JEAN BORELLA

RENÉ-JEAN JOSEPH GUÉNON was born in 1886 in Blois, Anjou, in the
pleasant valley of the Loire. The young René was an only child
of fragile health. He was baptized very early and lived a sheltered
childhood. His maternal aunt, Mme Duru, a childless school
teacher in Blois, gave her affection to her nephew, teaching him to read
and write.

It was not until October 1898 that Guénon entered Notre Dame des
Aydes, a religious school in Blois. He did well there but left in 1901 after
a disagreement with one of his teachers, and in January 1902 he entered the
Augustin Thierry school as a student of rhetoric. Guénon obtained his
baccalaureate in philosophy in 1903, then in mathematics in 1904, and he
showed himself to be gifted in both disciplines.

Arriving in Paris in October 1904, Guénon enrolled in a special mathe-
matics class in the Rollin school to prepare for a license and perhaps for the
Ecole Polytechnique, but he soon found the promiscuity of the boarding
school to be intolerable and he was, in the end, unable to keep up with the
work imposed upon him. A second year only served to confirm his disposi-
tion, but, more important, Guénon heard another call and his life suddenly
took a new turn. Abandoning his pursuit of a scientific career, he left the
noisy Latin Quarter for the calm of the Ile Saint-Louis and undertook, at
the end of 1906, a search for the "lost word," which would lead him to
several crucial encounters.

-330-