Char, the poet says. Char. The poet's poet, he says. Char is unfathomable, the poet says. Pure poetry, the essence of poetry, he says. It's too much for him. He can't even think of Char, the poet says. It gives him a headache.
Char! He shakes his head. No, he won't speak of Char. Not a word! The Leaves of Hypnos, he says. No, he won't speak of that. Commune presence, which he has in French, it's an anthology, he says. He doesn't understand a word. No, he won't speak of that, either, he says.
Char was a partisan, he says. That's the most poetic of vocations, the poet says. Captain Alexandre, that was his name in the Resistance, he says. That was his name, as a leader of a Maquis group, the poet says. A Maquis group; a group of Maquis: he's not sure how to say it.
The poet tells me he's going to read me some Char. He'll read me the opening of The Leaves of Hypnos, Feuillets d'Hypnos in French, he says. But when he opens his little hardback book, he finds it impossible. – 'I bear it', he tells me. 'You read it', he says, passing it to me.
'These notes owe nothing to self-love, the short story, the maxim, or the novel', I read. 'A fire of dry grass might well have published them. The sight of blood spilled under torture once broke their thread, destroyed their importance. They were written under stress, in anger, fear, emulation, disgust, stealth, in furtive meditation, in illusory hope for the future, in friendship and love'.
Stop!, the poet tells me. I am to stop, he says, it's too much. Then we sit in darkness, as he refuses to turn on the lights.
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