The Role of Rimbaud in Char's Poetry
René Char is the rare poet who unhesitatingly acknowledges the artistic sources of his creative vision, teleology, and practice. In La Conversation souveraine …, he identifies and appraises those poets to whom he is indebted as a poet, and he categorically states that his three major precursors are the philosopher Heraclitus, the painter Georges de La Tour, and the poet Arthur Rimbaud…. Rimbaud is quantitatively more prominent than either Heraclitus or La Tour, for among all of Char's hommage texts, Rimbaud receives the greatest attention and admiration….
Char's hommage to Rimbaud … goes beyond mere admiration; it is based on Char's awareness that he is esthetically indebted to Rimbaud….
Char and Rimbaud share a cosmic vision of a universe humanized by poetry. They begin with the intuitive knowledge that the discord, fragmentation, and multiplicity which characterize man's daily existence and his world are contradictory in appearance only, for beneath the flux, chaos, and disorder there is a totality of essence. It is the role of poetry to unify the fragments, reveal the original permanent oneness of the cosmos, discover man's integral position in that harmony, and lead him to beauty, fulfillment, and dignity. For Char and Rimbaud, poetry is man's instrument for the refutation of meaninglessness and misery; both are consistent in their conviction that life is worthwhile…. Poetry has the position that religion assigns to God; it is the macrocosm of existence, the common denominator of homogeneity, the principle of truth and action; it is not only a-spatial and a-temporal, but, unlike a divinity, it is also immediately accessible in the present. (p. 57)
Revolt is a key concept, and this spirit of protest and offensive action characterizes both poets in several ways. Char and Rimbaud defy esthetic rules and conventions and proclaim artistic freedom; they are against all literary schools and doctrines, commercial art, organized religion, bourgeois conformity. It is true that this spirit of defiance characterizes the young Char of Les Cloches sur le cœur (1928) and Le Marteau sans maître (1934; this last title is significant in itself) more dramatically than the mature Char of later volumes, but revolt and its possibilities remain a consistent motif in all of his work, and this was one of the initial concepts that attracted him to Rimbaud's work…. Furthermore, Rimbaud and Char refuse to accept human manifestations of mass man and, instead, proclaim the individual…. (pp. 57-8)
A second similarity in poetic spirit is that of anguish as a positive characteristic inherent in the poetic condition and conducive to poetic creation. Char and Rimbaud view anguish as obligatory, but where Rimbaud is never able to resign himself to having to accept it ("Angoisse," Illuminations), Char utilizes it and converts it into a constructive means for poetic triumph…. Char remains aware of his limits as man and poet, while, on the contrary, Rimbaud frequently forgets his limits and is frustrated when he is forced to accept them.
A third important affinity in spirit is their concept of the poet's role. The primary role of the poet is to discover totality and communicate this discovery. For Char and Rimbaud, the poet is the initiator, what Rimbaud calls "le principe" and what Char describes as matinal in Les Matinaux (1950)…. For both Rimbaud and Char, the poet precedes the man of action; the poet is the doer, the one who is first in the experience of the oneness of life. The poet is man's guide, his agent, and he is responsible to man.
The idea of moral responsibility in Rimbaud's work is ignored, neglected, and scorned, and it is true that Rimbaud himself does not accept it; however, Rimbaud does recognize categorically that the poet, and he Rimbaud in particular, has an obligation…. In a similar vein, Char rejects all previous traditional concepts of good and evil and envisages liberty as the only moral good; yet, unlike Rimbaud, Char demands, affirms, and accepts poetic responsibility in a moral sense…. Fundamentally, Char places his faith in man; he is a humanist who not only defends man as capable and worthy of dignity but also poeticizes man, for in his work he substitutes the term man for poet…. On the contrary, Rimbaud humanizes poetry but does not poeticize man. Despite his revolt against the futility of man's existence, Rimbaud's poetry is not humanistic but supernaturalistic…. Rimbaud asserts that life is innocent, but he is never able to believe that man is innocent. With this stance, Rimbaud is forced to place his faith in verbal expression as opposed to human expression. This is one of the basic differences between Char and Rimbaud. (pp. 58-9)
Another area of strong esthetic resemblance between Char and Rimbaud is their teleology. In the works of both poets there are similarities in their representation of poetic activity, action, love, experience, risk, human condition, man, nature. It is interesting that Rimbaud and Char examine the same concepts and exhibit the same concerns with regard to the matter or "fond" of poetry; in many respects, they embark upon identical courses in order to gain access to "la Maison." It is in this area that Char's indebtedness to Rimbaud is explicitly evident.
