Poèmes des deux années
One of 50 copies from the deluxe issue on vélin d'Arches (no. 33), signed by René Char, with an original etching numbered and signed by Alberto Giacometti.
The first collaboration between the poet and the artist.
On 3 March 1980, the poet recalled for readers of Le Nouvel Observateur the circumstances behind one of these poems: “One day, near a Romanesque church, a woman […] told me, weeping, of her husband’s jealousy. Passing that graceful, massive church again, a line came to me, as if fallen from the bell tower: ‘Vérité aux secrètes larmes, la plus offrante des tanières.’” The key word, “tanière,” had emerged from a succession of incidents. Poèmes des deux années would later be incorporated, together with Lettera amorosa, into the collection La Parole en archipel, published in 1962.
Adorned with a frontispiece engraving by Alberto Giacometti, this collection is a reminder of how often Char was a poet illustrated by painters, and above all how discerning an admirer and faithful a friend he was to them: in Char’s small house between L’Isle-sur-Sorgue and Saumane, the walls were hung with a Picasso engraving, a wax by Victor Brauner, a gouache by Braque, a lithograph by Vieira da Silva, and drawings by Giacometti. Char and Giacometti had grown close after meeting within the Surrealist movement, which both joined in 1930, and both later went their own independent ways. They nonetheless remained closely attached, and Char was the first to write a text on his painter friend, in Recherche de la base et du sommet, the very year Giacometti illustrated one of his books for the first time: these Poèmes des deux années.
According to the catalogue of the 2008 René Char exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale, the poet chose, from among five engravings, this image of two standing figures together near a bush. From this book until his sudden death in 1966, Giacometti collaborated twice more with Char. One was the unique experience of an illuminated manuscript, of the kind the poet conceived for several of his painter friends: with Giacometti he calligraphed Visage nuptial, first published in 1938, and gave this unique work to his friend and patron Yvonne Zervos. The other, and last, brought together four etchings by the painter and the poems of Retour Amont — Giacometti died before he could sign the copies.
Between Poèmes des deux années and Retour Amont, their friendship and exchanges never ceased. Giacometti gave Char several works, including drawings — a portrait of his own wife and one of Georges Braque, seated in the mortuary chamber on the day of his death. In return, Char dedicated many of his books to Giacometti, and a text of May 1964 remains celebrated within the poet’s œuvre: Célébrer Giacometti.