SOURCE: Worton, Michael. Introduction to The Dawn Breakers Les Matinaux, pp. 11-45. Newcastle Upon Tyne, England: Bloodaxe Books, 1992.

In the following excerpt, Worton offers a thematic commentary and introduction to his translation of Char's Les Matinaux.

René Char (1907-88) is often described as a poet of nostalgia who is essentially concerned with his own childhood in Provence and with the pre-industrial and pre-nuclear world. His poems have also often been described as hermetic, as “difficult” or “intellectual”. Internationally recognised as one of the most important French poets since the Surrealists, perhaps even since Paul Valéry, he is respected as a poet-philosopher but he has never become a popular poet. This says much about what many modern, urban readers expect from contemporary poetry: they want to encounter both familiar, “relevant” images and a language which corresponds to what they know and speak, hence the commercial success of such...