René Daumal Quotes

The path of greatest desires often lies ...through the undesirable.

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 am dead because I lack desire;
I lack desire because I think I possess;
I think I possess because I do not try to give.
In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;
Seeing you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing;
Seeing you are nothing, you desire to become;
In desiring to become, you begin to live.

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

For a mountain to play the role of Mount Analogue, I concluded, its summit must be inaccessible but its base accessible to human beings as nature has made them... The door to the invisible must be visible.

Everyone pretended to understand so as not to interrupt.

If I were to tell this story the way history is usually written or the way each of us recalls his own past, which means recording only the most glorious moments and inventing a new continuity for them, I should omit these little details and say that our eight stout hearts drummed from morning to night in time with a single all-encompassing desire — or some such lie. But the flame that kindles desire and illuminates thought never burned for more than a few seconds at a stretch. The rest of the time we tried to remember it.
Fortunately the demands of daily work, in which each of us had his vital role, reminded us that we had come aboard of our own free will, that we were indispensable to one another, and that we were on a ship — that is to say, in a temporary habitation, designed to transport us somewhere else. If anyone forgot it, someone else lost no time in reminding him.

There is an art to finding your way in the lower regions by the memory of what you have seen when you were higher up. When you can no longer see, you can at least still know. . .

"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)"

"At that point [Father Sogol] gave me a roguish and forceful look demanding my complicity in this adroit falsehood. For naturally everyone was still in the dark. But by this simple ruse each person had the impression of belonging to a minority, of being among "one or two not yet informed," felt himself surrounded by a convinced majority, and was eager to be quickly convinced himself. This simple method of Sogol's for "getting the audience into the palm of his hand," as he phrased it, was a simple application of the mathematical method that consists in "considering the problem as solved." And he also used the chemical analogy of a "chain reaction." But if this use was employed in the service of truth, could one still call it falsehood? In any case everyone pricked up his ears."

"It was at that moment that I called in a few of the top Fidgeters who, under my directions, set about organizing the destruction of the young. The method is quite straightforward; the children are taken at the time when their intelligence is not yet fully developed, and their passions respond to the slightest stimulation; they are made to live in companies, dressed and armed uniformly, and by means of magic speeches and collective physical exercises, whose secret is ours alone, we give them what we call "the cult of the common ideal"; this is an absolute devotion to a loud-mouthed, authoritarian person, or to a particular form of dress, or to some catch phrase, or to a certain grouping of colors, or whatever. All we need then is to have here two opposing groups of young people (or more than two, but an even number is preferable) who have been kept at a high level of emotional tension; the sole precaution to take is to leave no time for their brains to function, but that's easy enough. Then (are you with me?) when they have reached just the right pitch, they are let loose on one another...and afterwards, we can breathe easy for a while. This, at the same time, occupies and enriches the manufacturers and sellers of uniforms and armaments, and the authors of tracts which recommend the uses of carnage, one of whom wrote recently: "The young man who is not killed in the flower of youth is not a young man, he is the old man of tomorrow.

Besides, often at difficult moments you'll catch yourself talking to the mountain, flattering it, cursing it, making promises or threats. And you will have the impression that the mountain answers you if you speak to it properly — by becoming gentler, more submissive. Don't think the less of yourself for that; don't be ashamed of behaving like those our specialists call primitives and animists. Just keep in mind, when you remember these moments later on, that your dialogue with nature was just the outward image of an inner dialogue with yourself.

Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.

Я мертв, потому что у меня нет устремлений
У меня нет устремлений, 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.

it is very tempting, when you talk about the events of the past, to impose clarity and order upon what had neither one nor the other.