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The Brittle Age and Returning Upland Paperback June 30, 2009
Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the French by Gustaf Sobin. When Gustaf Sobin arrived in France at the age of twenty-seven in 1963, he befriended the poet Rene Char, who, as Sobin writes, "taught me my trade." "Rene Char taught me, first, to read particulars: that the meticulously observed detail, drawn from nature, could provide the key to the deepest reaches of the imaginary. One and the other, the visible and the invisible, were but the interface of a single, singular, vibratory surface: that of the poem itself." THE BRITTLE AGE AND RETURNING UPLAND are two volumes from Char's work of the mid to late 1960s that Sobin chose to translate in full. Here, side by side with Char's French text, it is possible to see Sobin building his poetic vocabulary within and as a result of the practice of his mentor, "scrupulously tracking the very trajectories of desire, [leading] one onto the sonorous landscapes of the revelatory."
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
First published June 30, 2009
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About the author
René Char
151 books127 followersRené Char spent his childhood in Névons, the substantial family home completed at his birth, then studied as a boarder at the school of Avignon and subsequently, in 1925, a student at L'École de Commerce de Marseille, where he read Plutarch, François Villon, Racine, the German Romantics, Alfred de Vigny, Gérard de Nerval and Charles Baudelaire.
His first book, Cloches sur le cœur was published in 1928 as a compilation of poems written between 1922 and 1926. In late November 1929, Char moved to Paris, where he met Louis Aragon, André Breton, and René Crevel, and joined the surrealists. He remained active in the surrealist movement through the early 1930s but distanced himself gradually from the mid-1930s onward. Throughout his career, Char's work appeared in various editions, often with artwork by notable figures, including Kandinsky, Picasso, Braque, Miró, Matisse and Vieira da Silva.
Char was a friend and close associate of Albert Camus, Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot among writers, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Nicolas de Staël, Georges Braque and Victor Brauner among painters. He was to have been in the car involved in the accident that killed both Camus and Gallimard, but there was not enough room, and returned instead that day by train to Paris.
The composer Pierre Boulez wrote three settings of Char's poetry, Le Soleil des eaux, Le visage nuptial, and Le marteau sans maître. A late friendship developed also between Char and Martin Heidegger, who described Char's poetry as "a tour de force into the ineffable" and was repeatedly his guest at La Thor in the Vaucluse.
His first book, Cloches sur le cœur was published in 1928 as a compilation of poems written between 1922 and 1926. In late November 1929, Char moved to Paris, where he met Louis Aragon, André Breton, and René Crevel, and joined the surrealists. He remained active in the surrealist movement through the early 1930s but distanced himself gradually from the mid-1930s onward. Throughout his career, Char's work appeared in various editions, often with artwork by notable figures, including Kandinsky, Picasso, Braque, Miró, Matisse and Vieira da Silva.
Char was a friend and close associate of Albert Camus, Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot among writers, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Nicolas de Staël, Georges Braque and Victor Brauner among painters. He was to have been in the car involved in the accident that killed both Camus and Gallimard, but there was not enough room, and returned instead that day by train to Paris.
The composer Pierre Boulez wrote three settings of Char's poetry, Le Soleil des eaux, Le visage nuptial, and Le marteau sans maître. A late friendship developed also between Char and Martin Heidegger, who described Char's poetry as "a tour de force into the ineffable" and was repeatedly his guest at La Thor in the Vaucluse.
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September 12, 2025
I was born, like the rock, with my wounds. Uncured of my superstitious youth, my limpid firmness exhausted, I entered the brittle age.
[...]
I've had, since birth, an aggressive breathing.
[...]
If you don't accept what is offered to you, one day you will be beggars: beggars to even greater refusals.
— from The Brittle Age
Stone after stone, I endure
My house's demolition.
Only the death-devoted, one evening,
Knew the exact dimension.
[...]
With a star of affliction
Blood is too slow in drying.
Range of my mournings, you rule:
I have never dreamt about you.
— from Seven Fragments of Luberon
July 4, 2017
Who would dare to say that what we have destroyed was worth a hundred times more than what we had dreamt and ceaselessly transfigured in murmuring to the ruins?
November 26, 2019
RED HUNGER
You were mad.
O, that was long ago!
You died, a finger in front of your mouth,
In an elegant gesture
That checked effusion
In the freezing sun of a green partition.
You were so lovely no one even noticed your
death
Later, it was night; you set out alongside me.
Unsuspecting nudity,
Breasts corrupted by your heart.
Comfortable in this occurring world,
A man who'd held you in his arms
Took his place at table.
