by Rene Daumal
His close friend, A. Rolland de Renéville, who was aware of Daumal’s failing condition and foresaw that he would not be able to finish Mount Analogue, had the idea of asking him to sketch out how future episodes of the work should unfold. He used the pretext that his wife, Cassilda, who had read what was already written, was impatient to know the end of the adventure. With his usual mix of seriousness and humor, René Daumal summarized his intentions in a few words; those words are engraved on my memory.
“In the course of the fifth and sixth chapters, I plan to describe the expedition of the four quitters. You remember that the cast of characters initially included Julie Bonasse, the Belgian actress; Benito Cicoria, the ladies’ tailor; Emile Gorge, the journalist; and Alphonse Camard, the prolific poet—all of whom left us even before we started out. However, one day they finally decided to embark on their own with some of their friends to discover Mount Analogue, for they were convinced that we had tricked them; if we had gone in search of the famous Mountain, it must have been to find more than a superior type of humanity. That’s why they called us “the jokers.” They thought that this mountain must contain oil, gold, and other earthly riches and must be jealously guarded by a people who would not hand anything over without a fight. As a result, they equipped themselves with a warship armed with the most powerful modern weapons, then weighed anchor. Their voyage involved many a twist and turn, but at last they arrived in sight of Mount Analogue and prepared to make use of their weapons. However, because they were ignorant of the basic laws of the place, they were helplessly caught in a whirlpool. Condemned to turn around and around, they were still able to bombard the coast, but all their projectiles came back to them like boomerangs, so their fate was ludicrous.”
We can imagine the inventive and humorously profound tale René Daumal would have told us recounting the misadventures of these misguided seekers, who had occasion to glimpse “the mountain that is the way uniting Heaven and Earth” but could not understand its nature or imagine how to approach it.
Daumal continued by sketching what he meant to show in the final chapter of his book:
“In the end, I want to focus at length on one of the laws of Mount Analogue: to reach the summit, one must go from camp to camp. But before leaving a camp, one must prepare those who are coming to occupy the place one leaves behind. Only after preparing them can one climb higher. That is why, before dashing off to a new camp, we had to go back down to teach our new knowledge to other seekers …”
It is very likely that René Daumal would have explained what he meant by this work of preparation. The fact is that in his own life he was working hard to prepare many minds for the difficult voyage toward Mount Analogue.
The title of his last chapter was to be:
And you, what are you looking for?
It is a better, more disturbing, and more productive question than the numerous pat answers usually made to it, a question, finally, that we must all answer for ourselves. Considering it seriously involves tapping into the deepest part of ourselves and cruelly, lucidly, listening to the sound it makes.
At the end of his life, René Daumal, though only on the threshold of his own research, had already made out whether the sound was full or empty. One would like to know more about it, to know the path he was taking even if he was interrupted—especially because he was interrupted.
The indicator has been given, nonetheless, condensed in precise terms in one of the last letters he wrote me, saying:
“Here is how I have summarized for myself what I would like those who work here with me to understand:
“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.”
—VÉRA DAUMAL
THE CASE OF SERGEANT GRISCHA
by Arnold Zweig
1-58567-335-8
“The greatest novel on a war theme … from any country.”
—J.B. PRIESTLEY
“Some experiences in literature are unforgettable and this is one novel that culminates in an overwhelming effect of power and protest and irony and pathos of human fate.”
—The New York Times
THE SORROW OF BELGIUM
by Hugo Claus
1-58567-238-6
“With biting wit, gorgeous language and graphic imagery, Hugo Claus rushes the reader back in time as if by magic … This immense autobiographical novel is clearly Claus’ masterwork.”
—DANIELLE ROTER, The Los Angeles Times
PAST CONTINUOUS
by Yaakov Shabtai
1-58567-339-0
“I cannot recall having encountered a new work of fiction that has engaged me as sharply as Past Continuous, both for its brilliant, formal inventiveness and for its relentless, truth-seeking scrutiny of moral life.”
—IRVING HOWE, The New York Review of Books
MOUNT ANALOGUE
by René Daumal
1-58567-342-0
“A marvelous tale… as transparent and as inexhaustible as Pilgrim’s Progress or a New Testament parable.”
—ROGER SHATTUCK
“One of the most intriguing poetic reveries of contemporary literature.”
—ROBERT MALLET, Le Figaro Littéraire
A NIGHT OF SERIOUS DRINKING
by René Daumal
1-58567-399-4
“The book is Daumal at his witty, satirical, parabolic best. It demolishes all ordinary human concepts and then, in a final redemptive gesture, sends its protagonists out into the resulting chaos to ‘pursue the business of living.’”
—P.L. TRAVERS
YOUNG HENRY OF NAVARRE
by Heinrich Mann
0-87951-978-9
“No one has ever penetrated the secret of Henry’s amazing character as thoroughly as Heinrich Mann has done in this book. It is a splendid novel, a fine history, and a glorious comment on life.”
—The Saturday Review
GREEN HENRY
by Gottfried Keller
1-58567-427-3
“In no literary works of the nineteenth century do the lines of development that to this day determine our lives become so clear to us as in those of Gottfried Keller.… His prose is unconditionally loyal to every living thing.”
—W.G. SEBALD
Mount
Analogue a novel
René Daumal
Translated from the French by Carol Cosman
Introduction by Kathleen Ferrick Rosenblatt
Afterword by Véra Daumal
René Daumal’s Mount Analogue is a twentieth-century classic, combining the author’s poetic gifts and philosophical accomplishments in a manner that is both entertaining to read and profound to contemplate. The powerful new translation by Carol Cosman does the metaphysical adventure great Justice.
Among other things, this is an allegory for the Journey of life, as well as a marvelous tale in which the narrator/author, one of an intrepid company of eight, sets sail in the yacht Impossible to search for Mount Analogue, the solid, geographically located (albeit hidden) peak that reaches inexorably towards heaven—as Mount Olympus reached to the home of the Greek gods, or Mount Sinai to the presence of Yahweh. Daumal, one of the greatest French writers of the twentieth century, died before the novel was completed, providing an uncanny one-way quality to the Journey.
“One of the most intriguing poetic reveries of contemporary literature.”
—ROBERT MALLET, Le Figaro Littéraire
“A marvelous tale… as transparent and as inexhaustible as Pilgrim’s Progress or a New Testament parable.”
—ROGER SHATTUCK
Rend Daumal (1908-44),
a follower of the teachings of G.I. GurdJieff, also studied Sanskrit, philosophy, science, mathematics, and medicine. He was an editor of the French poetry and surrealist review Le Grand Jeu and received the Jacques Doucet prize for Le Contre-Ciel, his first volume of poetry. Mount Analogue was first published posthumously, in 1952.
Kathleen Ferrick Rosenblatt is a Doctor of Homeopathy and Oriental Medicine and the author of the biography René Daumal: the Life and Work of a Mystic Guide.
1. This story is the subject of a book in progress, Mont Analogue, which includes in part the pages that follow.
