René DaumalRezensionen

A strange one this. A man has determined there must be a huge mountain on the earth so large it bends light around ti which is why it hasn't been discovered yet. He assembles a varied group of people to scale the mountain. I liked, if not understood, what there was of it but it is unfinished so it doesn't really feel like it accomplished much.

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Daumal-Essais-et-notes-1-Chaque-fois-que-laube-pa...

> « Chez nous l’on tient les hommes comme égaux
en “ Être ”, et ne différant que par “ l'Avoir ” :
qualités innées et savoirs acquis. L’Hindou
reconnaît une hiérarchie dans l’Être des hommes : le
maître n’est pas seulement plus savant ou plus habile
que l’élève, il EST substantiellement plus que lui. Et
c’est ce qui rend possible la transmission de la Vérité. » —René DAUMAL*, Chaque fois que l’aube paraît ;
*cité dans: Jeanne Guesné, Le septième sens : Le corps spirituel, Le Relié (2007), p. 221

> Daumal, René. Correspondance, Il 1929-1932. Ed. H.J. Maxwell. Paris: Gallimard, 1993. ISBN 2-07-073404-8. Pp. 331. 180 FF.
Se reporter au compte rendu de Danielle RAQUIDEL
In: The French Review, Vol. 69, No. 6 (May, 1996), pp. 1024-1025… ; (en ligne),
URL : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rOxGEc--Xd4z3Lgnoh-zs0OTc8tP4P5D/view?usp=shari...

> MUGLE, de René Daumal (Edition Fata Morgana). — Ce texte resté inédit jusqu’à ce jour a été écrit par René Daumal alors qu’il n’avait que dix huit ans. Procédant d'une nécessité intérieure, il décrit un combat.
Claudio Rugafiori écrit : « Il faut entendre ce texte à la manière du Bardo Thôdol, comme l’histoire d’une lutte bien réelle et non comme le débordement d’une imagination incontrôlée. C’est une description de bataille, mais aussi une confession où les images sont « Idées-Démons ». Et elles sont à nier, ainsi que les cadavres qu’elles habitent, ainsi que son propre moi-cadavre : celui deux fois tué dans MUGLE. Le mécanisme de ce récit consiste dans la superposition de plans projetés et résorbés : le monde, la ville, etc., puis dans leur reconstitution autour d’apparences illusoires parce que démoniaques ».
—L'Originel, (8), Févr./Mars 1979

> LE GRAND JEU, de Roger Gilbert-Lecomte & René Daumal [sous la direction de] (Edité par Jean-Michel Place)
Se reporter au compte rendu de J.L.A.
In: (1978) L'Originel, (3), Janvier-Février 1978, (pp. 38-39)… ; (en ligne),
URL : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kwQwRbfFFtw3yahMgg9eG7u43-qMqK8u/view?usp=shari...

> LA GRANDE BEUVERIE, de René Daumal (Gallimard, L'imaginaire n° 165,1986)
Se reporter à la critique de Denys LELIÈVRE
In: (1986).). Compte rendu de [Commentaires]. Nuit blanche, (25), p. 21. … ; (en ligne),
URL : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/20580ac

> NOTES SUR L’OBSCURANTISME [Texte inédit], de René Daumal (2020, Éoliennes, 26 p.). — 1939, René Daumal, 1939, vient de voir paraître son premier roman, La Grande Beuverie, dans la déjà prestigieuse collection Métamorphoses de la nrf. De nouveaux projets se dessinent: ce qui a pour l’instant la forme d’un « Traité d’alpinisme analogique » (il revient du Pelvoux, dans les Hautes-Alpes), une Anthologie des poètes français du XVe siècle, des traductions du sanskrit, mais aussi et on le sait moins, cet essai sur l’obscurantisme.
—3e millénaire, (135), Été 2020

What is here is wonderful and even the ending - left unfinished mid-sentence - kind of works in context, though I would have read Daumal's conclusion.

What is here is wonderful and even the ending - left unfinished mid-sentence - kind of works in context, though I would have read Daumal's conclusion.

