[Permis de chasse]
Avignon, Ministère de l'agriculture, September 9, 1933.
1 leaf (130 x 175 mm) headed “République française. Ministère de l'Agriculture,” with embossed seals.
Autograph note by the poet, who used (deliberately) his hunting license to write to a friend named Félix, with this autograph plea: “À (telle) fleur disparue du sentier. La forêt que j'aime. Ne pas tuer ses animaux, Félix, je te prie.”
The license was issued by the Vaucluse prefecture on September 9, 1933, under number 2457.
The “Description” column and the applicant’s identity fields were filled in by René Char in black ink: we thus learn that he was then twenty-six years old, that he measured 1 m 86, with chestnut hair and dark eyebrows, brown eyes, a medium-sized mouth, a round chin, an oval face and a ruddy complexion, that he lived at l’Isle-sur-Sorgue, and that his profession was listed as farmer.
This was the first hunting license issued to René Char, then twenty-six years old. It was never renewed, and Char does not appear to have been a genuine hunter afterward. At most, this “training” would serve him ten years later, when he took up arms to join the Resistance.
#19500
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