Claire Théâtre de verdure
One of 18 copies on Hollande (no. IV).
Signed presentation inscription: “à mon cher ami Louis Broder, rendez-vous au bord de la Sorgue, de Claire. René Char.”
With the manuscript of the publisher's insert. Publisher's wraparound band and publisher's insert signed by René Char.
Claire is part of the poet’s very brief output for the stage: three short plays written between 1946 and 1952, Sur les hauteurs, Claire and Le Soleil des eaux, later collected under the title Trois coups sous les arbres (Gallimard).
In the publisher’s insert, Char sets out the purpose and ambition of the work, written in the aftermath of a terrifying war in which he had played an active part. Much of his commitment to the Resistance is present in this play, first staged by Roger Planchon in 1952: ten short scenes linked only by the young woman Claire and her encounters with men who suffer. Through the figures of a maquis operations leader and a Resistance liaison officer, the poet of Feuillets d’Hypnos interrogates his own contradictions, with a Claire “who runs like fresh water and perhaps represents the poet’s thirst”: “The contemporary world has already taken from us dialogue, play and happiness; it is preparing to descend into the very center of our lives to extinguish the last hearth, that of Encounter […] / Against contemporary hostility we play the card of Claire. And if we lose it, we will play the card of Claire again. Our trumps are perpetual, like the storm and like the kiss […]”