Rene Daumal

Rene Daumal (Boulzicourt, the Ardennes, March 16th 1908 - Paris, May 21st 1944) is a Poète and writer French.

Biography

Born in 1908 in the Ardennes from a father teacher then civil servant with the ministry for Finances Leon Daumal, Rene Daumal is the main character of a specimen life of research, in all the directions of the culture and the self-knowledge. Very early engaged in innovative literary experiments, it creates with three friends, with Rheims, the group of the “Phrères simplistic”, in particular inspired of Jarry, Rimbaud and of the surrealist . It is about Roger Vailland, Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, and Robert Meyrat. Their “god” is called Bubu, and their experiments turn around the Drogue, going even to the Russian roulette.

It has, adolescent, the intuition that it will be able to voluntarily meet another world while being plunged in a coma close to what we call today the experiments of imminent death , but the use of the Carbon tetrachloride (CCL4) will weaken its health, and it is possible that will have sensitized it with its future Tuberculose.

Raise Alain with the Lycée Henri-Iv, it meets there the future philosopher Simone Weil, with whom it will have exchanges about the Sanskrit. Indeed, “Rene” precociously was interested in the crowned texts of the India, and decided to learn how the Sanskrit, even if it means to compose itself his own grammar sanskrite (this one was reproduced in facsimile under the title the language sanskrite - Grammar, Poésie, Théâtre ).

But especially, with Paris with Roger-Gilbert Lecomte (they broke with Vailland but Pierre Minet joined them), they found the review the Big game , which will know three numbers of 1928 with 1931, the fourth remainder in the paperboards. One meets there in particular the painter Joseph Sima, and Hendrik Cramer, the husband of Véra Milanova, the future wife of Rene.

Rene makes knowledge, in Rouquet (a coffee which did not change since) Alexandre de Salzmann, disciple of Gurdjieff, which helps it to open the eyes, enables him to check a certain number of intuitions: he decides to break with his life literary and passed, to agree the chances of a new life. He engages near the dancer Uday Shankar, which one is unaware of how he made his knowledge, and leaves with him in his round to the the United States.

This period is reported in the great drinking bout , the first great literary work of Daumal. One discovers of them the keys in the new Fragments . Full with humor, the great drinking bout presents a criticism of the wheels of the company for a man who burned his ego, and the question is put there of what the adult life could be.

Returned in Paris, he lives with difficulty but obtains the Prix Doucet for the against-sky , writes some translations of English (Hemingway, Suzuki) and of the Sanskrit, the articles for NRF, and an abundant correspondence. He writes in particular the text founder black Poésie, white poetry , where is exerted its critical eye and inimitable manufacturer.

Almost without fixed residence, it moves of a place to another with Véra Milanova. It meets Philippe Lavastine and, by him (which worked at Denoël), the writer Luc Dietrich and its large friend Lanza del Vasto.

Having taken knowledge of its disease, an already advanced tuberculosis, Rene will remain as much as possible in mountain, in the the Pyrenees but especially in the the Alps, with the Plate of ESA in pharmacist Genevieve Lief who will become a pupil. It is the war. He married with Véra, Jew. He lives under extremely difficult material conditions. He composes his more beautiful letters, goes back to poetry, writing the holy war and begins his major work, celebrates it and unfinished Similar Mont , demonstration of the analogical language and the writing with multiple layers of comprehension.

Born very little from time after the death of Alfred Jarry he will be a follower of the 'Pataphysique dice the time of “over-simplification” and he will continue during his life to claim himself some in various publications. He held in the New French Review a heading entitled “the `Pataphysique of the month”. It is a temporal bond of most serious between Jarry and the birth of the College in 1948.

He dies close to the Porte of Orleans, in Paris, at the 36 years age, in 1944.

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