René Char

French poet and resistance member (1907–1988) René CharChar in 1941BornRené Émile Char(1907-06-14)14 June 1907L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, FranceDied19 February 1988(1988-02-19) (aged 80)Paris, FranceOccupationPoetWriting careerPeriod1920–1940GenrePoetry René Émile Char (French: [ʁəne ʃaʁ]; 14 June 1907 – 19 February 1988) was a French poet and member of the French Resistance in World War II. Biography Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of the four children of Emile Char and Marie-Thérèse Rouget, where his father was mayor and managing director of the Vaucluse plasterworks. He 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. He was tall (1.92 m) and was an active rugby player. After briefly working at Cavaillon, in 1927 he performed his military service in the artillery in Nîmes. His first book, Cloches sur le cœur (1928), was a c