Resistance and its Futures: Translating the (Untranslatable) Wartime Poetry of René Char

This two-day international conference will explore how René Char’s Feuillets d’Hypnos  (Leaves of Hypnos), became a global phenomenon across a range of languages and media.  This collection of 237 short prose poems was drafted by Char while leading a division of the French Resistance in WWII. Though often considered untranslatable, the collection’s mysterious, aphoristic language soon inspired translations into more than 30 languages, as well as the visual arts, theater, music and film.

Shedding light on the experience of oppression, war, and suffering, along with hope and an ongoing quest for beauty, Char’s text and its various renditions together constitute a living, global legacy. They also prompt a series of historical and philosophical questions: How might these translations offer new insight into Char’s work and the political and aesthetic contexts of its reception? And what might these inter-lingual and inter-semiotic versions tell us about translation as well as literary and artistic resistance more broadly?

Some thirty scholars and artists—as well as a number of Princeton students—will begin to consider these issues in panels, conversations, and performances, which promise to provide new insight into the work, life and afterlife of René Char.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, the Humanities Council, the Princeton Center of Excellence / French Embassy in the United States, University Center for Human Values, and the Princeton Institute of International and Regional Studies.

Organized by Sandra Bermann (Comparative Literature). Contact Michael Franz, Comparative Literature Department Manager, with questions.