Emmanuel Macron: Which poet is the re-elected French president fascinated by?
The French presidential elections 2022 were held on April 24. Emmanuel Macron was re-elected for a second consecutive term as the French president, He defeated his opponent, Marine Le Pen, by a large margin. Earlier, he had served as the president of France since May 14, 2017 during the first term. However, Macron is more than just a political leader. He’s a man of letters with varied interests in poetry, music and theatre which he developed during his school days. He used to participate in school plays as a teenager. It was during one such play, written by Czech writer, Milan Kundera titled ‘Jacques and His Master’ that he met his future wife, Brigitte Macron. Macron also studied piano for 10 years at the music conservatory in Amiens, where he won third prize. He also has a keen interest in karaoke. According to media reports, Macron has an abiding love for books and cannot end the day without reading some of René Char’s poems or immersing himself in a metaphysical essay. Here’s all you need to know about the French poet Macron is fascinated by.
Who was Rene Char?
Rene Char was a French poet (1907-1988) and a member of the French Resistance. He was born in the Provence town of L'Isle-sur-Sorgue in Southern France and attended the University of Aix-en-Provence. After publishing his first collection of poems, Cloches sur le Coeur (1928), he relocated to Paris.
He was a member of the Surrealist Movement, a cultural movement that emerged in Europe after World War I in which artists depicted unsettling, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself in the early 1930s. The group of artists involved in this movement include Aragon, André Breton, and Pablo Picasso.
In 1940, Char joined the Resistance Movement, a collection of organisations who fought the Nazi occupation of France and the Vichy régime during the Second World War. Vichy regime refers to the time (July 10, 1940 – August 9, 1944) when France was led by French army general, Philippe Petain during the Second World War.
Poetic styles of Rene Char
Char published almost 30 volumes of poetry, criticism, and plays during his lifetime. He wrote most of his poems in one of three styles: free verse, prose poem and aphorism. A sense of loss and discontinuity are important themes of Char’s work as reflected in his poetry, Fureur et mystère (1948).
Char collaborated frequently with French writers and painters such as André Breton, Paul Éluard, Georges Braque, Joan Miró and Nicolas de Stael. He worked on the poetry collection, 'Ralentir Travaux' (1930) with Breton and Éluard. Keith Waldrop, an American poet, translator, and academic, translated it as Slow Under Construction in 1990. In addition, Pierre Boulez, a French music composer, adapted several of Char's poetry to music, including his well-known work, Le Marteau sans maître (Hammer without a Master).
Popular poems of Rene Char
Some of his famous poems are Le Marteau sans maître(1934), Moulin Premier (1936), Placard pour un chemin des écoliers (1937), Dehors la nuit est gouvernée (1938), Le Poème pulvérisé (1947), Fureur et mystère (1948) and Les Matinaux (1950).