MOUNTAINS, MOBILITIES AND MOVEMENT 978-1-137-58635-3, 1137586354, 978-1-137-58634-6

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxi
Introduction (Emily Goetsch, Christos Kakalis)....Pages 1-12
Front Matter ....Pages 13-13
Deep and Dark Play in the Alps: Daring Acts and Their Retelling (Jonathan Pitches)....Pages 15-35
In the Shadow of the Mountain: Tracing the Hesychast Inhabitation of Mount Athos (Christos Kakalis)....Pages 37-57
Reading Mountains: Performative Visual Language in Tenth-Century Northern Iberian Monastic Communities (Emily Goetsch)....Pages 59-79
‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon (Maria Mitsoula)....Pages 81-103
Front Matter ....Pages 105-105
Climbing the Invisible Mountain: The Apse Mosaics of St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, and Their Sixth-Century Viewers (Andrew Paterson)....Pages 107-128
How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political Expressions of Modern Imaginaries of Territoriality (Bernard Debarbieux)....Pages 129-153
A Difficult Line: The Aesthetics of Mountain Climbing 1871–Present (Anja-Karina Nydal)....Pages 155-170
Untimely Mountains | Entangled Matter (Kim W. Wilson)....Pages 171-186
Front Matter ....Pages 187-187
Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of Temptation to Mont Blanc (Veronica della Dora)....Pages 189-211
Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada): A ‘Translated’ Mountain of Reception of the Nineteenth-Century Alpine Geographical Imaginations (Carlos Cornejo-Nieto)....Pages 213-235
‘I Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills …’ (George Pattison)....Pages 237-254
Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites (William Bainbridge)....Pages 255-283
Back Matter ....Pages 285-290

Citation preview

Mountains, Mobilities & Movement Edited by

Christos Kakalis and Emily Goetsch

Mountains, Mobilities and Movement

Christos Kakalis  •  Emily Goetsch Editors

Mountains, Mobilities and Movement

Editors Christos Kakalis School of Architecture Newcastle University Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Emily Goetsch History of Art Department University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, United Kingdom

ISBN 978-1-137-58634-6    ISBN 978-1-137-58635-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952596 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: agustavop/gettyimages Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom

To Leslie and Elisabeth

Foreword

I once heard a talk by one of the world’s greatest mountaineers, a man who had been among the first to conquer some of the highest and most challenging peaks on earth. He described his breath-taking exploits in the language of exploration and discovery. And then he exclaimed, in an unmistakeable tone of regret, ‘there are no explorers any more, only cavers!’ Now that every mountain peak had been conquered, short of starting afresh on another planet, the only future for exploration—he thought—lay underground, a sort of upside-down mountaineering that would carry the torch of humanity to ever greater depths rather than to the most ascendant heights. For me, the great man’s remark set so many discordant bells ringing that I paid scant attention to the rest of the talk. While the audience listened spellbound to his stories, illustrated by slides which predominantly featured panoramic shots of formidable landforms or close-ups of men in gear and goggles, my mind was hooked on the mountaineer’s regret. Why should he think the era of exploration to be over? What leads us to believe that a mountain climbed once has been climbed for ever? What does this say about our understandings of perception, imagination and memory? Indeed this one remark seemed to harbour within it a whole agenda for thinking about what mountains really are, why they fascinate or repel, how they play on our conceptions of humanity and what it means to be alive, how we experience earth, sky and the ground between them, and how we measure up—in distance vii

viii  Foreword

and altitude—the space of human habitation. These are the themes of the volume now in your hands. Before you embark on it, I would like to enter with a few reflections of my own. We all come into the world as infants, so let us start from there. For every infant, the world that gradually opens up to their perception is a source of continual astonishment. The allure of everything and everyone around them motivates them to get moving, by whatever means are available, in order to discover more. Infants and small children are compulsive explorers, and are making discoveries all the time. Nor do they have to venture far from home to do so. Indeed they are more likely to discover things close to home, where familiarity affords the freedom to wander about in relative safety, unshackled by straps, harnesses and other protective gear. As grown-ups, however, we are convinced that everything within the circle of the familiar is already known, and that to explore we must go further, expand our horizons and gear ourselves up—mentally as well as physically—for the challenge. The adult’s sense of exploration, it seems, is the precise opposite of the child’s. One, the child’s, is centripetal; the other, the adult’s, is centrifugal. For young children, perception and imagination are one, not because their world is one of fantasy rather than fact, but because they are themselves immersed in the process of things becoming what they are. Everything and everyone has—or rather is—their own story, their own way of becoming, and the child-explorer, going on her way, joins her story with theirs in a correspondence that can continue for as long as life goes on. The familiar world, for the child, is an inexhaustible source of revelation. Adults, by contrast, understand their world to be complete and fully formed. To convert imagination into reality, or fantasy into fact, they therefore have to go beyond the limits of the already known. This is what drives the would-be adult explorer ever further afield. Is there some point, then, in the life-cycle of a human being, when childlike exploration ends and adult exploration begins? Or is it rather that as we get older, a certain discourse—shot through with idioms of territoriality, conquest and the human domination of nature—exerts an increasing grip on the mind? In this discourse there are two sorts of exploration, and two sorts of discovery. The first establishes a curriculum, in the form of a condensed recapitulation of past human achievements, that

 Foreword    

ix

every child is expected to follow in the course of their education. In this adultocentric conception of learning, children are merely playing catchup on their predecessors, discovering for themselves what earlier generations already knew, climbing mountains they had climbed. The second is the sort of exploration and discovery of which we pretend that never in all of human history has it been done or made before. Here the explorerdiscoverer—commonly assumed to be male—takes the first step, pulling the rest of humanity in his wake. From these small steps, we say, is the history of humankind made. This imagination of history, I believe, lay behind the exclamation of the regretful mountaineer. If making history means setting foot where no man has been before, then how can human history continue if there are no more summits on which to stand for the first time? The great man seemed almost to be offering an apology for the fact that he had bagged so many mountains for himself, leaving none for future generations. Are we now condemned to the endless recapitulation of a once glorious past? Is the inverse mountaineering of the caver the only remaining option, or would we do better to direct our ambition to other planets? Might there be mountains to be climbed on Mars? In the narrative of territorial conquest, peaks imagined are progressively converted into peaks remembered; the eye-witness account paints the mountain as a true story, a thing of fact rather than fiction. But to paint it thus is also to deny the mountain any story of its own. To say that once climbed, every subsequent climb is a repeat performance is to assume that the mountain itself remains exactly as it was—that while history moves on, the mountain is on the side of an ever-constant nature. But nature is not constant. As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once observed, there is no holding nature still and looking at it. Mountains have their stories just as we do. A peak that had never seen a human before our mountaineer arrived has, since then, seen many more humans. They have built steps in its gullies, hammered spikes into its rock faces, left their litter all over the place. But for a mountain that has been shaped over aeons of time by earthquakes and eruptions, by immense forces of descending ice and water and by extremes of weather, the human imprint must seem of little consequence. For the great slumbering giant, the conquering hero is no more than a minor irritant, like a fly on the tip of its nose. The mountain does not feel conquered or domesticated, con-

x  Foreword

tacted by civilisation or incorporated into the human fold. It promptly forgets—if it ever noticed—that someone was up there, waving his arms ecstatically on the summit. It just goes on being there, doing its thing. Indigenous people, for whom mountains are a familiar, everyday presence, know to treat them with respect. Often they have ascended their mountains many times, long before explorers arrived to climb them ‘for the first time’, not in order to claim them for themselves, but to petition for their protection and prosperity, for clement weather and good crops. In the sixth century BCE, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus is alleged to have declared that you cannot step twice into the same waters of a flowing river. Is it not the same with the mountain? Is not every ascent the first? This depends, of course, on how you define the mountain. Perhaps you will identify it as the landform seen from afar, with its characteristic profile. ‘Here is a picture of Everest’, you say; ‘Everest is a mountain’. It looks like a mountain because you are far away from it. Any profile, of course, will be one of many, often markedly different, viewed from different vantage points. But they all add up to a monumental presence which gives every sign of permanence. Having once been climbed for the first time, then every subsequent climb of the same mountain is a repeat performance. The only way to introduce variation is by changing the route, tackling this face rather than that. But for the climber on the slopes or at the summit, the mountain is not a profile, or even a route. Indeed it does not really look like a mountain at all. It rather feels like one. And that feeling is one of immersion in a whole that comprises the rock and earth beneath one’s feet, the sky above and between them the carpet of vegetation, the waters of bubbling brooks and stagnant bog, birds and beasts, rain and snow, clouds and swirling mists. Here you are climbing, to be sure, but you are not climbing the mountain. Rather, you are climbing in the mountain. What is more, you can never climb twice in the same mountain. For if the mountain is all flow, then—just as Heraclitus observed for the river—the idea that a mountain ascended once is ascended for ever is simply absurd. So when the regretful mountaineer told us that all peaks have been climbed, and that none remain to conquer, it can only be because he understood the mountain from the perspective of one who is not in it. He does not inhabit the mountain but goes at it as a soldier might embark on

 Foreword    

xi

a campaign, fitting himself up against a perceived adversary and hoping to prevail by force of arms. And then he leaves, having reached the summit and secured his place in history. This explains why his pictures are either distant shots with no people in them, or close-ups with people armed to the teeth and laden with equipment. For inhabitants, mountains are part of a familiar but ever-evolving world, where nothing is the same from one moment to the next. Inhabitants get to know this world by making paths through it. Life is measured out in steps and traced along the ground. The mountaineer, however, is not an inhabitant but an occupant. His lines are not traced in walking but are first projected, as a solution to the puzzle of how to get from base to summit by a connected sequence of points, and then enacted on site by means of ropes and spikes. Paradoxically, this places the most distant peaks closer to metropolitan centres from which every expedition typically starts, than to the inhabited rural areas in the foothills. The mountaineer’s telescopic vision vaults the hills to reach the summits, the angles of which are framed in the distant view. The lands in between are merely to be passed through; their inhabitants maybe pressed into service as porters for the expedition’s baggage. Even today, mountaineers tell of their exploits as if the odd sighting of a local person going about their business, perhaps herding animals or cutting hay on steep inclines, were an irrelevance. People, in the practice of their livelihood, go along. But the mountaineer has only one aim, to go up. His ambition is framed by verticality. For him it is the summit that counts, not the great, having mass of rock of which the summit just happens to be the highpoint. If you are farmer or herdsman, or even a traveller, and if you are more interested in making your way through a landscape than in rising to the top, then do not call it a mountain. Call it a hill! Where mountains are for climbing, hills are for walking. Though climbers tend to speak of hills rather disdainfully, as landforms of insufficient stature to qualify as proper mountains, the real difference comes down to the question of how the relation between land and form, or ground and feature, is understood. The walker, whether going uphill, downhill or on the level, remains in continual contact with the ground by way of the feet. Thus the ground itself appears corrugated, and the hills and valleys are its folds. These corrugations are felt in the muscles, whether straining with or against the force of gravity. Not so for

xii  Foreword

the mountaineer, however. From his telescopic perspective the ground figures as an isotropic plane, open to the horizon and level with the sea, upon which forms and features are placed as if on a base. The earth itself appears furnished, and among its furniture, mountains are by far the biggest and most impressive features. In this perception the mountain is not ground but a structure that rises from it, with base, sides and top. As the climber scales the mountainsides, so he pulls himself ever further up. Whereas hillwalking is a way of inhabiting the world, or a practice of immanence, what the mountain offers the occupant climber is transcendence. And for that, he is prepared to risk life and limb. University of Aberdeen Aberdeen, Scotland

Tim Ingold

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Emily Goetsch and Christos Kakalis Part 1 Performativity

 13

2 Deep and Dark Play in the Alps: Daring Acts and Their Retelling 15 Jonathan Pitches 3 In the Shadow of the Mountain: Tracing the Hesychast Inhabitation of Mount Athos 37 Christos Kakalis 4 Reading Mountains: Performative Visual Language in  Tenth-Century Northern Iberian Monastic Communities 59 Emily Goetsch 5 ‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon 81 Maria Mitsoula xiii

xiv  Contents

Part 2 Changing Perspectives

105

6 Climbing the Invisible Mountain: The Apse Mosaics of St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, and  Their Sixth-Century Viewers107 Andrew Paterson 7 How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political Expressions of Modern Imaginaries of Territoriality129 Bernard Debarbieux 8 A Difficult Line: The Aesthetics of Mountain Climbing 1871–Present155 Anja-Karina Nydal 9 Untimely Mountains | Entangled Matter171 Kim W. Wilson Part 3 Mobility

187

10 Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of  Temptation to Mont Blanc189 Veronica della Dora 11 Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada): A ‘Translated’ Mountain of Reception of the Nineteenth-Century Alpine Geographical Imaginations213 Carlos Cornejo-Nieto

 Contents    

xv

12 ‘I Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills …’237 George Pattison 13 Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites255 William Bainbridge Index285

List of Contributors

William Bainbridge  Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, UK  Carlos Cornejo-Nieto  Independent Researcher, Madrid, Spain  Bernard Debarbieux  University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland  Veronica Della Dora  Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK  Emily Goetsch  History of Art Department, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK  Christos  Kakalis School of Architecture, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK  Anja Karina-Nydal  Independent Scholar, Kent, UK  Maria Mitsoula  University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland  Andrew Paterson  University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland  George Pattison  University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK  Jonathan Pitches  University of Leeds, Leeds, UK  Kim W. Wilson  University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland

xvii

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Mapping the ascent to the peak of the mountain of Athos in the silence of the landscape Fig. 3.2 Mapping the search for silence of Elder Joseph the Hesychast Fig. 4.1 Mappamundi from the Girona Beatus. Catedral de Girona, Num. Inv. 7(11), ff. 54v–55r. Girona Cathedral Chapter—all rights reserved Fig. 4.2 Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS. Lat. 6018, folios 63v–64r. ©Vatican Library  Fig. 4.3 Oxford, Bodleian, MS Laud. Or. 317, folios 10v–11r Fig. 4.4 Beatus of Navarre map. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, nouv. Acq. Lat. 1366, ff. 24v–25r. Bibliothèque nationale de France Fig. 5.1 Southwest and northeast sides of Mount Pentelicon. Images by the author, 2012 Fig. 5.2 The four prints produced for the ‘Moving Mountains’ exhibition in the Tent Gallery, Edinburgh College of Art and a collection of slides from the Prezi presentation ‘Attic Marble Places’. Collage of images produced by the author, 2014 Fig. 5.3 Opencast quarrying at Dionysos quarries. Image by the author, 2012 Fig. 5.4 Underground quarrying at Dionysos quarries. Image by the author, 2012

43 49 63 66 67 68 82

84 86 87 xix

xx 

Fig. 5.5 Fig. 5.6 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4 Fig. 6.5 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3 Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2 Fig. 10.3 Fig. 10.4 Fig. 10.5 Fig. 10.6 Fig. 10.7

List of Figures

Attic Marble Landscape. Model by the author and images produced by Google Earth software 2014 90 Attic Marble Landscape. Drawing and installation by the author, 2014–2016 96 View of St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai 108 The Transfiguration of Christ. c. 550–65. Apse Mosaic. Sinai, Basilica of St. Catherine’s Monastery 114 Moses and the Burning Bush. c. 550–65. Mosaic. Sinai, Basilica of St. Catherine’s Monastery 116 Moses receiving the Law. c. 550–65. Mosaic. Sinai, Basilica of St. Catherine’s Monastery 117 St. Peter. Detail of Fig. 6.2 122 Camille Guy and Marcel Dubois, 1896, Album géographique, Paris, A. Colin 135 Wilson, K. W. (2015) ablation (sculpture) Generator Projects, Dundee179 Wilson, K. W. (2013) choler (work on paper) Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Edinburgh 181 Wilson, K. W. (2013) choler (work on paper, detail and outline of subsequent bleed) Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Edinburgh182 Duccio da Buoninsegna, The Temptation of Christ on the Mountain, 1308–1311, Frick Collection 191 William Richard Smith, Mount of Temptation, 1829. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London 192 The Madaba map, Jordan, sixth century, Alamy 194 Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503–1514, Louvre 199 Albrecht Altdorfer, The Battle of Alexander at Issus, 1529, Alte Pinakothek, Munich Royal 201 Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and Marc-Théodore Bourrit, Circular View of the Mountains from the Summit of the Bouët, 1779. Beinecke Library, Yale 205 Fulton, Description explicative du Panorama ou Tableau circulaire et sans borne ou manière de dessiner, peindre et exhiber un tableau circulaire, Brevet April 16, 1799. Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle, Paris 206

  List of Figures    

xxi

Fig. 11.1 Bird’s eye view of Granada, the irrigated land of the Vega, and the snow-capped Sierra Nevada in the background. Source: Google 214 Fig. 11.2 Landscape of Bellinzona. Lithography. Source: William Beattie, La Suisse pittoresque: ornée de vues dessinées spécialement pour cet ouvrage. London, 1836. Courtesy of Viatimages/Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire – Lausanne221 Fig. 11.3 T. H. S. Bucknall Estcourt. The Sierra Nevada from the Alhambra, 1833. W. Westall, engraver. Lithography. Source: T. H. S. Bucknall Estcourt, Alhambra/T.H.S.E. London, 1832–1833. Courtesy of Archivo del Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife, Granada 225 Fig. 11.4 David Roberts, The Alhambra from the Albaycin. 1834. E. Goodman, etcher. Steel engraving. Source: T. Roscoe and D. Roberts, Jennings’ Landscape Annual for 1835, or, Tourist in Spain Commencing with Granada. London, 1835. Courtesy of Archivo del Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife, Granada 227 Fig. 13.1 Gustave Doré, La légende du juif errant, Paris, 1856, plate VIII 266 Fig. 13.2 Josiah Gilbert, Dolomite Forms in Titian and others of the Venetian School, in Gilbert (1869, plate XII, page 74) 271 Fig. 13.3 Josef Madlener, The Berggeist, 1920s, ink, watercolour and gouache, 675×508 cm, private collection, sold at Sotheby’s in 2005 Image provided courtesy of Sotheby’s London272

1 Introduction Emily Goetsch and Christos Kakalis

Landscape is tension, the tension between perceiver and perceived, subject and object. Wylie et al. 2008, 202 Landscape isn’t either objective or subjective; it’s precisely an intertwining, a simultaneous gathering and unfurling, through which versions of self and world emerge as such. Wylie et al., 203

E. Goetsch (*) History of Art Department, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK C. Kakalis School of Architecture, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK © The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3_1

1

2 

E. Goetsch and C. Kakalis

We often think of the landscape as something static or slowly changing, endowed with a sense of stability that is only disrupted in moments of crisis, such as natural or human disasters. Therefore, it is common for our understanding of the landscape, which is developed and expressed through both actual experience and representations, to refer to a static topography, leading us to find security in the stable spatial context generated also by the unchanging landscapes of our thoughts and memories. Furthermore, we often rely on maps and other visual references, which we assume present an accurate and still representation of the world around us. In this context, iconic geological features such as mountains are usually considered to be stable, unmovable elements, landmarks that are enhanced by their emblematic presence in the topography and their often rough materiality, which allow for a number of both cultural and historical axis mundi connotations to be attributed to them. In spite of our ‘accurate’ representations of the world around us and the assumed stability of geological features such as mountains, however, it is not rare for us to lose track of where we are and how our position relates to different directions, features of the landscape and other entities. Our so-called accurate models, which are based on a stable Cartesian understanding of space, lack the experiential qualities of a topography, which are bodily inhabited by humans and therefore ever-changing in terms of how people relate to and understand them. This Cartesian and objective representational approach to geography opposes the non-­ representational understanding of landscape, which was initially proposed by Nigel Thrift in the 1990s (Thrift 1996) and then further developed by numerous scholars such as J.  D. Dewsbury and Derek McCormack (Dewsbury 2000; McCormack 2005). Such non-­ representational models embrace experiential spatiality and suggest how it can be used to explore a range of new geographical understandings and possibilities. Practice and performativity open fields of investigation in which embodied movement plays an important role as the landscape continually changes depending on our movement through and experience with it. This tension between us and the landscape is a significant strain that cannot only be grasped visually and abstractly. As such, representational and non-representational approaches to geography are intertwined in this

1 Introduction 

  3

book in order to more holistically evaluate the friction between the individual and their environs, suggesting the importance of mountainous topographies within the realms of human experience and the humanities. As human geographer John Wylie argues, the landscape emerges in the tension between an objective and a subjective understanding of the world. Indeed, for Wylie, the landscape is a tension between the perceiver and the perceived. It is the reality shared between a moving individual and the context that he/she moves through. Within this framework, landscape becomes a phenomenological situation rather than a static image or background. The landscape is something living and changing through the perception of the individual; it is the tension between an object being experienced and the subject experiencing the object through his/her senses. This multi-sensory condition is experienced to a great extent (and almost to its limits) in the case of the mountains that from distant, emblematic natural elements become the foldings of the earth’s skin as perceived by the mountaineer climbing up to them, the thinker that imagines them, the reader that interprets them, the artist or the architect that depicts them. Emphasising such a non-static understanding of natural elements, which varies depending on how we inhabit and represent them, the authors of this volume seek to answer questions about the moving characteristics of mountains. Are mountains moving entities? How do we move through mountains? Can we move mountains? How can we depict a moving mountain? These diverse and complex questions call for an interdisciplinary exploration of movement via experiential, representational as well as hermeneutical approaches. Furthermore, the tensions that Wylie attributes to landscape, and this understanding of mountains as key moments of a topography, raise other questions that the chapters of this book seek to unfold: With what kind of tensions are we dealing? How can we define these tensions in the exploration of a physical element that has been thought as relatively static, emblematic and aesthetically imposing? What are the different approaches to such tensions? Through examinations of different areas of cultural landscapes and mountain studies, from mapping to practical experience, the authors of this volume explore the different tensions found between mountainous

4 

E. Goetsch and C. Kakalis

landscapes and agents of interpretation. Concepts of performance, practice and mobility are deployed in order to demonstrate and explain the ­non-­static nature of mountains, as realised through inhabitation, interpretation and communication. Several areas of academic discourse have begun to explore these themes more specifically. In particular, associations between performativity and different theatrical actions such as writing a play, working on its scenography, rehearsing and executing it have served as a common ground for scholars as a means of unfolding the dynamics of landscape through non-­representational methods. Underlining the significance of the connection between performance and theatricality, even as a way of understanding of everyday life, Carlson argues: ‘with performance as a kind of critical wedge, the metaphor of theatricality has moved out of the arts into almost every aspect of modern attempts to understand our condition and activities, into every branch of human sciences […] performativity and theatricality have developed in these fields, both as metaphors and as analytic tools’ (Carlson 1996, 6). Challenging traditional theatrical praxis through interdisciplinary and intercultural comparisons, moreover, Richard Schechner also highlights the performative interconnection between theatre and real life. The notions of the ‘presentation self ’, ‘restored behaviour’ and ‘expressive culture’ underpin his ideas, making way for interpretations of both theatre and role-playing in real life, which are based on transformations happening from culture to culture and from historical period to historical period (Schechner 1985, 35–116). For Schechner, theatrical performance has the ability to transform the performer through the narrative of its production, something that can be so powerful that it is also transformative for the audience. Building upon Schechner’s arguments and focusing on the narrative aspects of theatre, Jonathan Pitches explores in his chapter the performative dynamics which are inherent to the narration and re-tellings of ‘dark play’ as related to three different mountains: Mont Blanc, the Eiger and the Matterhorn. Covering a wide span of time, from 1852 to 2014, Pitches examines the tension found in dangerous performances which require risky movements through the spaces of these mountains, as viewed and recorded through telescopes and headcams.

1 Introduction 

  5

Following a similar track, the connection between performativity and religious topography has been greatly explored by numerous scholars. Repetitively conducting symbolic actions, rituals are believed to be ­performative ways for people to contact the ‘sacred’ (Baker 2010, 41). Religious topographies (including both the architecture and the natural landscape of a site) become the spaces in which a number of built, unbuilt and human components are harmoniously combined according to the employment of ritual practices. The body-subject is always in a dialectical relationship with its context, inscribing ritual performances in place and becoming both author and reader at the same time. Rituals have their own spatial and temporal characteristics that communicate diverse messages in a multi-sensory way. Meaningfully performing a given act or idea, the individual participates in a ritual praxis, constantly moving between individual and collective levels of embodied interpretation. Therefore, in his chapter, Christos Kakalis explains how Mount Athos becomes a space for silent prayer and ritual actions to take place. The Athonite landscape emerges through the reciprocal interrelation between silence and communal ritual, stasis and movement. By examining the interpretation of both the ascetics and the visitors, Kakalis explores a mountainous religious topography as a place of religious movements and pauses, an eventual spatiality also expressed in his experiential visualisations, to echo Wylie’s argument: I think space still speaks of emptiness, absence, interval. The stillness and silence of juxtaposition. Place, by contrast, and even despite all the attempts to think of it differently, relationally, globally, is always already too full, too full of itself and the others: a whole congregation; everybody present. But I think that landscape works precisely amidst and through both of them: presence/absence. Landscape sits precisely on this tipping-point, both joining and dividing. It tears things apart, and maybe even sometimes threads them together again. (Wylie et al. 2008, 203)

Expanding on Wylie’s aforementioned theme of place, Emily Goetsch examines the tension between the compromised circumstances of Iberian Christian communities who migrated to Christian strongholds in the mountainous, northern regions of the peninsula during Muslim occupation

6 

E. Goetsch and C. Kakalis

of the Iberian Peninsula and their fundamental belief in salvation and triumph. Through close examination of medieval Iberian cartography, namely the Beatus Mappaemundi, and relevant textual material, the author argues that the mountainous landscape was used by medieval Iberian Christians as a way of resolving or rationalising the tensions between the political, social and religious uncertainty they experienced and the salvational context of Christian ideology. By unpacking cartographic iconography and texts from the period, Goetsch argues for the performative transposition of historical and biblical narratives on ascetic triumphs in the mountains, citing the City on a Hill (Jerusalem) as a prototype for the behaviours and considerations of those communities. Goetsch’s discussion of cartographic features extends from earlier literature on the ways in which maps are structured in relation to particular kinds of historically situated interests (power, legal title, symbolic claims, etc.). Since the late 1980s an important shift has taken place within studies of cartography and we have become acutely aware of the contingent nature of data and the partiality of all kinds of maps and the codes they use to communicate the elements of a territory. Cartographers such as J.B. Harley, J. Corner, J. Crampton and J. Pickles have led the academic discourse on the topic, which aims to redefine the philosophical and practical approaches to cartography. Considering the importance of performativity and embodiment, they argue for the role of maps as agents of an ‘eventful’ world, the creation of which is an unfinished process, remaining always open to further interpretations (Harley 1992, 1–20). Maria Mitsoula’s chapter also challenges traditional cartographic methods and their role in design process. The depiction of topography is mainly connected to cartography which represents the earth’s relief through schematic models such as hutching, contour lines and physiography. Mapping is recognised to be on the boundary between conventional encoding of spatiality and the meaningful embodied topography, concepts which have played a key role in architecture since the 1980s, with architects using mapping as a generative tool in architectural design (Dorrian 2005, 61–72). Challenging these ideas, Mitsoula’s chapter explores the dialogue between the architecture of Athens and Mount Pentelikon through the agency of marble, also suggesting new ways of representing the space graphically so as to indicate the critical roles that

1 Introduction 

  7

movement and performativity play in the landscape. Dynamically responding to non-representational theories, this approach echoes the Deleuzian tension between possibilities and virtualities that suggests multiplicities in time and space that are ready to be grasped in actual experience and interpreted in mapping explorations. In addition to the ways in which performativity facilitates an understanding of the significance of mountains and the ways in which people move through and according to them, different interpretations of mountains in diverse cultural, historical, social and disciplinary contexts also open new perspectives in their understanding with regards to the ways in which mountains can change and shift. They describe events when the individual (artist, author, missionary, mountaineer) begs questions of the topography through his/her experience, while simultaneously being asked different questions by the topography. As is suggested by German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, this exchange of queries and challenges creates a discourse of changing perspectives (Gadamer 1989, 301). In this sense, historical, social and cultural redefinitions of geography have influenced the construction of mountaineer’s identity as it has been the subject of discourse for more than 20 years now, something examined in Bernard Debarbieux’s chapter. Imagination plays an important role in these processes allowing even for contemporary scientific paradigms of mountains to be explored as both real and invented elements of landscape. Through shifting lines and changing barriers, mountaineering suggests an ‘aesthetic pleasure’ as expressed in Geoffrey Winthrop Young’s approach to climbing a mountain (1920s) and other mountaineering manuals and testimonies from diverse areas, from late nineteenth century to contemporary ones. Pleasure pre-occupation through the practical and embodied conquering of the idea of line becomes a theme worthy of further investigation. In climbing, Anja Karina Nydal suggests, the line is ever-changing and always linked to the idea of difficulty, which is experienced in the fatigue of the ascent and the achievement of a goal. These arduous aesthetics of trekking up the ‘difficult line’ set the framework for further investigation of these ideas in creative practices, such as literature, art and architecture. Apart from the more philosophical and theoretical approaches to changing perspectives, mountains and mountaineering also become the

8 

E. Goetsch and C. Kakalis

core of practical artistic and architectural processes which develop into creative interpretations of natural and built landscape as a way of ­understanding their conflicting elements and ideas. Questions of artists’ decision to include mountains in their narrative and to examine the significance of cultural and historical contexts in their interpretations are of vital importance, illuminating the dynamic nature of the theme of mountains in the humanities. Interpretation of mountainous landscapes provides artists with the opportunity to address the tension between the known and the unknown, the familiar pre-understanding and the new other. It allows for a ‘real fusion of horizons’ to occur (Lebech 2006, 230). In this process, the interacting components are transformed to suggest different understandings of their interrelations, something unfolded both by each individual chapter and the section itself as a field of interdisciplinary discourse. In line with this understanding, Andrew Paterson explores the role of the sixth-century mosaic of Christ’s Transfiguration along the apse of the basilica in the monastery of Saint Catherine of Sinai. Paterson considers this image within the pilgrimage tradition of the shrine, exploring the mosaic as a kind of ‘treatise in a visual theology’. The chapter examines the icon’s lack of an image of Mount Tabor, on which Transfiguration is believed to have taken place, drawing connections to theological ideas about divine contemplation, which is seen as a mystical climb of an ‘invisible mountain’. Exploring the polarity between presence and absence, Paterson argues about a mountain that while invisible, it still appears through its embodiment in pilgrimage and monastic practices. Kim W. Wilson also uses art as a lens to examine the shifting perspectives introduced by the study of mountains. Bridging past and present, Wilson fuses theories of New Materialism and Feminism with artistic approaches to oil-waste bings, which shaped her own understanding of the mountainous (industrial) landscape that has contributed to her understanding of the world since childhood. Illuminating the paradox of ‘becoming-while-not-becoming’ that is inherent to Niddry Bing, she examines (through both theoretical and practice-based exploration) the site and the oil waste. Moving back and forth between the whole and the part, Wilson argues for the generative dynamics of matter and its political, social, economic and environmental implications.

1 Introduction 

  9

Further developing the tension between polarities, William Bainbridge suggests ‘madness’ as a ‘topographic trope’. Bainbridge examines ­mountains that are striking because of their ‘aesthetic disorder’, their ‘strangeness’ and ‘unfamiliar juxtaposition of familiar ingredients’ as demonstrated through the case of the Dolomites. The interaction between order and disorder provides another understanding of mountains as a tensive geography. Continuing to address the examined tension of mountain geographies, mobility in geography provides another way of evaluating the connections between peoples, ideas, objects and information, considering not only how and why patterns of movement and exchange occur but also the consequences of such interactions. Given the rising prominence of mobility theory across disciplines, the final three chapters in this volume employ ideas of mobility in order to suggest how ideas and images of mountains are transposed into different settings, indicating the conceptual and symbolic mobility of mountains. Mobility theory came into prominence in the 1990s through the work of scholars such as Mimi Sheller, John Urry and Tim Cresswell. Sheller and Urry were particularly instrumental in defining and framing this theoretical rise, as their 2006 article ‘The new mobilities paradigm’ dispelled pre-existing static or sedentary approaches to the social sciences, instead suggesting that ‘all places are tied into at least thin networks of connections that stretch beyond each such place and mean that nowhere can be an “island”’ (Sheller and Urry 2006, 209). Broad in its approach, this paradigm is applied to a range of topics, from migration to the distribution of resources and from transportation routes to tourism. While Shelly and Urry acknowledge that theories of mobility also include ‘movements of images and information’, the applications of mobility theory have generally focused on ways of connecting and facilitating access to different regions and peoples, with comparatively little emphasis being placed on movement caused by changing perspectives, and the evolution of geographical and geological forms, such as mountains (Sheller and Urry 2006, 212), which lend themselves to cultural pressures and changes in understanding. Provided the limited consideration of mountains within the new mobilities paradigm, it is worth examining the work of Georg Simmel,

10 

E. Goetsch and C. Kakalis

whom Sheller and Urry cite as setting the stage for studies of mobility. More specifically, in Simmel’s essay, ‘The Philosophy of Landscape’, he describes nature as the ‘infinite interconnectedness of objects, the uninterrupted creation and destruction of forms, the flowing unity of an event that finds expression in the continuity of temporal and spatial existence’ (Simmel 2007, 21). In discussing this fluid facet of landscape, Simmel acknowledges that ‘the human gaze … divides things up and forms the separated parts into specific unities’, suggesting that the status and position of landscapes and natural forms change according to the viewer (Simmel 2007, 22). This sense of mobility through perspective is addressed specifically in this book by Veronica della Dora, who suggests how mountains move according to different vantage points, shifts in the gaze and ways of visualising the world. Della Dora suggests that tensions arise as perspectives and roles change according to how different individuals, cultures and societies position themselves in relation to mountains, which shift according to varying understandings and interpretations. This concept of mobility through interaction with the landscape is also explored in Carlos Cornejo-Nieto’s chapter, which addresses the intercultural movement of mountain imagery through his analysis of British travel accounts. Veronica della Dora has previously explained that representations of landscapes do not just function as ‘visual texts’, but rather can be ‘“enchanting” material objects’ which are ‘embedded in different material supports which physically move through space and time, and thus operate as vehicles for the circulation of places; worlds in miniature visually and physically possessed by the beholder and yet able to exercise their own agency’ (della Dora 2009, 334–335). It is in this vein that Cornejo-Nieto argues for the mobility of seemingly static English images and conceptions of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which were made mobile via cultural media that was transported from the English imagination into new interpretations of the Sierra Nevada range. Similar to the mobility of objects and representations, the movement of symbols and ideas offers another fresh avenue for considering the mobile potential of mountains. ‘Mobile Semiotics’, as first termed by Ole B. Jensen, provides a new framework which can be used ‘to explore the

1 Introduction 

  11

symbolic meanings of the material environment’, and which ‘foregrounds semiotics as a precondition to mobilities’ (Jensen 2014, 566). In line with these considerations and basing his arguments on readings of Heidegger and Ruskin, George Pattison presents the travelling of mountain inhabitation from Holderlin’s poetry to Turner’s painting. Via comparison and juxtaposition, movement becomes a way of linking places, creators and theoreticians as well as real and fictive experiences. The chapter argues for the significance of movement through multiple time-spaces, presenting the differences that arise in interpretation and understanding of mountain symbolism and imagery over the course of different periods. Whether through considerations of performance in relation to topography, hermeneutical analyses of geological forms or the mobility of mountains through fluid interactions and exchange of images, texts and ideas, the chapters that follow highlight the significance of the dynamic combination of representational and non-representational approaches to the understanding of mountainous landscape. Exploring mountains through the lenses of performativity, hermeneutics and mobility, the chapters of this book draw out tensions between peoples and their environments, which have not been discussed previously and which can only be deeply analysed through interdisciplinary exploration. Understanding the strains between different groups and their ways of understanding their places in the world and those of others is a necessary step towards more harmonious interactions between peoples, as well as between humans and the environment.

Bibliography Baker, V. G. (2010). Women’s pilgrimage as repertoiric performance: Creating gender and spiritual identity through ritual. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate College of Bowling Green, State University. Carlson, M. (1996). Performance: A critical introduction. New York: Routledge. Corner, J. (1998). The agency of mapping: Speculation, critique and invention. In D. Cosgrove (Ed.), Mappings (pp. 213–252). London: Reaktion Books. Crampton, J. (2003). The political mapping of cyberspace. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

12 

E. Goetsch and C. Kakalis

Della Dora, V. (2009). Travelling landscape-objects. Progress in Human Geography, 33(3), 334–354. Dewsbury, J. D. (2000). Performativity and the event: Enacting a philosophy of difference. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18, 473–496. Dorrian, M. (2005). Architecture’s cartographic turn. In F. Pousin (Ed.), Figures de la Ville et Construction des Savoirs: Architecture, Urbanisme, Geographie (pp. 61–72). Paris: CNRS Editions. Franklin, A. (2014). Tourism studies. In P.  Adey, D.  Bissell, K.  Hannam, P.  Merriman, & M.  Sheller (Eds.), Routledge handbook of mobilities (pp. 74–84). London: Routledge. Gadamer, H.-G. (1989). Truth and method. London: Sheed and Ward. Harley, J. B. (1992). Deconstructing the map. Cartographica, 26, 1–20. Howe, L. (2000). Risk, ritual and performance. The Journal of the Royal Anthropology Institute, 6(1), 63–79. Jensen, O. (2014). Mobile semiotics. In P.  Adey, D.  Bissell, K.  Hannam, P.  Merriman, & M.  Sheller (Eds.), Routledge handbook of mobilities (pp. 566–574). London: Routledge. Lebech, F. (2006). The concept of the subject in the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 14(2), 221–236. McCormack, D. (2005). Diagramming practice and performance. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23, 119–148. Merriman, P., Revill, G., Cresswell, T., Lorimer, H., Mastless, D., Gillian, R., & Wylie, J. (2008). Landscape, mobility, practice. Social & Cultural Geography, 9(2), 191–212. Merriman, P., et  al. (2008). Landscape, mobility, practice. Social & Cultural Geography, 9(2), 191–212. Pickles, J. (2004). A history of spaces: Mapping cartographic reason and the over-­ coded world. London: Routledge. Schechner, R. (1985). Between theater and anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2006). The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Planning, 38, 207–226. Simmel, G. (2007). The philosophy of landscape (trans: Bleicher, J.). Theory, Culture and Society, 24(7 and 8), 20–29. Snodgrass, A., & Coyne, R. (2006). Interpretation in architecture. Design as a way of thinking. London: Routledge. Thrift, N. (1996). Spatial formations. London: Sage.

Part 1 Performativity

2 Deep and Dark Play in the Alps: Daring Acts and Their Retelling Jonathan Pitches

Introduction: Defining and Reassessing Deep and Dark Play Conceptions of dark play, ‘playing that emphasizes risk, deception, and sheer thrill’, (Schechner 2006, 119) were formulated in the discipline of performance studies by Richard Schechner (1993) and described by him as ‘closely related’ to the much more established term of deep play—intense, if not addictive play, stimulated by close odds (Schechner 2006, 119). As early as 1985 Schechner invited his graduate students to document their own experiences of dark play, and, amongst examples of impetuous drug use and of ‘playing chicken’ with New York traffic, he records an instance

J. Pitches (*) University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

© The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3_2

15

16 

J. Pitches

of particular interest to the discussion proposed here, dark play in the iconic mountain environment of the Yosemite National Park: Female: I was 16 years old and on vacation at Yosemite with my father. I climbed out over the guard rail to get a better view of the waterfall. When I realised that my father was crying for me to come back, I went to the very edge and did an arabesque. I continued balancing on one leg until he got onto his knees, crying, begging for me to come back. Ten years later, in the Sierra Nevada range I repeated the same act in front of my husband who shouted at me to think of our daughter as a motherless child. My initial inspiration for dancing on the edge was in both cases the thrill of the beauty and the danger of the dance. (Schechner 1993, 37)

In a very literal testing of boundaries, the student’s taunting of successive significant men in her life is striking. Of more interest to this discussion, however, is the layering of representation and narrative construction indicated in this example of dark play, particularly given its repetition and multiple restaging in the specialized context of mountains. As Schechner points out after he published a picture of the restaged event, ‘The scene was played, replayed, documented and now made public. At each iteration it becomes more of a performance’ (2006, 120). This idea of representation and its relationship to storytelling, performance and mountains is fundamental to the ensuing discussion, and will be tested in this chapter in three case studies from three different eras of representation, all drawn from Alpine history (1852–7, 1936–8, 2009–12). Taking such an approach will help me develop a longer view of the activity of dark play than has thus far been attempted; it will necessitate a re-­evaluation of the roots of deep play theory and clearer distinctions being drawn between deep and dark play; and it will involve a scrutiny of the evolving technologies used to mediate mountains—from nineteenth-­century stage technology to twenty-firstcentury uses of digital documentation and social media. The framing of risky behaviour as performance and its conscientious documentation and replaying to an audience is consistent with readings in other mountain-related disciplines such as Lifestyle Sports, specifically those at the extreme end of the lifestyle continuum—BASE jumping1 and wingsuiting for instance. Sociologist of sport and leisure, Belinda Wheaton, suggests two important features for this chapter: (1) that ‘most lifestyle

2  Deep and Dark Play in the Alps: Daring Acts and Their Retelling 

  17

sports emphasize the creative, aesthetic and performative ­expressions of their activities’ and (2) that ‘[Lifestyle Sports] practitioners are self-consciously aware of “being seen”, and presentation of self to others – whether in lived settings or mediated forms – seems to be part of the experience’. The sometimes-fatal sports of BASE jumping or wingsuiting are clearly recent developments in the wider category of dark play, but the chapter will argue here that this so-called postmodern desire to mediate or retell the extreme experiences provoked by mountain landscapes is far from new. Indeed, the performative celebration and remediation of the mountain range in focus here—the Alps—ubiquitously present on social media sites today in 2017, can be traced back to the explosion of interest in the Mont Blanc massif occasioned by Albert Smith’s 1851 climb of the highest peak in the Alps and, subsequently documented in a series of performed lectures for a Victorian audience at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly. Using this early example of performed retelling as context, the chapter will move to examine two locations of mediated dark play: the Eiger’s notorious North face and the Hörnli ridge on the Matterhorn. For the former, the Eiger, it will examine the unique geological conditions that create its reputation as a ‘great black amphitheatre’ (Simpson 2003, 140), unpicking the gruesome tradition of Eiger watching; for the latter, the Matterhorn, the chapter will consider the relationship of social media and wearable technology to dark play, testing Wheaton’s assertion that self-presentation is fundamental to contemporary lifestyle sports and by extension to current modes of mountain representation. This chapter will begin by outlining the etymology of the terms ‘deep play’ and ‘dark play’ in both performance and mountain studies, and, in doing so, it is necessary to unravel some misrepresentations. It is customary to ascribe the first use of deep play to the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham—and specifically to his Theory of Legislation, posthumously published in 1840 from a French translation of his work. Diane Ackermann’s introduction to her book Deep Play (1999) is indicative: I’ve borrowed the phrase deep play from Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) […] who dismisses as ‘deep play’ any activity in which ‘the stakes are so high that it is … irrational for men to engage in it at all, since the marginal utility of what you stand to win is grossly outweighed by the disutility of what you stand to lose’. (Ackerman 1999, 18, emphasis in original)

18 

J. Pitches

Ackerman is, in turn, citing Al Alvarez’s climbing book, Feeding the Rat (1988, 30–31), a definition that is repeated verbatim in his later Risky Business (2007, 11). But both Ackermann and Alvarez are, in fact, making an error of attribution; these are not Jeremy Bentham’s words at all but Clifford Geertz’s, extending Bentham’s concept in his famous essay ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight’ (1972), later published in The Interpretation of Cultures (1973).2 Where Bentham’s engagement with the term is restricted to a moralizing footnote—‘it is to this head that the evils of deep play ought to be referred’ (Bentham 1840, 131)—Geertz elaborates on and extrapolates from Bentham’s term to advance an eloquent and lively description of the gambling habits of Balinese cockfighting audiences. Central to Geertz’s argument is that the best, the deepest, play is only achieved when there is next to nothing to separate the prowess of the unfortunate cocks—that is to say when it is nigh impossible to predict the result of the gruesome match. Accordingly, the owners of the cocks themselves—the central gambling pair—are also bound together in a desperately hard-to-call game; or as Geertz suggests: ‘In genuine deep play … they are both in over their heads’ (Geertz 1972, 15). Especially in the deepest fights, these players are almost always leaders of their communities and play out regional status games and personal politics through the agency of the fight. Mountain writers have been quick to appropriate Bentham’s deep play in trying to articulate the psychology of the climber, a psychology which is prepared to face odds little better than one of Geertz’s fighting cocks judging by the fatality rates on some of the Himalayan 8000-metre peaks.3 Joe Simpson (1997), Paul Pritchard (1997), Al Alvarez (1988, 2007) and Diane Ackerman (1999) all use the term with varying levels of accuracy. But surprisingly none of them reference Geertz, even though his is a far more nuanced and pertinent conceptualization. It is argued here that a careful look at Geertz’s notion of deep play is considerably more useful for understanding how mountains are mediated than the opaque footnote of Bentham, for the following reasons: (1) Geertz’s highlighting of the emotional intensity and absorption within the audience at a cockfight; (2) Geertz’s reading of the means by which status, hierarchy and masculinity are constructed in relation to the cockfight; and

2  Deep and Dark Play in the Alps: Daring Acts and Their Retelling 

  19

(3) Geertz’s sensitivity to the cockfight as performance—where melodramatic conflict, baying crowds and close identification between cock and owner (player and witness) define the experience. On this last point Geertz is particularly interesting, drawing as he does on the explicit fictionality of the conflict, at least for the human players: The cockfight is ‘really real’ only to the cocks – it does not kill anyone, castrate anyone, reduce anyone to animal status … what it does is what, for other peoples with other temperaments and other conventions, Lear and Crime and Punishment do; it catches up these themes – deaths, masculinity, rage, pride, loss, beneficence, chance – and, ordering them into an encompassing structure, presents them in such a way as to throw into relief a particular view of their essential nature. (Geertz 1972, 23)

Whilst mountaineering writers have appropriated the term ‘deep play’ to describe an addictive attitude to risk-taking (symbolized in Alvarez’s colourful title Feeding the Rat) or to evoke the thinnest of lines between life and death (in Joe Simpson’s Dark Shadows Falling for instance4), Geertz’s interest in defining deep play, ironically, is not in stressing death and danger but in the layers of theatricalized human conflict which surround these mortal facts. The cocks are simply a vehicle for the presentation of death, masculinity and chance, witnessed, beyond the edges of the gory pit, in the safe realm of human interaction. This is not to say that deep play as a theoretical concept is without utility for the examination of mountain behaviours—far from it—but to argue, crucially, that the acts of witnessing, presentation and representation are essential to a fuller understanding of deep play’s defining characteristics. It is perhaps for this reason that deep play is linked so readily with dark play—both Geertz and Schechner emphasize elements of inherent theatricality, related of course to the shared term, play. Focusing on notions of ‘deep’ and ‘dark’, however, does allow for some important distinctions to be drawn. ‘Deep’ for Geertz and for Ackermann refers to the level of intensity involved in the activity, stimulated by risk but paralleled by skill: ‘In [deep play’s] thrall, all the play elements are visible, but they’re

20 

J. Pitches

taken to intense and transcendent heights’, argues Diane Ackermann (1999, 12), identifying parachuting, hang gliding and mountain climbing as activities which are ‘prone’ to this level of intensity. ‘Dark’, on the other hand, refers to the kind of play being practised, an indication of which is embedded in the opening example of the teasing daughter/ wife in Yosemite. This is mocking, dangerous and subversive behaviour as much as it is playful. Practitioner and academic, Claire Hind, applying both deep and dark play theories to her own practice-led research in confessional performance, makes the distinction explicit: To separate the terms out more clearly, dark play is a particular activity that subverts rules, or ‘normal’ codes of behaviour and in the case of creative works, is the fictional or non-fictional play frame that drives the narrative or task, performer and participant. Deep play is the mode of playing a person achieves whilst in the midst of playing itself. (Hind 2010, 15)

Positioned as such, dark play relates to other forms of dark culture, such as ‘dark tourism’, first coined as a term by John Lennon and Malcolm Foley (in 1996) and developed by them (2000) and by Richard Sharpley and Philip Stone (2009). Dark tourism, defined by Sharpley, as ‘the act of travel to sites associated with death, suffering and the seemingly macabre’ (Sharpley and Stone 2009, 10), is clearly a subversion of the ‘“normal” codes of behaviour’ (Hind 2010, 15), associated with holidaying but may also help frame the behaviours to be outlined and analysed below, specifically in Kleine Scheidegg at the foot of the Eiger. Sharpley outlines five subcategories of dark tourism, the first of which is travel to ‘dangerous destinations from the past and the present’ (2009, 11), a fitting moniker for the Eigerwand or North face, as will be argued later.5 It should now be clear how the terms ‘deep play’ and ‘dark play’ have been misconceived in some mountain writing. It remains to be seen what this theatricalized reading of Geertz offers the mountain analyst and how both deep play and dark play are acted out on the mountainside. In sum, and to use Geertz’s alluring terminology, what kinds of ‘encompassing structures’ surround mountain culture in the Alps since the middle of the nineteenth century and how have they been presented (and represented) using contemporary technologies of mediation?

2  Deep and Dark Play in the Alps: Daring Acts and Their Retelling 

  21

 erformed Retellings of Dark Play: Mont Blanc, P the Eiger and the Matterhorn Mont Blanc All 4810 metres of Mont Blanc,6 the highest peak in the Alps and in the European Union, were first climbed in 1786 by mountaineer guide Jacques Balmat and physician, Michel-Gabriel Paccard (Newby 1977, 20–26). But whilst this remarkable feat is often aligned with the birth of modern mountaineering, it was not until the middle of the following century that Mont Blanc was truly popularized and became the ‘go-to’ peak on the French-Italian border. Albert Smith was central to this uplift in interest and an unlikely progenitor of the golden age of mountaineering (1854–65). Smith, a Victorian showman and satirical author, finally climbed Mont Blanc in 1851, 13 years after his first inspirational encounter with the mountain in 1838 (Fitzsimmons 1967, 31). He wrote about his experience in The Story of Mont Blanc, published in 1853, including some extraordinary details of the (now ludicrous) provisions taken on the trip.7 But it was his stage show, or more accurately his series of theatricalized lectures (from 1852 to 18608), that had the largest impact on mountaineering culture and on visitor numbers to the region, and it is for this reason that his work is relevant to a chapter on mediated dark play. As a revue writer and theatre producer, Smith was familiar with the theatrical resources of the period, and he mustered as many of them as he could lay his hands on for his series of lectures titled: Mr. Albert Smith’s Ascent of Mont Blanc. His biographer, Raymund Fitzsimons, outlines the mise-en-scène for the second season (November 1852): The exterior of a two-storied chalet with projecting eaves, carved balcony and green shutters … filled the centre of the stage. … The walls of the chalet rose out of sight when the views were shown and lowered again during the intervals … to the left was an inn with wooden roof tiles and a patterned balcony that was an exact copy of the balcony of the Aigle Noir Hotel at Grindelwald9 […] Between the inn and the centre chalet a waterfall tumbled over rocks … Alpine plants fringed the pool [and] were banked up to screen a small piano to the right […] the walls of the lecture

22 

J. Pitches

room were decorated with chamois skins, knapsacks and flags of the Swiss Cantons. Edelweiss hung from the lampshades. At 8 o’clock the door of the chalet opened and Smith came out. (1967, 125)

The ‘views’ referred to here were in fact dioramas, created by William Beverley—stunning vistas of the mountain, painted on transparent material through which light was shone and manipulated, creating a three-­ dimensional ‘immersive’ effect (Bevin 2008, 187). These dioramas were central to the experience of the event, subtly exaggerating the threat of the original climb but translating this danger for the urban sensibilities of his London audience. As Joe Kember comments: Beverley’s brilliantly backlit images of the climbers sought to bring the exaggerated dangers of mountaineering into the secure and comfortable confines of the Egyptian Hall. … These entertainments mediated the mountain adventure for city-dwellers. (cited in Bevin 2008, 188 and 189)

As the seasons progressed, the novelty began to wear off, and by 1856 The Times was demonstrably antipathetic to any more accounts of Mont Blanc summiting: The frequency with which the feat is performed constitutes the best evidence of that, at least in these days, it is attended with but little danger and not much fatigue. It seems to be as easy a matter, nowadays, to go up Mont Blanc as to go up the Rhine. (The Times, 6 October 1856, 8)

But Smith did not abandon his show. Instead, he gradually reduced the story of the ascent until Beverley’s dioramas were self-sustaining and denuded of commentary and Smith could develop his whimsical accounts of European (and later Chinese) travel underpinned by witty characterization and slick storytelling. By the end of his last show, early in 1860, the golden age of mountaineering was well under way, with countless Alpine peaks falling predominantly to British climbers supported by French and Swiss guides (Frison-Rouche and Jouty 1996, 62). Whilst mountaineering activity for the skilful few had increased significantly in the Alps in this period, back home Smith had succeeded in unlocking

2  Deep and Dark Play in the Alps: Daring Acts and Their Retelling 

  23

Mont Blanc and its environs for a much larger cross-section of society in London, contributing significantly to what Peter Hansen has called the construction of an ‘assertive masculinity to uphold [the] imagined sense of Britain’s imperial power’ (Hansen 1995, 304).10 In doing so, his use of theatrical devices even extended beyond the walls of the Egyptian Hall as Smith produced several spin-off objects of merchandise, including a portable lantern show to be used at home to recreate several of the exhilarating scenes elaborated upon in the stage performance (Hansen 2013, 175–6). These take-home spin-offs were some of the first examples of a practice of domesticated dark play, kindled by the technology of the day, a practice which, as we shall see, reaches its apogee in the viewing of extreme sports posted on social media. Smith’s stage show has been the subject of many extended studies (Hansen 1995, 2013; Bevin 2008; Conefrey and Jordan 2001; McNee 2015), but viewing his work in the context of deep and dark play, and as Geertz suggests, as an ‘encompassing structure’ shaped around the performative potential of death and destruction, helps illuminate an important part of Smith’s project—one which is echoed strongly in my later examples. The Ascent of Mont Blanc was shamelessly exploitative of theatrical technology, complicit in the construction of a particular mode of masculinity and heroism, and consciously designed to manipulate its audience’s emotions, creating a safe–danger, which immersed them further in the experience. As the most recent study of Smith’s artistry identifies: ‘Beverley’s descending panorama was so effective that “the spectator seems, step-by-step, to accompany the daring travellers in a hazardous journey, while Mr Albert Smith, with graphic description, tells every circumstance of the interesting deed”’ (McNee 2015, 139).

The Eiger Christian Almer, Peter Bohren and Charles Barrington first climbed the Eiger in 1858, whilst Smith was still performing his lectures at the Egyptian hall. But it was 80 years later before the notorious North face was conquered by a quartet of Austrian and German climbers, Anderl Heckmair, Fritz Kasparek, Ludwig Vörg and Heinrich Harrer, following a spate of

24 

J. Pitches

terrible tragedies earlier that decade.11 These deaths and the first successful summit have passed into mountaineering history and are referenced by more than one contemporary climber, often citing Harrer’s bestselling account of the 1938 ascent, White Spider (originally published in 1959), as a (perhaps perverse) stimulus for pursuing a mountaineering career. Joe Simpson, author of Touching the Void (1988), is typical of this trend: This gripping account of the first ascent … and the subsequent often disastrous attempts that followed should really have put me off mountaineering for life. … I [nevertheless] became a mountaineer inspired by the most gripping and frightening mountaineering book I have ever read. (in Harrer 2005, 7)12

One of the remarkable features of the North face of the Eiger is its incredible proximity to civilization. The pain, elation, progress and failure of every climber attempting the Eigerwand fall under the potential scrutiny of hoards of hotel visitors, hikers and journalists in Kleine Scheidegg, nestling at the foot of the 1800-metre face. This fact has led to the morbid phenomenon of ‘Eiger watching’, the close tracking of climbers from telescopes on the balconies of hotels in the valley below.13 Heinrich Harrer was one of many to find this spectacle theatrical: This particular face … has become an arena, a natural stage, in which every movement of the actors can be followed. And the applause accorded to successful climbers on their return is argued as another outward sign of their inward decay. (Harrer 2005, 24)

As Harrer notes, it is not the climbers themselves who seek out the burden of performing; instead, it is visited upon them by the audiences gathered in the mountain pass. In this example, the technology of mediation is not in the hands of the artist—Beverley and his dioramas of Mont Blanc for instance—but in the long-distance view of the spectator handling the telescope. As the balcony dweller frames an image of the climber in their viewfinder, the art of storytelling is shifted from actor to viewer, either for personal titillation or—if it happens to be a journalist’s eye—for more public enjoyment. Harrer records the latter process in White Spider, citing journalist Ulrich Link’s eyewitness account of the

2  Deep and Dark Play in the Alps: Daring Acts and Their Retelling 

  25

Eigerwand climb from afar, written ‘in a manner which would grip a layman, but without uncalled for dramatization’: From 3 to 3.30 p.m. the face was once again enveloped in cloud. Then it cleared again and everyone rushed to the telescopes. The leader of the second rope was just traversing from the rocks onto the ‘spider’ […] it was 4:10. Mist came down on the face again, and we were left cut-off with our fears and our hopes […] At 4:25 it began to rain gently, and exactly 5 minutes later a violent, noisy downpour set in, as if the clouds had been torn apart. It must be hitting the face and the four climbers on it like a tidal wave. One could hear many voices raised in a confused gasp of alarm. (2005, 109)

Gripping it is, and all the more so as the same telescopes had witnessed the drawn-out, frozen death of Toni Kurtz and the rest of his party, two years earlier. It is also highly dramatized, despite what Harrer might say. The telescopic perspective, punctuated by moments of obscurity occasioned by the weather, is a classic viewpoint in mountain dramas. It is seen in the tracking of Irvine and Mallory by Noel Odell on the highest slopes of Everest in 1924, before the ‘mist close[d] around them’ (McFarlane 2003, 268) and they disappeared for 75 years.14 And it was evident earlier, in the mid-century, when the long-distanced telescopic pursuit of Albert Smith’s Mont Blanc climb provided the stuff of drama for journalists and their readers. Smith’s actual ascent (not the performed account of it) was reported in The Observer: After their departure, telescopes were fixed from the windows of the inn, and in other places, to watch the progress of their toilsome ascent, and before 6 o’clock it was evident the voyagers had crossed the great glacier and had arrived at their resting place for the night – on the Grands Mulets. Yesterday morning, as soon as daylight afforded a clear view, the adventurers were again visible by aid of a good glass and by 12 o’clock were seen making the final ascent. (Observer, 25 August 1851, 3)

The good news occasioned by this long view then sparked extensive partying in Chamonix, bankrolled by Sir Robert Peel, many hours before the climbing party themselves returned.

26 

J. Pitches

In 1966, when the next mountaineering challenge after climbing the North face was to find the most direct line up it, journalists still drew on the telescope as dramatic mediator, as reporter Peter Gillman later reflected: For decades, every fresh drama brought journalists flocking to the scene, ready to bestow their headlines on the latest success or death. In February 1966, I was one of them, covering the attempt for the Daily Mail, the newspaper backing Harlin’s team, talking to the climbers by radio and watching through a telescope on a hotel terrace at Kleine Scheidegg as the two teams climbed, often only yards apart. (MailOnline, 31 May 2015)

Gillman was unfortunate enough to witness the death of US climber John Harlin ‘live’, through the eyepiece of his telescope, as Harlin fell from the face racing to beat the German team to the prize of ‘Eiger direct’. Some 40 years later in 2005, Harlin’s son John Junior sought to bury his demons by climbing the North face himself, creating another layer of mediation with the production of the docudrama The Alps, scripted by English mountaineer Stephen Venables (2007). Ten years after Harlin Senior’s death in 1976, climber Joe Tasker described how the phenomenon of ‘Eiger watching’ had liberated itself from the constraints of the Kleine Scheidegg balconies, bringing an even-­ greater sense of theatrical voyeurism: A distant speck, small as a fly, came towards us growing larger and larger – a helicopter. It hovered a few hundred feet away from us. We could see the occupants, cameras or binoculars masking their faces, and I could not move.

The best way he could find to express the intrusion was to cast himself as leading actor on the rock face: From stage fright at realising I was a performer in a gigantic vertical arena my feelings turned to resentment that our very private world should become the focus of the curiosity and pastime of others. I could not concentrate until it was gone, could not rid myself of the thought that those visitors, anonymous and safe in their plastic bubble, would’ve had the most perfect outing if they could only have seen one of us fall. (Boardman and Tasker 1995, 33)

2  Deep and Dark Play in the Alps: Daring Acts and Their Retelling 

  27

With tourist guide Lonely Planet: Switzerland noting the history of Eiger watching at the Bellevue Hotel as part of its draw as a ‘world-beating location’ (Williams and Walker 2009, 183), the fusion of leisure, locale and licentious voyeurism observed by Tasker in the 1970s is still an essential part of Kleine Scheidegg’s cultural offer today, affirming its status as a dark tourist hotspot and illustrative of what Stone and Sharpley identify as one of its most important functions: the ‘opportunity to confront and contemplate “mortality moments” from a perceived safe distance and environment’ (2008, 590).15 In optical terms, the telescope may shorten the distance between witness on the balcony and ‘actor’ on the face, but in socio-psychological terms it remains a key tool for retaining that distance, shifting the responsibility for mediation onto the storyteller-viewer whilst maintaining the conditions for deep and dark play.

