Le Chien de coeur

In May 1968, apart from the unrest shaking France, René Char suffered a heart attack. From this “experience” came the poems of Le Chien de cœur, published a year later, opening with a text recalling the night that nearly took him: “In the night of 3 to 4 May 1968, the lightning I had so often watched enviously in the sky burst inside my head, offering me, against a darkness of my own, the airy face of lightning borrowed from the most material of storms. I thought death was coming, but a death in which, filled with unprecedented understanding, I would still have one step to take before falling asleep, before being scattered forever into the universe. The dog of the heart had not whimpered.” All the poems were written between June and August 1968, except for “Outrages,” composed in fragments between 1944 and 1967; they denounce the distortions of modern society and the widening gap between man and nature.

To illustrate it, Char turned to Joan Miró, who composed a frontispiece for the book. About a hundred original lithographs were printed, all signed, to accompany the deluxe issue: 95 + 5 copies on vélin d’Arches, and six copies on gray vellum. The print run also included hors commerce copies on pink vergé chiffon paper and on green vellum, which do not carry the lithograph (except for the first pink copy, in which it was added).

790 copies were also printed on offset Robertsau paper, in which Miró’s frontispiece is reproduced in line only.

A precious copy: René Char’s own, which he had bound by Leroux.