Char and Rimbaud conceive of the notion of poetic activity as the simultaneous experience of life and art; in Char's poetry, this concept is enlarged to include as artistic any creative act of living, and creative activity becomes the basis for his poetics in both theory and practice. Char did not formulate and adopt this theory in his earliest works, notably Les Cloches sur le cœur (1928), Arsenal (1929 and 1930), and Le Tombeau des secrets (1930); however, Le Marteau sans maître (1934) represents his adoption of this principle as the foundation of his poetry, and after the publication of this volume, his poetry is consistently and faithfully constructed on this principle of creative activity…. Toward the end of his poetic production, Rimbaud is beginning to evolve in the selfsame fashion that Char evolves. What is project for Rimbaud becomes practice for Char. It is to be noted that, prior to his Surrealist experience, Char concentrated on the act rather than on the activity of poetry: that is, on the agent of the action, rather than on the nature of the activity itself; in this early stage, Char, like the Rimbaud of Une Saison en enfer, attempted to equate experience with expression through the actor, and it is also notable that in this same period of development Char is most tempted by Rimbaud's theory of the "Voyant" and by Rimbaud's faith in verbal expression. When Char moves from reliance on the power of the written word to reliance on the capability of man, he also turns from emphasis on act to activity.
One of Rimbaud's overriding concerns is love as the principle of communal participation in cosmic unity…. Love is tangentially a constant theme in Char's work, and, like his predecessor, Char views love as a unifying cosmic factor. Prior to Le Visage nuptial (1938) Char tends to limit his evocations of love to its erotic nature and concentrates on the sensual experience itself. In Le Visage nuptial, he focuses on the activity produced by the lovers and discovers that the couple represents an equal union that permits man to experience immediately his totality and provides man's first basis for exchange, for communion with another. The role of the couple is a vital notion in Char's subsequent expansion of exchange to the fraternal level and identification with others in a universal sense. On the other hand, Rimbaud does not find totality in the union of the couple; he finds a "drôle de ménage" … of slavery and dependence; his duality and alienation are reinforced, not overcome. Rimbaud is unwilling to pay the price for the risk of union; for him, it results in a loss of dignity and in dispersion. Char is willing to assume the risk; in fact, he chooses to expose his own vulnerability and identify with others, and, consequently, he ends dispersion, finds reconciliation, and discovers his dignity. Char analyzes experience and the role of participation, while Rimbaud only feels the need for exchange; indeed, Rimbaud's failure to glimpse the need for group exchange restricts him to the individual level, a source of personal frustration and dissatisfaction. Rimbaud did identify psychologically with "Les Communards," and he applauded the heroism that these revolutionaries attained through the risk of self, yet he never again attempted to experience personally joint action, much less reflect upon its possibilities. Char and Rimbaud share the artistic demand for consummated action in the present, but, of the two, only Char realizes Rimbaud's own theory of woman's possibilities…. (pp. 59-60)
The human condition is one of abject misery, and both Char and Rimbaud set out to reverse this situation; they wish to terminate man's contradictions and offer him justification for his being through the tool of poetry, which they believe can make man divine without God. In their examination and assessment of man, Rimbaud and Char discover a "bonheur ancien mêlé à son regret présent."… Man retains a nostalgia for harmony with himself and with his world, for an Edenic existence…. (p. 60)
Char attains [a] synthesis of misery and hope through the dialectic of being-destruction-being. Like Rimbaud, he has nostalgia for an original oneness and harmony…. In fact, all of Avant-monde … is devoted to this primordial unity. Char blames man for the initial rupture; man has ravaged his world, destroyed it, upset the balance necessary for cyclical regeneration; by guiding man from a destructive role to a constructive one in Le Soleil des eaux (1949) and Les Matinaux (1950), he overcomes hostility and alienation. Char asks man to preserve nature and rebuild it; this creative activity can reestablish harmony with the world. Rimbaud insists on regaining this lost Edenic situation; he offers no means except a "dérèglement de tous les sens" … for the attainment of this unity with the world. It is curious that both Char and Rimbaud accept destruction as a natural part of life and find beauty in the ugly or distorted; moreover, both assign value to active destruction as a way of bringing about a new order. The difference is that Char destroys in order to create, while Rimbaud either destroys or uninhibitedly puts forth a new order without any regard to its possible value. In fact, Rimbaud is unable to construct; even emergence is basically destructive in his poetry. Char demands constructive destruction….