The Matterhorn If the Eigerwand has a grim past of failed attempts, there is an equally tragic (and well-known) history associated with the Matterhorn, specifically its maiden ascent by the egoist- engraver, Edward Whymper. Whymper had seen Albert Smith’s lecture in 1858 and inspired (if not intoxicated) climbed the Matterhorn for the first time seven years later from the Swiss side, via the Hörnli ridge. On the descent, he lost four of his party—Lord Francis Douglas, Douglas Hadow, guide Michel Croz and Charles Hudson—immortalizing the experience in his mountaineering classic, Scrambles Amongst the Alps (1871), replete with his own engravings of the climb and, even, of the broken rope once attached to the luckless quartet.16 Historical interest notwithstanding, this section moves forward from dioramas, telescopes and helicopters to the technology of the twenty-first century: social media, headcams and wingsuits. In doing so, it will get closer to an understanding of the dynamics of deep and dark play, today, and specifically to the idea raised at the beginning of the chapter: that deep play ‘catches up’, in Geertz’s words, themes of ‘deaths masculinity, rage, pride, loss’—wrapping them up in an ‘encompassing structure’ (1972, 23) which mediates their danger to an audience in theatricalized form. In this final example, a particularly extreme form of dark play in

28 

J. Pitches

the Alps will be examined—wingsuiting from the Matterhorn—to reveal how practitioners of this new sport17 treat the mediation of their daring acts almost as seriously as the acts themselves, to reiterate Belinda Wheaton’s key criteria for understanding postmodern lifestyle sports, ‘presentation of self […] seems to be part of the experience’ (2004, 12). In one way, the act of mediation in the twenty-first century has come full circle from Albert Smith’s Egyptian Hall lectures: we are back to self-­ produced, narrative accounts of daring acts in the Alps. But the means by which these stories are relayed has of course been transformed by moving online. Video sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo are crammed with audiovisual materials culled from mountain experiences, often created with the use of head-mounted cameras or headcams, the most ubiquitous of these being the GoPro brand of cameras. GoPros have been used to document a long list of signature climbing routes: from Crib Goch in Snowdonia to the Striding and Sharp edges in Cumbria, and from the Khumbu ice fall on the approach to Everest to the sunrise over Mount Kilimanjaro.18 Many of the materials produced in this way evidence what has been termed the ‘lifecaching’ tendency of this century: collecting, storing and displaying one’s entire life, for private use, or for friends, family, even the entire world to peruse (Bruns 2008, 228). Such user-led production and publication signals what Bruns calls a paradigm shift, away from an industrial model of product development and consumption towards a much more ‘fluid movement of produsers [sic] between roles as leaders, participants, and users of content’ (Bruns 2007, n.p.). Expressions of mountain culture offer excellent examples of this ‘produsage’ in social media (mountaineer bloggers, YouTube filmmakers, mountain ‘Instagrammers’), providing numerous illustrations of the presentational prerogative of postmodern sports suggested in Wheaton’s work. If, as Patrick Lonergan has recently argued, ‘social media is a space for the performance of identities – a space that can be seen in many ways as theatrical’ (2016, 3), then how does that urge for self-presentation play out in the context of contemporary mountain media? To offer on answer to this question this chapter considers the following short video, Wingsuit Jump in the North Wall of the Matterhorn,19 created with a headcam and posted on YouTube by Russian BASE jumper and wingsuiter, Valery Rozov. It is one of several movies capturing wingsuit-

2  Deep and Dark Play in the Alps: Daring Acts and Their Retelling 

  29

ing from or around the Matterhorn. As a headcam video, it naturally locates the jumper pivotally in the movie using two mounted-camera perspectives on his helmet spliced together with a little footage from the mountainside. From a launch point lower than the summit, the wingsuiter heads down the north face of the mountain for a descent lasting little more than a minute of film time (and not much more in real time). The stunt concludes with Rozov landing softly in the green pastures of Switzerland, backed by the image of the mountain behind. He ends the video with a brief statement to camera in Russian: ‘First jump in the wingsuit from the northern wall of the Matterhorn’,20 claiming what is in effect a first descent in a wingsuit, and marking the peak in a vernacular more commonly associated with lines up the mountain, which are discussed in greater depth in this volume by Anja Karina-Nydal. Whilst this is clearly a celebration of one man’s daring, masculinity (and, perhaps, madness21), the mountain is far from lost in Rozov’s extreme filmmaking. Indeed, the reverse view of the landscape is preferred to the view ahead with the iconic triangular summit of the Matterhorn a constant reference point. This celebration of mountain iconography is typical of videos documenting wingsuiting from the Matterhorn, and can be seen in the films of American Jeb Corliss, Rozov’s wingsuiter rival in the Alps. From a helicopter launch Corliss speeds down the Hörnli ridge in his wingsuit, retracing Edward Whymper’s steps at a speed the Victorian engraver would not have thought imaginable.22 Indeed, this is arguably less about lifecaching as it is about ‘cachet-caching’, though the status achieved by the wingsuiters through the massive distribution of these digital assets is not solely accomplished through their own sporting audacity.23 It is also achieved through the carefully stage-managed associations with the mountain, its history, its aesthetic and its far more mature record of darkness and danger. This style of wingsuiting is called ‘proximity flying’ and defines itself in terms of the very close distances between land features and flyer.24 Following a world-famous ridge, steeped in history and tragedy, adds an additional value to this proximity, beyond the raw danger of flying past, over and through environmental obstacles at high speed. One might call it topographical capital. Jeb Corliss expands, justifying his choice of the Matterhorn:

30 

J. Pitches

It’s very interesting for me to fly from icons. It symbolizes an area, it symbolizes a place so when you do something there, you are becoming part of that place. (Daredevils: The Human Bird 2009)

For Rozov, Corliss and the other flyers operating in the Alps, their audience may have shifted online, away from the Egyptian hall or from the Kleine Scheidegg balconies, but the motivation of a captive audience remains a fundamental driver for this act of dark play. It is difficult to imagine anyone taking such risks without a permanent record ‘cached’ for future prosperity—and the sponsors emblazoned on the underside of Rozov’s parachute would not, of course, be involved without it.25 In the critical context of this chapter, social media allows for an almost-infinite iteration of the dark play cycle Schechner outlines: ‘played, replayed, documented and now made public’ (2006, 120). It also offers a new, digital, type of ‘encompassing structure’ which Geertz could never have been able to foresee, but which nevertheless retains his distinction between the deadly game in the centre of the activity (there are numerous wingsuit deaths, each year) and the frisson of safe–danger we experience watching it.

Conclusion These three examples of mountainous activities, hailing from different eras and utilizing very different technologies for their retelling, help to illustrate an enduring theme of what has been called ‘deep and dark play mediation’ in this chapter. As Geertz acknowledges, the audience of deep play events will never experience the immediacy in the midst of the feather-flying cockfight but it is precisely this mediated play (the experience of ‘safe–danger’, as I have termed it, here) which can in some ways enhance the appreciation of extremity. As this chapter has moved from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, the available technologies have engaged audiences in different ways: Smith via the proto-immersive stage space of the Egyptian hall and his canny use of take-home slide sets; the Bellevue hotel with its tempting telescopes and focus for international journalism; and Valery Rozov with the largest potential audience of all

2  Deep and Dark Play in the Alps: Daring Acts and Their Retelling 

  31

thanks to the connecting technologies of the internet, YouTube’s facility for ‘mass-self communication’ (Van Dijk 2012, 182). Whilst it is unsurprising that audiences have grown exponentially over these three separate centuries, it is enlightening that they remain consistent in their pursuit of a mediated form of danger, a translated experience of depth and darkness. One way to explain this consistency in the motivations behind deep and dark play is to align it with ideas of the sublime, so often associated with mountains and culture. As Robert McFarlane identifies in his Mountains of the Mind: It would be impossible to appreciate the Sublime if one were, say, hanging by a handhold from a cliff face. But if you came just near enough to a waterfall or a cliff edge to suggest to your imagination the possibility of self-destruction, then you would feel a sublime rush. (McFarlane 2003, 75)

Irrespective of the technology being used, it is this notion of the ‘just near-enough’ that characterizes the theatrical mediations of deep and dark play considered here, suggesting that Geertz’s contribution to long-­ standing debates about mountain experience and spectatorship is significantly more valuable than the oft-quoted Jeremy Bentham. Geertz’s understanding of deep play’s emotional intensity, constructions of masculinity and consistent wrapping up of mortal themes in various ‘encompassing’ (hence distancing) structures helps define a theatrical reading of risk-taking in the mountains which is remarkable in its consistency over three centuries. No one needs to get hurt in this space of mediated risk. Just do not try telling the cocks that.

Notes 1. BASE jumping is the sport of using a parachute to jump from fixed objects. ‘BASE’ is an acronym that stands for the four categories of objects from which one can jump; Building, Antenna, Span (the word used for a bridge) and Earth (the word used for a cliff). The term was coined by Carl (BASE #4) and Jean Boenish (BASE #3), Phil Smith (BASE #1) and Phil Mayfield (BASE #2), regarded as the forefathers of modern BASE jumping, and in 1981 Carl began issuing sequential numbers for those who completed a

32 

J. Pitches

jump from each of the four categories of objects, should they choose to apply. http://www.basenumbers.org/ 2. Compare Ackermann’s citation of Alvarez with Geertz’s actual words: ‘Bentham’s concept of deep play is found in his Theory of Legislation. By it he means play in which the stakes are so high that it is, from his utilitarian standpoint, irrational for men to engage in it at all. If a man whose fortune is a 1000 pounds (or ringgits) wages, 500 of it on an even bet, the marginal utility of the pound he stands to win is clearly less than the marginal disutility of the one who stands to lose. In genuine deep play, this is the case for both parties’ (1972, 15). 3. Annapurna’s fatality to summit ratio rate is 38%; K2’s is 23.2%. Source: http://www.nerverush.com/the-14-highest-peaks-in-the-world/ 4. ‘Climbers have a rare ability to gamble the rest of their lives on one step, and for this they are both admired and sometimes regarded as vainly stupid. They take to the extreme the notion of Deep Play, whereby what they stand to win from their gamble can never be equaled by the enormity of what they will lose’ (Simpson 1997, 196). 5. The other categories are ‘houses of horror’, ‘fields of fatality’, ‘tours of torment’ and ‘themed thanatos’, by which he means museum collections based on death and suffering (2009, 11). 6. There is some dispute over the height of Mont Blanc (White Mountain) with a remeasuring happening every two years. It is possible to find heights for the mountain ranging from 4807 to 4810 metres. http://www.chamonix.net/english/news/mont-blanc-shrinks 7. Sixty bottles of Vin Ordinaire, 6 of Bordeaux, 10 of St. George, 15 of St. Jean, 8 of cognac, 1 bottle of syrup of raspberries, 6 bottles of lemonade, 2 of champagne, 20 loaves, 10 small cheeses, 6 packets of chocolate, sugar, prunes, raisins and salt, 4 wax candles, 6 lemons, 4 legs and shoulders of mutton, 6 pieces of veal, 1 of beef, 11 large and 35 small fowls, spread amongst 16 guides (cf. Smith 1853, 154–5). 8. There is a record of a farewell lecture dated Tuesday 6 July 1858 (in Brotherton Special Collections, Leeds), but Smith returned from travelling in China and downplayed the Mont Blanc content in favour of reportage of his travels further afield after the summer of 1858, performing right up until he died on 23 May 1860 (Fitzsimmons 1967, 185). 9. Clearly, authenticity was not an essential criterion for Smith, as the village overlooked by Mont Blanc, from which Smith launched his ascent, is Chamonix not Grindelwald. Thanks are due to Dr Scott Palmer for pointing this out to me.

2  Deep and Dark Play in the Alps: Daring Acts and Their Retelling 

  33

10. There is insufficient space to deal with the complex and fascinating area of British mountaineering, colonialism and empire in this chapter, which reached its peak in the middle of the twentieth century and the coincidence of the first ascent of Everest and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Peter Hansen’s The Summits of Modern Man is an excellent beginning to reading around this subject and specifically Chapter Nine, pages 245–74. 11. Most notably the deaths of Toni Kurz, Andreas Hinterstoisser, Willy Angerer and Edi Rainer (in 1936) and Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer (in 1935). 12. In the same vein, cf. Joe Tasker in the Savage Arena: describing another Eiger classic, The Climb up to Hell: ‘Rather than being deterred by the dangers. … The book provided an inspiration for my own first steps’ (Boardman and Tasker 1995, 18). 13. Hotel Bellevue is the most famous and long-standing Kleine Scheidegg hotel, having held a position at the foot of the Eiger since 1840. http:// scheidegg-hotels.ch/index1eng.php 14. Mallory’s body was found by Conrad Anker on an expedition in 1999. Irvine’s body remains undiscovered. 15. The Bellevue hotel is clearly aware of its international status as a viewing spot and centre for the climbing history of the Eigerwand enshrined in the Guardian’s review of 2010 posted on the site: ‘The Bellevue’s corridors heave with climbing lore and the ghosts of Eiger Alpinists, long lost’. http://scheidegg-hotels.ch/berichte/guardian2010.pdf 16. The rope is still available for view at the Matterhorn Museum, Zermatt. 17. Wingsuits have been commercially available since 1998 (Davis 2013, 278). 18. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRrLwT8Im8g; https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1llLj2q0k8; https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=moBJMGNSql4; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 6VLI5iIs0Qo; http://www.climbkilimanjaroguide.com/gopro-kilimanjaro/ 19. The film is located here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2IkI4Qu CuM&feature=youtu.be 20. My thanks are extended to Olya Petrakova for providing a translation for me. 21. Brymer (2010) points to research done by Storry on extreme sports which counters this perspective—that in fact BASE jumping has a much lower fatality rate (1:2317) than motorbike riding (1:500) and evidences

34 

J. Pitches

high levels of planning and organization on behalf of its practitioners (218). 22. https://youtu.be/h-lQh1_tUYM 23. Rozov’s Matterhorn jump has had 23,700 hits; his wingsuit leap from Everest has had 1.4 million hits (as of January 2016). 24. Jeb Corliss explains the appeal of proximity flying in the Channel 4 documentary Daredevils: The Human Bird: ‘When I did the Christ Statue [in Rio de Janeiro] I was only close for a split second. When we get to Matterhorn, the entire flight down the ridge you are close to things.’ 25. Red Bull have built their brand on associations with high-risk sports, including Formula 1, snowboarding, BMX and wingsuiting.

Bibliography Ackermann, D. (1999). Deep play. New York: Random House. Alvarez, A. (1988). Feeding the rat. London: Bloomsbury. Alvarez, A. (2007). Risky business. London: Bloomsbury. Bentham, J. (1840). Theory of legislation. Boston: Weeks, Jordan and Co. Bevin, D. (2008). The struggle for ascendancy: John Ruskin, Albert Smith and the Alpine Aesthetic. PhD thesis, Exeter University, Exeter. Boardman, P., & Tasker, J.  (1995). The Boardman Tasker omnibus. London: Baton Wicks. Bruns, A. (2007). Produsage: Towards a broader framework for user-led content creation. Proceedings creativity and cognition, 6. http://eprints.qut.edu. au/6623/1/6623.pdf Bruns, A. (2008). Blogs, Wikipedia, second life and beyond: From production to produsage. New York: Peter Lang. Brymer, E. (2010). Risk taking in extreme sports: A phenomenological perspective. Annals of Leisure Research, 13(1–2), 218–238. Conefrey, M., & Jordan, T. (2001). Mountain men: The remarkable climbers and determined eccentricities who first scaled the world’s most famous peaks. Boston: Da Capo. Daredevils: The Human Bird. (2009). Channel 4, Documentary. Davis, S. (2013). Learning to fly. New York: Touchstone. Dijk, V. (2012). The network society (3rd ed.). London: Sage. Fitzsimmons, R. (1967). The baron of Piccadilly: The travels and entertainments of Albert Smith: 1816–1860. London: Geoffrey Bles. Frison-Rouche, R., & Jouty, S. (1996). A history of mountain climbing. Paris: Flammarton.

2  Deep and Dark Play in the Alps: Daring Acts and Their Retelling 

  35

Geertz, C. (1972). Deep play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight. Daedalus, 10(1), 1–37. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Hansen, P. H. (1995). Albert Smith, the Alpine Club, and the invention of mountaineering in Mid-Victorian Britain. Journal of British Studies, 34(3), 300–324. Hansen, P. H. (2013). Summits of modern man: Mountaineering after the enlightenment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harrer, H. (2005). The white spider: The classic account of the ascent of the Eiger. London: HarperPerennial. Hind, C. (2010). Dark and deep play in performance practice. PhD thesis, University of Leeds, Leeds. Lennon, J., & Foley, M. (1996). JFK and dark tourism: A fascination with assassination. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2(4), 198–211. Lennon, J., & Foley, M. (2000). Dark tourism. London: Continuum. Lonergan, P. (2016). Theatre and social media. London: Palgrave Macmillan. McFarlane, R. (2003). Mountains of the mind; A history of fascination. London: Granta. McNee, A. (2015). The cockney who sold the Alps. Brighton: Victorian Secrets. Newby, E. (1977). Great ascents. Vancouver: Douglas, David and Charles. Pritchard, P. (1997). Deep play: A climber’s odyssey from Llanberis to the big walls. London: Baton Wicks. Schechner, R. (1993). The future of ritual: Writings on culture and performance. London: Routledge. Schechner, R. (2006). Performance studies an introduction. Abingdon: Routledge. Sharpley, R., & Stone, P. (2009). The darker side of travel: The theory and practice of dark tourism. Bristol: Channel View Publications. Simpson, J. (1988). Touching the void. London: Jonathan Cape. Simpson, J. (1997). Dark shadows falling. London: Jonathan Cape. Simpson, J. (2003). The beckoning silence. London: Random House. Smith, A. (1853). The story of Mont Blanc. New York: G.P. Putnam and Co. Stone, P., & Sharpley, R. (2008). Consuming dark tourism: A Thanatological perspective. Annals of Tourism Research., 35(2), 574–595. Stone, P., & Sharpley, R. (2009). The darker side of travel: The theory and practice of dark tourism. Bristol: Channel View Publications. The Alps. (2007). Directed by Stephen Judson. Screenplay by Stephen Judson and Stephen Venables. Laguna Beach: MacGilvray Freeman Films. Wheaton, B. (Ed.). (2004). Understanding lifestyle sports: Consumption, identity and difference. Abingdon: Routledge. Whymper, E. (1871). Scrambles amongst the Alps in the years 1860–69. London: J Murray. Williams, N., & Walker, K. (2009). Switzerland. Melbourne: Lonely Planet Publishers.

3 In the Shadow of the Mountain: Tracing the Hesychast Inhabitation of Mount Athos Christos Kakalis

Introduction This chapter examines the role of silence and communal ritual in the experience of the southern part of Mount Athos, a semi-independent peninsula in north-eastern Greece, which is home to the world’s largest Orthodox monastic community and one of the most important Christian pilgrimage sites.1 The focus is on the so-called desert of the peninsula, its mountainous end (the area between Karmelion Mountain and the Skete of Agia Anna) that rises into a peak of 2033 metres in height. The mountain is a natural magnet for the Athonites’ attention and a number of ascetics have chosen to live there as either cave/hermitage-dwellers or wandering ascetics practising hesychasm, an ascetic way of life with intense meditational qualities. The chapter seeks to unfold the performative qualities of the mountainous Athonite desert as a field of religious inhabitation. One of the

C. Kakalis (*) School of Architecture, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

© The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3_3

37

38 

C. Kakalis

most important ascetic practices that the monks and pilgrims undertake is an annual pilgrimage to the summit of the mountain on the sixth of August, the day dedicated to Christ’s Transfiguration. This feast day commemorates the possibility of communication with the divine through a number of rituals. Moreover, the mountain of Athos opens as an ideal setting for ascetic life. Athonite caves and hermitages are the smallest (natural or man-made) spaces for the hermits to practise silent prayer there. In the atmosphere of the mountainous Athonite desert, silence plays a key role examined as a material condition in which intelligible sounds come to consciousness and senses are fully engaged in a pilgrimage topography. The relief of the peninsula is mainly mountainous (Kotoulas 1991, 47–56); there a very few, small plains and the coasts are extremely rocky and steep. These conditions of geographical isolation have led to a primitive, untouched landscape, inhabited by ascetics searching for solitude (Sidiropoulos 2000, 18). The first written evidence of the presence of ascetics on Mount Athos dates back to the ninth century (Papachrysanthou, 31–39) though it was in 943 that the boundaries of the peninsula as a monastic realm were officially inscribed by the emperor’s ambassadors (Speake 2002). Gradually, a network of huts (kalyves), cells (kellia),2 sketes3 and 20 coenobitic monasteries4 was organized on Athos, with the structure built during the middle and late Byzantine period (Archim.; Aimilianos 1991, 118). In the fourteenth century, Mount Athos became an important centre of hesychasm, a practice which was intensively followed by most of the Athonites. Since then, Mount Athos has been ­considered an active field of hesychast practice in which hermits and coenobitic monks seek salvation through prayer and which pilgrims visit to draw from its religious character (Speake 2002, 157–194 and Sidiropoulos 2000, 145–155). Besides a field for communal rituals to be performed, these conditions of geographic isolation provide an ideal context for both human and atmospheric qualities of silence to be experienced by the individual. The former relate to our vocal silencing that involves an attentive listening and opening to the surroundings and can be connected to meditation and prayer practices. On the other hand, atmospheric silence regards the silence and tranquillity of the environment and is usually connected

3  In the Shadow of the Mountain: Tracing the Hesychast... 

  39

to a soundscape that is different from what we are used to. Silence is a material condition that enhances the performative dynamics of Mount Athos. Ascetics seek to experience its atmospheric qualities in order to pray in a more effective way and at the same time their silence and prayer influence the religious character of the silent topography. This hesychast combination of human and atmospheric silences opens to pilgrims that are usually struck by the otherworldly feelings of the quiet landscape, making the interaction with the Athonite silence part of their travel goal. Echoing John Wylie’s definition of the landscape as the tension between the perceiver and the perceived, therefore, this chapter argues about an embodied topography found in the interaction between communal ritual inhabitation, silent ascetic practices and mountainous landscapes. In this tension the topography emerges as a situation of communal and individual embodied inhabitations. Exploring the annual ritual to its summit and the bodily perception of silence, this chapter furthers the performative dynamics of the mountain as an embodiment of hesychast ideas. This is also illustrated in a number of visualizations that question the modern two-dimensional, ‘accurate’ and rather Cartesian, mapping techniques, arguing that it is impossible for the performative aspects of the landscape to be accurately depicted as they are always changing and can only be fully understood through bodily experience.

The Mountain of Athos The mountain of Athos plays an important role in monastic life there. It is symbolically connected to the event of the Transfiguration and the possibility of theosis, on which the theology of hesychasm is based. Hesychasm derives from the Greek word for ‘calmness’ or ‘tranquillity’ (ησυχία-hesychia). It is based on the co-existence of positive and negative theology and involves the ceaseless, silent repetition of the Jesus prayer (‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, the sinner’). Its aim is the acquisition of a sense of stillness, a state of alertness and vigilance through different ascetic techniques that consider the human body as undivided from the soul (Chryssavgis 2004).

40 

C. Kakalis

Hesychasm was gradually introduced by Christian writers such as St. Dionysius the Areopagite, St. John Climacus and St. Symeon the New Theologian, and was established as the main ascetic practice of Eastern Christianity during the fourteenth century through the life and the writings of St. Gregory Palamas (Louth 1999, 2001; Chryssavgis 2004; Meyendorff 1998). According to Eastern Christian theology, God is a ‘mystery’, for which humans should eternally search, a mystery that cannot be fully disclosed and fully hidden at the same time (Evdokimof 1965, 17; Lossky 1957, 36–38). God is known and unknown at the same time (Daniel 2007, 140). This is theologically related to the event of the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ, which Andrew Paterson also discusses in his chapter, in relation to the mosaics at Mt. Sinai. During the Transfiguration, part of His holiness was witnessed by the apostles Peter (Πέτρος), John (Ιωάννης) and James (Ιάκωβος) at the peak of Mount Tabor (Mark 9:2–13). According to St. Gregory Palamas, Christ’s Transfiguration paved the way for the possibility of divine contemplation (theosis). Theosis for St. Gregory can be part of the devotee’s life, and it usually involves the experience of the ‘uncreated light’: a white light that can be felt, according to Athonite monks, on both the material and psychological levels (Meyendorff 1998). A chapel built at the summit of the mountain is, therefore, dedicated to the Transfiguration of Christ and attracts a great number of monks and pilgrims during its annual celebration. Moreover, Athos is a constant point of reference for the monks, due to its symbolism and its imposing presence in the topography. At the same time, its deserted, mountainous rough relief provides the ideal physical conditions for hermits and wandering ascetics to practise hesychasm. The bodily effort required to reach the peak of the mountain, and at the same time the changes in atmosphere and vision that follow the increasing altitude, leads to a feeling of distance from the everyday world which has been connected to the communication with the divine. According to Mircea Eliade, a mountain can be a sacred place, a ‘centre’, an Axis Mundi, ‘where hierophanies and theophanies can occur and where there exists the possibility of breaking through from the level of earth to the level of heaven’ (Eliade 1952, 27–56). The sacred associations of mountains were found as far back as prehistoric times when, according

3  In the Shadow of the Mountain: Tracing the Hesychast... 

  41

to Walter Burkert, sanctuaries were organized on the peaks of mountains located at small distances from human settlements (Burkert 1977, 26–28) to facilitate ritual activities. Mountains in Scripture are points of the relief where a divine aura can be shared through human inhabitation. The sound of trumpets, the cloud around the peak, rain, earthquake and especially the voice of God were included in Moses’ experience when he went up to the peak of Mount Chorev to receive the Ten Commandments (Exodus 19–20:21) or of Prophet Elijah when he sought shelter to protect himself from Emperor Achaav and his wife Iezavel in the same mountain (1 Kings 19:11–12). Vision, hearing and touching (the stone tablets) are interconnected with the ascent of the scriptural figures to the peak of the mountains and their prayerful pauses there (40 days in the case of Moses). This is also the case with Mount Tabor as the setting of Christ’s Transfiguration. The key moments of these journeys involve the paradoxical encounter with God, happening at the peak of a mountain through a multisensory aural manifestation that becomes an important sacred atmosphere. Traces of this atmosphere are also carried back, as they return transformed, ready to transmit a divine message to the people left behind. The Holy Mountain that characterizes the peninsula is, for the monks, an Axis Mundi, a ‘central point’ that stands as a threshold between the sky and the earth, the seen and the unseen; it is an embodiment of the idea of Transfiguration emphatically manifested through the small church at its top, which is dedicated to the rituals that take place during the day of the Transfiguration celebration. Therefore, whereas the mountain is not part of the scriptural landscapes, it is connected to them through its spiritual associations to Christ’s Transfiguration and theosis. As Father L. from Gregoriou Monastery suggested during an August 2012 visit to Mount Athos: Arriving at Mount Athos and deciding to live here for the rest of his life, the individual learns that the Mountain plays an important role in his life, symbolizing the transformative experience of transfiguration. Gradually the reference to the sacred dynamics of the mountain becomes part of his daily cycle and the ascent to its peak is always felt as a great blessing and worthy of being conducted.

42 

C. Kakalis

The Annual Ascent to the Peak of the Mountain These performative dynamics of the mountain are mainly manifested today through the annual ascent of monks and pilgrims to the peak, the all-night services held in the chapel and the following descent on the sixth of August, when the event of the Transfiguration is celebrated. In particular, monks from different Athonite monastic structures and pilgrims ascend the mountain on the fifth of August to prepare for and participate in the all-night vigils that are held in the chapel. Five different paths meet at the middle of the route, where all the participants gather and start ascending a steep, narrow path that passes through the thick forest. The aim is to reach the recently restored ‘Shelter of The Mother of God’, a small complex of a communal guest room, a kitchen and a chapel dedicated to the Virgin (at about 1600 metres up the mountain). They have some rest and an informal meal there, conduct Vespers in the chapel and then continue the ascent to the peak in a processional way. Priests and deacons wearing their vestments are followed by the rest of the devotees carrying icons, candles or branches to be used during the service. Chanting, censing and reading are also part of the procession. At the peak there is the small Church of the Transfiguration, which is still under construction. Its building started in 2012 to replace the ­previous one (built in 1977), which was destroyed due to bad weather conditions.5 Outside the chapel there is a small courtyard and a well. The all-night vigils usually start with the Blessing of Holy Water at 20:30, and finish around 06:00 the next morning. The devotees then go back to the shelter of the Mother of God, where the celebration ends with a meal. Besides this feast, the monks conduct pilgrimages to the shelter, combining the ascent and descent with their prayer. This annual pilgrimage has a clear liturgical character with relatively predefined movements that contrast with the freer movement usually found along the footpaths of Mount Athos. The participants, mostly monks and pilgrims, aim at a possible transformation through the interactions that occur at different stages of this pilgrimage, the shared rituals and silent prayer. Therefore, the interaction with the rough topography is followed by the ritual procession that changes the experience by inscribing a new aural line in the silence-scape of the mountain (chanting, reading,

3  In the Shadow of the Mountain: Tracing the Hesychast... 

  43

censing). The individual body’s fatigue is dynamically combined with the hesychast qualities of the topography into an initiation process. The silent desert is inhabited by walking individuals who either go up to the shelter or follow the litany to the summit. When one starts walking up, one feels that it will be an experience of solitude and isolation. However, while walking up to Panaghia, one keeps meeting other people and the path becomes a field of pilgrimage walking that is replaced by a ritual walking to the peak after the vespers.6 Standing on the summit of Athos, monks and pilgrims feel that they have the possibility of being exposed to an interaction with the divine. This is also connected to the cooler atmosphere, the mist of the environment and the changing/panoptical views of the horizon from above. It is the experience of the distance between the land and the peak that narrates the possible communication with divine qualities through the creation of a feeling of awe and sublime (Fig. 3.1).7 The possibility for visitors to participate in the procession underlines the dynamic opening of communal rituals to the interpretation of the outsiders, further enhancing the performative dynamics of the mountain. This is described in travel accounts, such as those by Vasileios Stergioulis and Dimitris Kyrou, who participated in the relevant rituals more than once over the course of the last 20 years, illuminating communal ritual as a shared/attuned reading of the natural landscape (Stergioulis 2005; Kyrou 2001).

Fig. 3.1  Mapping the ascent to the peak of the mountain of Athos in the silence of the landscape

44 

C. Kakalis

 he Silence of the Mountain: The Desert, the Cave T and the Hermitage Part of the mountainous environment of the Athonite peninsula, caves play an important role in the topography, as hesychast life in them has been one of the forms of monastic practice on Athos for more than a thousand years. They are the pores of a deserted mountainous rough relief, whose dynamics attracted ascetics possibly even during the seventh century, opening as an ‘antilandscape’, that, according to Veronica della Dora, embodied qualities of negative (or apophatic) theology (Della Dora 2011, 761–779). It is the absolute isolation and the difficult living conditions that enhance the hermits’ need to alienate themselves from the worldly environment: Caves have served as privileged physical and metaphorical settings for both mapping and enacting apophatic doctrine’s via negativa. Indeed, these spaces are defined for what they are not rather than for what they are. (…) Caves can be thus considered as metaphorical spaces in which vision is partly interrupted; as pauses in the physical and spiritual landscape; as silences. (…) They also provided hermits with both natural shelters and privileged settings for their ascetic struggle to attain theosis through kenosis. They functioned as natural voids in which holy men who had renounced the world could in turn become empty vessels to be filled with divine grace. (Della Dora 2011, 764)

In the case of Athos, the dynamics of the caves, which are the porous features of this rough mountainous relief, attracted ascetics possibly even during the seventh century. They are the folds of the skin between the earth and the sky, providing the ascetic with a sense of solitude and partial protection from the weather due to their organic form. Being part of the living organism of this natural environment, caves are connected to the notions of unbuilt, indestructible, eternal. ‘Primitively eccentric’, these dwellings of the hermits are, for the theorist G. Chatzinis, related to a non-rational way of thinking, according to which the individual/hermit builds his relationship to God (Chatzinis 1963, 132–133). It is the absolute isolation and the difficult living conditions that enhance their need to alienate themselves from the worldly environment through silence,

3  In the Shadow of the Mountain: Tracing the Hesychast... 

  45

solitude and work on the repetition of the Jesus prayer. Caves become for the hermits a kind of physical–spiritual ‘womb’ in which they live, seeking rebirth and psychosomatic transformation through ascesis. Monks who wanted to experience this completely secluded life went to Athos and adjusted their spiritual demands to the existing landscape. They used the mountain’s cavities that were most easily accessible to the walker through the minimum of passages. During the Late Byzantine era, asceteria were dispersed all over the Athos peninsula. Nowadays, still-­ active hermitages are to be found mainly in the Athonite desert. ‘Cave-hermitages’ can be categorized into two types. The first one is quite elaborate and is a result of a hermit’s own building work. These dwellings have a small chapel, one or two rooms, and sometimes also ancillary spaces. The second type stems from the minimum alteration of the spaces of a cave or a smooth folding of the relief. The addition of built boundaries should be minimal, as profane concerns have to be reduced. Therefore, the extension of the natural space of a cave for the protection of the hermit from the difficult weather conditions, the covering of his needs or the housing of disciples that gather around him is not necessarily related to a new structure. It is in-between the natural and the artificial when a dry wall or a rectangular space made of wood closes the opening of a cave. These spaces constitute the smallest inhabitable spaces provided by nature, and carry intense solitude dynamics, supporting hesychast practice, also enhanced by the minimization of built additions. The addition of built boundaries should be minimal, as profane concerns have to be reduced. Therefore, the extension of the natural space of a cave for the protection of the hermit from the difficult weather conditions, the covering of his needs or the housing of disciples that gather around him is not necessarily a new structure. It is in-between the natural and the artificial when a dry wall or a rectangular space made of wood closes the opening of a cave. Staying in a quasi-natural environment becomes, thus, part of hesychast practice, contributing to their progress in communicating with God through silent prayer. Moreover, the practice of wandering also plays an important role in the understanding of the Athonite desert. In this sense, some ascetics inhabit a cave or a hermitage and abandon it when their silence is disturbed.

46 

C. Kakalis

Wandering and need for solitude makes these places become part of the landscape again, through either their total destruction or the smooth incorporation of their ruins into the surrounding context. Hence, even small huts built in the wild landscape as a shelter for one or two ascetics are not considered to be permanent constructions. Their boundaries are always in a process of a possible annulment and smooth reintegration in the natural landscape. The combination of solitary–silent life and ascetic wandering influences the way the landscape is experienced by the monks, either through its inhabitation or through the structuring of the smallest bounded spaces for the cover of their needs. Difficult to approach and move in, hidden by the thick vegetation or always exposed to the weather conditions, the rocky desert embodies the ideas of ephemeral, sacrifice and unfamiliar. Most of the time a hermitage is almost organically integrated into the rough, mountainous environment. The intention of the hermits is to live in an isolated, rough environment. Sometimes the transformation of a cave is the beginning of such a monastic place. The structural evolution of the complex is related to the development of the ascetic life in it. In this sense, the inaccessible area of Karoulia is where the two types of hermitages are mainly found. Even its name, which means ‘the place of the pulleys’, reveals the hard, ascetic way of life. This relates to the old way of accessing these hermitages, as hermits had to haul themselves up by ropes or chains that passed over makeshift pulleys. The area contains a number of separate hermitages, though the harshness of the environment and the intention of the ascetics to practise hesychasm did not allow for the creation of a clear network of movement. It was difficult for the paths to be opened and preserved, and for this reason the ascetics had to struggle there, uninterrupted by outsiders. Now the different caves and small huts are connected through a narrow mule track, hard to walk and dangerous because of the sharp cliff. Ladders and pulleys are still used as a way of accessing the hermitages, becoming extensions of the mule track. Silence plays an important role in this part of the peninsula. Ascending the steep slope of the area, one finds himself in a mountainous rocky context, whose harshness and, at times, vegetation intensifies a sense of isolation. The only sounds are those of the sea, the wind and the birds.

3  In the Shadow of the Mountain: Tracing the Hesychast... 

  47

It is very rare to see the hermits as they usually avoid interaction with other people. The difficulty involved in approaching these hermitages enhances this sense of solitude and silence through the creation of a clear boundary between the insider and the outsider. Absence of noise and limitation of vision are experienced both by the Athonites and by the visitors, becoming an in-between zone in which they co-exist. On the one hand, the ascetic practices silent prayer in the seclusion of his cave-hermitage. This condition of vigilance and anticipation is intensely communicated through the topography. On the other, the outsider interacts with this uncanny environment, passing through an unfamiliar landscape that, while not soundless, has the character of otherworldly isolation. Discontinuities in the route towards a hermitage (when a ladder replaces part of a path, or falling rocks obstruct the way) also make the outsider experience feelings of disorientation and unfamiliarity. Exploring the desert, the visitor is always aware and wondering what is going to happen next. Wishing to hear a familiar noise or to become familiar with aspects of the unfamiliar environment, he reads the landscape through a silent conversation with its constituents: Without a map to consult, I set off on what I later learned was the high trail across the desert, the steep, sparsely inhabited southern slope of the mountain, sometimes following a black plastic pipe that carried water from a spring. But there were no spigots on the pipe. Even in the shade the air was stifling. The question of right relation to the earth is troubling for Christians, who have a long history of interpreting God’s command to ‘have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’ (Genesis 1:28) in literal terms. (…) The vertical desert of Athos was a tonic to a culture predicated on materialism. (…) In the heat I realized how far I had strayed from my deepest self, having forgotten what was once an article of faith: the intimate connection between the conservation of the earth and a good marriage- how each depends upon recognizing limits. (…) My stiff neck and broken marriage, my hiatus from poetry and lost connection to the earth: they were of a piece. (Merrill 2016, 138)

48 

C. Kakalis

A combination of a solitary way of life and a more communal one in the wider sphere of the Athonite desert becomes clear in the case of the monk Joseph the Hesychast (1898–1959), an ascetic of the desert who gradually attracted a number of disciples around him. Joseph the Hesychast always tried to stay in isolated places in which, according to tradition, great hermits had lived before. He thus spent his first summer on Athos chasing around the peninsula and practising hesychasm under hard living conditions, such as the ones of the Shelter of the Mother of God at the beginning of the peak of Athos. He and another monk named Arsenios decided to start a common ascetic life and settled in a hut at Katounakia, an area close to Karoulia. They changed four different huts during the course of their life, seeking always to find a quieter place to practise silent prayer. For a long period of time they used to spend the winter in their hut and wander in the desert for the rest of the year. Wandering helped them feel like strangers (xenoi) in relation to their environment. Through their wanderings and the repetition of the Jesus Prayer they tried to find a way to depart from their mundane sphere and move towards God. The severity of this ascetic way of life was a result of the dynamic interaction between the elder and the distinct natural environment. This rough place permitted Joseph the Hesychast to construct only the essential buildings required to frame his hesychast life. The landscape and the people became part of the same ascetic topography as the modest constructions filled the voids left by the natural cavities of the mountain (Fig. 3.2). Stories such as the one of Joseph the Hesychast create a mythical framework in which wandering asceticism is a unique and difficult hesychast practice. Τhe wanderer is a silent moving body-subject that is only temporarily attached to a place. Athonite monks claim that there are very few wandering ascetics today on the peninsula, mainly living in the deserted parts of Karoulia and Kerasia.8 Crossing and transgressing boundaries, the wanderer is a silent moving body-subject that is only temporarily attached to a place and mainly inhabits the network of movement in the peninsula, the pathways and few dirt roads. Qualities of homelessness are therefore added to the performative dynamics of the mountainous landscape, deepening its ascetic meaning. It should be underlined here that technological development has affected the more deserted areas of the peninsula, influencing its

3  In the Shadow of the Mountain: Tracing the Hesychast... 

Fig. 3.2  Mapping the search for silence of Elder Joseph the Hesychast

  49

50 

C. Kakalis

e­ xperiential ­spatiality. While at Karoulia one can still find the extreme, deserted topography and life, the conditions in other parts such as Vigla, which used to have a similar character, have now changed. Dirt roads reach the area making them easier to approach (some hermits even have their own cars) and changing the scale of the landscape formations. The footpaths that lead to them are either partly replaced or suddenly interrupted by the dirt roads, something that changes the landscape in an intense way and compromises its hesychast dynamics.9

Hesychasm, Silence and Communal Ritual The psychosomatic transformation towards a communication with God suggested by hesychasm influences, therefore, the perception of the different qualities of the Athonite natural and aural environment. In hesychasm, repetitive (individual or communal) rituals are dynamically interconnected with silent prayer, opening to the interpretation of the stranger, something emphatically manifested in the inhabitation of the mountain of Athos.10 According to Nick Crossley, rituals include ‘bodily activity, patterned movements or postures’, the role of which becomes important in ritual as connected to the manifestation of ‘a practical grasp upon our embodied understanding of our incarnate, subjective or psychological state of potentialities (…) of both our own subjectivity in an embodied way of being-in-the-world and those of social world (…)’ (Crossley 2004, 33 & 40–47). Communal rituals are shared embodied recollections of scriptural events or previous liturgical experiences that reaffirm the identity of the community and open to their future re-actualization (Casey 1997, 238). Eastern Orthodox Christianity acknowledges the importance of the embodied experience in the sacraments, underlining the undeniable co-existence of the physical and the spiritual levels of the believer. As the theologian Kallistos Ware characteristically argues: ‘Orthodoxy rejects any attempt to diminish the materiality of the sacraments. The human person is to be seen in holistic terms, as an integral unity of soul and body, and so the sacramental worship in which we humans participate should fully involve our bodies along with our minds’ (Ware 1997,

3  In the Shadow of the Mountain: Tracing the Hesychast... 

  51

274–275). Therefore, Mount Athos opens as a dynamic field of ritual choreographies in which important theological ideas are also bodily recollected through movements, gestures and interaction with the relevant symbolic dynamics. Communal rituals taking place in the natural landscape, therefore, are processional inscriptions that interconnect the different places of the topography through the narrative of an embodied, liturgical choreography. The annual ascent to the summit of Athos regards a ritual inhabitation of the landscape the happening of which is directly connected to the theological connotations of the mountain and its arduous nature. Most of the people participating in it believe that this pilgrimage is a great blessing, attributing to the landscape the sacred dynamics of the Transfiguration: ‘It is the third time I am climbing up and I need to keep focused and dedicated to what is happening here. I walk and I say the Jesus Prayer rhythmically. Isn’t it like we are all becoming one body as we gradually go up for the all-night vigils?’11 The service is the main phase of the pilgrimage, which reaches its peak at the Holy Communion. The all-­ night vigils are not limited to inside the four walls of the small church. The surrounding landscape takes on worshipping qualities; the pilgrims (monks and visitors) standing outside are participating in the liturgy even if they cannot hear or watch the event happening inside. This experience of worshipping in the landscape is further enhanced by the litany. The rocky landscape opens an arena for pilgrims walking, praying and waiting to receive the Holy Communion. Either sleeping, because of bodily tiredness, or carefully following the Liturgy in the cold night, they all eventually stand in the queue to receive the Holy Gifts and fulfil the aim of their pilgrimage. The architecture of the shelter and the church is organically combined with the natural landscape through the rituals testifying to the worshipful aspects of the Athonite desert. Climbing a mountain, therefore, involves arduous walking along the ‘difficult line’ of the path that leads to the peak. It is an almost ‘vertical walk’, to use Rebecca Solnit’s term, that requires physical strength combined with hope and anticipation in order to reach the destination (Solnit 2000, 133). As Anja Karina-Nydal suggests in her chapter, the dynamics of mountaineering are connected to the ‘search for the “difficult” line and the quest to master it’. This ‘line’ for Karina-Nydal ‘is simultaneously

52 

C. Kakalis

that space within which the activity of climbing takes place, as well as that space which climbers represent graphically through drawings and photographs’. Anticipation and intentionality are merged with these aspects of concrete experience to suggest the pilgrimage qualities of the mountainous Athonite landscape. The climbing up to the Shelter of the Mother of God and the ritual climbing to the peak and the Chapel of the Transfiguration assume the sacred connotations of the mountain, transforming the ‘difficult line’ to the peak into an arena of religious worship. On the other hand, silent prayer is intertwined with human and atmospheric qualities of silence, which is not a completely soundless phenomenon. It is a material condition incorporated in the experience of both architecture and the natural landscape. Besides sound and hearing, its occurrence also involves a multisensory, performative interaction with the environment as it is organically interconnected to the other phenomena taking place in it. Either human or atmospheric, silence is both a space ready to be filled and a substance filling a specific space in a meaningful way (Kakalis 2016b, 304–305). It is connected to temporality, something also enhanced in the case of hesychasm by a sense of rhythm that is produced by the recitation of the same phrase. Silence is therefore intensely performative, as another way of understanding the surrounding context and communicating with other individuals through shared prayer practices. Besides the conditions of solitude and isolation, the silence of the rough landscape of Mount Athos is also connected to the exposure of the individual to a natural atmosphere of wind, rain and sounds of the birds and the sea that is significantly different from what we usually experience in our everyday life in more urban areas. Silence is not perceived the same way in all the parts of the peninsula. In the desert, the silence is intense and even ‘unbearable’ for some outsiders (Fieldwork, September 2014). On the other hand, in a monastery silence is mixed with various sounds, creating a different aural-scape. Silence, therefore, adds to the existential qualities of the topography. It is a material condition of waiting and openness that communicates various meanings (ascetic for the Athonites, religious for the pilgrims and more profane for some other visitors). In it sounds come to consciousness and senses are fully engaged. In the hesychia of the mountain of Athos, the individual opens to the

3  In the Shadow of the Mountain: Tracing the Hesychast... 

  53

communication with the divine through silent prayer, severe ascetic life and unique pilgrimage experiences. Approaching the meaning of hesychia, the theologian Kallistos Ware thus talks about an experienced silence working at different levels, from the more external to the more inward. In particular, the hermit has to define his spatial relationship with other human beings and seclude himself in places of solitude, such as the caves and the hermitages of Mount Athos’ desert (first level: Hesychia and Solitude). The monk who is a member of a coenobitic community has the ability to depart from it and practises the silent prayer in his cell (second level: Hesychia and the spirituality of the cell). Having demarcated the outward framework of their spiritual struggles, both hermits and monks seek to ‘confine their incorporeal within their bodily house’, striving to discover ‘the ladder that leads to the Kingdom of God’ (third level: Hesychia and the ‘return into oneself ’) (Ware 2000, 89–98). These levels of hesychia illuminate the role of silence in the Athonite topography. Silence demarcates the personal sphere of the monks who prefer quiet places such as the desert. They try neither to talk nor to hear more words than necessary (Sherrard 1960, 92). The regulations of entrance to the peninsula and the long Athonite monastic tradition have led to the preservation of an untouched natural environment, which, despite having been recently wounded by uncritically executed infrastructural and building developments, is still experienced by the outsiders as something different from the world outside of it. During their stay, visitors are often forced to reconsider qualities of place, which are now lost from our contemporary lives. One of them is silence, the atmospheric experience of which enhances their explorations. A long walk in a forest, a climb to the peak of the mountain, walking along the seashore or a journey through the desert are all situations during which we can feel involved in the occurrence of silence. The silence of the natural landscape is directly linked with its tangible components and soundscape. The sound of the birds, the rustling of the leaves and the sound of water may contribute to an eventful silent interaction with Athonite nature. Natural phenomena, such as wind, rain, snow and the changes in temperature, also take part in it. Alterations in their intensity may lead either to the enhancement of solitude or to the sudden intrusion of noise.

54 

C. Kakalis

Light, darkness and shadows can be also parts of a meaningful silencescape. Walking and direct interaction with the natural landscape enhance our reading of the embodied traces of silence. It is through walking that visitors at Athos usually read the silence of the landscape as an integral component of the peninsula. Depending on their motivation, they may interpret it as a sacred/hesychast quality (usually pilgrims) or even a phenomenon with intense existential qualities.

Conclusions Mount Athos embodies, therefore, important theological ideas, such as the ones of Transfiguration and hesychasm, realized through the annual pilgrimage to its peak and the rituals happening there on the fifth and sixth of August, but also the hermetic inhabitation of its caves and steep slopes. In its hesychast performativity, silence of nature plays an important role as an atmospheric quality that contributes to the otherworldly, sacred, dynamics of the landscape and its opening as an arena for self-­ reflection and existential quests to happen. Hermits fill the pores and the paths of the landscape with silent prayer, through either cave dwelling or prayerful walking itineraries. Strangers interact with silence as bodily fatigue is combined with the natural sounds of the rough environment to create a feeling of solitude and isolation, which allows their journey to happen within the performative dynamics of the Athonite topography. Different strangers and Athonites meet on the fifth of August, walking through the silent desert to transform the mountain into a common ground of effort and worship.

Notes 1. I would like to express my gratitude to the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation for partly funding the relevant research on both doctoral and postdoctoral levels. 2. The kellion is a small monastic structure surrounded by a piece of land, directly related to one of the 20 coenobitic monasteries.

3  In the Shadow of the Mountain: Tracing the Hesychast... 

  55

3. The sketes are monastic complexes that administratively ‘belong’ to one of the 20 coenobitic monasteries, functioning partly independently. Their organization is based on the model of the lavras and the connection between a central complex of communal buildings (church, refectory, common room) and the cells spread in them. The ascetics live alone in their cell and meet at the services every Saturday and Sunday.In addition, there are also two other types of sketes: one is a skete of a coenobitc character, following the organization of a monastery; the other is about the assembly of a number of huts that do not have a core of communal buildings. Assemblies like this can be found in the Desert of Athos, like the aforementioned Karoulia, and in the Kapsala situated near the capital of Karyes, which is also known as ‘the desert of Kapsala’. 4. ‘Coenobitic’ monasticism is a monastic tradition of communal life. Etymologically the word stems from the Greek words koinos (κοινός), meaning common, and bios (βίος), meaning life. In Athos, there are 20 coenobitic monasteries that share a number of architectural principles, opening as a field for a programmed common life of work and worship. 5. Little is known about the history of the chapel and the establishment of the annual pilgrimage to the peak. The previous one was built in 1895, and it is almost certain that it had replaced a previous one as a chapel is even depicted in 1588 Pierre Belon’s map of Mount Athos and later depictions of the peninsula. For more on this map, see Della Dora (2006). 6. These observations come from the author’s discussions with visitors walking up to the peak on 18 August 2015. 7. These insights derive from fieldwork on Mount Athos in August 2015. 8. This information was gleaned during the author’s fieldwork at Mount Athos in August 2012. 9. These observations were made during the author’s August 2015 fieldwork on Mount Athos. 10. For more on this, see also Kakalis (2016a, b). 11. Pilgrim N. at the celebration of the Transfiguration. Fieldwork at Mount Athos, August 2015.

Bibliography Aimilianos. (1991). Monastic life. In P.  Stilianos (Ed.), Simonopetra  – Mount Athos. Athens: ETBA, Hellenic Industrial Development Bank.

56 

C. Kakalis

Burkert, W. (1985). Greek religion: Archaic and classical. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Burkert, W. (1985). Greek religion: Archaic and classical. Blackwell Publishing and Harvard University Press. (first edition in German: 1977). Casey, E. S. (1997). Remembering: A phenomenological study. Bloomington: The Indiana University Press. Chatzinis, G. (1963). The secret of Mount Athos. Nea Estia  – Mount Athos, 132–133. Chryssavgis, J. (2004). John Climacus – From the Egyptian desert to the Sinaite mountain. London: Ashgate. Crossley, N. (2004). Ritual, body technique and (inter)subjectivity. In K.  Schilbrack (Ed.), Thinking through rituals. Philosophical perspectives (pp. 31–51). New York: Routledge. Della Dora, V. (2006). Pre-linnaean taxonomies, Edenic visions and the cosmographic dream: Pierre Belon’s mapping of Mount Athos. The Griffon, 8, 47–61. Della Dora, V. (2011). Anti-landscapes: Caves and apophasis in the Christian East. Environment and Planning D: Place and Society, 29(5), 761–779. Elder Josef from Vatopaid. (2008). Ο Γέροντας Ιωσήφ ο Ησυχαστής [Elder Josef the Hesychast]. Mount Athos: The Holy Monastery of Vatopaidi. Eliade, M. (1952). Images and symbols: Studies in religious symbolism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Evdokimof, P. (1965). Orthodoxy. Athens: Rigopoulos Editions. Kakalis, C. (2016a). Silence and communal ritual in an Athonian coenobitic monastery. In A. Pérez-Gómez & S. Parcell (Eds.), Chora 7: Intervals in the philosophy of architecture (pp. 163–189). Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Kakalis, C. (2016b). Silence, stillness and the international competition for the Arvo Pärt Centre. Architecture and Culture, 4(2), 293–314. Kotoulas, D. (1991). The natural environment. In P.  Stilianos (Ed.), Simonopetra – Mount Athos (pp. 47–56). Athens: ETBA, Hellenic Industrial Development Bank. Kyrou, D. (2001). Ascending towards the peak of Mount Athos. Poligiros: Perfecture of Chalcidiki. Langdon, M.  K. (2000). Mountains in Greek religion. The Classical World, 93(5), 461–470. Lossky, V. (1991). The mystical theology of the Eastern Church. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. Ltd.

3  In the Shadow of the Mountain: Tracing the Hesychast... 

  57

Lossky, V. (1991). The mystical theology of the eastern church. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. Ltd. (First Publication: 1957). Louth, A. (1999). Maximus the Confessor. New York: Routledge. Louth, A. (2001). Denys the Areopagite. London: Continuum. Merrill, C. (2016). Things of the hidden god: Journey to the Holy Mountain. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers. Meyendorff, J.  (1998). St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox spirituality (trans: Fiske, A.). New York: St. Valdimir’s Seminary Press. Papachrysanthou, D. (1992). Ο Αθωνικός Μοναχισμός  – Αρχές και Οργάνωση [Athonian monasticism  – Origins and organization]. Αθήνα/ Athens: Μορφωτικό Ίδρυμα της Εθνικής Τράπεζας της Ελλάδος. Payne, D. P. (2007). The revival of political Hesychasm in Greek Orthodox thought: A study of the Hesychast basis of the thought of John S. Romanides and Christos Yannaras. PhD thesis, Institute of Church – State studies, Baylor University. https://baylor-ir.tdl.org/baylor-ir/bitstream/handle/2104/4847/daniel_ payne_phd.pdf. Accessed 7 July 2017. Sherrard, P. (1960). The mountain of silence. London: Oxford University Press. Sidiropoulos, G. (2000). Mount Athos: References to its human geography. Athens: Kastaniotis Editions. Solnit, R. (2000). Wanderlust: A history of walking. New York: Penguin Books. Speake, G. (2002). Mount Athos: Renewal in paradise. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Stergioulis, V. (2005). All-night vigils at the peak of Mount Athos. Larisa: Private Publication. Stilianos, P. (Ed). (1991). Monastic life. In Simonopetra – Mount Athos. Athens: ETBA, Hellenic Industrial Development Bank. Ware, T. (1997). The Orthodox Church. Suffolk: Penguin Books. Ware, K. (2000). The inner kingdom. New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

4 Reading Mountains: Performative Visual Language in Tenth-Century Northern Iberian Monastic Communities Emily Goetsch

Introduction This chapter will examine medieval images and text to suggest that mountain environments were essential features of performative experience in tenth-century Iberia. The impact of and response to the mountainous environment that was newly inhabited by Christian groups who migrated from the Muslim-ruled South has not previously been examined in depth, though a single contemporary source known as the Chronicle of 754 documents the invasion, specifically referencing the change in topography. This document explains that the Muslim leader Musa: devastated not only Hispania Ulterior, but Hispania Citerior up to and beyond the ancient and once flourishing city of Zaragoza, which was now, by the judgment of God, openly exposed to the sword, famine and captivity. … While he terrorized everyone … some of the cities that remained

E. Goetsch (*) University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland

© The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3_4

59

60 

E. Goetsch

sued for peace under duress and, after persuading and mocking them with a certain craftiness, the Saracens granted their requests without delay. When the citizens subsequently rejected what they had been forced to accept out of fear and terror, they tried to flee to the mountains where they risked hunger and various forms of death. (Baxter Wolf 2011, 43)

While the reliability of and perspective embraced in the Chronicle of 754 has drawn criticism from scholars in the past, the reference to fleeing to the mountains not only matches up with the establishment and revival of Christian communities in northern Iberia after Muslim invasion in 711, but also calls direct attention to mountains as an impactful feature of the Christian experience within Muslim-ruled Iberia. With the aim of analysing how mountains were understood and integrated into the Iberian Christian mindset, this chapter will examine key illustrations from the most prominent Mozarabic manuscript tradition— Beatus of Liébana’s illustrated Commentary on the Apocalypse. It will be argued that the notable inclusion of mountain imagery in the earliest, tenth-century editions of the Beatus manuscripts functioned as a visual language, which translated and expressed the Christian condition in northern Iberia in relation to biblical events, making mountain imagery a viable way of articulating performed experiences. More specifically, analysis of the images and relevant texts will show that Iberian Christians considered themselves to be living out or performing biblical situations, which occurred in mountain regions and the holy city of Jerusalem—the city upon a hill. By regarding their circumstances in the mountains as a re-enactment of biblical scenarios, the tenth-century monastic communities creating and using these manuscripts were able to contextualize, rationalize and explain the hardships they incurred.

 ountain Language, Materiality M and Representation In order to understand and contextualize the linguistic function of mountain imagery in the Beatus illustrations, it is necessary to examine how mountains were integrated into Iberian literature as a way of

4  Reading Mountains: Performative Visual Language... 

  61

expressing specific ideals, qualities and conditions. Prior to Muslim invasion, a range of sources discussed mountains with reverential language and ­importance. For example, Isidore’s prologue to the ‘History of the Kings of the Goths’, which is entitled, ‘In Praise of Spain’, describes the abundance of Spain’s ‘mountains full of trees’ and the ‘rock, shining in the shadowy depths of the mountains, that is aflame with radiance like the sun’ (Isidore 2011, 67–68). After Muslim invasion, the northern mountain ranges are repeatedly referenced in terms of their challenging terrain and protective capacities. For example, the Chronicle of 754 offers instances of this, as it describes how Abd alRahman was forced to ‘cut through the rocky mountains of the Basques’ in order to invade Frankish lands, a manoeuvre which ultimately led to his defeat at the hands of Charles Martel and the European army. This source also tells of Abd al-Malik’s need to ‘subdue the inhabitants of the Pyrenean mountains’, suggesting that groups were identified because of their location and the ways in which they used the mountains to their advantage (Baxter Wolf 2011, 116–118). Mountains also played a significant role in foundation stories of the region and in accounts of significant Christian victories over Muslim forces. The Chronicle of Alfonso III of Asturias, which was written in 883, recounts how the celebrated figure of Pelayo, who is credited with founding the Kingdom of Asturias, bravely evaded Muslim capture by climbing deep into the mountains and up Mount Asueva, where he ‘took refuge in a cave on a hillside which he knew to be safe’ (Baxter Wolf 2011, 134). While the following explanation oversimplifies the story, Pelayo’s faith and adherence to the Christian God allowed him to fend off an army of 185,000 Muslim soldiers and adverse Christian groups from his position in the mountains. After Pelayo declared his firm belief in Christianity, God shook the mountains, which launched Pelayo’s adversaries into the river and then crushed them. Thus, in this capacity, mountains played an active role in accounts of Christian victory over Muslims and also facilitated the development of heroic lore surrounding this celebrated northern Iberian founder. The small selection of descriptions provided above begins to suggest the ways in which mountains became active elements in texts where Iberian Christian interacted with their Muslim neighbours and p ­ erformed great

62 

E. Goetsch

feats to enhance and preserve the Christian cause. Iberian Christians integrated aspects of their new geographical placement on the peninsula into these texts as a way of demonstrating how they related to their Muslim neighbours and the global Christian community. Provided that it is possible to glean an understanding of Iberian ideas related to identity, history and security through the specific inclusion of mountains in texts, it is worth examining how images of mountains were used to demonstrate the ways in which Iberian Christians conceived of themselves, their experiences and other communities. As will be argued throughout the rest of this section, images of mountains formed part of a visual language, articulating, contextualizing and explaining circumstances on the Iberian Peninsula, particularly in relation to living out or performing Christian narratives. As mentioned in the introductory section, analysis in this chapter will draw on prominent illustrations from manuscripts of Beatus of Liébana’s Commentary on the Apocalypse. The Beatus manuscripts are particularly appropriate for this discussion as they were produced prolifically over the course of tenth to thirteenth centuries, becoming more prominent than even illustrated manuscripts of the Bible in Iberia during this time (Williams 1977, 24). This long period and frequency of production, in tandem with the extensive nature of their illustrative programme, offer the potential for more consistent analysis, which cannot be achieved by studying disparately produced works. In essence, examining the illustrative features included across several manuscripts, which are temporally and structurally similar, offers the opportunity to see repeated and emphasized messages, patterns that cannot be gleaned from exploring more isolated works. Furthermore, the earliest extant manuscripts— those dating from the tenth century—provide evidence of how Iberian Christians understood and responded to their physical environs during the Golden Age of Muslim rule in Iberia, which lasted to the end of the tenth century. By focusing on text and image from this period, the analysis that follows can provide insight into the Christian perspective during the time in which Christian communities were perhaps most challenged by Muslim presence. More specifically, this chapter will focus on the Mappaemundi from the four most complete, early Beatus manuscripts, which include the Morgan, Valladolid, Girona and Urgell Beatus manuscripts (see Fig. 4.1

4  Reading Mountains: Performative Visual Language... 

  63

Fig. 4.1  Mappamundi from the Girona Beatus. Catedral de Girona, Num. Inv. 7(11), ff. 54v–55r. Girona Cathedral Chapter—all rights reserved

for an example of these images). These representations are significant within cartographic history as they are considered to form their own ­distinct tradition and feature elements, which separate them from other early cartographic traditions. Within these works, the importance of these images is indicated through their prominent placement within the illustrative programme. As the first double-page scenes, the maps are arresting representations of the world, which are particularly striking as one progresses through the manuscript due to the considerably smaller size of the preceding images and the numerous pages of image-free text which lead up to the maps.1 Additionally, within the context of the Beatus narrative, the Mappaemundi are used to establish a key framework, which structures the rest of the text and illustrative programme. Occurring in the Prologue to the Second Book of the Commentary, which seeks to define the church and all opposition to it, the maps represent the Mission of the Apostles

64 

E. Goetsch

and, significantly, the image is specifically referenced in the text,2 thereby visually and textually asserting the extent of the church on earth. In the text, the church is juxtaposed against the synagogue, which is taken to mean all opposition to the church; the Commentary text explains that the prologue was written ‘concerning the Church and the Synagogue so that you, O Reader, may know in the fullest way what their respective characteristics are and who may be regarded as dwelling in each’ (Beatus 2000, 403). These themes of the good and the heretical permeate the text and illustrative programmes of these manuscripts, and thus the maps are central to establishing the concepts and dichotomies which structure the narrative of this important text and the affiliated images. Furthermore, the prominent placement, structure, size and context of these scenes indicate that they were developed to deliver ideas and themes, which were important to their artists and patrons. Thus, as the Mappaemundi assume a prominent role in the expression of ideas developed throughout the commentary text, the details of these visual representations become essential to articulating and delivering ideas about the Church and its status. Certainly, this instructive element is not unique to the Beatus maps. It almost goes without saying that scholars of cartography, and map readers generally, widely accept that form, colour, line, pattern and spatial relationships communicate ideas and messages. Similar to the ways in which written and spoken languages use words to articulate meaning, the graphic devices or symbols on a map become the words within each cartographic phrase, facilitating the transmission of ideas to viewers (Robinson et al. 1978, 2–3). While interest in cartosemiotics and the communicative potential of maps has flourished over the last 10 to 15 years, studies have focused on contemporary maps and the most effective ways of expressing spatial and geographic information through new media and to new audiences with a greater breadth of technological knowledge and understanding.3 Despite this general focus on the communicative potential of maps today, this linguistic conception of and approach to cartography is a fruitful way of considering the symbols, forms and shapes employed in early map imagery which has not been fully explored; the consideration of the symbols and signs on the Beatus maps as a language in their own right opens up

4  Reading Mountains: Performative Visual Language... 

  65

the possibility of new interpretations of Iberian Christian understanding. As the French linguist Antoine Meillet wrote, ‘Every language expresses whatever is necessary for the society of which it is an organ’ (Ortega y Gasset 1992, 102). As the rest of this chapter will argue, in the case of the Beatus maps, which were prominently placed and incorporated into this highly popular manuscript tradition of tenth-century Iberia, the symbols and forms deliberately included on these large representations of the Christian landscape served as a way of explaining and rectifying the experiences of Christian communities in Northern Iberia during this period. As Octavio Paz wrote, ‘Language has become a landscape, and that landscape, in turn, is a creation, the metaphor of a nation or of an individual, a verbal topography that communicates fully, that translates fully’ (Paz 1992, 157). By analysing the forms included on these tenth-century landscapes as a cartographic linguistic system, this chapter will translate the articulated symbols in the context of the northern Iberian communities producing these manuscripts, suggesting that the features of the map point to an understanding of performed biblical experiences.

