by Rene Daumal
“It’s my brother,” he said. “I must tell you his story because we may be together a long time, and you should know what kind of man (he spat into the fire) you are dealing with.
“My men are such children! They complain that hunting is strictly forbidden from here on up. There is plenty of game in the area, sure! But the guides know what they’re doing up there, forbidding hunting beyond Prés-mouillés. They have their reasons, and I should know. For a rat that I killed less than fifty steps from here, I lost the four peradams that I had taken such trouble to find and keep, and I lost ten years of my life.
“I come from a peasant family settled at Port-des-Singes for
huge gullies in the flank of the mountain. A good part of the trail, which at that time climbed from Prés-mouillés and crossed the slope much higher up, was destroyed. For several days, rock slides, gushes of water and mud, and earth slides kept coming, one after the other, and blocked our way. The caravan returned below, to Port-des-Singes, in order to equip itself for unforeseen dangers, then set out in search of a new trail toward the chalets of the Base along the other bank—a very long, risky, and difficult path on which several men perished. I was forbidden to leave until a commission of guides had determined the causes of the catastrophe. At the end of a week, I was called before this commission, which declared that I was responsible for the disaster, and that by virtue of the first judgment I would have to repair the damage.
“I was flabbergasted. But they explained to me how things had transpired, according to the commission’s findings. Here is what was explained to me—impartially, objectively, and today I would even say kindly, but in a categorical fashion. The old rat I had killed fed chiefly on a species of wasp found abundantly in this place. But, especially at his age, a rock rat is not agile enough to catch wasps in flight; so he usually ate only the sick and the weak who dragged themselves on the ground and could barely fly. In this way he destroyed the wasps that carried defects or germs that, through heredity or contagion, would have spread dangerous illnesses in the colonies of these insects without his unconscious intervention. Once the rat was dead, these illnesses spread quickly, and by the following spring there were hardly any wasps left in the region. These wasps, gathering nectar from the flowers, ensured their pollination. Without them, a great many plants that played an important role in stabilizing the shifting earth,
Note from the French Edition
According to René Daumal’s last outlines and working notes, Le Mont Analogue was to contain seven chapters. We have chosen to publish the two key documents rather than a hypothetical but possible reconstruction of the missing part of the narrative.
The first involves chapter 5. It gives us a glimpse of the end of the story of Bernard, the head porter, and indicates the two themes still to be dealt with: “sending provisions to the previous caravan” and “the language of the guides.”
The second contains the material for chapter 6—which would have dealt with the “other expedition” of Alphonse Camard, Emile Gorge, Julie Bonasse, Benito Cicoria, which could only end in disaster—and of chapter 7, in which Daumal would most likely have addressed the reader directly.
Between 1938 and 1941-1942, René Daumal wrote several other texts along with Le Mont Analogue which are very important for understanding the meaning of this “novel.” We offer them here in chronological order.
The first is the beginning of a “treatise of analogical alpinism,” conceived well before the writing of Le Mont Analogue. The second is comprised of two paragraphs of introduction which do not sum up how the story began but allow the reader to enter into it, and two paragraphs which, in the guise of a conclusion, show how René Daumal planned to “clothe this truthful story to make it believable.”
These four paragraphs serve to frame chapter 1, published in Mesures (#1, 15 January 1940).
The third and fourth texts concern chapter 3 and were meant to introduce the “Tale of the Hollow-men and the Bitter-Rose” (which was published in Cahiers du Sud, #239, October 1941).
1
Forward—My observations are those of a beginner. As they are completely fresh in my mind and concern the first difficulties a beginner encounters, they may be more useful to beginners making their first ascents than treatises written by professionals. These are no doubt more methodical and complete, but are intelligible only after a little preliminary experience. The entire aim of these notes is to help the beginner acquire this preliminary experience a little faster.
Definitions—Alpinism is the art of climbing mountains by confronting the greatest dangers with the greatest prudence.
Art is used here to mean the accomplishment of knowledge in action.
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.
I questioned him: “What do you mean when you talk about ‘analogical alpinism’?
“It’s the art of …”
“What is an art?”
“The value of danger:
temerity—suicide.
Short of that, no satisfaction.”
“What is danger?”
“What is prudence?”
“What is a mountain?”
Keep your eyes fixed on the way to the top, but don’t forget to look at your feet. The last step depends on the first. Don’t think you have arrived jut because you see the peak. Watch your feet, be certain of your next step, but don’t let this distract you from the highest goal. The first step depends on the last.
When you take off on your own, leave some trace of your passage that will guide your return: one rock set on top of another, some grass pierced by a stick. But if you come to a place you cannot cross or that is dangerous, remember that the trace you have left might lead the people following you into trouble. So go back the way you came and destroy any traces you have left. This is addressed to anyone who wants to leave traces of his passage in this world. And even without wanting to, we always leave traces. Answer to your fellow men for the traces you leave behind.