Be well. You don't exist.
You were mad.
O, that was long ago!
You died, a finger in front of your mouth,
In an elegant gesture
That checked effusion
In the freezing sun of a green partition.
You were so lovely no one even noticed your
death
Later, it was night; you set out alongside me.
Unsuspecting nudity,
Breasts corrupted by your heart.
Comfortable in this occurring world,
A man who'd held you in his arms
Took his place at table.
Be well. You don't exist.
August 24, 2025
“I was born, like the rock, with my wounds. Uncured of my superstitious youth, my limpid firmness exhausted, I entered the brittle age.”
—
“In the present state of the world we stretch, above reality, a candle of untainted blood, and we sleep outside of sleep.”
—
“In fidelity we learn never to be consoled.”
—
“Without the support of the shore, don't confide in the sea but in the wind.”
—
“Upon poetry night hastens, awakening breaks whenever we are enthused in expressing it. However long its tether, poetry wounds itself in our hands as we are wounded, in turn, by its escapings.”
—
“Be consoled. In dying you return everything that you were lent, your love, your friends. Even that living coldness, harvested over and over.”
—
“Death's great ally, where its midges are best concealed, is memory: the persecutor of our odyssey, lasting from an eve to the pink tomorrow.”
—
“Who would dare to say that what we have destroyed was worth a hundred times more than what we had dreamt and ceaselessly transfigured in murmuring to the ruins?”
—
“Taking away the breath of work, its inconceivable dynasty, setting back the liberal arts until they no longer reflect on anything, this is the boneheap.”
—
“To abolish distance kills. The gods only die by being among us.”
—
“Lick one's wound. Only the musician is admitted to the dance of the demons.”
—
“At the same time living, being deceived by life, wishing to live and being able to live a better life, is infernal.”
—
“If you don't accept what is offered to you, one day you will be beggars: beggars to even greater refusals.”
—
“Sorrow is the last fruit, itself immortal, of youth.”
—
“How, frail schoolboy, will you convert the future and rake this fire, so questioned, so stirred, fallen onto your faulty watch? The present is only a game or an archer's massacre.
Ever since, faithful to his love as the sky is to the rock. Faithful, fuse-bearing, but ceaselessly wandering, concealing his course throughout the entire expanse revealed by the fire and maintained by the wind; the expanse, the butcher's hoard, bleeding on a hook.”
—
“Against the extensive density of a poisoned somnambulism, would the spirit's disgust be coded escape; would it, later on, be revolt?
Youth of dupes, night's chanterelle.
Extinguish this turmoil, without a weapon, like the rainbow of the moon that loosens itself at dawn.
We are not jealous of the gods, we neither serve them nor fear them, but in peril of our lives we attest to their multiple existence, and are moved at belonging to their adventurous breed that no longer remembers them.
The wine of liberty quickly turns if, halfdrunken, it isn't tossed back to the vine-stock.”
—
“I showed you La Petite-Pierre, the dowry of her
forest, the sky that's born in her branches,
The richness of her birds, hunters of other birds,
The pollen twice alive beneath the blaze of
flowers,
A tower hoisted far off like the sail of the
corsair,
The lake that's once again the mill's cradle, the
infant's sleep.
There, burdened by my belt of snow,
Beneath the visor of a rock speckled by crows,
I left the need of winter.
We love one another today without lineage and
without what's beyond,
Ardent or unassuming, different but together,
Turning from the stars whose nature is to fly
without arriving.
The ship makes its way toward the high vegetal
sea.
All lights extinguished, it takes us aboard.
We were up before dawn in its memory.
It protected our childhood, ballasted our golden
age.
This itinerant host, beckoned for as long as we
believe in its truth.”
—
“The stones pressed against one another in the ramparts; off the moss of these stones men existed. Night carried a rifle and women would no longer give birth. Ignominy looked like a glass of water.
I am bound to the courage of several people; I've lived violently, without aging, my mystery among them. I have shuddered at the existence of all others like an incontinent boat about the segmented depths.”
—
“At this end of an afternoon in April 1964, the old despotic eagle, the kneeling blacksmith, under the flaming cloud of his abuses (endlessly thrashing his work, himself, that is, with insults) revealed to me, on the floor of his studio, the figure of Caroline, his model, Caroline's face on canvas-after how many scratches, wounds, bruises?-, fruit of passion above all of love's objects, triumphant over that mock enormity of the summed up scraps of death, and also over these luminous particles of ourselves, scarcely separated; ourselves, the temporal witnesses. Outside the canvas's alveole of desire and cruelty. This handsome face, without yesteryear, about to murder sleep, reflected in the mirror of our glance: the momentary, all-embracing recipient for every future eye.”
