Mount Daumal:
A review of Rene Daumal: The Life and
Work of a Mystic Guide, by Kathleen Ferrick Rosenblatt
by Erik Davis
A version of
this piece appeared in VLS, September, 1999
When 36-year-old Rene Daumal died in Paris near the close of World War II,
he left behind one blistering book of poetry, numerous essays on Hindu
aesthetics and various Surrealist obsessions, and two weird and amazing
allegories: the absurdist satire A Night of Serious Drinking, and the
unfinished Mount Analogue, a masterwork of 20th-century spiritual
literature. At their best, these writings crackle with an intense and empyrean
glow, a hard glint of the Absolute that, coupled with their Pataphysical
humor, has made Daumal something of a cult figure among Surrealist
aficionados, literate seekers, and other post-Beat types. Nonetheless, he
remains an undeservedly obscure figure, and Rosenblatt's is the first major
Daumal study to appear in English.
One reason for Daumal's marginal status is that, despite his intensely
modernist deployment of inversion and revolt, he was at heart a profoundly
spiritual man — a self-transcending ascetic who renounced even the trappings
of renunciation. Though many avant-garde figures got into the mystic, from
Kandinksy and Theosophy to Cage and Zen, Daumal took this trend to the limit.
In his life and mind, we can trace the prophetic outlines of a genuine
"mystical modernism," a mode of spiritual practice that is experiential,
anti-religious, and counter-cultural -- even to the point of being
counter-modern.
In any case, Daumal's writing must be seen in the context of esoteric
trends in early twentieth century France, which is exactly what Rosenblatt's
intellectual/spiritual biography attempts and largely succeeds at doing.
Rosenblatt does not read like a literary critic -- in fact, she earns her keep
as a doctor of homeopathy and Oriental medicine. Though her scholarship is not
razor-sharp -- she flubs some Buddhist terms, for example -- she has a great
feel for her subject and has unearthed all sorts of yummy nuggets of poetry
and prose to boot.
Daumal's first claim to fame was the precociously weird group he formed
with three teenage pals known as Le Grand Jeu. They wanted political,
psychological, and metaphysical revolution, with pretentious rants and all
("No more free will! No more whim or fantasy! No more pretty things!").
Anticipating the 1960s, they dived into automatic handwriting, astral travel,
sensory deprivation and drugs. Daumal's most notable experiments involved
carbon tetrachloride, an impressively toxic dry-cleaning solvent that launched
him into a near-death experience that eventually crystallized into his essay
"Determining Memory," a play-by-play of druggy gnosis worthy of William James.
The chemical also probably contributed to the TB that killed Daumal in 1944,
though a lifetime of Gaulois probably didn't help things much.
As you might expect, the Grand Jeu carried on a lively dialogue with the
older Surrealists. But Daumal's rigorous investigation of mysticism drew him
beyond Breton's occult juvenilia. As Rosenblatt explains, Le Grand Jeu
attempted to uncover the core of spiritual tradition without falling into a
reactionary trap. Still, Daumal had no problem imbibing his deep and scholarly
appreciation for classic Sanskrit texts from the profoundly conservative
Traditionalist Rene Guenon. But Daumal did not really find his spiritual home
until he joined the circle that surrounded the notorious master G.I.
Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff's insistence that awakening arose only after merciless
self-observation and intense psychological friction went over great with
Daumal, who had already cultivated an almost frightening spirit of visionary
de-personalization.
As Rosenblatt explains in the literary round-up that closes her book, the
Gurdjieff work looms large over both A Night of Serious Drinking -- a
Swiftian parody about "The bric-a-brac and eternal fidgeting of the world of
sleep" -- and Mount Analogue, which reads like a magical blend of
Gulliver's Travels, Ouspensky, and Breton's Nadja. The fact that
Mount Analogue breaks off in mid-sentence is not a flaw, but
emblematic, because the project that the book allegorizes -- the discovery of
a modern way of Being -- hangs without resolution. But what really makes these
works breathe is not their considerable insight and wisdom but their playful
and unpretentious conviction that waking up is the only true revolt.
Omnium
Gatherum