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Daumal-Le-Mont-Analogue/260749
> Ludwig Jean Sébastien (Amazon) : https://www.amazon.fr/gp/customer-reviews/R2FYXAEEVITXHW/
> Critiques Libres : http://www.critiqueslibres.com/i.php/vcrit/21838
> BAnQ (Marcotte G., Le devoir, 12 juin 1954) : https://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/2786390

> Biès Jean. Vie et portrait de René Daumal.
In: Littératures 12, novembre 1965. pp. 185-200. … ; (en ligne),
URL : https://www.persee.fr/doc/litts_0563-9751_1965_num_12_3_1013

> LE MONT ANALOGUE, par René Daumal. — Le Mont Analogue est un roman d'aventures alpines, non euclidiennes et symboliquement authentiques écrit par René Daumal. Le livre raconte l'histoire de Pierre Sogol, un alpiniste français qui se lance dans une quête pour trouver le Mont Analogue, une montagne mythique qui est censée être le centre du monde et qui relie le monde physique au monde spirituel. Le Mont Analogue est un roman très symbolique et aborde des thèmes tels que la spiritualité, la connaissance de soi et la quête de sens. Le livre est une oeuvre inachevée, mais est considéré comme un classique de la littérature française et a été salué pour sa vision unique et imaginative. Les lecteurs qui s'intéressent à la philosophie, la religion et la spiritualité trouveront probablement ce livre fascinant et enrichissant.
—BooksAI

> SE DÉGAGER DU SCORPION IMPOSÉ, par René Daumal (2014 - Éditions Éolienne - 122 p. - 20 €). — René Daumal fut un poète d’une grande précocité, proche un temps des surréalistes même s’il s’en éloigna rapidement. Il se fit connaître dans les milieux littéraires en fondant une revue appelée « Le Grand Jeu » dans les années 30. Et c’est en 1930 qu’il rencontra le Travail proposé par G.I. Gurdjieff. Sa vie prit un tournant alors décisif, comme sa poésie et son écriture d’écrivain. On citera en particulier le remarquable ouvrage « Le Mont Analogue » qu’il écrivit à la fin de sa vie. Ici, il s’agit de ses oeuvres de jeunesse, alors qu’il n’avait pas encore rencontré l’enseignement de Gurdjieff. On y trouve en sourdine l’écho de sa recherche intérieure, son goût pour les écrits sacrés de l’Inde : « l’oeil de la conscience, comment voulez-vous le voir, puisqu’on ne voit que par lui ? », écrit-il ainsi. Mais essentiellement les textes présentés sont inspirés par le surréalisme.
—3e millénaire, (113), Automne 2014

> René Daumal / ou / le retour à soi / (Textes inédits et études), (Paris, L’Originel, 1981. Un vol. 13,5x21 de 301 p.)
Se reporter au compte rendu de Michel PICARD
In: Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France, 83e Année, No. 5/6, Jean Giraudoux (Sep. - Dec., 1983), pp. 963-964… ; (en ligne),
URL : https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k56566816/f261.item

> René Daumal ou le retour à soi. Textes inédits de René Daumal. Etudes sur son œuvre, (Paris, L’Originel, 1981, 21,5x13,5 cm, 304 p.)
Se reporter au compte rendu de A. REIX
In: Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger, T. 172, No. 1 (Janvier-Mars 1982), p. 62… ; (en ligne),
URL : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k-b0cAGnpvU-jumMYUCF6qaEs4zkp0AR/view?usp=shari...

> Un livre qu'il fallait signaler et dont les 300 pages complètent utilement les oeuvres publiées. 300 pages précieuses pour les daumaliens mais qui peuvent servir d'introduction à ceux qui ne connaissent René Daumal que de nom.
—Magazine littéraire

> Les inédits de Daumal sont toujours un événement. Les études qui suivent sont d'un très haut niveau.
—Pages

> René Daumal est de ceux qui provoquent les hommes à se voir tels qu'ils sont et à se transformer, eux et le monde. C'est dire combien est actuelle sa pensée, combien salutaire la publication de son oeuvre.
—Aurores