—
“So much it froze that the milky branches
Hurt the saw, and snapped in the hands.
Spring didn't see the gracious ones turn green.
From the master of the felled, the fig tree
Asked for the shrub of a new faith.
But the oriole, its prophet,
The warm dawn of his return,
Alighting upon the disaster,
Instead of hunger, died of love.”
—
“We returned to the streets through sanguine slopes and an Umbrian land. The helm of love wasn't passing us, and now no longer gained. You opened your hand and showed me its lines. But there the night rose. Onto the tracing of life I placed the feeble glow-worm. Beneath this lamp, alive and athirst for us, years and years of recumbency suddenly lit.”
—
“A rose isn't slaughtered
In the wars of the sky.
But a lyre is banished.”
—
“Strengthened by the goodness of a winter fruit, I brought the fire into the house. The civilization of storms dripped from the overhanging tiles. I'll now be free to detest tradition, to dream of the frost of those that passed on the scarcely captious pathways. But to whom will I entrust my unborn children? Solitude was without its spaces; the white flame sank and its warmth only offered an expiring gesture.
Without solemnity I leapt over this walled-in world; coatless, I'll love whatever trembled beneath me.”
—
“There is nothing to console us when we walk, holding a hand, the perilous blossoming of the flesh of a hand.
The obscuring of the hand, pressing and pulling us, this innocent, this fragrant hand into which we add ourselves and subsist, that spares us neither thorns nor ravines, neither the premature fire nor the encirclement of men, this hand, the most beloved of all, removes us from the shadow's duplication at the daylight of evening. The daylight, glittering above evening, when its threshold of agony has crumpled.”
—
“The west vanished behind us, seemingly swallowed, touched by nothing and beyond all memory, tears itself from its elliptic couch, climbs in keeping its breath, and finally rises and rejoins. The point melts. The sources gush. Upland bursts. And below, the delta turns green. The song of the frontiers spreads to within sight of the lowlands. Pleased with so little is the pollen of the alder.”
—
“In the present state of the world we stretch, above reality, a candle of untainted blood, and we sleep outside of sleep.”
—
“In fidelity we learn never to be consoled.”
—
“Without the support of the shore, don't confide in the sea but in the wind.”
—
“Upon poetry night hastens, awakening breaks whenever we are enthused in expressing it. However long its tether, poetry wounds itself in our hands as we are wounded, in turn, by its escapings.”
—
“Be consoled. In dying you return everything that you were lent, your love, your friends. Even that living coldness, harvested over and over.”
—
“Death's great ally, where its midges are best concealed, is memory: the persecutor of our odyssey, lasting from an eve to the pink tomorrow.”
—
“Who would dare to say that what we have destroyed was worth a hundred times more than what we had dreamt and ceaselessly transfigured in murmuring to the ruins?”
—
“Taking away the breath of work, its inconceivable dynasty, setting back the liberal arts until they no longer reflect on anything, this is the boneheap.”
—
“To abolish distance kills. The gods only die by being among us.”
—
“Lick one's wound. Only the musician is admitted to the dance of the demons.”
—
“At the same time living, being deceived by life, wishing to live and being able to live a better life, is infernal.”
—
“If you don't accept what is offered to you, one day you will be beggars: beggars to even greater refusals.”
—
“Sorrow is the last fruit, itself immortal, of youth.”
—
“How, frail schoolboy, will you convert the future and rake this fire, so questioned, so stirred, fallen onto your faulty watch? The present is only a game or an archer's massacre.
Ever since, faithful to his love as the sky is to the rock. Faithful, fuse-bearing, but ceaselessly wandering, concealing his course throughout the entire expanse revealed by the fire and maintained by the wind; the expanse, the butcher's hoard, bleeding on a hook.”
—
“Against the extensive density of a poisoned somnambulism, would the spirit's disgust be coded escape; would it, later on, be revolt?
Youth of dupes, night's chanterelle.
Extinguish this turmoil, without a weapon, like the rainbow of the moon that loosens itself at dawn.
We are not jealous of the gods, we neither serve them nor fear them, but in peril of our lives we attest to their multiple existence, and are moved at belonging to their adventurous breed that no longer remembers them.
The wine of liberty quickly turns if, halfdrunken, it isn't tossed back to the vine-stock.”
