René Char was a 20th-century French poet and member of the French Resistance.
“With my teeth
I have seized life
Upon the knife of my youth.”
"Mute Game", as translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson in Guernica : a magazine of art & politics (June 2007)<!-- Stone Lyre (2010) -->
Context: With my teeth
I have seized life
Upon the knife of my youth.
With my lips today,
With my lips alone…
A statement written soon after the end of World War II, as quoted in René Char : This Smoke That Carried Us : Selected Poems (2004) edited by Susanne Dubroff
“A poet should leave traces of his passage, not proofs. Traces alone engender dreams.”
Un poète doit laisser des traces de son passage, non des preuves. Seules les traces font rêver.
As quoted in The French-American Review (1976) by Texas Christian University, p. 132
Variant translation: A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proofs. Only traces bring about dreams.
As quoted in Popular Dissent, Human Agency, and Global Politics (2000) by Roland Bleiker, p. 50
“I believe in the magic and authority of words.”
Message as a member of the French resistance, to his superiors in London, insisting that certain codewords "The library is on fire" be changed after a disastrous parachute drop which set a forest on fire and alerted the Gestapo to the location of his group of Maquis fighters, as quoted in René Char : This Smoke That Carried Us : Selected Poems (2004) edited by Susanne Dubroff
