René Daumal: The Life and Work of a Mystic Guide (SUNY series in Western Esoteric Traditions) - Hardcover

Rosenblatt, Kathleen Ferrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0791436330 ISBN 13: 9780791436332

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1999

Synopsis

Based on twenty years of research and personal interviews, Kathleen Rosenblatt's book is the first to comprehensively cover all aspects of the life and work of Rene Daumal, seminal writer of the metaphysical avant garde. As an individual, Daumal was seen by those who knew him as a modern proto-saint with a blazing intellect and wit; as a writer, he was the first to forge a mystical link between classical Hindu poetics and the revolutionary views of Gurdjieff, synthesized in surrealist style.

Originally published in French, this revised English edition shows why many feel that Daumal's literary group, Le Grand Jeu was a brief, but more authentic voice of the French avant-garde circa 1930 than the more established Surrealist movement. While still in his teens, he placed himself at the crossroads of powerful converging influences: Hinduism, Surrealism, Marxism, Freudianism, and parapsychology, but the strongest influence was the fiery internal cauldron of his own lifelong spiritual struggle. At sixteen, Daumal began to teach himself Sanskrit and to decipher the essence of Hindu philosophy and poetics, but it was the teaching of Gurdjieff that truly changed his life, giving him an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the human being and of the entire cosmos.

Rosenblatt traces all these influences and experiences as they reveal the depths of Daumal's being, and as they surface in his poetry, Le Contre-ciel, and in his two short novels, A Night of Serious Drinking and Mount Analogue. Today, Daumal's personal vision of the Infinite and the story of his quest are more timely and essential than ever.

About this title

Review:

"It throws light on an at-present relatively unknown twentieth century literary figure whose writings have a great deal to offer to today's spiritual seeker, including the growing number of people interested in the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff. Full of interesting ideas and insights, it is the first serious and competent book in English about Daumal that deals responsibly with his connection to Gurdjieff. "--Jacob Needleman, San Francisco State University

From the Author:

Rene Daumal, the psychic of the avantgarde
The story of Rene Daumal unfolds against the backdrop of les annees folles--the crazy years following World War I. As all those disaffected moderns converged on Paris from both sides of the Atlantic, Daumal and his small coterie experimented in all the bizarre behaviors of the artistic and psychic avantgarde. But somehow Daumal was able to rise above the rest and achieve an extraordinary level of enlightenment.

Rene Daumal epitomized the convergence of the most avantgarde creativity and the most metaphysical transcendance of the 1930s. He was a modern proto-saint with a blazing wit, and as a teenager, drew around him a precocious literary group, known as the Simplistes. As true warriors of the psyche, they are considered by some to be a more authentic voice of the French avantgarde movement than the better known Surrealists. They delved into psychic phenomena, psychokenesis, astral travel, out-of-body experiences, psycho-pharmaceuticals, Freudianism, Marxism, sociopolitical involvement, and Eastern religion. Still in their teens, they launched a literary review, Le Grand Jeu, which expressed their revolutionary ideas about life and literature. The cohesiveness of their group--what Rene called "a single angel in four bodies" was expressed in a whole fabric of special rites, collective hallucinations, and cryptic codes. Their writings epitomize this interwar period, considered by many to be the most creative era in five hundred years---from the Renaissance to the 1960s.

Since childhood, Daumal had a natural gift for experiencing super-ordinary dimensions of reality. His obsession with the Void and with death led him to live on the edge--experimenting with dangerous substances, and engaging in dangerous exploits. Yet this tendancy was balanced by his study of Sanskrit and Hinduism beginning at age sixteen. But the crucial turning point in his life was his encounter with Alexandre de Salzmann who exposed him to the teachings of Gurdjieff. As an ardent pupil, Daumal lived the teaching in his life and distilled the essence of it in his writing. His life was cut short when he was struck down by tuberculosis at the age of thirty-six in 1944.

It was primarily in the 1960s that Daumal became known to a whole new generation of readers. In the Paris student uprisings of May 1968, the demonstrators scribbled many of Daumal's most subversive quotes on the walls of the Sorbonne. Yet his greatest legacy was not political but metaphysical. His poetry, essays, and short novels full of strange tales, surrealistic images, satire, and wisdom, captured the essence of the Hindu metaphysical tradition and the teaching of Gurdjieff. Yet they also bear the original stamp of his own extraordinary psyche. He truly epitomized the Hindu role of kavi: both poet and priest. Today he is becoming known to a whole new generation of readers longing for an original source.

About this edition

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0791436330
• ISBN 13: 9780791436332
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 290