René Daumal

A twentieth-century classic, Mount Analogue combines the author's poetic gifts and philosophical accomplishments in a manner that is both entertaining to read and profound to contemplate. The novel is a representation of the author's own spiritual quest, transposed into fictional form, and was published posthumously in 1952. This edition is newly translated by Carol Cosman, with an afterword by Vera Daumal. Among other things, this is an allegory for the journey of life, as well as a marvellous tale in which the narrator/author, one of an intrepid company of eight, sets sail in the yacht Impossible to search for Mount Analogue, the solid, geographically located, albeit hidden, peak that reaches inexorably towards heaven - as Mount Olympus reached to the home of the Greek gods, or Mount Sinai to the presence of Yahweh. Daumal, often described as one of the most gifted literary figures in twentieth century France, died before the novel was completed, providing an uncanny one-way quality to the journey that the reader cannot help but share.

A Tale of Non-Euclidian and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures

Mount Analogue

A Night of Serious Drinking is among Rene Daumal's most important literary works. Like Daumal's Mount Analogue it is a classic work of symbolic fiction. An unnamed narrator spends an evening getting drunk with a group of friends.; as the party becomes intoxicated and exuberant, the narrator embarks on a journey that ranges from seeming paradises to the depths of pure hell. The fantastic world depicted in A Night of Serious Drinking is actually the ordinary world turned upside down. The characters are called the Anthographers, Fabricators of useless objects, Scienters, Nibblists, Clarificators, and other absurd titles. Yet the inhabitants of these strange realms are only too familiar: scientists dissecting an animal in their laboratory, a wise man surrounded by his devotees, politicians, poets expounding their rhetoric. These characters perform hilarious antics and intellectual games, which they see as serious attempts to find meaning and freedom.

A Night of Serious Drinking

Pataphysics: the science of imaginary solutions, of laws governing exceptions and of the laws describing the universe supplementary to this one. Alfred Jarry's posthumous novel, Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician, first appeared in 1911, and over the next 100 years, his pataphysical supersession of metaphysics would influence everyone from Marcel Duchamp and Boris Vian to Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard. In 1948 in Paris, a group of writers and thinkers would found the College of 'Pataphysics, still going strong today. The iconoclastic René Daumal was the first to elaborate upon Jarry's unique and humorous philosophy. Though Daumal is better known for his unfinished novel Mount Analogue and his refusal to be adopted by the Surrealist movement, this newly translated volume of writings offers a glimpse of often overlooked Daumal: Daumal the pataphysician. Pataphysical Essays collects Daumal's overtly pataphysical writings from 1929 to 1941, from his landmark exposition on pataphysics and laughter to his late essay, "The Pataphysics of Ghosts." Daumal's "Treatise on Patagrams" offers the reader everything from a recipe for the disintegration of a photographer to instructions on how to drill a fount of knowledge in a public urinal. This volume also includes Daumal's column for the Nouvelle Revue Française, "Pataphysics This Month." Reading like a deranged encyclopedia, "Pataphysics This Month" describes a new mythology for the field of science, and amply demonstrates that the twentieth century had been a distinctly pataphysical era.

Pataphysical Essays

In this novel/allegory the narrator/author sets sail in the yacht Impossible to search for Mount Analogue, the geographically located, albeit hidden, peak that reaches inexorably toward heaven. Daumal's symbolic mountain represents a way to truth that "cannot not exist," and his classic allegory of man's search for himself embraces the certainty that one can know and conquer one's own reality.

A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing

Ein nicht-euklidischer, im symbolischen Verstand authentischer alpinistischer Abenteurroman

Der Berg Analog

«Era tarde, quando começámos a beber. Todos achávamos que era mais do que tempo de começar. Não nos lembrávamos do que tinha acontecido antes. Pensávamos apenas que já era tarde. Saber de onde vinha cada um de nós, em que ponto do globo estávamos, ou sequer se se trataria mesmo de um globo (o que, aliás, nem era assunto), em que dia do mês de que ano, eram tudo coisas que nos ultrapassavam. Não são perguntas que se façam quando se tem sede.»
René Daumal (1938), A Grande Bebedeira

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«A Grande Bebedeira, único romance de René Daumal publicado em vida do autor, começou a ser escrito em Nova Iorque, (…) em 1932-33.
(…) A par da reflexão subjectiva e do desejo de transformação interior, está presente ao longo de todo o relato uma visão da sociedade da época, a sua crítica, e o desejo de a ver transformar-se. Deste ponto de vista, é particularmente interessante o panorama que nos é dado do mundo cultural, científico, religioso e político.
(…) Trata-se de um romance muito centrado na realidade, mas onde esta é descrita de forma surrealista, num tom humorístico e paródico, com grande imaginação e um domínio total da língua e da linguagem, como é característico no estilo de Daumal.»