Interpretation and Performance Admittedly, and despite the significance of the maps within these works, the iconography included on the tenth-century mappaemundi is relatively sparse. Mountains, rivers, a small depiction of Adam and Eve in paradise, some vegetation and text are shown on the represented earth, though much of the page is left empty. While this could be one reason that so little attention has been paid to the features of these maps, the lack of extensive illustration allows the images that are depicted, such as the mountains, to be accentuated. Aside from the oceanic borders in the Morgan, Valladolid and Girona images, which are blue in colour and populated with fish and boats, the background of the interiors of these images have largely been left blank. As such, the mountains, rivers and the image of Eden in the top, easterly regions, dominate the scenes, forming pronounced and specific statements against the blank parchment of the represented earth.

66 

E. Goetsch

This lack of additional ornamentation and detail is striking when compared to other early medieval maps and later Beatus maps, which are similarly shaped and formatted, though filled with significantly more illustration and text. For example, the sixth-century Cosmas world map (Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat.gr. 699, folio 40v) is rectangular in shape, with a tan border. The interior of the map features blue ocean and tan earth in the centre, which renders the backdrops of the tenth-century Beatus maps strikingly bare in comparison. The scarcity of colour and detail in the Beatus scenes is further accentuated when they are compared to the eighth-century Vatican world map, which is found in a volume of Isidore’s Etymologies (Fig. 4.2). While this image lacks the solid coverage of the painted background seen in the Cosmas map, the illustrated rivers, islands cities and text almost entirely fill the interior of the earth. Similarly, non-western maps produced

Fig. 4.2  Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS.  Lat. 6018, folios 63v–64r. ©Vatican Library

4  Reading Mountains: Performative Visual Language... 

  67

around the same time also combine colour, detailed depictions of landmasses and text, which fill the interior of the map, exhibiting considerable detail and use of colour that is not evident in the Beatus Mappaemundi. For example, the Balkhi School world map seen in Fig. 4.3 presents a rich blue ocean surrounding islands and large blocks of land, which include red mountain ranges and considerable amounts of Arabic text. Thus again, the empty space included on the Beatus maps is significant when compared to the detailed images found in medieval cartographic images from both western and relevant non-western traditions. Notably, later Beatus mappaemundi are also much more elaborate and ornamental than the tenth-century images. When compared to the world maps from the eleventh-century Osma and Saint-Sever Beatus manuscripts and the late twelfth-century Beatus of Navarre, among others, the tenth-century maps are decidedly less colourful and less detailed, ­featuring fewer structures and fewer figures. Both the Osma Beatus map (Burgo de

Fig. 4.3  Oxford, Bodleian, MS Laud. Or. 317, folios 10v–11r

68 

E. Goetsch

Osma, Archivo de la Catedral, Cod. 1, folios 34v–35r) and the Saint-­ Sever Beatus map (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS lat. 8878, folios 44v–45r) present considerably more detail than is found in the earlier Beatus images. Rivers and lakes are presented in a deep blue colour, numerous buildings and mountain ranges stretch across the represented earth and, in the case of the Osma Beatus, busts of the apostles are included on the map as well. While the earth is still presented as blank parchment on these images, considerably more details and images are presented on these images, drawing less specific attention to any one feature. The images found on the interior of the Beatus of Navarre map (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, nouv. Acq. Lat. 1366, ff. 24v–25r; Fig. 4.4) are even further developed, with comparatively little blank parchment left on the interior. Here, light blue rivers, orange and brown mountains and a wealth of architectural renderings dominate the map. While mountain

Fig. 4.4  Beatus of Navarre map. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, nouv. Acq. Lat. 1366, ff. 24v–25r. Bibliothèque nationale de France

4  Reading Mountains: Performative Visual Language... 

  69

ranges are shown, they are visually overtaken by brightly coloured rivers that weave their way through an explosion of architectural renderings, which fill the majority of the map. In this twelfth-century image, the colours, types of depictions and suggested movement of the waterways create a busy and eccentric image, which contrasts with the comparatively static representations of mountains and rivers of the tenth-century maps. As the tenth-century Beatus images are so much less detailed than these other cartographic images, it would seem that the early Beatus maps were deliberately developed to emphasize features, such as the mountains, which contrast with the emptiness of the blank parchment background. The visual emphasis placed on these specifically developed elements allows them to pictorially convey ideas and key messages, thereby acting as a linguistic system to translate the priorities and beliefs of the Iberian Christian communities producing the manuscripts. That mountains are visually emphasized within this system of signifiers is important, though, on some level, not entirely surprising. In one sense, these are terrestrial images and the presentation of geological features, such as mountains, allows viewers to identify the images as earthly ­representations. Perhaps more significantly, however, mountains were extremely popular tropes in both scripture and in patristic writings. For example, God and his protection are frequently compared to mountains, as evidenced in Psalm 125:1–2, which declares: ‘They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Sion: he shall not be moved forever that dwelleth in Jerusalem. Mountains are round about his people from henceforth now and for ever.’ Mountains also signalled Christian power and authority throughout the world, which is evidenced in Isaiah 2: ‘In the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills and all nations shall flow unto it.’ In scripture, mountains also attest to the importance of belief in the faith, as is suggested through Matthew 17:19: ‘Jesus said to them … For, amen I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, Remove from hence hither, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible for you.’ While these excerpts in no way form a comprehensive account of the references to mountains that are found in

70 

E. Goetsch

biblical and patristic texts, they do suggest the prevalence of mountains in Christian doctrine, demonstrating that these geological forms were used to promote certain concepts and express Christian ideals. In terms of the Beatus Mappaemundi, another common biblical association with mountains is particularly important—the connection between mountains and the apostles. As mentioned earlier, the maps were included in the text as an image of the Mission of the Apostles and therefore represent the extent of the earthly Church, which was founded through the work of the apostles who evangelized the world. Within the context of these manuscripts, the maps occur next to a list of the apostles and the regions they evangelized, and are actually referenced at the end of that list: ‘And how [the Apostle] reap with their sickles these grains of seed throughout the field of this world, which the prophets prepared, the following picture shows’ (Edson 1999, 148). This link between the mountains and the apostles is explored in detail in a number of texts, including, for example, John’s Gospel and associated exegesis written by Gregory and Augustine (Gregory the Great 1990, 246; Augustine 1988, 44–45). While these texts lend insight into the Christian understanding of mountains and the apostles, this discussion will focus on references to these topics from the Psalms, which formed a direct and important part of the Mozarabic liturgy. Unlike other rites where the recitation of the Psalms was regularly distributed throughout the week or, in some cases, a single day, the Mozarabic Rite lacks a fixed structure. Thus, while the Psalms are introduced into the liturgy in varying orders and with varying degrees of frequency, they were and are central to the performance of the Mozarabic liturgy. One prominent mountain reference occurs in Psalm 45, which states: Unto the end, for the sons of Core, for the hidden. Our God is our refuge and strength: a helper in troubles which have found us exceedingly. Therefore we will not fear, when the earth shall be troubled; and the mountains shall be removed into the heart of the sea. Their waters roared and were troubled: the mountains were troubled with his strength. The stream of the river maketh the city of God joyful: the most high hath sanctified his own tabernacle.

4  Reading Mountains: Performative Visual Language... 

  71

When analysing this passage, Augustine explained when the ‘earth shall be confounded … It shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord shall be manifest’ and furthermore: this mountain placed above other mountains; because the Apostles also are mountains, supporting this Mountain (my italics). Therefore followest, ‘In the last days the Mountain of the Lord shall be manifest, established in the top of the mountains.’ Therefore passeth It tops of all mountains, and on the top of all mountains is It placed; because the mountains are preaching The mountain. (Augustine 1857, Vol. 2, 265)

Cassiodorus also detailed the relationship between the apostles and mountains when he commented on the section of Psalm 45 that reads, ‘And the mountains shall be removed into the heart of the sea’. He wrote: ‘This happened at the moment when the mountains, in other words, the apostles, abandoned the unbelieving Jews and crossed over into the heart of the sea, that is, to preach to the Gentiles’ (Cassiodorus 1990, Vol. I, 454). Cassiodorus then continued, ‘We note that following the example of these spokesmen, the mountains jutting out with their holy peak and most secure in the firmness of their faith, were removed to the heart of the sea, that is, to instil belief in all nations’ (Ibid., 454). Provided this direct connection between the apostles and mountains, the distribution of mountains across the rectangular images of the Beatus Mappaemundi would seem to represent the apostles themselves, who also were dispersed throughout the world in order to spread the faith.4 This visual suggestion of preaching Christianity and behaving or performing in the way of the apostles would have been particularly relevant for Christian communities in northern Iberia, whose population and regional control were compromised by Muslim rule in the South. While much has been made of the relatively copasetic relationship between Christians and Muslims in the South, the northern Christian regions were essentially frontier zones during the ninth and tenth centuries. Texts such as the Chronicle of 754 and the Chronicle of Alfonso III, which was written in the early tenth century, recount a number of the battles, skirmishes and displays of military and political prowess that occurred between Muslims and Christians during this period, describing, as was referenced earlier,

72 

E. Goetsch

the ‘refugees’ that fled ‘to the mountains where they risked various forms of death’ and hardship (Baxter Wolf 2011, 43, 54 and 134). In addition to military insecurity, Muslim rule enforced cultural and social restrictions on Christian communities, which included high taxes, marriage restrictions and limitations on worship. For example, the Chronicle of 754 explains that in 721, the Muslim leader Anbasah ‘burdened the Christians by doubling their taxes’ (Baxter Wolf 2011, 113) and that in 723, Walid was ‘seized with greed and a greater collection of money was made, east and west, by the generals he sent out than has been gathered by any king at any time before him’ (Baxter Wolf 2011, 114). The implications of these restrictions are evidenced in a number of ways, including through conversion rates to Islam on the Peninsula, which are estimated to have peaked in the tenth century; Richard Bulliet’s study projected that the conversion in Spain peaked around the year 913, just prior to the creation of the manuscripts discussed here (Bulliet 1979, 117). This increase in conversions during the tenth century suggests that there was some degree of pressure on Christian communities to maintain their population numbers. More broadly, the production of these four manuscripts coincides with the Golden Age of the Córdoban Caliphate, which saw tremendous expansion and cultural development during the tenth century. With the long reign of Abd al-Rahman III (912–961) came a period of great Muslim organization, development and success on the Peninsula, which lasted throughout the tenth century. Assuming the title of caliph and asserting his dominion over spiritual and worldly domains, Abd al-­ Rahman III inspired a sense of loyalty in his subjects, bringing together the diverse but thriving population and establishing Cordoba as a cultural and commercial centre. While Abd al-Rahman did not destroy the Christian states in the North, there was little opportunity for Christians to challenge the Muslim presence, let alone drive Islam from Iberia. The combination of sovereign authority in al-Andalus and political strife within Asturias brought about by a series of unsuccessful and incompetent rulers contributed to an inauspicious century for Christian communities inhabiting the northern Iberian mountains (O’Callaghan 1975, 120–126).

4  Reading Mountains: Performative Visual Language... 

  73

Thus, during a time of great challenge, these representations of mountains, with their link to the Mission of the Apostles and the environment surrounding these Christian communities, would have expressed the benefits of behaving in the way of the apostles by preaching Christianity and emphasized the benefits of endurance, protection and triumph that come with the faith. These images would have served not only as messages of reassurance in the stability of Christian life and practice, visually countering the threats of dominance, conversion and invasion brought about by Muslim rule, but also would have encouraged acting in the manner of the apostles, figures which took the form of the mountainous environs of northern Iberia. The significance of the apostles and these messages of an enduring faith are made increasingly apparent in later editions of the manuscripts where images of the apostles were included. In the Las Huelgas Beatus, a full-page illustration just before the maps is devoted to the images of the apostles. Additionally, in the Osma Beatus busts of the apostles are placed on the map in relation to the areas that they evangelized. With nimbused heads set atop a pedestal of sorts, these busts resemble the shape of the mountains included on the earlier works and fill the spaces on the map which had previously occupied by the mountain representations. Thus, the link between the mountains and the apostles is further extended within the Beatus tradition, more directly promoting the actions of the apostles and Christian dominance, which was brought about by the Mission of the Apostles. In addition to the Mission of the Apostles, other Christological associations with mountains would have contributed to the ways in which these monastic communities understood and interpreted their circumstances. More specifically, Christ declares in the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5:14: ‘You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.’ This reference and the exegesis on this verse suggest the positive associations with the concept of a city upon a hill. More specifically, Augustine explains that this city is ‘founded upon a singularly great holiness, which is signified by the very mountain whereon the Lord spoke’ (Augustine 1848, 25). These biblical and exegetical endorsements of existing in mountainous regions established a positive precedent of

74 

E. Goetsch

inhabiting mountains, which could be adopted and emulated by the Iberian Christian communities. More specifically, however, the city on the hill referenced in the Sermon on the Mount was and is generally considered to be Jerusalem. Psalm 121:2–3 explains, ‘Jerusalem, which is built as a city, which is compact together. For thither did the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord: the testimony of Israel, to praise the name of the Lord.’ This act of climbing up the hill to this lofty city was central to the concepts associated with the ‘city on the hill’ and was actively embraced in medieval practice. In one sense, this ascension could be performed through contemplation, which is developed through Psalms 120–134, also known as the ‘Songs of Ascent’ or the ‘Gradual Psalms’. Within this series, the early Psalms introduce themes of strife and trouble in this life and progress towards ideas of contemplation in the latter part of the series (Barrie 2010, 105–107). Towards the end of the series of Psalms, when contemplation and Jerusalem are reached, Psalm 132 acknowledges ‘Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity’. In his Commentary on Psalm 132, Augustine wrote: For these same words of the Psalter, this sweet sound, that honeyed melody, as well of the mind as of the hymn, did even beget the monasteries. By this sound were stirred up the brethren who longed to dwell together. This verse was their trumpet. It sounded throughout the whole earth, and they who had been divided were gathered together. (Augustine 1857, Vol. 1, 116)

Augustine continued by explaining that because the Psalm acknowledged, ‘“Behold, how good and how pleasant is it, that brethren should dwell together in one”, why then should we not call Monks so? … They … live together as to make one man, so that they really possess what is written, one mind and one heart, many bodies’ (Augustine 1857, Vol. 1, 116). For the monastic communities in the northern Iberian mountains, this notion of building and existing in a city upon a hill would have been uniting and important. By drawing parallels between their communities and Jerusalem, these groups of Iberian Christians could promote their own status in line with the sacred city, constructing a pious identity by

4  Reading Mountains: Performative Visual Language... 

  75

performing acts of literal and spiritual ascension associated with the narrative of the city upon a hill. In this sense, mountains became a part of the performative experience of these monastic communities, allowing them to assert their importance within Christendom as an entity in line with Jerusalem and justifying the hardships that came with the move into the mountains and Islamic rule. This connection between the monastic communities in Iberia and Jerusalem extends beyond these theological links, as Jerusalem was also under Muslim rule during the tenth century. Muslim forces first took Jerusalem in 638, maintaining control until 1099, when the crusaders captured they city. During this period the same sort of taxes and restrictions on worship, which spurred Iberian Christians to migrate to the mountains, were enforced in Jerusalem (Gil 2002, 101–120). Throughout the more than 400 years of Muslim rule in Jerusalem, numerous churches were damaged or destroyed; surprise attacks, murders and robberies were carried out on Christians by Muslim villagers; priests and monks were harassed; and heavy taxes were levied on churches and monasteries (Prawer and Ben-Shammai 1996, 139–142). As a result of persecution and restrictions, significant emigration from Jerusalem to Cyprus, southern Anatolia and Constantinople began in the ninth century (Prawer and Ben-Shammai 1996, 141–143), again paralleling the experience of Christians in Iberia at that time. Furthermore, the Christians that remained in Jerusalem underwent a period of Arabicization or Islamicization, which saw Christian communities embrace Arabic language and text, merging traditions in a way that was similar to the cultural fusion occurring in al-Andalus. Thus, in addition to referencing instances of biblical hardships to justify their own position on the Peninsula, Iberian Christians also used mountains to forge links between their circumstances and the Muslim occupation in the tenth century and the experiences of those in other realms of Christendom at the same time. By referencing Jerusalem in particular, Iberian Christians created ties between their small and relatively new communities to the most important and holy of cities, further legitimizing their own beliefs and practices through such comparisons. Thus, the prominent inclusion of mountains on the world maps from the tenth-century Beatus manuscripts was not only a way of illustrating

76 

E. Goetsch

and encouraging behaviour similar to that of the apostolic mission, which is prominently addressed in the text of the Beatus Commentary. These scenes also draw attention to Christological interpretations of mountains, creating links between mountainous terrains across Christendom. Through these correlations, members of the Iberian monastic communities could contextualize their existence and rationalize their circumstances in relation to Jerusalem, the city upon the hill, whose faithful believers endured various forms of captivity and persecution to eventually be rewarded with God’s grace. For these communities, these ties would have provided reassurance of God’s favour for the Church, suggesting how maintaining and promoting the Christian faith in spite of adversity would help to ensure favour at judgement.

Conclusions As has been suggested throughout this chapter, the commonly overlooked, yet deliberate, features included on the Beatus Mappaemundi are significant in the way that they form a cartographic language, relaying concepts and ideas which were central to not only the Christian faith, but also to the specific practices and experiences of the communities creating the manuscripts. The ‘reading’ of these maps through representations such as the mountains reveals the ideals of Christian endurance, strength and evangelism, providing not only reassurance for the communities newly inhabiting the mountains in the tenth century, but also drawing connections between the Christian situation in Northern Iberia to biblical lessons and events or situations within Christendom. This way of analysing these cartographic symbols offers a new approach to understanding how Christians and Muslims related to one another, which can be extended to the other illustrations and details. Additionally, however, the suggestion that these tenth-century Christian communities likened themselves to the holy City upon the Hill is important, as such references and parallels were sustained through to the end of the Reconquista, as Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella brought ‘an upsurge in political prophecy and messianism’ with them as they ascended their thrones (Edwards 2000, 224). Aragonese poetry

4  Reading Mountains: Performative Visual Language... 

  77

touted Ferdinand to be the ruler of the world even before he was known outside of Sicily, and, in 1486, Rodrigo Ponce de León asserted that he had been told by ‘a very knowledgeable man and Catholic Christian’ that Ferdinand of Aragon would succeed in running the Muslims out of Spain, conquering all of Africa, eliminating Islam and reconquering Jerusalem (Edwards 2000, 224). Motivated by this aim of taking Jerusalem back into Christian hands, eliminating Muslim forces there and demonstrating the weakness of Judaism, Ferdinand and Isabella invested heavily in exploration through the likes of figures such as Christopher Columbus, for example, to reassert Christian control in the Holy Land (Edwards 2000, 224). Therefore, the suggestion that Iberian Christian communities were performing or living out an experience on par with Jerusalem during the tenth-century indicates that these m ­ onastic communities initiated a prophetic way of understanding Iberian Christianity, which lasted for hundreds of years, leading into the Early Modern period. This reading of the Beatus images lends further significance to the manuscripts as a whole, offering perhaps a stronger link to the ideas of the Reconquista than has previously been suggested. Thus, despite their limited presence in earlier studies of medieval Christian Iberia, mountains played an important role in the positioning of Christian communities, and in the ways they behaved, expressed and considered themselves. While this discussion forms only an initial examination of such themes, it is hoped that future studies will continue to explore the impact of geography on performative experiences and how they were communicated in both text and image.

Notes 1. In the Morgan Beatus, there are 12 interrupted pages of text between the world map and the preceding image of the Commission to Write, which is vertical and single page. The Valladolid Beatus features 32 text pages between the map and the same preceding image, while the Girona Beatus has 35 pages between those two images. 2. The Beatus text references the map image, explaining: ‘This is the Church extending throughout the whole earthly globe. This is the holy and elect

78 

E. Goetsch

seed, the regal priesthood, that was sown over the whole world. They were few, but select. The picture appended to the text more clearly illustrates the grains sown in the field of this world, that the prophets prepared and sowed there’ (Beatus 2000, 406). This explicit mention of the map suggests the importance of the image from the beginnings of the Beatus tradition. 3. For more on Cartosemiotics and the study of cartographic languages, see Jānis Štrauhmanis, ‘Thematic Cartography and Cartosemiotics: Common and Distinctive Features’, Scientific Journal of RCU, 8 (2012): pp. 25–29; Alexander Kent and Peter Vujakovic, ‘Cartographic Language: Towards a New Paradigm for Understanding Topographic Maps’, Cartographic Journal 48/1 (2011): pp. 21–40; and Arthur Wolodtschenko, ‘Cartography and Cartosemiotics: Conception Vision’, Journal of the Japan Cartographers Associations 43/2 (2005): pp. 17–19. 4. Both Augustine and Cassiodorus were read widely in medieval Iberia. This is evidenced in the library inventories from Oviedo, Burgo de Osma, Oña, Ripoll and Burgos, as well as by extant illustrated manuscripts such as Cassiodorus’ Commentary on the Psalms, Madrid, R.A.H., 8, which was produced in the tenth century.

Bibliography Augustine. (1848–1857). Expositions on the book on Psalms. London: F. and J. Rivington. Augustine. (1988). St. Augustine: Tractates on the Gospel of John, The fathers of the Church series (Vols. 78, 79, 88, 90, and 92) (trans: Rettig, J.W.). Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Barrie, T. (2010). The sacred in-between: The mediating roles of architecture. Oxon: Routledge. Baxter Wolf, K. (Trans.). (2011). Conquerors and chroniclers of early medieval Spain. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Beatus. 2000. Apocalipsis (pp.  371–569) (trans: Freeman, L.G.). Valencia: Scriptorium. Bulliet, R. (1979). Conversion to Islam in the medieval period: An essay in quantitative history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cassiodorus. (1990–1991). Explanation of the psalms (trans: Walsh, P.G.). New York: Paulist Press.

4  Reading Mountains: Performative Visual Language... 

  79

Collins, R. (2004). Visigothic Spain 409–711. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Edson, E. (1999). Mapping time and space: How medieval mapmakers view their world. London: British Library. Edwards, J. (2000). The Spain of the Catholic monarchs. Oxford: Blackwell. Gil, C.  J. A. (2002). El Beato de Valladolid. Contribución al Estudio de sus Miniaturas. In El Beato de la Universidad de Valladolid (pp. 93–195). Madrid: Colección Scriptorium. Gregory the Great. (1990). Forty gospel homilies (trans: Hurst, D.). Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications. Isidore. (2011). History of the kings of the Goths. In Conquerors and chroniclers of early medieval Spain (pp.  10–22)(trans: Kenneth Baxter Wolf, K.). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. O’Callaghan, J.  F. (1975). A history of medieval Spain. London: Cornell University Press. Ortega y Gasset, J. (1992). The misery and splendor of translation. In R. Schulte & J. Biguenet (Eds.), Theories of translation: An anthology of essays from Dryden to Derrida (pp. 93–112). London: University of Chicago Press. Paz, O. (1992). Translation: Literature and letters. In R. Schulte & J. Biguenet (Eds.), Theories of translation: An anthology of essays from Dryden to Derrida (pp. 52–162). London: University of Chicago Press. Prawer, J., & Ben-Shammai, H. (1996). The history of Jerusalem: The early Muslim period, 638–1099. New York: New York University Press. Robinson, A. H., Morrison, J. L., & Sale, J. D. (1978). Elements of cartography. New York: Wiley. Williams, J. (1977). Early Spanish manuscript illumination. London: Chatto & Windus. Williams, J. (1994). The illustrated Beatus: A corpus of the illustrations of the commentary on the apocalypse (Vols. I–V). London: Harvey Miller Publishers.

5 ‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon Maria Mitsoula

Attic Marble Landscape This chapter emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between Mount Pentelicon and Athens as it draws on the performativity of their material exchange. White marble, the geological matter of Mount Pentelicon, has been persistently called upon to construct the grounds (literally) and the myths of the Athenian metropolis. At the same time, the marble materiality of Athens moulds images of the mountain. Herman Melville’s poem The Attic Landscape (1857) highlights this historic reciprocity. In the mid-nineteenth century when Melville visited Athens and Attica—the geographic and historical territory that encompasses both the Athenian city and the city’s broader landscape—one could clearly see the mountain facing the ancient marble monuments of the metropolis (and vice versa). Melville’s poem muses upon ‘the clear-cut hills’ of Mount Pentelicon that Athens’ ‘carved temples face’, noting that the mountain and the temples

M. Mitsoula (*) University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland © The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3_5

81

82 

M. Mitsoula

represent ‘Art and Nature lodged together’, responding to one another (Robillard 2000, 332).1 As the poem illustrates, the fascination with the imagery of the quarried landscape of Mount Pentelicon as a touristic attraction was as powerful as the attraction of the classical monuments. Today, the excessive urbanization of Athens—buildings are encroaching on the mountain—and the relocation of the productive landscape (Dionysos quarries) to the northeast side of Mount Pentelicon prevent any direct visual connection. As Mount Pentelicon’s innards are removed and the city spreads, the outer landscape of Mount Pentelicon becomes an increasingly overtextured and overwritten place; as historian William Hoskins would argue, the mountain becomes a material palimpsest which carries the traces—as material absences—of a plethora of places.2 As a result, despite the quarries being hidden from the city, a romanticized imaginary still exists of a reciprocity between Athens and Mount Pentelicon, an imaginary that is still the dominant narrative associated with the mountain’s material (Fig. 5.1). Throughout this chapter, the space between Mount Pentelicon and Athens is redrawn through marble as a complex historical, social, political, material image-landscape. In re-imaging and reimagining a (speculative) Attic marble landscape, this chapter moves away from the romantic image of mountain and city to explore the specificity of the Athenian situation and to provide both an elaboration and a testing of Félix Guattari’s notion of ‘ecosophic cartographies’. However, rather than

Fig. 5.1  Southwest and northeast sides of Mount Pentelicon. Images by the author, 2012

5  ‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon 

  83

­ rioritizing a reading of Guattari’s theorization, this chapter explores sitp uation and representation as instigators of theorization. The chapter starts with a detailed portrayal of the current central ‘place’ of marble production, which delineates the methodologies practised and technologies employed during contemporary underground excavations on Mount Pentelicon. Key transformations in the mountain’s natural environment are, then, unfolded as the chapter focuses on the historical emergence and constitution of Mount Pentelicon’s ancient and modern quarries. Although analytical, these two historiographies are rather telling; they underline the role that the various imagings of the mountain have played in technological advancements of quarrying, as well as the sociocultural and political formation of the city, therefore invoking the mobility of the term ‘landscape’ (in response to ubiquitous readings of the term ‘employed’ in the disciplines of cultural geography and visual culture). These two historiographies are further explored, alongside this chapter, through a Prezi presentation entitled ‘Attic Marble Places’, which accompanied the paper presented in the ‘Moving Mountains: Studies in Place, Society and Cultural Representation’ conference and exhibition held in Edinburgh between 18 and 27 June 2014. This Prezi revisualizes a more polyvocal imagery of these two historiographies. It becomes a cartographic exercise that maps a series of epochs, scales, sites and situations—associated with the intricate and mutually constitutive relationship between the mountain and the metropolis—in the ‘infinitive’ two-dimensional surface that the Prezi software provides. When brought into proximity, epochs-scales-sites-situations illustrate an active network of Mount Pentelicon’s marble in Athens and Attica that allows for a series of non-linear readings of the relationship between the mountain and the city (Fig. 5.2).3 The chapter concludes with a closer reading of Guattari’s ‘eco-logical praxis’, a praxis that the psychiatrist/philosopher developed through a theoretical transversal metamodel, namely ‘the ecosophic object’. Prompted by Guattari’s theorizations, which mobilize sensibilities, leading to different ways of representing the ‘asperity of alterity’, the generative index of Mount Pentelicon’s marble which emerges in this chapter, and in the Prezi, disrupts traditional schemes for depicting the rich, ideologically charged relationship between Mount Pentelicon and Athens.

Fig. 5.2  The four prints produced for the ‘Moving Mountains’ exhibition in the Tent Gallery, Edinburgh College of Art and a collection of slides from the Prezi presentation ‘Attic Marble Places’. Collage of images produced by the author, 2014

84  M. Mitsoula

5  ‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon 

  85

This chapter, in conjunction with the Prezi presentation, archives and activates the ‘dense agency’ of Mount Pentelicon.4

 uarrying, Representing, Imagining Q and Imaging Mount Pentelicon’s Marble Dionysos quarries are situated on the northeast slopes of Mount Pentelicon, at an altitude of 460 metres.5 At the time of writing, nine opencast operations performed through bench quarrying methods and three underground operations carried out by pillared chamber quarrying methods inform the materiality of this landscape. The landscape formed by the opencast operations resembles stepped constructions; each bench (step) is slightly angled, and its height usually reaches up to 10 metres. Walkways that facilitate the hauling of the material are created on each bench, and ramps connect one bench to the other, ultimately leading to a sunken ‘square’ at the lowest level of these manufactured constructions. The landscape formed by underground operations creates labyrinthine networks. As operations extend, the tunnels produced in the bedrock of the earth turn into polyhedral chambers that retreat deeper and deeper inside the mountain. In both cases, these irregularly ‘designed’ spaces are mere by-products that patently reveal the material that is absent; these spaces are sublime. The exposure of absence, in conjunction with the overwhelming haptic character of the present marble, triggers a profound sensory response. Being in the gigantic underground chambers of Mount Pentelicon intensifies and stimulates all senses: these spaces generate a specific smell, humidity, temperature, darkness, noise and echo. This aura and the inhuman scale of the rooms are contrasted with various anthropomorphic registers, such as the ladders used by the labourers, the numerical writings or the steel plates that mark most of the exposed marble surfaces.6 However, what became apparent during a fieldtrip in 2012, is that these immediate sensory impressions become secondary. The allure and awe of this marble landscape lies in the ways its material is cut, in observing the choreographed and non-verbal hand gestures employed by the quarrymen who direct the enormous e­ xcavators,

86 

M. Mitsoula

Fig. 5.3  Opencast quarrying at Dionysos quarries. Image by the author, 2012

and in engaging in discussions with engineers and geologists who prepare, through digital re-presentations of the mountain, the drawings that today always precede the act of underground quarrying (Figs. 5.3 and 5.4). Underground exploitation was established here in the mid-1990s. Starting from the highest bench of an existing opencast quarry, the first incision on the vertical surface of the mountain subsequently turns into a tunnel, a chamber and then a series of chambers. Technical regulations set a height limit for these chambers; and when the chambers reach this height, a horizontal slab is retained, allowing excavation to proceed beneath and creating multilevel structures inside the mountain. The material quarried from the body of the mountain is to be as regular as possible (as the Latin origin of the word quadrum suggests) and must be

5  ‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon 

  87

Fig. 5.4  Underground quarrying at Dionysos quarries. Image by the author, 2012

drawn from the ‘healthy’ areas of the mountain. It thus becomes important to recognize the faults embedded in the mass of the stone. After the removal of the ‘healthy’ marble what remains in the chambers is the ‘less healthy’ stone that becomes the structural pillars permitting further ­excavation. Pre-tensioned cables are surgically inserted into the r­ emaining

88 

M. Mitsoula

mass as reinforcement, preventing movement between the volumes of rock that could lead to failure. Consequently, the methodologies required have a twofold aim: first, to ascertain the precise measurement of the planes of weakness, ensuring consistent (in terms of quality) marble blocks, which in turn guarantees not only the value of the blocks but also the safe spatial developments underground which allow for continued extraction of the marble. As a result, the natural phenomenal language of the hollowed-out mountain—materialized and made visible through those marble faults that exhibit the material’s flows, striations and resistances—becomes overwritten by a diagram that projects an economic (rather an ecologic) rationale from the outset. This economic approach is perpetuated by three-dimensional digital technological means (Vanneschi et  al. 2014). Traditional planimetric mappings and geological cross sections of the mountain, which record information regarding the natural bedding and foliation, are combined with satellite views and interior surveys of the underground chambers, which are conducted through terrestrial laser scans and photographic panoramic illustrations. Superimposing the scanning data and photographic images with the topographic–geological mappings, a more accurate imagining of the faults is fathomed by means of stereographic projections. These representational methods that result in the construction of a three-dimensional digital model of Mount Pentelicon are, today, essential for resolving stability and safety issues of the remaining marble walls inside the mountain. Such representations, however, enact strange oscillations between material and immaterial imaging processes, as the imaged mountain provides a more reliable imaging of the mountain than any image that we can draw from the actual stone. Put differently, such procedures become more effective than operating in the real landscape. Hence, while quarrying is literally an extraction of material from the body of the mountain, these recent representations of Mount Pentelicon, drenched in empiricist epistemologies and driven by capitalist production, gesture towards an abstraction of quarrying and the ultimate commodification of the mountain. Representation, material and economics become intertwined, and the mountain is refigured, re-made, and re-­ imagined as a result.

5  ‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon 

  89

Mappings of Mount Pentelicon, such as these outlined above, are objective and reductive; they resonate with the measured and mathematical concerns advanced by eighteenth-century principles of cartography.7 In order to break away from these conventional depictions, while acknowledging the diverse ways in which the mountain affects the city, I experiment with a drawing enquiry that also incorporates the subjective, virtual and immaterial dimensions of Mount Pentelicon. Motivated by architect and archaeologist Manolis Korres’ speculative mapping of lithagogia road, presented in From Pentelicon to the Parthenon (1995), I develop a series of material, drawn and animated explorations of the relationship between this landscape and the city of Athens.8 Korres’ survey produced a new imagery of this metropolitan landscape, coupling specific traces left by the tools of the ancient and modern quarrymen on the mountain to specific architectures in the city. Oscillating between a narration of a ‘myth’ and a quasi-scientific, factual research, Korres introduced a grid in the Attic landscape stretching from the field of Marathon to the port of Piraeus. I further extrapolate on this investigation as I resurface and further ‘mobilize’ the flows and energies of Mount Pentelicon’s marble in Attica. Here, I will offer a brief, and in this instance chronologically narrated, reading of this complex network (Fig. 5.5). The emergence of the marble quarries on Mount Pentelicon after the Greco-Persian wars (449 BC) marked a perceptible change in the Attic landscape. At least 30 ancient quarries altered the physical slopes of a ridge of the mountain that runs from northeast to southwest, corresponding to the belt of metamorphic rocks that lies underneath.9 According to stratigraphic studies, the oldest and deepest quarry of this ancient complex—known as Spelia (cave) quarry—provided the marble required for the construction of the Parthenon. For many centuries, Mount Pentelicon retained its ancient marks; the quarries remained inactive until 1836. From the mid-seventeenth century, however, the mountain was in o­ peration, albeit in a different manner. Spelia quarry had already transformed into a sacred place where asceticism flourished, and Spelia and the Parthenon had become the places in Attica most visited by Western travellers (artists, intellectuals and ‘grand’ tourists). Numerous pictorial and verbal representations of the mountain are

90 

M. Mitsoula

Fig. 5.5  Attic Marble Landscape. Model by the author and images produced by Google Earth software 2014

found in travel journals, ­paintings and essays, depicting the quarried landscape of Mount Pentelicon as a cultural symbol of classical ideals and a pastoral, seductively beautiful, project.10 These depictions, William J.  T. Mitchell would argue, illustrate a meditative and contemplative understanding of Mount Pentelicon, since their ‘aim is the […] presentation of an image designed for transcendental consciousness’ (2002, 1).In the mid-nineteenth century, modern quarrying began in Spelia quarry, and extended along the ridge on which the ancient operations developed exclusively to provide the marble for the embellishment of the then Royal Palace (today’s Hellenic Parliament). Thus, the reopening of the quarry served political ends. Athens was established as the modern Hellenic capital in 1834, and Pentelic marble was used as it represented

5  ‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon 

  91

Athens’ ‘purest’ material, and evoked the city’s lost ancient political identities. Today, such imaging of an ideal ‘White City’ has been challenged—characterized as ‘a heterotopia of Hellenism’, the archaeologist Plantzos (2011, 613) notes—on the basis that this is a myth forged through a materiality that is, in fact, a rediscovery of an imaging of ancient Athens through Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s eighteenth-century writings.11 This myth developed elsewhere in Europe before returning to Greece. As Alex Potts explains, Winckelmann’s ideas of an ideal materiality that imitated the Parthenon’s elements spread into Europe throughout the Enlightment contributing to neoclassicism becoming the internationally adopted architectural style for the majority of public buildings (2000). By the nineteenth century then, when Greece began construction of its new political identity, an idealized image of Mount Pentelicon’s materiality born of the classical monuments of Athens had gestated abroad, only to reappear and prevail as a reputable aesthetic system in and for the Athenian metropolis.An international export of the Pentelic marble trade was fully established by 1897, as Attica’s infrastructure expanded to facilitate exports, connecting the edge of the mountain with the ports.12 In the wake of this rapid expansion, the absence of any proper design strategy for preserving the natural environment of Mount Pentelicon, along with the emergence of capitalist relations of production based solely on gain and profit-­making, proved immensely destructive.13 Modern operations covered the traces of previous operations until the late 1980s, when quarrying was completely banned on the historic side of Mount Pentelicon. With the closure of the quarrying operations on the southwest side of the mountain, a landscape reclamation scheme began transforming the now disused quarried landscape into a place for recreation. The scheme put forward by the landscape architect Aspasia Kouzoupi and landscape sculptor Nella Golanda (2001) blurs the distinctions between human-­made activities and natural environment, as the designers ‘revive’ the network of pathways worn into the ground by the constant passage of quarrying activities. A marble lookout point was also constructed, offering a staged view over the Attic landscape, while all surfaces of the modern and ancient quarries are exposed for the ‘tourists’ gaze’, the sociologist John Urry (1990) would argue. Today, then, touristic excursions and cultural activities continue the consumption and ide-

92 

M. Mitsoula

alization of the materiality of the southwest side of the mountain begun in the nineteenth century, while the privatized quarrying operations described earlier on the northeast side mobilize the landscape of Mount Pentelicon to conform with economic ends.

‘Geological and Geographic [and Ecological] Landscapism’14 Throughout the centuries, Mount Pentelicon has thus become an imaginary sight, a symbol of culture and a political signifier as well as a ‘practiced space’. Mount Pentelicon is, in other words, a transdisciplinary landscape, challenging those profuse understandings of landscape as both ‘word and image’ that have emerged through the renaissance of cultural geography and visual culture in the twenty-first century. Among the growing body of literature that sheds light on these academic reorientations of the hybrid nature of landscape is the collection of essays Deterritorialisations … Revisioning Landscapes and Politics (2003), edited by Mark Dorrian and Gillian Rose. The Deleuzian term employed in the title underlines the intention of the authors to ‘uproot [landscape] from its location within fixed ways of signification’ and stress landscape’s intrinsic fertility. Dorrian and Rose (2003, 16) write: [Landscapes] are often understood as repositories of the past, holding history in their contours and textures. […] Looking at landscapes as evidence of past processes and events seems a strong temptation, much stronger than seeing landscapes as offering possibilities for the future. But the meanings of landscape, whether historical or for the future, are never simply there, inherent and voluble. […] the process of practicing landscape […] always places landscape in a present moment. This presentism is a crucial one and a political one, for it disrupts accounts of landscape which seek to ground certain claims, and identities in a self-evident earth. Landscapes are always perceived in a particular way at a particular time. They are mobilized, and in that mobilization may become productive: productive in relation to a past or to a future, but that relation is always drawn with regard to a present.

5  ‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon 

  93

Dorrian and Rose’s suggestion that we re-vision and reimagine landscape as an instantiation of process, which is always instrumental and constitutive instead of merely historic, is further supported by Denis Cosgrove’s geographical writings. Influenced by a Marxian tradition, as well as Raymond Williams’ theorizations of a ‘lived culture’, in Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (1984) Cosgrove portrays a ‘way of seeing’ landscape as that which constructs a spatial and visual organization of view that entangles issues of subjectivity with politics.15 Such discourse on landscape, along with the increasing interest in the projective possibilities of mapping through philosophy, advanced by the writings of Deleuze and Guattari, and extrapolated, among others, by the landscape architect James Corner, promote ways of deterritorializing fixed and linear modes of perceiving and representing landscapes. In ‘The Agency of Mapping’, for instance, Corner calls attention to the distinction between ‘maps’ and ‘tracings’ while he unfolds Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic and diagrammatic thinking.16 Corner (1999, 214) writes: Mapping unfolds potential; it remakes territory over and over again, each time with new and diverse consequences. Not all maps accomplish this, however; some simply reproduce what is already known. These are more ‘tracings’ than maps, delineating patterns but revealing nothing new. In describing and advocating more open-ended forms of creativity, philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari declare: ‘Make a map not a tracing!’17

For Corner then, the constructive art of mapping enriches the intricacy and contradiction that is already embedded in landscapes, whereas tracings, on the other hand, merely expose redundancies that ‘always come back to “the same”’, that is, conventional, linear and hierarchical systems of order (1999, 244). The imaginative tradition of mapping, Corner continues, is attached to the drawing out of new lines of possibilities and potentialities for an alternative practice that ‘produces a “re-­territorialization” of sites’ (1999, 230). Simultaneously analogous and abstract, mappings map cultural constructions that embrace complexity and fluidity as they oscillate between procedures of ‘accumula-

94 

M. Mitsoula

tion, disassembly and reassembly’ (Corner 1999, 231). As Corner, similar to Dorrian and Rose, return to Guattari and Deleuze’s A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1987), so architect Mohsen Mostafavi more recently supplements these readings with Guattari’s later ecological considerations. Guattari’s transversal hypothesis of an ‘autopoietic becoming’ presented in The Three Ecologies (1989) becomes for Mostafavi the key ‘ethico-political-aesthetic’ reference upon which to base a new ‘cartography’ that puts forward a politicized ‘philosophy of subjectivity’. Guattari’s ecosophic principles, Mostafavi continues, hold the capacity to revitalize ‘the very methods of thinking that we apply to the development’ of design practices (2010, 24). By way of a conclusion to this chapter, I will expand a little on Guattari’s ‘eco-logical praxis’—or ecosophy (eco—dwelling and sophia—wisdom)— as a further prompt for rethinking Mount Pentelicon’s role in Attica. Moving away from Ernst Haeckel’s modern definition, which was presented in his Generelle Morphologie (1866) as an economy of nature that continues the Darwinian model of natural selection, Guattari clarifies that he does not regard ecology as ‘being associated with the image of a small nature-loving minority or with qualified specialists’ (2000, 52). On the contrary, ecology for Guattari, ‘questions the whole of subjectivity and capitalist power formations’ (2000, 52). Drawing upon Gregory Bateson’s cybernetic writings, Guattari (2000, 41) opens The Three Ecologies with an extract from Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), which highlights the ‘epistemological pathologies’ that have wrongly focused on those ancient dualities (separating environment from man or mind from body), in order to suggest that what comes under the ‘ethico-­ aesthetic aegis of an ecosophy’ activates society, individual and collective human praxes as well as environment.18 Guattari argues that ‘integrated world capitalism’ (Guattari’s term for global capitalism) has resulted in diminutions to three fundamental ecological networks: the erosion of social relations (the first: ‘social ecology’); the disequilibrium of the natural world (the second: ‘mental ecology’); and their invisible penetration into people’s perceptions (the third: ‘environmental ecology’). The result is such that all forms of production, axes of value and ways of living are flattened out to the extent that alterity [l’altéritè] ‘tends to lose all its

5  ‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon 

  95

asperity’ (Guattari 2000, 27). In order to avoid such homogenization, Guattari focuses on the importance of the production of subjectivity while he analyses its reappropriation through his concept of the ‘the ecosophic object’.19 Initially presented in Chaosmosis (1992), ‘the ecosophic object’ is a schizoanalytic metamodel which seeks to respond to redundant schemes that control the production of subjectivity by encouraging ‘assemblages of enunciation capable of capturing the points of singularity of a situation’ (Guattari 1995, 128). Put simply, Guattari advocates a ‘making-specific’ in the face of an overwhelming trend towards the generic (for Guattari a result of ‘integrated world capitalism’). Four ontological factors constitute such a situationally attuned metamodel, namely in Guattari’s terms: (i) ‘material, energetic and semiotic Fluxes’; (ii) ‘concrete and abstract machinic Phylums’; (iii) ‘virtual Universes of value’; and (iv) ‘finite existential Territories’ (Guattari 1995, 124). Guattari’s quadrants of subjectification map the complex interactions between actual domains (what Guattari calls ‘Fluxes’ and ‘Phylums’) and virtual domains (those incorporeal ‘Universes’ of reference and existential ‘Territories’ that exist beyond the actuality of a given situation) of action that can lead to a process of ‘ontological heterogenesis’, a process in which we recognize and foster the sensibilities that promote different ways of seeing, reading and making the world. As such, Guattari promotes a rereading of the world as specific and multiple that also constitutes a remaking of a world that is already complex with a view to increasing (rather than flattening) complexity and heterogeneity. As Janel Watson (2012, 97) notes in other words, Guattari’s ‘ecosophic cartographies’ offer a constructive reformulation of the ‘subject’ through strategies for ‘analyzing, creating, producing, recreating, and reproducing […] subjectivity’ that enrich uncertainty while preserving singularity. Summarizing his chapter on ‘the ecosophic object’, Guattari writes (Fig. 5.6): Psychoanalysis, institutional analysis, film, literature, poetry, innovative pedagogies, town planning and architecture – all the disciplines will have to combine their creativity to ward off the ordeals of barbarism, the mental implosion and chaosmic spasms looming on the horizon, and transform them into riches and unforeseen pleasures, the promises of which, for all that, are all too tangible. (1995, 135)

96 

M. Mitsoula

Fig. 5.6  Attic Marble Landscape. Drawing and installation by the author, 2014–2016

Following Watson’s and Mostafavi’s reading of Guattari’s ‘ecologies’, I would argue that Guattari’s ‘ecosophic cartographies’ can offer another way of seeing, reading and reconstituting Mount Pentelicon’s particularities and diversities in Attica. In so doing, we further enrich the complex relationship between Mount Pentelicon and Athens that has been the focus of this chapter. Scientific, technological, bureaucratic and economic ‘Flows’ and ‘Phylums’ on their own cannot eschew the reductive depictions of Mount Pentelicon’s multiplicity and forces, which today regulate the mountain’s matter, as these were for instance seen through the reading of the current underground quarrying operations on Mount Pentelicon. By adopting Guattari’s four-dimensional conceptual assemblage, we can however see that these actualized domains always operate in conjunction

5  ‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon 

  97

with the virtual ‘Universes’ of value embodied in existential ‘Territories’. Such an understanding could ensure that our representations of the relationship between city and landscape challenge nostalgic approaches while positively asserting potential means for Mount Pentelicon’s materiality to develop further in Athens, as integrated with its Attic landscape—in this sense that Dorian Wiszniewski (2013, 67) calls us to see and represent ‘the city as integrated with its [loving] metropolitan landscape’.20 As representation is implicated in how we occupy, construct, imagine and image, any recasting of an ‘ecosophic cartography’ is predicated upon representation. The prints presented in the exhibition ‘Moving Mountains: Studies in Place, Society and Cultural Representation’, the Prezi presentation that accompanied the conference paper, as well as the architectural installation built upon the Prezi presentation, represent drawing explorations into how we might present, map, imagine and image the reciprocal relationship between Mount Pentelicon and Athens, not as a conclusion to this theorization but rather as a prompt for and simultaneously an extension to it. These three forms, along with this chapter, aim to offer shifts in our perception of Mount Pentelicon’s matter while simultaneously broadening our field of vision for Athens’ marble materiality. Mount Pentelicon’s ‘ecosophic cartographies’ are actively implicated in both the reconstitution of the marble image for Athens and the ‘recreating and reproducing subjectivity’ in the Attic marble landscape.

Notes 1. Melville’s poem reads as a kind of traveller’s advisory: Tourist, spare the avid glance That greedy roves the sight to see: Little here of ‘Old Romance’, Or Picturesque of Tivoli No flushful tint the sense to warm— Pure outline pale, a linear charm. The clear-cut hills carved temples face, Respond, and share their sculptural grace.

98 

M. Mitsoula

‘Tis Art and Nature lodged together, Sister by sister, cheek to cheek; Such Art, such Nature, and such weather The All-in-All seems here a Greek. 2. Looking at the English landscapes, dating from prehistory to the Industrial Revolution, Hoskins examines the traces left in those landscape as the product of man’s activities; each generation registers on the landscape its own story while simultaneously erasing remnants of earlier economic, political and social forces. ‘[T]o those who know how to read it aright, [the landscape] is the richest historical document we possess’, Hoskins (1955, 14) notes. 3. The zooming user interface of the Prezi software extends beyond the linearity of any specific narration, allowing each viewer to exercise one’s imaginative power to animate further spatial connections of the relationship between Mount Pentelicon and Athens. For the Prezi presentation, see (accessed 26 June 2016). The intention is that the Prezi is read alongside this chapter. 4. In the chapter ‘Geophilia, or The Love of Stone’, professor of English Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (2015, 12) employs the term ‘dense agency’ as he writes, ‘Stone holds a dense agency […] [that] figures the real, and figuring is an active process’. 5. The complex of these quarries, named as the adjacent low-­density residential suburb of Dionysos, got its name after the excavations of 1888, under the guidance of archaeologist Carl D. Buck, who uncovered ruins of a sanctuary dedicated to the Olympian God Dionysos. 6. The coded ‘graffiti’ inscribed on the marble surfaces of the quarries hold information regarding the local coordinates, from which each extracted block is originated, along with an archiving system of the loose marble units. 7. During the end of the nineteenth century, the first official topographic depiction of the quarried landscape of Mount Pentelicon is realized. This representation is part of a broader mapping entitled Karten von Attica (1895–1903), conducted by the German geographer Johannes A. Kaupert and archaeologist Ernst Curtius. Curtius had already started surveying Athens, focusing on registering the city’s marble ruination through research that had begun in 1875 and that was subsequently published as Atlas von Athens in 1878. Although Kaupert and Curtius’ mappings were

5  ‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon 

  99

originally conceived as a historical and archaeological project, it developed into a national one that was of primary importance at that time, offering the basis for several redrawings of modern Athens. 8. Lithagogia road is the ancient route that connected the quarried landscape of Mount Pentelicon to the Athenian metropolis, and employed for the transport of the material. 9. A complex of Aegean islands (i.e. Paros, Naxos, Tinos) lie on that same Attico-Cycladic geotectonic fault line. 10. For examples of such representations, see Lange, L. 1836. ‘Steinbruch c zu Pentele’ and Ross, L. 1836. ‘Das Pentelikon bei Athen und seine Marmarobrüche’. 11. White City (1968) is Giannis Hristodoulou’s documentary, commissioned by the Greek National Tourism Organization, which emphasizes on marble as the matter to rebrand the Hellenic capital as a ‘bright’ city. 12. Renwick (1909, 52–53) records that the Anglo-­Greek company Grecian Marbles (or Marmor) Limited purchased the quarrying rights on Mount Pentelicon with a capital of £350,000 (equivalent to approximately £19,971,000 today, calculated using the ‘Old money to new’ currency converter developed by the British National Archives), and became one of the largest productive units of marble quarrying in Europe. 13. According to topographic depictions, produced by the geologist Scott Pike (1995), at least 172 discrete quarries are now identified as existing on the mountain. 14. This title is taken from the note (as cited in Sanouillet and Peterson 1973, 78–79) that Marcel Duchamp wrote in 1934: a geographic ‘landscapism’ – ‘in the manner’ of geographic maps – but The landscapist from the height of an aeroplane – Then the field trip (400km). … The geographic landscape (with perspective, or without perspective, seen from above like maps) could record all kinds of things, have a caption, take on a statistical look. There is also ‘geological landscapism’: Different formations, different – A mine of information! Duchamp’s note is linked to his famous The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even), produced between 1915 and 1923, which by 1934 Duchamp had abandoned as ‘definitely incomplete’

100 

M. Mitsoula

until, as James Housefield (2005, 99–111) notes, Duchamp’s interest in representations of landscape through the eyes of cartographers and cultural geographers reactivated it. 15. According to Cosgrove, ‘[l]andscape is not merely the world we see, it is a construction, a composition of that world. Landscape is a way of seeing the world’ (1984, 11). 16. Deleuze argues that the rhizomatic diagram ‘is no longer an auditory or visual archive but a map, a cartography that is coextensive with the whole social field. It is an abstract machine. […] a diagram is a map, or rather several superimposed maps. And from one diagram to the next, new maps are drawn. Thus, there is no diagram that does not also include, besides the points which it connects up, certain relatively free or unbound points, points of creativity, change and resistance, and it is perhaps with these that we ought to begin in order to understand the whole picture’ (1990, 30 and 37). 17. As he quotes from Guattari and Deleuze’s A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Corner continues: ‘The rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing. Make a map, not a tracing. […] What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real. The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious. It fosters connections between fields, the removal of blockages on bodies without organs, the maximum opening of bodies without organs onto a plane of consistency. […] The map has to do with performance, whereas the tracing always involves an “alleged competence”’ (1999, 214). In a similar manner, Bateson had argued even earlier, ‘Let us go back to the original statement for which Korzybski is most famous – the statement that the map is not the territory. […] We know the territory does not get onto the map. […] What gets onto the map, in fact, is difference, be it a difference in altitude, a difference in vegetation, a difference in population structure, difference in surface, or what-ever. Differences are the things that get onto a map’ (2000, 318). 18. Bateson articulates ecology in the following way: ‘Formerly we thought of a hierarchy of taxa – individual, family line, subspecies, species, etc. – as units of survival. We now see a different hierarchy of units – gene-inorganism, organism-in-environment, ecosystem, etc. Ecology, in the widest sense, turns out to be the study of the interaction and survival of ideas and programs (i.e., differences, complexes of differences, etc.) in circuits’ (2000, 340).

5  ‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon 

  101

19. The term ecosophy first appeared in the texts of Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess. As John Tinnel explains, however, Naess’ definition is rather different to Guattari’s: ‘Naess calls for an ­expansion of the self via identification’ (‘Self-realization’), whereas Guattari valorizes autopoietic processes that perform a dissolution of the self via disjunction (‘becoming-other’) (2011, 36). 20. Wiszniewski employs the term ‘metropolitan landscape’ in order ‘to give a sense of the urban to questions of landscape and that of landscape to questions of urbanity. […] If we are to accept the ancient formulation that the landscape must feed the city as much as the city feeds the landscape, then, we need to renegotiate the relations based on a deeper understanding of how specific contextual histories and inherent potentiality may inform, and where necessary resist, the territorial claims of cultural and commodity productions driven by the homogenizing national, trans- and supranational forces of what either Félix Guattari calls Integrated World Capitalism (IWC) or what Hardt and Negri call Empire’ (2013, 67). As for the notion of loving, Wiszniewski, following Alain Badiou, promotes ‘the loving process as reciprocal; an enquiry into how one should elicit love and care for the other […] [affecting] both the dynamics of subjectivation and the apparatuses that are implicated in establishing our dispositions’.

Bibliography Bateson, G. (2000). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cohen, J. J. (2015). Geophilia, or the love of stone. Continent, 4(2), 8–18. Corner, J. (1999). The agency of mapping: Speculation, critique and invention. In D. Cosgrove (Ed.), Mappings (pp. 213–252). London: Reaktion Books. Cosgrove, D. (1984). Social formation and symbolic landscape. Totowa: Barnes and Noble Books. Curtius, E., & Kaupert, J.  A. (1878). Atlas von Athens. http://digi.ub.uniheidelberg.de/diglit/curtius1878. Accessed 10 Aug 2013. Curtius, E., & Kaupert, J. A. (1895–1903). Karten von Attika: Karten. http:// digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/curtius1895a. Accessed 10 Aug 2013. Deleuze, G. (1988). Foucault (Seán Hand, Trans., & Ed.). London/New York: Continuum.

