Rene Daumal: 3 books

A Night of Serious Drinking is among Rene Daumal's most important literary works. Like Daumal’s Mount Analogue it is a classic work of symbolic fiction. An unnamed narrator spends an evening getting drunk with a group of friends; as the party becomes intoxicated and exuberant, the narrator embarks...

Daumal's symbolic mountain represents a way to truth that "cannot not exist," and his classic allegory of man's search for himself embraces the certainty that one can know and conquer one's own reality. In this novel/allegory the narrator/author sets sail in the yacht Impossible to search...

For this early 20th century French poet-philosopher, life, in its most dynamic sense, can only be experienced after the facade of self-identity has been systematically negated through a kind of metaphysical suicide. In Le Contre-Ciel, Daumal invites us, his readers, to go through this process of regeneration-through-negation...