Though it never took the form of a whole-hearted commitment, René Char's participation in the surrealist movement is, nevertheless, a fact of literary history, a fact which, furthermore, played a decisive role in the development of the poet and the man. (p. 2)

During his brief surrealist apprenticeship, Char gained, I believe, two important insights: (1) the realization that the existing socio-political order was in need of re-examination and with it the consecrated canons of art, and (2) the certainty that violence and destruction would not solve the problems faced by his generation…. The investigation of the outer world had to lead [the] poet back to a re-examination of his inner universe. There René Char sought the answer to the apparent contradictions of a world shared by partisan and poet, violence and magic. (pp. 2-3)

The key-notes of Char's poetry of 1930–1934 are given by words such as attentat, barbare, brutal, cadavre...