René Daumal Quotes

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

So, am I a madman or a joker? Or simply a scribbler?

"un couteau, dit un autre, n'est ni vrai ni faux, mais celui qui l'empoigne par la lame est dans l'erreur".

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. It must be unique and it must exist geographically. The gateway to the invisible must be visible.

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.

Then he went on:
“As for the unconscious, I might not speak of it, granted, but I speak to it. Let the unconscious answer me, if it can do so without expiring in the process.”
On not receiving an answer, he continued:
“Right, in that case I’ll go on to the very end of my explanations. Besides, all roads lead to Man. Listen or don’t listen, as you choose, but do not — on any account — forget to drink.

On an experimental animal subject — the University not yet having authorized us to attempt a trial on a bishop in partibus, as we would prefer — we have tied, one by one, Corti fibers, that living harp, to the cones and rods of the retina. We have obtained, right on the macula lutea (which paradoxical as it may seem, is in keeping with our theory of concrete absences), the exact image of the guinea pig’s scream. The victim’s face presented all the signs of celestial bliss. The day we are allowed to avail ourselves of a subject of our choosing, we will be able to offer their Lordships the Ecclesiastics all the photophloxes of vespers, matins, complines, plainchants, antiphons, neumes, etc., they might need for their confounded ministries.

The angst of paramnesia — the sense of “deja vu” — is not purely and simply erased in poetic feeling; it is overcome by a contact made by consciousness with the universal, it becomes the feeling of a reminiscence of something that has existed for all eternity, that the poet has not created, but unveiled, and that we recognize immediately.

The Primecrat, when asked in his turn to demonstrate his ouroborism, cupped his hands and shouted through the trap door to his followers:

'Take up military sports! For the sportsman of today is the soldier of tomorrow. The soldier of tomorrow will repel the invader and at the same time open up new markets for the industries of his country. The industries will prosper, the country will become rich, and thus it will be able to support associations which encourage military preparations and from these will emerge the soldiers of the day after tomorrow, who will repel the invader and at the same time open up new markets...'

The mechanical repeater was brought in. In somber mood, I recalled my whole life up to this day, and my head spun with the buzzing of a hundred and one ouroboristic worms. I remembered the drinking parties that made us thirsty and the thirst that made us drink; I thought back to Sidonius recounting his endless dream; to the people who worked to be able to eat and who ate to have the strength to work; to the black thoughts I drowned with such sadness in the cask and which were reborn in different hues. Between the vicious circles of the drinking party and those of the delusory paradises, I would never again be able to choose, I could no longer be part of their revolutions, I was from that moment no more than a wasteland.

et les anciens sages instruisaient leurs disciples sur le bord des précipices...

"The Kaffir, who tended the garden and looked after the chickens, in Cracow, used to sleep in the pigeon loft. He said it was "very good for the breath": One night, I had this terrifying dream. A huge corkscrew, which was the earth, was spinning round, turning on its axis and twisting in its own spiral, just like the signs outside American barbershops, and I could see myself, no bigger than a bug but not hanging on so well, slither and stumble over the helix, and with my thoughts sent whirling down moving staircases made of a priori shapes. Suddenly, the fatal moment, there is a loud crack, my neck snaps, I fall flat on my face and I emerge in a splash of sparks before the Kaffir who had come to wake me. He says: "Did you have an attack of the nasties, then? Come and look at this": And he leads me to the pigeon loft and gets me to peep through a hole in the wall. I put my eye to it. I see a terrifying sight: a huge corkscrew, which was the Earth, was spinning round, turning on its axis and twisting in its own spiral, just like the signs outside American barbershops, and I could see myself, no bigger than a bug, but not hanging on so well....'

Eyes popping, the bumps on his forehead lit up, his moustache bristling, little Sidonius began the story again, which slotted into itself endlessly like the popular refrains everybody knows. He spoke feverishly, mangling his words. I listened, paralyzed with horror, at least ten times to his appalling rotating story. Then I went off to get a drink."