SOURCE: Starobinski, Jean. “René Char and the Definition of the Poem.” In Figuring Things: Char, Ponge, and Poetry in the Twentieth Century, edited and translated by Charles D. Minahen, pp. 113-27. Lexington, Ky.: French Forum Publishers, 1994.

In the following essay, Starobinski discusses the poetics and aesthetics of Char's writings.

There is no poem, no line of René Char that does not give us a feeling of opening. An increased space appears before us, lights up within us. This space offers itself to our open eyes. It does not have the facile qualities of the dream: it is the harsh and expanding volume of our earthly sojourn, the instant of our present breath, revealed to their fullest extent. Something immense, intense, announces itself imperiously. We are made sensitive to its fullness through a fit of emotion which will not be felt distinct from great, natural energies: we recognize the...