René Char
The text for this work was taken from René Char's collection of poems, "Le Marteau sans maître", written in the 1930s while Char "still shared the surrealist views of poets like André Breton and Henri Michaux". Boulez had earlier written two cantatas, "Le Visage nuptial" and "Le Soleil des eaux" in 1946 and 1948, which also set poems by René Char.