Daumal, René (1908-44). The major theoretician of the group Le Grand Jeu. After he had met Alexandre de Salzmann and then Gurdjieff, his quest for authentic spiritual experience led him to the East, to Hinduism, and to the sacred Sanscrit texts, some of which he translated. In his lifetime he published the gnomic, or ironic, or colloquial poems of Le Contre-Ciel (1936) and the 'pataphysical récit, La Grande Beuverie (1938). His posthumous publications include Le Mont Analogue (1952), an allegorical account of a journey to another world, the essays and notes of Chaque fois que l'arbre paraît (1953), Poésie noire, poésie blanche (1954), the metaphysical treatise Tu t'es toujours trompé (1970), and Mugle (1978), a series of prose cantos vaguely reminiscent of Lautréamont's Les Chants de Maldoror. His writings stress the importance of negation as a positive act, together with an eternal quest for poetry, self-knowledge, and the Absolute.

— Keith Aspley

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.