Rene Daumal 1908-1944



biography

Like virtually all major thinkers, Rene Daumal was both profoundly of his time and far removed from it. And as with many major thinkers, his work remained all but unknown until after his death. Overshadowed by the extravagance and self-promoting polemics of Surrealist-dominated French thought, Daumal's sober brilliance was not apt to attract the notoriety on which Andre Breton and company thrived. When in 1944 he succumbed to chronic ill health, the war's hardships and his own unrelenting quest for knowledge, there was little to indicate that nearly twenty years of rigorous literary production and spiritual progress would ever be noticed by more than a handful of friends and collaborators. And yet Daumal and his group were the logical extension of what Surrealism had begun: they were at once enthusiastic and skeptical; orthodox and iconoclastic; and finally, resolutely independent of their predecessors.

Although a few of his writings saw the light of day during his lifetime, Daumal did not truly come into his own until the publication of Mount Analogue, nearly a decade after his death. It has since come to be regarded as a modern classic. A quantity of other works appeared in its wake, including writings on Hindu theatre, a poorly edited volume of letters, and the known balance of his poetry. The essays and notes, of which the book The Powers of the Word contains a sampling, were not collected in book form until 1972; with few exceptions, their first appearance is in The Powers of the Word. A number of essays, letters, etc.., remain unavailable to this day.






selected works in translation




selected poems in The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry edited by Paul Auster (Vintage, 1982)


Mount Analogue translated by Roger Shattuck (Penguin Books, 1974)


A Fundamental Experiment translated by Roger Shattuck (Hanuman Books, 1987)


The Powers of the Word translated by Mark Polizzoti (City Lights, 1991)


You've Always Been Wrong translated by Thomas Vosteen (University of Nebraska, 1995)





writing


last letter to his wife


This is how I sum up for myself what I wish to convey to those who work here with me:



I am dead because I lack desire,

I lack desire because i think I possess.

I think I possess because I do not try to give.

In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;

Seeing that you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;

Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing:

Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become;

In desiring to become, you begin to live.




skin of light


The skin of light enveloping this world lacks depth and I can actually see the black night of all these similar bodies beneath the trembling veil and light of myself it is this night that even the mask of the sun cannot hide from me I am the seer of night the auditor of silence for silence too is dressed in sonorous skin and each sense has its own night even as I do I am my own night I am the conceiver of non-being and of all its splendor I am the father of death she is its mother she whom I evoke from the perfect mirror of night i am the great inside-out man my words are a tunnel punched through silence I understand all disillusionment I destroy what I become I kill what I love.




return to the library
return to kicking giants