René Daumal – Mount Analogue

“For a mountain to play the role of Mount Analogue, I concluded, its summit must be inaccessible but its base accessible to human beings as nature has made them. It must be unique and it must exist geographically. The door to the invisible must be visible.”

A touchstone of Surrealism, Pataphysics, and Gurdjieffian mysticism, Mount Analogue tells the story of an expedition to a mountain whose existence can only be deduced, not observed. Left unfinished (mid-sentence) at the author's early death from tuberculosis in 1944 and first published posthumously in French in 1952, the book has inspired seekers of art and wisdom ever since - Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1973 film The Holy Mountain is a loose adaptation. This 1959 translation, the first made into English, remains the best and closest in spirit to the deadly serious joking of the original. Written in the form of an adventure tale, the story and language of Mount Analogue are open to layers of interpretation, an invitation that has kept generations of devoted readers returning to it again and again. Exact Change is delighted to bring this superb translation of a true 20th-century classic back into print.

René Daumal (1908-1944) was a literary prodigy in his teens, publishing writings and editing a journal (Le Grand Jeu) that attracted the attention of André Breton and the Surrealists. Rather than join the group, he turned his attention to Eastern Philosophy — first teaching himself Sanskrit to study the Hindu classics, then under the influence of G.I. Gurdjieff and his Parisian circle.