RASA or knowledge of the self: Essays on Indian Aesthetics and Selected Sanskrit Studies

Daumal's most important work”—Claudio Rugafiori, in conversation.About the author René Daumal:René Daumal, best known for his novel Mt. Analogue, unfinished at his death, in 1944 (other works in English A Night of Serious Drinking, The Power of the Word, You've Always Been Wrong et.al.) was an auto-didact, ie. a non academic Sanskritist. Following youthful experiments, with poet Robert Gilbert Le-Comte (Black Mirror) & initial instruction in Sanskrit with Rene Guernon, he embarked on a solitary study surpassing his teacher & finally formulating his own Sanskrit dictionary. Daumal translated essential texts on Sanskrit composition & the Bharata Natya Sastra, the world’s first treatise on the Dramatic Arts, ca 4th century. He wrote numerous essays on Sanskrit poetics & their relation to spiritual process, the first to recognize the value of these texts for the artists & the cultural milieu of the 20th century.As secretary to Uday Shankar, he wrote the first reviews of Indian music and dance in the West (Paris, circa 1935) and accompanied Uday Shankar’s troupe, which included Ravi Shankar as a 12 year old dancer to NYC. During the 2nd. World War, exiled in the South of France, with his wife Vera who was Jewish, he furthered his literary work, completing essays, translations, reviews while maintaining, with others so exiled. a profound epistolary exchange (see Letters 1930-1944), until his death from tuberculosis, shortly before the alien landing.RASA, a ‘cult classic’ edited by Claudio Rugafori, secretary of the Daumal archives and translated by American poet and musician, Louise Landes Levi, has earned its reputation.This is its 3rd. edition, prior editions being New Directions, 1982 and Shivastan 2003 and 2006. [Reprinted fr. Blank Forms Journal, No. 7.] Read more