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Chapter 13 - Pataphysics

from III - Science, Alchemy, Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2023

Anna Watz
Affiliation:
Linköpings Universitet, Sweden
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Summary

This chapter presents a reading of René Daumal’s novel Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing (1952) in the context of its relations with Alfred Jarry’s ’pataphysical or ’neo-scientific novel’ Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician (1911). Like that of many surrealists, Daumal’s humour was nurtured in adolescence on Jarry’s idiosyncratic, absurdist, and blackly comic Umour. Mount Analogue is Daumal’s most sustained expression of such humour. The novel, unfinished at the time of the author’s death in 1944, tells of the narrator Theodore’s encounter with Père Sogol, an expert climber and non-Euclidean navigator (i.e. spiritual guide), who leads a small group of novices on a quest to scale an unclimbable mountain. With much intertextual wit, Daumal weaves together his own peculiar mixture of Jarryesque scientific satire, the spiritual mythos of René Guénon, and the Gurdjieffean teachings of Alexandre de Salzmann into an ecological morality tale and Rabelasian adventure story. The chapter situates Mount Analogue within Daumal’s concern with what he and the other members of the Grand Jeu called “experimental metaphysics” – a lived, experiential foray into situations which pushed the limits of rational and conventionally scientific understanding of life.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Pataphysics
  • Edited by Anna Watz, Linköpings Universitet, Sweden
  • Book: A History of the Surrealist Novel
  • Online publication: 02 February 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009082648.017
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  • Pataphysics
  • Edited by Anna Watz, Linköpings Universitet, Sweden
  • Book: A History of the Surrealist Novel
  • Online publication: 02 February 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009082648.017
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Pataphysics
  • Edited by Anna Watz, Linköpings Universitet, Sweden
  • Book: A History of the Surrealist Novel
  • Online publication: 02 February 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009082648.017
Available formats
×