You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again… So what’s the point? Only this: what is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above. While climbing, take note of all the difficulties along your path. During the descent, you will no longer see them, but you will know that they are there if you have observed carefully. 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…—René Daumal, “The Art of Climbing Mountains,” Mount Analogue: A Tale of Non-Euclidian and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures, Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2004, pp. 105–108. Imants Tillers, Mount Analogue, 1985, Oil, oil stick and synthetic polymer paint overall 279.0 h x 571.0 w cm via: parabola-magazine:

You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again… So what’s the point? Only this: what is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above. While climbing, take note of all the difficulties along your path. During the descent, you will no longer see them, but you will know that they are there if you have observed carefully. 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…

—René Daumal, “The Art of Climbing Mountains,” Mount Analogue: A Tale of Non-Euclidian and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures, Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2004, pp. 105–108.

Imants Tillers, Mount Analogue, 1985, Oil, oil stick and synthetic polymer paint overall 279.0 h x 571.0 w cm

via: parabola-magazine:

“When your feet will no longer carry you, you have to walk with your head.” —René Daumal, Mount Analogue [photo: Marc Riboud, Huang Shan, 1985] Great! Thank you, aperfectcommotion.

“When your feet will no longer carry you, you have to walk with your head.”

—René Daumal, Mount Analogue

[photo: Marc Riboud, Huang Shan, 1985]

Great! Thank you, aperfectcommotion.

(Source: mythologyofblue)

In the troubled depths of my memory of myself, a little child is awakening and makes the old man’s mask sob.
René Daumal, Mount Analogue (Powerful. Thank you, aperfectcommotion)

(Source: mythologyofblue)

>

Keep it in mind.

“If I were writing this story the way it might be written collectively, or the way each of us tells his own story to himself, noting only the most glorious moments in order to construct a continuous imaginary line, I would leave out these little details; and I would say that our…hearts beat as one from morning to evening and from evening to morning with the same desire - or some such lie. But the fire that kindles desire and illuminates thought never burned for more than a few seconds at a time; in between, we tried to keep it in mind.”

—René Daumal, Mount Analogue

Yes. Thank you, aperfectcommotion

(Source: mythologyofblue)

As for the silences, how can silence be described in words? Only poetry can do that.
René Daumal, Mount Analogue (Thank you, aperfectcommotion)

(Source: mythologyofblue)

Now we must understand. We must love to understand.
René Daumal, 1942
René Daumal (16 March, 1908 - 1944, tuberculosis) was a French writer, philosopher and poet. He was born in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France. In his late teens his avant-garde poetry was published in France’s leading journals, and in his early twenties, although courted by André Breton co-founded, as a counter to Surrealism and Dada, a literary journal, “Le Grand Jeu” with three friends, collectively known as the Simplists, including poet Roger Gilbert-Lecomte . He is known best in the U.S. for two novels A Night of Serious Drinking and the allegorical novel Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing both based upon his friendship with Alexander de Salzmann, a pupil of G. I. Gurdjieff. ********* René Daumal: Poem One cannot stay on the summit forever -One has to come down again.So why bother in the first place? Just this.What is above knows what is below -But what is below does not know what is aboveOne climb, one sees-One descends and sees no longerBut one has seen!There is an art of conducting one’s self inThe lower regions by the memory ofWhat one saw higher up.When one can no longer see,One does at least still know. Thank you, i12bent & lumpypudding. I had forgotten it was Daumal’s birthday today. More Daumal material here.

René Daumal (16 March, 1908 - 1944, tuberculosis) was a French writer, philosopher and poet. He was born in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France.

In his late teens his avant-garde poetry was published in France’s leading journals, and in his early twenties, although courted by André Breton co-founded, as a counter to Surrealism and Dada, a literary journal, “Le Grand Jeu” with three friends, collectively known as the Simplists, including poet Roger Gilbert-Lecomte . He is known best in the U.S. for two novels A Night of Serious Drinking and the allegorical novel Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing both based upon his friendship with Alexander de Salzmann, a pupil of G. I. Gurdjieff.