102 

M. Mitsoula

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). London/New York: Continuum. Dorrian, M., & Rose, G. (Eds.). (2003). Deterritorialisations…Revisioning landscapes and politics. London: Black Dog. Golanda, N., & Kouzoupi, A. (2001). The old quarries of Dionysos, Attica, Greece. Topos, 36, 24–28. Guattari, F. (1995). Chaosmosis: An ethico-aesthetic paradigm (trans: Bains, P., & Pefanis, J.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Guattari, F. (2000). The three ecologies (trans: Pindar, I., & Sutton, P.). London/ New Brunswick: The Athlone Press. Hoskins, W. G. (1955). The making of the English landscape. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Housefield, J. (2005). The case of Marcel Duchamp: The artist as traveller and geographer. In P.  Brooker & A.  Thacker (Eds.), Geographies of modernism. New York: Routledge. Korres, M. (1995). From Pentelicon to the Parthenon: The ancient quarries and the story of a half-worked column capital of the first marble Parthenon. Athens: Melissa Publishing House. Livieratos, E., et al. (2013). Karten von Attica: A major German contribution to Greek cartographic heritage and its digital approach. In Manfred Buchroithne (Ed.), Proceedings of the 26th international cartographic conference (pp. 423–447). Germany: International Cartographic Association. Mitchell, W. J. T. (2002). Landscape and power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mitsoula, M. (2014). Attic marble places. https://prezi.com/0tnk3igiumoq/ attic-marble-places/. Accessed 26 June 2016. Mostafavi, M. (2010). Why ecological urbanism? Why now? In M. Mostafavi & G. Doherty (Eds.), Ecological urbanism (pp. 12–51). Baden: Lars Müller and Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Plantzos, D. (2011). Behold the raking Geison: The new acropolis museum and its context-free archaeologies. Antiquity, 85, 613–630. Pike, S. (1995). Preliminary results of a systematic characterization study of Mount Pentelikon, Attica, Greece. In M. Schvoerer (Ed.), Archeomateriaux (pp. 165–170). Bordeaux: CRPAA-PUB. Potts, A. (2000). Flesh and ideal: Winckelmann and the origins of art history. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Renwick, W. G. (1909). Marble and marble working. In A handbook for architects, sculptors, marble quarry owners and workers, and all engaged in the building and decorative industries. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company.

5  ‘Ecosophic Cartographies’ of Mount Pentelicon 

  103

Robillard, D. (Ed.). (2000). The poems of Herman Melville. Kent/London: The Kent State University Press. Sanouillet, M., & Peterson, E. (Eds.). (1973). Salt seller: The writings of Marcel Duchamp. New York: Oxford University Press. Tinnel, J. (2011). Transversalising the ecological turn: Four components of Félix Guattari’s ecosophic perspective. The Fibreculture Journal, 18, 35–64. Urry, J. (1990). The tourist gaze. London/New Delhi: SAGE. Vanneschi, C., et al. (2014). Geological 3D modeling for excavation activity in an underground marble quarry in the Apuan Alps (Italy). Computers and Geosciences, 69, 41–54. Watson, J. (2012). An energetics of existence: Four quadrants. In F. Guattari (Ed.), Diagrammatic thought: Writing between Lacan and Deleuze (pp. 97–103). London/New Delhi/New York/Sydney: Bloomsbury. Wiszniewski, D. (2013). The [Loving] metropolitan landscape and the public-­ private borderland: Refiguring the field for architecture, landscape and urban design. In S. Serreli (Ed.), City project and public space (pp. 65–83). Dordrecht/ Heidelberg/New York/London: Springer.

Part 2 Changing Perspectives

6 Climbing the Invisible Mountain: The Apse Mosaics of St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, and Their Sixth-­ Century Viewers Andrew Paterson

Since the third century CE, a mountain cluster in the southern region of the Sinai Peninsula, known in Hebrew as Horeb, has been identified with the location of sacred narratives from the Hebrew Scriptures which underpin the concept of theophany, or divine self-revelation, essential to both the Judaic and the Christian religions. One of the summits of Horeb in particular, known today in Arabic as Jabal Mūsā, was designated as the site where Moses had received the divine Law (the Decalogue) from the hand of God (Exodus 24: 12–18), and had also been granted a glimpse of God himself (Exodus 33: 18–23). The lower slopes of Jabal Mūsā were also identified as the location of the Burning Bush, where God had earlier announced his presence to Moses for the first time (Exodus 3: 1–6). This holy mountain came to be known variously as the Mount of the Law, the Mount of God, or simply and more commonly Mount Sinai, and as such has been a major Christian pilgrimage destination as well as

A. Paterson (*) University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland © The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3_6

107

108 

A. Paterson

a centre of monasticism ever since. The famous monastic compound at the foot of the mountain, known since the eleventh century as the Monastery of St. Catherine, was erected in the sixth century in a somewhat awkward position on the lowest slopes of the mountain (Fig. 6.1), because of the need to accommodate within its walls the site of the Burning Bush. The compound as we see it today was built as a fortress, with a new basilica at its heart, at the orders of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian (r. 527–65), both to cater for the ever-increasing volume of pilgrim traffic at the time and to protect pilgrims and monks from Saracen raiders along the southeastern fringes of the Byzantine Empire (Coleman and Elsner 1994, 77). Pilgrims have continued to flock to this sacred site to the present day, and it is the summit which nowadays forms the main objective of most visitors. The monastery sits at an elevation of just over 5000 feet above sea level, while the summit of Jabal Mūsā is at about 7500 feet. Many present-­ day visitors climb the mountain in the evening and camp on the summit overnight in order to witness the desert sunrise, after which they descend

Fig. 6.1  View of St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai

6  Climbing the Invisible Mountain: The Apse Mosaics... 

  109

for breakfast to the simple coffee houses conveniently located just outside the monastery. This secular ‘ritual’ represents a striking contrast to the holy fear with which the summit was regarded in the sixth century. Procopius of Caesarea, in his description of the mountain and Justinian’s building programme there (composed c.560), asserted: ‘It is impossible for a man to pass the night on the summit, since constant crashes of thunder and other terrifying manifestations of divine power are heard at night, striking terror into man’s body and soul’ (Procopius of Caesarea, On Buildings V. 8.). This chapter will analyse the ways in which this mountain was effectively sacralized by the devotional actions of its earliest visitors and residents—pilgrims and monks both before and after Justinian’s building programme— to such an extent that the geological object was subsumed into a construct of religious ideology. Jabal Mūsā came to stand as a metaphor for a spiritual ideal, and the act of climbing the mountain became interiorized as a spiritual quest. As well as adducing literary and archaeological evidence of this process of sacralization, the chapter will offer an interpretation of three sixth-century images located at the heart of the sacred site, forming part of the mosaic scheme in the monastery’s basilica. These depict three biblical theophanies: two of Moses’s encounters with God on Mount Sinai, and the Transfiguration of Christ, which according to the Gospel accounts took place on Mount Tabor in Palestine, and in which Moses appears once again. As we shall see, together these theophanies may be taken as marking progressive stages in the spiritualized form of ‘ascent’ which constituted the monastic vocation. In particular, I shall highlight an unusual aspect of the mosaic of the Transfiguration, namely that the mountain on which the episode occurred is not depicted. What could these images, and particularly this absent or invisible mountain, tell us about the complex relationship between Mount Sinai and its residents and visitors at this period? As already indicated, for at least two centuries before Justinian’s building programme Horeb was both established as an important pilgrimage destination and inhabited by scores of anchorites who, apart from congregating for worship on Sundays, lived largely eremitical lives in very rudimentary cells (often caves in the mountain sides) interconnected by laurai (‘pathways’)—hence the term laura, generally used for this loose-­ knit type of monastic community. The only building known to have

110 

A. Paterson

been used by the monks for regular corporate worship at this period was located on the summit of Jabal Mūsā—according to Theodoret of Cyrrhus’s A History of the Monks of Syria (composed in the fifth century) this was a small chapel built by the Syrian Julian Saba between 360 and 367, which appears to have been gradually expanded in a succession of building phases until it was replaced by a new basilica on the same site as part of Justinian’s programme (Manginis 2016, 66–70).1 Mount Sinai became one of the great biblical loca sancta (‘sacred sites’), most of them located in the Holy Land, which were cultivated as pilgrimage destinations from the fourth century onwards, often sponsored by imperial patrons such as Constantine (r. 324–37) and Justinian (Abel 1952, 267–72 and 359–63; Chitty 1966, 168–78). For the first time, large numbers of Christians were able to see for themselves the holy places they had previously only heard about. In the memoria or commemorative churches built at these sites, the relevant biblical narratives were brought to life liturgically through readings and prayers, and pilgrims were thus enabled not only to visualize the events in situ, but to experience them as present happenings, as they took on the vividness of historical actuality (Loerke 1984, 32–33). For example, St. Jerome (347–420) describes the visits of a nun named Paula to such places—in the grotto at Bethlehem, Paula ‘swore she saw with the eyes of faith the Child, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger’ (Jerome, Epistles 108, 9).2 The earliest surviving account of pilgrimage at Mount Sinai was written by a Spanish nun called Egeria, who travelled to a number of loca sancta in the Near East between 380 and 384 (Egeria 1981, 108–14). Egeria gives a detailed description of her party’s ascent of Horeb, guided by resident anchorites, in December 383—describing the various summits of the cluster which they climbed in turn, she writes: They are hard to climb. You do not go round and round them, spiralling up gently, but straight at each one as if you were going up a wall, and then straight down to the foot, till you reach the foot of the central mountain, Sinai itself. Here, then, impelled by Christ our God and assisted by the prayers of the holy men who accompanied us, we made the great effort of the climb. It was quite impossible to ride up, but though I had to go on foot I was not conscious of the effort – in fact I hardly noticed it because, by God’s will, I was seeing my hopes coming true. (Egeria 1981, 109)

6  Climbing the Invisible Mountain: The Apse Mosaics... 

  111

This description is notable for the way an emphasis on physical effort becomes subsumed into the excited anticipation of finally seeing the place which had already assumed such a sacred status in Egeria’s imagination. She then describes how her experience of the summit itself was modulated by the scriptural readings and liturgical worship provided by her monastic guides, who were led by an elder (presbyter) appointed to service the chapel: All there is on the summit of the central mountain is the church and the cave of holy Moses. No one lives there. So when the whole passage had been read to us from the Book of Moses (on the very spot!) we made the Offering in the usual way and received Communion. As we were coming out of church the presbyters of the place gave us ‘blessings’, some fruits which grow on the mountain itself. [Then the anchorites] showed us the cave where holy Moses was when for the second time he went up into the Mount of God and a second time received the tablets of stone after breaking the first ones when the people sinned. (Egeria 1981, 109–110)

Egeria records that this ritualized structuring of the viewing of the sacred site was typical: a reading of the passage of scripture relevant to the specific site was followed by a celebration of the Eucharist (‘the Offering’), after which visitors were presented with eulogiae (‘blessings’) as tokens of monastic hospitality. A second Eucharist was offered later the same day in a chapel on a neighbouring mountain next to the cave where Elijah (the other great prophet associated with Horeb) hid while fleeing from King Ahab and also experienced a theophany (1 Kings 19, 9–12). On the following morning a third Eucharist took place in the small church at the site of the Burning Bush. Egeria’s guides also showed her and her fellow pilgrims numerous other sacred spots associated with specific episodes from the Books of Exodus, Numbers, and 1 Kings (Egeria 1981, 111–14). It may reasonably be inferred that the anchoritic residents of Horeb regularly provided hospitality and ‘guided tours’ in this way, following a specific itinerary, and that a sacred topography of the area had thus become well established by the end of the fourth century.

112 

A. Paterson

Other devotional actions on the mountain from this period have been recorded. According to Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Symeon the Elder (d. c.390) spent a week on the summit of Jabal Mūsā as a devotional exercise: It is related that, when they reached the mountain they desired, this wonderful old man, on the very spot where Moses was counted worthy to see God and beheld him as far as was possible for human nature, knelt down and did not get up until he heard a divine voice announcing to him the Master’s favour. He had spent the whole cycle of a week bent double in this way and taking not a scrap of food when the voice sounded and bade him take what was offered him and eat it willingly. (Theodoret 1985, 67)

The element of imitation in this action is significant: the devotee aspires not only to see the place where Moses had contemplated the presence of God but to re-enact the prophet’s own actions in the hope of attracting the same divine favour. At the same time, this literal ‘following in the footsteps’ of Symeon’s biblical hero carries a penitential dimension (fasting, immobility) typical of desert asceticism—the ascent of the mountain is paradoxically undertaken as an act of self-abasement on the part of the climber. Two centuries later, an anonymous pilgrim from Piacenza visited the site just after the Justinianic compound had been built. His account (composed c. 570) mentions another penitential ritual: many pilgrims, once they reached the summit, ‘out of devotion, cut off their hair and beard, and throw them away’ (Manginis 2016, 46). This pilgrim also records that he took a new path to the summit, known as the Path of Moses or ‘Stairway of Repentance’, which was built as a staircase of 3700 steps hewn out of the granite mountainside (a considerable devotional labour in its own right), probably in the sixth century. Towards the lower end of the stairway, pilgrims pass through two stone archways of similar date, called the Gateway of Confession and the Gateway of St. Stephen. The first of these is so named presumably because pilgrims were required to take part in the sacrament of Confession before proceeding further; this requirement of purification may have been inspired by verses three and four from Psalm 24: ‘Who may ascend the hill of the Lord, who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his

6  Climbing the Invisible Mountain: The Apse Mosaics... 

  113

soul to an idol or swear by what is false’ (Manginis 2016, 46). The second archway is named after a sixth-century holy man who reputedly tested the piety of pilgrims at this spot before allowing them to continue their ascent (Graves 1996, 64). (It may be noted that most present-day climbers of the mountain elect not to take this particularly strenuous route but the more circuitous ‘camel path’, created in the nineteenth century, which begins outside the main gate of the monastic compound.) Further archaeological evidence indicates the centrality of the summit of Jabal Mūsā as the devotional focal point of both pilgrims and monks. Fourteen cave-like prayer niches, all dated to this early period, have been discovered scattered around the slopes of Horeb, with a further nine niches on nearby mountains (Manginis 2016, 43). These mark various significant spots such as the junction of two paths, and perhaps the places where earlier pilgrims stopped to pray during their ascent of the holy mountain—at any rate, it seems significant that they are oriented towards the summit of Jabal Mūsā, the views they afford of the pilgrim’s goal thus constituting ‘a succession of mini-goals’ in their own right (Coleman and Elsner 1994, 78). Thus, we have literary and archaeological evidence of a complex of devotional practices which had already become well established before Justinian’s restructuring of the holy site in the mid-sixth century. These practices effectively fused geological terrain with sacred narrative to produce a symbolic construct (‘Mount Sinai’), which engaged the body and senses of the devotee as well as their mind and spirit. As we shall see, a further level of sacralization seems to have taken place around the sixth century, on the evidence of the narrative images created as the visual focal point of the monastery’s basilica. Between 550 and 565, the Justinianic basilica was decorated with an ambitious mosaic scheme in its sanctuary, which has survived in remarkably good condition (Weitzmann 1982, 5–18). The artists who produced these mosaics are likely to have been sent from Constantinople at the emperor’s behest, simply because such quality of execution in this medium is unsurpassed anywhere else at this time (Forsyth and Weitzmann 1973, 14). However, the devising of the iconographical scheme itself is not n ­ ecessarily to be attributed to an imperial source. In fact, the prominent Greek inscription which frames the scene of

114 

A. Paterson

the Transfiguration of Christ in the apse conch seems to imply monastic sponsorship (Fig. 6.2): In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, this entire work was made for the salvation of those who have endowed it, in the lifetime of Longinos the most holy priest and abbot … with the help of Theodore the priest and second in command, in indiction 14. (Török 2005, 339)

The scheme’s particular combination of biblical narratives, already mentioned above, cannot be traced to any known theological text, but is so appropriate to the site that it is reasonable to attribute it to a theologian or cleric associated with the Sinai monastic community itself (Elsner and Wolf 2011, 52). Hence, it may be assumed that the scheme reflects the monks’ own understanding of the metaphorical significance of the holy mountain in relation to their own vocation.

Fig. 6.2  The Transfiguration of Christ. c. 550–65. Apse Mosaic. Sinai, Basilica of St. Catherine’s Monastery

6  Climbing the Invisible Mountain: The Apse Mosaics... 

  115

The account of the Transfiguration in the Gospel of Luke 9: 28–36 is as follows (slightly abbreviated): [Jesus] took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray. And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white as the light. And behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. But Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep; and when they were awake, they saw his glory, and the two men that stood with him. [Then] there came a cloud, and overshadowed them; and they feared as they entered the cloud. And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son; hear him. And when the voice was past, Jesus was found alone.

In the mosaic, Christ stands at the centre, the luminous whiteness of his robe rendered with tesserae of marble and gold leaf. The figure is enclosed within an elliptical mandorla, perhaps evoking the overshadowing cloud of the gospel account, which consists of four concentric bands in tones of blue, deepening towards the centre. Across these bands eight rays of light emanate from Christ himself. On either side of Christ stand Elijah and Moses, both raising their right hands in gestures of speech, while the astonished James and John are shown in awkwardly twisting postures, as if disoriented and perhaps trying to direct their gaze towards the vision without quite succeeding, and Peter in particular is shown in a remarkably undignified pose, prone beneath Christ’s feet. As already noted, the mountain itself on which the episode takes place is not depicted. The mandorla and all five witnesses stand out starkly against a uniform field of gold, uninterrupted by any indication of landscape setting, apart from a narrow strip of green tesserae along its lower edge, which may be intended to represent the summit (Elsner and Wolf 2011, 55).3 Above the triumphal arch are a pair of smaller mosaics depicting the two Sinaitic theophanies already mentioned from the Book of Exodus: at the upper left, Moses, called by God from the midst of the Burning Bush, removes his sandals now that he realizes he stands on holy ground (Fig. 6.3), while at the upper right Moses receives the divine Law from the hand of God, in the form of a scroll rather than the ‘tablets of stone’ mentioned in the biblical account (Fig. 6.4).

116 

A. Paterson

Fig. 6.3  Moses and the Burning Bush. c. 550–65. Mosaic. Sinai, Basilica of St. Catherine’s Monastery

How would these images have been read by pilgrims and desert monks in the sixth century? And how might the unexpected absence of a depicted mountain in the Transfiguration scene help us to understand how the significance of the physical mountain (immediately outside the monastic compound) has been transformed for these two categories of viewer?

6  Climbing the Invisible Mountain: The Apse Mosaics... 

  117

Fig. 6.4  Moses receiving the Law. c. 550–65. Mosaic. Sinai, Basilica of St. Catherine’s Monastery

Firstly in relation to visiting pilgrims, the mosaics may have served a primarily didactic purpose. The basilica was so constructed that the sacred bush—just as significant an object of the pilgrims’ devotions as the mountain’s summit—was located outside its east wall, as it still is today. In other words, the relic itself was, to some extent, marginalized

118 

A. Paterson

as a result of the restructuring of the site (Forsyth 1968, 15).4 Once the basilica was built, it is likely that pilgrims would have been guided by their monastic hosts through the basilica en route to the sacred bush, in which case they would have seen the mosaics before arriving at the bush.5 No doubt the powerful visual impact of the mosaics would have heightened the pilgrims’ sense of awe on their arrival at the holy site, but their imagery may also have served to reframe the relic cult focused on the holy bush and mountain within a larger theological perspective. With this in mind the monastic community most probably continued their tradition of providing their guests with theological guidance by giving some instruction in ‘reading’ the iconography of the mosaics, particularly the way in which the Old Testament theophanies associated with the site are visually subordinated to the revelation of Christ’s divinity at the Transfiguration.6 One clue to the nature of this instruction is provided by another Greek inscription, this one carved into the lintel beam above the entrance to the narthex of the basilica, which may be translated as: ‘And the Lord spoke to Moses in this place saying, I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. I am that I am.’ This text conflates two divine self-declarations taken from the episode of Moses and the Burning Bush in Exodus 3: 6 and 14; thus, the positioning of this text at the doorway to the basilica seems to equate access to the ‘holy ground’ of the Exodus theophany with the physical act of stepping into the church (Elsner and Wolf 2011, 50). Since most lay pilgrims would have been illiterate, the monks would have needed to read these words to them, and the visual impact of the apse mosaics would have amplified the same message—namely, that the fullness of God’s plan of salvation, as articulated in the iconography of the mosaics, was to be experienced primarily through the present dispensation of the church, and particularly the Eucharist celebrated beneath them. Hence, the relic of the Bush—and by implication Mount Sinai too—were not to be seen as devotional ends in themselves but rather as incidental mementoes of the complete plan of salvation as revealed in the New Testament (Elsner and Wolf 2011, 14). If the purely symbolic topography of the basilica with its inscriptions and images thus served as a didactic corrective to the instinctive focus of

6  Climbing the Invisible Mountain: The Apse Mosaics... 

  119

pilgrims on the physical mountain and its bush as devotional objects in their own right, the mosaic scheme would have held further levels of meaning for the resident monks, and can be interpreted as representing for them a more radical interiorization of the mountain as a symbol of spiritual quest. While the cultivation of loca sancta enabled pilgrims to experience the holy with as much physical immediacy as possible, monks had been trained to mistrust and reject such sensory experiences, being engaged instead in an internal struggle for purity of heart which alone made possible a genuine vision of God (Harmless 2004, 241).7 At the same time, the Sinai monks would surely have recognized that the three scenes of the Burning Bush, the Receiving of the Law, and the Transfiguration collectively symbolized the essence and goal of their vocation, which was precisely to see and know God. This vocation was summarized by means of an extended metaphor of mountain ascent in the allegorical Life of Moses composed by the theologian St. Gregory of Nyssa (335–94), who wrote that ‘the knowledge of God is a mountain steep indeed and difficult to climb – the majority of people scarcely reach its base’ (Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, 2. 158). It is also significant in this connection that the monastery’s most famous abbot, St. John Climacus (c.579–c.649)—who would have regularly celebrated the Eucharist beneath the mosaics—composed an immensely influential treatise on the monastic vocation entitled The Ladder of Divine Ascent, in which the theme of spiritual ascent is equally central, but the mountain metaphor is replaced by that of a ladder (Manginis 2016, 71). The three scenes depicted in the mosaics can be read as a hierarchy of theophanies (Elsner 1995, 111); they form a sequence that corresponds to the stages of a mystical ascent, beginning with the image of Moses before the Burning Bush. At the base of the mountain (in this case the rock itself forming an integral part of the image), God attracts Moses’s attention by means of a dramatic visual phenomenon—‘though the bush was on fire it did not burn up’ (Exodus 3: 2)—and only once Moses comes nearer to investigate this does God speak, ordering Moses to make the ritual gesture of removing his sandals. However, a monastic viewer may have understood this episode allegorically, as the call of God initiating a mystical ascent that led away from physical vision towards spiritual vision (this idea is also developed in Emily Goetsch’s chapter in this

120 

A. Paterson

v­ olume). According to Gregory of Nyssa, the vision of the Burning Bush represented an experience of grace, which a faithful monk could hope to receive in the present: It is upon us who continue in this quiet and peaceful course of life that the truth will shine, illuminating the eyes of the soul with its own rays. This truth, which was then manifested by the ineffable and mysterious illumination which came to Moses, is God. (Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, 2. 19)

Gregory then proceeds to expound the theological consequences of such an experience, namely that ‘none of the things which are apprehended by sense perception and contemplated by the understanding really subsist, but that the transcendent essence and cause of the universe, on which everything depends, alone subsists’ (Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, 2, 24). It was this kind of theological argument, endorsed by much of the ecclesiastical elite in the fourth century and owing a good deal to neo-Platonist philosophy, which underpinned Gregory’s argument in one of his surviving letters, that pilgrimages to loca sancta were pointless for monks since they had committed themselves to an interior pilgrimage of prayer, of which outward journeys at best served as a metaphor (Gregory of Nyssa, Letters 2). Nevertheless, Gregory argues in the Life of Moses, the ‘vision of the senses’ is necessary for the preliminary ‘education of the soul’ (Gregory of Nyssa, Letters 1, 20; 2, 20). The second Moses panel, in which again the mountain itself is prominently depicted, seems to represent the goal of the ascent that began with the vision of the Burning Bush, since we now see Moses at the summit. However, in fact at this point Moses receives only a partial vision of God. He is depicted standing in a narrow cleft in the rock in reference to the theophany described in Exodus 33: 22–23, in which God announces, ‘When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.’ In the mosaic Moses’s gaze is directed, not upwards to the hand of God, but towards the viewer, perhaps suggesting that the vision of God depicted here is ultimately incomplete; only in the Transfiguration scene do we see Moses gaining access to the ‘face to face’ vision of God in Christ.

6  Climbing the Invisible Mountain: The Apse Mosaics... 

  121

The theological inference drawn from these Old Testament theophanies is that they are merely preliminary to the third and final theophany of the sequence, that of the Transfiguration of Christ in the apse conch. Here, in keeping with the gospel accounts, Moses appears once again (on the right of the scene), this time depicted as a considerably older man, along with the prophet Elijah on the left, whose own experience of a partial theophany on Horeb is recorded in the first Book of Kings: 8–13. The two great prophets stand alongside Christ and converse with him, their mystical ascent at last complete. As for the three disciples taken up the mountain by Jesus, their very body language in the mosaic indicates that their mystical ascent is still in progress. They have been cast to the ground by the power of the divine light but are beginning to get up again. Their postures can be taken to symbolize a spiritual act of passage from a state of sleep to one of wakefulness. While the disciples’ state of being ‘heavy with sleep’ is referred to in Luke’s account, it carries metaphorical meaning, which would have resonated with the mosaic’s monastic viewers. Various passages in the New Testament dwell on the need to ‘watch’ (or ‘wake up’) in order to be receptive to the advent of the presence of God.8 The variations in physical posture among the depicted witnesses seem to serve as a visual metaphor for this process of ‘waking up’. For example, a curious aspect of the figure of Peter in particular is that his alert head, whose turning round to face towards Christ is emphasized by its supporting hand, appears—at least in certain lights9—somewhat detached from his body, which still faces downwards and away from Christ; the tesserae used to form the shoulder and neck are so close in colour to the gold of the background that this seems to have been an intentional effect (Fig. 6.5). This detail may be interpreted as depicting a partial, initial response to theophany, comparable to that experienced by Moses at the Burning Bush—so far it is only Peter’s gaze, so to speak, which is able to ascend towards the light, while the rest of his being is still to follow. The figures of John and James on either side of Peter are depicted kneeling, again with their heads turned towards Christ and their bodies facing away—a halfway stage, so to speak, between the prostration of Peter and the uprightness of Moses and Elijah. Both John and James are

122 

A. Paterson

Fig. 6.5  St. Peter. Detail of Fig. 6.2

shown with their legs tightly bent at the knee, in exactly the same way as Peter’s right leg which seems to be flexed in order to begin the process of rising up off the ground. In other words, the three disciples seem to be drawn in such a way as to articulate stages in a process of ‘standing up’ which is completed in the figures of Moses and Elijah, who have become like Christ in their posture and converse with him.10 The reward for completing this symbolic ascent is a vision of divine light, a vision which transforms the one who beholds it. This theophanic vision was associated theologically not just with the Transfiguration as an historical event, but with the future appearing of Christ at his Second Coming. A chant from the liturgy for the feast of the Transfiguration in the Eastern Church states: ‘Thou wast transfigured upon Mount Tabor, showing the exchange mortal men will make with Thy glory at Thy second and fearful coming, O Saviour’ (cited in Hieromonk Justin of Sinai 2011, 8). In this connection, the luminous blue tones of Christ’s ­mandorla evoke the eschatological vision of the heavenly firmament described in Exodus 24: 10–11. On this occasion, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, along with ‘seventy of the elders of Israel’, ascend Mount Sinai:

6  Climbing the Invisible Mountain: The Apse Mosaics... 

  123

And they saw the place where the God of Israel stood: and there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the appearance of the firmament of heaven in its clearness. And of the elect of Israel not even one was lost; also they appeared in the dwelling place of God, and did eat and drink.

A pilgrim-viewer might have looked forward to participating in such a vision through the future grace of the Second Coming. However, for a sixth-century Sinai monk the colour of sapphire might also have evoked a striking passage from the works of the mystical theologian Evagrius of Pontus (345–99), which concerns a spiritual ascent by means of introspective contemplation: ‘When the mind has put off the old man and clothed itself with grace, then during prayer it will see its own nature like a sapphire or the colour of heaven. In Scripture this is called the dwelling place of God that was seen by the Elders on Mount Sinai’ (Evagrius of Pontus 1979, Vol. 1, 49). The ascetic is thus exhorted to reinterpret eschatological vision as a mystical transformation attainable in contemplative prayer. The mosaicist’s treatment of Christ’s mandorla and the eight rays of light emanating from it ingeniously indicate the still unfolding nature of this divine revelation and its transformative power. The transparency of each ray is rendered by using a proportionally lighter tone of blue than the band of the mandorla through which it passes, until it emerges from the edge of mandorla as white, and then proceeds to alter in a similar way the colours of the robes of the disciples it touches. As the disciples’ vision of God becomes clearer, their human nature is transformed—as one of the so-called Macarian Homilies (probably composed in Syria towards the end of the fourth century) puts it: ‘the glory that was within Christ was outspread upon His body and shone; and in like manner in the saints, the power of Christ within them shall in that day be poured outwardly upon their bodies’ (Pseudo-Macarius 1921, 15. 38). In sum, the basilica’s mosaics articulated for their monastic viewers a complete spiritual ascent, from sleep to wakefulness, from the response to the divine voice within the Burning Bush to the glimpse of the ‘back’ of God, and culminating in the face-to-face vision of the Incarnate God. The fundamental metaphor of ‘ascent’ as summarizing the whole of the

124 

A. Paterson

monastic vocation no doubt alluded to the subjective experience—or at least invoked the experience of biblical heroes like Moses—of climbing a literal mountain. However, it was an ascent that had become thoroughly interiorized—the grand architecture of the Justinianic basilica and the fortress-like monastic enclosure as a whole seem to indicate that this new physical locus of Sinaitic monks’ devotions marked something of a retreat indoors from the bare mountain itself. The location of the mosaics also indicates that the devotional ascent, albeit essentially mystical in nature, was at the same time more specifically envisaged as being enacted within a liturgical context. An optimal view of the Transfiguration mosaic could only have been gained from a position at the east end of the nave, in other words where worshippers went forward to receive Holy Communion at the climax of the Eucharist. Indeed, the mosaic’s iconography was designed to be understood in conjunction with the Eucharist celebrated daily at the altar immediately beneath. If the Transfiguration, in Orthodox teaching, implies the possibility for humanity to partake of the divine nature, then the Eucharist is the sacramental means by which such union may be achieved. This finally brings the chapter back to the question of the undepicted mountain in the Transfiguration mosaic, and the visual and spiritual impact of this image on its original audience of pilgrims and monks. Just as pilgrims at loca sancta were enabled to visualize the biblical events associated with them with unprecedented immediacy, so artists in the sixth century were beginning to depict such events (e.g., in Syrian miniatures of that period such as those in the Codex Sinopensis and the Rossano Gospels)11 with greater vividness too, visualizing them as if they were presently taking place and including the depiction of onlookers reacting to what they were witnessing. However, the locus sanctus of Mount Sinai must have presented a particular challenge, pictorially speaking, in that the subject here was not simply the interaction of human figures but a theophanic vision of God. The achievement of the mosaicists in the Sinai basilica can be appreciated by comparing their work to another apse mosaic of the Transfiguration executed only a few years earlier, at the church of Sant’ Apollinare in Classe near Ravenna, which, remarkably, avoids the literal depiction of the biblical event altogether in favour of a highly conceptualized representation.12

6  Climbing the Invisible Mountain: The Apse Mosaics... 

  125

By contrast, the Sinai presentation of the Transfiguration must have struck its original viewers with astonishing immediacy, an immediacy enhanced all the more by the decision to omit any pictorial indication of spatio-temporal location. This particular Transfiguration, one might say, is not just a staged representation of a biblical vision; rather, the sight of it is meant to function (in conjunction with the ritual of the Eucharist) as a transforming experience in its own right. The depiction of Mount Tabor was not required, simply because the image was itself located on another holy mountain, Mount Sinai. Whoever was able to contemplate this image, whether monk or pilgrim, had already made a difficult physical journey, and by implication had already embarked on a path of inward transformation, in order to arrive at this vision, since the geographical journey was seen as but an outward symbol of the spiritual quest on which such sixth-century viewers were engaged. If the mountain had been depicted, its ‘holy ground’ would effectively have been placed at a slight remove from the viewer’s immediate visual environment; ‘there’ in pictorial space rather than ‘here’ in the viewer’s own space. But the exclusion of the mountain from the image has the effect of including the mosaic’s viewer as present, as another direct witness of the theophany itself (Elsner 1995, 113). The figures depicted—Moses and Elijah, and also the three disciples—all function as exemplars of the mystical ascent, as models for imitation, while the sixth-century viewers of the mosaic, both monks and pilgrims, were effectively included in the sacred space depicted, as present participants in a sacred history that was still unfolding. This virtual ‘holy ground’, symbolized by the gold ground of the mosaic uninterrupted by any literal pictorial reference to a mountain, had become the true goal of the pilgrim’s journey and the monk’s spiritual endeavour, rather than the physical mountain outside the basilica’s walls, which had drawn them all to the site in the first place.

Notes 1. Few traces of the summit’s sixth-century basilica now remain; however, recent archaeological excavations have ascertained that it was of a similar design to the one in the monastic compound, and was roughly three times larger than the chapel, built in the 1930s, which stands in its place today.

126 

A. Paterson

2. Jerome. (1963). Epistolae. (trans: Mierow, C.C.). Ancient Christian Writers no. 33. Westminster Md., London. 3. It should be noted that Elsner and Wolf propose an alternative interpretation of the apparent non-depiction of the mountain, namely that ‘the positioning of Peter’s body evokes the rock formation associated with the translation of his name’. In other words, the revelation of Christ’s divinity in this image is associated with the establishment of his Church on the rock of St. Peter. This is an ingenious suggestion, but I am not aware of any other example of Peter’s prone body carrying such iconographical significance, and it may be doubted in any case whether the Byzantine Church ascribed the same unique significance to St. Peter as the Roman Church did at this period. My own interpretation of Peter’s posture (see below) is more in keeping with the theme of spiritual ascent, which runs through the mosaic scheme as a whole. 4. The decision to place the Bush outside the basilica is in marked contrast to other churches built on loca sancta which were designed around a relic at their centre, such as the fifth-century martyrium of St. Symeon Stylites in Syria, which the architect of the Sinai basilica, Stephanos of Aila, would surely have known as a potential model. 5. According to Forsyth’s hypothetical but plausible reconstruction (1968, 11–14), pilgrims would have been conducted along a passageway from the gate in the fortified wall of the monastery to the west entrance of the basilica, and via the narthex into the north aisle, then through a side chapel and out into the courtyard where the sacred bush was located (today enclosed within the Chapel of the Burning Bush). From there they would return along the south aisle, thus completing a U-shaped circuit of the church which did not intrude upon the central worship area of nave and sanctuary. 6. This theme is also addressed in Christos Kakalis’s chapter on Mount Athos. 7. Cf. Matthew 5: 8: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.’ 8. For example, 1 Cor. 15: 51–53: ‘Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed … for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.’ 9. It should be noted that the mosaicists placed the tesserae at subtly varied angles to the curved surface of the apse conch, thus enabling the changing ambient light to alter the apparent tonal relationships between different areas of the design. Thus, photographs of the mosaic taken at different times may record somewhat different visual effects.

6  Climbing the Invisible Mountain: The Apse Mosaics... 

  127

10. ‘Standing up’ is a literal translation of ἀνάστασις, the Greek term for resurrection. 11. For examples, see Weitzmann (ed.) 1979, 491–93, and Loerke 1984, 30–33. 12. For an illustration and discussion of the Ravenna mosaic, see Loerke 1984, 43–45.

Bibliography Abel, F.-M. (1952). Histoire de Palestine. Paris: Gabalda. Basil of Caesarea. (1951–55). Epistolae (trans: Way, A.C.). Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Chitty, D. J. (1966). The desert a city. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Climacus, J. (1982). The ladder of divine ascent (trans: Luibheid, C., & Russell, N.). London: SPCK. Coleman, S., & Elsner, J. (1994). The Pilgrim’s progress: Art, architecture and ritual movement at Sinai. World Archaeology, 26(1), 73–89. Egeria. (1981). Egeria’s travels to the Holy Land (J. Wilkinson, Trans.). Warminster: Aris and Phillips. Elsner, J. (1995). Art and the Roman viewer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elsner, J., & Wolf, G. (2011). The transfigured mountain: Icons and transformations of pilgrimage at the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai. In S. Gerstel & R. S. Nelson (Eds.), Approaching the holy mountain: Art and liturgy at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai (pp. 37–71). Turnhout: Brepols. Evagrius of Pontus. (1979). Texts on discrimination in respect of passions and thoughts. In G.E.H. Palmer, P. Sherrard & K. Ware (Eds.), The Philokalia: The complete text (Vol. 1, pp. 38–52). London: Faber. Forsyth, G. H. (1968). The Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai: The church and fortress of Justinian. Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 22, 1–19. Forsyth, G.  H., & Weitzmann, K. (1973). The Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai I: The church and fortress of Justinian. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. Gregory of Nazianzus. (1899). In A. J. Mason (Ed.), The five theological orations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gregory of Nyssa. (1978). The life of Moses (trans: Malherbe, A.J., & Ferguson, E.). New York: Paulist Press.

128 

A. Paterson

Graves, E. (1996). The Monastery of Saint Catherine and the tradition of pilgrimage. In O. Baddeley & E. Brunner (Eds.), The Monastery of Saint Catherine. London: Saint Catherine Foundation. Harmless, W. (2004). Desert Christians: An introduction to the literature of early monasticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hieromonk Justin of Sinai. (2011). The Sinai apse mosaic: The majesty and the glory of god. Unpublished paper. Jerome. (1963). Epistolae (trans: Mierow, C.C.). Ancient Christian writers, No. 33. Westminster: London. Loerke, W. (1984). ‘Real presence’ in early Christian art. In T. Vernon (Ed.), Monasticism and the arts (pp. 30–51). New York: Syracuse. Manafis, K. (Ed.). (1990). Sinai: The treasures of the Monastery of St. Catherine. Athens: Ekdotike Athenon. Manginis, G. (2016). Mount Sinai: A history of travellers and pilgrims. London: Haus Publishing. Marsengill, K. (2013). Portraits and icons: Between reality and spirituality in Byzantine art. Turnhout: Brepols. Procopius of Caesarea. (1971). On buildings (trans: Dewing, H.B.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pseudo-Macarius. (1921). Fifty spiritual homilies of St. Macarius the Egyptian (trans: Mason, A.J.). London: SPCK. Theodoret of Cyrrhus. (1985). History of the monks of Syria (R. M. Price, Trans.). Kalamazoo: Cistercian. Thunø, E. (2015). The apse mosaic in early medieval Rome: Time, network, and repetition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Török, L. (2005). Transfigurations of Hellenism: Aspects of late antique art in Egypt. Leiden: Brill. Veniamin, C. (2005). Mary the mother of god: Sermons of Saint Gregory Palamas. South Canaan: Mount Thabor Publishing. Weitzmann, K. (Ed.). (1979). Age of spirituality: Late antique and early Christian art, 3rd to 7th century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Weitzmann, K. (1982). The mosaic in St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai. In K. Weitzmann (Ed.), Studies in the arts at Sinai (pp. 5–18). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

7 How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political Expressions of Modern Imaginaries of Territoriality Bernard Debarbieux

Three Authors in Search of Characters In 1749, Buffon dedicated a volume of his Histoire naturelle générale et particulière to the human species (Leclerc 1749). Some historians of the human sciences see it as a foundational text of anthropology (Blanckaert 1993, 13–50), and even an important contribution to geographical thought (Broc 1974). As with many of his contemporaries, Buffon postulated the fundamental unity of the human species; humanity’s anatomic and cultural variations, understood through the prism of ‘race’ as was the custom then, were explained through variation in ‘climates’. In a volume of the Suppléments appearing in 1778, he reproduces a long extract of a text by Nicolas Commerson on the ‘half-men’ who were said to live in the high mountains of the interior of the island of This paper is an almost complete translation of a paper published in Annales de Géographie, 2008, 660–661, 90–115, called “Construits identitaires et imaginaires de la territorialité: variations autour de la figure du « montagnard »”

B. Debarbieux (*) University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland © The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3_7

129

130 

B. Debarbieux

Madagascar, and to form a sizable ‘national body’ called the Quimos or Kimos (Leclerc 1778, 510). The author said they were white skinned and of small build. Buffon discussed the account, being surprised that so close to the equator, and therefore in a hot climate, one would find such small people. But by bringing together observations made on plants and ‘men for whom climate had yielded similar races’ (Leclerc 1778, 463) in the Andes, in Ethiopia, and in Lapland, he concluded that wherever a temperature gradient permitted comparisons of individuals of the same species, those that lived in relatively colder climates present forms of dwarfism. To explain the white skin of the Quimos, Buffon suggested that the descendants of the first representatives of the species, who were, according to him, white and originated in the mountains of Central Asia, conserved their original colour when they remained in relatively temperate climates. Inversely, those who established themselves in hot climates saw their skin darken from the sun’s rays. Furthermore, the ‘mores’ of the populations he described would be diversified in virtue of the same principle of acclimation to different environments, as well as in function of the kinds of food that each allowed. In a text published in 1936 on the occasion of the ninth Congress of the Institut de Hautes Etudes Marocaines [Institute of Advanced Moroccan Studies], Jean Célérier proposed a way, unusual for his time, of understanding population issues in the mountains (Célérier 1938). Of course, he expressed some of the concerns of geography of his day, notably the joining of natural and social phenomena and the effects of the natural environment on the temperament of local populations. But he also developed a political analysis of the categorization of Moroccan society and territory. Notably, he considered that the hypothesis of a retreat of the Berber populations to the mountains following successive invasions— which was widely adopted after the French occupation—was unwarranted. According to Célérier, the Berbers of the Atlas merely constituted the non-Arabized part of this people once distributed over the entire territory, which later works largely confirmed. He also thought that the Atlas as an entity made no sense for the majority of its inhabitants, who were more concerned with delimiting the nearby areas they frequented. He concluded that the identification of a mountain range designated by a single term, the Atlas, arose from a naturalist reading progressively

7  How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political... 

  131

adopted by the colonial powers for pointing at the natural environment of the Berbers so as to better organize its management of Moroccan society and control its territory. In 1998, Elizabeth A. Byers, the head of The Mountain Institute, an organization aiming to bring attention to the distinctiveness of mountain regions around the world, published an article in the magazine of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) presenting the Mountain Forum (Byers 1998). She introduced her article as follows: ‘Mountain peoples and mountain organizations have many common characteristics including isolation from one another and from much of the rest of society’ (1998, 13). She explains that this forum, created in 1996, ‘is a network of networks’ in that it electronically brings together systems of regional actors organized at the level of continents, for example Europe, and the principal mountain ranges, such as the Andes (1998, 13). The forum is said to have three objectives: ‘to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, to be an advocate for mountain peoples and environments, and to foster mutual support among mountain people’ (1998, 13). On the digital platform there are databases, discussion spaces and digital talks, an online library, case studies, and recommendations regarding policies and initiatives. Furthermore, at the regional level the forum organizes workshops and information exchanges.

 roblematizing the Relations Between Culture, P Identity, and Space The three texts referenced above share an interest in mountain populations; each points to the ethno- and social type on which this article focuses. However, each text differs radically in terms of its underlying paradigm, particularly with regard to how each understands the singularity of its subjects, and how each articulates the relations between space, culture, and identity—in short, the way they problematize the territoriality of each group they invoke. For Buffon, the uniqueness of the Quimos rested on a discrete notion of space, a biophysical understanding of territoriality and a naturalistic concept of culture and identity: the surface of the earth is composed of

132 

B. Debarbieux

separate entities for which everything within is causally related; the territoriality of this human group results from its adaptation to biophysical phenomena; the culture of this group, understood as the totality of artifacts, empirical traits, and ‘customs’ which define it, is the product of the natural entity within which it is constituted—the ‘high mountains’ of Madagascar; the identity of this group and the zone over which it extends is understood as the objective result, unique and lasting, of these processes. For Célérier, the Berbers of Morocco are not so determined by their immediate surroundings, but more so by the designation of a natural entity, the Atlas Mountains, to which alone an ensemble of tribes were associated. At first glance, the spatial reasoning here is not different from that which was identified in the first paradigm, except that it is guided by political and strategic questions. As such, this forms an institutional register of territoriality—an inventory by which social institutions name social and geographic entities, and regulate practices of the environment of corresponding groups. Therefore, this institutional register of territoriality contributes to the making of social identities. According to Célérier, the construction of Berber social identity occurred through the identification of a geographic entity to which it is linked, the Atlas, in the political context of colonial segmentation of Morocco. For Byers, the Mountain Forum connects social actors mobilized around a global project arising from a shared engagement of individuals living in mountain regions and their advocates. Mountain societies, even though distant from one another, are deemed sufficiently related to justify such exchanges. The predominant identities here are most often referred to as personal and collective identities. The second designates the feeling and desire of multiple individuals to belong to the same group and to act accordingly. Personal identity here refers less to the psychologizing sense (self awareness) but rather to Hannah Arendt’s (Arendt 1958) and Charles Taylor’s conceptualizations in political philosophy: My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand. (Taylor 1989, 27)

7  How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political... 

  133

The Mountain Forum as described by Byers results from the gradual creation of collective identity involving individuals situated far apart, yet in relationship with one another, sharing representations, knowledge, and experiences—and thereby a certain form of culture—related to a specific kind of environment. In this case, we suggest speaking of a self-­ referential register of territoriality, by which each individual inscribes herself or himself simultaneously in an affinity group and a system of corresponding spatial practices. In the chronological sequence of these three texts, it would be tempting to recognize signs of renewal in the notion of culture: from culture as a fact of nature to culture as an institutional phenomenon, to culture as an intersubjective construction. This renewal would proceed from the invalidation of earlier problematics, be it because evidence showed them to be misguided—the Quimos as Buffon describes them as having never existed—or because they ignored factors and processes that later came to be seen as decisive, for example the role of collective action and self-­ representation in contemporary societies. Similarly, we might be tempted to apply this modest sampling of texts to an evolutionist analysis of modernity: modernity would have led local communities to emancipate themselves from biophysical forms of territoriality by favoring the elaboration of institutional forms of territoriality, sophisticated yet normative, before yielding, in these times of weakening institutional control, to forms of territoriality based on affinity. The present article adopts a different position regarding the diversity of problematics evident in the three narratives. Rather than assume that one perspective on the relations between identity, culture, and territoriality supplants the preceding one, it proposes considering these narratives as illustrations of different imaginaries of territoriality, which can coexist and be combined within logics of action tending to singularize corresponding social and geographic entities. In order to defend this thesis, this chapter will further look at how scholars and social actors refer to the so-called montagnards in the French-speaking world, ‘mountain peoples’ and ‘mountaineers’ in the English-speaking world,1 studying contemporary forms of practices, actions, and identifications related to ‘mountains’, since they have been conceived as a class of natural objects, that is, since the time of Buffon.

134 

B. Debarbieux

 onstructing a Social Category with a Modern C Conception of Mountains The categories ‘mountain peoples’ and ‘mountaineers’ owe much to the naturalist and philosophical discourses of the eighteenth century (Broc 1991; Walter 2004). In fact, in the image of Buffon, many authors of the Enlightenment and the following century endeavored to create a conception of the world that joined a representation of the diversity of natural forms—mountains becoming then an essential category—to a representation of the diversity of peoples and nations. In the eighteenth century one thus finds an increase in statements aiming to define the scope of the categories ‘mountain’ or ‘mountain region’ on the one hand and ‘mountain people’ or ‘mountaineer’ on the other, and to apprehend their relations in a causal way. The category ‘mountain’ was defined according to criteria of size, slope, altitude, or the succession of climates and vegetation, and was thought, at different times, to be the earliest or latest traces of the history of the earth (Broc 1991). The ‘mountaineer’ tends then to become a human type whose attributes—physical, psychic, moral, and so on—derive from a kind of environment said to be ‘mountainous’. Yet, for a long time, the people designated by this term did not recognize themselves in it, largely preferring local and regional names. Nonetheless, this identity became naturalized and widely diffused in modern societies by way of popular and touristic literature, and works directed to broad audiences, particularly school children (Fig. 7.1). For this reason, the montagnard became one of a social types that European societies adopted to think about their internal diversity and to construct their popular mythologies. But this tendency, because it was tied to moral and political values, also gained a normative and prescriptive function, already evident in Célérier’s work. The uniqueness of the groups and peoples described in these ways was then subordinated to social roles and political projects by which national societies understood themselves as such. But the terms of this normative and descriptive function varied in relation to political context. Applied to mountain populations where national mythology extolled its virtues, for example in Switzerland (Walter 2004), Scotland (Trevor-­

7  How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political... 

  135

Fig. 7.1  Camille Guy and Marcel Dubois, 1896, Album géographique, Paris, A. Colin

136 

B. Debarbieux

Roper 1983), and since 1918 in Austria, the category montagnards has often designated a model to follow and favored public interventions promoting such cultural traits and ways of life. Applied to populations whose traits are deemed outside the mainstream social model or whose behaviors are seen as maladapted to a modernity promoted in the West, the term feeds a social critique and a questioning of the way of life of such mountain dwellers (Debarbieux and Rudaz 2015). The construction of these social identities, the pejorative representations used to justify them in several countries, and the radical measures they engendered gave rise to a repositioning, beginning in the 1960s, by part of the academic community, and interpretations in terms of class relations (Whisnant 1980) and ‘colonization’ (Lewis et al. 1978). Despite the diversity of texts, which have made use of the terms over the last several centuries, ‘mountain people’ and ‘montagnards’ have essentially served to designate populations apprehended from without. These names have allowed the formation of one of the most popular figures of alterity by which we conceive human diversity, just as mountains were seen as fundamentally different from the milieu where the majority of the producers of these representations spoke.

From Social to Collective Mountain Identities However, from the middle of the nineteenth century, the social use of these categories became more complex for two reasons: the will of mountain climbers to refer to themselves as ‘montagnards’ or, more specifically, to adopt and keep for themselves the English-speaking word ‘mountaineers’, and the tendency of many social actors living in mountain environments to designate themselves in reference to ‘mountains’.

How Mountain Climbers Became ‘Mountaineers’ The words ‘montagnard’ or ‘mountaineer’ became a tool for self-­ designation among alpinists in the middle of the nineteenth century. Indeed, during the earliest days of alpinism, these words were reserved by

7  How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political... 

  137

tourists for high-mountain guides and inhabitants of the high Alpine valleys. But the emergence of a more athletic alpinism, at times deemed heroic, and the advent of Alpine clubs in the second half of the nineteenth century led a new generation of climbers to claim the title for themselves (Clark 1953; Lejeune 1988). Then, the term montagnard more often designated these alpinist tourists than resident populations, a tendency for which there are several explanations. In practicing mountaineering, there was an evident concern with social distinction, so as not to be confused with the contemplative tourist, who was beginning to be mocked in popular literature. There was also, as in Edward Whymper (Whymper 1900), a symbolic dismissal of local mountain populations, who could not yet offer the technical skills needed by elite alpinists. In this process of appropriating the name montagnard/mountaineer, the influence of the close relations that alpinists and Alpine clubs maintained with scientific circles and governments should not be underestimated. Sport climbing recruited its adepts from among the most leisured, most educated, and most connected social groups at the time. The Alpine clubs prided themselves as well on contributing to the advancement of science, at times by initiating scientific studies, at times by divulging scientific knowledge in their publications. As such, they saw themselves as bearers as much of scholarly representations of mountains as of modern mountain practices. Popular representations and traditional practices were only rarely objects of comparable curiosity on their part, at least until the middle of the twentieth century. This state of mind also allowed, during this period, a genuine collaboration of Alpine clubs with forest administrators, with whom they shared objectives on behalf of a naturalist and progressive conception of mountains. It also allowed the alpinists to assume an important role in promoting the idea of protecting mountain nature, which was taken up very early, with little consideration for local populations and without taking into account their frequent hostility vis-à-vis such emerging public policies. This appropriation of the term montagnard/mountaineer by members of Alpine clubs should be interpreted as forms of personal and collective identity, rather than of social identity. They connect their personal and collective image to a kind of environment—in this case the ‘high mountains’—which they invest with their practices and initiatives. We discern

138 

B. Debarbieux

here the manifestation of what was previously referenced as the subjective and self-referential register of territoriality. But it would be reductive to limit ourselves to this interpretation and this one register. Because of their proximity to national administrators and their participation in state projects, their identification and actions cannot be apprehended independent of the institutional register of territoriality. Finally, in contributing to the setting of the first public policies specific to mountain regions, especially forestry and conservation policies, they conceived of themselves as decisive interpreters of the biophysical reality of the high mountains, particularly in the Alps. Largely reforested, alleviated of grazing pressure and managed in terms of new tourist practices, the European high mountains were said to be brought into new equilibria. The three registers of territoriality distinguished here therefore proved eminently complementary in the construction of the Alpine clubs, in that none could be considered decisive alone.

 merging Modes of Self-Identification in Local E Populations The taking up of the name ‘mountain people’ by local populations came both later and more slowly, but again this was largely subordinate to issues of political recognition in national, yet heterogeneous contexts. In fact, even though we lack specific studies on this point, it seems that these populations didn’t begin to claim the appellation until the end of the nineteenth century, and even then only in the sole touristic regions where they protested the indifference shown to them by some tourists (Tissot 2004). This process occurred earlier or later depending on whether the national imaginaries tended to celebrate, or on the contrary denigrate, the so-called mountain people. The rather distinct cases of Switzerland, France, and the European Union are instructive. Mountains became objects of public policies in Switzerland beginning in the 1920s. The depopulation of corresponding regions, observed since the middle of the nineteenth century, had become cause for concern, giving rise to legislative proposals aiming to mitigate the causes and effects. Switzerland then, on behalf of a certain concept of the positive qualities

7  How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political... 

  139

of its mountains and the virtues of its mountain inhabitants, adopted the first public measures aiming to keep these populations in place (Rudaz and Debarbieux 2013). Soon afterward, several lobbies were set up as privileged interlocutors of the Federal Parliament and administration for questions relating to the management of the Alps and Jura. Notable among these, from 1943, was the Schweizerische Arbeitsgemeinschaft für die Bergbauern [Swiss Organization of Mountain Farmers], which presented itself as the official emanation of Swiss mountain populations. The organization of a representative body for mountain populations thus came following the adoption of the first public policies aiming to assist the corresponding regions. Both were justified by a concern to correct the social and territorial imbalances brought about by the economic development of the industrial period. A comparable configuration also occurred in France, but close to half a century later. Some 20 years following the adoption of measures favoring mountain agriculture, France gave itself a Loi Montagne [Mountain Law] (1985) which sought to address a wide range of social and economic problems. A National Association of Elected Representatives of the Mountains (Association Nationale des Elus de la Montagne, ANEM) was established right afterward, presenting itself as representing mountain populations and establishing itself as an interlocutor with public powers at the national level. Born in the aftermath of virulent polemics over the cogency and modes of tourist development and protection of the French mountains, following as well the decentralization laws of 1982–1983, which recognized the competencies of local elected officials in matters of urban planning, but the application of which was limited in mountain jurisdictions by other texts, ANEM adopted a discourse aiming to restore the legitimacy of elected officials from the mountains: ‘We are a “territorial lobby”, over a very complex territory that is the mountains. It engenders an ensemble of issues arising out of montagnards society [société des montagnards]. Our objective is to be the expression of this mountain population’ (Remy 2001). In the years following its creation, ANEM demonstrated its activism and efficacy in forcing the national legislature to take into consideration the claimed distinctiveness of mountain regions.

140 

B. Debarbieux

The progressive transfer of competencies in policy matters to the level of the European Union led to a rescaling of lobbies and pressure groups (Debarbieux and Rudaz 2015). Two groups have been set up for promoting collective discussion on mountains at the EU scale: Euromontana, in 1974, mainly devoted to agriculture and rural development; and the European Association of Elected Representatives from Mountain Regions (AEM), in 1993, mainly initiated by ANEM and its Italian counterpart, the UNCEM, in order to encourage the European Commission and Parliament established a European Association of Elected Representatives from Mountain Regions (AEM). The European Commission, encouraged in this by the existing associations, for a time also reflected on the opportunity and possibility of specifying to adopt specific measures for mountain regions in the EU policies. Under the pressure of this active lobbying, reference to mountains appeared for the first time in a European Treaty, the one of Lisbon (2007) and the Commission, the AEM, and Euromontana have got used to work in concert to create organizational structures at the level of mountain ranges (mainly the Alps, the Carpathians, and the Pyrenees). The ensemble of these initiatives formed part of two processes long recognized in the social sciences: (1) a social process of identity conversion from a denigrated social identity to an affirmed collective identity, with the self-definition of identity of the groups concerned transforming the motives for stigmatization into sources of collective pride; and (2) a political process of institutionalization, particularly in the form of advocacy groups, aiming to influence democratic and deliberative processes in the name of a legitimacy acquired through widely shared social identities. In these conditions, both subjective and institutional registers of territoriality are strongly mobilized, but the attention here to sociopolitical processes shouldn’t obscure the importance of the biophysical register; indeed, the initiatives mentioned here specifically aimed to defend or promote kinds of uses of mountains likely to alter their character. Thus, when the associations of elected representatives demanded more autonomy in managing the administrative territories of their members, they especially sought to reduce the weight of environmental constraints; conversely, the Alpine Convention and many of its advocates have sought to generalize a mode of sustainable development and environmental protec-

7  How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political... 

  141

tion to the level of ranges, a proposition motivated by a certain conception of alpine environments, and inclined to favor ecological components and forms of management.

 he Reformulation of Social and Collective T Identities in the Context of the Globalization of Mountain Issues Since the beginning of the 1990s, a process similar to that seen in Europe throughout the twentieth century is expanding at the global level, giving rise to the requalification of ‘mountain peoples’ and new manners of self-­ identification. In 1992, in what was a first for such a gathering, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro, described mountains as a planetary issue. In Agenda 21, the action plan of the conference, an entire chapter, chapter 13, was dedicated to mountains. There mountains are offered as a model environment for the implementation of the sustainable development goals promoted at the gathering. This attention to mountains culminated in 2002 with the organization of the International Year of Mountains, again at the instigation of United Nations. That same year, in the context of the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg, the Mountain Partnership was created, bringing together diverse bodies (states, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), associations of elected representatives, scientific teams, etc.) eager to coordinate their initiatives directed toward mountain regions. UNCED placed at the forefront international organizations—particularly the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which was entrusted with implementing and monitoring chapter 13, and later assumed leadership of the Mountain Partnership—and the states which were most involved in the negotiations (Debarbieux and Price 2008). Switzerland, which was at the time preparing to enter the UN, played a decisive role in the discussion, leading a group of mountainous countries mostly from the Global South (Ethiopia, Bolivia, Nepal, etc.). These countries,

142 

B. Debarbieux

brought together with the support of several NGOs, formed a lobby which was particularly active during the annual sessions of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). But further—and this is the principal interest of this series of events to the thesis of this article—these institutional actors strove to engage the active participation of, on the one hand, scientific experts and, on the other, local populations. The analysis which follows concerns principally this new configuration of protagonists, the modalities of naming and characterizing ‘mountain populations’ which resulted, and the registers of territoriality which this implies.

 he Status Given to the Scientific Community and Its T Initiatives UNCED and the administrations of the most-engaged countries played a decisive role in the shaping of a scientific community specialized on mountain issues so as to have at their disposal appropriate expertise, and to be able to put it to use. During the period covering the preparatory steps of the conference, the conference itself, the following events especially in 2002 and the working period of the institutions set up in the following steps, a close relationship between a group of scientists, UN agencies, and national administrations of development gave way to the rise and stabilization of a common vision for a global governance of mountain regions. At the same time, the scientific community organized itself at the global level with the twin goals of creating a body of knowledge appropriate to the issues and facilitating the implementation of local and regional campaigns and networks which would follow. The work of synthesizing available knowledge at the beginning of the 1990s took form in a series of scientific publications (Stone 1992; Messerli and Ives 1997; Price et al. 2004a), lavish pamphlets which year after year has supported the CSD on a series of issues (water, tourism, etc.) concerning mountain regions. Alongside this effort toward synthesis, scientists organized themselves in regional associations (the Andes, Africa, etc.), seeking to build regional communities intended to become the preferred interlocutors of states

7  How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political... 

  143

and NGOs working at these levels. In fact, the organization of this scientific community has not been exempt from identity concerns, some of its members calling for the definition of a specific field of knowledge called ‘montology’.

 he Status Attributed to the So-Called Mountain T Populations During the same period, this scientific community and the international organizations or UN agencies involved in this mountain agenda elaborated a specific discourse about local populations which they sought to bring into the process. In fact, the various international conferences on sustainable development organized during these years had already highlighted the value of the knowledge and know-how of local populations, and the importance of their involvement. Moreover, international organizations insisted on the importance of concerned states recognizing the distinctiveness of these regions and granting a certain autonomy to the peoples living in them, as a guarantee of good management. The globalization of mountain issues thus was led by the combined ideas that the ecological and cultural uniqueness at the global level should be recognized, and that its preservation could be optimized through the promotion of local autonomy of ‘mountain sustainable communities’. But once again, the identity of the so-called mountain populations was constructed from an external perspective, in the frame of a skillful argument seeking to delimit mountains, characterize their main ecological features, and promote sustainable development policies. It was still therefore a social identity, independent of the ones these populations assumed themselves. Given this situation, some social scientists have criticized this naturalist prism as a corruption of the cultures of these populations, and as the expression of a political will to subordinate their identities and practices to the goals of environmental conservation.2 The definitions and characterizations of mountains and mountain populations, scientific and political in its principles and justifications, quickly became the subject of political and scientific controversy.

