Poèmes

An anthology of poems written between 1934 and 1969, from Le Marteau sans maître (1934) to L’Effroi la Joie (1969): sixty-four poems, several of them drawn from collections published by Guy Lévis Mano, Char’s friend and publisher for forty years. In 1934, Lévis Mano had taken over the management of the “Librairie 79” on the Avenue de Ségur, where he installed a treadle-operated Minerva press purchased from Nancy Cunard, who had ceased operations with The Hours Press in 1931. With this new equipment, he was able to produce editions far more refined than his earlier ones, which had been printed in his small room on a makeshift press. One of the first books printed with this new press was for René Char, made possible through the financial support of Paul Éluard: the collection Moulin premier, published in 1936, the first of a long series that culminates here with this anthology.

A precious copy: the poet’s own copy. Char entrusted it in 1976 to the master binder Georges Leroux, who executed a sober Jansenist binding for it.

The anthology brings together a selection of his favorite poems, among them “Le Deuil des Névons,” which occupies the central place in the volume.

A choice copy.