> Cet ouvrage est une excellente introduction à une pensée souvent difficile mais toujours authentique.
—La Revue Philosophique

> Tous textes pleins de sens et de vie, tous devenus rares sont ici rassemblés.
—Questions de femmes

> Les fans de Daumal liront avec intérêt cet ouvrage constitué d'études et de textes inédits.
—Les Nouvelles Littéraires

> L'oeuvre de Daumal est une oeuvre nécessaire.
—Le Monde Inconnu

> Un recueil très dense... Des études pertinentes dans leur impertinence... Une lecture en prise directe avec Daumal et la Réalité.
—L'Autre Monde

> Des inédits de jeunesse d'un surréalisme étincelant.
—Le Matin de Paris

> Un volume fort... Il est des oeuvres auxquelles on revient toujours, qui plongent dans l'époque et la dominent, qui interrogent l'homme en le mettant à nu. De telles oeuvres sont rares, l'oeuvre de Daumal est, assurément, de celles-là.
—Plein Chant

Although it is an unfinished book (he died before he could complete it) it's a wonderful little piece. Predominately about the search for the "ultimate truth" in the guise of a far away mountain in the south pacific there are lots of wonderful little insights about human nature, religion and perceptions of "truth" throughout the book that make it really interesting.

It's a miracle that this book even exists. A book we were never meant to have, existing only in myth. A fever of a dream, but with all the details intact, specific, and so real. Like ending up in a dream without leaving the real world behind, both in terms of the trivialities of living as well as the logic that never approaches dream logic. An amalgamation of science, philosophy, myth, humor, and clear thinking, yes with the translucent, almost invisible, clarity of a 'paradam' that suddenly bends your thinking around its curvature. A 'paradam' shift. This book was already written from another world, no wonder Daumal died mid-sentence. No wonder! He was a dead man when he began, only gracing us with a few words from the other side. And how fitting! This story of a journey to the other side, a journey that never reaches its destination because its author, having reached it, cannot come back to tell us but a few details that might lead us there. An impossible journey. (Mount Analogue is analogous of itself, without ever being self-reflexive, without even knowing its antecedent). The unknown, like a dagger in the known, is deceptively accessible. Nevertheless, Daumal prepares the way, like the campers before him. In Daumal's world, the mystery of the unknown is more real than the reality of the world, so that our reality is but a dream within it. It's a transcendence into specificity. When we look back from the other world, we'll see but a vagueness reminiscent of lives half-lived in the fog that hovers in the foothills.

PS - reading some of the other reviews, I was a little annoyed that a few people had mentioned that this was surrealism. No it's not! People like to repeat what other people say without really evaluating it. Why would Daumal delve into surrealism when he can end up in the ideal territory of surrealism without ever leaving the real? That is what Daumal does, and that is why it is brilliant beyond anything I've ever imagined could be written. One logical step at a time, is how Daumal leads us up the mountain.

"Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments" Daumal quotes [a:Alfred Jarry|41534|Alfred Jarry|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1256164961p2/41534.jpg] as saying. This means nothing to me. However, Daumal goes on to quote him saying this:

"It will study the laws governing exceptions," and that made so much more sense to me. Science in general is trying to come up with rules for the generalizing of everything. Pataphysics is the opposite. As a computer scientist (aka programmer), I have come up against this very conflict within myself. The scientist in me wants everything to be the same, homogenous, one big picture that works in every case. This is a dream for a programmer because it makes the job so much easier.

The hardest problems I've ever had to tackle as a programmer have always been those where exceptions creep in. And always there are exceptions! Why? Because computers do not work with computers alone, computers interact with human beings, who are prone to act irrationally and inconsistently.

But the other non-scientist/artist/writer part of me understands this and even celebrates the exceptions! The computer program should not define human behavior, it should yield to human behavior. It should become invisible in the face of the human. And exceptions make the human, because none of us are alike, i.e. each human being is irreducible ("The particular is absurd [...] The particular is revolting"). I think this may be why I'm attracted to writers who struggle with similar issues, writers like Musil and philosophers like Wittgenstein. And now René Daumal.

