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The Powers of the Word: Selected Essays and Notes, 1928-1943
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 Grand Jeu group. He was iconoclastic and electic, able to embrace simultaneously Alfred Jarry's Pataphysics and Hindu teachings.
Daumal's two major works in English translation, Mount Analogue and A Night of Serious Drinking, have long been classics in this country; but until now, readers have not had acess to the full range of his thought. The Powers of the Word spans a lifetime of essays and notes-many here translated for the first time-from the earliest incitements to drug use and revolt; through Daumal's unique readings of literary works; to his more mature, but no less ardent, meditations.
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First published April 18, 1972
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About the author
René Daumal
75Ìýbooks182ÌýfollowersRené Daumal was a French spiritual surrealist writer 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 known best 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 the Sanskrit language and translated some of the Tripitaka Buddhist canon into the French language, as well as translating the literature of the Japanese Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki into French.
He married Vera Milanova, the former wife of the poet Hendrik Kramer; after Daumal's death, she married the landscape architect Russell Page.
Daumal's sudden and premature death of tuberculosis on 21 May 1944 in Paris may have been hastened by youthful experiments with drugs and psychoactive chemicals, including carbon tetrachloride. He died leaving his novel Mount Analogue unfinished, having worked on it until the day of his death.
The motion picture The Holy Mountain by Alejandro Jodorowsky is based largely on Daumal's Mount Analogue.
William Walsh, an English poet, was a personal friend of Daumal and performed a radio presentation of Mount Analogue later in his life.
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 known best 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 the Sanskrit language and translated some of the Tripitaka Buddhist canon into the French language, as well as translating the literature of the Japanese Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki into French.
He married Vera Milanova, the former wife of the poet Hendrik Kramer; after Daumal's death, she married the landscape architect Russell Page.
Daumal's sudden and premature death of tuberculosis on 21 May 1944 in Paris may have been hastened by youthful experiments with drugs and psychoactive chemicals, including carbon tetrachloride. He died leaving his novel Mount Analogue unfinished, having worked on it until the day of his death.
The motion picture The Holy Mountain by Alejandro Jodorowsky is based largely on Daumal's Mount Analogue.
William Walsh, an English poet, was a personal friend of Daumal and performed a radio presentation of Mount Analogue later in his life.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 8, 2014
Found shoved into the dollar shelf outside the Strand between and . I snapped up all three.
I wonder if this has any overlap with his ? (Will probably have to wait for Jimmy on this.) "On the Life of Basiles", for instance, I expect.
I'm not really the best reader of pure theory, but there are some solid essays here. I actually gleaned quite a bit from "The Limits of Philosophical Language" which synthesizes metapatterns from classical and eastern philosophy while making many astute individual observations, and warning convincingly against philosophy becoming its own hermetic ends outside of contact with the larger world. Many of these, also, are essentially Daumal's ÀÏ»¢»úÎÈÓ®·½·¨ page: book reviews and discussion, though also typically interesting (and spurring me to buying a copy of Aurelia, finally, which I should really get around to reading now that I've been so on board with Exact Change Press lately. And then there are the more absurd bits, and the more psychotropic bits, both appreciated. Finally, I may actually have stumbled on the origins of the Infinity of Tiny Dogs from .
To give a little context, Daumal emerged in the 20s, responded to Andre Breton's overtures by inviting Breton to join him as a Simplist, and eventually wrote the fantastic , which among other things provided a certain template to Jodorowsky when he made The Holy Mountain. So an interesting set of thoughts to wander through.
I wonder if this has any overlap with his ? (Will probably have to wait for Jimmy on this.) "On the Life of Basiles", for instance, I expect.
I'm not really the best reader of pure theory, but there are some solid essays here. I actually gleaned quite a bit from "The Limits of Philosophical Language" which synthesizes metapatterns from classical and eastern philosophy while making many astute individual observations, and warning convincingly against philosophy becoming its own hermetic ends outside of contact with the larger world. Many of these, also, are essentially Daumal's ÀÏ»¢»úÎÈÓ®·½·¨ page: book reviews and discussion, though also typically interesting (and spurring me to buying a copy of Aurelia, finally, which I should really get around to reading now that I've been so on board with Exact Change Press lately. And then there are the more absurd bits, and the more psychotropic bits, both appreciated. Finally, I may actually have stumbled on the origins of the Infinity of Tiny Dogs from .
To give a little context, Daumal emerged in the 20s, responded to Andre Breton's overtures by inviting Breton to join him as a Simplist, and eventually wrote the fantastic , which among other things provided a certain template to Jodorowsky when he made The Holy Mountain. So an interesting set of thoughts to wander through.
June 23, 2012
Exhilarating and inspirational. Rene Daumal was an amazing philosopher and thinker and a scholar from the Gurdjieff School. Great pieces on The Grand Jeu/surrealism and Hindu poetics. Iconoclastic one of the four "Simplists" - sort of extension of our childhood freedom of ideation, imagination and thought, Daumal pursued a life of forging connections from disconnects and nomadic transitions from one devotion to another in a struggle of ideas. Brilliant man, in the time of wild, abstract thought, this book gives him a subtle voice in the cacophony left by the like of Breton and the Surrealists. Highly recommended.
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