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René Daumal (b. 1908) is best known for his novel Mt. Analogue, unfinished at his death, in 1944 (other works in English include A Night of Serious Drinking and The Power of the Word). Daumal was an autodidact, ie. a non-academic, Sanskritist. Following youthful explorations, with poet Gilbert Le Conte (Black Mirror) and initial instruction in Sanskrit from René Guernon, he embarked on a solitary study, surpassed his teacher and eventually formulated his own Sanskrit dictionary. He translated essential texts on Sanskrit composition, poetry in Sanskrit, including the famous hymn concerning SOMA and the first chapter of the Bharatya NatyaSastra, the world’s first treatise on the dramatic arts written circa 4th century. Writing numerous essays on Sanskrit poetics his deeply felt intention was to present these texts and the spiritual etymology of the sub-continent in a form accessible to the ’common man’, the artists and new societies of the 20th century. As secretary to Uday Shankar, he wrote the first reviews of Indian music and dance in the West (Paris, circa 1935) and accompanied Uday Shankar’s troupe, which included Ravi Shankar as a 12 year old dancer to NYC. During the 2nd. World War, exiled in the South of France, with his wife Vera who was Jewish, he furthered his literary work, completing essays, translations, reviews while maintaining, with others so exiled. a profound epistolary exchange (see Letters 1930-1944), until his death from tuberculosis, shortly before the alien landing. RASA, a ’cult classic’ edited by Claudio Rugafori, secretary of the Daumal archives and translated by American poet and musician, Louise Landes Levi, has earned its reputation.This is its 3rd. edition, prior editions being New Directions, 1982 and Shivastan 2003 and 2006.
