René Daumal | |
---|---|
Born |
Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France |
16 March 1908
Died | 21 May 1944 Paris, France |
(aged 36)
Nationality | French |
Occupation | Para-surrealist writer, poet |
Known for | Mount Analogue (1952) |
Signature | |
René Daumal (French: [domal]; 16 March 1908 – 21 May 1944) was a French spiritual para-surrealist writer and poet, best known for his posthumously published novel Mount Analogue (1952) as well as for being an early, outspoken practitioner of 'pataphysics.
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 English-speaking world 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.