The elements of Char's concept of constructive destruction are a "santé du malheur," pulverization, and crispation. According to Char in "Arthur Rimbaud," the last two aspects are to be credited to Rimbaud. Char believes that security, peace, and the absence of threat would lead to a lack of action; his analysis of the human situation has revealed that man acts only when his vulnerability is menaced. Man's innate contradictions of fear, apprehension, defiance, desire, passion, tenderness, and his inherent situation of mortality and finiteness are to be channeled into a concerted activity directed against the menace; the threat must be maintained by the poet. This is the meaning of Char's work, À une sérénité crispée (1951). (p. 61)
Of course, Char is a humanist and Rimbaud is not, but it is to be noted that Char's intimate knowledge of Rimbaud's efforts allows him to evolve a poetics based on life, not one based on theory. In this way, Char succeeds in reintegrating man and nature, while in Rimbaud's work man and nature remain at odds with one another and harmony remains an unrealized ambition.
Nature is of prime importance to both Char and Rimbaud, and Char recognizes this affinity between himself and his precursor…. Char and Rimbaud recognize that the world of nature is unified and that each element contributes to the construct of the whole; but only Char grasps the parallels between the cyclical process of nature and that of man, between nature as a synthetic whole composed of multiple elements and the human community at large. Although Char and Rimbaud are aware of the mutual give-and-take that occurs within nature, only Char takes the next step and unifies man with nature in the "commune présence" of creative activity.
To realize their vision of cosmic unity and oneness, Char and Rimbaud are constantly engaged in the artistic struggle to efface appearances and unveil the essence of the real. Although these two poets exhibit other strong teleological likenesses, it is in their practice that actual differences emerge. It is to be noted that both Char and Rimbaud find that all forms of expression and all sources of creativity are valid. Moreover, they endeavor to capture the moment of harmony spontaneously albeit Rimbaud is literally spontaneous while Char concentrates only on the effect of spontaneity. Rimbaud relies on the dictates of his inspiration and intuition, while Char evinces a logical, almost mathematical, intellect at work; his reason is always in control of his feeling. Where Rimbaud is uninhibited, Char is disciplined; this is especially notable in Char's deliberate efforts to delete personal details and references, whereas Rimbaud's personal reactions prevail. Further evidence is found in Char's procedural progression from the particular to the general, while Rimbaud rarely goes beyond the particular. Where Rimbaud is a dreamer, Char is the practitioner who realizes a fusion of desire and verb, which remain antithetical for Rimbaud. The young Char of Les Cloches sur le cœur is less personal, less objective, less humanistic, and more fervently confident in the power of the verb or written form; but he matures as a poet, learns to control his sensitivity and reactions, learns to reconcile his inspiration and his reason, and learns not to attempt to go beyond the realm of the human. Rimbaud proposes verbal essence and accord only to find greater dispersion, incompatibility, multiplicity, and disillusionment in his own ability to express his vision. Char demonstrates a lived poetics and discovers reconciliation, harmony, and unity. He overcomes his early fears of illusion and death, but Rimbaud remains tormented by them. Char completes and realizes Rimbaud's vision; he brings the necessary corrective, human expression, to Rimbaud's immature faith in the nonhuman. It is impossible to predict the kind of poetry that a mature Rimbaud would have composed, but it is possible to suggest that his work would be similar to the poetry of René Char. Char is very much the student who profited from the successes and failures of his predecessor, and in fulfilling the vision he has remained loyal to it. The text that Char admires most from the entire body of Rimbaud's work is "Génie," which Char interprets as a means for Rimbaud to announce his "congé" from poetry. However, Char does not lament Rimbaud's farewell because he adheres to Rimbaud's tenet that the poet must be, above all, an initiator, a beginner. For Char, it is not satisfaction that one seeks from a poet's work, but scintillation, titillation, provocation…. (pp. 61-2)
Virginia A. La Charité, "The Role of Rimbaud in Char's Poetry," in PMLA, 89 (copyright © 1974 by the Modern Language Association of America; reprinted by permission of the Modern Language Association of America), January, 1974, pp. 57-63.
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