The complete radio interviews can be consulted on the archives site.
TRANSCRIPTION
PATRICK FERLA: 9.05 30 seconds on La Première. I’m delighted to start this 10th week of the year with you, this Monday morning on 5 sur 5, and of course the 9 to 10 breakfast. Welcome, and thank you for joining us. So you’re in Lausanne this morning, but unless I’m mistaken, you were in Rome on Saturday. What’s the weather like in Rome these days?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: It was raining terribly. Apart from that, Rome is always rather pleasant. I mean, it was relatively mild.
PATRICK FERLA: I think that a fortnight ago, you too experienced a little of the landscape that we are discovering this morning through the windows of this studio, i.e. snow.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes, a very nice snow, as I live in the hills, not far from Rome. And we had a lot of snow, we were even stuck for a few days. And it was very pretty. As someone who occasionally does watercolours, I rushed off to do some pretty drawings of trees in the snow.
PATRICK FERLA: So, you live not far from Rome, I think in a village that’s a bit unusual. It’s called Zagarolo, but that’s not what makes it special. The story goes that this site was once built on a labyrinth.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: The hill I live on is called “The Labyrinth”. And legend has it… It’s just below the Etruscan Temple, which was the great Etruscan Temple of the Goddess, which is in Prenesta, now Prenestina. And legend has it that there was a labyrinth there and that Aeneas, when he came from Troyes, stopped in the labyrinth before going up to pay his respects to the goddess in her cave at Prenesta. So we assumed that… But then again, as someone who believes in places, this is a place with a very special magnetism. What’s more, the house I live in is… there are lots of debris, columns, architraves in the ground, and so on. So there must have been something. And it’s oriented exactly like the Temple of Delphi on the summer solstice, which crosses the whole house through a small hole – it’s very curious – that’s always in the wall.
PATRICK FERLA: So on the subject of places, you’ve been around the world several times. We’ll no doubt be talking about this again between now and 10 o’clock. Is there a town, a village, a particular place that you’ve never forgotten?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Well, listen, in any case, I’ve lived in Benares for almost 25 years, and obviously it’s been a unique, prodigious, wonderful place for me. And there are of course a few other places, but all the same, I think, for me it’s… In fact, that’s why I stayed.
PATRICK FERLA: So, on the map of our hearts this morning, Benares. You know French-speaking Switzerland well, especially Lausanne and Fribourg. You have rather chilly memories of Fribourg. One Christmas Eve, you and a friend went to midnight mass in Fribourg in an open car.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes, yes. You know, at the time, I was an innocent Frenchman and I had no idea of the resistance that a young Swiss man who was here during the winter could have. And yes, I came, that was in the old days, it was 1932 or even 31 I think. And I came to Lausanne very often at that time, and then, yes, Lausanne was a bit of a home for me. I came here very, very often.
PATRICK FERLA: In a few days’ time, on Thursday, the Musée de la Photo, the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, will be showing works by a photographer from Lausanne who was a friend of yours, Raymond Burnier. You will tell us later, Alain Daniélou, the man and the work that you knew so well, that you were born on 4 October 1907 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, that you are the Frenchman who knows India best. You lived there for many, many years. And one of your passions, Alain Daniélou, is music, Hindu music. You were also the first person to record the most ancient monuments of traditional music from that country. So why India, of course? Who did you go looking for and who did you find? We’ll be talking about this again between now and 10 o’clock, but I’d just like to add very quickly that you have written a great many books: “Le Roman de l’Anneau”, “Les Quatre Sens de la Vie”, “L’Erotisme Divinisé” and then “Une histoire de l’Inde” and in 81, “Souvenirs d’Orient et d’Occident” grouped together under the title “Le Chemin du Labyrinthe” which was published by Robert Laffont. In the preface to this book, Alain Daniélou wrote these lines by François Mauriac, dated 14 July 1960. Mauriac wrote: “Here is Alain Daniélou, author of Polythéisme hindou, brother of Father Jean Daniélou, son of Madame Daniélou who was almost a founder of an order and perhaps a saint. I ended up finding,” he said, “in this curiously Asiatic figure a few features that recall his origins”. He spoke of you, of the Hindu religion, as a scholar, in the most objective tone, without any apparent fervour: “What a mystery a family is” wrote François Mauriac, “I once wrote Le Mystère Frontenac, who will write Le Mystère Daniélou? So what mystery was François Mauriac talking about?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: The contrast of a family… my mother was an extremely Catholic and extremely cultured person. She was the first woman agrégée, I think, in France, and she had founded an institution to teach young girls at a time when religious orders were banned. So she created a kind of religious order in civilian clothes and a series of institutions that still exist today, which are the great Sainte-Marie colleges where all the young girls of French high society went to school. So there was that. My father was a very left-wing politician, anti-clerical, probably a Freemason, and a great friend of Aristide Briand, who was a minister in many ministries. So on the face of it, he was the complete opposite of my mother. Then there was my brother, who was a Jesuit, who became a cardinal, and who is considered a fairly important figure in the Church. Then, all of a sudden, this black duck that I am, goes off to the East, adopts the Hindu religion and writes books… So, obviously it was a rather… unusual family.
