SOURCE: Kelly, Van. “The Elegiac Temptation in Char's Poetry.” L'Esprit Créateur 35, no. 4 (winter 1995): 59-70.

In the following essay, Kelly addresses the tension in some of Char's poems between past and future in perspective and focus.

Laissons l'énergie et retournons à l'énergie. La mesure du Temps? L'étincelle sous les traits de laquelle nous apparaissons et redisparaissons dans la fable.

—René Char, “Riche de larmes”

Life and death vie fiercely in Fureur et mystère (1948), especially in the section subtitled Le poème pulvérisé, which contains a number of texts written from the Munich crisis through the Purge.¹ Virginia A. La Charité notes that a paradox informs this era in Char's creation: “To live is to act, but every act appears menaced by the flux and destruction of the world.”² The poems “Les Trois Soeurs,” “Donnerbach Mühle,” and “Seuil” manifest Char's labor to make his...