Never stop on a crumbling slope. Even if you believe your feet are firmly planted, while you take a breath and looking at the sky the earth is gradually piling up under your feet, the gravel is slipping imperceptibly, and suddenly you are launched like a ship. The mountain always lies in wait for the chance to trip you up.
If, after climbing up and down three times through gullies that end in sheer drops (visible only at the last moment), your legs begin to tremble from knee to heel and your teeth start to chatter, first reach a little platform where you can stop safely; then, remember all the curse words you know and hurl them at the mountain, and spit on the mountain; finally, insult it in every way possible, swallow some water, have a bite to eat, and start climbing again, calmly, slowly, as if you had your whole lifetime to undo this bad move. In the evening, before going to sleep, when it all comes back to you, you will see then that it was just a performance. It wasn’t the mountain you were talking to, it wasn’t the mountain you conquered. The mountain is only rock or ice, with no ears or heart. But this performance may have saved your life.
Besides, in difficult moments you’ll often surprise yourself talking to the mountain, sometimes flattering it, sometimes insulting it, sometimes promising, sometimes threatening. And you’ll imagine that the mountain answers, as if you had said the right words by speaking gently, by humbling yourself. Don’t despise yourself for this, don’t feel ashamed of behaving like those men our social scientists call primitives and animists. Just keep in mind when you recall these moments later that y
our dialogue with nature was only the outward image of a dialogue with yourself.
Shoes are not like feet—we are not born with them. Therefore we can choose them. Let yourself be guided in this choice first by experienced people, then by your own experience. Very quickly you will be so used to your shoes that every nail will seem like a finger, capable of testing the rock and gripping it firmly; they will become a sensitive and reliable tool, like a part of yourself. And yet you were not born with them; and yet, when they wear out, you will throw them away and remain what you are.
Your life somewhat depends on your footwear. Care for them properly, but a quarter of an hour per day will be plenty, for your life depends on several other things as well.
A climber far more experienced than I told me, “When your feet will no longer carry you, you have to walk with your head.” And that’s true. It is not, perhaps, in the natural order of things, but isn’t it better to walk with your head than to think with your feet, as often happens?
If you slip or have a minor spill, don’t interrupt your momentum but even as you right yourself recover the rhythm of your walk. Take note of the circumstances of your fall, but don’t allow your body to brood on the memory. The body always tries to make itself interesting by its shivers, its breathlessness, its palpitations, its shudders, sweats, and cramps. But it is very sensitive to its master’s scorn and indifference. If it feels he is not fooled by its jeremiads, if it understands that enlisting his pity is a useless effort, then it falls back into line and compliantly accomplishes its task.
The moment of danger
The difference between panic and presence of mind
Automatism (master or servant)
2
I would have liked to tell you the whole story right now. But since this would be too long, here is the beginning. Perhaps it is always artificial to speak of the beginning and the end of a story, since we always grasp only the intermediate phases. But at the source of the events there was a meeting, and every meeting is a relative beginning, and this meeting in particular is a whole story in itself.
What I have to tell is so extraordinary that I must take certain precautions. To teach anatomy, one uses conventional diagrams—rather than photographs—which differ in every respect from the object to be studied, except that certain relations—specifically, those that form the thing to be known—are preserved. I have done the same here.
This is how the project for an expedition to Mount Analogue came into being. Now that I have begun, I should tell you the sequel: how it was proved that a continent hitherto unknown, with mountains much higher than the Himalayas, existed on our Earth; how no one had noticed it before; how we reached it; what beings we met there; how another expedition, for other purposes, nearly perished in the most ghastly way; how little by little we began to put down roots, so to speak, in this new world; and how, nonetheless, the journey has scarcely begun …
Very high and very far up in the sky, above and beyond the successive circles of increasingly elevated peaks, of increasingly white snow, so dazzling the eye cannot bear it, invisible due to excessive light, stands the extreme point of Mount Analogue. “There, at the summit sharper than the sharpest needle, alone stands he who fills all space. Up there, in the finer air where all is frozen, there alone exists the crystal of ultimate stability. Up there, in the full fire of the sky where all burns, there alone exists perpetual incandescence. There, at the center of all, is he who sees each thing done in its beginning and its end.” This is what the mountain men sing here. This exists. “You say that this exists, but if it’s a little cold your heart is transformed into a mole; if it’s a little warm, your head is filled with a cloud of flies; if you’re hungry, your body becomes a donkey heedless to the cudgel; if you’re tired, your feet know how to stall!” This is another song the mountain men are singing as I write, as I try to figure out how to craft this truthful tale to make it believable.