PATRICK FERLA: Yes, tell us a little about Alain Daniélou. Were you born in Brittany?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: No, but my parents, my father was Breton.
PATRICK FERLA: Yes.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: He spoke Breton and was a member of parliament for Brittany, and so on. But I was born in Paris.
PATRICK FERLA: In Paris, but do you know Brittany?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes, there was the family property, which was only sold by my brothers a short while ago. And a beautiful property in a beautiful village in Brittany where we used to go on holiday. But I was never really interested in Brittany. It was only later on that I realised that we had a deep affinity with people of a certain type, from a certain region, I think.
PATRICK FERLA: From which region? Another country, another continent, for example? The affinities you’re talking about.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: No, I mean, we have certain affinities of character. Even so, I think it’s easier for a Vaudois to get on with a Vaudois than with a Pole, well… But although we get on, there’s something about… a kind of ease that we have, a security that we have in dealing with people who are a bit of your blood in a way.
PATRICK FERLA: Yes, what did the Breton breakfasts you had as a child on holiday there smell like?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: I don’t remember that very well, it was… You know, at that time, houses were still quite rustic. Comfort was very limited. It really was the turn of the century. And… But anyway, it was certainly a place with a lot of charm and… In fact, I quite liked it there, but I was still a rather lonely child, because I’d always been hostile to my environment, ever since I was a child. So I had my own fantasies, and I lived more with the fairies and the genies and the spirits of the forest than with people.
PATRICK FERLA: So, Alain Daniélou, when you travelled as much as you did, did you ever come across elves, fairies or spirits?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: All of a sudden, for me, it was a revelation to come across a country in India where we lived in familiarity with gods, spirits, genies, ghosts, all sorts of things that are realities. Whereas here, for us, these things are quite abstract or rather bizarre. It’s not easy.
PATRICK FERLA: Yes. So, little boy, I think you’re often ill. I mean, you had quite a few health problems. You also perform what you yourself call rather bizarre rituals around the age of three or four.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes, yes. Very curious and… But I’ve always been looking for some kind of contact with the spirits of the forests and so on. So when I was a child, I used to make little hermitages hidden in the woods, with strange objects.
PATRICK FERLA: What kind of objects?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Well, anything. There were pebbles, there were pictures of piety, there were things like that. So when, unfortunately, my parents found out about it, they said I was a little saint and so on. And my mother, who was very close to Pius X, had the Pope send me a blessed gold cross and so on. And I didn’t like it at all, it was… I had desecrated my shrines. It was a fundamental misunderstanding.
PATRICK FERLA: Yeah. And that blessed cross, I think you sold it quite a few years later.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes, of course. You know, when you’re 15, you’ll sell anything because… maybe today’s parents are more generous, but young people need money their parents don’t understand. So at that point, you’ll do anything you can get your hands on, including blessed crosses and other things.