*********

René Daumal: Poem

One cannot stay on the summit forever -
One has to come down again.
So why bother in the first place? Just this.
What is above knows what is below -
But what is below does not know what is above

One climb, one sees-
One descends and sees no longer
But one has seen!

There is an art of conducting one’s self in
The lower regions by the memory of
What one saw higher up.

When one can no longer see,
One does at least still know.

Thank you, i12bent & lumpypudding. I had forgotten it was Daumal’s birthday today.

More Daumal material here.

>

The Holy War by René Daumal (translated by D. M. Dooling)

One of the most relentless and ruthless descriptions of spiritual warfare ever penned by the great lion of truth, René Daumal.

An excerpt:

“…May it break out and continue without truce! Now and again it takes fire, but never for long. At the first small hint of victory, I flatter myself that I’ve won, and I play the part of the generous victor and come to terms with the enemy. There are traitors in the house, but they have the look of friends and it would be so unpleasant to unmask them! They have their place in the chimney corner, their armchairs and their slippers; they come in when I’m drowsy, offering me a compliment, or a funny or exciting story, or flowers and goodies—sometimes a fine hat with feathers. They speak in the first person, and it’s my voice I think I’m hearing, my voice in which I’m speaking: “I am … , I know … , I wish …” But it’s all lies! Lies grafted on my flesh, abscesses screaming at me: “Don’t slaughter us, we’re of the same blood!”—pustules whining: “We are your greatest treasure, your only good feature; go on feeding us, it doesn’t cost all that much!”

And there are so many of them; and they are charming, they are pathetic, they are arrogant, they practice blackmail, they band together … but they are barbarians who respect nothing—nothing that is true, I mean, because they cringe in front of everything else and are tied in knots with respect. It’s thanks to their ideas that I wear my mask; they take possession of everything, including the keys to the costume wardrobe. They tell me: “We’ll dress you; how could you ever present yourself properly in the great world without us?” But oh! It would be better to go naked as a grub!

The only weapon I have against these armies is a very tiny sword, so little you can hardly see it with the naked eye; though, true enough, it is sharp as a razor and quite deadly. But it is really so small that I lose it from one minute to the next. I never know where I stuck it last; and when I find it again, it seems too heavy to carry and too clumsy to wield—my deadly little sword…”

Should I never speak of the Unknowable because that would be a lie? Should I speak of the Unknowable because I know that I come from it and I am bound to bear witness to it?
René Daumal (16 March 1908 - 21 May 1944) French writer and poet.

…the most serious thing, and the strangest, is that we are afraid to the point of panic, not so much of seeing ourselves as of being seen by ourselves. This is our root absurdity. What is behind this great fear?

We are afraid that if we see ourselves we will not see anything very great. Our humbug self is afraid of being seen for what it is. It is fear of this awful exposure that makes us cover ourselves with makeup and put on phony facial expressions.

Sometimes one of life’s accidents—misfortune, a deeply moving encounter, rattles the relatively factitious and solid edifice that a human being has built up for the comfort of his existence. Shaken to what he believes to be his roots, he is burned for an instant by the fire of a question, a doubt: who am I? why am I living? where am I going?

At this moment of reality, he thinks. But such moments are almost always exceptional and accidental, particularly for the specialized men—conditioned by social attitudes, withdrawn into vicious circles in the shadows of their consciousness—that our modern civilization produces in abundance. But the edifice’s semblance of balance is rarely compromised in a serious way.

For the question “who am I,” civil status, first names, last names, positions, professions, titles, ranks, social circles, mirrors, ambitions, vanities and laziness are there to give the pretense of an answer. If the person is of a slightly speculative nature, his little internal philosophy also keeps answers to these rattling questions—brilliant, consoling or approximative answers—in reserve.

And man, that phantom vessel, sets off again under his illusory rigging on the waves of this world where, at times, a real vessel leaves its wake.…

Man is head, chest and stomach. Each of these animals operates, more often than not, individually. I eat, I feel, I even, although rarely, think…. This jungle crawls and teems, is hungry, roars, gets angry, devours itself, and its cacophonic concert does not even stop even when you are asleep.

—an excerpt from René Daumal’s Notebook.