3
All sorts of voices again made themselves heard. I could pick and choose among the things they said. One spoke of the man who, having come down from the peaks, found himself below once more, where his gaze encompassed no more than the immediate surroundings. “But he has the memory of what he saw, which can still guide him. When one can no longer see, one can still know; and one can bear witness to what one has seen.” Another spoke of shoes, and said how each nail, each wing-nail becomes as sensitive as a finger that tests the terrain and firmly grips the slightest rough patch. “And yet these are only shoes, we are not born with them, and a quarter of an hour of care each day is enough to keep them in good repair. While feet we are born with, and we will die with them—at least so we think. But are we really sure? Are there not feet that survive their owner, or that die before him?” (I shut this one up, it was becoming eschatological.) Another spoke of Olympus and of Golgotha, another of polyglobuli and the peculiarities of the mountain men’s metabolism. Another finally announced that “we were wrong to claim that the high mountains were poor in legends, and that it knew at least one quite noteworthy example.” He specified that, truthfully, in this legend the mountains served as a setting more than a symbol, and that the true site of the story was “at the junction of our humanity and a superior civilization, where an established truth is perpetuated.” Quite intrigued, I begged him to tell me the story. Here it is. I listened to it and I try to reproduce it with all the attention and precision I am capable of—which means that what you find here is merely a rather pale and approximate translation.
4
On a certain day in a certain August, I was coming down from the bitter and hard, snow-covered regions, where gusts of hail blow and storms begin. I knew that various circumstances would soon prevent me from returning to the aerial land of wind-torn ridges dancing in the middle of the sky, the illusion from above and below of the white coastal paths traced in the blue-black abyss from above, which collapsed in the midst of a silent afternoon, among the slopes seamed with gullies and shimmering with black ice, where sulfurous explosions begin. Once more I had wanted to inhale the greenish breath of a crevasse, run my fingers over a stone slab, slip between crumbling blocks, rope together a group of climbers, weigh the back-and-forth of a gust of wind, listen to the steel chime on the ice and the small, crystalline fragments hurtle into the trap of the deceptive rimaye—a killing machine powdered and draped with gems; I wanted to trace a trail in the diamonds and dust, entrust myself to two strands of hemp, and eat prunes while suspended in space. Crossing through a cloud cover on my descent, I had stopped at the first saxifrage, before a great fall of seracs, a gigantic sash of iridescent folds that descended in spirals toward the great desert of stones at the bottom.
For a long time now I had had to stay below, lying down or gathering flowers, my pickax under a chest. Then I remembered that I was a man of letters by profession. And that I had a splendid opportunity to use this profession for its usual purpose, which is to speak instead of doing. Being unable to go mountain climbing, I would sing about the mountain climbers from below. I must admit that this was my intention. But fortunately, it released a revolting odor inside me: the odor of that literature which is merely a dead end, the odor of words that we cast instead of acting, or to console ourselves for being unable to do so.
I began to think more seriously, with the heavy clumsiness required to mull something over, just as one conquers one’s body by conquering rock and ice. I would not speak of the mountain but through the mountain. With this mountain as language, I would speak of another mountain, which is the way that joins earth and sky, and I would speak of it not to resign myself but to exhort myself.
And the whole story—my story until today, clothed in mountain words—was traced before me. A whole story that I now need the time to tell, and also time to finish living.1
I was leaving with a group of friends to seek the Mountain which is the path joining Earth and Sky. It must exist somewhere on our planet, and must be the dwelling of a superior humanity. This was
proven rationally by the man we called Father Sogol, our senior in mountain matters and the leader of the expedition.
And now we have reached the unknown continent, seed of superior substances implanted in the terrestrial crust, protected from curious and covetous gazes by the curvature of its space—just as a drop of mercury, by its surface tension, remains impenetrable to the finger that tries to touch its center. By our calculations—thinking of nothing else—by our desires—abandoning all other hope—by our efforts—renouncing all comfort—we had forcibly entered this new world. So it seemed to us. But later we knew that if we had been able to reach the foot of Mount Analogue, it was because the invisible doors of this invisible country had been open to us by those who guard them. The cock crowing in the milk of dawn believes that his song makes the sun rise; the child howling in a closed room thinks his cries make the door open. But the sun and the mother follow courses set by the laws of their beings. Those who see us even if we cannot see ourselves, answer our puerile calculations, our fickle desires, our small and awkward efforts with a generous welcome.
Afterword
And so René Daumal stopped mid-sentence in the fifth chapter of Mount Analogue. His customary graciousness would not allow him to keep the visitor waiting who was knocking at his door on that day in April, 1944. It was the last day that Daumal could still hold his pen.