The Poet Emerges from the Poem

Time: 1 hour

Purpose:For students to construct the identity of a poet based on the poem below.
For students to write a poem entitled "desire."

Materials: A copy of the poem for each student.
A copy of the biography of the poet for each student.

Preparation: Photocopy the poem, the biography and the set of questions about the author.
Distribute each of these texts separately in the strict order given in the Lesson Outline.

Lesson Outline:

1. In pairs get them to reorder a cut up version of the poem. Give no clue as to the identity of the author.
2. Ask them to share their impressions of the poem.
3. Hold some plenary feedback.
4. Give them the questions "About the Poet" below to work on individually.
5. Get them to compare their biographies in groups of three/four.
6. Get a spokesperson from each group to tell the whole class their biographies.
7. Give them the version of the biography of Rene Daumal.
8. Ask them whether they consciously build up the identity of the author when they read a novel or poem. Are they interested in the person who wrote the text or is the text itself the only material they are interested in?
9. Ask them to discuss what they think Daumal means by "desire" in his poem.
10. Hold some plenary feedback.
11. For homework both you and the students write a poem entitled "Desire" to share in a subsequent class.

The Poem

I am dead because I lack desire,
I lack desire because I think I possess,
I think I possess because I do not try to give.
In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;
Seeing that you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing:
Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become;
In desiring to become, you begin to live.

About the Poet.

Answer the following questions and be prepared give reasons for each answer to your partner.

1. Do you think man or a woman wrote this poem?
2. Where do you think the poet is/was from?
3. Do you think the poet is dead or alive?
4. In which decade do you think the poem was written?
5. How old do you think the poet was when they wrote it?
6. What sort of personality do you think the poet has/had?
7. This poem was dedicated to one person. Who do you think he/she was?

A short biography of Rene Daumal.

Rene Daumal was born March 16th 1908, in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France. He died of tuberculosis on May 21, 1944 in Paris. During the thirty-six years of his life he wrote a volume of poetry, numerous essays on Hindu aesthetics, and absurdist satire, "A Night of Serious Drinking" and an unfinished spiritual work "Mount Analogue."
Daumal, along with three others, formed a literary group called "Le Grand Jeu" ("The Big Game") who called for political, psychological and metaphysical revolution. The group experimented with drug taking, astral projection and sensory deprivation.
Although his surrealistic excesses mark him down as an archetypal modernist, underneath it all he was a profoundly spiritual man who spent his life searching for enlightenment. He became a dedicated student and participant in the work of the spiritual teacher George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. The above poem is entitled "Last Letter to his Wife," written shortly before his death.

For a full biography we recommend "Rene Daumal: The Life and Work of a Mystic Guide" by Kathleen Ferrick Rosenblatt (NY: State University of New York Press, 1999)