144 

B. Debarbieux

 he Modes of Adjustment of Local Populations T to the Globalization of Mountain Issues How did the concerned populations position themselves when invited to think of themselves as mountain ones and to contribute under that title to sustainable development policies at the global level? In fact, they adopted several, very different attitudes. A first attitude consisted of taking advantage of this new context to carry out local initiatives in partnership with intergovernmental ­organizations, NGOs, or cooperation offices. In this way, the Swiss SDC has accompanied many local development projects throughout the world, projects presented then in official government reports as contributing much to this international cause. A second attitude consisted of these populations involving themselves in long-distance partnerships and organizing themselves in regional and transnational networks set up by some of the initiators of this process of globalizing mountain issues. Exchange programs between the inhabitants of different mountain chains (HimalAndes and SANREM, among others) were organized by scientists with the financial support from the U.S.  Agency for International Development (USAID). Information-­ sharing networks, on the model of the Mountain Forum mentioned at the very beginning of this chapter, were set up by NGOs eager to optimize communication between populations seen as facing similar problems. Finally, resource centers were set up at the regional level, for example the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICMOD) for the greater Himalayan region and the Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Region (CONDESAN) for the Andes, concerned with engaging the corresponding populations of these regions in their agenda. Similar initiatives were taken in European mountain regions following the Alpine Convention. In 2007, at the initiative of the Convention’s secretariat and International Commission for the Protection of the Alps (CIPRA, a transnational association very active in the promotion of sustainable development at the level of the massif ), a 240-member-­ strong association of municipalities, Alliance in the Alps, took on the goal of promoting sustainable development at this level. Similar associations

7  How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political... 

  145

have emerged recently in the Carpathians and Central Asia. Additionally, a great many mountain municipalities and regions in Europe have increased the number of sister relationships and other forms of cultural exchanges with other mountain municipalities or regions in the world, often with the aid of national agencies eager to facilitate this kind of initiative (Debarbieux and Rudaz 2008). A third response has been for some actors to organize in reaction to global initiatives seen as imposed from above. The World Mountain People Association (WMPA) is one example: at its origin, this association, which was created in 2001 at the initiative of individuals otherwise involved in associations of elected representatives of mountain regions in Europe (ANEM, UNCEM, AEM), clearly aimed to position itself as the preferred interlocutor of international organizations so as to favor local autonomy and to guarantee a voice for the populations concerned. The founding partners made explicit their interest in reproducing at the global level that which they had achieved at the level of France, Italy, and Europe at the height of their community discussions and elaboration of national policies regarding mountain regions. Perceived at first as a force aiming to jeopardize the global initiatives regarding the world’s mountains, the WMPA in the end was recognized in its representative role, joining the Mountain Partnership. Having won this recognition, its objectives have broadened to promoting mountain agricultural and artisanal products, creating protective labels and establishing dedicated marketing circuits, as well as conserving and promoting mountain cultures and identities.

 eturn to Forms of Identity and Registers R of Territoriality at the Time of Globalization of Mountain Issues Throughout this fairly complex process, animated by many heterogeneous actors, how can we specify the role of the various forms of identity and registers of territoriality identified so far? During the last 15 years, considerable energy and means have been devoted to identifying and describing the mountain regions and environments of the world. This

146 

B. Debarbieux

mobilization has explicitly aimed to promote sustainable development and the conservation of the biological and cultural diversity of these regions. It thus concerned cultivating the distinctiveness of mountain regions, especially in their biophysical dimensions. The principal initiators of this process—scientists, diplomats, as well as NGOs and IGOs—share a common engagement with the cause of mountains, to the point at times of being defined by it, as reflected in those who call themselves ‘montologists’. In their actions, they point to an ensemble of ‘mountain populations’ for whom they wish to speak and who are presented as the legitimate beneficiaries of the policies that they pursue. We recognize here a kind of repeat at the global level of what ­happened in Western and Southern Europe from the end of the nineteenth century: the making of a mountain social identity subordinate to the objectives of managing mountains as such. But this time, the objective of sustainable development has taken precedence over reforestation. The ways affected populations have positioned themselves has varied greatly vis-à-vis the categories used to refer to them, notably ‘mountain populations’ and ‘mountain people’. Some have shown themselves indifferent, while others have assumed the labels on their own account—to shape collective identities, rethink their uniqueness and place in the world, or to gain means, active networks, or coordinate demands. This observation supports in part that which analysts of the indigenous movement in the Americas have concluded: the display of a common identity entails varied cultural and political strategies, consisting often of combining heterogeneous referents of identity, mobilized according to circumstance. But this selective way of making reference to mountains in the construction of new collective identities, clearly linked to the globalization of mountain issues, shouldn’t lead us to think that the institutional and nation-state registers of mountain territoriality have become obsolete. The analysis above and some supplementary elements lead us to the opposite conclusion. In fact, we have observed that certain countries for which reference to mountains constitutes an important part of their very identity, or a decisive internal issue in terms of development—notably Switzerland—have played a decisive role in this process of globalization. Next, the process itself, because it is based on intergovernmental organizations, rests first and foremost on the engagement of member states of

7  How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political... 

  147

these organizations. In this way, the International Year of Mountains (IYM) took the form of an ensemble of events many of which had national aims. France illustrates this fact well: the French state hoped the IYM would all at once help promote Agenda 21 and sustainable development in mountain regions, update its own ‘mountain’ policies, advance mountain policy at the level of Europe, and sustain numerous initiatives by local actors. The mobilization of local and institutional actors was impressive—382 proposals were submitted and 188 were approved—as was the diversity of the projects (cultural, economic, environmental, ­educational, etc.) and the spatial frames (local, interregional, transnational, long-distance partnerships, etc.). Therefore, considering the role played by some states, such as France and Switzerland, and intergovernmental organizations in this worldwide reshaping of modes of identification of, and with, mountains, we cannot overlook the importance of institutional registers of territoriality. Even further, several promoters of these initiatives, foremost some intergovernmental organizations, have actively sought to win recognition for mountain peoples and environments by states otherwise resistant to doing do—be it to retain a free hand in exploiting natural resources or to avoid recognizing cultural minorities. Thus, far from being the initiative of a few activists, the globalization of mountain issues attests to the ability of very heterogeneous protagonists—individuals, cultural and professional groups, intergovernmental organizations, and states—to construct a complementarity of identifications (geographic, social, collective), motivations, and actions capable of redrawing the field of discourses and legitimate action regarding mountains. The degree to which the biophysical register of territoriality participates in the whole of this process remains to be determined. It has often been invoked by the protagonists of this process to demonstrate the distinctiveness of mountain environments or the ways of life and subsistence of their inhabitants. It has also been used, though less frequently, to support the hopes and claims of certain communities, and here we could see reemerge the image of the free and proud Bergbaeur or Highlander, like the one made common in the literature of the enlightenment. But besides constituting one of several figures of the territorial imaginary, the biophysical register of territoriality is operative in the whole of actions and

148 

B. Debarbieux

concrete changes arising from the practical initiatives ensuing from this imaginary. The data banks of the resource centers mentioned above and many field studies attest to these practical initiatives which, because they are built on a discourse of mountain specificity, also participate in constructing the distinctiveness, including the biophysical distinctiveness, of the corresponding regions and sites. To illustrate this, we can point to the specific example of mountain massifs that tend to be depicted as so many ‘bioregions’ or ‘ecoregions’, so as to better conceive and implement interventions and regulations at that scale. This approach was adopted first by environmental organizations, such as World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and CIPRA, and then by interested states, as seen in the Alpine Convention. It tends to be the case for groups of inhabitants who defend the idea that new social collectives should emerge and be organized at the level of the mountain ranges to which they belong; this is the idea that underlies the activities of Alliance in the Alps. The same is evident among adherents of the bioregional movement in North America (Sale 1985): followers promote natural entities (essentially watersheds and mountain ranges), no longer merely as areas for management, but also, and above all, as administrative and political entities and as a frameworks for reconfiguring collective identities. The advocates and conceptualizers of this movement speak of a process of territorial reshaping, referring ‘both to geographical terrain and a terrain of consciousness— to a place and the ideas that have developed about how to live in that place’ (Berg and Dasmann 1978, 218), to ‘ecocentric identities’ (Bretherton 2001) or even to an ‘ecology of shared identities’ (McGinnis 1999).

Conclusions The main objective of this chapter was to analyze the ways mountain identities have been defined according to various conceptions of culture and territoriality. Let’s summarize the argument, following the two perspectives adopted all along the chapter: first, the invention and social diffusion of the categories montagnards, ‘mountain people’, and ‘mountain population’; second, the various imagined territorialities on which these categories have been based through time.

7  How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political... 

  149

The modern meanings of the categories montagnards, ‘mountain people’, and ‘mountain population’ were born in the eighteenth century, when scholars and philosophers became eager to organize knowledge of human diversity according to geographic and natural categories. This manner of thinking, external to the people being designated, was quickly adopted by tourists and administrations. In the twentieth century, the designated populations gradually did the same, mostly in order to take advantage of this mode of designation for defending their own interests at national, continental, and, then, global levels. This diffusion of the modes of categorization illustrates social processes quite familiar to the social sciences: the spread of scientific models of knowledge within the societies they analyze and the social reflexivity which derives from this process; the conversion of social identities into collective identities; and the politicization of collective identities, especially within minorities eager for recognition and a voice in debates concerning their daily life. The mountain identities identified above are of different types and correspond to different registers of territoriality. A first one is based on the idea, ground in the dominant scientific culture of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries but still active today, that populations living in mountain environments, as defined by natural scientists, present specific characters or features due to their close relation to these environments. The corresponding imagined territoriality insists on the nature-society relationships developed at a local or regional scale. A second register of territoriality, called institutional here, is based on the idea that ‘mountain people’, still seen from above and externally, are a component of national societies or humanity as a whole and should be thought of according to their contribution to the collective bodies they are embedded in. The corresponding imagined territoriality is more horizontal, focusing on the articulation of diverse areas and social groupings. A third type of mountain identity relates to the modes of self-designation of individuals and collectives willing to refer to mountains for conceiving and representing themselves. The corresponding territoriality is highly reflexive and often political when issues of recognition and rights are at stake, highlighting in a symbolic manner the relations of the people with their environment. These various forms of identity and imagined territoriality have offered, in academia, strong alternatives for conceiving the social world, belong-

150 

B. Debarbieux

ing to competing schools of thought. But the same may not be true outside of that sphere. In fact, the illustration developed here shows that these various forms cohabitate and are even superimposed in the discourses and modes of action of key actors engaged in mountain topics and issues.

Notes 1. In French, montagnards has been the main word used for designating individuals living in mountain regions for centuries, both among scientists and in ordinary language. The same word has been common for pointing at mountain climbers since the mid-nineteenth century. It is only from the mid-twentieth century that it has become common to talk about populations de montagne. In English, ‘mountaineer’ was equivalent to ‘montagnards’ until the mid-nineteenth century; then, the word became reserved for climbers and sportsmen, individuals living in the so-called mountain regions being mostly named ‘mountain populations’ or ‘mountain people’. Some regional appellations have been adopted such as hillbilly in the Appalachian mountains and highlander in Scotland, both loaded with many connotations which will be commented later in this chapter. 2. See for example David Barkin and Michèle Dominy, 2001, ‘Mountain lands: regions of refuge or ecosystems for humanity?’ in B. Debarbieux and F. Gillet, op. cit., pp. 71–77.

Bibliography Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Berg, P., & Dasmann, R. (1978). Reinhabiting California. In P.  Berg (Ed.), Reinhabiting a separate country: A bioregional anthology of Northern California (pp. 217–220). San Francisco: Planet Drum. Bernbaum, E. (1998). Sacred mountains of the world. Berkeley: University of California Press. Blanckaert, C. (1993). Buffon and the natural history of man: Writing history and the ‘foundational myth’ of anthropology. History of the Human Sciences, 6(1), 13–50.

7  How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political... 

  151

Bretherton, C. (2001). Ecocentric identity and transformation politics. International Journal of Peace Studies, 6. http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ ijps/vol6_2/Bretherton.htm Broc, N. (1974). La géographie des philosophes: géographes et voyageurs français au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Éditions Ophrys. Broc, N. (1991). Les montagnes au siècle des Lumières. Paris: CTHS. Byers, E. A. (1998). The mountain forum. Unasylva, 49(195), 13–19. Castells, M. (1997). The power of identity. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Célérier, J. (1938). La montagne au Maroc, essai de définition et de classification. Hesperis, XXV, 109–180. Clark, R. W. (1953). The Victorian mountaineers. London: BT Batsford. Cognat, B. (1973). La Montagne colonisée. Paris: Éditions du Cerf. Debarbieux, B. (2008). Construits identitaires et imaginaires de la territorialité: variations autour de la figure du ‘montagnard’. Annales de géographie, 660–661, 90–115. Debarbieux, B., & Gillet, F. (Eds.). (2000). Mountain regions: A research subject? Brussels: European Commission. Debarbieux, B., & Price, M. (2008). Representing mountains: From local and national to global common good. Geopolitics, 13(1), 148–168. Debarbieux, B., & Rudaz, G. (2008). Linking mountain identities throughout the world: The experience of Swiss municipalities. Cultural Geography, 15(4), 497–517. Debarbieux, B., & Rudaz, G. (2015). The mountain: A political history from the enlightenment to the present. Chicago: University Press of Chicago. Evans, M.-L., Santelli, R., & George-Warren, H. (2004). The Appalachians: America’s first and last frontier. London: Random House. Funnell, D., & Parish, R. (2001). Mountain environments and communities. London: Routledge. Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. (1778). Supplément à l’ Histoire naturelle, tome IV. Paris: Imprimerie Royale. Guérin, J.-P. (1984). L’Aménagement de la montagne en France: politique, discours et production d’espaces dans les Alpes du Nord. Gap: Ophrys. Haas, P. (1992). Epistemic communities and international policy coordination. International Organization, 46(1), 1–35. Ives, J. (2002). Along a steep pathway. Our Planet, UNEP Magazine, 131, 3–5. Kapos, V., et al. (2000). Developing a map of the world’s mountain forests. In M.  Price & N.  Butt (Eds.), Forests in sustainable mountain development: A state-of knowledge report for 2000. Wallingford: CAB International.

152 

B. Debarbieux

Leclerc, G. L. comte de Buffon. (1749). Histoire naturelle générale et particulière, tome III. Paris: Imprimerie Royale. Lejeune, D. (1988). Les alpinistes en France: 1875–1919. Etude d’histoire sociale, étude de mentalité. Paris: CTHS. Lewis, H.  M., Johnston, L., & Askins, D. (1978). Colonialism in modern America: The Appalachian case. Boone: Appalachian Consortium Press. McGinnis, M. V. (Ed.). (1999). Bioregionalism. London: Routledge. Messerli, B., & Bernbaum, E. (2004). The role of culture, education, and science for sustainable mountain development. In M.  F. Price, L.  Jansky, & A.  Iatsenia (Eds.), Key issues for mountain areas. Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Messerli, B., & Ives, J. (Eds.). (1997). Mountains of the world: A global priority. London: Parthenon. Mondada, L. (2001). La ‘montagne’ comme objet de savoir co-construit dans le débat scientifique. Revue de Géographie Alpine, 89(2), 79–92. Nash, R. (1967). Wilderness and the American mind. New Haven: Yale University Press. Otero, G. (2004). Global economy, local politics: Indigenous struggles, civil society and democracy. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 37(2), 325–346. Price, M., Jansky, L., & Iatsenia, A. (2004a). Key issues for mountain areas. Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Price, M., Lysenko, I., & Gloersen, E. (2004b). Delineating Europe’s mountains. Revue de Géographie Alpine/Journal of Alpine Studies, 2, 61–86. Ramakrishnan, P. S., Saxena, K. G., & Rao, K. S. (2006). Shifting agriculture and sustainable development of North-Eastern India: Tradition in transition. New Delhi/Oxford: UNESCO and IBH Publishers. Remy, P. (2001). Un lobby territorial et l’expertise scientifique. In B. Debarbieux & P.-A.  Landel (Eds.), La montagne entre science et politique. Grenoble: Dossiers de la Revue de Géographie Alpine. Robertson, R. (1995). Glocalization: Time-space and homogeneity-­ heterogeneity. In M. Featherstone, S. Lash, & R. Robertson (Eds.), Global modernities. London: Sage. Rudaz, G., & Debarbieux, B. (2013). La montagne suisse: un objet politique incertain. Lausanne: Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires romandes. Sale, K. (1985). Dwellers in the land: The bioregional vision. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers. Sarmiento, F., Romero, H., & Messerli, B. (1999). The Andean Mountain Association, the International Geographical Union, and Alexander Von Humboldt on Mount Chimborazo. International Geographical Union Bulletin, 49(2), 161–164.

7  How Can One Be a ‘Montagnard’? Social and Political... 

  153

Stone, P. (Ed.). (1992). The state of the world’s mountains. London: Zed Books. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tissot, L. (2004). Du touriste au guide de montagne: la question de l’identité Alpine (1850–1920). In D. Grange (Ed.), L’espace alpin et la modernité. Bilans et perspectives au tournant du siècle. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble. Trevor-Roper, H. (1983). The highland tradition of Scotland. In E. Hobsbawn & T.  Ranger (Eds.), The invention of tradition (pp.  15–41). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walter, F. (2004). Les figures paysagères de la nation. Paris: EHESS. Whisnant, D. E. (1980). Modernizing the mountaineer. New York: Burt Franklin. Whymper, E. (1900). Scrambles amongst the Alps in the years 1860–69. London: John Murray. Zimmer, O. (1998). In search of natural identity: Alpine landscape and the reconstruction of the Swiss nation. Comparative Studies of Society and History, 40, 637–665.

8 A Difficult Line: The Aesthetics of Mountain Climbing 1871–Present Anja-Karina Nydal

Introduction In 1920, Geoffrey Winthrop Young (1876–1958) published a large manual of mountaineering techniques titled Mountain Craft. An accomplished British mountaineer and educator, he was best known for his many first ascents in the Alps and also for the legacy this comprehensive manual has left. In the introduction, Young writes that mountaineering ‘is a genuine craft’, ‘a science for whose mastery the study of all our active years is barely sufficient. Of its rewards in […] aesthetic pleasure […] it is not the place to speak in a book of practical counsel’ (Young 1920, ix). However, despite Young’s unmistakable indication that he will not discuss the aesthetic experiences of climbing mountains, there is nevertheless plenty of material in his book that shows climbers’ aesthetic appreciation of the mountain and the ways in which their perspective differs from that

A.-K. Nydal, PhD (*) Independent Scholar, Kent, UK © The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3_8

155

156 

A.-K. Nydal

of ordinary observers. Young simply cannot resist the temptation of writing about the subject throughout his technical manual. This chapter has therefore drawn upon Young’s continual references to the aesthetic experiences of climbers, discussing the idea that climbing, as a challenging and difficult pursuit, gives a certain aesthetic value to the mountain that is irresistible to climbers. To do so, it investigates, in the first instance, texts by writers who were the first of their time and discipline to write instructional manuals for their craft and who, consequently, grappled specifically with the difficulties involved in mastering such a craft and thus also indirectly with the concept of ‘aesthetics’. Fortunately, there are a large number of writers whose work will be analysed in order to demonstrate these points. Apart from Young’s work, other texts that predate his manual, such as those by Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), Clinton Thomas Dent (1850–1912) and Owen Glynne Jones (1867–1899) will also be examined in this chapter. Young’s manual was written during the early part of the twentieth century as a result of a proposition by the publisher that the earlier Badminton volume on Mountaineering (1892) by Clinton Thomas Dent was out of date (Lunn 1961, 111). As Peter Hansen, historian of British mountaineering, pointed out: ‘some might identify Young’s book as the first technical manual’ on mountaineering, but Clinton Dent’s book Mountaineering was ‘an earlier example of the same kind’ (Hansen 2009). Texts by contemporary climbers will also be examined to contribute to an understanding of the aesthetic experiences climbers have and the ways in which they value the mountain as a result. These accounts assist in evaluating the historical tapestry that this concept is capable of weaving. Kurt Diemberger (b.1932), Martin Moran (b.1953), John Middendorf (b.1959), Steve McClure (b. 1970), Ben Heason (b.1975) and Dave MacLeod (b.1978)—to name a few—provide fascinating insights into climbers’ aesthetic experiences from a range of different perspectives: from those scaling Himalayan mountains, to mountain guides and to those attempting some of the world’s most difficult rock-climbing routes. These mountaineers, mountain guides and rock climbers all have something in common: the search for the ‘difficult’ line and their quest to master it. This shared objective means they all have something important to contribute to this discussion.

8  A Difficult Line: The Aesthetics of Mountain Climbing... 

  157

The Pursuit of Difficult Lines Climbing has, at its core, a never-ending quest to solve spatial problems; it is the activity that preoccupies anyone attempting to scale a rock, wall or a mountain for the majority of their time during this pursuit. At the centre of these ‘problems’, and that which is ‘difficult’, lies the object of the discipline’s interest and the source from which all the climber’s activities ignite—the concept of lines. Throughout the literature it is apparent that the idea of lines permeate every page; there are ‘historic lines’, ‘good lines’, ‘fine lines’, ‘pure lines’, ‘great natural lines’, ‘elegant lines’, ‘wrong lines’, ‘weak lines’, ‘freakish lines’, ‘fancy lines’, ‘great classical lines’ and so on. The ‘direttissima’ is also a well-known line. Chris Bonington wrote for example that: ‘It’s got to be a good line—not just hard—but one that catches my imagination’ (Bonington 1966, 119). ‘Lines’, then, are the topic of largely all dialogues on climbing and thus also hold the clues to what it is about a difficult line that climbers value so highly. What climbers refer to as a ‘line’ is simultaneously that space within which the activity of climbing takes place, as well as that space which climbers represent graphically through drawings and photographs. Such lines are often referred to in the literature as a ‘design’. Young, for example, uses this term in several places in his book where he writes that ‘a good leader must be able to design and direct an ascent’ (Young 1920, 3–4), and furthermore that he hopes to ‘design a route which by reason of its angle […] should be safe’ (Young 1920, 386). Equally, author and mountaineer Clinton Dent wrote about the conquest of Mont Blanc as a ‘design’ (Dent 1892, 25). But what did this line, or design, mean for Stephen, Dent, Jones and Young as well as the contemporary climbers? At what point does a difficult line become an object that has aesthetic value? Contemporary big wall climber John Middendorf said that ‘sometimes climbers fall in love with the line, or the idea of a line’ (Middendorf in Nydal 2013, 255) but what is it about a challenging or difficult line that makes a climber ‘fall in love’ with it? In climbing, the design of a line is inevitably related to safety. When decisions are made on which line of ascent to take, safety is indeed the

158 

A.-K. Nydal

main priority, and yet there is a real dilemma throughout the climbing literature: the desire for safety on the one hand, yet conversely the challenge of solving a difficult and, therefore, potentially dangerous problem. The Welsh rock climber and mountaineer Jones illustrated well this persistent aesthetic attitude towards difficulty: The joy that might have attended our remaining efforts in working up to the head of the chimney was marred by the reflection that we had not conquered the chief difficulty, we had only avoided it. […] Our doubts grew as we advanced, as at last I proposed to descend again and settle them finally. This suggestion was met with a very prompt approval, and ten minutes later found me at the foot of the vertical wall again. (Jones 1897, 10, author’s emphasis)

The aesthetic value that Jones alludes to, then, implies that the climbing line has a problem that needs solving. The pleasure—or ‘joy’—that Jones has observed is significant because it is aroused directly by pursuing something without any other obvious aesthetic qualities, other than that it has a problem that needs solving. It therefore seems plausible to suggest that climbing lines have aesthetic value because they provide valuable experiences, rather than because it, as an object, simply contains qualities with aesthetic value. Jones later describes an instance where some climbers, after having ‘practically solved the main problem’, saw little reason to continue on the climb and, as he writes; ‘were contented to work out of the gully by steep ‘mantelshelf ’ climbing up to the left’ (Jones 1897, 44), something which would have been off-route. It may of course be that the climb Jones describes was a particularly easy route, but the aesthetic value of a line still remains the same: the ‘problem’—and the pursuit to solve it. Again, this suggests that the value, thus, must be in the experience rather than the object itself. However, several contemporary climbers have opposed the idea that difficulty is the starting point from which climbing can be a valuable aesthetic experience. One climber argues, for instance, that the ‘aesthetics of the line are the primary motivation, the difficulty of the climbing is secondary’ (Heason in Nydal 2013, 258). Another agrees that there are ‘always some aesthetic choices in route selection, [and that] it is definitely not just to do with difficulty […]’ (McClure in Nydal 2013, 260). Herein

8  A Difficult Line: The Aesthetics of Mountain Climbing... 

  159

lies a problem that needs resolving before we continue further. By referring to ‘aesthetics’ and ‘difficulty’ as if they are two separate values, and as if one of them refers to an aesthetic value and the other not, it draws our attention to a commonly held view on what an aesthetic experience is: that it primarily involves sensory experiences like sight, sound and smell. However, what is less well understood outside the fields of philosophy is that an aesthetic experience involves perception in all its complexity. Much of aesthetic experience, Collinson writes, ‘has its beginnings in sense experience’, but as she continues, ‘it does not end with them’ (Collinson in Hanfling, 112–113). The ‘aesthetics’ that climbers often refer to are the sensuous experiences they have of climbing, but to have a valuable aesthetic experience of something that is ‘difficult’ it is clear that it cannot simply engage the senses by themselves—it must in some way engage our cognitive faculties in a way that is experienced as enjoyable. Thus, climbing routes, or lines, are repeatedly referred to as ‘difficult’ and as a ‘problem’, but with distinctly positive undertones. We often find in contemporary climbing guidebooks descriptions of routes that are described as: ‘yet another “last great problem” [on the Matterhorn]’ (Griffin 1998, 424)—and always directly referring to the ‘problem’ as being its main attraction. Whenever this phrase is used in the climbing literature, the word ‘great’ almost always appears to mean more than just the scale or difficulty of the problem but also of how good it is. If the problem of a climb, then, is ‘great’, it must somehow be as much sought after as it is avoided. There is a sense of pride in having overcome the most difficult of problems. Why else would there be such a sense of pride in having climbed K2 instead of Everest? ‘Everest is indeed the taller of the two, but K2’, as Kurt Diemberger argues, ‘is the more beautiful, more fascinating and quite the more difficult of the two’ (Diemberger 1999, 347). Climbing to the top of Everest long ago became much less of an achievement than other, more difficult, mountains.

The Gaze Throughout Mountain Craft, Young recommends a number of skills that he believes climbers need to learn and add to their repertoire in order to become expert, rather than amateur, climbers. In order to solve many of

160 

A.-K. Nydal

the challenges associated with climbing he emphasizes, in particular, the necessity to ‘train their eyes’ in order to understand the mountains better and, as a consequence, improve their climbing skills. A more detailed account of what this training entailed is found in his chapter on reconnoitring. Young argues that, unfortunately, in more familiar mountain regions the existence of maps and guidebooks have relieved ‘the mountaineer of almost all occasion to apply his powers of observation’ and that consequently the majority of climbers travelling to such regions simply do not get the necessary training that he values so highly (Young 1920, 370). He notes that: The loss is considerable, not only because a developed faculty of observing, and of reasoning from the observations, is in itself a valuable permanent possession, but because the neglect involves the failure to see much that is beautiful. (Young 1920, 370)

In effect, what Young proposes is that the climber’s aesthetic experience is dependent upon critical judgement. In the aesthetics of art, for example, critical judgement plays a significant part in the appreciation of the object. In order to make critical judgements there has to be a level of intellectual activity that takes place. The aesthetic appreciation that Young observes in climbers is thus closely connected to training their observational skills that in turn allowed them to make reasoned judgements. Interestingly, Young appears to be more concerned about how this lack of experience affected their aesthetic judgement rather than how it affected their climbing skills. Furthermore, what Young makes particularly clear is that the knowledge acquired from training their observational skills and their ability to reason facilitated making better aesthetic judgements: If we are accustomed to wait until beauty imposes itself upon the eye, as in the end it will, and almost flauntingly, in large mountain scenery, we shall have already missed the discovery of the relations of line and colour and mass to which the beautiful effect is due, and we are fated to overlook much that is lovely and much that is interesting […]. (Young 1920, 370)

8  A Difficult Line: The Aesthetics of Mountain Climbing... 

  161

In Young’s account there are two types of aesthetic judgements a climber can make, first, a judgement that does not lay any claim to prior knowledge and can therefore, literally, impose itself upon him. This imposed type of beauty has been defined as ‘the immediacy thesis’ and this means ‘that judgments of beauty are not (or at least not primarily) mediated by inferences from principles or applications of concepts, but rather have all the immediacy of straightforwardly sensory judgment’ (Shelley 2015). Second, what Young proposes is a judgement based upon having the necessary training required in order to interpret these sensory impressions and thus be able to see connections that others would not. As such, an experienced climber will perceive, as Young states, qualities of the mountain that are not only ‘lovely’ but ‘interesting’. ‘Mountains […] are visible to everybody’, he says, ‘but not equally intelligible to everybody’ (Young 1920, 372). By distinguishing an imposed type of aesthetic, which everyone can see, he is therefore able to differentiate it from the more important reasoned version that must be learnt. Fifty years earlier, Leslie Stephen addressed a similar concern to Young when he examined the difference between what he calls the inexperienced and the ‘experienced eye’. In his book The Playground of Europe, he described, for example, the way in which an untrained observer would commonly perceive a buttress to be a perpendicular rock structure and consequently judge it as a route only available to highly skilled climbers. However, Stephen argues that, ‘the long slopes of debris by which it is faced prove the fallacy of this idea to an experienced eye, and it is, in fact, easy to ascend […]’ (Stephen 1871, 116). The inexperienced eye, then, hovers over what it sees, but does not know how to interpret what it sees. It could be argued that the shift in terminology during these 50 years, from the ‘experienced eye’ in Stephen’s text to ‘trained eye’ in Young’s text, represented the changes that occurred in the climbing literature during the development of a more systematized training of climbers. Whether or not this shift also represented a change in their aesthetic judgement is not clear but it seems appropriate to, at the very least, suggest that climbers over the course of this 50-year period were, at the outset, aware of an aesthetic experience that was immediate but which later, through training, developed into one that was reasoned.

162 

A.-K. Nydal

Consequently, evidence of different types of aesthetic judgements began to appear in the climbers’ texts. This approach to training the climbers is something Young writes about more systematically than any other writer before him. In his analytical appraisal of climbing, it follows that, ‘he has learned to see […], and with the power of sight he has opened a new world of pleasure’ (Young 1920, 396). What Young describes is a situation where the mountain is interpreted and appreciated in a similar way to a work of art. The aesthetic appreciation of a work of art arises when an observer recognizes the intention and purposeful arrangement made by the artist (Sheppard 1987, 4–17). Climbers look at a mountain with a very specific objective in mind, to climb it, and the route to the top is arranged with purpose and intent. Climbers are thus in a position both as the artist and as the observer, and their appreciation of the mountain relies upon the capacity of their imagination to project such purpose and intent onto the mountain. According to Young, ‘climbing is a joyous method of getting up attractive mountains by attractive ways’ (Young 1920, 138)—a sentiment that is also evident in the thoughts of contemporary climbers. What, then, are the features of a mountain that climbers find ‘attractive’, that inspire them to attempt the climbing of a route, and that has aesthetic value? Steve McClure, for example, states that he is, ‘inspired by obvious natural features […] like corners, grooves, cracks etc, any series of features that lead from bottom to top, ideally one feature that goes the whole way’ (McClure in Nydal 2013, 260). McClure’s use of the word ‘obvious’ is important because, as a highly trained climber with many years’ experience in practising his observational skills, he would have had the means to easily distinguish sophisticated climbing lines otherwise imperceptible to the untrained eye. Natural features such as ‘corners, grooves’ and ‘cracks’ are characteristics of the geology of the mountain that his trained eye is very familiar with. It is unlikely that an untrained eye would recognize them, let alone assemble them into a ‘series of features that lead from bottom to top’ to make one continuous, and undoubtedly good, climbing route up a mountain. The ability to identify and assemble these features would give McClure, in the words of Young, an ‘expert eye’ (Young 1920, 892).

8  A Difficult Line: The Aesthetics of Mountain Climbing... 

  163

Ben Heason also affirms that the lines that attract his desire to climb them tend ‘to be the most striking lines, such as […] arêtes and corners, which are continuous lines from bottom to top. They are the purest lines’ (Heason in Nydal 2013, 258). The ability to distinguish these geological features and assemble them into one continuous line indicates therefore an attraction and a desire to climb that line. As Heason maintains, ‘it [the line] just stands out and asks to be climbed. They simply catch the eye more strongly therefore giving you a stronger urge to climb them’ (Heason in Nydal 2013, 258). In this context, Moran’s use of the words ‘natural aesthetic line’ effectively captures the type of line that climbers identify as having good climbing potential. Moran explains, ‘Occasionally, the natural aesthetic line is also the most practical. Such routes give the best mountaineering experiences imaginable. If the mountain is beautiful then the details of the route line are less important. Just to reach the top is satisfaction enough’ (Moran in Nydal 2013, 255). Why do climbers feel this desire to climb the ‘natural aesthetic line’, or a line that stands out distinctly against a background? It has been argued that ‘our perception would not comprise either outlines, figures, backgrounds or objects, and would consequently not be perception of anything, or indeed exist at all, if the subject of perception were not this gaze which takes a grip upon things’ (Merleau-Ponty 1992, 295). A trained climber’s gaze sees lines that are only visible because experience separates complex linkages of features from the background and assembles them into a line. In any visual field, something will move into the foreground because the climber strives towards organizing what they observe. The ‘segregation of planes and outlines is’, according to Merleau-Ponty, ‘irresistible’ (Merleau-Ponty 1992, 307). With the intention and purpose of a climber to assemble these features into their work of art, as it were, they become features that have an ‘irresistible’ aesthetic value.

The Puzzle We have seen that experienced climbers frequently refer to their desire to climb a route from ‘bottom to top’ and to do so in one continual, and pleasing, route. In order to achieve this, climbers go to great lengths to

164 

A.-K. Nydal

identify suitable geological features that can be assembled into a single, attractive line. Kurt Diemberger, who was confronted by the challenge of a broken line, describes the moment when he saw the missing link that would resolve the impasse of his climb: The corner, the ‘groove’, might be the key; but after a few steps I could see that our dream of the summit-prize was over. […] And then, all of a sudden, I spotted it … surely, there, just above the snow-crawl, one small weakness in the ice-armour, and the only one! […] Yes—just at the most improbable spot—there was a way up […] that last link. (Diemberger 1999, 94–95)

In large mountain landscapes, such as the one Diemberger illustrates, there is more likelihood that chance encounters can provide links that solve the problem of a climb than on shorter, and arguably more technical, rock-climbing routes where each feature of a route is often carefully planned, and linked together, in advance. However, we must remember that Diemberger’s link, which appears to be a visual problem and simply a matter of such chance encounters while climbing, are the words of an experienced climber. Although he writes about it in such a matter of fact way, what he actually demonstrates is an intricate series of linked manoeuvres, which the climber has to perform, in order to join up the route. From this emerges something that is at the core of this discussion. Climbers have a sustained aesthetic interest in identifying complex linkages of features that they find beautiful: ‘I am attracted to beautiful lines—obvious geological weaknesses or complex linkages of features’ (Moran in Nydal 2013, 255) and have valuable aesthetic experiences from the linking together of these features: ‘I enjoyed the puzzle aspect of piecing together discontinuous features in order to climb with the least permanent impact’ (Middendorf in Nydal 2013, 254). In order to understand more fully the nature of this enjoyment, we must try to understand how they went about linking together routes and what solving the puzzle meant to them. A puzzle is first and foremost an intellectual challenge, one that climbers clearly enjoy, because although climbing is at its heart a physical activity that has practical and material challenges at the centre

8  A Difficult Line: The Aesthetics of Mountain Climbing... 

  165

of their discourse, a puzzle demands of the person attempting to solve it a desire for something difficult to understand and to test one’s ingenuity in solving the problem. The spatial problem of piecing together these discontinuous features thus satisfies this desire. It could, then, be argued that to have a spatial problem, or puzzle, which needed solving, is a criterion for having a valuable aesthetic experience of climbing. Throughout the climbing literature it is evident that there is a persistent search for new challenges by identifying and negotiating complex linkages. However, because they cannot be found simply through remote observation, using telescopes, binoculars and photographs, it is important to understand that their discovery is not always a result of ‘reasoning from the observation’, as Young puts it, but often the result of an imaginative projection. Young illustrates this occurrence at length: It is for our reconnoitering craft, first, to reject those alternatives which are interrupted by the angle of the impossible; secondly, to condemn the lines where it detects surface conditions or direct menaces which will introduce too large an element of danger; thirdly, to except the routes where it decides that harsh angle and poor condition in unrelenting succession combine to form too great a volume of difficulty to be humanly vincible in a single expedition; and lastly, if no agreeable or interesting remainder be left over, to use its utmost skill to determine whether some unseen aspect may not reveal sufficient of its character to encourage a hope that it will offer a more helpful line of attack. (Young 1920, 373)

When Young’s climber ascertains, through visual observation, that a climb is too dangerous or difficult, they will nevertheless attempt to establish, through using their ‘utmost skill’, whether there is another line of approach. His ‘unseen aspect’ implies not only something out of view, but also something that the climber must be able to see and solve in the mind. As such, it could be argued that the greatest skill Young identified of a climber was an ability to treat the problem of complex linkages like a three-dimensional puzzle in the mind’s eye, as it were. It would therefore be appropriate to argue here that a mountain is valued by the climbers ‘because of the imaginative effort’ it demanded of them in order to see the line (Sheppard 1987, 15).

166 

A.-K. Nydal

What, more precisely, is this imaginative effort required of them, and how was it used to resolve some of the difficulties met with on a climbing line? Clinton Dent describes, for example, a common situation where a climber has become stuck in the midst of solving a problem. He writes, ‘When a man has become hopelessly entangled on rock, he can often set himself straight by simply taking hold with his left hand in the same place that he had anchored himself with his right […]’ (Dent 1892, 224). The term ‘entanglement’ is ordinarily associated with a state of mind, a mental confusion or a complicated situation, but the word also brings to mind lines, and we often think of something entangled as objects with distinct linear qualities. These could be thin cords, hair, twine, fibres or wire, to mention a few, that can easily be entangled and twisted together. Dent’s entanglement on the rock appears to suggest the climber’s inability to visualize the climbing line in the mind; consequently he finds himself ‘anchored’ with the wrong hand. In order to solve this spatial problem, or puzzle, the climber must first be able to visualize the sequence of moves but if, as Dent writes, the climber can ‘set himself straight’ by swapping the left hand for the right hand, it could be argued that the climber must also be able to manipulate and rotate this three-dimensional configuration of lines in the mind. An example from one of the world’s leading contemporary rock climbers, Dave MacLeod, who says that he ‘just remember[s] the moves in [his] head’, will help us understand this more fully: I can play it [the sequence of moves] back either ‘inside’ myself as if I was climbing it, or from ‘outside’ as if I was watching myself. I also find I can improve my sequence by doing this i.e. I can discover a way to climb a sequence more efficiently by playing back the different options the hand and footholds offer without being on the route to try it. Quite often when I go back to the route and try it out, it works. (MacLeod in Nydal 2013, 257)

It is important to note that the climbing route MacLeod is referring to is not only extremely advanced technically and therefore outside the perimeter of existing climbing grades, as we will see further on, but that it is also on a scale which demands an ability to remember and visualize more than 300 hand and foot moves in their correct sequence (MacLeod

8  A Difficult Line: The Aesthetics of Mountain Climbing... 

  167

in Nydal 2013, 250). That is without also having to remember the location of all the equipment. The ability to visualize three-dimensional configurations of lines, then, is not static, but indeed a dynamic, or moving ‘image’ that can be rotated at will. Furthermore, MacLeod states: ‘I play moves back in my head so often I don’t even realize I’m doing it’ (MacLeod in Nydal 2013, 257). It could be argued that MacLeod’s ability to visualize, and rotate, a three-­ dimensional, dynamic configuration of lines in the mind—with a lot of practice—has become instinctual. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Young had also indicated that the ability to visualize the sequences of moves could be trained to become instinctual. He explained, ‘He has only to train his eye to select holds ahead which will allow of a sequence of harmonic positions; to train his instinct to imagine beforehand what these positions will be; and to train his body to move from each one of these positions to the next’ (Young 1920, 145). The process of learning to climb, then, was threefold: first to train the eye, second to train the minds-eye, and third to train his body to perform accordingly. As Young stated, this was the ‘ladder of modern technique’ (Young 1920, 145). MacLeod’s ability to ‘play’ the position of his body back to himself in his head, both from an internal and an external perspective sounds extraordinary, and it is unlikely that Young would have been able to envisage that an ‘instinct to imagine’ the position of climbers’ hand and footholds would entail anything like the complex spatial rotation that MacLeod performs in his mind. The rock-climbing abilities were, during Young’s time, far below the technical standards that exist today. Interestingly, Young uses the term ‘position’ three times in the same sentence, implying a sense of spatial location: a physical as well as a cognitive location. Climbing, then, is a complex puzzle that negotiates spatial positions and is solved through a carefully orchestrated series of manoeuvres that are both of the eyes, mind and the body simultaneously. The fact that the space occupied by these locations are described as ‘harmonic’ suggests that Young must have had a strong awareness that each of them involved a choreography that had aesthetic value. Throughout the history of climbing there has been a quest to reach the limit of human capacity: ‘[t]ime perhaps will show’, Clinton Dent

168 

A.-K. Nydal

observes, ‘that the upward limit has assuredly not yet been reached’ (Dent 1892, 89). Just as Dent predicted, increasingly more difficult climbs began to appear, and the ‘upward limit’ is still as sought after today as it was then. Diemberger also wrote about this pursuit of climbing more and more difficult routes: ‘once the day dawned when to climb a peak by the normal route […] failed to satisfy, I had become a rock-climber […]. Rock—with all the difficulties of extreme climbing—that was the thing: cliffs, ridges, arêtes of rock’ (Diemberger 1999, 62). Climbers are continually searching for new links that allow them to assemble, what to them, is a route that has aesthetic value. This quest, together with the whimsical nature of rock, creates an unlimited number of new lines and the puzzles are ever more difficult and complex. Once each spatial problem has been solved they become easier to understand and other more difficult climbs become more within physical as well as cognitive reach. Unlike ordinary puzzles where the activity reaches a natural conclusion once a problem is solved, climbing will always have more complex problems. Once you have tackled a grade 5a climb, you tackle a 5b, then a 5c and so on and so forth. MacLeod reached the limit of documented climbing grades1 with his climb at Dumbarton Rocks, Scotland, called Rhapsody and graded E11 7a. MacLeod comments: ‘Notes on the grade: E11 7a. Obviously this is a remarkable grade. It arises mainly from the physical and technical difficulty of the climb. It’s the hardest link I’ve ever done. […] But it’s also very technical climbing, a very devious sequence’ (MacLeod 2016a). If successful, each time MacLeod attempts a harder climb he places a new grade on the climbing scale. What follows from each new attempt is increasingly more challenging and therefore also more dangerous climbs. It could be argued that one of the main attractions of climbing is a sustained aesthetic interest in solving spatial problems both visually, ­cognitively as well as physically—and that this is what draws climbers to attempt increasingly more challenging climbs. These aspects of the puzzle become increasingly more difficult and thus less likely to be solved. MacLeod describes this very clearly: ‘my worst fear was realised and the rope wrapped itself around my leg as I fell, flipping me upside down,

8  A Difficult Line: The Aesthetics of Mountain Climbing... 

  169

crushing and burning my leg and slamming my back off the wall. I just managed to pull my head out [of ] the way, if I hadn’t I would be dead’ (MacLeod 2016b).

Conclusion At its heart, climbing is a physical pursuit with many challenges and we have seen that it is hard to dissociate it from the pursuit of aesthetic pleasure. Principally, everyone has an inherent appreciation of the mountain as an object that has aesthetic qualities belonging to the mountain itself. Experienced climbers are additionally able to identify complex linkages of features on the mountain that are otherwise indistinguishable to the casual observer and are therefore also able to use this ability to solve the problems encountered whilst attempting to climb difficult lines. As such climbers have an aesthetic appreciation of the mountain, and of the activity of climbing, that is intrinsically linked to the acquisition of knowledge and experience as well as to the imaginative effort it requires of them. These combined experiences give the mountain an irresistible aesthetic value to climbers. Climbers, then, negotiate difficult lines in physical as well as cognitive locations simultaneously and it is through mastering them that their aesthetic experiences become so highly valued. Their quest to reach the limit of human capacity, as well as a desire to repeat their experiences, leads them to constantly look for links that would allow them to create new, more challenging routes. This results in infinite possibilities of climbing and spiralling levels of difficulty. The conquest of such difficult lines gives the climber a sense of achievement and immense satisfaction. In this short pursuit of the aesthetic value of mountains as seen from a climber’s perspective, we have seen that the climbing of difficult lines enriches their understanding about the mountain, and this is an experience that has a deep cognitive significance that captures and sustains climbers’ aesthetic interests in the mountain. This is a significant reason why climbers climb.

170 

A.-K. Nydal

Note 1. ‘Limit’ refers here to climbing grades from 2006.

Bibliography Bonington, C. (1966). I chose to climb. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Dent, C.  T. (1892). Mountaineering. London/Bombay: Longmans, Green & Co. Diemberger, K. (1999). Omnibus: Summits and secrets: The endless knot, spirits of the air. London: Bâton Wicks Publications. Griffin, L. (1998). Valais Alps west. Selected climb. London: Alpine Club. Hansen, P. (2009). Personal correspondence. Hill, L. Interview with Kathleen Gasperini. Mountain Zone. http://classic.mountainzone.com/climbing/hill. Accessed 21 Mar 2009. Jones, O.  G. (1897). Rock climbing in the English Lake District. London: Longmans & Co. Lunn, A. (1961). Geoffrey Winthrop Young. Alpine Journal, 66(302 and 303), 100–117. MacLeod, D. (2016a). http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=198. Accessed 07 August 2016. MacLeod, D. (2016b). https://www.scottishclimbs.com/wiki/Rhapsody_E11_7a. Accessed 16 Sept 2016. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1992). Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge. Nydal, A-K. (2013). Repertoires of architects and mountaineers. A study of two professions. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Kent. Shelley, J. (2015). The concept of the aesthetic. In E. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University. http://plato.stanford. edu/archives/win2015/entries/aesthetic-concept/ Sheppard, A. (1987). Aesthetics: An introduction to the philosophy of art. Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press. Stephen, L. (1871). The playground of Europe. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Thompson, S. (2010). Unjustifiable risk? The story of British climbing. Milnthorpe: Cicerone. Young, G. W. (1920). Mountain Craft. New York: Charles Scribner’s & Sons.

9 Untimely Mountains | Entangled Matter Kim W. Wilson

Introduction I grew up in one of the many ex-oil-shale mining villages of West Lothian. The landscape was and still is populated by the remnants of that industry in the form of several oil-shale waste spoil heaps locally referred to as bings. As children we were aware that these were not mountains in the proper definition of the word. However, their vast burnt redness, completely at odds with the rest of our landscape, secured their place in our imaginations. Our occasional childhood adventures on the bings were always tinged with a sense of uneasiness that may have been rooted in their otherworldly character. Also, the bings resisted us. Each step taken towards the top would be carried away by the loose shale lamina. It was surely a task better suited to the quadrupeds we were not. Atop and insulated by its shaley craterous lip the rest of the world fell away, as we remained bing-held.

K.W. Wilson (*) Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland © The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3_9

171

172 

K.W. Wilson

This personal history was the catalyst that drew me back to the bings, but it was also their particular material qualities and histories that held my interest as an artist. There were practical reasons for my focus on Niddry bing. The other waste heaps were now protected, leaving Niddry as the only possible source of spent oil-shale that I could access. However, following my first site visit, I quickly realised that there were several qualities that made this bing of particular interest. Niddry bing is constantly in a state of becoming-as-it-becomes-undone. Almost daily, tonnes of spent shale are removed. Each visit I make is to a bing re-made. Yet it retains its atmosphere of ambiguity regarding location in time and place, continually shifting between the imagined territories of prehistories and science fiction futures. It is a material source but it is also a thing-in-itself. Since 2013 my work as an artist has focused on the oil-shale waste that is Niddry bing. More recently I have adopted a new materialist method of enquiry of the bing through sculpture. It is this new materialist approach that I shall discuss in this chapter, beginning with an outline of the shale-oil industry and how the bings were formed. I will then give a brief overview of the areas of New Materialism that are relevant to my artistic practice. Following on from this I will discuss the relationship between my work and this new materialist method of enquiry.

 he Shale-Oil Industry and the Oil-Shale Waste T Bings The oil-shale of West Lothian is lacustrine in origin, laid down around 360 million years ago and is a sedimentary rock that contains kerogen, a solid organic matter that when heated releases oil and gases (Ellis 2009, 5; Allix et al. 2011, 4–6; Monaghan 2014, 1). The shale-oil industry was founded in 1851 near Bathgate, West Lothian, by the Glasgow-born chemist James Young, in what is considered by some to be the world’s first commercial-scale oil refinery (Almond Valley Heritage Trust 2010). It was Young who pioneered a method of extracting mineral oil through a process of retortion (heating) (Almond Valley Heritage Trust 2010).

9  Untimely Mountains | Entangled Matter 

  173

The oil-shale was mined, transported to the surface and refinery where it was crushed and fed into the retorts where it was super-heated. The released oil vapours were collected in condensers, separated and refined to obtain the different grades of lighting, motor and lubricating oils and wax (Knox 2010a, b). The spent oil-shale was then transported to the bing, adding to the accumulating ‘mountain’ of waste that would eventually form bings reaching heights of between 9 and 9.5 metres above the surrounding landscape (Harvie 2005, 6). Gradually oxidising from burnt blue-grey to a terracotta hue, the bings became steep-sided and flat-­ topped, distinctive artificial mountains within the level green arable land of Scotland’s Central Belt (Harvie 2005, 8). Initially considered to be of no commercial interest, the spent shale was eventually used to manufacture bricks and as hardcore for road and building foundations, which included the access road for the new Forth bridge crossing (Scottish Oils, Limited 1948, 28 and European Academies Science Advisory Council 2007, 16). Certainly from the mid-nineteenth century onwards the bings have been frequented by walkers, underage drinkers, air-rifle enthusiasts and fly-tippers. Their steep sides have posed a challenge for bing-baggers, motorbike scramblers and those who raced for gala day prizes in the 1940s. Over the years several bings have become the habitat of local and nationally rare species of fauna and flora (Harvie 2005, 20–21). Of course Niddry bing could hardly be classified as a mountain. However, rising as it does, terracotta-coloured and mesa-like, it continues to loom mountainously over the relatively flat-green countryside of that region. As the only bing currently being extracted, it is a ‘mountain’ in the process of unbecoming. It is to this mountain that I returned as an artist whose practice is driven by an interest in materials and processes. As Niddry bing slowly began to edge its way back into my consciousness, I had become increasingly aware of the possibilities of new materialist theory as a method of artistic enquiry. It seemed appropriate therefore to embark upon a new body of work that would also allow me to analyse the usefulness of New Materialism within the context of my own art production.

174 

K.W. Wilson

New Materialism As noted by Bolt, there remains in contemporary art a widespread approach to making work wherein matter is perceived to be passive and inert, a means to a conceptual end (2006, 1). In the introduction to her book Materiality, Petra Lange-Berndt sets out the current state of affairs concerning the place of matter, materials and materiality in contemporary art, to address processes of making is still associated with formalism, while materials are thought of in terms of concrete, direct and inert physicality, carrying imprinted messages. … For some, to engage with materials still seems the antithesis of intellectuality, a playground for those not interested in theory. … Materiality is one of the most contested concepts in contemporary art and is often side-lined in critical academic writing. (2015, 12)

New Materialism offers a way of challenging these commonly held beliefs and assumptions as well as providing a context for my own practice, the core of which is formed by my interest in materials and processes. A new materialist practice of contemporary art challenges the hylomorphic model of making wherein matter is passive and inert, awaiting the imposition of preconceived form by humans. In this section I will give an outline of a selection of the common ideas that unite the various theorists and practitioners of New Materialism in which I have a particular interest. While this overview should not be taken as an exhaustive exploration of what New Materialism is, as addressing the expanse of the theory this lies beyond the scope of this chapter, it offers insight into the theoretical foundations of my work and my approach to the mountain-­ like forms of the bings. In terms of approach, New Materialists challenge the persistent view of matter as that which belongs to the denigrated half of a world that is forever subjected to Cartesian dualism: ideal versus real; culture versus nature; human versus non-human; and matter versus form. Their aim is not to reverse the fortunes of these binaries but to seek an understanding of the world as one that is not bifurcated and, by implication, hierarchical. Instead New Materialism claims a mutually constitutive and c­ onstituting

9  Untimely Mountains | Entangled Matter 

  175

world of materials and (im)material forces that are constantly generating and productive of the physical-virtual world. With regards to theoretical foundations, New Materialism is part of the ‘material turn’, a reorientation towards what we know rather than how we know about the world (McNeil 2010, 429). Seeking a multiplicity of ways of thinking about and through matter, it challenges the premise that meaning and knowledge are created via culture (humans) by way of impressing itself upon nature or matter (Ingold 2010, 92). Rather, New Materialism seeks to address the unacknowledged constitutive nature of matter and redress the situation that has now arisen in which, as noted by Karen Barad, ‘Language matters. Discourse matters. Culture matters [and that] the only thing that does not seem to matter anymore is matter’ (2003, 801). New Materialism asserts that matter—human; non-human; organic; inorganic; animate; inanimate; cultural and non-cultural—is a force in itself rather than a passive substrate for life. At the core of New Materialism is agential matter. Philosopher and feminist theoretician Rosi Braidotti on the impact of New Materialism states that, ‘a radically immanent conceptualization of matter necessarily affirms its ongoing metamorphosis … as it shows an interest in intensive material processes and the actual forms they can produce’ (Dolphijn and van der Tuin. 2012, 107). Consequently, a New Materialist approach is an inherently relational one. Matter is at once embedded in and generative of a world through processes that are described by New Materialist practitioners as an entanglement, assemblage, a flux and flow of forces and matter from which things emerge and re-emerge, become and unbecome become (Barad 2003; Bennett 2010; Grosz 2011; Ingold 2010). Matter does not need a cultural force for it to have agency. New Materialism, therefore, refutes human exceptionalism that allocates agency, knowledge, meaning, making and value solely within the realm of the human. Matter that is an entanglement of transformations and meanings is matter that is storied, in the sense that it enfolds and embeds all processes that it has provoked and been subjected to, be they virtual or physical, human or non-human. New Materialists Iovino and Oppermann state that:

176 

K.W. Wilson

the stories of matter are everywhere: in the air we breathe, the food we eat, in the things and beings of this world, within and beyond the human realm. All matter, in other words, is a ‘storied matter’. It is a material ‘mesh’ of meanings, properties, and processes, in which human and nonhuman players are interlocked in networks that produce undeniable signifying forces. (2014, 1–2)

What are the stories of the oil-shale waste and Niddry bing itself? Certainly these stories do not begin or end with the spent shale of the bing. Rather they spiral out, through, under and above. The oil-shale waste is the residue product of super-heated oil-shale. It is the kerogen that formed over millions of years of heat and compression. It is the Carboniferous plants that fell to and rotted on lacustrine beds. It is the oil retorted to light homes and streets and lubricate engines. It is the bright clean light that gave safe passage to ships. It is the burnt shale pumped out at material source, spreading arterial-like as roads and motorways, re-emerging through the brick-work of towns and villages. It is the thick plates of oil-shale shearing heads from the bodies of miners. It is the sharp fragments displaced by foot, wind, rain, wheel, spade, hand, claw, paw, beak and root. It is the greasy residue dug from finger nails. It is the stains left on hands. It is material bought and sold. The bing is an industrial spoil heap. It is the derelict land once designated by civil servants. It is a 1940s gala day race and penny prize (Miller 1942). It is adventures and trysts. It is dumping ground, drinking ground, eyesore and anomaly. It is a view to the Forth Road Bridges. It is work and leisure place. It is a new habitat sought out by fauna and flora. It is art. It is the sign for home. Storied matter is untimely matter. New Materialist feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz1 states that, Something is untimely, out of its own time, either through its being anachronistic, which is another way of saying that it is not yet used up in its past-ness, it still has something to offer that remains untapped, its virtuality remains alluring and filled with potential for the present and future. (2010, 48)

The untimely characterises a New Materialist approach to time, one that resists its assumed linearity and teleology, that time is always measur-

9  Untimely Mountains | Entangled Matter 

  177

able, divisible and constantly moving forward. New Materialists consider this an abstract and structural characterisation of time that is essentially a human (Western) one (Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012, 66). What they propose instead is a concept of time that does not encourage the myth of linearity and inevitable progress, but which ‘shifts the focus on [to] an open-ended future … to include the affective power of the past and the present’ (Walker 2014, 53). The untimely is dynamic, unfolding and generative. It has no linear causal relationships, no predictable movement from past to future and no end point or final state that the past or present is directed towards. As a non-anthropocentric model of time the untimely provokes us to consider perspectives that are non-(Western) human, when humans are yet to be or are no longer. Untimely matter acknowledges matter’s active participation in the constitution of the present and future, that the matter of the past is not in any way deadened by its past-­ness. It enfolds matter that is human, non-human, animate and inanimate, that which is of human and non-human time (Gil Harris 2009, 16, 17). The spent shale is untimely. It has been retorted of its oil but it is ʻnot yet used up in its past-nessʼ, for its used-up-ness does not leave it redundant and stranded in the past (Grosz 2010, 49). It is an accumulation of material transformations, human and non-human and while it accumulates it also provokes. In its oil-bearing state, it provided heat and fuel and prompted the birth of the oil-shale mining industry. Villages expanded as workers flocked to take advantage of the boom. Miners’ rows were illuminated by the refined shale oil as were streets, businesses and homes throughout the country. The sharp-edged shale tore at miners’ hands, but still the business of mining shale was cleaner and safer than coal. The first spurt of wealth funded some of Livingstone’s expeditions in Africa. Extracting oil from shale eventually became more expensive than the oil struck in the USA leading to the closure of mines and refineries (Almond Valley Heritage Trust 2010). Collapsed mine shafts left crater-like dips in the landscape that were filled with fictions of German bombers and scrap material for gang-huts. What lay beneath now lay above. Burnt, rising and oxidising, they seem to blush at their own anomalous looming. Who needs a sign post when these shaley gatherings signal home.

178 

K.W. Wilson

The untimely is that which exists in myriad concurrent states that are constantly in a state of becoming and unbecoming, each state opening up other potentialities, a ‘leap into the future … a movement of becoming-­ more and becoming other, which involves the orientation to the creation of the new, to an unknown future, what is no longer recognisable in terms of the present’ (Grosz 2010, 49). It is the oil-shale unbecoming to become something other, something that differs and keeps on differing, becoming as it is unbecoming, so that it is liquid, solid and gas. It is motorway, architecture, bing and art. It is fact, fiction, geology and history. It is personal and public.

Putting New Materialism to Work The relational approach of New Materialism that postulates a world that is an entanglement, a flux and flow of forces and materials from which things emerge and re-emerge, become and unbecome, is one that I have adopted in attempting to put New Materialism to work through my own practice as an artist. I am interested in materials that bring their own geologies and (pre)histories. Their own social, biological and industrial histories of processes and transformation and what, in turn, they have transformed. Reductive processes such as extraction, drying, compression and incineration are fundamental to my choices of materials. Making work becomes a self-entanglement with the materials. The aim is not to silence these materials and forces but rather for them to be manifest through and generative of work. New Materialists Van der Tuin and Dolphijn state that, ‘New Materialism is something to be put to work’. It is ‘generative’ rather than ‘generated’ (Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012, 101, 103). They state that there is a danger of (mis) treating New Materialism as if it were fully formed and fixed, a body of knowledge to be applied in different contexts and disciplines. This they believe is tantamount to treating it as if it were the form-giver to formless inert matter, thus reinforcing the dualisms that it seeks to challenge. Whatever New Materialism intersects with or cuts across its aim is not one of negation. Rather, ‘putting New Materialism to

9  Untimely Mountains | Entangled Matter 

  179

work’ aims at generating something new, something related to but different (Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012, 101). My approach to the oil-shale waste and bing-related research is one that attempts to put New Materialism to work through the production of sculpture. It is centred on Niddry bing and is bound up in the bing’s constant state of becoming-while-it-is-unbecoming, of the site as a whole but also of the shale waste in particular, its oxidisation, its potential for crushing, flaking, compressing and mixing. My intervention as an artist should not be regarded as a means by which the oil-shale waste or Niddry bing becomes suddenly activated or meaningful. The New Materialist method of enquiry that I adopt works with and through the oil-shale waste as that which is already storied and untimely. As a consequence the art works I produce are generated by and embedded in this untimely and storied matter. Working Mew Materialism, sculpture and works on paper through one another involves the co-constitutive forces of materials and ­non-­materials research. I give as an example, ablation (Wilson 2015) (see Fig. 9.1).

