SOURCE: Douglas, Kenneth. “René Char.” Yale French Studies 1, no. 2 (fall-winter 1948): 79-84.

In the following essay, Douglas assesses the evolution of Char's reputation in post-World War II France.

It is time to speak of Char. He has been writing since 1927, and since the Liberation has aroused a fervent interest within France. His novitiate served in the seminaries of Surrealism, and having published jointly with Breton and Eluard, from that dogmatic chaos he emerged gradually (and without apostasy) to affirm his own poetic truth.

For truth is his concern. Not the mirage of yet another imaginary world, not the dexterous patterning of words and echoes. Truth in, through, and about poetry, which thus reflects self, as so often before it has done (traditional invocation of the “Muse,” and compare the like attitude of those who pray that they may be shown how to pray), but sinks itself, too, in other...