Working towards reconciling the “dilemma of having to choose between meaning and music” in her translation of Char’s poems, Carlson also hopes to bring an awareness of the stress of syllables and of poetic rhythms to her work. In her introduction, she offers as an example the poem “Congé au vent,” of which the first line, for example, illustrates this aim in retaining the “f” alliteration and assuring that the sentence ends “with a stressed syllable,” in keeping with the original:

A concentration on sound, however, means that the translator at times loses important layers of meaning in a poem. In this poem, the word “Congé” — in its sense of “taking leave of” — has been dropped, resulting in a translation in which the writer’s moment of breathlessness and fascinated oblivion to the wind as the perfumed young woman passes by is absent. Further, the line “Il serait sacrilège de lui adresser la parole” or “It would be a sacrilege to speak to her” is translated as “Sacrilege to utter a single word”; the imagined connection between the writer and the subject has not been retained and the impact of the poem is diminished as a result.

In “Yvonne,” Char seems to touch upon bisexuality in describing a woman who “could drink and survive forty rounds” and “From waking to sunset used tactics of men.” Carlson has modestly translated “coucher” as “sunset,” but the word also means “bedtime,” “putting to bed,” or even “the bed” itself. She has also translated “manoeuvre” as “tactics.” A closer translation of the line “De l’éveil au couchant sa manoeuvre était mâle” might be “From waking to bedtime her moves were male.” The last lines in Carlson’s translation are:

Char, however, uses “puits”— which means “well” — and not shaft; he also uses “dans l’écart de ses mains” in the last line, which means “in the gap between her hands.” This more literal translation retains the notion of bisexuality in a woman who at times “digs a well” and at others engages in “raising water,” the result being that she risks having a heart divided, holding it in the gap between her hands.

To conclude, Char’s writings often describe specific moments. In “Proclaiming One’s Name,” the poet deals with an experience of coming of age when he was ten; it was an instant of grief, of transformation: “But what wheel in the wary child’s heart turned harder and faster than that of the mill, churning its white fire?” (p. 55). Indeed, Char remains optimistic: these moments can be survived. Gaining vitality by looking at the “stars… shadowed and hard” in the “sky of men,” as evoked in “Combatants,” the poet left behind a memorable line, representative of his spirits and visions, “I collected their golden sweat, and the earth, through me, ceased to die” (p. 43).