Fig. 9.1  Wilson, K. W. (2015) ablation (sculpture) Generator Projects, Dundee

180 

K.W. Wilson

Ablation was made from oil-shale waste, wool grease, raw silk, petroleum jelly and bone oil. It is not only the sculpture made from these materials exhibited in the gallery. It is also simultaneously an entanglement of all the processes and relations, including myself, that it has accumulated along the way. The millions of years of compression and heat of organic matter. The waxy kerogen of oil-shale discovered and sought out. The blasting and digging of miners. The super-heating of retorts. The dry sound of shale waste sliding underfoot as I climb the bing to mine the waste back out of its steep slopes. Partially retorted shale, creamy with oil and staining my fingers. The fine laminae of red shale like the friable pages of an old book, graze hands and press through jeans. The weight of my shale loaded back slowing my pace as the pressure comes to bare on my knees. The materials are brought to the gallery and the work is made on-site incorporating all the unknowns of material performances, including my own. Unfolding and becoming in the space with its own temperature and light, ablation is enmeshed in and an enmeshment of the human and non-human, organic and inorganic materials and material forces from a time before and during human existence. The mixture of silk, wool grease and petroleum jelly hardens in tubs as the temperature drops. Getting it out becomes a drawn-out process, the entanglement of temperature and materials resists extraction and my wrists ache. There is a process of improvisation, in which the materials and I navigate the work together. Building from beneath my feet, responding and adjusting as the material collapses, slides, spreads and shears away. As part of the bing and spent shale body of work I produced a series of works on paper. The work choler (see Figs. 9.2 and 9.3) contains almost all of the same materials as ablation: wool grease; oil-shale waste and bone oil on isometric paper. As with the sculptural work, choler is an assemblage of materials and materials forces virtual and physical: oil-shale; heat; compression; scouring; smashing; staining; mixing; mining; melting; sliding; silk; sheep; shearing; bruising; bricks; bodies; weighing; worms; wool grease; dumping; death; climbing; chaffing; chopping. Since its production in 2013, choler has kept, ‘working on paper’. The oil and grease halo has continued to advance across the paper saturating to transparency, exposing and incorporating the fixings into the visual plane.

9  Untimely Mountains | Entangled Matter 

  181

Fig. 9.2  Wilson, K.  W. (2013) choler (work on paper) Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Edinburgh

182 

K.W. Wilson

Fig. 9.3  Wilson, K. W. (2013) choler (work on paper, detail and outline of subsequent bleed) Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Edinburgh

9  Untimely Mountains | Entangled Matter 

  183

The materials in choler exert themselves, entangling the work in other iterations of itself. Ablation and choler enfold storied matter. Matter whose stories are geological, biological, industrial, economic and cultural. They are human and non-human narratives to which I add to when I am mining, bagging, crushing, mixing and naming during the process of extracting, processing and making the works. However, my involvement does not equate with the insertion of a full stop, nor is it an attempt to silence the ‘voices’ of the materials but rather to be one voice among many. Even after my direct involvement ceases the materials themselves continue to story the work. Their odour conjuring up other times, places and experiences for those encountering it. The terracotta-hued shale waste continues to dry and pale. A greasy halo continues to advance.

Conclusion Niddry bing is an artificial ‘mountain’. It is a mountain that is already in the process of unbecoming and becoming other: bricks, roads, architecture and art. My New Materialist approach to Niddry bing and the oil-­ shale of which it is comprised recognises that matter exerts itself. It is not activated or made meaningful solely by humans. Rather the bing in its evolving state is made up of storied and untimely matter whose protagonists are geological, animal, botanical, meteorological, chemical and human. Through the work that I have made I have attempted to extend this New Materialist approach to my own art practice through sculpture. By doing so I challenge widely held assumptions and attitudes held by practitioners and educators within the field of contemporary art, wherein matter or materials are regarded as the inert stuff awaiting the imposition of form and meaning by the artist. This raises questions not only with regard to how art is made and taught but also how it is received and perceived. However, the practice of New Materialism has potential far beyond the scope of contemporary art. A turn towards the material is a turn towards the ethical for it is only when the matter of matter is addressed that the boundaries between entities—human and non-human animals, the

184 

K.W. Wilson

organic and inorganic, boundaries that are manipulated for the construction of, or used as a by word for hierarchies—can be dissolved and ­dualistic modes of thinking broken down. It is only when we attempt to imaginatively empathise with the Other, uncovering similarities and differences, that we can begin to understand these differences as being non-­ hierarchical in nature.

Notes 1. Elizabeth Grosz is Women’s Studies Professor in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Duke University.

Bibliography Allix, P., Burnham, A., Fowler, T., Herron, M., Kleinberg, R., & Symington, B. (2011). Coaxing oil from shale. Oil Field Review, 22(4), 4–15. Almond Valley Heritage Trust. (n.d.). Scottish a brief history of Scotland’s shale oil industry. www.scottishshale.co.uk. Accessed 15 Jan 2013. Almond Valley Heritage Trust. (2010). A brief history of Scotland’s shale oil industry. http://www.scottishshale.co.uk/KnowledgePages/Histories/Scottish ShaleOilIndustry.html. Accessed 3 Sept 2015. Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801–831. Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham: Duke University Press. Bolt, B. (2006). Materializing pedagogies. Working papers in art and design 4, University of Hertfordshire. http://herts.ac.uk/_data/assets/pdf_file/0015/ 12381/WPIAAD_vol4_bolt.pdf. Accessed 29 Oct 2015. Bolt, B. (2013). Introduction: Toward a ‘new materialism’ through the arts. In B.  Bolt & E.  Barrett (Eds.), Carnal knowledge: Towards a new materialism through the arts (pp. 1–14). London: IB Tauris & Co. Ltd. Coole, D., & Frost, S. (2010). Introducing the new materialisms. In D. Coole & S. Frost (Eds.), New materialisms: Ontology, agency and politics (pp. 1–46). Durham/London: Duke University Press.

9  Untimely Mountains | Entangled Matter 

  185

COST. (2013). New materialism: Networking European scholarship on ‘how matter comes to matter’. In Memorandum of understanding for the implementation of a European concerted research action designated as COST action IS1307. Brussels: European Cooperation in Science and Technology Research (COST). Dolphijn, R., & van der Tuin, I. (2012). New materialism: Interviews & cartographies. Michigan: Open Humanities Press. Ellis, R. (2009). Oil shale. Oil Shale Information Centre, September 1. www. oilshale.co.uk. Accessed 4 Apr 2013. European Academies Science Advisory Council. (2007). A study on the EU oil shale industry—Viewed in the light of the Estonian experience. Study, EASAC. Gil Harris, J.  (2009). Untimely matter in time of Shakespeare. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. Grosz, E. (2010). The untimeliness of feminist theory. NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 18(1), 48–51. Grosz, E. (2011). Becoming undone: Darwinian reflections on life, politics and art. Durham: Duke University Press. Hale, J. (2006). Gottfried Semper’s primitive hut: Duration, construction and self-creation. In J. Odgers, F. Samuel, & A. Sharr (Eds.), Primitive: Original matters in architecture (pp. 52–62). London/New York: Routledge. Harris, O., & Fowler, C. (2015). Enduring relations: Exploring a paradox of a new materialism. Journal of Material Culture, 20(2), 127–148. Harvie, B. (2005). West Lothian local biodiversity plan: Oil shale bings. West Lothian: West Lothian Council. Hinton, P., & van der Tuin, I. (2014). Preface. Women: A Cultural Review, 25(1), 1–8. Ingold, T. (2010). The textility of making. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34, 91–102. Iovino, S., & Oppermann, S. (2014). Introduction: Stories come to matter. In S. Iovino & S. Oppermann (Eds.), Material ecocriticism (pp. 1–17). Indiana: Indiana University Press. Knox, H. (2010a). Obtaining oil from oil shale. www.scottishshale.co.uk. Accessed 15 Jan 2013. Knox, H. (2010b). The mining of shale. www.scottishshale.co.uk. Accessed 15 Jan 2013. Lange-Berndt, P. (2015). Introduction: Complicity with materials. In P. Lange Berndt (Ed.), Materiality (documents of contemporary art) (pp. 12–23). London: Whitechapel Gallery. Latham, J. (1976). Feasibility study. Tate archive TGA 20042.

186 

K.W. Wilson

Ligatus Research Centre. (2015). John Latham archive. http://www.ligatus.org. uk/aae/node/2527. Accessed 2 Mar 2013. McNeil, M. (2010). Post-millennial feminist theory: Encounters with humanism, materialism, critique, biology and Darwin. Journal for Cultural Research, 14(4), 427–437. Miller. (1942). Stewartfield Gala Day, Broxburn. Film. Directed by Mr. Miller. Regal Cinema. Monaghan, A. A. (2014). The carboniferous shales of the midland valley of Scotland: Geology and resource estimation. Governmental, London: British Geological Survey for Department of Energy and Climate Change. Plumwood, V. (2002). Environmental culture: The ecological crisis of reason. London: Taylor and Francis/Routledge. Randall, S. (1984). Oral history. Scottish Shale, December 5. http://www.scottishshale.co.uk/DigitalAssets/pdf/Reference/OralHistoryTranscripts/ JM,%20Mr-%20(4).pdf. Accessed 2 Feb 2013. Richardson, C. (2011). Scottish art since 1960, historical reflections and contemporary overviews. Surrey: Ashgate. Richardson, C. (2012). Tate papers no. 17 waste to monument: John Latham’s Niddrie woman. Tate. http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tatepapers/17/waste-to-monument-john-lathams-niddrie-woman. Accessed 5 Mar 2013. Scottish Oils Limited. (1948). A brief description of the operations of the Scottish shale oil industry. Glasgow: Scottish Oils Ltd. Stiles, K. K. (n.d.). John Latham 1921–2006 artist biography. http://www.tate. org.uk/art/artists/john-latham-1470. Accessed 12 May 2013. Tate. (n.d.). Glossary: Artist placement group. http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/ online-resources/glossary/a/artist-placement-group. Accessed 12 May 2013. Torrence, K. (2011). Investigation of self-sustaining combustion of a coal waste heap in Scotland. GSA Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, Minneapolis, October 9. van der Tuin, I. (2011). Review essay: ‘New feminist materialisms’. Women’s Studies International Forum, 34, 271–277. Walker, R. L. (2014). The living present as a materialist feminist temporality. Women: A Cultural Review, 25(1), 40–61.

Part 3 Mobility

10 Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of Temptation to Mont Blanc Veronica della Dora

Climb mountains to see lowlands (Chinese proverb)

Mountains move as we shift our gaze. Yet, mountain encounters have also shaped and reflected shifting ways of seeing, experiencing, and representing the world. Not only are mountains the most visible landmarks in the landscape, they are also privileged vantage points. Ancient Greeks and Byzantines referred to mountain heights as skopiai and Romans as speculae, which is ‘look-out places’1 (Tozer 1897, 327). The Argonauts climbed Mount Dindymon to gain a prospective understanding of the region through which they were about to travel (Thalmann 2011, 6–7). Philip the Macedon ascended the highest

This chapter is a revised and adapted version of ‘Mountains and Sight’, in V. della Dora, Mountain: Nature and Culture (London, 2016).

V.d. Dora (*) Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

© The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3_10

189

190 

V.d. Dora

peak of the Haemus range in order to see the lie of the land as he planned his war against Rome—it was widely believed that this summit commanded a view over the Danube and the Alps, and both the Adriatic and the Black seas (Tozer 1897, 313–314). Likewise, Hadrian ascended Aetna in Sicily and Mount Casius in Syria to observe the sunrise and obtain a view over a wide swath of country, whereas Atlas, the legendary ruler of Mauretania, who was also a philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, was said to have climbed up to the highest summit in his kingdom to gain a prospect of the entire world (Tolias 2011). The view from the mountaintop was an approximation of divine knowledge, a sort of compromise between the totalizing ‘god’s eye’ view and the view from the ground of mortals. The synoptic experience of space is a quintessentially visual experience: it requires distancing. From antiquity to our days, gazing from a mountaintop has been traditionally interpreted as an empowering act—as a supreme expression of political authority and knowledge. As a metaphor of omniscience, it is at once divine and demonic; it allows rational mastering and at the same time it causes dangerous vertigo. This tension is best encapsulated in Matthew’s Gospel, as the devil takes Christ on a lofty peak and tempts him with a simultaneous view of ‘all the kingdoms of the Earth and the glory of them’ (Matthew 4:8). The biblical scene had an enormous and enduring resonance in the Western imagination. Through the centuries, it has been the subject of poems, commentaries, and visual representations of sorts. On a painting by Duccio di Buoninsegna from Siena dating 1308–1311 (Fig. 10.1), for example, the lofty peak nearly disappears under Christ’s mighty presence. Eternity, suggested by the gold leaf on the higher part of the composition, contrasts with the fabulous yet ephemeral-walled cities on the lower part. Christ is firmly standing on a boulder-like mountain, the rock of faith; Satan stumbles over his illusory cities. Five-hundred years later, the same scene assumes very different contours. On an engraving by William Richard Smith (Fig. 10.2), scenery takes over allegory. Here, Christ and the devil nearly disappear in the landscape. What is alluring is not the beauty and richness of the cities but the overpowering cartographic view from above—and the infinite horizon.

10  Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of Temptation... 

  191

Fig. 10.1  Duccio da Buoninsegna, The Temptation of Christ on the Mountain, 1308–1311, Frick Collection

What has happened in between the creation of these two images? This chapter explores some iconic mountaintop encounters at different times in Western visual history and how these encounters have changed, or reflected, shifting ways of perceiving landscape and the world: from the fourth-century Spanish pilgrim Egeria on Mount Nebo to Horace-­ Bénédict de Saussure on Mont Blanc, and beyond. These encounters allow us to explore three ways of perceiving space and looking at landscape: topographically, as a sum of features and memory places; geometrically, through linear perspective; and finally, panoramically, at 360 degrees.

192 

V.d. Dora

Fig. 10.2  William Richard Smith, Mount of Temptation, 1829. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Topographies of Memory Duccio’s painting (Fig. 10.1) is ruled by memory and symbols. The sizes, locations, and colours of the figures are proportionate to their significance in the Bible and to the need to commit them to memory. They do not respond to the geometrical principles of linear perspective but to the power of memory. The viewer’s attention is immediately captured by Christ at the centre of the composition. It subsequently moves to other individual features: the devil, the angels, the cities, and the boulder-like mount. This technique, sometimes called ‘psychological perspective’, was common in Egyptian and Byzantine art but it also, more broadly, reflects a typically pre-modern topographic way of seeing and experiencing space and landscape.

10  Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of Temptation... 

  193

Early examples of this way of seeing are found in the pilgrimage account of Egeria, a Spanish nun who, in AD 384, undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. As she moves through the landscape, Egeria is constantly after elevated vantage points: craggy hills, high cliffs, and mountain tops. Mountain churches and chapels encourage the use of biblical summits as panoramic platforms. For example, on the top of Nebo, the ‘lofty peak’ Moses ascended at the end of his life to behold the Promised Land (Deut. 32:49–50), local clergymen invite Egeria to walk around the church and view ‘the places which are described in the Books of Moses’. From the church door she sees: ‘where the Jordan runs into the Dead Sea, and the place was down below where we were standing. Then, facing us, we saw Livias on our side of the Jordan, and Jericho on the far side. … From there you can see most of Palestine, the Promised Land and everything in the area of Jordan as far as the eye can see. To our left was the whole country of the Sodomites, including Zoar, the only one of the five cities which remain today. … We were also shown the place where Lot’s wife had her memorial, as you read in the Bible’ (Wilkinson 2006, 121).

Egeria does not ascend mountains for pure aesthetic pleasure, but to better grasp Scripture. What matters are the places she has already encountered in the Bible. From the height of her panoramic platform she sees a giant topographic map of biblical places unfold under her eyes. Each location evokes a story, a scriptural passage. Landscape operates as a memory theatre in which the eye wanders from locus to locus. Egeria’s descriptions are addressed to her sisters who remained home in Spain. As she explains, the mental visualization of those places shall enable them to better memorize Scripture. This way of seeing rules most premodern cartography (Mangani 2006). For example, the Madaba map, a sixth-century index-mosaic on the floor of the Basilica of Saint George in Jordan, presented the faithful with a bird’s-eye view of the Holy Land in the form of pictorial vignettes with historical explanations (Fig. 10.3). As with Egeria, Madaba parishioners would associate biblical events to each of the coloured loci memoriae portrayed at their feet: a bird’s-eye view of Jerusalem with its Constantinian holy landmarks; the Dead Sea traversed by two large

194 

V.d. Dora

Fig. 10.3  The Madaba map, Jordan, sixth century, Alamy

boats; ‘the desert of Sinai, where the manna came’; ‘Ephron where the Lord went’; and so on (Gold 1958, 50–71; see also Dilke 1987, 261–262). A similar structure ruled Western medieval mappae mundi. While operating at a different scale, these Christianised images of the earth, likewise, worked through topological and mnemonic principles, rather than through the mathematical principles of modern cartography (Woodward 1987, 359–368). They were not about the actual appearance of the land or about distances between places. Rather, they were tools for memorizing biblical events through spatial visualization. Standard features ranged, for example, from the Red Sea painted in red and crossed by the Israelites to the Garden of Eden with the four rivers and Adam and Eve. As with the world of the Madaba map and mappae mundi, pre-modern landscape was a container of loci, or memorable features. It was also a container of symbols and allegories—Satan’s illusory cities and ‘the rock of faith’ in Duccio’s painting, for example. One of the most evocative ‘symbolic’ mountaintop views nonetheless comes from the Byzantine world, from the Life of Saint Basil the Younger, a holy man who lived in Constantinople in the first half of the tenth century. Amidst his many miracles, Basil enabled his disciple and biographer Gregory to access the

10  Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of Temptation... 

  195

realm of afterlife and explore its complex topographies in nocturnal visions. In one of them, Gregory is guided to the top of a lofty mountain on which is a watchtower. From this privileged observatory, Gregory is given to witness nothing less than the Second Coming. Everything underneath flees. Scenes of salvation and damnation parade one after the other under his feet, as in a tableaux vivant. Landscape continually transforms. The drama culminates in the creation of a new earth, an earth upon which ‘there were no mountains rising up nor descending chasms nor level plains, but that entire earth appeared in a uniform state and condition from one end to the other, and there was no concealed place in it, so one might liken it to a threshing floor in summer’ (Sullivan et  al. 2014, 455–457). The surface of this new earth is like the blank surface of a map awaiting to be inscribed by the cartographer. From his elevated position, Gregory is given the privilege to watch this process of inscription. From its smooth, translucent surface wondrous plants spring out one after the other, disclosing their sweetest aromas and beautiful features. Quickly, this renewed earth becomes a giant Garden of Eden: Its surface was white like milk or snow just fallen from the clouds and a golden gleaming mist emanated from it and rose up to the air of heaven, filling it with ineffable sweet aroma; and it was all glorified. And still the Lord gazed upon all the surface of the earth, and immediately there sprang upon it grass white as snow. Behold, there were upon it plants beautiful and gorgeous in form providing leafy shade and fine fruit, some plants growing fiery red, some gleaming like snow, some blooming with flowers of many colours. … I was totally astonished and astounded at the beauty of the vegetation, I became dizzy and trembled. (Sullivan et  al. 2014, 455–457)

Unlike Egeria who focuses on the biblical past, Gregory’s visionary gaze is directed to the future. As with Egeria’s account, however, Gregory’s account presents a complex topography of salvation. In both instances, the goal is the spiritual edification of readers, and, in both instances, this is achieved through vivid icons, through memorable place-events surveyed from above, from a mountaintop. If faith and topographies of memory underpin these accounts, curiosity and aesthetic gratification motivate the most famous mountain climb

196 

V.d. Dora

in Western intellectual history—Petrarch’s ascent of Mont Ventoux, which, at 1912 metres, is the highest peak in Provence. On April 26, 1336, the Italian poet decided to climb this mountain, which had been haunting his imagination for many years. He wrote to Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro, an Augustinian monk at the University of Paris: I have lived in this region from infancy. Consequently the mountain, which is visible from a great distance, was ever before my eyes, and I conceived the plan of some time doing what I have at last accomplished to-day. The idea took hold upon me with especial force when, in re-reading Livy’s History of Rome, yesterday, I happened upon the place where Philip of Macedon, the same who waged war against the Romans, ascended Mount Haemus in Thessaly, from whose summit he was able, it is said, to see two seas, the Adriatic and the Euxine. (Petrarch 1970, 308)

As Petrarch confesses to the monk, his only motivation was ‘the wish to see what so great an elevation had to offer’(1970, 308). The climb nevertheless soon turns into an allegory of his life journey, as the youngster repeatedly tries to find an easier way to the top, but each time it reveals lengthier and more straining paths than the direct path chosen by his brother. Disgusted by the intricacy of his detours, Petrarch summons himself that ‘thou must perforce either climb the steeper path [of life], under the burden of tasks foolishly deferred, to its blessed culmination, or lie down in the valley of thy sins, and (I shudder to think of it!), if the shadow of death overtake thee, spend an eternal night amid constant torments’ (Petrarch 1970, 311–313). His slow progress to the top, dependent ‘upon a failing body weighed down by heavy members’, makes the poet long for traversing ‘that other road’ in spirit, the road to eternity (Petrarch 1970, 313–314). His brother, a priest, is (spiritually) lighter and makes it to the top more quickly. Petrarch eventually rejoins him and reaches the highest part of the mountain, ‘one peak, the highest of all, the country people call Sonny, why, I do not know’(Petrarch 1970, 313–314). The ‘great sweep of view’ unfolding before him, as combined with the ‘unaccustomed quality of the air’, initially causes a sense of vertigo. ‘I stood like one dazed. I beheld the clouds under our feet, and what I had read of Athos and Olympus seemed

10  Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of Temptation... 

  197

less incredible as I myself witnessed the same things from a mountain of less fame’ (Petrarch 1970, 313–314). However, as his gaze turns south-east, to Italy, the poet, once again, moves from external to inner contemplation and recalls the years he has left behind his boyhood studies. The mountain top offers him a bird’s-eye view not only of the surrounding area but also of his life itself. The Alps, rugged and snow-capped, seemed to rise close by, although they were really at a great distance; … I sighed, I must confess, for the skies of Italy, which I beheld rather with my mind than with my eyes. An inexpressible longing came over me to see once more my friend and my country. … Thus I turned over the last ten years in my mind, and then, fixing my anxious gaze on the future … I rejoiced in my progress, mourned my weaknesses, and commiserated the universal instability of human conduct. (Petrarch 1970, 314–316)

As if awakened from sleep, Petrarch suddenly recalls the initial purpose of his ascent. Having cast homesickness and lovesickness aside, he thus turns his gaze to the west and launches into a detailed exploration of the panorama. As passions and anxieties dissipate and his organism adjusts to the high altitude, the landscape acquires crisper contours. He is able to identify the bay of Marseilles and the mountains of the region about Lyons (though these remain generic mountains, rather than named peaks). His reconnaissance completed, Petrarch pulls out the pocket a copy of Saint Augustine’s Confessions and decides to read at random. His eye falls on the following passage: ‘And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not’(Petrarch 1970, 317). At this point, bodily vision is once again superseded by spiritual insight. Ashamed, the young man turns back to the valley. ‘I had seen enough of the mountain. I turned my inward eye upon myself ’ (Petrarch 1970, 317). Petrarch’s ascent has been taken as emblematic of a novel sensibility. Some commentators identified the Italian poet as the ‘the first modern man’ insofar that his original motivation was to ‘look at nature itself ’ (Clark 1949). His gaze surveying the landscape has thus been tradition-

198 

V.d. Dora

ally interpreted as a grantor of truth and accuracy. Other commentators have taken the episode as a threshold between two eras and attitudes, that is, modern empirical knowledge and Renaissance humanism on the one hand, and medieval devout introspection and humility on the other (Schama 1995, 421). Either way, Petrarch’s ascent is an allegorical as much as physical feat. While Egeria climbed Nebo and other biblical peaks after Moses and used sight to validate biblical truths and better memorize them, Petrarch is caught between Philip the Macedon’s thirst for terrestrial omniscience and Saint Augustine’s acknowledgement of the limit, or rather deceitfulness, of terrestrial things. Ultimately, Petrarch’s venture remains a t­ ypically Christian inner struggle followed by epiphany and redemption (the ­reading of Saint Augustine’s passage). On the mountaintop the poet overcomes homesickness, lovesickness, and melancholy in the same way Christ resisted Satan’s allures. The mountaintop enables Petrarch to put his life ‘into perspective’ (just as Gregory did in his vision). Yet, Mount Temptation unconsciously casts its long shadow on Mt Ventoux. Like Duccio’s painting, Petrarch’s account is still dominated by topoi. It is still lingering between medieval and modern sensibilities.

Landscape and Linear Perspective As opposed to Duccio’s painting, on Smith’s engraving (Fig. 10.2) landscape is no longer an ensemble of topoi, but a scenery mastered by a mono-focal gaze from a fixed point of view. The eye is guided through the vertiginous rocky platform to Christ and the devil, where visual axes converge. At the same time the eye is also pushed to the horizon. Landscape is articulated through such tension—between proximity and infinity. According to the Italian geographer Franco Farinelli, the modern idea of landscape was born only when mountains were measured and the maximum horizon defined—that is, shortly before Smith’s engraving was printed (Farinelli 2003, 41). This way of perceiving and representing landscape, however, has much deeper roots. Comprehensive bird’s-eye views, as if witnessed from a mountain or a hilltop, are common features in Renaissance painting. Leonardo da Vinci has been especially credited

10  Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of Temptation... 

  199

for advancing aerial imagination. Leonardo took advantage of the hilly topography of central Italy and conducted observations on and from mountains (Cosgrove and Fox 2010, 16–18). Landscapes witnessed from above form the background of several of his paintings, including the Mona Lisa (Fig.  10.4). Other times, high-oblique views of hazy peaks loom on distant horizons through windows, porches, or natural openings, as in the Virgin of the Rocks. These enframed views remind the beholder of the wider world, of the harmony and totality of creation.

Fig. 10.4  Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503–1514, Louvre

200 

V.d. Dora

In the sixteenth century, aerial views became artistic subjects ‘per se’. The so-called cosmographic paintings set the observer in an elevated ­position (usually on a highest mountaintop or cliff); they offered a vast panorama of impossibly distant places—like Christ on Mount Temptation. Pieter Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, for example, brings both Crete and Cyprus within visual reach. In Albrecht Altdorfer’s Battle of Alexander at Issus (Fig. 10.5) landscape assumes an even vaster extent. The whole Eastern Mediterranean becomes the stage for the global drama of the defeat of the Persian army in 334 BC. Dazzling numbers of armed soldiers pour out of walled cities and encampments framed by distant lands and seas: the Levantine coast, Cyprus, the Isthmus of Suez, the Nile Delta, and the Red Sea stretching to the horizon. Terrestrial drama extends into the sky, as the shape of a lonely peak reflects in the cosmic swirl of clouds (Schama 1995, 426). The eye is raised to a position where ‘the site of battle, the curving earth and the planetary bodies are all brought within its scope’ (Cosgrove and Fox 2010, 128). As vantage points, mountains operate as liminal spaces, spaces setting the observer between elemental and celestial spheres. Foreshadowing the Copernican challenge to geo-centrism, they offer to every observer the command over space that was once reserved to gods and kings; at the same time, they also cause exhilaration and dizziness. The apotheosis of such cosmographic vision is marked by Milton’s literary representation of Christ’s temptation on the Mount, probably the most famous and evocative of all renditions of the biblical passage. The reader of Paradise Regained (1671) is taken with Jesus up to the top of the lofty peak. Here the reader is offered a dazzling view of the plain below and of the entire cosmos akin to Altdorfer’s epic panorama. Past and present glories converge in a single moment. Landscapes impossible  for the mortal eye to see are brought together in a single bird’s-eye view. From the mountaintop the reader beholds with Christ: Assyria, and her empire’s ancient bounds, Araxes and the Caspian lake; thence on As far as Indus east, Euphrates west, And oft beyond; to south the Persian bay, And, inaccessible, the Arabian drouth. (Milton 1894, 270–274)

10  Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of Temptation... 

  201

Fig. 10.5  Albrecht Altdorfer, The Battle of Alexander at Issus, 1529, Alte Pinakothek, Munich Royal

202 

V.d. Dora

A succession of famous cities parade under the gaze of Christ and the reader: Nineveh, Babylon, Persepolis, Bactra, Hecatompylos, Susa, Seleucia, Nisibis, Artaxata, Teredon, Ctesiphon—and the list continues. Armies and soldiers come next, outpouring from city gates in the same ‘numberless numbers’ as in Altdorfer’s painting. Marjorie-Hope Nicolson linked Milton’s cosmic perspective to the development of a modern ‘aesthetics of the infinite’, of a new sensibility dictated by the ‘opening’ of the closed Aristotelian cosmos and the ­discovery of new worlds and new spaces through the lens of Galileo’s telescope. Here, however, Milton uses Galileo’s glasses for terrestrial rather than outer space observation; he transfers vastness from God and interstellar space to terrestrial mountains (Nicolson 1997, 273–274).

Modernity and the Panoramic View In the seventeenth century, views from above remained for the most, epic flights of the human imagination. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, European mountains were generally despised as unproductive and peripheral places of danger to be carefully avoided. (In this sense Petrarch’s ascent was a notable exception.) German mountains were infested by witches and demons. Until the eighteenth century, the Swiss Alps were deemed to be inhabited by dragons. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, a Zurich professor of physics, compiled a catalogue of Alpine specimens. The best ones, he wrote, were to be found in the cantons of the Grisons: ‘that land’, he wrote, ‘is so mountainous and so well provided with caves that it would be odd not to find dragons there’ (Bernbaum 1997, 123). It was only in the nineteenth century that the Alps started to be systematically climbed and measured. At this point, the view from the mountaintop undergoes a further transformation; it becomes a view constructed around and for a sovereign subject standing alone and ‘first’ on the summit (Hansen 2013). Horace-­ Bénédict de Saussure, a professor of natural philosophy from Geneva, is usually credited for this new perception of the Alps. In 1787 he successfully ascended Mont Blanc, the highest Alpine peak. The summit had already been gained by two locals the previous year. Saussure, however,

10  Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of Temptation... 

  203

was the first to undertake the climb for the specific purpose of scientific observation. From cursed wilderness, he transformed the peak into an object of science. Unlike Egeria’s eye wandering through biblical memory places, or Petrarch’s, satisfied with a basic reconnaissance, Saussure’s eye was after order in nature. His was a holistic, totalizing view. On the top of Mont Blanc, he could enjoy the grand spectacle which lay under his eyes: What I saw and saw with the greatest clearness, was the whole collection, the whole group of these high peaks of which I had so long desired to know the organization. I could not believe my eyes; it seemed to me that it must be a dream when I beheld beneath my feet those majestic peaks. … I seized on their bearing one to another, their connection, their structure; and one glance removed all those doubts which years of labour had not been able to clear up. (de Saussure 1876, 17)

Ultimately, it was the naturalist’s omniscient view from the mountaintop that enabled the aesthetic appreciation of Western Europe’s high places. This way of seeing nonetheless soon ended up embracing other peaks on other continents—and most notably thanks to Alexander von Humboldt. Between 1799 and 1804 the Prussian naturalist travelled extensively in South America carrying with him more than three dozen scientific instruments. In the Andes he envisaged a vast observatory enclosing the totality of the cosmos. Like Saussure on Mont Blanc, on Chimborazo Humboldt found, ‘all the phenomena that the surface of our planet and the surrounding atmosphere present to the observer’; it was on Mont Blanc that he physically saw ‘the general results of five years in the tropics’ (Dettelbach 1996, 268). The majestic mountain, which was then believed to be the highest in the world, condensed huge expanses of territory into a single vertical ascent. In a perpendicular rise of 4800 metres, the various climates succeed one another, layered one on top of the next like strata, stage by stage, like the vegetable zones, whose succession they limit, and there the observer may readily trace the laws that regulate the diminution of heat, as they stand indelibly inscribed on the rocky walls and abrupt declivities of the Cordilleras (Humboldt 1997, 33).

204 

V.d. Dora

Humboldt laboured under the Goethean notion of the harmony of nature. He was after unity in diversity. He was not interested in individual plant species, but in their distribution and in the invisible principles behind it. The sensual interfusion with the mountain and its elements helped the scientist achieve an intimate, spiritual contact with the cosmos and its hidden energies: When the human mind first attempts to subject to its control the world of physical phenomena, and strives by meditative contemplation to penetrate the rich luxuriance of living nature and the mingled web of free and restricted natural forces, man feels himself raised to a height from whence, as he embraces the vast horizon, individual things blend together in varied groups, and appear as if shrouded in a vapory veil. (Humboldt 1997, 79)

Humboldt’s views from mountain tops are always characterized by a haze on the horizon, by a progressive loss of clearness and transparency as the distance increases. Landscape is a threshold. It is a space of possibility. It is the meeting point between the present and what has yet to come. Landscape allows Humboldt to mediate between the local scale and the cosmos, to grasp the hidden forces that animate the earth. His view from above is the view the devil presented to Goethe’s Faust as he promised him the power to command the energies of the cosmos. It is also the view Faust eventually enjoys from the top of his artificial hill created by human labour. From this height Faust, the prophet of modern science and development, controls his new world in its entirety, a world he has eventually brought into being through mega projects of land reclamation, through vast irrigation networks, through canals, dams, and urban planning (Berman 1988, 61). Hazy distant horizons stir his unbound appetite for power and suggest the possibility for further ­development. For Faust, Humboldt, and Saussure, the world has become a vast spectacle constructed for and around the scientist: My gaze revealing, under the sun, A view of everything I’ve done, Overseeing, as the eye falls on it, A masterpiece of the human spirit,

10  Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of Temptation... 

  205

Forging with intelligence, A wider human residence. (Faust, vv)

This way of seeing is best represented by the fisheye view. Eight years before his legendary ascent, during his geological explorations, Saussure sketched the panorama he had enjoyed on the summit of Mont Bouët (3096 metres) and commissioned Marc-Théodore Bourrit to produce one such view of the surrounding mountains (Fig.  10.6). The fisheye view conveys a sense of unity and panoptic control; it sets the observer at the very centre. ‘All the objects’, Saussure writes, ‘are drawn in perspective from this centre, as they would present themselves to an eye situ­ ated at the same centre which successfully made a tour of the

Fig. 10.6  Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and Marc-Théodore Bourrit, Circular View of the Mountains from the Summit of the Bouët, 1779. Beinecke Library, Yale

206 

V.d. Dora

horizon’ (Hansen  2013, 58). In the nineteenth century fisheye views transcended science; they became part of a new popular visual culture. For example, fisheye views were used as maps for orientation in the panoramic rotundas of the great European capitals. Rotundas were windowless circular structures in which the viewer could admire a vast 360-degree-panoramic painting from a platform set at the centre of the building (Fig. 10.7). The visitor’s field of vision was cut by a coverage above the platform and by the platform itself. This produced the illusion of total immersion in an actual landscape, to the extent that visits to panoramas were sold as surrogates of travel. Visitors could freely wander on the platform and take advantage of ‘guides’ who would point at the various features in the landscape (Comment 1999). Von Humboldt himself encouraged the construction of public rotundas ‘containing alternating pictures of landscapes of different geographical latitudes and from different zones of elevation’, which he believed would help the growth of a popular knowledge of ‘the works of creation, and an appreciation of their exalted grandeur’ (Humboldt 1997, 98). Like Humboldt and Faust’s

Fig. 10.7  Fulton, Description explicative du Panorama ou Tableau circulaire et sans borne ou manière de dessiner, peindre et exhiber un tableau circulaire, Brevet April 16, 1799. Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle, Paris

10  Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of Temptation... 

  207

global visions and Saussure’s mountaintop views, panoramas portrayed the world as an ordered totality centred on the individual. Ironically, the Alps became familiar to the public mainly thanks to these new visual technologies. Lay citizens could comfortably explore the inaccessible high places of Europe in urban rotundas. They could also enjoy alpine fisheye views on fine porcelain dishes and other visual mementoes (Anderson 2012, 155–183). More specifically, from 1852 to 1858 Londoners could experience the ascent of Mont Blanc through Albert Smith’s popular show in Piccadilly, as we have seen in Jonathan Pitches’ chapter. The British satirist had himself climbed the peak in 1851 with a retinue of guides comparable to Saussure’s expedition; according to the article ‘Mont Blanc’ in the March 18, 1852, issue of the Hannibal Journal, however, instead of scientific equipment they carried extraordinary provisions of alcohol: 66 bottles of vin ordinaire, 6 bottles of Bordeaux, 10 bottles of Saint George, 15 of Saint Jean, 10 of cognac, and 2 of champagne. The show, an ‘extravaganza of Alpine kitsch’ (Schama 1995, 88), featured dioramas of the mountain rolling across the back of the stage and commented by Smith. By 1858 Smith’s audience outnumbered the hundreds of thousands. So mountains moved. And as they moved, increasing numbers of people moved to the mountains. Between 1853 and 1858 Mont Blanc was ascended 88 times. At some point, the editors of the Punch sarcastically reported that the route to its top was to be carpeted (Colley 2010, 2). Not only did visual technologies made mountains available to the European urban bourgeoisie, but the view from the mountaintop transformed the world into an exhibition; an exhibition centred on a spectator paradoxically immersed and at the same time detached from it as in the panorama—the ultimate paradox of modernity.

Conclusions: Other Ways of Seeing There are different ways to look at a mountain: from ground level, from its slopes, from above its top, and from its very top. Likewise, there are different reasons for gazing at the lie of the land from a mountaintop: military reconnaissance, pious contemplation, scientific observation,

208 

V.d. Dora

planning, mastering, or simply mere curiosity. There are, however, also different ways of looking at the landscape. The perspectival view from the mountaintop has been taken as a metaphor of modernity and its many contradictions. It is the one way of seeing we have come to take for granted. However, we often forget it is just one way of looking at landscape—and at the world. According to the Scottish novelist and poet Nan Shepherd, writing on the Cairngorms in the 1940s, mountains allow us to see things in new ways. Yet, one has to train and discipline the senses, including the eye. As she takes her readers along dark ridges and crystal lochs, Shepherd challenges them to pry through surfaces, to venture into hidden crevasses, to pause over details, to fully immerse in the landscape and all its elements. Her poetic journeys are a perpetual act of discovery. Rather than pursuing the modern dream of omniscience, or passively surrendering to the impossibility of mastering the sublime, Shepherd takes the mountain experience as a creative act, an infinite act of learning, an enriching but always unfolding process. ‘Knowing [the mountain] is endless. The thing to be known grows with the knowing’ (Shepherd 2011, 59). The view from above entrances Shepherd. From the height of the mountaintop, the world seems ‘to fall away all round, as though I have come to its edge and were about to walk over. And far off, on a low horizon, the high mountains’ (Shepherd 2011, 46). Unlike Saussure, however, it is not lucidity of image and open horizons that excite her most, but the snowflake’s geometrical shapes, the quartz crystal, the patterns of stamen and petal, the crack in the rock, the deep recess, the ascent of the inside of a cloud, the haze hiding and revealing new shapes, a walk in the dark, ‘oddly enough, reveal[ing] new knowledge about a familiar place’, or the illusions of the eye caused by elevation—in other words, the hidden sides of landscape (Shepherd 2011, 16). The end of a climb meant for me always the opening of a spacious view over the world: that was the moment of glory. But to toil upward, feel the gradient slacken and the top approach, as one does at the end of the Etchachan ascent, and then find no spaciousness of reward, but an interior—that astounded me. And what an interior! The boulder-strewn plain,

10  Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of Temptation... 

  209

the silent shining loch, the black overhang of its precipice, the drop to Loch Avon ad the soaring barricade of Cain Gorm beyond, and on every side … towering mountain walls. (Shepherd 2011, 16)

The poet’s gaze looks into and through the mountain. As Robert MacFarlane recently noted, Shepherd provides a powerful corrective to our contemporary sensorial disengagement from nature. ‘More and more of us come increasingly to forget that our minds are shaped by the bodily experience of being in the world—its spaces, textures, sounds, smells and habits—as well as by genetic traits we inherit and ideologies we absorb. We are literally losing touch, becoming disembodied’ (MacFarlane 2011, xxxi). By reactivating this link and navigating us through her ‘living mountains’, Shepherd reminds us of the creative potential of the eye, rather than of its ordering powers. ‘The eye brings infinity into my vision. … It is the eye that discovers the mystery of light, … the endless changes the earth itself undergoes under changing lights’ (Shepherd 2011, 98). Shepherd’s mobile engagement with mountains is reminiscent of Chinese landscape painting. While Western perspectival painting and mechanized photography require a fixed viewer gazing from an elevated vantage point, traditional Chinese landscape painters emphasize the necessity of moving through the mountains. In learning to paint, wrote eleventh-century artist Kuo Hsi, ‘you must go in person to the countryside to discover it. The significant aspects of the landscape will then be apparent’ (Casey 2002, 106–109). Wandering allows the artist to absorb the essence of the landscape. And in turn, it makes the viewer’s eye wander through the verticalities of the painted mountains. Yet, today the perspectival view from the mountaintop seems to dominate the world. Scenic spots and pathways, panoramic restaurants and webcams punctuate European peaks. Nowadays the top of Mount of Temptation is accessible from Jericho by cable car. The view from the mountaintop is no longer a demonic temptation, nor is it the privilege of divinities, monarchs, and scientists. It is a commodity for mass consumption; it is a view to be framed by the lens of the camera and taken home, SMSed to friends, posted on Facebook, or circulated on blogs. Because mountains move. And today they move faster than ever.

210 

V.d. Dora

Note 1. The Greek poet Simonides (556–468  BC), for instance, speaks of the summits of Cithaeron as ‘lonely watch-towers’, whereas Strabo (64 BC–24 AD) provides descriptions of an actual belvedere built on one of the summits of Mount Tmolus in Lydia (Western Anatolia).

Bibliography Anderson, B. (2012). The construction of an alpine landscape: Building, representing and affecting the Eastern Alps, c. 1885–1914. Journal of Cultural Geography, 29, 155–183. Berman, M. (1988). All that is solid melts into air: The experience of modernity. New York: Verso. Bernbaum, E. (1997). Sacred mountains of the world. Berkeley: University of California Press. Casey, E.  S. (2002). Representing place: Landscape and maps. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Clark, K. (1949). Landscape into art. London: John Murray. Colley, A. (2010). Victorians in the mountains: Sinking the sublime. Farnham: Ashgate. Comment, B. (1999). The painted comment. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Cosgrove, D., & Fox, W. (2010). Photography and flight. London: Reaktion. de Saussure, H.-B. (1876). Mont Blanc. In J. T. Headley (Ed.), Mountain adventures in various parts of the world: Selected from the narratives of celebrated travellers. New York: Charles Scribner and Company. Dettelbach, M. (1996). Global physics and aesthetic empire: Humboldt’s physical portrait of the tropics. In D. Miller & P. Reill (Eds.), Visions of empire: Voyages, botany and representations of nature (pp.  258–292). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dilke, O.  A. (1987). Cartography in the Byzantine empire. In B.  Harley & D. Woodward (Eds.), History of cartography (Vol. 1, pp. 261–262). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Farinelli, F. (2003). Geografia: un’introduzione ai modelli del mondo. Torino: Einaudi. Gold, V. (1958). The mosaic map of Madaba. The Biblical Archaeologist, 21, 50–71.

10  Mountains as a Way of Seeing: From Mount of Temptation... 

  211

Hansen, P. (2013). The summits of modern man: Mountaineering after the enlightenment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Macfarlane, R. (2011). Prologue. In The living mountain. Edinburgh: Canongate. Mangani, G. (2006). Cartografia morale. Geografia, persuasione, indentità. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini. Milton, J. (1894). The poetical works of John Milton. New York: Macmillan. Mont Blanc. (1852, March 18). Hannibal Journal, p. 2. Nicolson, M. H. (1997). Mountain gloom and mountain glory: The development of the aesthetics of the infinite. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Petrarch, F. (1970). An ascent of Mount Ventoux. In J. Robinson (Ed.), Petrarch: The first modern scholar and man of letters. New York: Greenwood Press. Schama, S. (1995). Landscape and memory. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Shepherd, N. (2011). The living mountain. Edinburgh: Canongate. Sullivan, D., Talbot, A. M., & McGrath, S. (Trans., & Eds.). (2014). The life of saint basil the younger. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Thalmann, W. (2011). Apollonius of Rhodes and the spaces of Hellenism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tolias, G. (2011). Mapping Greece, 1420–1800: A history. Maps in the margarita Samourkas collection. Houten: Hes & de Graaf Publishers. Tozer, H.  F. (1897). A history of ancient geography. Cambridge: Cambridge Historical Series. von Humboldt, A. (1997/[1858]). Cosmos: A sketch of the physical description of the universe. (Vol. I, E.  Otté, Trans.). Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wilkinson, J. (trans. and Ed.). (2006). Egeria’s travels. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Woodward, D. (1987). Medieval mappae mundi. In B. Harley & D. Woodward (Eds.), History of cartography (Vol. 3, pp. 359–368). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

11 Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada): A ‘Translated’ Mountain of Reception of the Nineteenth-Century Alpine Geographical Imaginations Carlos Cornejo-Nieto

Introduction The Sierra Nevada is a Mediterranean high mountain massif forming part of the Betic-Rif arc and located close to the city of Granada, in Andalusia. It contains the highest summits of the Iberian Peninsula, reaching a maximum height of 3482 metres above sea level at the Mulhacen peak, followed by the Veleta peak (3392 metres) and the Alcazaba (3371 metres). It is thus the southernmost high mountain range in Europe, and the second highest after the Alps (Platt et al. 2013; Muñoz Jiménez and Sanz Herráiz 1995). Some of the most remarkable features of this mountain massif are its unusual elevation between the surrounding valleys and cultivated plains, its alpine landscapes over 3000 metres height, its snow cover despite being only 35 kilometres far from the Mediterranean Sea, and its

C. Cornejo-Nieto (*) Independent Researcher, Madrid, Spain

© The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3_11

213

214 

C. Cornejo-Nieto

great biodiversity (Jiménez Olivencia 1991). All of these ­characteristics, along with its unusual morphology as a European high mountain massif, provoke an astonishing visual contrast with respect to its entire natural environment (Fig. 11.1). The Sierra Nevada has had important historical relations between its geographical features and human cultural activities, as well as other European mountain chains such as the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Caucasus, and the Greek summits (Joutard 1986; Walter 1989; Broc 1991; Briffaud 1994; Debarbieux 1995; Schama 1996; Reichler 2002; Beattie 2006; Frolova 2006; Della Dora 2011). Historical ways of engaging with the Betic mountain have generated a wide range of iconographic, narrative, and rhetorical materials, which have, in turn, conveyed the topographical knowledge, the popular interpretation, the scientific research, the romantic imagination, and the mountaineering activity of Sierra Nevada throughout modern history (Cornejo Nieto 2015a, b). All of these modes

Fig. 11.1  Bird’s eye view of Granada, the irrigated land of the Vega, and the snow-capped Sierra Nevada in the background. Source: Google

11  Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada)... 

  215

of approaching the massif have emerged as a result of the materiality of the mountain itself, and of its visual relation with the entire landscape of the city of Granada and its large cultivated plain, called the Vega. Stirred by the powerful visions of Orientalism, nineteenth-century British travellers transformed the ancient Islamic city of Granada into one of the main destinations of the journey to the Iberian Peninsula. But the images shaped by orientalist tastes were not the only ones that represented the travel to Granada. The proximity of the Sierra Nevada to the city also made the massif an important natural site of attraction for foreign visitors. Owing to the outstanding influx of Romantic travellers, the Sierra soon emerged as a geographical repository of cultural forms. Travellers’ geographical imaginations came to materialize in a huge array of renderings and narrations, conveyed by cultural devices such as travel accounts, print albums, and engraving collections. However, the metaphors and contents which shaped these imaginaries and the global contexts from which they emerged have not been discussed yet from a global perspective within recent debates in Cultural Geography. This chapter focuses on one of these geographical imaginations of the Sierra Nevada through the study of several images and narratives created by the British travellers during the nineteenth century. The aim is to place them within the context of cultural knowledge of Western European high mountains, and, thus, to set out a comparative dialogue between the meanings of the Sierra’s representations and those images shaped by the way of envisioning the Alpine landscapes within British culture. The chapter will show how the aesthetic models and the conventional metaphors of mountain scenery, previously employed in the making of the symbolic acquaintance of the Alps, circulated in time and space through diverse cultural artefacts, being thereby reappropriated in the visions of the local landscape formed by Granada, the Sierra, and the Vega. The aesthetic criteria of the sublime, the romantic Gothic revival, and a mythical narrative of mountains—elements which had defined the canon image of the Alpine world—were reinterpreted onto and facing the summits of Sierra Nevada, forming an Alpine collective imagination in southern Europe.

216 

C. Cornejo-Nieto

 eographical Imaginations and Geographies G of Reception The concept of geographical imaginations—also named ‘imaginative’ or ‘imagined geographies’, and ‘spatial consciousness’—has been defined by David Harvey as a series of practices and processes which ‘enable the individual to recognize the role of space and place in his own biography, [and] to relate to the spaces he sees around him’, thus allowing him to identify ‘the relationship which exists between him and his […] territory’, as well as ‘to use space creatively and to appreciate the meaning of the spatial forms created by others’ (Harvey 2005, 212). Geographical imaginations function, as the cultural geographer Stephen Daniels has put it, as symbolic tools which make it possible to ‘bring material and mental worlds into closer conjunction’ by merging ‘the mythical and the mundane’ (Daniels 2011, 182). Academic attention to geographical imaginations has generally led to an essential ‘ocularcentrism’ in the study of landscape within Cultural Geography (Driver 1995, 2003; Rose 2003). Thus, landscape has been conceptualized as a symbolic formation which is produced by the specificities of a particular visual regime and the power of a social group, both exerted over nature (Cosgrove 1984, 1985; Daniels and Cosgrove 1988). This visual approach to landscape has nonetheless been challenged from different perspectives within different disciplines. Kenneth Olwig (1996, 2002) has called into question the idea of landscape in terms of representation, claiming instead the construction of a social space where a strong political sense of community (the ‘body politic’) might be developed in a territory. Likewise, landscapes have been considered ‘as arenas of practice’ (Cresswell 2003, 270), which must be explored through the perspective of ‘human embodiment’ so as to find its meaning in ‘practical activity […] rooted in an essential engagement with the material environment’ (Ingold 1993, 157; see also Bender 2002). Recent studies, including Christos Kakalis’ chapter in this volume, have unified such perspectives with performativities occurring in the ‘more-than-human, more-than-­ textual, multisensual worlds’ (Lorimer 2005, 83) focusing on the ‘processual sensibilities’ mediated by ‘the relations between “selves” and

11  Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada)... 

  217

“landscapes”’; within ‘practices of voyaging and dwelling’ (Wylie 2002, 251). In any case, either through images and metaphors or through practices and performatives, imaginative geographies permit us to ‘apprehend and create nature as meaningful’ (Cosgrove 1990, 354). Spatial consciousness of territory moves spatially and chronologically through cultural devices and ‘forms of media and instrumentation’ (Daniels 2011, 185). The models of representation concerning the European high mountain also circulate in time and space over collective imaginations. This transmission of ideas, visions, and cultures provides a good opportunity to place the study of the Sierra Nevada within the framework of circulation of knowledge, drawing on Edward Said’s essay ‘Traveling landscapes’. Said considered the role of journey as the main communication channel of theories and knowledge, both scientific and symbolic. He stated that ‘ideas and theories’, ‘cultural and intellectual life’, ‘travel from situation to situation, from one period to another’, taking ‘the form of acknowledge or unconscious influence, creative borrowing, or wholesale appropriation’ (Said 1991, 226). After Said, several studies have examined the consequences of transmission of discourses through cultural printed forms and translations, discussing how ideas are transformed as they travel around (Jardine et al. 1995; Beer 1996; Rupke 2000). Circulation of knowledge means, according to James Secord (2004, 661), ‘thinking always about every text, image, action, and object as the trace of an act of communication, represented by conventions of transmission’. Within Geography, David Livingstone (1995, 2005) has re-thought this theory in spatial terms, focusing on what he calls ‘geographies of reception’ or ‘geographies of reading’. He has explored how knowledge is situated by highlighting ‘the significance of location in hermeneutic encounters’ of texts, images, and theories with readers and viewers (Livingstone 2005, 395, 392). As Livingstone has put it, the meanings of ideas, discourses and narratives, once turned into printed forms, ‘varies from place to place’, ‘tak[ing] shape in response to spatial forces at every scale’ (2003, 4). Thus, the making of ideas is geographically constituted and spatially conditioned. In their mobility, they are continuously shared, ‘disarticulated’, transformed, and re-shaped, for ‘spaces both enable and constrain discourse’ (Livingstone 2003, 7). Other geographers have also

218 

C. Cornejo-Nieto

discussed the transmission of ideas and narratives through cultural devices and moving practices. Derek Gregory and James Duncan have pointed out how the action of travel writing becomes an ‘act of translation’. In narrating and representing the ‘other natures’ of unknown landscapes, travellers adopt an established compendium of spatial norms, as those referring to high mountain spaces, thus ‘“translat[ing]” one place into another’ and producing a ‘tense “space in-between”’ (Duncan and Gregory 2010, 4; see also Gilroy 2000; Wylie 2007), an idea that is developed in Emily Goetsch’s chapter in this volume. Finally, Veronica della Dora has investigated the mobility of popular landscape images by remarking their ‘materiality, performance and circulation as a medium of exchange between places’, and, consequently, between societies’ spatial consciousness (Della Dora 2007, 288). Against this theoretical background, this chapter will analyze the circulation of the aesthetic and symbolic knowledge of mountain landscapes in nineteenth-century Europe through the case study of the Sierra Nevada, illustrating how the massif became a focus of geographical reception and reinterpretation of the Alpine imaginative geographies. First, the chapter will briefly review the main keys of the aesthetic discourses and recurrent metaphors that shaped the canonical image of the Alpine world by presenting the contents which contributed to defining the concept of the sublime, the Gothic revival, and the idea of Arcadia. The discussion will then turn to address how such narratives and aesthetic models were combined to shape the conventional representations of the entire landscape of Granada, formed by the main medieval landmark of the city (the Alhambra), the snow-capped summits of the Sierra Nevada, and the large meadow of the Vega.

 haotic, Gothic, and Arcadian Visions C of the Alps The historical genealogies of the metaphors which shaped the Alpine geographical imaginations in British culture were complex. On the one hand, the new geological theories appeared at the dawn of the Enlightenment,

11  Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada)... 

  219

and the English aesthetic theory conceived in the pre-­Romantic period. Both were unified by the sense of the sublime, which prompted the making of new symbolic ways of relating to wild nature. On the other hand, Romantic sensibilities  were found in the classical idea of Arcadia, an Edenic connotation of nature which carved out an idealized image of Alpine mountain landscapes. The sense of the sublime was one of the main rhetorics that moulded the collective imaginations of mountains. However, it was not an exclusive issue of the aesthetical rhetoric. Marjorie Hope Nicolson has shown that, before being established by the eighteenth-century liberal arts, the elements and metaphors which fashioned the ‘rhetorical Sublime’ had previously been formulated by diverse scientific disciplines through the idea of the ‘natural Sublime’ (Nicolson 1963, 30, n. 39). Theology, Astronomy, Geology, and Philosophy set up the terms, the languages, and the images which would characterize the category of the sublime in the height of modernity. Discoveries in Astronomy and Earth Sciences, reflected in Literature, changed the attitude towards mountains. The fantastic scenes of Johannes Kepler’s Somnium sive Astronomia lunaris, published in 1634, presented a ‘forbidding spectacle of vast towering [lunar] mountains, profound chasms and abysses’ (cited in Nicolson 1963, 132). Likewise, the geological treatise Geographia Generalis by Bernhardus Varenius, first published in England in 1650, became a literary model among pre-Romantic English poets, such as John Milton and James Thomson, who echoed the explanations of the rising of mountains of the Moon, and the infinite panoramas of the unknown mountains of the Earth. Kepler’s and Milton’s imaginaries became examples for the writers of the Romantic generation. Attracted, on the one hand, by those sublime scenes, and, on the other hand, by the writings of expeditions to the peaks and glaciers of the Alps—especially those by Horace-Benedict de Saussure, Marc-Théodore Bourrit, William Coxe, and William Windham—a whole generation of British poets set out on the journey to Chamonix to see, in situ, Mont Blanc. Their descriptions contained the same metaphors which had formed the fantastic and chaotic landscapes from Milton’s Paradise Lost and Kepler’s Astronomia lunaris. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, for example, extolled the ‘icy caverns’ and ‘jagged rocks’ of the chaotic massif of Mont Blanc (Coleridge 1969, 377–379), while

220 

C. Cornejo-Nieto

Percy Bysshe Shelley emphasized the powerful force radiating from the ‘unearthly forms’ and ‘unfathomable deeps’ of the highest summit in the Alps (Shelley 2002, 98). In the Earth Sciences of the second half of the seventeenth century, mountains played an essential role in the scientific theories on the formation of landforms and oceans. Transformations of the Earth surface and the origin of mountain ranges were explained by means of several metaphors, using the recurrent images of chaos and ruins. In this regard, Thomas Burnet’s book Telluris Theoria Sacra, first published in English in 1684, was fundamental. According to Burnet, mountains rose by the collapse of the original ‘smooth’ surface of the Earth (Burnet 1697, 47). This orogeny then provoked the ‘Chaos’, whose consequences resulted in the creation of oceans and mountain chains. Mountains were thus seen as ‘vast bodies thrown together in confusion’, ‘heaps of Stones and Rubbish’, the ‘ruins of a broken world’ (Burnet 1697, 95, 96, 100; see also Nicolson 1963, 200). Burnet’s ideas were very influential in the making of the aesthetic theory of the ‘rhetorical Sublime’, as well as in descriptions of the Alps’ wild nature (Ogden 1947; Schama 1996). From the starting point of those imaginaries, conveyed by poetry and science, the eighteenth-­ century philosophers Joseph Addison and Edmund Burke formulated for the first time the theoretical and aesthetic considerations of the sense of the sublime. In ‘The Pleasures of the Imagination’, written by Addison in 1712, and A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, published by Burke in 1759, they highlighted the agreeable horror that vast, dark, and wild natural spaces should provoke in the viewer or the traveller. Concurrently to the categorization of the sublime, the Gothic Revival also echoed the haunting atmospheres of ruins and rugged landscapes, and the terror stirred by the wild nature of the high mountain. These environments were presented in Gothic novels and travel accounts as wild landscapes which made the readers move virtually to remote historical times. Thereby, sublime landscapes of irregular peaks and chasms were completed by medieval architectures (Fig.  11.2). According to Maggie Kilgour, the taste for the Gothic, exemplified by architectural features and ruins such as cathedrals, castles, towers, and abbeys, was ‘­symptomatic of a nostalgia for the past which idealises the medieval world as one of

11  Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada)... 

  221

Fig. 11.2  Landscape of Bellinzona. Lithography. Source: William Beattie, La Suisse pittoresque: ornée de vues dessinées spécialement pour cet ouvrage. London, 1836. Courtesy of Viatimages/Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire – Lausanne

organic wholeness’(Kilgour 1995, 11). Besides, these medieval remains were connected to the fascination of the violent formation and the wild structure of mountains, that is, the ‘ruins of a broken world’ (Kilgour 1995; Natta-Soleri 1998). The imagined geographies of the Alps also recovered a mythical vision of nature. Alpine valleys embodied the new Eden of bourgeois societies in industrialized Europe. As Claude Reichler has pointed out (2002, 10–12), mountain geographies occupied an increasingly important place in European culture to the extent that its canon image, epitomized by chasms and peaks, came to represent a contrast to that of the verdant valleys. Hence the metaphor of the locus amoenus was recalled in opposition to the concept of topos horribilis. The Arcadian connotations of the Alpine locus amoenus responded to the ‘dream about the state of Nature,

222 

C. Cornejo-Nieto

about the preserved happiness of a primeval life’ which was projected onto wild nature by modern societies (Reichler 2002, 10). In classical times, the term locus amoenus denoted an idealized space of Edenic reminiscences. It was conceptualized as a secluded location (in geographical and metaphorical terms) in which time did not seem to run, and in which the realization of the Golden Age, represented by the archetype of Arcadia, might be possible (Schama 1996, 531–538; see also Samson 2012). In eighteenth-century England, this landscape archetype was envisioned as ‘a means of escaping imaginatively from the pressures of urban or courtly life into a simpler world’ (Andrews 1989, 5). That idyllic place symbolized Arcadia, a ‘mythical time set in an eternal spring when man lived in harmony within his society and with the natural environment’ (Andrews 1989, 5). The poem Die Alpen by Albrecht von Haller, first published in 1729, and well known in all Europe after its French edition in 1732, was the foundational work which set the Edenic sense of the Alpine mountain in the collective imaginations. Its success ensured the circulation of an Alpine locus amoenus over the continent. Such a mythical interpretation of mountains presented an archetypal image of Alpine scenery formed by the ‘opposed’ elements of climate and vegetation ‘gathered in one site’ (Joutard 1986, 84). Alpine valleys were thus conceptualized by European elite as the new natural spaces which harboured the Classical Arcadia, nourishing the mountain myth of the legendary Golden Age (Raffestin 2001, 17).

 ublime Summits, Gothic Ruins, and Arcadian S Landscapes in the Visions of the Sierra Nevada During the nineteenth century, British travellers discovered other geographies apart from the traditional routes of the Grand Tour, other places which evoked the chasms, the peaks, and the valleys of the Alps. The Iberian Peninsula came to be one of the most visited lands among these new destinations. It emerged as an exceptional place in which travellers could put into practice the pleasures of the imagination moulded by the  sublime, the Gothic, and the mythical. The Alpine geographical

11  Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada)... 

