The Role of Rimbaud in Char's Poetry

Abstract

RENE CHAR is the rare poet who unhesitatingly acknowledges the artistic sources of his creative vision, teleology, and practice. In La Conversation souveraine (Recherche de la base et du sommet, Paris: Gallimard, 1965), he identifies and appraises those poets to whom he is indebted as a poet, and he categorically states that his three major precursors are the philosopher Heraclitus, the painter Georges de La Tour, and the poet Arthur Rimbaud: