Rene Daumal
Rene Daumal
René Daumalwas a French spiritual para-surrealist writer and poet, best known for his posthumously published novel Mount Analogueas well as for being an early, outspoken practitioner of 'pataphysics...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 March 1908
change gold common-experience
Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds.
pain tears degrees
Words are made for a certain exactness of thought, as tears are for a certain degree of pain. What is least distinct cannot be named; what is clearest is unutterable.
knives errors blades
A knife is neither true nor false, but anyone impaled on its blade is in error.
thinking giving trying
I am dead because I have no desire, I have no desire because I think I possess, I think I possess because I do not try to give; Trying to give, we see that we have nothing; Seeing that we have nothing, we try to give ourselves, Trying to give ourselves, we see that we are nothing, Seeing that we are nothing, we desire to become, Desiring to become, we live.
philosophy drinking men
Philosophy teaches how man thinks he thinks; but drinking shows how he really thinks.
art climbing mountain
Definition: Alpinism is the art of going through the mountains confronting the greatest dangers with the biggest of cares. What we call art here, is the application of a knowledge to an action.
thinking climbing order
When feet doesn't want to hold you, you climb with your head. Maybe it isn't the natural order of things, but isn't it better to walk with your head than to think with your feet, as it happens so frequently?
men thinking animal
Man is head, chest and stomach. Each of these animals operates, more often than not, individually. I eat, I feel, I even, although rarely, think. This jungle crawls and teems, is hungry, roars, gets angry, devours itself, and its cacophonic concert does not even stop when you are asleep.
doors invisible visible
The door to the invisible must be visible.
art truth reality
Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.
men sky mountain
In the mythic tradition, the Mountain is the bond between Earth and Sky. Its solitary summit reaches the sphere of eternity, and its base spreads out in manifold foothills into the world of mortals. It is the way by which man can raise himself to the divine and by which the divine can reveal itself to man.
roots panic serious
...the most serious thing, and the strangest, is that we are afraid to the point of panic, not so much of seeing ourselves as of being seen by ourselves. This is our root absurdity. What is behind this great fear?
dawn mystery entirety
Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.
cutting men errors
Truth is one, but error proliferates. Man tracks it down and cuts it up into little pieces hoping to turn it into grains of truth. But the ultimate atom will always essentially be an error, a miscalculation.