René Emile CHAR, born 14 June 1907 in l’Isle-sur-Sorgue, Vaucluse, France, died 19 February 1988 in Paris in the 5th Arrondissement, was an eminent poet, French « resistant » during WWII against the Vichy Nazi-collaborative regime and an erstwhile « surréaliste » (along with Breton and Eluard) and a close friend of the philosopher-novelist Albert CAMUS,

Translation of René CHAR's "Jeu Muet"

René Emile CHAR, born 14 June 1907 in l’Isle-sur-Sorgue, Vaucluse, France, died 19 February 1988 in Paris in the 5th Arrondissement, was an eminent poet, French « resistant » during WWII against the Vichy Nazi-collaborative regime and an erstwhile « surréaliste » (along with Breton and Eluard) and a close friend of the philosopher-novelist Albert CAMUS, Martin Heideggar, Bataille and the musician who set his work to music. Most of all, he was 1m 92cm tall and an active rugby player. His forbears were of the labouring and commercial class but by the time he was born, they were quite well-off. He was the youngest of four children, his father having married the sister of his first wife who died of tuberculosis after only a year. He had hardly made a career for himself after beginning commercial studies in Marseille.
After the success of his first book of poems : « Les cloches sur le coeur », written during his teen years, he launched out with the poems he wrote as a maquis-resistant during 1942-44 : « Les Feuillets d’Hypnos » in 1946. His poems have mainly appeared in German and English – translated in the latter by some of the great American poets – like William Carlos Williams – amply aired by the most renowned publishing houses.

It might be said that his great height saved him from being killed in the car accident that took Camus and Michel Gallimard’s lives for there was no room left in the car heading for Paris.
Heideggar said of his poems that they pushed further « into the ineffable ». I would have thought his forté peaked as a sculptor of words in the imagery he forged.
Check : en.wikipedia.org

(Here's my version of:)

Jeu muet - Poème
Mute Play - Poem

Avec mes dents
With my teeth
J'ai pris la vie
I seized Life
Sur le couteau de ma jeunesse.
On the cutting edge of my youthful verve.
Avec mes lèvres aujourd'hui,
With my lips today,
Avec mes lèvres seulement...
Only with my lips...


Courte parvenue,
Brief upstart,
La fleur des talus,
The flower of embankment slopes,
Le dard d'Orion,
The cactus flower,
Est réapparu.
Is born again.

© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2023.