This pataphysical journey up a mountain whose summit must be
inaccessible, but its base accessible to human beings depicts an
allegorical landscape akin to Alice in Wonderland
A beloved cult classic of surrealism, pataphysics and Gurdjieffian
mysticism, René Daumal's Mount Analogue is the allegorical tale of an
expedition to a mountain whose existence can only be deduced, not
observed. As its numerous editions (most now rare) over the decades
attest, the book has been highly influential: Alejandro Jodorowsky's
visionary 1973 film The Holy Mountain is a loose adaptation of the
book, and John Zorn based an eponymous album on it.
This edition, a gorgeous addition to the Exact Change list, brings the
original 1959 English translation by Roger Shattuck--widely considered
the best--back into print.
Left unfinished after Daumal's death from tuberculosis in 1944--in
mid-sentence, as he broke from writing to receive a visitor--Mount
Analogue offers a compelling and philosophically resonant chronicle of
a group of travelers seeking the titular mountain, based on the symbolic
calculations of one Father Sogol ("Logos" spelled backward) and his
students. As Daumal writes, "Mount Analogue is the symbolic
mountain--the way that unites Heaven and Earth, a way which must exist
in material and human form, otherwise our situation would be without
hope."
Translator Roger Shattuck, author of many volumes, is perhaps best known
for his important book The Banquet Years, a history of the
turn-of-the-century French avant-garde.
René Daumal (1908-44) was a literary prodigy in his teens,
publishing poetry that attracted the attention of André Breton and the
surrealists. Forging his own path instead of joining the group, he
co-created and edited the influential literary journal Le Grand Jeu
(1927-32), before turning his attentions to Eastern philosophy under the
influence of Gurdjieff and Alexandre de Salzmann (model for the
character Father Sogol in Mount Analogue). His early death from
tuberculosis in 1944 left his masterpiece, Mount Analogue, unfinished;
nonetheless it became his best-loved and most famous work.