PATRICK FERLA: You had quite a difficult relationship with your mother, whom you tell us in this book resembled Silvana Mangano in “Death in Venice”.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Well yes, my mother was a woman with enormous charm, who was extraordinarily cultured, but at the same time she had such strict ideas that it was… When she decided to do something, it was very difficult. I’m sure it was she who decided that her eldest son would be given to God, and my brother had no choice but to become… to enter religion.
PATRICK FERLA: Do you think he ever regretted it?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: I have the impression that it’s only… Yes, I think he suffered a great deal, and that it was only when he became a cardinal that all of a sudden there was a whole worldly side to the Church into which he threw himself… Because all the same, he was a very open, very cultured person, he was great friends with Cocteau, Mauriac and all sorts of people. So he wasn’t at all a… I mean, a man confined to the Church. But certainly, this sort of discipline of religious orders, where people have to obey, is something, I think, appalling. And I had the impression, in the few years I knew him afterwards, when he had become a cardinal, that all of a sudden he took on a little side of an eighteenth-century cardinal, didn’t he, very, very worldly, kissing the hands of the ladies and behaving in a very free manner.
PATRICK FERLA: It’s almost 9.30 on La Première as we share breakfast this Monday morning with Alain Daniélou. You lived in India for 25 years. Of course, we’ll be talking about this very long stay in a country that I imagine you know, as the saying goes, like the back of your hand. But first, let’s take a few minutes to look back at your first time in Paris, when you were 20-21 years old. And if your passion was, generally speaking, India and Hindu music, your passion at the time, which I think you kept for a relatively long time, was both dancing and singing.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes. Basically, I was only interested in music and painting, which I practised. I played the piano. I studied singing with Panzera, who was a famous singer at the time, and dance with Legat, who was Nijinsky’s teacher, wasn’t he, and who was the great master, as was Nijinska afterwards. So these activities had nothing to do with what my family approved of, but they put me in this Parisian milieu where, for a few years, I got to know a bit of the world of music and painting of the time.
PATRICK FERLA: Yes, could you name a few of the people you met at that time in Paris?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes, someone who then had some misfortunes, who was Maurice Sachs, who then had some problems during the war, who died in a… and so on. We didn’t really know how. And then, the whole Henri Sauguet group and the whole Poulenc, De Auric, etc., group.
PATRICK FERLA: You knew Cocteau, Diaghilev too?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: So I knew Cocteau, I knew Diaghilev. And at that time I also knew someone who was very young, Nicolas Nabokov, who became a great friend when I met him again many years later. And then, finally, the whole Parisian world, yes.
PATRICK FERLA: But what was your destiny at that time? When you were a child, did you… well, at least what you write, Alain Daniélou, did you very quickly have the obscure feeling, you say, of having been chosen by a particular destiny?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: That’s true. But as it was something completely unknown. It was a time in my childhood when, yes, I was performing rituals. I felt like I was promising something and I didn’t know. And then, no, I went into this purely artistic field and I had absolutely no interest in philosophy, or the East, or India. I didn’t know what it was at all. It was purely by chance that I went to India afterwards. So yes, obviously we have instincts. But until you find the junction point, you don’t know it exists.
PATRICK FERLA: So, one day in Paris, Alain Daniélou, you meet someone whose prints and photographs will be on show at the Musée de l’Elysée from Thursday. This person is Raymond Burnier. He’s a photographer from Lausanne, and you’re meeting him in Paris.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes. So, Raymond Burnier, who was 19 at the time, and who was interested in photography with his first Leica and all that… had met a friend of mine who said to him: “I know a Frenchman who has been invited by the King of Afghanistan”. So Raymond said: “I absolutely want to meet him”. And it was on the pretext of Afghanistan that I met Raymond. In fact, I had a childhood friend whose father was… who was called Zaher, who is now the dethroned king and whose father had become king of Afghanistan and who had invited me to go there.
