René Daumal

René Daumal (1908 - 1944) was a French surrealist writer, philosopher and poet, born on March 16, 1908 in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France.

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 Dadaism, he founded a literary journal, "Le Grand Jeu". He is best known for two novels A Night of Serious Drinking and the truly bizarre both based upon his friendship with Alexander de Salzmann, a pupil of G. I. Gurdjieff.

Daumal's 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.

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