René Daumal (1908 - 1944) was a French surrealist writer, philosopher and poet, born on March 16, 1908 in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France. 1908 is a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1944 was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Poets are authors of poems, or of other forms of poetry such as dramatic verse. ... March 16 is the 75th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (76th in Leap years). ... 1908 is a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Ardennes is a département in the northeast of France named after the Ardennes area. ...

In his late teens his avant-garde poetry was published in France's leading journals, and in his early twenties, as a counter to Surrealism and Dada, he founded a literary journal, "Le Grand Jeu". He is best known 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. Surrealism is an artistic movement, and an aesthetic philosophy that aims for the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative powers of the unconscious. ... Dadaism or Dada is a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design. ... A Night of Serious Drinking is an allegorical novel by the French surrealist writer René Daumal detailing what is ostensibly an extremely simple plot in which the narrator overly imbibes alcohol; what unfolds however is a novel which explores the extremities of heaven and hell. ... An allegory (from Greek αλλος, allos, other, and αγορευειν, agoreuein, to speak in public) is a figurative representation conveying a meaning other than and in addition to the literal. ... René Daumal’s Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing is a classic novel by the early 20th century French surrealist novelist René Daumal. ... Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff (January 13, 1872 - October 29, 1949), the Greek-Armenian mystic and teacher of dancing born in Alexandropol, Armenia (then of the Russian Empire, now Gyumri, Armenia), traveled to many parts of the world (i. ...

Daumal was self-taught in Sanskrit and translated some of the Tripitaka Buddhist canon into French, as well as translating the Japanese Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki into French. The Sanskrit language ( संस्कृता वाक्) is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family and is not only a classical language, but also an official language of India. ... The Tripitaka (Sanskrit, lit. ... Statues of Buddha such as this, the Tian Tan Buddha statue in Hong Kong, remind followers to practice right living. ... Bodhidharma, woodblock print by Yoshitoshi, 1887. ... Dr. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870, Kanazawa, Japan - 1966; standard transliteration: Suzuki Daisetsu, 鈴木大拙) was a famous author of books and essays on Buddhism and Zen that were instrumental in spreading interest in Zen to the West. ...

Daumal's sudden and premature death of tuberculosis on May 21, 1944 in Paris, France was in all probability hastened by youthful experiments with a heady cocktail of drugs and psycho-active chemicals, the principal culprit amongst these no doubt being carbon tetrachloride. He died leaving his novel Mount Analogue unfinished, having worked on it up to the very day of his death. Tuberculous lungs show up on an X-ray image Tuberculosis is an infection with the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which most commonly affects the lungs (pulmonary TB) but can also affect the central nervous system (meningitis), lymphatic system, circulatory system (miliary TB), genitourinary system, bones and joints. ... May 21 is the 141st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (142nd in leap years). ... 1944 was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Eiffel Tower has become the symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... Tetrachloromethane (carbon tetrachloride)CCl4 is a synthetic chemical compound formerly widely used in fire extinguishers and refrigeration, but now largely abandoned due to its toxicity. ...

See: Daumal: The Life and Work of a Mystic Guide by Kathleen Ferrick Rosenblatt (NY: State University of New York Press, 1999)