Speaking of Wittgenstein, Daumal's version of pataphysics reminds me a lot of Wittgenstein's language games (but with a more scientific and literary edge to it, rather than a math and logical edge):

"pataphysical sophism is a proposition which brings into play syllogisms in a nonconclusive mode, but which become conclusive as soon as certain terms are changed in a manner that the mind grasps as quite obvious [...] the object of pataphysical knowledge is none other than the very law governing these changes [...] The reality of thought moves along a string of absurdities, which is true to the great principle that evidence cloaks itself in absurdity as its only means of being perceived. [...] Just as pataphysics as knowledge is the reverse and exact mirror opposite of physics, it probably can also have a powerful effect against attempts to streamline work when applied to the flow of production." (italics Daumal's).

Ultimately pataphysics comes down to a game of language that twists perception beyond its limits. And when I say game, I mean it in the very consequential Cortázarian sense of play, or the serious almost spiritual element that Wittgenstein brings to his language games. Even the pataphysical laughter that Daumal mentions as a key component is a way of transcending an individual's consciousness: "The revelation of laughter will come to every man, but there will be nothing joyful about it [...] the obvious becomes absurd, light is a black veil and a dazzling sun slumbers, whereas my eyes do not."

I find this opening essay very intriguing because it wrestles head on with the forward dash of science. And instead of rejecting it outright or adopting it fully, it creates a third reality, one that assimilates science through a field of laughter into a parallel universe that makes us more human instead of less.

Not to give you the wrong impression, the essay on pataphysics is only a small portion of this book. The rest is filled with glorious pun-ridden prose-poem-like pataphysical particulars. It is almost impossible to explain or review this portion, but it is a pleasure to read:

2. ON INTELLECTUAL GELOIDS, PLUMS EXCEPTED

A projection on a horizontal plane of psychic activity, represented, for example, by A HUMAN FACE PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE PRECISE MOMENT OF PARAMNESIA, furnishes on a protoplasmic mass sensitized by potassium bichromate, after its solution and digestion by the aqueous medium of non-insolubilized salts, a sufficiently approximate image of the static intellect, in the best conditions of visibility. The odor, thanks to the idea of God, is pestilential.

If this book were written by anybody else, it would probably be a two or three star book. It's a bit too plainly allegorical, its critiques of society were a bit too simplistic, and its concluding sentiment was a bit too tidy. But even with all these faults, it's the particularities of Daumal's humor, his fantastical inventions, his logical propositions that lead inevitably to a higher non-sense, his wordplay and wit, his sincere truth-seeking (always thirsting for transcendence), and his ultimate quirky vision that saves this book from its larger faults.

The parts are greater than the sum here. Perhaps Daumal knew this when he decided to include a 5 page index to this 113-page book (this is probably the shortest book I've ever read with a full index) with entries as varied as 'young people', 'timeless truths', 'axolotl', 'dietary systems', 'Jarry, Alfred', 'bicycle (made of gold)', 'Flatulencers', 'hashish', 'space (secretion of)', 'pre-actors', 'caterpillar', 'useless gestures (art of)', and 'ouroborism'.

“Philosophy teaches how man thinks he thinks; but drinking shows how he really thinks.”

Most of the way through this I kept it in my mental bookcase alongside Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman and Karel Čapek’s War With the Newts, as another artful late-1930s satire of European modernism. In a tradition going back at least to Rabelais, A Night of Serious Drinking skewers religion and education, propaganda and science, mathematics and poetry, ideology, philosophy, and art—but with a nod to the early-20th c. Dada and Surrealist avant-gardes. (The book jacket on my copy calls Daumal an ex-Surrealist, which probably means that he pissed off André Breton somehow.) What made the 1930s such a rich context for satire was the realization that the European Era was over; for Daumal, the prevailing between-the-wars pessimism evaded nihilism only by embracing the absurd—which he transforms into a kind of optimism in the end. I didn’t see it coming.

