René Char is the rare poet who unhesitatingly acknowledges the artistic sources of his creative vision, teleology, and practice. In La Conversation souveraine …, he identifies and appraises those poets to whom he is indebted as a poet, and he categorically states that his three major precursors are the philosopher Heraclitus, the painter Georges de La Tour, and the poet Arthur Rimbaud…. Rimbaud is quantitatively more prominent than either Heraclitus or La Tour, for among all of Char's hommage texts, Rimbaud receives the greatest attention and admiration….

Char's hommage to Rimbaud … goes beyond mere admiration; it is based on Char's awareness that he is esthetically indebted to Rimbaud….

Char and Rimbaud share a cosmic vision of a universe humanized by poetry. They begin with the intuitive knowledge that the discord, fragmentation, and multiplicity which characterize man's daily existence and his world are contradictory in appearance only, for beneath the...