René Daumal

René Daumal (16 March, 1908 - 21 May, 1944) was a French writer, philosopher and poet. He was born in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France.

In his late teens his avant-garde poetry was published in France's leading journals, and in his early twenties, although courted by André Breton co-founded, as a counter to Surrealism and Dada, a literary journal, "Le Grand Jeu" with three friends, collectively known as the Simplists, including poet Roger Gilbert-Lecomte. He is best known in the U.S. for two novels A Night of Serious Drinking and the allegorical novel Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing both based upon his friendship with Alexander de Salzmann, a pupil of G. I. Gurdjieff.

Daumal was self-taught in Sanskrit and translated some of the Tripitaka Buddhist canon into French, as well as translating the Japanese Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki into French.

Daumal's sudden and premature death of tuberculosis on May 21, 1944 in Paris was in all probability hastened by youthful experiments with a heady cocktail of drugs and psycho-active chemicals, the principal culprit amongst these no doubt being carbon tetrachloride. He died leaving his novel Mount Analogue unfinished, having worked on it up to the very day of his death.

The film Holy Mountain by Alejandro Jodorowsky is based largely on Daumal's Mount Analogue.

Works by René Daumal in English translation

 * Le Contre-Ciel (Le contre-ciel), Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 2005.
 * A Fundamental Experiment, New York / Madras: Hanuman Books, 1987.
 * The Lie of the Truth and Other Parables from the Way of Liberation, New York / Madras: Hanuman Books, 1989.
 * Mount Analogue (Le mont analogue), Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 2004.
 * Mugle and the Silk (Mugle; La soie), New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 1997.
 * A Night of Serious Drinking (La grande beuverie), Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 2003.
 * The Powers of the Word (1927-1943) (Les pouvoirs de la parole), San Francisco: City Lights, 1991.
 * Rasa or Knowledge of the Self, New York: New Directions, 1982.
 * You've Always Been Wrong (Tu t'es toujours trompé), Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

Works in English on René Daumal

 * Phil Powrie, René Daumal and Roger Gilbert-Lecomte: A bibliography, London: Grant & Cutler, 1988.
 * Kathleen Ferrick Rosenblatt, René Daumal: The Life and Work of a Mystic Guide, New York: Suny Press, 1999.