The Role of Rimbaud in Char's Poetry

Abstract

René Char acknowledges that his major poetic precursor is Arthur Rimbaud. Char is esthetically indebted to Rimbaud for his creative vision, teleology, and practice. The numerous thematic affinities between these two poets include a humanized harmonious universe, the attitude of revolt, the obligation of anguish, the poet as the initiator of action, and the concepts of poetic activity, love, experience, risk, man, nature. The poetic matter of their creative worlds is identical, but Char brings the necessary corrective of faith in human expression to Rimbaud's immature reliance on verbal expression. Where Rimbaud fails to synthesize the fragments, Char succeeds. It is Char's understanding of Rimbaud's work that enables him to evolve a poetic based first on life and second on theory. Char does not merely humanize the cosmos; he goes on to poeticize man. Technical similarities are equally numerous, but Char is disciplined; he rejects the equation of the act and expression in favor of an evocation of the activity through the effect of spontaneity, his theories of pulverization and crispation. Char overcomes Rimbaud's limits and frustrations and succeeds in fulfilling his vision.