Part One, entitled “A labored dialogue on the power of words and the frailty of thought," finds the narrator among a group of drinkers in the front salon of an unfamiliar residence. A voice from behind the mantle insists on pontificating on the uses of language (‘If only you knew how much I’d like to stop talking, you wouldn’t be so thirsty’) and the narrator relates his encounters with a number of eccentric characters.

On the last syllable, the guitar exploded in Gonzague’s hand. One of the strings caught him on the upper lip. He allowed a few drops of blood to fall onto the back of his hand. Then he drained his glass. Then he jotted down in his notebook the rudiments of an extraordinary poem which would be plagiarized the following day and betrayed in every language by two hundred and twelve minor poets; from it sprang the same number of avant-garde artistic movements, twenty-seven historic brawls, three political revolutions on a Mexican farm, seven bloody wars on the Paropamisus, a famine in Gibraltar, a volcano in Gabon, a dictator in Monaco, and not quite lasting glory for the half-baked.

In Part Two, having stumbled up a staircase, the narrator is startled to discover ‘the universe in a garret.’ He is given a guided tour, and we get Daumal’s dark-comic disquisition on all manner of human foibles. Up here, excellence in all endeavors aims at uselessness, whether of household objects, new colors, scientific theorems, 'numbers which cannot be expressed, spaces shaped like espaliers or corkscrews, stretches of nothing with holes and bumps in it.' Thanks to picture books, 'children take no time at all to learn everything about art without ever having to create anything, everything about science without having to think, everything about religion without having to live.' People may turn into thermometers, bookworms, or pianos. The narrator encounters a heretic writing a book called A Night of Serious Drinking, which depicts the nightmares of lost souls, drunken and stupefied, stuck in a delusion of paradises until the cold harsh light of day and its unexpected revelations. Some people speak a language designed so that fallacy and imprecision cannot be expressed.

Some of them live in houses made entirely of glass which they call ivory towers; some in concrete boxes which they call glass houses; large numbers in photographic dark rooms which they call Nature; and many more in dog-headed baboon cages, vampire caves, penguin parks, performing-flea circuses, and puppet theatres that they call the world or society: and they all dote on and pamper one of their internal bodily organs, usually one with something wrong with it, such as intestine, liver, lung, thyroid, or brain, stroking it fondly, embellishing it with flowers and jewels, stuffing it with the choicest morsels, calling it “my soul,” “my life,” “my truth,” and they are always ready to launder in blood the most trifling insult to the object of their inner devotions. They call this “living in the world of ideas.”

The narrator’s ascension culminates with a scrum of gods, hunched over a trapdoor, lustily inhaling vaporous fumes and gestures of adulation from below. It’s Dante inside out at the Cabaret Voltaire with absinthe and Alfred Jarry.

In the final section, the narrator queries the reader as to the best method of extricating himself from his baffled condition. What has happened? Should he awake, as from a dream? Daumal refuses the neat dénouement. Having described the seemingly familiar from a perspective impossible to occupy in what we think of as the ‘real world,’ Daumal turns the tables on us. Is the narrator to be trusted? By the end, the reader is just as likely to question her own interpretation of the narration as to doubt the reliability of the narrator. We arrive full circle at the question of language and intention. The last few pages change the way we understand what we have been reading. The sensation is of falling up, as from a drunken stupor, into a bemusement that is oddly reassuring.

"The fire that kindles desire and illuminates thought never burned for more than a few seconds at a time; in between, we tried to keep it in mind." Daumal's unfinished novel is an allegory in homage to illumination and profound thought. It is a book about seeking and responsible open-mindedness. The vehicle for Daumal's consideration of intellectual liveliness (the actual plot of the story) can seem frivolous and distracting or a bit thinly veiled; but there is humor in it and a quick pace.

The "Tale of the bitter rose and the hollow men"--a mountain legend revealed to the seekers is particularly memorable; but is counterbalanced by some poor poetry and a flat creation myth. The books is worth reading. There is some wisdom in it. But it will frustrate most readers that it ends mid sentence, just when the real business of shedding light gets under way. One of the book's thought provoking positions: it is a crime to create a void that you do not try to fill.

Very weird and interesting...½

150 DAU 1