L'abri rudoyé, poème autographe signé de ses initiales

Nice autograph poem in prose by René Char, entitled "The Sheltered Shelter", signed with his initials in pencil. 12 lines in black ink, a few strikethrough words and additions.
Provenance: from the collection of choreographer Maurice Béjart, great admirer of the work of Char and creator of ballets inspired by his poems.

Poem published for the first time in The Lost Naked (1971), added in the book The Rain Game .

The poem was part of the collection of Maurice Béjart, famous choreographer and author passionate poetry and theater, who borrowed for his ballets texts Novalis, Hölderlin, Char or Sartre. In his interviews, Béjart will put René Char, the Provencal poet-fighter, among the great masters who rocked his youth, with Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Hugo. Char became a powerful source of inspiration, beginning in 1961 with the short film by François Weyergans, where Béjart recites the passages of his Lettera amorosa in front of the camera. The poet saw this short film during a private screening organized by the director, and thanked Béjart for this loan by autograph dedication of the author an autograph of his Anthology , published a few months earlier. This, however, was the only sign of friendship ever received from René Char, who will never forgive Béjart for his collaboration with Salvador Dalí. Béjart went up the same year with Dalí the ballet Gala , at La Fenice in Venice, reminding Char of the painful break between his great friend Eluard and his wife Gala, who had left for Dali.
As for Béjart, he will continue to take inspiration from the poet's works and collect his autograph poems - including "L'abri rudoyé". A decade later, his work will cross again Char's with The Hammer Without Master , which he will choreograph the poems set to music by Pierre Boulez. Béjart's creations, vigorous and impulsive, seem to prolong Char's poems, which he re-read unceasingly. In an interview, he will say: "Poetry has always been present in my life because it takes into account to a certain extent the body, it takes into account the rhythm, the breathing, the musicality ...".
In this prose poem we find the influence of Heraclitus, an ephesian poet of antiquity, whom Char admired for the strength of his aphorisms, described as "punctual and tumultuous mirages". The poet affirms from the outset this inheritance Heraclitenne by the title of the poem, very contradictory: "Shelter rudoyé". In the space of a short paragraph, Char paints a Provencal painting " I have always liked on a dirt road the proximity of a trickle of water fallen from the sky ", which we meet in many his works imprinted with the memory of his native Vaucluse. Char completes his vision on an evocative comparison - that of the flow of thought suddenly interrupted: " the soft awkwardness of the middle grass that a charge of stones stops as an obscure lapel puts an end to thought."
Rare proof of mutual admiration between the two artists Maurice Béjart and René Char, then at the peak of his poetic maturity.

"The rough shelter
I At all times I liked on a dirt road near the one of a stream of water fell from the sky that comes and goes and comes just going, if hunting alone and tender awkwardness of middle grass that a charge of stones stops As a sudden setback interrupts puts an end to Thought as an obscure lapel puts an end to thought