—
“I showed you La Petite-Pierre, the dowry of her
forest, the sky that's born in her branches,
The richness of her birds, hunters of other birds,
The pollen twice alive beneath the blaze of
flowers,
A tower hoisted far off like the sail of the
corsair,
The lake that's once again the mill's cradle, the
infant's sleep.
There, burdened by my belt of snow,
Beneath the visor of a rock speckled by crows,
I left the need of winter.
We love one another today without lineage and
without what's beyond,
Ardent or unassuming, different but together,
Turning from the stars whose nature is to fly
without arriving.
The ship makes its way toward the high vegetal
sea.
All lights extinguished, it takes us aboard.
We were up before dawn in its memory.
It protected our childhood, ballasted our golden
age.
This itinerant host, beckoned for as long as we
believe in its truth.”
—
“The stones pressed against one another in the ramparts; off the moss of these stones men existed. Night carried a rifle and women would no longer give birth. Ignominy looked like a glass of water.
I am bound to the courage of several people; I've lived violently, without aging, my mystery among them. I have shuddered at the existence of all others like an incontinent boat about the segmented depths.”
—
“At this end of an afternoon in April 1964, the old despotic eagle, the kneeling blacksmith, under the flaming cloud of his abuses (endlessly thrashing his work, himself, that is, with insults) revealed to me, on the floor of his studio, the figure of Caroline, his model, Caroline's face on canvas-after how many scratches, wounds, bruises?-, fruit of passion above all of love's objects, triumphant over that mock enormity of the summed up scraps of death, and also over these luminous particles of ourselves, scarcely separated; ourselves, the temporal witnesses. Outside the canvas's alveole of desire and cruelty. This handsome face, without yesteryear, about to murder sleep, reflected in the mirror of our glance: the momentary, all-embracing recipient for every future eye.”
—
“So much it froze that the milky branches
Hurt the saw, and snapped in the hands.
Spring didn't see the gracious ones turn green.
From the master of the felled, the fig tree
Asked for the shrub of a new faith.
But the oriole, its prophet,
The warm dawn of his return,
Alighting upon the disaster,
Instead of hunger, died of love.”
—
“We returned to the streets through sanguine slopes and an Umbrian land. The helm of love wasn't passing us, and now no longer gained. You opened your hand and showed me its lines. But there the night rose. Onto the tracing of life I placed the feeble glow-worm. Beneath this lamp, alive and athirst for us, years and years of recumbency suddenly lit.”
—
“A rose isn't slaughtered
In the wars of the sky.
But a lyre is banished.”
—
“Strengthened by the goodness of a winter fruit, I brought the fire into the house. The civilization of storms dripped from the overhanging tiles. I'll now be free to detest tradition, to dream of the frost of those that passed on the scarcely captious pathways. But to whom will I entrust my unborn children? Solitude was without its spaces; the white flame sank and its warmth only offered an expiring gesture.
Without solemnity I leapt over this walled-in world; coatless, I'll love whatever trembled beneath me.”
—
“There is nothing to console us when we walk, holding a hand, the perilous blossoming of the flesh of a hand.
The obscuring of the hand, pressing and pulling us, this innocent, this fragrant hand into which we add ourselves and subsist, that spares us neither thorns nor ravines, neither the premature fire nor the encirclement of men, this hand, the most beloved of all, removes us from the shadow's duplication at the daylight of evening. The daylight, glittering above evening, when its threshold of agony has crumpled.”
—
“The west vanished behind us, seemingly swallowed, touched by nothing and beyond all memory, tears itself from its elliptic couch, climbs in keeping its breath, and finally rises and rejoins. The point melts. The sources gush. Upland bursts. And below, the delta turns green. The song of the frontiers spreads to within sight of the lowlands. Pleased with so little is the pollen of the alder.”
June 7, 2017
The west vanished behind us, seemingly
swallowed, touched by nothing and beyond all
memory, tears itself from its elliptic couch, climbs
in keeping its breath, and finally rises and rejoins.
The point melts. The sources gush. Upland bursts.
And below, the delta turns green. The song of the
frontiers spreads to within sight of the lowlands.
Pleased with so little is the pollen of the alder.
swallowed, touched by nothing and beyond all
memory, tears itself from its elliptic couch, climbs
in keeping its breath, and finally rises and rejoins.
The point melts. The sources gush. Upland bursts.
And below, the delta turns green. The song of the
frontiers spreads to within sight of the lowlands.
Pleased with so little is the pollen of the alder.
March 19, 2022
Not the best Rene Char anthology, but worth it for those who love his work
December 8, 2010
Two more absolutely fucking groundbreaking books of poetry by Rene Char, if you pardon my French.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews