René Daumal Quotes

"Mi appellai ad alcuni capi di Frenetici i quali, secondo le mie indicazioni, si sono messi a organizzare la distruzione dei giovani. Il metodo è molto semplice: si prendono i bambini nel momento in cui la loro intelligenza non è ancora sviluppata, in cui le loro passioni obbediscono ancora al minimo stimolo; li si fa vivere intruppati, vestiti e armati in modo uniforme e, grazie a discorsi magici e a esercizi fisici collettivi di cui noi possediamo il segreto, diamo loro quello che noi chiamiamo il "culto dell'ideale comune": è una devozione assoluta a un personaggio sbraitante e autocratico, o a un certo modo di vestire, o a qualche parola d'ordine, o a una certa combinazione di colori, poco importa. Ci basta allora di aver qui due gruppi opposti (o più di due, ma preferibilmente in numero pari) di giovani mantenuti in questa tensione sentimentale; l'unica precauzione da prendere è di non lasciare al loro cervello il tempo di funzionare, ma è facile. Allora (mi capite?) quando sono al punto giusto, li si lascia andare gli uni contro gli altri... e, dopo, si può respirare per un po'. Nello stesso tempo, ciò occupa e arricchisce i fabbricanti e i mercanti di uniformi e di armi e gli autori di esortazioni all'ecatombe, uno dei quali scriveva recentemente: "Un giovane che non è ucciso nel fiore dell'età, non è più un giovane, ma un futuro vecchio". (151)"

"If, on the way back from the Passage des Patriarches to my apartment near Saint-Germain-des-Prés, I had thought of examining myself like a transparent foreign body, I should have discovered one of the laws which governs the behavior of "featherless bipeds unequipped to conceive the number pi" — Father Sogol's definition of the species to which he, you, and I belong. This law might be termed: inner resonance to influences nearest at hand. The guides on Mount Analogue, who explained it to me later, called it simply the chameleon law. Father Sogol had really convinced me, and while he was talking to me, I was prepared to follow him in his crazy expedition. But as I neared home, where I could again find all my old habits, I imagined my colleagues at the office, the writers I knew, and my best friends listening to an account of the conversation I had just had. I could imagine their sarcasm, their skepticism, and their pity. I began to suspect myself of naiveté and credulity, so much so that when I tried to tell my wife about meeting Father Sogol, I caught myself using expressions like "a funny old fellow," "an unfrocked monk," "a slightly daffy inventor," "a crazy idea.

And then you grew up, went to school, and began to 'philosophize,' didn't you? We all go through the same thing. It seems that during adolescence a person's inner life is suddenly weakened, stripped of its natural courage. In his thinking he no longer dares stand face to face with reality or mystery; he begins to see them through the opinions of 'grown-ups,' through books and courses and professors. Still, a voice remains which is not completely muffled and which cries out every so often — every time its gag is loosened by an unexpected jolt in the routine. The voice cries out its great questioning of everything, but we stifle it again right away.

Я мертв, потому что у меня нет устремления; У меня нет устремления, потому что я думаю, что обладаю; Я думаю, что обладаю, потому что не пытаюсь дать. Пытаясь дать, понимаешь, что у тебя ничего нет; Поняв, что у тебя ничего нет, пытаешься отдать себя; Пытаясь отдать себя, понимаешь, что ты ничто; Поняв, что ты ничто, ты стремишься стать; Стремясь стать, ты начинаешь жить.

A man who makes a plate or a shirt or a loaf of bread or anything our great great ancestors called a work of art, has no need to try to be sincere; all he can do is practice his craft to the best of his ability. But once he starts making useless things, how can he not be sincere?

I've got a couple of other ideas. For instance, about the viscosity of sound. Sounds spread over surfaces, slide across polished floors, flow in gutters, pile up in corners, snap on ridges, fall like rain on mucous membranes, swarm on plexuses, flame up on body hair, and flutter on skin like warm air over summer fields. There are aerial battles where sound waves bounce back on themselves, start spinning and whirl between heaven and earth, like the indestructible regret of the suicide, who halfway down from the sixth floor all of a sudden no longer wants to die any more. There are words which do not reach their mark and roll up into roving balls, swollen with danger, like lightning does sometimes when it fails to find its target. There are words which freeze...

Out of a single man, they get a thousand: homo economicus, homo politicus, homo physico-chimicus, homo endocrinus, homo skeletonicus, homo emotions, homo percipiens, homo libidinosus, homo peregrinans, homo ridens, homo ratiocinans, homo artifex, homo aestbeticus, homo religiosus, homo sapiens, homo historicus, homo ethnographicus, and many, many more. But at the very end of the production line in this laboratory of mine sits a Scienter who is quite unique. Three thousand brains in one. His function is to collect all the data and clarifications written up by the specialist Scienters. When he has collated everything, he is convinced that he has clasped the red rabbit or the essential man entire to his understanding. There you are, you can see him from here,' he ended, with a sign to one of his assistants who brought me a pair of binoculars.

I put them to my eyes and, indeed, at the far end of the gallery, I saw the Omniscienter. There he was, an enormous cranial dome with a tiny, shapeless, crumpled face, which seemed to me to be hanging by the ears from the two ebony knobs on the back of a raised throne. Swinging to and fro beneath this head was a little cloth puppet which dangled its empty trouser legs over the crimson plush seat. His tiny right arm was kept aloft by means of a wire, and the index finger rested on his temple in the gesture of one who knows. Above the throne ran a banner bearing this inscription:

I KNOW EVERYTHING, BUT I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANY OF IT

A hope, which he thought long dead, glowed again in his heart.

"I am a man?" Why not say, "I am Alphonse," or "I am a wholesaler," or "a crook," or "a mammal," or "a philosopher," or "a proud animal"?

When you strike off on your own, leave some trace of your passage which will guide you coming back: one stone set on another, some grass weighted by a stick. But if you come to an impasse or a dangerous spot, remember that the trail you have left could lead people coming after you into trouble. So go back along your trail and obliterate any traces you have left. This applies to anyone who wishes to leave some mark of his passage in the world. Even without wanting to, you always leave a few traces. Be ready to answer to your fellow men for the trail you leave behind you.

Having no lead to follow, we were swept up by words, memories, manias, grudges, and solidarities. Having no goal to aim for, we wasted what little life there was in our thoughts on joining in with a pun, speaking ill of common acquaintances, avoiding unpleasant facts, riding hobbyhorses, pushing at open doors, making faces, and preening ourselves.

Tout ce qu'on adore est cadavre, sauf Dieu [...]. C'est pourquoi je dis: mon corps est mort, ma voix est morte; toute science est cadavre, toute oeuvre est un cadavre

Everyone pretended to understand so as not to interrupt.

Now, in my readings and in my travels I have heard, like you, about men of a superior type, possessing the keys to all our mysteries. Somehow I could not regard this as a simple allegory, this idea of an invisible humanity within visible humanity. Experience has proven, I told myself, that a man can reach truth neither directly nor alone; an intermediary must exist — still human in certain respects yet surpassing humanity in others. Somewhere on our Earth this superior humanity must exist, and it cannot be absolutely inaccessible. And so shouldn’t all my efforts be devoted to discovering it? Even if, in spite of my certainty, I were the victim of a monstrous illusion, I would have nothing to lose in making the effort, for in any case, without this hope, all life is meaningless. “But where to look? Where to begin? I had already traveled the world, stuck my nose everywhere, into all sorts of religious sects and mystical cults, but to each one it was always: maybe yes, maybe no. Why should I stake my life on this one rather than that one? You see, I had no touchstone.

Era tardi, quando ci mettemmo a bere. Pensavamo tutti che era ormai tempo di cominciare. Quel che c'era stato prima, non lo si ricordava più. Solo ci dicevamo che era già tardi. Sapere da dove ciascuno veniva, in qual punto del globo si era, o se veramente un globo (in ogni caso non era un punto), e il giorno del mese di quale anno, tutto ciò era troppo per noi. Non si sollevano questioni simili quando si ha sete.