The Art of Climbing Mountains

The Art of Climbing Mountains
René Daumal
Extraits du livre "LE MONT ANALOGUE (1952)" en français



You cannot always stay on the summits

You have to come down again . . .

So what’s the point?
Only this: what is above knows what is below,
what is below does not know what is above.

~ • ~

One climbs,
One sees.
One descends,
One sees no longer,
But one has seen.

~ • ~

There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions
by the memory of what one saw higher up.
When one can no longer see,
one can at least still know.”

~ • ~

A climber far more experienced than I told me,
“when your feet will no longer carry you,
you have to walk with your head.”

~ • ~

This excerpt is from René Daumal’s Mount Analogue: A Tale of Non-Euclidian and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures, Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2004, pp. 105–108, and is used here with their kind permission. Copyright © 1981 Editions Gallimard, Paris. English translation Copyright © 2004 by Carol Cosman. For more information contact The Overlook Press, One Overlook Drive, Woodstock, NY 12498.