René Char

René Char (1907–1988) was a French poet who moved from surrealism to active resistance against the Nazi occupation of France. He wrote in French, and his work is among the most demanding in twentieth-century poetry, valued for its formal precision and its attention to nature and freedom.

Born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, in the Vaucluse, he studied in Avignon and Marseille, though literature held his attention more than business did. He published an early collection that he later destroyed, and in 1929 he settled in Paris, where he met André Breton, Louis Aragon and René Crevel. He signed the Second Surrealist Manifesto, but gradually distanced himself from the movement in the mid-1930s.

His poetry pairs dense imagery with compressed, economical phrasing. It deals with earth, trees, water and animals, and with the tension between life and death. It also carries a strong moral charge, as it aims to guide the reader towards what matters most in human existence. During the war he joined the Resistance under the name Captain Alexandre, and that experience produced Feuillets d'Hypnos, written in 1943–1944 and published in 1946, which brought him wide recognition.

In the 1950s and 1960s he reached full maturity as a poet and took part in public causes, including opposition to atomic weapons in Provence. He developed an intellectual friendship with Martin Heidegger, who stayed with him at Le Thor and referred to his poetry more than once.

His legacy lives on chiefly among readers of poetry and in music, since Pierre Boulez set his verse, notably in Le marteau sans maître. He died in Paris in 1988.