PATRICK FERLA: Alain Daniélou, could you take a few minutes to draw up a profile, a portrait of this photographer from Lausanne, Raymond Burnier?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Well, listen, yes, Raymond was a very tall, very blond boy, extremely distinguished and elegant, who belonged, I think, to a very wealthy family and who was someone with a very, very great charm. And at that time, of course, he was a very young man. He went on to develop a great deal, because he and I stayed in India for many years. And at that time, he was doing photography like that, as a good amateur. And it was only later that he developed a passion for Hindu sculpture and produced this absolutely magnificent work that revealed India’s great sculpture to the world.
PATRICK FERLA: So in April 1932, unless I’m mistaken, Alain Daniélou, you headed for Venice, and from Venice you embarked for Bombay.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes, in Bombay.
PATRICK FERLA: On a big boat? Was it a beautiful boat?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes, they were the beautiful Italian boats, in those days it took 15 days, it was great fun, and they were superb boats.
PATRICK FERLA: It was the Conte Rosso, do you remember?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Oh yes, the Conte Rosso was the first, yes. Then we went on the Conte Verde, on the Victoria, because in those days, we only travelled by boat.
PATRICK FERLA: Yes, and what were you looking for in India in 1932?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Nothing at all. I was on my way to Afghanistan to visit a childhood friend whose father had become king. These things happen. And so, to get there, I had to cross India. And at that point, of course, both Raymond and I were completely flabbergasted, because neither of us had ever heard of India. There was no tourism at the time. We didn’t go to India. Only civil servants went to the colonies. So we were both amazed and dazzled. That’s why, after our stay in Afghanistan, where we played the 400 tricks of the trade, we went on adventures in the Pamir that enraged everyone, extremely dangerous explorations, it seems, absolutely with the innocence of young people… so we came back to India. And that’s when we really started to visit India and we went to the beautiful city of Calcutta. Calcutta was a charming city, not at all congested like it is today. And from there we went to see the poet Rabindranath Tagore…
PATRICK FERLA: Who has meant a lot to you.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes, because there we were, stumbling along, knowing absolutely nothing about India or anything else. And the poet, who was a very, very funny man, must have found these two naive people absolutely hilarious. So he said to us: “Well, if you’re here, stay as long as you like”. He had this sort of school in the countryside, with a house for visitors and so on. So we stayed there for a while. And afterwards, it created very deep ties because Tagore took a liking to us and put us in charge of all his friends in Europe. It was great fun, you know, when you’re 20, to have assignments with Paul Valéry, Romain Rolland, Benedetto Croce, Paul Morand, André Gide and so on. And then, after that, we went back to Shantiniketan practically every year. And it was there that our Indian life gradually developed.
PATRICK FERLA: We’ll talk about your life in India in a moment, Alain Daniélou. We’re going to listen to some music that you recorded many years ago in this country. We’ll talk about it later.
(Music)
PATRICK FERLA: Alain Daniélou was a guest on Le Petit Déjeuner this morning, and what does what we’ve just heard evoke in you?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: These are recordings I made when Raymond Burnier married a young Indian dancer called Radha, who has now become president of the Theosophical Society. How time flies. So Radha came and wanted to dance in Europe. So I had done… this was done just after the war. As soon as there were recording machines, I rushed to New York, I bought machines that were enormous at the time to record music, because it was fascinating and there was no such thing as recordings. So I also recorded all the programmes so that Radha could dance. And the first records we made were… Mr Schnell, who had the photo shop on Saint-François there, went to a lot of trouble to make… at the time it wasn’t done, some sort of records that could be used to enable her to dance on stage. And this is one of the recordings on which Radha danced.
PATRICK FERLA: Yes. So, Alain Daniélou, at a certain point, you settled down, so to speak definitively, in a city where there are many palaces, which is the city, the heart of the Hindu world. This city is, of course, Benares.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes, well, in the early years with Raymond Burnier, we went back and forth between Europe and India. We went to Bengal, so to Rabindranath Tagore’s milieu. And we also started doing a bit of sightseeing, visiting different places.
