"Poet of upheaval and freedom, who effortlessly is also the poet of love." With these words, Albert Camus described his friend, the writer and Resistance fighter René Char. Char's poetry transcends the boundaries of poetry; it is rather "poetry of poetry" (Maurice Blanchot), although its reference points are always tangible: reality as a place of limited choices, the dictates of our present, the transience and porosity of our existence, and - as a counterpoint - dreams and love, youth and the urge for revolution. "Rückkehr stromauf" gathers poems translated into German by Peter Handke that Char wrote between 1964 and 1975. His aphorisms and fragments are marked by perceptions of light and darkness, they traverse paths into the vague, the intangible, eluding a definitive interpretation and leaving...