  223

imaginations thus circulated in time and space, being culturally transmitted to the Peninsula, and particularly reactivated in those mountainous regions with great landscape diversity. The ancient Kingdom of Granada appeared as one of the richest areas from a geographical perspective. It represented the quintessence of the British aesthetic categories. Due to the spectacular geographical location of the city (in a setting formed by the contrast between the plain of the Vega and the Sierra Nevada), and to the imposing presence of the Alhambra (erected just on the Sierra’s wooded foothills), Granada, the plain and the Sierra had the material elements which had configured the sublime and the Edenic, while the architectural remains of the city enhanced the potential of such categories through the recovering of the medieval revival. The geographical and visual structure of this landscape enabled the English travellers to envision the Granada’s mountains and its environment through the already familiar Alpine metaphors. The way of envisioning the Sierra Nevada through the metaphors of the chaos and the sublime became evident in the summits’ climbing. In their expeditions to the Betic high mountain, travellers shaped an Alpine conceptualization of the massif. One of the first travellers who narrated his ascent of the Sierra (namely to the Veleta Peak) was Robert Semple in A Second Journey in Spain, in the Spring of 1809. Its climbing was described by the sequence of conventional images which had previously marked out the accounts of expeditions to the Alps. According to the traveller, ‘by degrees the Sierra assumed a grander form, the ridges became loftier, sharper, and more distinct; the precipices darker and more profound’ (Semple 1809, 183). As he was reaching more altitude, he recalled the geographical elements which generally took part of the Alpine landscapes. Once passed the plain, he found himself ‘in the bosom of the Sierra, among wild mountains, chasms, torrents, precipices, and rocks’ (Semple 1809, 184). The Alpine verticality was thus lived in Sierra Nevada through the relocation of foreign imaginative geographies. The Alpine imaginations continued to circulate through the most famous travel account of the time, Richard Ford’s A Hand-Book for Travellers in Spain and Readers at Home, published in 1845. ‘The Alpine range of the Alpujarras is grand beyond conception, and is the

224 

C. Cornejo-Nieto

Switzerland of Spain’, he wrote, as he likewise claimed that ‘the lover of Alpine scenery should by all means ascend the Sierra Nevada’ (Ford 1845, 359, 395). During his ascent, Ford employed the chaos analogy by stressing the confused appearance of several spots of the expedition, such as the Dornajo, described as an ‘Alpine jumble of rocks’ (Ford 1845, 395). As a good connoisseur of the English literature, and perhaps due to his previous journey to the Alps, his narration of the ascent of the Veleta Peak used many terms referred to the Alpine world, offering an image of the Sierra close to the agreeable terror: The Picacho is a small platform over a yawning precipice. Now we are raised above the earth, which, with all its glories, lies like an opened map at our feet. Now the eye travels over the infinite space. […] The cold sublimity of these silent eternal snows is fully felt on the very pinnacle of the Alps, which stands out in friendless state, isolated like a despot, and too elevated to have anything in common with aught below. (Ford 1845, 396)

William George Clark visited Granada in 1849. Before setting off on his journey to Spain, he had  already indicated his intention of getting into the Sierra when he ‘first unrolled the map of Spain at home’: ‘there was one portion of [my future tour] which, above all, attracted my imagination—the district lying between the Sierra Nevada and the Mediterranean’ (Clark 1850, 139). Further, he deliberately expressed his ‘great passion for hill-climbing’ (Clark 1850, 154). Just as Ford, he knew well the English poetry and travel literature of the time. He had read the oeuvre by those authors who set out on the journey to Chamonix in search of the Mont Blanc. In his account, he actually confessed that ‘this passion has since been fostered by Wordsworth’ (Clark 1850, 154). The sublime and chaotic visions of the mountain also appeared in Clark’s narration, determined by the Alpine sceneries with which he had become acquainted through literature. As he was ascending the Sierra, ‘the cold grew more and more intense’, and the mountain ‘presented to the eye a vast black mass’ (Clark 1850, 158). The summits landscape emerged with a marked chaotic appearance, ‘where Nature seemed to have carted her rubbish’ (Clark 1850, 158).

11  Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada)... 

  225

The transmission of the Alpine sublime to the Sierra Nevada was not only made possible through the ascent of its summits. The visual relation between the massif and the ruins of the Islamic fortress of the Alhambra also brought about the reactivation of the sublime in the landscape of Granada. The Hispanist traveller Henry David Inglis emphasized this connection in his book Spain in 1830. Inglis stressed the visual harmony of the Islamic building and the Sierra in the background, describing the scenery in medieval terms, and even identifying the architectural elements with the summit line of the massif. Far from being ‘a few isolated ruins’, the architectures consisted of ‘ranges of palaces, and castles, and towers, […] rising above and stretching beyond one another, […] and almost vying in grandeur with the gigantic range of the snowy Sierra that towers above them’ (Inglis 1831, II, 218). This visual dialogue was well exemplified by the engraving The Sierra Nevada from the Alhambra (Fig. 11.3). Published in the album Alhambra 1827 by T. H. S. Bucknall Estcourt, the plate underscored the Alpine appearance of the Sierra,

Fig. 11.3  T. H. S. Bucknall Estcourt. The Sierra Nevada from the Alhambra, 1833. W. Westall, engraver. Lithography. Source: T. H. S. Bucknall Estcourt, Alhambra/ T.H.S.E. London, 1832–1833. Courtesy of Archivo del Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife, Granada

226 

C. Cornejo-Nieto

whose imaginary summits were shown behind an evocative medieval site which was represented by the ruins of the Alhambra’s towers and gates (Bucknall Estcourt 1832). The English traveller seemed to place the Alpine imaginations in Granada through its archetypal elements: the medieval ruins and the craggy mountains. The Alhambra was considered a Gothic building by the British theorists of the time. Christopher Wren introduced in 1750 a new theory on the origin of the Gothic style. He claimed that the late medieval architecture was connected to Islamic art by means of the Saracen origin of pointed arch, introduced in Europe by the  Crusaders, and later perfected by Christians through the Gothic style (Raquejo 1990, 41–42). In addition, the bad state of preservation of the Alhambra’s rooms, walls, and, in general, of the whole area of the building, allowed the evocation of the world of ruins which had been so attractive for British culture (see also Raquejo 1986; Hoffmeister 1990; Saglia 2010). In renderings, the distortion of the fortress’s external parts was the clearest evidence of the transmission of the sublime Gothic to Granada. This was the case of David Roberts’ drawings, engraved on steel plates for the popular Robert Jennings’ Landscape Annuals. The plates paradigmatically illustrated the sublime interpretation of the landscape of Granada, the Alhambra, and the Sierra. Images like The Alhambra from the Albaycin did not only present a distortion of the outer relief of the building, but also a distorted view of the entire natural environment, in which the Sierra Nevada was depicted as a mountain of exaggerated height and verticality (Fig.  11.4). The ‘Gothic’ fortress appeared perfectly intertwined in a geographical frame of Alpine connotations, and was even identified with the mountain itself: On emerging from the hills, […] the old Moorish capital is seen in the distance, and more conspicuously the ruddy light of its Vermilion Towers, high overhung by the range of the snow-clad Sierra. The sight of the famed Alhambra […] impresses the soul with deep and mournful feelings […]. A fortress of palaces, its walls bristling with castellated forts, embrace the entire crest of the hill which commands the city, forming part of the grand Sierra Nevada, a chain of mountains perpetually covered with snow. […] Granada, the beloved city of this vast mountain-fortress, lay at its feet. (Roscoe and Roberts 1835, 3, n. †)

11  Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada)... 

  227

Fig. 11.4  David Roberts, The Alhambra from the Albaycin. 1834. E.  Goodman, etcher. Steel engraving. Source: T.  Roscoe and D.  Roberts, Jennings’ Landscape Annual for 1835, or, Tourist in Spain Commencing with Granada. London, 1835. Courtesy of Archivo del Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife, Granada

In the Landscape Annual’s plates, the landscape formed by the Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada was offered to the reader as a magnificent scenery governed by several aesthetic rules which were widely assimilated by British popular visual culture. Roberts endowed the visions of the ‘other’ with familiarity, transcribing the elements of the Alpine geographical imaginations to the new travel destination. With the readaptation of these imaginaries to Granada, the landscape of the Sierra Nevada was given an outstanding spectacularization of Alpine type, complemented with the Gothic appearance of the Alhambra, and legitimized by the medieval reminiscences of the ancient Islamic kingdom. The Alpine conceptualization of the landscape of Granada and the Sierra Nevada also included the vast plain of the Vega. In this sense, the idea of the modern Arcadia, which had nourished the Alpine geographical imaginations, also travelled to the Iberia Peninsula. Granada’s Vega has traditionally been a field of exceptional fertility for irrigated land due

228 

C. Cornejo-Nieto

to the proximity of the Sierra. In this sense, the massif has always functioned, as Ford stated, as ‘a perpetual Alembic of fertilizing water’ for the fields of the meadow (1845, 359). Its irrigated landscape provoked a strong impression on all the British travellers. In their travel accounts, they often pointed out the geographical connection between the Sierra and the Vega. The traveller William Jacob noticed that the ‘melted snow on the Sierra Nevada forms continual streams, which are most copious in the summer, when they are particularly necessary to refresh the parched land; and it is to this circumstance that the productive powers of the soil of the Vega may be chiefly traced’ (Jacob 1811, 299), while John Leycester Adolphus conceived the massif as ‘the parent of all the waters which refresh the gardens and the plain’ (Adolphus 1858, 181–182). The lush appearance of the Vega’s farming landscape at that time acquired a mythical meaning in the travellers’ imaginations. Their descriptions usually compared the plain with a garden, an orchard, and even paradise as the result of the good irrigation system managed by the Arabs during the Islamic times. It thus became a spatial repository of the Edenic perception of the close mountain scenery. Through the evocation of the Vega as a vast garden of Islamic reminiscences, the meadow turned into an anachronistic locus amoenus, and the Sierra Nevada, conceived as the natural creator of that space, was part of it. The Edenic connotations of the locus amoenus stemmed from the idea of paradise. This term came from the ancient Persian, whose word pairidaēza referred to an enclosed circular piece of land of Royal property, so that the term was generally applied to the royal gardens (Samson 2012, 7). If the classical locus amoenus was enclosed by walls or gates, the ‘garden’ of Granada also appeared, in British travellers’ eyes, fenced within natural walls, which were represented by the surrounding mountains, especially by the Sierra Nevada as the highest of all of them. The traveller Sir John Carr envisioned the landscape of Granada in that way in his Descriptive Travels in the Southern and Eastern Parts of Spain and the Balearic Isles, in the Year 1809. When entering ‘the vast and magnificent plain, […] variegated with farms, meadow-fields, rivers, forests, woods, and country-houses’, he soon noticed that it was ‘bounded by chains of mountains covered with vineyards, orange, citron, olive, mulberry, and fig-trees’ (Carr 1811, 163–164). In the background, he wrote,

11  Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada)... 

  229

the Sierra Nevada rose, ‘whose summits, covered with eternal snows, presented a brilliant contrast to the prodigal display of all tints of verdure which nature had assumed below’. The entire landscape presented, according to the traveller, ‘an expanded scene of luxuriance and opulence, rarely to be beheld’ (Carr 1811, 163–164). Likewise, Inglis echoed the Arcadian interpretation of the Vega. According to his vision, the meadow, ‘bounded on the south-east, the east, and north-east, by a semi-circular range of high mountains called the Sierra Nevada’, was ‘covered with perpetual verdure, with grain of every description, with gardens, with olive plantations, and with orange groves’ (Inglis 1831, II, 220). The metaphor of Arcadia was specially conveyed in the Spanish Papers by Washington Irving. In his conceptualization of Granada from the Alhambra’s towers, he eloquently merged the search for an anachronistic paradise and his interest in history. His visions were defined by the appropriation of the previous geographical imaginations and their relocation in the context of Granada Islamic history. In entering the ‘vast and beautiful plain, interspersed with villages, adorned with groves and gardens, watered by winding rivers, and surrounded by lofty mountains’, the writer reflected on its beauty in the past (Irving 1881, I, 112). The Vega, he wrote, was ‘destined to be for ages the favorite abode of the Moslems’: ‘When the arab conquerors beheld this delicious vega’—Irving stated—, ‘they were lost in admiration; for it seemed as if the Prophet had given them a paradise on earth, as reward for their services in his case’ (1881, I, 112).

 onclusions: The Sierra Nevada as a Translated C Mountain of Reception As ideas and theories travel, aesthetic models and cultural myths also circulate in time and space over societies’ imagined geographies, thus constituting a moving symbolic knowledge. Collective imaginations which shape the meanings of geographical space are also transmitted, generating what Della Dora calls a ‘geography of landscape reception’, a continuous mobility of the symbolic formation of landscape (2007, 288–290). In light of Livingstone’s ‘geographies of reading’ (2005), this

230 

C. Cornejo-Nieto

chapter has shown how the landscape formed by Granada, Sierra Nevada and the Vega emerged as an appropriate space for the reinterpretation of the nineteenth-century patterns of representation of European mountain landscape. From the Central Alps to the Mediterranean massif of Sierra Nevada, the Alpine geographical imaginations travelled through different cultural devices, establishing a foreign way of seeing the Sierra and its entire environment, and turning the massif into a mountain of reception of the cultural archetype of the Alpine landscape. Sublime, chaotic, Gothic, and Arcadian visions and narratives of the Alps found in Sierra Nevada an ideal ‘other’ space where to be relocated and reinterpreted. What consequences may be drawn from the circulation of this imaginary? In addition to certain ideals of European landscape—shaped by ‘genres of aesthetics such as the picturesque, the pastoral and the sublime’—being used to ‘characterise, appropriate and judge non-European scenes’, the mountain landscape canon formed by the gaze of the ‘centre’ of the continent (in this case, in the Alps by British culture) was also used in the ‘periphery’ (the Iberian Peninsula) as a means of ‘understanding, evaluating, inhabiting and making knowable’ other types of alien geographies (Wylie 2007, 124, original emphasis). In this way, visions of the Sierra Nevada responded to an ‘act of translation’ of ‘one place into another’, ideas which also emerge in Emily Goetsch’s chapter. This translation aimed to present the unfamiliar landscape of the Sierra as a ‘legible space whose cultural inscriptions [and also geographical features] could be deciphered by the educated reader’ (Duncan and Gregory 2010, 4, 115). Romantic travel to Granada and the Sierra Nevada was configured as a sophisticated ‘hermeneutic project’ waiting for the reader’s (and virtual traveller’s) interpretation to operate in the field of culture (Duncan and Gregory 2010, 115). Travellers’ ways of seeing, subjected to the previous Alpine geographical imaginations, transformed the landscape of the Sierra Nevada into an astonishing sight. British travellers then represented Granada’s mountain as an object of desire intended to be visually consumed. The cultural translation of the Sierra’s landscape by travel accounts entailed a ‘“staging” of particular places’ and views which were categorized according to a certain ‘hierarchy of cultural significance’ (Duncan and Gregory 2010, 116). In the case of Granada, such a hierarchy was given by the meaning of its most vis-

11  Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada)... 

  231

ible Orientalist landmarks. Hence, the landscape of the Sierra Nevada was appreciated by British visual culture as an attractive natural scenery complementing the medievalist vision of the Islamic fortress of the Alhambra. This translation of the ‘other’ triggered a de-contextualization of the specificities of the Sierra Nevada. The foreign cultural appropriation of the ancient Kingdom of Granada established an evocative image of the entire landscape formed by the city, the Sierra and the Vega, which was offered to the viewer and the reader as a palimpsest of what the traveller Henry David Inglis described as ‘thousands of associations, half reality, half adventure’ (Inglis 1831, II, 218–219). At the same time, the foreign imaginative geographies, ‘translated’ by British travellers, contributed to their disregarding of the historical particularities and geographical features of the local territory. Their way of approaching the ‘other’ nature of Granada entailed a cultural covering, both narrative and iconographic. Accordingly, this ‘act of translation’ produced a ‘space in-between’ in which local geographies turned into a distorted object to be visually consumed depending on the British elite’s ‘landscape tastes’ (Duncan and Gregory 2010, 2, 4; Wylie 2007, 133–134). The landscape of Granada, with the Alhambra and the snow-capped Sierra Nevada in the background, remains an icon today. Its image still circulates in different ways by means of illustrated tourism magazines, postcards, websites and photographs, nourishing current travellers’ imaginations for the search of Alpine summits close to the sunny city, plenty of ancient Islamic features and souvenirs.

Bibliography Adolphus, J.  L. (1858). Letters from Spain in 1856 and 1857. London: John Murray. Andrews, M. (1989). The search for the picturesque: Landscape aesthetics and tourism in Britain, 1760–1800. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Beattie, A. (2006). The Alps: A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beer, G. (1996). Open fields: Science in cultural encounter. Clarendon: Oxford University Press. Bender, B. (2002). Time and landscape. Current Anthropology, 43(4), 103–112.

232 

C. Cornejo-Nieto

Briffaud, S. (1994). Naissance d’un paysage. La montagne pyrénéenne à la croisée des regards (XVIIe–XIXe siècles). Toulouse: AGM, Université de Toulouse II. Broc, N. (1991). Les montagnes au siècle des lumières. Perception et représentation. Paris: Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques. Bucknall Estcourt, T. H. S. (1832). Alhambra/T.H.S.E. London: J. Dickenson. Burnet, T. (1697). The theory of the earth containing an account of the original of the earth, and of all the general changes which it hath already undergone, or is to undergo till the consummation of all things. London: Printed by R. Norton for Walter Kettilby. Carr, S. J. (1811). Descriptive travels in the southern and eastern parts of Spain and the Balearic isles, in the year 1809. London: Printed for Sherwood, Neely, and Jones. Clark, W.  G. (1850). Gazpacho or summer months in Spain. London: John W. Parker. Coleridge, S.  T. (1969). In E.  Hartley (Ed.), Poetical works. London: Oxford University Press. Cornejo Nieto, C. (2015a). La circulación del conocimiento en la creación del discurso geográfico de Sierra Nevada en el s. XIX. Cuadernos de Investigación Geográfica, 41(1), 231–248. Cornejo Nieto, C. (2015b). Los imaginarios geográficos de Sierra Nevada (siglos XVI–XIX): modelos de representación y prácticas espaciales en la circulación global del conocimiento de la montaña. PhD thesis, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Cosgrove, D. (1984). Social formation and symbolic landscape. London: Croom Helm. Cosgrove, D. (1985). Prospect, perspective and the evolution of the landscape idea. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 10(1), 45–62. Cosgrove, D. (1990). Environmental thought and action: Pre-modern and post-­ modern. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 15(3), 344–358. Cresswell, T. (2003). Landscape and the obliteration of practice. In K. Anderson, M.  Domosh, S.  Pile, & N.  Thrift (Eds.), Handbook of cultural geography (pp. 269–281). London: SAGE. Daniels, S. (2011). Geographical imagination. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 36(2), 182–187. Daniels, S., & Cosgrove, D. (Eds.). (1988). The iconography of landscape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Debarbieux, B. (1995). Tourisme et montagne. Paris: Economica.

11  Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada)... 

  233

Della Dora, V. (2007). Putting the world into a box: A geography of nineteenth-­ century ‘travelling landscapes’. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 89(4), 287–306. Della Dora, V. (2011). Imagining Mount Athos: Visions of a holy place from Homer to World War II. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Driver, F. (1995). Visualizing geography: A journey to the heart of the discipline. Progress in Human Geography, 19(1), 123–134. Driver, F. (2003). On geography as a visual discipline. Antipode, 35(2), 227–231. Duncan, J., & Gregory, D. (Eds.). (2010). Writes of passage. Reading travel writing. London/New York: Routledge. Ford, R. (1845). A hand-book for travellers in Spain and readers at home, describing the country and cities, the natives and their manners, the antiquities, religion, legends, fine arts, literature, sports, and gastronomy; with notices on Spanish history, Part I.  Contaning Andalucía, Ronda and Granada, Murcia, Valencia, Catalonia and Extremadura; with travelling maps and a copious index. London: John Murray. Frolova, M. (2006). Les paysages du Caucase: invention d’une montagne. Paris: Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques. Gilroy, A. (Ed.). (2000). Romantic geographies: Discourses of travel, 1775–1844. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Harvey, D. (2005). The sociological and geographical imaginations. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 18(3–4), 211–255. Hoffmeister, G. (1990). Exoticism: Granada’s Alhambra in European romanticism. In G. Hoffmeister (Ed.), European romanticism: Literary cross-currents, modes, and models (pp. 113–126). Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Inglis, H. D. (1831). Spain in 1830 (Vol. II). London: Whittaker, Treacher. Ingold, T. (1993). The temporality of the landscape. World Archaeology, 25(2), 152–174. Irving, W. (1881). The works of Washington Irving in twelve volumes Vol. VIII, Spanish papers. Biographies and miscellanies (Vol. I). New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Jacob, W. (1811). Travels in the south of Spain in letters written A.D. 1809 and 1810. London: Printed for J. Johnson. Jardine, N., Secord, J. A., & Spary, E. C. (Eds.). (1995). Cultures of natural history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jiménez Olivencia, Y. (1991). Los paisajes de Sierra Nevada: cartografía de los sistemas naturales de una montaña mediterránea. Granada: Universidad de Granada. Joutard, P. (1986). L’invention du Mont Blanc. Paris: Gallimard.

234 

C. Cornejo-Nieto

Kilgour, M. (1995). The rise of the Gothic novel. London: Routledge. Livingstone, D. (1995). The spaces of knowledge: Contributions towards a historical geography of science. Environment and Planning D, 13, 5–34. Livingstone, D. (2003). Putting science in its place: Geographies of scientific knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Livingstone, D. (2005). Science, text and space: Thoughts on the geography of reading. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30(4), 391–401. Lorimer, H. (2005). Cultural geography: The busyness of being ‘more-than-­ representational. Progress in Human Geography, 29(1), 83–94. Muñoz Jiménez, J., & Concepción Sanz Herráiz. (1995). Guía física de España. 5. Las montañas (pp. 415–444). Madrid: Alianza. Natta-Soleri, C. (1998). Alpi gotiche: l’alta montagna sfondo del revival medievale: atti delle giornate di studio. Torino: Museo Nazionale della Montagna. Nicolson, M. H. (1963). Mountain gloom and mountain glory. The development of the aesthetics of the infinite. New York: W. W. Norton. Ogden, H. V. S. (1947). Thomas Burnet’s Telluris Theoria Sacra and mountain scenery. English Literary History, 14(2), 139–150. Olwig, K. (1996). Recovering the substantive nature of landscape. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 86(4), 630–653. Olwig, K. (2002). Landscape, nature, and the body politic: From Britain’s renaissance to America’s new world. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Platt, J. P., Behr, W. M., Johanesen, K., & Williams, J. R. (2013). The Betic-Rif arc and its orogenic hinterland: A review. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 41(1), 313–357. Raffestin, C. (2001). Les Alpes entre mythes et réalités. Revue de Géographie Alpine, 89(4), 13–26. Raquejo, T. (1986). The ‘Arab cathedrals’: Moorish architecture as seen by British travellers. The Burlington Magazine, 128(1001), 555–563. Raquejo, T. (1990). El palacio encantado. La Alhambra en el arte británico. Madrid: Taurus. Reichler, C. (2002). La découverte des Alpes et la question du paysage. Genéve: Georg. Roscoe, T., & Roberts, D. (1835). Jennings’ landscape annual for 1835, or the tourist in Spain. Commencing with Granada. Illustrated from drawings by David Roberts. London: Robert Jennings. Rose, G. (2003). On the need to ask how, exactly, is geography ‘visual’? Antipode, 35(2), 212–221.

11  Representing the Landscape of the Sierra Nevada (Granada)... 

  235

Rupke, N. (2000). Translation studies in the history of science: The example of vestiges. The British Journal for the History of Science, 33(2), 209–222. Saglia, D. (2010). Iberian translations: Writing Spain into British culture, 1780–1830. In J.  M. Almeida (Ed.), Romanticism and the Anglo-Hispanic imaginary (pp. 25–52). Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. Said, E.  W. (1991). Traveling theory. In The world, the text and the critic (pp. 226–247). London: Vintage. Samson, A. (Ed.). (2012). Locus amoenus. Gardens and horticulture in the renaissance. Chichester/Malden: Wiley. Schama, S. (1996). Landscape and memory. New York: Vintage Books. Secord, J. A. (2004). Knowledge in transit. Isis, 95(4), 654–672. Semple, R. (1809). A second journey in Spain, in the spring of 1809; from Lisbon through the western skirts of the Sierra Morena, to Sevilla, Cordoba, Granada, Malaga, and Gibraltar; and thence to Tetuan and Tangier … with plates, containing 24 figures illustrative of the costume and manners of the inhabitants of several of the Spanish provinces. London: C. and R. Baldwin. Shelley, P. B. (2002). In D. H. Reiman & N. Fraistat (Eds.), Shelley’s poetry and prose: Authoritative texts, criticism. New York: Norton. Walter, F. (1989). Attitudes towards the environment in Switzerland, 1880–1914. Journal of Historical Geography, 15(3), 287–299. Wylie, J.  (2002). Becoming-icy: Scott and Amundsen’s South Polar voyages, 1910–1913. Cultural Geographies, 9(3), 249–265. Wylie, J. (2007). Landscape. London/New York: Routledge.

12 ‘I Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills …’ George Pattison

Introduction The main purpose of this chapter is to initiate a comparison between John Ruskin and Martin Heidegger. They are, in many respects, seemingly too dissimilar to merit any comparison since each plausibly instantiates precisely the features that make dialogue between British and Germanic thought so often a dialogue of the deaf. Ruskin, whilst no crude empiricist, builds up his arguments by observation and comparison, Heidegger develops a vast meta-narrative that reaches back into the remote origins of Western philosophy and presents itself as a ‘History of Being’. In terms of their concrete interests, Ruskin wrote as a student of art and of the history of art, whilst Heidegger’s main (though, as we shall see, not sole) focus was on the foundational texts of the philosophical tradition. At the same time, Ruskin’s political thought led him to a practical commitment to ameliorating the lives of the new industrial ­working-­classes

G. Pattison (*) University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

© The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3_12

237

238 

G. Pattison

whilst Heidegger’s eulogizing of the peasant life of the Black Forest seems linked to his (albeit temporary) embrace of National Socialism. Nevertheless, for all their differences (and these few comments are merely indicative) there are also good reasons to look at them together. In their respective contexts, they are amongst the principal inheritors of European Romanticism. Wordsworth is amongst the most quoted sources in Ruskin’s Modern Painters and, although the connection is ignored by Ruskin, not only Coleridge but also Wordsworth has been shown to have had significant affinities with the philosophy of German Romanticism (see Hirsch 1960) that is the background of a major element in Heidegger’s thought. At the same time (and like Romanticism itself ) they are both marked by a deeply conflicted relation to Christianity and to the Biblical sources of Christian thought. Furthermore, although Ruskin pursued a constructive response to the effects of industrialization and urbanization, he, no less than Heidegger, was alarmed by the ways in which these processes were degrading the human experience of the natural environment and traditional ways of relating to it. When Ruskin writes in the Preface to The Queen of the Air of the degradation of the Alpine scenery that he had, by 1869, known for 35 years, lamenting the deterioration of the light, the air, and the waters of Lake Geneva (Ruskin 1904, viii–x), he is not just cataloguing the material impact of industrialization but alerting his readers to an epochal change in the whole relation of human beings to their world. In such passages he is not far from the kind of view developed by Heidegger in meditating upon the deeper differences at play in the relationship between a wooden bridge over a river and the installation of a modern hydro-electric turbine on that same river (Heidegger 1977, 15–16).1 Both are intending to push us towards a deeper questioning of the losses brought about by these changes and both privilege both art and a certain recovery of the early Greek spirit as a means of making good what has been lost or damaged. In Ruskin’s case that is further embedded, for much of his career, in the explicit invocation of Christian and biblical categories. In such passages, both are exceptional examples of what might be called antimodern modernism, and both merit consideration as foundational thinkers—in their respective contexts—of contemporary ecological thinking.

12  ‘I Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills …’ 

  239

There are many points at which such a comparative study might begin. In choosing to focus on their respective uses of mountain-imagery, I am taking a theme that is expressly developed by Ruskin and indirectly by Heidegger since, in his case, it is the rivers, primarily the Rhine and Danube, that flow down from their Alpine sources that are the main point of concentration. However, since for both of them the ‘meaning’ of mountains is intertwined with and becomes manifest in their function as a source of the rivers in whose valleys and along whose banks human civilization develops, this difference is largely relative. It is in the relationship between mountains and rivers that what we might call ‘the truth’ of mountains becomes apparent. Here, as elsewhere in their writings, both are influenced by biblical mountain-imagery. Again this is more explicit in the case of Ruskin and less so in that of Heidegger, for whom this influence is mediated by, principally, the poetry of Hölderlin, whose poetic thought fuses Greek, Christian, and natural imagery in evoking the calling and destiny of the poet and of the peoples he addresses. For both the mountain becomes a privileged site of divine revelation, whether of the biblical God or, in the case of Heidegger, the less definite ‘gods’ that appear repeatedly in his later thought. But, again, differences do not negate convergences, and each, in his way, illustrates the transformative reception of the Bible in modern culture. This chapter will therefore begin with some comments on mountain-­ imagery in the Bible before looking at Heidegger and Ruskin and moving to some preliminary and tentative conclusions focussed specifically on how their thought, each in its own way, reflects its biblical inheritance.

Biblical Mountains That mountains suggest spiritual values or experiences remains a feature of modern attitudes. Even now that the ages of faith have passed, the landscape that reveals itself when we lift up our eyes to the hills gives a different perspective on the human world, or on our human place in the world, from the limited view allowed for by the preoccupations of lowland life. Still today we seemingly instinctively understand why a Wordsworth,

240 

G. Pattison

feeling that ‘the world is too much with us’, would turn away to a landscape of hills, lakes, and waterfalls. Of course, oceans, deserts, jungles, and other remote places far from the madding crowd (or just a corner of ordinary countryside) may also serve the function of getting away from it all and re-ordering our perspective on life, but mountains not only offer the prospect of distance, they also suggest powerful ideas of elevation, of rising above the cares that, we too often feel, drag us down. In this regard, they seem to have a particular affinity with religious imagery that, as we have seen, is richly seamed with images and metaphors of height and elevation, ideas which are also discussed in Veronica Della Dora’s chapter. In the wake of Romanticism, New Age spiritualities and Western appropriations of, for example Tibetan traditions, invite us to return to the cosmic mountains of world mythologies and perhaps encourage us to see the biblical ‘hills’ in such a mythological perspective. The much-publicized episode of a British tourist sentenced in 2015 in Malaysia for dishonouring a sacred mountain and, as some believed, bringing about a subsequent earthquake, found many in the West taking the side of those defending traditional beliefs. We may have lost our own holy mountains, but we are nostalgic for the power they represent.2 If a certain veneration of mountains remains intelligible to the post-­ Christian West, it is no surprise that mountains play a prominent role in the Bible. In the Hebrew Bible it is on a mountain that Moses is called to lead his people to freedom in the promised land (Exodus 3), it is on a mountain that God reveals the law his people are to obey (Exodus 19ff.), and it is on a mountain, Mount Zion, that God chooses to make his dwelling-place on earth (e.g., Psalm 87). It was on Mount Horeb that the prophet Elijah, fleeing for his life, encountered God not in the storm or tempest (as Moses had done), but in the ‘still, small voice’ (1 Kings 19.12). It was to a mountain, Mount Moriah, that Abraham was summoned in order to sacrifice his son Isaac—a sacrifice averted by the last-­ moment substitute of a ram (Genesis 22). The New Testament has Jesus preaching on a mountain (Matthew 5f.), transfigured on a mountain (Mark 9), crucified on a hill ‘outside the city wall’, and ascending from a mountain (at least in Christian iconography—the biblical text does not specify that it was a mountain). When the psalmist sings ‘I lift up my eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help’ (Psalm 121), he is therefore looking

12  ‘I Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills …’ 

  241

towards the place that, in the biblical world, is in a special way the abode of God, the Eternal. Following these biblical pointers, mountain-­imagery has pervaded Christian accounts of the spiritual life, accounts in which the theme of ‘ascent’ became virtually ubiquitous—as institutionalized in the religious order of the Carmelites (Mount Carmel being identified as the site of the epiphany to Elijah). In Dante’s Purgatory, the ascent to heaven is itself figured as a journey up Mount Purgatory. But how does this relate to the biblical inheritance? Is the mountain-­ imagery of the Bible one particular instance of a universal cosmic mountain mythology, or is it something rather different? The thrust of my argument here is that the ‘strength of the hills’ (Psalm 95.4) as understood by the biblical authors ultimately points to something rather different from the cosmic mountains of mythology. Of course, the Bible is an ancient text and we should never underestimate the differences between the traditions of ancient cultures and those of the modern world. This means that the treatment of the mountain theme by the modern writers Ruskin and Heidegger will prove very different from that of the Bible, since they do not share the Bible’s focus on questions of cultic practice. Nevertheless, and bearing these differences in mind, we may see a certain analogy between one line of biblical thinking and what we do in fact find in their writings, namely, that religious significance does not reside in the mountain itself but in the cultural ritual, language, and image that make the mountain humanly meaningful. In this regard, one of the key fault-­ lines in religious thinking about mountains is therefore less between the mountain as a (pre-modern) site for the revelation of a god and a (modern) site for the revelation of nature, but rather as the site of a call to religious self-transformation that is mediated by very specific cultural and textual traditions. In this regard, Petrarch’s ‘experience’ on Mount Ventoux, which is often cited as a paradigm of the supposedly modern way of experiencing the mountain, is itself rooted in this biblical tradition—which, given the turn to a biblical text at the high-point of Petrarch’s account, should scarcely be surprising (see Petrarch 1948). In this regard the Bible may be more on the ‘modern’ side of any divide than we might at first imagine. Let us examine this further. Although the importance of mountains in the biblical narrative is at first glance rather varied, closer reading reveals that many of the relevant

242 

G. Pattison

references bear on questions about cultic practice and, especially, about whether any site other than Mount Zion (Jerusalem) might be considered suitable for the worship of Israel’s God. Broadly, the answer of the Hebrew Bible is a resounding ‘No’! Jerusalem is the sole site of authentic temple-worship of Israel’s God—although the Bible itself also bears witness to the fact that in earlier Israel (i.e., in the period between the occupation of the land post-exodus and the exile to Babylon) other mountains were consistently being used for the worship of a God who, though denounced in the biblical text, seems to have been seen by the worshippers as the God of Israel. Here, as elsewhere, historical criticism has made us aware of just how complex a text the Bible we have inherited really is and that, especially in the case of the Hebrew Bible, it incorporates a wealth of materials that, at some points, seem to conflict with the main tendencies of the final editorial redaction. An interesting example of this is how the mountain of God’s revelation to Israel and the giving of the law is named in Exodus as Sinai (Exodus 19–24) but in the book of Deuteronomy becomes Horeb. This shift also relates to other tensions in the text, such as the tension between seeing the mountain as the particular dwelling-place of God and descriptions of God coming down to the mountain (i.e., from heaven). Such inconsistencies and tensions can be seen to anticipate or, probably more accurately, to reflect debates about the nature of God’s presence in the Temple of Jerusalem. Such debates would swing between the view that God dwells in Zion in a very particular and concrete way (e.g., Psalm 132.13–14) and the view, uttered in Solomon’s prayer of dedication itself, that ‘heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built’ (2 Chronicles 6. 18). Clearly these were questions that the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians in 597  BCE and the consequent exile of the majority of the Judeans to Babylon threw into sharp focus. As Thomas B.  Dozeman sums up his meticulous study of the Exodus and Deuteronomy traditions: I have argued first, that the static and permanent presence of God in the Mountain of God tradition [which Dozeman sees as continuous with wider ancient Near Eastern sacred mountain traditions], as dwelling on the cosmic mountain, symbolizes a metaphoric relationship of resemblance

12  ‘I Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills …’ 

  243

between God and the mountain, which is reminiscent of Mount Zion in pre-exilic Israel; second, that the mobile imagery of God in the deuteronomistic redaction, as ‘approaching’ (bw’) the mountain in order to speak with Moses and Israel, symbolizes a metonymic relationship of contiguity between God and the mountain, which is similar to the impermanent auditory presence of the ‘name’ on Mount Horeb. (Dozeman 1989, 201)3

We might suspect a similar shift in New Testament treatments of mountain events (the sermon on the mount, the transfiguration, the crucifixion, and the ascension), as this text too witnesses and responds to a major trauma in the history of Jerusalem worship, namely, the destruction of the Second Temple by Roman occupiers in 70 CE. Here again, the mountain locations are actually used to relativize the claims of Jerusalem and to privilege the Christian claims that God’s presence is now bound solely to the highly mobile preaching of the word (cf. Paul’s manifold journeys) and is therefore no longer bound to any specific holy place. The Bible, then, is mistakenly interpreted if we read it as reflecting a deep sense of cosmic mountain mythology. On the contrary, the biblical narrative is, in this respect, precisely a narrative in which cosmic mountain mythology is, as it were, turned against itself in order to valorize the word and the ethical, social, and religious teaching that is the content of that word. As we turn to the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1886–1976) and the art-critic John Ruskin (1819–1900), we find that whilst neither of them directly pick up the Bible’s ‘cultic’ concerns, both continue to give the mountain a privileged site with regard to the relation between God (Ruskin) or ‘the gods’ (Heidegger) and humans. At the same time they both move away from seeing the religious significance of the mountain as tied to its material presence and towards seeing it as most especially meaningful in terms of how it is represented (for Ruskin in art, for Heidegger in language). Although neither of them would have been familiar with the kind of text-critical study that lie behind Dozeman’s conclusions, both were exposed to the larger biblical narrative that similarly moves away from cosmic mountain traditions and towards identifying the divine with a mobile and place-less word, not least as it is read in Christian traditions. Therefore, despite significant differences that should

244 

G. Pattison

not be underestimated, both can be read as offering a modern analogy to the dynamic transformation of sacral experience into linguistically mediated communication that is seen in the Bible.

Heidegger on Mountains and Rivers Martin Heidegger, one of the great philosophers of landscape, drew much of his imagery from his own habitual treks through the mountainous landscape of his native Black Forest (a practice reflected in the subtitle of his Collected Works: Wege nicht Werke: ‘ways not works’). Philosophizing, he suggested, is often like wandering down a forest track that seems at first broad and well-trodden, but gradually becomes choked with undergrowth until it becomes impassable so that the wanderer has to turn back, re-trace his steps, and try a different path. From time to time, however, the forest will suddenly open out and one finds oneself in a clearing, the German word is Lichtung, a ‘lighting’, from where one can get a vista and take bearings from the landmarks previously hidden by thicket and forest. And this can be connected with another key term of Heidegger’s later philosophy ‘the open’: we can only be human and we can only have a world because or when we ourselves and our world have become ‘open’. ‘In the midst of beings as a whole an open place occurs. There is a lighting. … Beings can be as beings only if they stand within and stand out within what is lighted in this lighting’ (Heidegger 1978a, 175). Although Heidegger’s imagery drew richly on his Black Forest rambles, his philosophical argument was that this ‘opening’ of the world occurred primarily in the advent of language, the word. When we speak it, the world is no longer just there: we see that it is there and it is this event, the speaking of the word, that is ultimately more decisive than the immediate effect of any natural landscape on sense or imagination. ‘Language, by naming beings for the first time, first brings beings to word and to appearance’ (Heidegger 1978a, 185). This is not a matter of linguistic idealism, in which the human world is merely constructed in language, but the relation of language and world is held to be essentially reciprocal: language belongs to the world and the world to language.4 In specific ­relation

12  ‘I Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills …’ 

  245

to landscape, the word reveals the truth of landscape, landscape gives the possibility of truth to the word. In the event of the word, the two belong together, conjoined in mutual attentiveness. However, there is a further point in Heidegger that, at first, seems to lead away from language (and from mountains) but that, in the end, will (as we shall see) return us to a deeper understanding of what is at issue in the linguistic revelation of the meaning of landscape and of the mountain in shaping that landscape. This point is that, for Heidegger, landscape is not just for wandering in; it is for living in. It was therefore crucial to him that we attend to how we live in the landscape we inhabit or, to use his favourite term, how we dwell in it (German: wohnen). Any house is somewhere to live, a shelter from the storm, but not every house is, in the strong sense, ‘a dwelling’. To dwell is to live in the world in such a way as to know it as our home. In these terms, the modern world’s problem is not that we are clustered together, ant-like, in cities and mega-cities, but that, under the pressure of the ‘total mobilization’ brought about by modern technology we are experiencing a kind of ‘planetary homelessness’. Even when we sit ‘at home’ we are as likely as not to be mentally transported by television, Facebook, or other media to television studies, fantasy worlds, or to wherever the current global sporting jamboree is taking place. ‘Home’ itself becomes an ensemble of technical instruments—kitchen units, bedroom units, keep-fit equipment, computers, televisions, and so on—designed and ordered to service the practical goals of worldly living. Heidegger acknowledged the necessity of this, but his contribution as a philosopher was to invite us to think more carefully about what makes it possible for us to dwell on earth or what dwelling as such could involve—as opposed to the dominant technological and instrumental relation to ourselves and our environment. An alternative to this modern technical approach is what we see in the example of a Greek Temple: A building, a Greek temple, portrays nothing. It simply stands there in the middle of the rock-cleft valley. … Standing there, the building rests on the rocky ground. This resting of the work draws up out of the rock the obscurity of that rock’s bulky yet spontaneous support. Standing there, the building holds its ground against the storm raging above it and so first makes the

246 

G. Pattison

storm itself manifest in its violence. The luster and gleam of the stone, though itself apparently glowing only by the grace of the sun, yet first brings to radiance the light of the day, the breadth of the sky, the darkness of the night. The temple’s firm towering makes visible the invisible space of air. The steadfastness of the work contrast with the surge of the surf, and its own repose brings out the raging of the sea. Tree and grass, eagle and bull, snake and cricket first enter into their distinctive shapes and thus come to appear as and what they are. (Heidegger 1978a, 168–169)

The key point here is that this kind of building is seen by Heidegger as essentially different from a built object placed in or perhaps imposed on the landscape. Instead, it contributes to the landscape becoming the landscape that it is. Of course, this will not be true of just any building or artefact. In another much-cited essay, ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’, Heidegger describes how an old stone bridge gathers its environment: ‘It brings stream and bank and land into each other’s neighbourhood. The bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the stream. Thus it guides and attends the stream through the meadows’ (Heidegger 1978b, 330). But he would almost certainly not say the same of an industrial age bridge that, as it were, negates the landscape in order to facilitate the speed of travel through (rather than to) the landscape. In another essay, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ he specifically contrasts the relationship with the river of, on the one hand, an old wooden bridge and, on the other, a modern hydro-electric plant. Of the latter he writes that for such a plant the river itself has been changed and has become merely a source of power that can be stored and that from the point of view of the consumer might equally well have been generated by wind, sun, coal, gas, or nuclear power. The river has become, simply, Bestand, a reserve or resource to be managed in accordance with human demands that are only tangentially respectful of and responsive to its distinctive character. ‘But it will be replied, the Rhine is still a river in the landscape, is it not? Perhaps. But how? In no other way than as an object on call for inspection by a tour group ordered there by the vacation industry’ (Heidegger 1977, 16).5 However, recalling Heidegger’s insistence on the primacy of language, everything that is done by the temple or by other building works that

12  ‘I Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills …’ 

  247

gather their landscape is done even more powerfully by the word and, specifically, the word of the poet and, for Heidegger himself, this means the poet he sometimes refers to as the poet, Friedrich Hölderlin. And one aspect of this particular focus is that Hölderlin is not just the poet of Germany’s great defining rivers, but, in connection with this, the poet of German identity itself. As the meditation on the bridge suggests, if we once accept that our experience of landscape is itself mediated by the manner of our dwelling so that we have no experiences of ‘pure’ nature, then it will also be the case that it is inseparable from our experience and understanding of specific historical communities, whether these are villages, tribes, or nations. Hölderlin’s poems Germania and The Rhein were the focus of Heidegger’s first lecture series on the poet. In The Rhein, Hölderlin portrays the river as the free-born progeny of the Alpine-thunder god, tumultuously and heroically rushing forth to stamp his character on the lands he waters and the peoples nurtured by that land. From The Rhein: But now, within the mountain range,/deep beneath the silver peaks/and under the merry greenery, where the woods look to him/and the heads of the rocks peer down over one another/all the day long, there/in the coldest abyss I heard the youth/crying out for freedom/and it was heard, how he raged/complaining to his mother earth/and to the thunderer who had begotten him/compassionate parents, yet/mortals had fled the place/since it was frightful, where, without light, he/writhed about in the rocks/the raging of a half-god./The voice was that of the noblest of rivers/the free-­ born Rhein,/and he was hoping for something different, when he parted up there from his brothers, the Tessin and Rhodanus;/he separated himself and wanted to roam/as his royal soul/impatiently drove him towards Asia,/ for wishes don’t understand/the will of destiny./Blindest of all/are the sons of gods. … But a god will spare his sons/a hasty life and smiles, /when, unhindered, but hemmed in/by the holy Alps, his streams/rage down into the depths./In such a smithy/all resonance is forged,/and it is beautiful how, then,/after leaving the mountains,/he quietly wanders through the German land,/content, and soothing his longing/through good works, when he builds up the land, Father Rhine, nourishing beloved children/in the cities that he founds.6

248 

G. Pattison

But, Heidegger insists, neither the poem nor the river are mere allegories of German destiny. Rather, the poem is the river or the river is the poem, because it is only in the poem that what the river means for human dwelling comes into the open. It is only the light of the word that shows us what it is to be children of the Rhineland and, as subsequent lectures suggest, the Danube. It is only in the word of the poet that a place of human habitation finally becomes a true dwelling-place for mortals, for only the poet brings us into that open place of language in which we are no longer just here but also know or can learn what it might mean for us to be here. The truth of the mountain appears in the rivers to which it gives birth and that, in turn, provides a place for the historical flourishing of human communities, a flourishing grounded and fulfilled in the grateful word of the poet, divinely called to sing his people’s song. In this connection the vocation of the poet contains a twofold relationship that strongly resembles the relationship between mountain and river. For this vocation is, as Heidegger puts it, to translate the divine thunder into mortal speech, that is, the thunder of the mountain storm into the speech of those who dwell in the land that has been moulded by the forces unleashed by that thunder. Furthermore, it is precisely this poetic speech that, in turn, teaches the people how to honour their god and how to be grateful for the bestowal of the land. We may seem to have moved very far from anything specifically biblical, not least since Hölderlin’s references seem to be specifically pagan and Alpine. However, although Heidegger himself did not pursue these, there is a strong case for seeing the overall structure of Hölderlinian thought as being shaped by the Christian mythos. And, certainly there seems to be a prima facie analogy between the relationship between the divine, the mountain revelation that we find in Hölderlin and the creation of a people through the sacral or cultic reception and commemoration of the original divine word that is central to the biblical understanding of the mountain. Strangely, and perhaps despite himself, Heidegger’s poet is not unlike the biblical Moses, since both mediate between the thunder of the divine mountain-God and the people who, without them, would hear only the thunder and not a word.7

12  ‘I Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills …’ 

  249

Ruskin on God’s Plan for Mountains Turning from Heidegger to Ruskin, we apparently enter an entirely different thought-world. This chapter suggested at the outset that it is possible to, very broadly, see both of them as, in their ways, inheritors of Romanticism as well as of biblical traditions, but what does that actually mean? One point does seem clear enough, namely, that there is in fact a basic and important analogy between Heidegger’s interpretation of Hölderlin and Ruskin’s multi-volume eulogy of the painter J. M. W. Turner, and that this analogy relates both to their view of the dignity of art and to the relationship between art and landscape. Just as Heidegger claims that Hölderlin’s poetic rivers are the rivers and the rivers are their eponymous poems, so Ruskin claims that it is pre-eminently in Turner’s painting that we come to see, on human scale, the truth of space, of clouds, of vegetation, of water, and, in Part V of Modern Painters, of mountain beauty. In this curious, rambling, often digressive piece of volume-­length writing that is constantly shifting amongst art-criticism, geology, and theology (with an occasional dash of social criticism thrown in for good measure), we learn that Turner, the greatest of all modern painters, was also the greatest painter of mountain scenery. And in Ruskin, even more clearly than in Heidegger, we hear distinct echoes of the role of the mountain in the Bible. In many respects, Ruskin follows the kind of argument associated with the so-called natural theology of William Paley, whereby the existence and goodness of God could be inferred from the order of creation. Thus, Paley-like, Ruskin argues that the wisdom of God in creation is vindicated by the way in which what he calls the great ‘architecture’ of mountain scenery was carefully designed by God in order to facilitate human dwelling on earth. Now whilst Ruskin is not like contemporary fundamentalists and acknowledges that Genesis does not give an exact chronology of creation, it is possible to understand what is said in the most literal sense, as any normal untutored person would understand it. Commenting on the biblical expression ‘God bowed the heavens and came down’, he notes that: the expression either has plain meaning, or it has no meaning. Understand by the term ‘Heavens’ the compass of infinite space around the earth, and

250 

G. Pattison

the expression, ‘bowed the Heavens’, however sublime, is wholly without meaning; infinite space cannot be bowed or bent. But understand by the ‘heavens’ the veil of clouds above the earth, and the expression is neither hyperbolical nor obscure; it is pure, plain, and accurate truth, and it describes God, not as revealing himself in any peculiar way to David, but doing what He is still doing before our own eyes day by day. By accepting the words in their simple sense, we are thus led to apprehend the immediate presence of the Deity. (Ruskin 1906, 81)

And what is it we learn when we understand it in the way Ruskin suggests? It is, he says, to recognize the ‘three great offices which mountain ranges are appointed to fulfil, in order to preserve the health and increase the happiness of mankind’. These are ‘to give motion to water. Every fountain and river, from the inch-deep streamlet that crosses the village lane in trembling clearness, to the massy and silent march of the everlasting multitude of waters in Amazon or Ganges, owe their play, and purity, and power, to the ordained elevations of the earth’. The second ‘is to maintain a constant change in the currents and nature of the air’; the third, ‘to cause perpetual change in the soils of the earth’ and their ‘perpetual renovation’—without which ‘the earth must have become for the most part desert plain, or stagnant marsh’ (Ruskin 1906, 87). Much of Part V of Modern Painters is consequently dedicated to filling out these claims in often extraordinary detail. But mountains are not just there to serve as a water-conduit for an air-­purification system. Mountains are also there as a thing of sublime beauty: the feeding of the rivers and the purifying of the winds are the least of the services appointed to the hills. To fill the human heart for the beauty of God’s working—to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of astonishment—are its higher missions. They are as great and noble architecture; first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also with mighty sculpture and painted legend. … [E]ven the most ordinary mountain scenery … has been prepared in order to unite as far as possible and in the closest compass, every means of delighting and sanctifying the heart of man. (Ruskin 1906, 87)

12  ‘I Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills …’ 

  251

Ruskin may use a Paley-like logic, but he rises above Paley not only in the quality and measure of his prose but also in his recognition that human meaning—or in Heideggerian terms, human dwelling—cannot be reduced to mechanical instrumentality. To encounter the mountain is to encounter the mystery of life in time. Ruskin again: The earth, as a tormented and trembling ball, may have rolled in space for myriads of ages before humanity was formed from its dust; and as a devastated ruin it may continue to roll, when all that dust shall again have been mingled with ashes that never were warmed by life, or polluted by sin. But for us the intelligible and substantial fact is that the earth has been brought, by forces we know not of, into a form fitted for our habitation: on that form a gradual, but destructive change is continually taking place, and the course of that change points clearly to a period when it will no more be fitted for the dwelling-place of men. … [I]n what form was the mountain originally raised which gave that torrent its track and power? … In what form did it stand before a single fragment fell? Yet to such questions, continually suggesting themselves, it is never possible to give a complete answer. For a certain distance, the past work of existing forces can be traced; but there gradually the mist gathers, and the footsteps of more gigantic agencies are traceable in the darkness; and still as we endeavour to penetrate farther and farther into departed time, the thunder of the Almighty power sounds louder and louder; and the clouds gather broader and more fearfully, until at last the Sinai of the world is seen altogether upon a smoke, and the fence of its foot is reached, which none can break through. (Ruskin 1906, 134–135)

Heidegger, we have seen, claimed that it is primarily the poetic word that opens up the event of the world as a place of human dwelling. In the case of Ruskin, it is not the poetic word but the painterly image—and just as Heidegger found in Hölderlin a privileged exemplar of the poet, so Ruskin found in Turner a painter ‘who has a communion of heart with his subject’ (Ruskin 1906, 9) that enables him to ‘speak’ with prophetic power to the age. Even if there is no direct ‘realism’ in Turner’s painting, it too, like Hölderlin’s poems, can reveal the heart of its subject and, through his art, do so in a way that a direct encounter with the subject cannot. In the painting the mountain comes to be all that we mean by

252 

G. Pattison

a mountain. Now, for the first time, we see it for what it is. It has been brought out into the open, and, therefore, we can now see, also for the first time, who we ourselves might be as a people born to dwell in a world shaped, watered, refreshed, and nourished by this great architecture.

Conclusion A full exploration of the analogy between Heidegger/Hölderlin and Ruskin/Turner and a defence of the importance if not of the correctness of their conceptions of the relationship amongst art, landscape, and the emergence of modern technological society would require much more than even a longer or another paper. For now, I shall conclude with the comment that despite significant differences in their conception of God, their accounts of their favoured artists suggest that one of the offices of mountain landscape is to remind human beings that their lives are sourced by an origin that is appropriately called ‘divine’. But against another line of Romanticism that would lead alienated Western society back to the primordial experience of the cosmic mountain (as in Eliade) both seem to agree that the holiness of the mountain is primarily revealed not in the unmediated confrontation of the individual with the bare mountain but with the mountain finding its human meaning in the work of art. In this regard they may also have learned more from the Bible than either p ­ erhaps knew. For although the Bible shows little interest in what we today would understand as art, the worship that it commends is effected through a combination of architecture, ritual action, and musical and poetic expression, ideas which are also discussed in Kakalis’ chapter. It is through this ‘art’ of worship that Mount Zion fulfils its designated task of becoming the place where God and humans can finally dwell together. For now, of course, in this time of exile, that condition exists only as a memory and as a hope. The testimony of Heidegger and Ruskin is that it is in art (for Heidegger in poetry, for Ruskin in painting) that this utopian idea lives on and remains present, even in the midst of the degraded landscapes of an industrial and post-industrial world. If Heidegger’s example offers a warning that such a focus on art can lead to disengagement from the concrete challenges of the social world or else (as in his National Socialist

12  ‘I Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills …’ 

  253

phase) a disastrous aestheticization of political life, Ruskin’s social activity demonstrates that the preservation of such an idea may nevertheless bear fruit in practical steps towards the amelioration of life, the building of Jerusalem, the sacred Mountain of the Lord, in this green and pleasant land.

Notes 1 . Discussed further below. 2. On the mythology of sacred mountains see Eliade 1986. 3. Dozeman has a further third point, but it is less relevant to our present purpose. 4. Elsewhere, Heidegger makes this point by playing on the German word for ‘to belong’, gehören, which derives from the same root as hören, to hear. Thus, language ‘belongs’ to being by listening to it. See Heidegger 1969. Can we perhaps connect this to the imagery of Moses and Elijah listening for and to the Word of God on their respective mountains? 5. Of course, there will be many cases where there is room for dispute as to how a work actually functions. There may be examples of high-tech bridges that also, in their way, ‘gather’ their environment (the Golden Gate, the eponymous ‘Bridge’ between Denmark and Sweden). And does the installation of an Antony Gormley sculpture on a mountain-­side or a shore-line gather or negate its landscape. Judgements will, presumably vary. 6. My translation. 7. Inevitably, there is the further and unavoidable question that the content of these lectures can be related only too easily to Heidegger’s Nazism and to the founding of a would-be 1000-year Reich through national ritual. See Pattison 2015, 319–326 for further discussion.

Bibliography Dozeman, T. B. (1989). God on the mountain. A study of redaction, theology and canon in exodus (pp. 19–24). Atlanta: Scholars Press. Eliade, M. (1986). Sacred architecture and symbolism. In M.  Eliade (Ed.), Symbolism, the sacred, and the arts (pp. 105–129). New York: Crossroad.

254 

G. Pattison

Heidegger, M. (1969). Identity and difference (trans: Stambaugh, J.). New York: Harper and Row. Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology. In The question ­concerning technology and other essays (pp. 3–35) (trans. and Ed. Lovitt, W.). New York: Harper. Heidegger, M. (1978a). The origin of the work of art. In D. F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writings (pp. 143–187). London: Routledge. Heidegger, M. (1978b). Building dwelling thinking. In M.  Heidegger & D. Farrell (Eds.), Basic writings (pp. 319–339). London: Routledge. Hirsch, E. D. (1960). Wordsworth and schelling. A typological study of romanticism. Newhaven: Yale University Press. Pattison, G. (2015). Eternal god/saving time. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Petrarca, F. (1948). The ascent of mount Ventoux. In E. Cassirer et al. (Eds.), The renaissance philosophy of man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ruskin, J. (1904). The queen of the air. London: George Allen. Ruskin, J.  (1906). Modern painters (Vol. 4). London: Dent. (N.B.  This is volume 4 of the published set, but comprises Vol. 5 of Ruskin’s own volume numbering.)

13 Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites William Bainbridge

In a letter to a prospective contributor and friend, Charles Dickens discloses the ‘maddening’ outcome of a mysterious ‘Dolomite paper’ meant to appear in All the Year Round: I am unable to give you any pledge or promise respecting the Dolomite paper, for the simple reason that I can not read it. Pretty well accustomed to messes in the way of manuscript, I never saw such a mess. I very much doubt whether my printers can print from it, or will do so without permission. I will try them, however. If it may be possible to make the paper pass muster, it shall go in. If it be impossible, I can’t help it. I have been at work on a new work of my own, all day, and am half blinded and maddened by your unintelligibility. (Dickens 2002, 12: 441–2)

The editors of the The Letters of Charles Dickens  wryly remark ‘No “Dolomite paper” appeared in AYR’ (Dickens 2002, 12: 442). A closer

W. Bainbridge (*) Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, UK

© The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3_13

255

256 

W. Bainbridge

scrutiny reveals instead that an article anonymously published as ‘A Lady’s Visit to the Dolomites’ was indeed printed in the journal that year, just a few months after Dickens’ death. Since no other article on the Dolomite Mountains appeared in All the Year Round, Dickens’ letter authorizes us to attribute that lady’s visit to Frances Minto Elliot—the ‘idle’ author who would later go on to produce a staggering series of travelogues connected to Italy and the Mediterranean.1 In the article, Elliot offers us one of the most enthusiastic scenic descriptions of the Dolomites. The scenery described in that article is no less ‘maddening’ than the essay itself; one could easily speculate about Dickens’ bewildered reaction to Elliot’s draft as the result of a particular clash between form and content: The whole scene comes to me like a vision; the dreary woods over the lower heights, the pale Dolomites above, mountains everywhere, walling us up as in a fantastic prison-house. To the left, looking through a rocky cleft of many thousand feet, rose the splintered cliffs and clustered points of the Drei Zinnen, nearly ten thousand feet high. Of peculiarly calcareous stone, porous and fragile-looking, it sharply cuts against the sky in forms of towers and battlements, like some Titanic fortress, the cloud-home of the spirits ruling these awful solitudes. … As the night approached and the shadows became deeper, the weird individuality and almost human expression of some of these misty giants, abrupt, and unlooked for, became almost oppressive. I came to think that they were mountains run mad. (Elliot 1870, 355)

In borrowing Elliot’s impression as the title of my essay, I tend to understand ‘madness’ as a topographic trope, rather than a manic reaction to a spectacular landscape, to identify a distinct subcategory of mountains: mountains that are less striking for their elevation, famous for their climbing history, or revered for their sacred aura, but instead prominent for their iconic topography and chromatic allure; mountains whose particular landforms instantly capture the gaze of the onlooker for their steepness, their strangeness, their unfamiliar juxtaposition of familiar ingredients that convey an aura of aesthetic disorder; mountains, finally, that stand out panoramically, and whose isolated appearance is able to attract the pen of the writer, the brush of the artist, the rope of the

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  257

climber, or the camera of the tourist, with results, I claim, that shall all pertain to the heuristic toolkit of the geographer. These topographic characteristics aptly describe the Dolomite Mountains (Panizza 2009). In more technical terms, they find a summary in the mountaineering concept of ‘prominence’, which becomes their scenic ‘signature’.2 Their geological makeup allows for the fantastic display of towers, pyramids, steeples, ledges, pinnacles, which often appear as isolated peaks. Douglas W. Freshfield, in 1915, graphically rendered this picturesque phenomenon through a comparison with the visual arts: The Dolomite groups would be correctly figured in the Impressionist maps of which we have so many, not as lines but dots; big dots, no doubt, scattered about in a region of valleys and pastoral heights. The valleys have a way of ending in a low gap instead of a high ridge. Consequently you pass from one to another with relatively little trouble. Here and there frown, like giant castles, the red or grey-gold walls of the great Dolomites, the Pelmo and Antelao, the Civetta and Marmolada, the fantastic Rosengarten, and the incredible Pala. But between them spreads a bevy of green and friendly hills. (Freshfield 1915, 426)

Figured as ‘big dots’ and not as ‘great walls’ or ‘sheer ramparts’, the Dolomites appear as ‘giant castles’ strewn here and there about the amiable Italian landscape, as ‘prominent strongholds’ that offer a paradise for rock climbers (Sanger Davies 1894; Abraham 1919). This chapter deals with the geographical matrices of this bewildering attraction, their latent allegiance to enduring topographic memories, and their symbolic re-­ circulations in narratives, practices, and representations of sites, which continue to harness that ‘madness’ by transforming it into a ‘cult of the picturesque’.