PATRICK FERLA: Yes. How did you travel at the time?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: In those days, we travelled by train, and sometimes quite difficult journeys. The first time we went to Konârak, which is the great temple of the sun, we went by elephant, because in those days there were no roads. We also travelled by camel. We had some pretty fun trips. So at that point, I especially started to take a huge interest in discovering a civilisation. All of a sudden, I had the impression that I was in… a bit like being magically transported to the Egypt of the pharaohs, you know? We were in a country we knew nothing about. We felt there was something… So the idea of going to the heart of this place, and like… passing through Benares we said to ourselves: “It would be amazing to live in one of these palaces, it’s fantastic, incredible with marble balconies, huge things” and the young man who was our guide said: “If you want to rent this palace, you know, nobody lives there”, etc. And so we rented the palace, which we did. And so we rented the palace, I think, for 100 rupees a month or something like that! We thought: “We’ll come, it’ll be fun”. And in the end, Raymond and I stayed there for 20 years.
PATRICK FERLA: And one day, Alain Daniélou, you became a Hindu.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes, then once we got settled in Benares. And then we got stuck there, because there was a war here. So there was no question of…
PATRICK FERLA: To return.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: … to go elsewhere. At that point, Raymond started taking photographs of the temples. So we made a lot of expeditions into the jungles to find temples that nobody knew about at the time. And then I began to study Hindi and Sanskrit very, very seriously. So for me, Hindi, for example, is something I read and write. I’ve written lots of books in Hindi. It has become my language. And so at that point, all of a sudden, I discovered a whole world of thought, knowledge and understanding that is absolutely prodigious. And so, obviously, I became completely integrated into this world. Raymond did too, but more superficially in a way. He was more interested in questions of… he was passionate about his work photographing temples. And there he… but he also practised rites a bit. That amused him, because rituals are very pretty. You know, Hindu rituals are things you do all by yourself. We worship images with a very complicated system, with offerings of fire, offerings of flowers, offerings of food, offerings of water, all that and a whole… a very, very poetic thing that the Hindus do all alone, at home, quietly without… that’s it. The Hindu religion is not at all a public thing. Temples are not places where people go. Temples are places where people worship, where priests worship gods. It’s very different from Buddhist or Christian concepts.
PATRICK FERLA: And so, one day, Alain Daniélou became Shiva Sharan.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Shiva Sharan, yes.
PATRICK FERLA: Yes, the name Shiva Sharan has a meaning?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Shiva’s protégé. Sharan means “he who is under protection”.
PATRICK FERLA: So 25 years in India. Do you feel nostalgic about that time, that country, those people?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: What can I say? I can’t say. It’s one thing… You know, it’s like… I mean, if you study very hard at university, basically you don’t go on to live… to study. I mean, you learn things, you immerse yourself in a certain… you discover a whole world. Then I acquired an enormous amount, and as Louis Renou, the great French Sanskritist, used to say to me: “You have so many things that it will take you a whole lifetime just to try and explain them”. So I then set about presenting what I had been able to understand and discover about this extraordinary civilisation.
PATRICK FERLA: We talked about the facts at the beginning of the programme. Here’s a princess who’s now singing, she’s Stéphanie of Monaco. Would you like to listen?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Well, if you like, but it’s not… It’s very contrary to all Hindu social ideas, isn’t it? And it’s something that’s starting to happen even in India today, these people from a certain society who steal the work of craftsmen, you understand? Something that, for Indians, is absolutely monstrous. Isn’t it? Musicians in India are castes. These are people who hereditarily study, possess a certain knowledge, and so on. It’s their property, it’s their right like any other craft, isn’t it? The arts are considered to be crafts. And so the blacksmith’s son learns the blacksmith’s secrets and continues his dynasty. And likewise, the son of the musician learns. And then, all of a sudden, you’ve got these young girls from society getting involved, but what right do they have? You know what I mean? It’s not their… from the Indian point of view. Obviously, things are much more mixed here. But that’s one of the great things about Indian society, isn’t it? It’s this respect for work and this respect for the heredity of work that is as important as princely heredity or the heredity of wealth, isn’t it? There are dynasties of craftsmen. And in India, there are dynasties of musicians, and they are so extraordinary that when one dies and the other takes over, you hardly notice.
