-itself merits the purchase of this bilingual edition.

While on editions, we believe that Dubroff’s book calls for a second edition, an excellent way to “accompany” the Char Centenary. Such a publication would overcome easily one major drawback of the first edition: a French version “potholed” with errors. Then, Susanne Dubroff would also have an opportunity to correct some mistranslations and, in spite of the challenge it represents, to penetrate further into the endlessly enriching universe of René Char’s poetry. In this regard, we dare advance a suggestion. The latter is inspired by the outstanding English translation of Amadou Lamine Sall’s poetry (one of Senegal’s greatest living poets) by a team of two individuals, one a U.S and the other a French native. (Cf. Amadou Lamine Sall. KAMANDALU. Selected Poems. Translations by James W. and Lydie J. Haenlin. Wells College Press, Aurora 2002). Working with a French native, well-versed in René Char’s poetry and natural environment, would undoubtedly inspire Susanne Dubroff to offer us more priceless treasures, in English, that truly reflect the world of René Char.

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