Discussion and Reading Around the Work of René Char with Maurice Petit
Maurice Petit, founder of Confluences and the Lettres d’automne festival, joins the Jeudi Poésie team for a presentation and readings centered on the work of the poet René Char.
Originally from Vaucluse, René Char moved to Paris in 1929 and joined the Surrealist movement, forming friendships with Louis Aragon and André Breton in particular. He contributed to numerous journals and activities of the movement before parting ways with it in 1934. He began publishing several texts and poems before the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1939, he was mobilized as a soldier before joining the Resistance. He led the Basses-Alpes landing section under the name “Captain Alexandre.” He recounts this period in his Feuillets d’Hypnos, which he published at the end of the conflict. He continued his career as a poet and gained an international audience. According to his friend Albert Camus, he was “the greatest event in French poetry since Rimbaud.”