PATRICK FERLA: Like every morning this week, La Première on Radio Suisse Romande, and our guest this morning is Alain Daniélou. We choose to wish someone, somewhere, a good day. I think you’re calling someone in Paris this morning.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes. I’d like to talk to Jean Chalon, who is a great friend of mine, the literary critic at Le Figaro, and who has also done work on Alexandra David-Néel with which I don’t entirely agree. He wrote an admirable and very successful book about this adventuress of the spirit.
PATRICK FERLA: Jean Chalon is on the line with you and can hear you.
JEAN CHALON: Yes, I hear you.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Hello Jean.
JEAN CHALON: Hello Alain.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Well, I was just thinking, since we’re here, why not say hello to you this morning and…
JEAN CHALON: Well, I’m very touched by what you say about my biography of Alexandra David-Néel, because I know by heart the letter you wrote to me about it, which began with: “It was with no pleasure that I began your biography”, because you don’t like Alexandra David-Néel. And I’m very grateful to you for helping me to write this biography, because it’s to you that I owe the understanding of all the Sanskrit terms, in other words the whole Hindi part of this biography. And you ended your letter after reading my biography by saying: “Alexandra David-Néel doesn’t exist, she’s an invention of Jean Chalon”. I was very amused by that, which shows that people like you can have a great deal of erudition and a great deal of humour. Which is the only way to have erudition and make it bearable.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: There you go. Did you get my note about your problems with the Samadhi?
JEAN CHALON: But no, I haven’t received it. I still don’t know whether Samadhi… Well, like the sex of angels, I don’t know the sex of Samadhi. If, for those listening to us, Samadhi is supreme ecstasy, is it feminine or masculine?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Well, I was very shocked that you used as a reference a Genevan called Jean Herbert, who had put Samadhi in the masculine form. Well, that’s completely wrong, because I’ve looked it up in my dictionaries, and there’s no doubt about it, Samadhi, the final ecstasy, is in the feminine, there’s nothing you can do about it.
JEAN CHALON: Well, Jean Herbert directed a collection of living spirituality at Albin Michel, so…
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Yes, but…
JEAN CHALON: I bow to the gender of Samadhi. So I was right to use Samadhi in the masculine form in my biography of Alexandra David-Néel.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: That’s it.
PATRICK FERLA: Well, Jean Chalon, we wish you a very good day in Paris today.
JEAN CHALON: It will be illuminated by the sex of Samadhi, thank you. Goodbye.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Goodbye.
PATRICK FERLA: It’s almost 10 o’clock on La Première. Thank you Alain Daniélou for coming in this morning for breakfast. So, over the next few days, we have at least three meetings with you. The first two are two books that have just been published. One is “Visage de l’Inde Médiévale”, with photos by Raymond Burnier, published by Editions Hermann in Paris.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: A superb book.
PATRICK FERLA: Yes. And then, in 86, a book of poems and improvisation themes will be published by Editions Nulle Part in Paris. And the title of the book was “Dhrupad”. What does that mean?
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: “Dhrupad” are the noblest songs in Indian classical music. So I wrote down the themes and translated the texts.
PATRICK FERLA: And so, at the Musée de l’Elysée from Thursday, there are photos by Raymond Burnier, a walk around Paris and in Paris by Jenajay, and of course a major exhibition devoted to Jacques Henri Lartigue.
(Music)
PATRICK FERLA: Alain Daniélou, thank you for coming. Have a good day.
ALAIN DANIÉLOU: Well, thank you very much. It was lovely to have this whimsical breakfast with you.
PATRICK FERLA: Thank you for joining us on La Première. In a moment, we’ll have a continuation of 5 sur 5 by 12.30 p.m., straight after the news flash. And then we’ll be back, please, tomorrow at 9 o’clock.