A Grande Bebedeira

Un gruppo di singolari ed esperti alpinisti, certi dell’esistenza, in qualche parte del globo, di una montagna la cui vetta è più alta di tutte le vette, decide un giorno di partire da Parigi per tentare di scoprirla e di darne la scalata. Dopo una navigazione «non euclidea», a bordo di un’imbarcazione chiamata "l’Impossibile", gli esploratori approdano nell’isola-continente del "Monte Analogo", dove trovano una popolazione, dagli usi apparentemente stravaganti, che discende da uomini di tutti i tempi e che, come loro, vive ormai, soltanto, nella speranza di scalare la vetta. Un breve soggiorno nel villaggio di Porto-delle-Scimmie, e il gruppo dei nostri alpinisti intraprende l’ascensione, arrivando in vista del campo base. A questo punto il racconto s’interrompe: siamo soltanto all’inizio di un viaggio – che forse è sempre, continuamente, all’inizio – quando la morte coglie René Daumal, l’autore di questa storia, impedendogli di descrivere il seguito della scalata al monte simbolico che unisce la Terra al Cielo. Sotto le parvenze di un romanzo d’avventure, o di un racconto fantastico, "Il Monte Analogo", pubblicato postumo nel 1952, ci offre una «metafisica dell’alpinismo» che è, anche, un itinerario minuzioso, lentamente maturato nelle esperienze dell’autore, verso un centro, sentito come liberazione della persona da ogni suo limite, verso una vetta in cui, al disopra di ogni specifica contraddizione, ciascun uomo attui le proprie umane possibilità. Con la leggerezza propria del saggio, facendo uso nel racconto di storie, canzoni, deduzioni, miti e dimostrazioni, Daumal trasporta il lettore nel regno dell’analogia, dove niente è vero ma tutto è veridico, per un parallelismo tra realtà raggiunta e realtà raggiungibile attraverso un metodo (cioè: il «mettersi sulla via») che fa cadere i nostri schemi difensivi e ci porta a contemplare con occhi nuovi il nostro paesaggio interiore.

Il Monte Analogo

Christoph Ruckhäberle

Harald Langenfeld

Carsten Tabel

Studierende der Klasse Ruckhäberle stellen aus

Roger Vailland

Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes

Roger Gilbert-Lecomte

Maurice Henry

Between 1928 and 1930, the Paris magazine Le Grand Jeu (The Great Game) ran to three issues. During its brief period of activity, however, Le Grand Jeu was more than a little magazine that vanished in the orbit of the Surrealist movement. The journal was the public face of a tightly-bound group of artists and writers who since adolescence had systematically attacked their perceptions of reality by means such as drugs and near-death experiences. The theory of Le Grand Jeu is presented in the group's own words, through the essays and articles which formed the magazine.

Writings from Le Grand Jeu Magazine

Theory of the Great Game

Translation (with introduction and bibliography) of Rene Daumal's two short stories, written in 1925-26. The stories are allegories of self-destruction and self-destructing writing.

And, The Silk

René Daumal's Mugle

Dennis Duncan

Terry Hale

London Institute of 'Pataphysics. Department of Dogma and Theory

Julien Torma

Correspondence Between René Daumal and Julien Torma with an Additional Letter from Julien Torma to Jean Montmort

Pataphysical Letters

Since his death in 1944, Rene Daumal has come to be recognized as one of the original minds of the twentieth century French letters. Poet, essayist, philosopher and translator, Sanscrit scholar and pupil of Gurdjieff, Daumal was a founder of the...

Selected Essays and Notes 1927-1943

The Powers of the Word

LE CONTRE-CIEL is a powerful and transcendent collection of poetry. Rene Daumal presents, in the form of easily digestible verse, a stirring and provocative meditation on life, death, and the afterlife. LE CONTRE-CIEL ('The Counter-Heaven') marked the start of one of the most daring and inventive careers in all of French literature. Written when its author was only twenty-two, it was honoured with the prestigious Prix Jacques Doucet, awarded by the reigning triumvirate of French letters, Andre Gide, Paul Valery, and Jean Giraudoux. LE CONTRE-CIEL is an exploration of, among other things, death as a beginning to life rather than end, a means of shedding superficial identity and experiencing understanding and awareness - concepts that Daumal later developed in his two great prose masterpieces, A Night of Serious Drinking and the posthumously published Mount Analogue.

René Daumal

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