Picturesque Mountains Picturesque views of mountains appear today in glossy magazines, alluring advertisements, blockbuster movies, environmental documentaries, tourist brochures as well as in the recreation of rocky habitats in zoos and

258 

W. Bainbridge

the promotion of coveted areas in national, natural, or amusement parks. The picturesque programme still works; when we look at weird conglomerations of rocks we continue to be amazed, we continue to be attracted by their ‘romantic topography’. In a study entirely devoted to the inextricable relation between geology and aesthetics, Noah Heringman reminds us that ‘as a physically descriptive adjective, “romantic” … refers to the broken or dislocated character of landforms’ and explains that ‘through its fantastic or enchanted appearance, such a landscape belongs to the genre of romance and the literary past’ (Heringman 2003, 2004, 4; 2013; Dean 2007). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the use of ‘romantic’ was common around 1660 to express a ‘fantastic, extravagant, quixotic idea’, something that goes ‘beyond what is customary or practical’, and is ‘responsive to the prompting of imagination or fancy regardless of practicality’; Addison, in 1705, defines the term by tracing its roots to literature: ‘Of places: redolent or suggestive of romance; appealing to the imagination and feelings’. If it is true, as Francis Younghusband maintained, in his 1921 monograph The Heart of Nature, that ‘The picture and the poem are as legitimate a part of geography as the map’, I define here ‘romantic topography’ in geographical terms as a scenery agreeable in romances, in the same way in which ‘picturesque topography’ is defined in geographical terms as a scenery that is agreeable in pictures (Younghusband 1921, 229). Throughout this chapter I intend to use the two terms in this way. An intrinsic imbalance resides, however, within this heuristic formulation. Not only do I reduce here topography to a scenery or a scenic distribution of both organic and inorganic ingredients on a given terrain, linking it inextricably to a certain act of looking, but this act of looking operates on a different scale depending on the different scripts to which it appears associated (Cosgrove 2008). In the case of ‘romantic topography’ this act of looking strictly adheres to the rules of a literary genre— the ‘romance’, with its own figurative repertoire and poetic conventions; in the painterly case of ‘picturesque topography’, this same act of looking is allegiant to an artistic genre that is less strictly determined—‘landscape art’ and its numerous sub-genres. In both cases, however, the fabrication of that particular act of looking has a history, which subtends competing matrices of topographic memories, able to produce resilient symbols that

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  259

are both visual and performative in their nature. The scenic value depends here on the intensity of these symbols, which fluctuate through phases of latency and activation, engendering multiple ‘signatures’ at various points in time and space. The terms ‘romantic’ and ‘picturesque’ repeatedly recur in describing the kind of landscapes that UNESCO most elusively qualifies as ‘areas of exceptional beauty and aesthetic importance’ (Criterion VII), linking their outstanding geological history (Criterion VIII) to different civilizational narratives (Gianolla 2008). The scenery is not just ‘romantic’ or ‘picturesque’ per se (tangible component), but it acquires its ‘romantic’ or ‘picturesque’ status through a series of privileged acts of looking that activate it as such (intangible component); thus the process through which such a scenery becomes a heritage landscape relates to a strategy to shield an orthodox way of seeing, treasured by temporary sojourners, from the potential harm provoked by permanent dwellers. If picturesque topographies are static sceneries in their tangible dimension, they become dynamic in their intangible one—landscapes that visitors construct by ‘working the scenery’ in the same way that photographers capture their images by ‘working the shot’. The ‘picturesque’ programme acts here as a signature that authenticates the prestige of a ‘romantic’ scenery. As Giorgio Agamben explains, signatures are precisely what ‘orients and determines the interpretation and efficacy of signs in a certain context’ (Agamben 2009, 64); they carry an operation manual with them that tells the user how to use  the signs. Signatures, according to Agamben, are the conditions for the emergence of signs; they hold a sacramental power that is ‘inseparable from the sign yet irreducible to it, a character … that by insisting on a sign makes it powerful and capable of action’ (Agamben 2009, 50). In elevating the notion of natural beauty to a criterion of outstanding universal value, the UNESCO protects in fact the ‘signature’ of a prestigious act of looking. This privileged act of looking governs the relationship between viewer and subject, stipulating a set of conditional norms for the appreciation of a landscape, and a set of behavioural protocols for its conservation, management, and sustainability. The case of the Dolomites is in this sense paradigmatic. Their inclusion on the World Heritage List is owed to two criteria: Criterion VII, describing

260 

W. Bainbridge

‘properties that contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance’; and Criterion VIII, denoting ‘outstanding examples representing major stages of earth’s history’. These criteria define the Dolomites as a landscape of uncontaminated beauty, whose ‘scientific sign’ and ‘aesthetic signature’ mutually reinforce the idea of an uncontested heritage situated at the level of its inhospitable peaks (core zones) and their immediate grassland areas (buffer zones), leaving the contested heritage of its valleys—divided by different ethnic, linguistic, and historical frontiers—fully unconsidered: The Dolomites can be perfectly interpreted both scientifically and aesthetically and therefore their nomination is deliberately proposed under Criterion VIII and Criterion VII simultaneously. As the history of their discovery explains, these two criteria are indissolubly linked, just as the tie between scientific interest and love of natural beauty of their ‘discoverers’ is inseparable. (Gianolla 2008, 32)

The exclusion of the valleys is justified as ‘a historically proven fact, confirmed in art and literature’ (Gianolla 2008, 282). The inclusion within buffer zones of grasslands, above the tree line, with limited and transitory human activity, merely serves to protect the landscape scenery. The valleys and villages are therefore confined outside the nine UNESCO areas because from them ‘a complete vision of the ranges is rendered impossible by the slopes themselves’ (Gianolla 2008, 282). The ‘heritage’ that the UNESCO protects under these two criteria is the product of foreign gazes, which emerged and operated during the nineteenth century, gazes allegiant to two distinct cultural traditions— British and German—and identity-building processes. This heritage operates as a complex cluster of symbolic ingredients oscillating between four competing poles of civilizational prestige—Venice and its Romantic aura, Switzerland and its Alpine sensationalism, Austria and its Germanic folklore, London and its embodiment of modernity—coexisting today in a multi-layered heritage, jumbled, at the local level, through the interplay between competing imaginative geographies and political appropriations (Bainbridge 2016). I intend to illustrate some of the ways in which the dolomitic topography has acquired its symbolic value as the product of

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  261

spontaneous generation, patterns of emulation, and imaginary ­attachment linked together by a prestigious ‘signature’, which constantly oscillates between different, sometimes opposite and competing, cultural poles.

Gothic Mountains The coincidence of Criterion VII (outstanding landscape scenery) and Criterion VIII (outstanding landform history) already appeared in the very first mentioning of the Dolomite Mountains in a tourist guide— Murray’s landmark A Handbook for Travellers in Southern Germany, published in London in 1836. In it the Dolomites are clearly described as an unheard-of pile of ‘romantic rocks’ forming a perfect ‘picturesque outline’: They form a most striking contrast to all other mountains—in their dazzling whiteness, in their barren sterility, in their steepness, in the innumerable cracks and clefts which traverse their gigantic walls, all running in a vertical direction, and above all, in their sharp peaks and tooth-like ridges, rising many thousand feet into the air, which present the most picturesque outline. Sometimes they take the appearance of towers and obelisks, divided from one another by cracks some thousand feet deep; at others the points are so numerous and slender, that they put one in mind of a bundle of bayonets or sword-blades. Altogether, they impart an air of novelty and sublime grandeur to the scene, which can only be appreciated by those who have viewed it. (Murray 1836, 241)

Only a few pages later, the description continues, reiterating the same architectural repertoire to describe their topography and highlighting their unique scenic magnetism: They are unlike any other mountains, and are to be seen nowhere else among the Alps. They arrest the attention by the singularity and picturesqueness of their forms, by their sharp peaks or horns, sometimes rising up in pinnacles and obelisks, at others extending in serrated ridges, teethed like the jaw of an alligator; now fencing in the valley with an escarped

262 

W. Bainbridge

precipice many thousand feet high, and often cleft with numerous fissures all running nearly vertically. They are perfectly barren, destitute of ­vegetation of any sort, and usually of a light yellow or whitish colour. (Murray 1836, 247)

This kind of architectural vocabulary would become commonplace in all subsequent Victorian travelogues as a distinctive ‘signature’ pertaining almost uniquely to the Dolomite Mountains.3 Forty years after Murray, Thomas Cook would couch that architectural vocabulary into a set of fantastic references able to paint an alluring picture of the Dolomites: Latterly much attention has been called to the Dolomite Mountains, and Botzen is the station from which they are most accessible. These mountains, named after a French geologist, Dolomieu, are among the wonders of the world. They are of yellow and slaty limestone, utterly treeless, and by atmospheric and other influences have been fashioned into playing fantastic tricks before high heaven. Ruined castles, mouldering towers, weird, witch-like ravines and gorges,—everything, in short, that imagination likes to see, may be seen in this wondrous region. (Cook 1875, 17)

The picturesque description of Murray is here almost entirely substituted by a blend of topographic ingredients most obviously akin to the world of the Gothic novel; the task of conveying the picturesque mood of the scenery is performed by the ‘word-painting’ provided by the description: what the ‘imagination likes to see’ is evoked by a cascade of terms pertinent to a ‘romance’ (Landow 1971, 232–6; Stein 1975, 49). It should be noticed that while Murray’s description is included in A Handbook for Travellers in Southern Germany, Cook’s one is printed in a Tourist’s Handbook for Northern Italy. It is not so much the change of the intended audience, from ‘traveller’ to ‘tourist’, that interests me here, but the change of geographical context, from Southern Germany to Northern Italy. I shall return to this point later on. In 1869, the year of Elliot’s submission to All the Year Round, her paper could only rely on Murray and the pioneering travelogue The Dolomite Mountains, published by painter Josiah Gilbert and botanist George Cheetham Churchill in 1864, the book credited today for bestowing

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  263

the current label to the Dolomite district. From that moment on, the once called Venetian or Tyrolean Alps would be collectively identified as ‘Dolomite Mountains’.4 Their text extended the name of the mineral to the entire region, and their work provided the milestone that qualified the classic literature on the Dolomites for the years to come. The ‘romantic’ dimension of both Cook’s and Elliot’s descriptions derive from this canonical travelogue. The acknowledgement of the source does not explain its success. If we take a closer look at Cook’s promotion of the Dolomites as a picturesque land of romance, for instance, a number of questions can be formulated. How does Cook’s promotion of the Dolomites as a land of romance work? What are the ingredients circulating in it? And what are the intended results that this circulation is supposed to achieve? By suggesting that the Dolomite landform plays ‘fantastic tricks’ before the eyes of tourists, Cook instils in their imagination the thrill of being projected inside the scenery of a Gothic novel in the manner of Ann Radcliffe. Yet the wonders of this ‘wondrous region’—a region where one can find ‘everything that imagination likes to see’—are not ‘geological’ per se. They are ‘wondrous’ because of the ‘family resemblances’ that inextricably link physical topography to the production of fantastic places, nurturing in the mind of Cook’s readers the desire of inhabiting a Radcliffe novel or a canvas by Rosa via a ‘symbolic pilgrimage’ to the Dolomites. We are far away here from what we would call today ‘geo-tourism’ (Gordon 2011; Reynard et al. 2011); Elliot’s readers and Cook’s tourists are not encouraged to appreciate the geo-morphology of the Dolomites as such—as in the case, one could argue, of Murray’s Handbook. Their manoeuvre is harnessing here an existing ‘cult geography’, in the sense expounded by Matt Hills in his intriguing study on Fan Cultures. Hills observes that by ‘visiting cult geographies, the cult-fan is able to extend an engagement with a text or icon by extra-textually inhabiting the world of the media cult’, which means to say that ‘cult geographies’ sustain fans’ fantasies of ‘entering into the cult text’, while allowing the ‘text’ itself to leak out into different creative transpositions (Hills 2002, 144–57). In other words, Cook does not promote a setting that the reader could find already named and portrayed in an existing novel or painting; we are not talking here about the creation of a hypothetical Rosa or Radcliffe

264 

W. Bainbridge

Country, in the same way that we may talk about a Constable or Brontë Country (Daniels 1993, 205; Pocock 1987).5 Rather, Cook capitalizes on a stock of emotional energy already stored in his reader’s mind, a mind saturated with topographic symbols derived from that novel or that painting. His procedure clearly exemplifies here what Hills calls a ‘creative transposition’, an affective process that spills into and redefines material space through the activity of family resemblances. The Dolomites, of course, never offered a setting for a Radcliffe novel or a Rosa painting, but they could have done. Their association with that imaginary world presupposes the existence of a specific cult formation able to equip the tourist with a set of familiar tropes that would ultimately make him or her feel at home while abroad, confirming James Buzard’s observation that ‘abroad, the tourist is the relentless representative of home’ (Buzard 1993, 8).6 In a way, this is the same process that had allowed Charles Bucke to describe Radcliffe, in 1837, as the writer ‘whom the Muses recognize as the sister of Salvator Rosa’, and Robert Chambers, in 1844, as ‘the Salvator Rosa of British novelists’—that very Ann Radcliffe, we should remember, who had not only never been in the Dolomites but also had never been to Italy (Bucke 1837, 2: 122; Chambers 1844, 554). The script that enables this cult formation is found in The Dolomite Mountains by Gilbert and Churchill. It suffices here to signal just few examples to find in their text the same Gothic tone: The Dolomites seized upon us with the spell of witchery. … The view to the south as the sun’s rays began to slant was a fairyland for variety and intricacy of mountain form … a wondrous scene of boiling mists and shivered pinnacles, all glory-tinted … all the Scotch-like mist, all the romantic richness and grandeur of the Italian Alps. (Gilbert and Churchill 1864, 24, 35, 410)

Any one of these topographic qualifiers could hint at the Gothic: the spell of witchery, the fairyland comparison, the boiling and Scotch-like mist, and so on. The Scottish Presbyterian minister in Venice, Alexander Robertson, would go as far as to promote his guidebook to the Dolomites as A Practical, Historical, and Descriptive Guide-Book to the Scotland of Italy (1896).

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  265

Similarly, also the recirculation of Salvator Rosa’s imagery appears already in Gilbert and Churchill: These old roots are quite a feature in the wild scenery. White with age, and partially blackened by fire, they look as uncanny as may be, and perhaps have aided by their appearance the peasant superstition, which reckons it of evil omen to stumble over them in the dark. Here they gave a very Salvator Rosa aspect to many a craggy corner, where the light struck faintly down. If, according to some critics, Salvator is not like nature, nature, in these instances, was very like Salvator. (Gilbert and Churchill 1864, 151)

The Gothic-like atmosphere of the Rosaesque scenery is here further enhanced by references to Ruskin ideally corrected by Gustave Doré (Fig. 13.1): Mr. Ruskin affirms that overhanging, or even perpendicular precipices, though often represented [in art] are not really found in nature. We agreed there that here there are plenty of both sorts, and the aptness of A—’s remark was at once appreciated when she compared the scene to one of Gustave Doré’s marvellous grouping of peak and precipices in his illustrations to the ‘Wandering Jew’. … Again occurred the resemblance to Doré’s designs, far above the funereal tops gleamed pale spires of Dolomite, in ghastly accord; and below, the roots of destroyed trees contorted themselves into every dragon semblance. (Gilbert and Churchill 1864, 49–50)

The gaze filled with artistic memories and literary reminiscences composes a Romantic landscape scenery, revealing the discursive interaction between Gilbert and Anna Maitland Laurie, Churchill’s wife, who will be charged with filling an entire chapter with her letters from the Dolomites to the party’s English friends. As for Doré, Gilbert adds that ‘His magnificent illustrations to the Inferno … are thoroughly Dolomitic in character’ (Gilbert and Churchill 1864, 149, note). What is at stake here is the attempt to substitute literary and artistic qualifiers, such as ‘romantic’ and ‘picturesque’—but also ‘fairy’, ‘wondrous’, ‘witchlike’, and so on—with ‘dolomitic’ as a key to open the door to the fantastic.

266 

W. Bainbridge

Fig. 13.1  Gustave Doré, La légende du juif errant, Paris, 1856, plate VIII

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  267

Renaissance Mountains The evocation of illustrious authors associated with a clear topographic repertoire, such as, Rosa or Doré in the examples provided, reveals an anxiety on the part of the authors to find a suitable ‘sponsor’, possibly one whose cult was already secured in Britain. Amelia B. Edwards, in 1873, would even dare to associate the mystery of those misty peaks to the Etruscan civilization, mentioning a bounty of archaeological findings in the area, captured by a Viennese collector.7 In 1869, quite opposite to the travelogue written with Churchill, Gilbert would find that sponsor in Venice itself under the name of Titian. The Gothic dimension that had imbued The Dolomite Mountains book gives way to another inflection of the picturesque, a new Arcadian Picturesque, re-fashioning those peaks as ‘Renaissance mountains’. The Dolomites, here, are not picturesque because they are agreeable in a painting by Rosa, but because we could find them exactly reproduced in a canvas by Titian, who in the Dolomites was born. The Dolomite district becomes utterly Italian, and re-baptized as Titian Country. Frances Elliot, in her article for All the Year Round, is quick to endorse the novelty: Those mountains, which ignorant criticism has dared to censure as impossible, not only in his [Titian’s] backgrounds, but in those of other Venetian artists, are nothing in the world but Dolomites, under whose shadows so many painters were born. So much has been written on the subject, that I cannot allow myself to expatiate on how the very shape of the stifflarch fir-­ trees about Cadore, stripped to the stem of their lower branches, and feathering out towards the tops, the villages crowning Dolomite excrescences, piled block upon block, like fortresses, the rich tints of the narrow valleys, shaded by chestnut woods, whose silvery trunks catch up the sunshine, all reminded me of ‘bits’ by Titian. (Elliot 1870, 365)

Gustave Doré’s ‘Wanderer’, who found himself surrounded by the ghostly figures of these ‘impossible mountains’ along his endless journey, is now walking on a different ground—in the background of a Titian’s painting, showing how the Dolomites as trapped in a complex web of different cultural signatures.

268 

W. Bainbridge

No one denies that in promoting and spreading the cult of Titian during the Victorian era John Ruskin and Anna Jameson played a seminal role (Johnston 1994; Thomas 2004, 71–78; Hanley and Sdegno 2010). Already in 1846, Anna Jameson claimed to have located the actual Venetian house that belonged to Titian in the area of the Fondamenta Nuove, and from the garden there she fancied about the view Titian could have seen from it during his working life spent in Venice. Distinguishing clearly among a watery foreground (the Lagoon), a pastoral middle ground (the mainland and the Euganean hills), and a rugged background (the Friuli Alps), Jameson imagined the view Titian himself would have seen: [Titian] looked over the wide canal, which is the thoroughfare between the city of Venice and the Island of Murano; in front the two smaller islands of San Cristoforo and San Michele; and beyond them Murano, rising on the right, with all its domes and campanili, like another Venice. Far off extended the level line of the mainland, and, in the distance, the towering chain of the Friuli Alps, sublime, half defined, with jagged snow-peaks soaring against the sky; and more to the left, the Euganean hills, Petrarch’s home, melting, like visions, into golden light. … This was the view from the garden of Titian; so unlike any other in the world, that it never would occur to me to compare it with any other. More glorious combinations of sea, mountain, shore, there may be—I cannot tell; like it, is nothing that I have ever beheld or imagined. (Jameson 1846, 42–43)

Jameson’s ‘glorious combination’ of foreground, middle ground, and background is here staged like a vision of an expanded scenery, ‘melting … into the golden light’ of Venice. The significance of this, however, is that Jameson knows very well that those mountains surround the Alpine birthplace of Titian. As Adele Ernstrom rightly observed, her piece appealed ‘to the English tourist’s fantasized desire to approach or recapture the painter’s aura by visiting his former haunts’ (Ernstrom 1999, 430). In a more practical sense, however, Jameson managed to make of Titian’s house in Venice the starting point for a tourist itinerary ending at Titian’s house in Piave di Cadore, in the geographic heart of the Dolomite Mountains.

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  269

Jameson’s ‘petit tour’ quickly found its way into the leading periodicals of the day. In Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Mrs. Oliphant, for example, added to Jameson’s itinerary a further picturesque component: ‘From the garden of Titian, yet wildly luxuriant, we looked up to Cadore,—to the splintered, fantastic pinnacles, whose very names were then unknown to us’ (Wilson 1888, 185). Leader Scott (the alias of Lucy Emily Baxter), in The Magazine of Art would transform this view into a ‘pilgrimage’ following the footpath of Titan himself: He sat musing in his garden on summer evenings the memories of things that had vanished were more potent than the joys which were left. His gaze turned northward, where, far, far away, peaked Antelao shot its spires up into the sky like a white phantom above the mists of the lagoons, and the ghostlike points seemed fingers beckoning him back to the home of his youth. Year after year had he answered their call. … We will follow in spirit the course of his pilgrimage. (Scott 1893, 29)

Distinct from Anna Jameson’s imaginative depiction of the Dolomite Mountains, Leader Scott’s ‘pilgrimage’ to Cadore provides us with a description in which a mountain is named. The Antelao, the highest mountain of Cadore is difficult to see from Venice, even on the clearest of summers. This mountain, however, became such a symbolic marker of that scenery that a simple knot of clouds could be misinterpreted and transfigured into an authentic view of it. Such was the power that the legacy of that cultivated gaze possessed, a power further enhanced in approaching the birthplace of Titian in the Dolomites where travellers would first get a real glimpse of the Antelao: ‘We know at once that yonder vague and shadowy mass which soars beyond our sight and seems to gather up the slopes of the valley as a robe, can be none other than the Antelao. A grand, but a momentary sight!’ (Edwards 1873, 43). Even those who arrived to the Dolomites from the northern route, such as Frances Elliot, could not forbear from imagining its sight viewed in a painting by Titian: ‘Antalao (sic), with its magnificent pinnacles blazing with magic colours in the morning sun, seemed to me but a great landmark pointing to the wonder-land behind … all reminded me of “bits” by Titian’ (Elliot 1870, 356). The ‘bits by Titian’ evoked

270 

W. Bainbridge

here in a close-up encounter with the Dolomites were directly mediated by Josiah Gilbert, who had literally reduced Titian’s backgrounds into pieces to be admired not from Venice but from Cadore itself, amid the mountains. The peaks portrayed in Titian’s paintings were conveniently reproduced in his book Cadore, or Titian’s Country (1869) with an indication of their tentative names, and the same was done also for the paintings of other painters of the Venetian school, such as Giovanni Bellini (Fig. 13.2, Bainbridge 2017).

Modern Mountains In sharp contrast with the Venetian allure that Titian’s house in Cadore could provide, the Dolomite peaks continue to grant access to realm of the fairy tale, offering many ways to harness ‘the liberating potential of the fantastic’ (Zipes 2006, 169–91). For ‘romantic anti-capitalist writers of fairy tales like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien’, this outlandish realm allowed them to ‘look back conservatively to the past for salvation’, transforming the real experience of picturesque gazing into a fantastic vision of picturesque dreaming constructed in a mediated encounter with an imagined mountain scenery born out of childhood memories (Zipes 2006, 185). Although still hazy in its evidence, it has been advanced that the bizarre forms of the Dolomite Mountains inspired the creation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Middle Earth’. It is enough to recall here that Tolkien possessed a postcard with a reproduction of Josef Madlener’s Der Berggeist (‘the spirit or the ghost of the mountain’), portraying a wizard-like man, seated alone in a forest but surrounded by a friendly and beneficial wild-life. On the envelope in which the author kept it, Tolkien wrote ‘The origin of Gandalf ’ (Carpenter 2000, 59; Kiermeier-Debre and Vogel 2007; Zimmerman 1983). Despite the fantastic atmosphere emanating from the picture, it is here clearly possible to distinguish not only a dolomitic aura surrounding the pink mountains in the background, but the actual topographic features, I suggest here, of the Cinque Torri, near Cortina d’Ampezzo (Fig. 13.3).

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  271

Fig. 13.2  Josiah Gilbert, Dolomite Forms in Titian and others of the Venetian School, in Gilbert (1869, plate XII, page 74)

272 

W. Bainbridge

Fig. 13.3  Josef Madlener, The Berggeist, 1920s, ink, watercolour and gouache, 675×508 cm, private collection, sold at Sotheby’s in 2005. Image provided courtesy of Sotheby’s London

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  273

The Dolomite background of Titian’s paintings, so much cherished by Josiah Gilbert is gone. Madlener’s foreground replaces here Venetian civilized classicism (civilisation) with German cultural rooted in Nature (Kultur)—columns become trees, buildings become boulders, cherubs become squirrels, and architectural adornments become wild flowers, wrapped in the solitude of a gaze that is not cast from an Italian city anymore but from a German forest. The Dolomites are surrounded by an evocative mysterious iconography that is not immediately recognizable through classical or biblical erudition, but perceived instead as a fantastic stage without prescriptive narrative open to fabulous and primeval reformulations—as if the written script of the Grand Tour would be replaced by the oral tales of a Germanic Wanderer (Busk 1871, 1874). Madlener’s scene was most probably taken from the Dolomitenstrasse— the new spectacular Dolomite Road that the Austrians opened in 1909 as an alternative to the old Titian Route linking Venice to Cadore. By then, the commercial exploitation of the Dolomite region had already become an Austrian affair. The staggering series of Grand Hotels that tourists could find along the great ‘Dolomite Road’, conceived and realized by Theodor Christomannos to link Bozen to Cortina d’Ampezzo through some of the most spectacular Dolomite passes, bore unambiguously Austrian names. In 1896, following the Swiss model, Christomannos— certainly the most glittering figure in the history of tourism in Tyrol— founded the Tyrolean Alpine Hotel Association to develop the high valleys of the Dolomite District through the building and running of new comfortable hotels, linked together in a well-organized network of luxurious tourist resorts (Faggioni 2012, 132–66; Hartungen 2006, 25–27; Kramer 1972; Patzeit 2010). Christomannos’ hotels inserted an ‘urban interzone’ in the mountainous landscape of Tyrol, allowing it to become part of an updated version of the Grand Tour—the ‘Grand Hotel Tour’ (Knoch 2008; Pitscheider 2005; Trentin-Meyer 2000). These temporary and transitory zones constituted seasonal urban islands within isolated upland communities, cosmopolitan islands in which chunks of modernity suddenly appeared. British travellers, who had promoted the Dolomites as a ‘new playground’ distinct from the ‘old playground’ represented by the Swiss Alps,

274 

W. Bainbridge

lost their exclusive access to the region, confirming what Elliot had said back in 1870 that without the Dolomites ‘Tyrol is a bad Switzerland’ (1870, 353). The loss of this exclusivity transformed itself into a nostalgic claim over the real ‘soul’ of the Dolomite landscape, threatened by Austrian encroachers. The debatable character of the region became then palpable (Bainbridge 2014, 2016). In introducing his well-informed lecture on ‘The Southern Frontiers of Austria’ to the members of the Royal Geographical Society in 1915, Douglas W. Freshfield—president of the Society and former president of the Alpine Club—could not forbear evoking ‘the reasoned opinion’ expressed by Friedrich Ratzel, one of the acknowledged pioneers of political geography (Farinelli 2000, 200; Mikesell 1978). In a short article on the political subdivision of the Alpine regions, Ratzel defended the view that the so-called Southern Alps were wholly Italian: ‘ganz Italienish’ (Freshfield 1915, 415).8 One year after the outbreak of World War I, in a period that had already witnessed the beginning of the conflict between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austrian Empire for the renegotiation of their Alpine frontiers, Freshfield’s choice could not have been more polemical. Not only was Ratzel one of the fathers of political geography, and therefore an absolute authority in the field, not only was he German, but his article was published in the official journal of the German– Austrian Alpine Club. Unlike the British Alpine Club, with its restrictive membership requirements, the Alpenverein had adopted a rather universal ethos towards mountaineering, welcoming members from all social strata of the population (but excluding Jews and socialists) and thus functioning as the symbolic site for gathering different mountain identities under the all-inclusive rubric of German Heimat (Holt 2008, 5; Hansen 1995).9 The outburst of World War I intensified this approach and spurred the Alpenverein to transform the role of the German mountaineer from a physically powerful, nature-loving individual to a thoroughly nationalist, militarized defender of the Heimat, qualifying itself as an organization dedicated to the production of an invincible, masculine Germany. One of the privileged fields in which this new turn could fully express itself was the Austrian district of Tyrol, which at that time

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  275

also included the Italian district of Trentino—the Italian-speaking part of the region. Forty years before, in a humorous page of his Italian Alps (1875), Freshfield had already drawn a clear line between the German and the English interpretations of mountaineering, acknowledging the open competition between the two respective nations: The races of English and German mountaineers, after making due allowance for the exceptions which there are to every rule, will be found respectively to embody many of the characteristics of the two nations. Our Alpine Clubman affords while in the Alps an example of almost perpetual motion. … He dashes from peak to peak, from group to group, even from one end of the Alps to the other, in the course of a short summer holiday. Exercise in the best of air, a dash of adventure, and a love of nature, not felt the less because it is not always on his tongue, are his chief motives. A little botany, or chartography (sic), may come into his plans, but only by the way and in a secondary place. He is out on a holiday and in a holiday humour. (Freshfield 1875, 182–3)

The speedy pace of the British mountaineer functions here as a trope for ‘lightness’—lightness of spirit, lightness of equipment, and lightness of goals. And while the German mountaineer ‘continues to revolve like a satellite, throwing considerable light on the mass to which he is attached, round the Ortler or the Marmolata … his English rival dashes comet-­ wise, doing little that is immediately useful’ (Freshfield 1875, 184): Far different is the scheme and mode of operation of the German mountaineer. To him his summer journey is no holiday, but part of the business of life. He either deliberately selects his ‘Excursions-Gebiet’ in the early spring with a view to do some good work in geology or mapping, or more probably has it selected for him by a committee of his club. About August you will find him seriously at work. While on the march he shows in many little ways his sense of the importance of his task. His coat is decorated with a ribbon bearing on it the badge or decoration of his club. He carries in his pockets a notebook, ruled in columns, for observations of every conceivable kind, and a supply of printed cards ready to deposit on the heights he aims at. (Freshfield 1875, 183–4)

276 

W. Bainbridge

If the British mountaineer, once back home, ‘hurries off in the intervals of other business a ten-page paper for the “Alpine Journal”’, the German one produces ‘a solid monograph, properly divided into heads, “orographical, geological, botanical, and touristical”, … published in the leading geographical magazine of Germany’ and ‘followed by a thick volume, printed in luxurious type, and adorned with highly coloured illustrations and a prodigious map, most valuable doubtless, but, alas! to weak English appetites somewhat indigestible’ (Freshfield 1875, 185). The real reason, however, behind this clearly stereotypical characterization seems to be another. Despite the witty, if not sarcastic, tone—impossible to be replicated in 1915—Freshfield vigorously contested the inclusion of the Trentino within the ‘German Alps’: The exertions of our German fellow-climbers can, however, scarcely justify the annexation of the district calmly carried out by one of their writers. ‘In all our German Alps’, says a learned doctor, ‘there is hardly a more forsaken or unknown corner than the Adamello.’ ‘In unseren Deutschen Alpen!’ There is not in the whole Alps a region which is more thoroughly Italian than the mountain-mass of which the Presanella is the highest, the Adamello the most famous, summit. … The mountains of the Trentino may be still, politically speaking, Austro-Italian Alps; in every other respect they belong entirely to the southern peninsula. (Freshfield 1875, 185–6)

By 1915, the expression ‘unsere Deutschen Alpen’ (‘our German Alps’) had already mutated into a claim that gave political weight to the open conflict over the frontiers between Italy and Austria. The Austrians not only claimed Trentino as part of their own territory, but also the Ampezzo Valley, with Cortina—the geographical and cultural background of Titian’s Cadore: Yes; Italian they are [the Southern Alps], and their peculiar charm lies in the combination they display of Italian space and serenity with Alpine grandeur. There is a delightful element of surprise when the wide harmonious sweep of the landscape is interrupted by the strange shapes of the spires and obelisks that suddenly surge up above the lower hills. The eyes of the

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  277

traveller, in place of being confined between two mountain walls, wander out into great distances, over wide expanses, and his imagination follows them to recall past rambles, or anticipate fresh adventure. (Freshfield 1915, 415–6)

No need, at this point, to further discuss the relevance of those ‘spires’ and ‘obelisks’ as figurative tropes almost uniquely associated with the Dolomites in British travel literature since the times of Murray. Freshfield’s sketches recirculated in the Austro-Italian debate a set of symbols common to a British context. It is neither the idea of Heimat, defended by the Austrians, nor the idea of the ‘bastions of the nation’, defended by the Italians that motivates those sketches (Armiero 2011, 87; Cuaz 2005, 167), but the idea of a shared sensibility, which received its symbolic consolidation in the loop of a movable framework of cultural practices (Wickberg 2007)—the idea, we could say, of a sensibility in transition. The nostalgia for a cultivated gaze, for a refined but conversational vocabulary to express it, for a set of established interactions between permanent dwellers and temporary sojourners is coupled here with the fear of losing the Arcadian fantasy of English mountaineering—‘now this Garden of Proserpine, the haunt of shepherds and peaceful herds, is being defaced by trenches and watered with blood. The pity of it!’ (Wickberg 2007, 426). The image used to further develop and in some ways appropriate this sobering scene derives, perhaps not surprisingly, from the poetic works of one of the acknowledged pioneers of that sensibility—William Wordsworth’s ‘The Solitary Reaper’ (Wordsworth 2008, 151–2): Here a few years, and flowers will cover the trenches and the graves and there will be only an echo in the valley homes to tell ‘old unhappy far-off things, and battles long ago’ [from Wordsworth, ‘The Solitary Reaper, 1805, ll. 19–20’]. Battles I fear with relatively small results. (Freshfield 1915, 426)

Indeed, the great season of the British discovery of the Dolomites was destined to end with the Great War—if not earlier, with the development of the modern tourism business in South Tyrol, between the 1890s and the 1910s.

278 

W. Bainbridge

Notes 1. Elliot’s titles would include Diary of an Idle Woman in Italy (1871), Pictures of Old Rome (1872), The Italians (1875), The Diary of an Idle Woman in Sicily (1881), Roman Gossip (1894), besides novels and studies of ‘Old Court Life’ in France and Spain. 2. From a technical point of view, topographic prominence is conventionally defined as the height of a peak’s summit above the lowest contour line encircling it, sometimes referred to as ‘lowest pass’, ‘saddle point’, or ‘col’—‘the height of a mountain above the saddle of the highest ridge connecting it to a peak higher still’ (Helman and Earl 2005, 5). 3. Murray’s description refers quite closely to the one provided by Leopold von Buch, one of the most celebrated earth scientists of the time (Buch 1823); on the parallels between the two, see Bainbridge (2016). 4. What are known as the Dolomites remained variously dubbed also as ‘Friuli’s Mountains’, ‘Rhætian Hills’, ‘Mystic Mountains’, ‘Pale Mountains’, and so on, until the publication of The Dolomite Mountains (Gilbert and Churchill 1864); for the current debate surrounding the historical naming of the region, see Torchio and Decarli (2013). 5. In a similar way, for instance, Nicola Watson explored the making and unmaking of ‘Scott Country’ (2012); Stephen Daniels noted that by the 1890s tours to ‘Constable Country’ in Suffolk prompted tourists to experience in reality the landscape painted in works such as The Hay Wain (1821), a painting which had come to symbolize an ‘essential England’ (Daniels 1993; Matless 1998); Shelagh Squire has shown that visits to Hill Top Farm, the Lake District home of Beatrix Potter, conjured up emotions and meanings which connected less with the writer herself or the content of her Peter Rabbit books than ‘values about happy childhoods and nostalgia for English country life’ (1994, 117). 6. During the Grand Tour, Anglo-Italian travellers negotiated their British gaze by inhabiting a liminal space between home and abroad, entrapped in a positional ‘betweenness’ as the deictic locus for casting their Self in subjective views (Schoina 2009, 6–16; Saglia 2000, 144). Un-Italianized tourists, instead, constructed their British gaze by relentlessly representing home while abroad, caught in an inescapable ‘stayathomeativeness’—as Mary Shelley put it—as the hegemonic template for confirming their self in objective views (Shelley 1826, 327). The legacy of the Grand Tour emerged as a heritage to be revived by some Victorian travellers and be

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  279

exploited by others, marking a clear distinction between two different travel styles—the one interpreted by the ‘traveller’ and the one performed by the ‘tourist’ (Buzard 1993, 18–79). 7. Edwards is interested in the cabinet of curiosities she finds in the hotel Nave D’Oro in Predazzo, a town noted in the early nineteenth century as privileged site for leading mineralogists and geologists, see Ciancio (1999) and Vardabasso (1950). Her curiosity is here entirely absorbed by a small bronze bracelet of Etruscan origin found in the area together with a series of other similar objects (Edwards 1873, 282); her archaeological interests were driven by the publication of Ludwig Steub’s theory on the unity of the Etruscan and Rhaetian languages, and on the ethnic link between the people of Tyrol and the Etruscans (1843). 8. Freshfield is referring here to Ratzel (1896, 79). 9. For the relevance of Heimat in this context, see Applegate (1990), Blickle (2004), Confino (1997), Jacobson (2003), and Pasinato (2000, 2004).

Bibliography Abraham, G. D. (1919). On Alpine heights and British crags. London: Methuen and Co. Agamben, G. (2009). The signature of all things: On method (trans: D’Isanto, L., & Attell, K.). New York: Zone Books. Applegate, C. (1990). A nation of provincials: The German idea of Heimat. Berkeley: University of California Press. Armiero, M. (2011). A rugged nation: Mountains and the making of modern Italy. Isle of Harris: White Horse Press. Bainbridge, W. (2014). Heritage in the clouds: Englishness in the Dolomites. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Durham, Durham. Bainbridge, W. (2016). Debatable peaks and contested valleys: Englishness and the Dolomite landscape scenery. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 31(1), 31–58. Bainbridge, W. (2017). Titian country: Josiah Gilbert (1814–1893) and the Dolomite Mountains. Journal of Historical Geography, 56(April), 22–42. Blickle, P. (2004). Heimat: A critical theory of the German idea of homeland. Rochester: Camden House. Buch, L. v. (1823). Lettre de M. Léopold de Buch à M.A. de Humboldt, renfermant le Tableau géologique de la partie méridionale du Tyrol. Annales de chimie et de physique, 23, 276–304.

280 

W. Bainbridge

Bucke, C. (1837). On the beauties, harmonies, and sublimities of nature. 3 Vols. London: Thomas Tegg and Son. Busk, R. H. (1871). Household stories from the land of Hofer, or popular myths of Tirol. London: Griffith and Farran. Busk, R. H. (1874). The valleys of Tirol: Their traditions and customs, and how to visit them. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. Buzard, J. (1993). The beaten track: European tourism, literature, and the ways to culture, 1800–1918. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carpenter, H. (2000). Tolkien: A biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Chambers, R. (1844). Ann Radcliffe. In Cyclopaedia of English literature: A history, critical and biographical, of British authors, from the earliest to the present times (pp. 554–558). Edinburgh: William and Robert Chambers. Ciancio, L. (1999). La chiave della teoria delle Alpi: Località, collezioni e reperti dell’area trentina e dolomitica nella storia delle teorie geologiche (1760–1830). Archivio Trentino, 48, 205–274. Confino, A. (1997). The nation as a local metaphor: Württemberg, imperial Germany, and national memory, 1871–1918. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Cook, T. (1875). Cook’s tourist handbook for Northern Italy. London: Thomas Cook and Son. Cosgrove, D. E. (2008). Geography and vision: Seeing, imagining and representing the world. London: I.B. Tauris. Cuaz, M. (2005). Le Alpi. Bologna: Il Mulino. Daniels, S. (1993). Fields of vision: Landscape imagery and national identity in England and the United States. Cambridge: Polity. Dean, D. R. (2007). Romantic landscapes: Geology and its cultural influence in Britain, 1765–1835. Ann Arbor: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints. Dickens, C. (2002). In G. Storey, M. House, & K. Tillotson (Eds.), The letters of Charles Dickens: The Pilgrim edition (12 Vols.). Oxford: Clarendon. Edwards, A. A. B. (1873). Untrodden peaks and unfrequented valleys: A midsummer ramble in the dolomites. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. Elliot, F. (1870). A lady’s visit to the Dolomites. All the Year Round, 4(93), 352–357. Ernstrom, A. M. (1999). ‘Why should we be always looking back?’ Christian art in nineteenth-century historiography in Britain. Art History, 22(3), 421–435. Faggioni, S. (2012). Theodor Christomannos: Geniale pioniere del turismo nelle Dolomiti. Trento: Reverdito. Farinelli, F. (2000). Friedrich Ratzel and the nature of (political) geography. Political Geography, 19(8), 943–955.

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  281

Freshfield, D.  W. (1875). Italian Alps: Sketches in the mountains of Ticino, Lombardy, the Trentino, and Venetia. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. Freshfield, D.  W. (1915). The southern frontiers of Austria. The Geographical Journal, 46(6), 414–433. Gianolla, P. (Ed.). (2008). Nomination of the Dolomites for inscription on the World Natural Heritage List UNESCO. Bolzano/Trento/Udine. Gilbert, J. (1869). Cadore or Titian’s Country. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Gilbert, J., & Churchill, G.  C. (1864). The Dolomite Mountains. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green. Gordon, J. E. (2011). Rediscovering a sense of wonder: Geoheritage, geotourism and cultural landscape experiences. Geoheritage, 4(1–2), 65–77. Hanley, K., & Sdegno, E. (Eds.). (2010). Ruskin, Venice and nineteenth-century cultural travel. Venezia: Cafoscarina. Hansen, P.  H. (1995). Albert Smith, the Alpine Club, and the invention of mountaineering in mid-Victorian Britain. The Journal of British Studies, 34(3), 300–324. Hartungen, C. H. v. (2006). Miti e realtà degli albori del turismo nelle Dolomiti. In G. Recusani (Ed.), Gottfried Hofer a Madonna di Campiglio: Arte e turismo nelle Dolomiti tra Otto e Novecento (pp. 18–27). Turin: s.n. Helman, A., & Earl, E. (2005). The finest peaks: Prominence and other mountain measures. Victoria: Trafford Publishing. Heringman, N. (2003). Romantic science the literary forms of natural history. Albany: State University of New York Press. Heringman, N. (2004). Romantic rocks: Aesthetic geology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Heringman, N. (2013). Sciences of antiquity: Romantic antiquarianism, natural history, and knowledge work. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hills, M. (2002). Fan cultures. London: Routledge. Holt, L. W. (2008). Mountains, mountaineering and modernity: A cultural history of German and Austrian mountaineering, 1900–1945. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Texas, Austin. Jacobson, H. (2003). Home, Heimat, haimish. Index on Censorship, 32(2), 27–29. Jameson, A. (1846). Memoirs and essays illustrative of art, literature and social morals. London: Richard Bentley. Johnston, J. (1994). Invading the house of Titian: The colonisation of Italian art. Anna Jameson, John Ruskin and the ‘Penny Magazine’. Victorian Periodicals Review, 27(2), 127–143.

282 

W. Bainbridge

Kiermeier-Debre, J., & Vogel, F. F. (2007). Josef Madlener: Mein Kosmos. Köln: Böhlau. Knoch, H. (2008). Life on stage: Grand hotels as urban interzones around 1900. In M. Heler & C. Zimmerman (Eds.), Creative urban milieus: Historical perspectives on culture, economy, and the city (pp. 137–157). Frankfurt: Campus Verlag. Kramer, H. (1972). Von der Badmoidl zum Grand-Hotel. Der Schlern, 46, 183–191. Landow, G. P. (1971). The aesthetic and critical theories of John Ruskin. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Matless, D. (1998). Landscape and Englishness. London: Reaktion. Mikesell, M. W. (1978). Tradition and innovation in cultural geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 68(1), 1–16. Murray, J. (1836). A handbook for travellers on the continent: Being a guide through Holland, Belgium, Prussia, and Northern Germany, and along the Rhine, from Holland to Switzerland. London: John Murray. Panizza, M. (2009). The geomorphodiversity of the Dolomites (Italy): A key of geoheritage assessment. Geoheritage, 1(1), 33–42. Pasinato, A. (2000). Heimat: Identità regionali nel processo storico. Milano: Donzelli Editore. Pasinato, A. (Ed.). (2004). Heimatsuche: Regionale Identität im österreichisch-­ italienischen Alpenraum. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Patzeit, I. (2010). Vom Bauernhous zum Grandhotel. Wissenschaftliche Jahrbuch der Tiroler Landesmuseum, 3, 432–453. Pitscheider, S. (2005). Alpine Grandhotels in freier Landschaft mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Südtirols (1870–1914). Diplom Arbeit: Universität Wien. Pocock, D. (1987). Haworth: The experience of a literary place. In W. E. Mallory & P. Simpson-Housley (Eds.), Geography and literature: A meeting of the disciplines (pp. 135–145). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Ratzel, F. (1896). Die Alpen inmitten der geschichtlichen Bewegungen. Zeitschrift des Deutschen und Oesterreichischen Alpenvereins, 27, 62–88. Reynard, E., Coratza, P., & Giusti, C. (2011). Geomorphosites and geotourism. Geoheritage, 3(3), 129–130. Robertson, A. (1896). Through the Dolomites, from Venice to Toblach. London: G. Allen. Saglia, D. (2000). Poetic castles in Spain: British romanticism and figurations of Iberia. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Sanger Davies, J. (1894). Dolomite strongholds: The last untrodden alpine peaks: An account of ascents of the Croda da Lago, the little and great Zinnen, the

13  Mountains Run Mad: Picturesque Signatures in the Dolomites 

  283

Cinque Torri, the Fünffingerspitze, and the Langkofel. London/New York: George Bell and Sons. Schoina, M. (2009). Romantic ‘Anglo-Italians’: Configurations of identity in Byron, the Shelleys, and the Pisan Circle. Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate. Scott, L. (1893). Titian’s summer pilgrimage. The Magazine of Art, (January), 29–34. Shelley, M. (1826). English in Italy. Westminster Review, 6(October), 325–341. Squire, S. J. (1994). The cultural values of literary tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 21(1), 103–120. Stein, R. L. (1975). The ritual of interpretation: The fine arts as literature in Ruskin, Rossetti, and Pater. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Steub, L. (1843). Ueber die Urbewohner Rätiens und ihren Zusammenhang mit den Etruskern. München: Verlag der Literarisch-Artistischen Anstalt. Thomas, D. W. (2004). Cultivating Victorians: Liberal culture and the aesthetic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Torchio, F., & Decarli, R. (2013). Ad est del Romanticismo 1786–1901: Alpinisti vittoriani sulle Dolomiti. Rovereto: New Book Edizioni. Trentin-Meyer, M. (2000). Die Anfänge des Alpinismus als urbanisches Phänomen. In T. Busset, L. Lorenzetti, & J. Mathieu (Eds.), Ville et montagne = Stadt und Gebirge (pp. 21–54). Zürich: Chronos. Vardabasso, S. (1950). Das Fremdenbuch des Gasthofs ‘Nave d’Oro’ in Predazzo. Geologische Rundschau, 38, 68–71. Watson, N. J. (2012). Holiday excursions to Scott country. In B. Colbert (Ed.), Travel writing and tourism in Britain and Ireland (pp. 132–146). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wickberg, D. (2007). What is the history of sensibilities? On cultural histories, old and new. The American Historical Review, 112(3), 661–684. Wilson, M.  O. (1888). Mrs. Oliphant on Venice. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 143(868), 185–192. Wordsworth, W. (2008). The complete poetical works of William Wordsworth: 1801–1805. New York: Cosimo Classics. Younghusband, F. E. (1921). The heart of nature; Or, the quest for natural beauty. London: John Murray. Zimmerman, M. (1983). The origin of Gandalf and Josef Madlener. Mythlore, 34, 22–24. Zipes, J. D. (2006). Fairy tales and the art of subversion: The classical genre for children and the process of civilization. London: Routledge.

Index1

A

Ackermann, Diane, 17–20, 32n2 Addison, Joseph, 220, 258 aesthetics, 3, 7, 9, 17, 25, 29, 91, 155–70, 193, 195, 202, 203, 218–20, 223, 227, 229, 230, 256, 258–60 Alcazaba, 213 Alhambra, 28, 223, 225–7, 229, 231 Alps, 15–34, 138–40, 155, 190, 197, 202, 207, 213–15, 218–24, 230, 247, 261, 263, 264, 268, 273–6 Altdorfer, Albrecht, 200–2 Andalusia, 213 apostles, 40, 63, 68, 70, 71, 73 Arcadia, 218–30, 267, 277

architecture, 5–7, 51, 52, 89, 95, 124, 178, 183, 220, 225, 226, 249, 250, 252 Arendt, Hannah, 132 Athens, 6, 81–3, 89–91, 96–7, 98n3 Augustine (Saint), 70, 71, 73, 74, 78n4, 197, 198 aura, 41, 85, 256, 260, 268, 270 Axis Mundi, 2, 40, 41 B

Balmat, Jacques, 21 Beatus of Liébana, 60, 62 Bings, 172–3 bird’s-eye view, 214 Bourrit, Marc-Théodore, 205, 219 bridge, 173, 238, 246, 247, 253n5

 Note: Page numbers followed by “n” refers to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2018 C. Kakalis, E. Goetsch (eds.), Mountains, Mobilities and Movement, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58635-3

285

286  Index

British Alpine Club, 274 Buffon, Comte de (Leclerc, Georges Louis), 129–31, 133, 134 Burke, Edmund, 220 Burning Bush, 107, 108, 111, 115, 116, 118–21, 123, 126n5 Byers, Elizabeth A., 131–3 C

Carmelites, 241 Carr, John, 228, 229 cartography/cartographic, 6, 63–5, 67, 69, 76, 78n3, 81–101, 190, 193–5 cartosemiotics, 64, 78n3 Cassiodorus, 71, 78n4 Caucasus mountains, 214 caves, 37, 38, 44–50, 53, 54, 61, 109, 111, 202 Célérier, Jean, 130, 132, 134 Chamonix, 25, 219, 224 Chronicle of 754, 59–61, 71, 72 Clark, William George, 224 Climacus, John (Saint), 40, 119 climbing, 3, 7, 18, 20, 25, 26, 28, 33n15, 51, 52, 61, 74, 107–27, 137, 155–70, 180, 223, 256 communal ritual, 5, 37–9, 43, 50–4 Cook, Thomas, 262–4 Corner, James, 6, 93, 94, 100n17 cultural geography, 83, 92, 100n14, 215, 216 D

Dante, 241 Danube, 190, 239, 248

da Vinci, Leonardo, 198, 199 Deleuze, Gilles, 93, 94, 100n16, 100n17 Della Dora, Veronica, 10, 44, 55n5, 189–210, 214, 218, 229, 240 Dent, Clinton Thomas, 156, 157, 166–8 Dickens, Charles, 255, 256 dioramas, 22, 24, 27, 207 Dolomite Mountains, 9, 255–79 Doré, Gustave, 265–7 Dorrian, Mark, 6, 92–4 Duccio di Bueninsegno, 190–2, 194, 198 E

ecological praxis, 83, 94 ecosophy, 81–101 Eden, 65, 194, 195, 221–3, 228 Egeria, 110, 111, 191, 193, 195, 198, 203 Eiger, 4, 17, 20–30, 33n12 Eliade, Mircea, 40, 252, 253n2 Elliot, Frances Minto, 256, 262, 263, 267, 269, 274, 278n1 F

Ford, Richard, 223, 224, 228 G

Geertz, Clifford, 18–20, 23, 27, 30, 31, 32n2 geographic, 2, 9, 38, 62, 64, 81, 92–7, 99n14, 129, 132, 133, 147–9, 206, 213–31, 257, 258, 262, 268, 276

 Index    

geological, 2, 9, 11, 17, 69, 70, 81, 88, 92–7, 109, 113, 163, 164, 193, 205, 218, 219, 257, 259, 263, 276 geo-tourism, 263 Gothic revival, 215, 218, 220 Granada, 213–31 Grand Tour, 222, 273, 278n6 Gregory of Nyssa, 119, 120 Gregory the Great, 70 Guattari, Félix, 82, 83, 93–6, 100n17, 101n19, 101n20 guidebooks, 159, 160, 264 H

Haemus range, 190 Harrer, Heinrich, 23–5 Heidegger, Martin, 11, 237–9, 241, 243–9, 251, 252, 253n4, 253n7 Heimat, 274, 277, 279n9 hesychasm/hesychast, 37–55 hesychast practice, 38, 45, 48 historiographies, 83 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 11, 239, 247–9, 251, 252 Holy Land, 77, 110, 193 holy mountain, 41, 107, 113, 114, 125, 240 horizons, 8, 43, 95, 132, 190, 198–200, 204, 206, 208 Humboldt, Chimborazo, 203 I

Iberia/Iberian peninsula, 6, 59, 60, 62, 65, 71–3, 75, 76, 78n4, 213, 215, 222, 227, 230

287

iconography/iconographical, 6, 29, 65, 113, 118, 124, 126n3, 214, 231, 240, 273 identity/identities, 7, 28, 50, 62, 74, 91, 92, 131–4, 136–41, 143, 145–9, 247, 274 images, 9–11, 22, 59, 60, 62–5, 67–9, 71, 73, 77, 77n1, 81, 82, 88, 90, 109, 113, 116, 118, 191, 194, 215, 217–20, 223, 226, 240, 259 imitation, 112, 125 industrialization, 238 Inglis, David Henry, 225, 229, 231 Irving, Washington, 229 Islam, 72, 77 J

Jameson, Anna, 268, 269 Jennings, Robert, 226, 227 Jerusalem, 6, 60, 69, 74–7, 115, 193, 242, 243, 253 Jesus prayer, 39, 45, 48, 51 Jones, Owen Glynne, 156–8 K

Kepler, Johannes, 219 Korres, Manolis, 89 L

Lake Geneva, 238 landscapes, 2, 17, 38, 65, 81–5, 92, 115, 164, 171, 189, 198–202, 213–31, 239, 256 Lewis, C.S., 136, 270 lines, 6–8, 11, 19, 26, 29, 42, 51, 64, 74, 75, 93, 155–69, 225,

288  Index

241, 252, 257, 260, 268, 275, 278n2 linguistic, 60, 64, 65, 69, 244, 245, 260 loca sancta, 110, 119, 120, 124, 126 M

MacLeod, Dave, 156, 166–9 Madaba map, 193, 194 Madlener, Joseph, 270, 272, 273 Mappamundi, 63 mapping, 3, 6, 7, 39, 43, 44, 49, 88, 89, 93, 98n7, 275 maps, 2, 6, 47, 63–70, 73, 75, 76, 77n1, 83, 93, 95, 97, 99n14, 100n16, 100n17, 160, 193–5, 206, 224, 257, 258, 276 marble, 6, 81–5, 87–91, 96, 97, 98n6, 98n7, 115 massif, 17, 144, 148, 213–15, 218, 219, 223, 225, 228, 230 materiality, 2, 50, 60–5, 85, 91, 92, 97, 174, 215, 218 materials, 6, 10, 11, 22, 28, 38–40, 52, 81, 82, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91, 95, 155, 164, 172–80, 183, 214, 216, 223, 238, 242, 243, 264 matter, 8, 22, 81, 96, 97, 139, 140, 164, 171–84, 193, 244 Matterhorn, 4, 17, 21–30, 34n23, 34n24 medieval, 6, 59, 66, 67, 74, 77, 194, 198, 218, 220, 221, 223, 225–7 Milton, John, 200, 202, 219 mining, 171, 177, 180, 183 Mission of the Apostles, 63, 70, 73 Mona Lisa, 199

monastic, 8, 37–9, 42, 44, 46, 53, 54n2, 55n3, 55n4, 59–78 montagnards, 129–50 Mont Blanc, 4, 17, 21–30, 32n6, 32n8, 32n9, 157, 189–210, 219, 224 mosaic, 8, 40, 107–27 Moses, 41, 107, 109, 111, 112, 115–22, 124, 125, 193, 198, 240, 243, 248, 253n4 mountaineering, 7, 19, 21, 22, 24, 26, 27, 33n10, 51, 137, 155, 156, 163, 214, 257, 274, 275, 277 Mountain forum, 131–3, 144 mountain people, 131, 133, 134, 136, 138, 141, 146–9, 150n1 Mount Athos, 5, 37–55, 196 Mount Bouet, 205 Mount Casius, 190 Mount Dindymon, 189 Mount Everest, 25, 28, 33n10, 34n23, 159 Mount Horeb, 107, 109–11, 113, 121, 240, 242, 243 Mount Moriah, 240 Mount Nebo, 191, 193, 198 Mount of Temptation, 189–210 Mount Olympus, 196 Mount Pentelicon, 81–101 Mount Purgatory, 241 Mount Sinai, 40, 107–27, 242, 251 Mount Ventoux, 196, 198, 241 Mount Zion, 240, 242, 243, 252 Mulhacen peak, 213 Murray, John, 261–3, 277, 278n3 Mūsā, Jabal, 107–10, 112, 113 muslims, 5, 59–62, 71–3, 75–7

 Index    

289

N

R

New Materialism, 8, 172–83 Niddry Bing, 8, 172, 173, 176, 179, 183

Ratzel, Friedrich, 274 representation/representational, 2, 3, 10, 11, 16, 17, 19, 60–5, 69, 73, 76, 83, 88, 89, 97, 98n7, 124, 125, 133, 134, 136, 137, 190, 200, 215–18, 230, 257 Rhine, 22, 239, 246, 247 risk, 15, 19, 30, 31, 60, 72 Roberts, David, 226, 227 rock climbing, 156, 164, 167 Romanticism, 238, 240, 249, 252 Rome, 66, 190, 196 Rose, Gillian, 92–4, 216 Ruskin, John, 11, 237–9, 241, 243, 249–53, 265, 268

O

oil shale, 171–3, 176–80, 183 Orientalism, 215 P

Paccard, Gabriel, 21 Paley, William, 249, 251 performance, 4, 5, 11, 15–17, 19, 20, 23, 28, 65–76, 100n17, 180, 218 Petrarch, F., 196–8, 202, 203, 241, 268 pilgrimages, 8, 37, 38, 42, 43, 51–4, 55n5, 107, 109, 110, 120, 193, 263, 269 play dark play, 4, 15–34 deep play, 15–20, 27, 30, 31, 32n2 policies, 131, 137–40, 143–7 postures, 50, 115, 121, 122, 126n3 Prezi, 83–5, 97, 98n3 Procopius of Caesarea, 109 Pyrenees mountains, 140, 214 Q

quarries, 82, 83, 85–7, 89–91, 98n5, 98n6, 99n13

S

Said, Edward, 217 Saint Basil, the Younger, 194 St Gregory Palamas, 40 Saussure, Horace Bénédict, 191, 202–5, 207, 208, 219 Schechner, Richard, 4, 15, 16, 19, 30 Semple, Robert, 223 Shepherd, Nan, 208, 209 Sierra Nevada, 10, 16, 213–31 silence, 5, 37–9, 43–54, 178, 183 Sinai, 40, 107–27, 242, 251 Smith, Albert, 17, 21–3, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32n8, 32n9, 207 Smith, Richard William, 190, 192, 198 Stephen, Leslie, 156, 157, 161 storytelling, 16, 22, 24

290  Index

sublime, 31, 43, 85, 208, 215, 218–20, 222–30, 250, 261, 268 T

telescopes, 4, 24–7, 30, 165, 202 territoriality, 129–50 texts, 6, 11, 59–67, 70, 71, 75–7, 77n1, 114, 118, 129–31, 133, 136, 139, 156, 161, 162, 217, 237, 240–3, 263, 264 Theodoret of Cyrrhus, 110, 112 theophanies, 40, 109, 115, 118, 119, 121 Titian, 267–71, 273, 276 Tolkien, J.R.R., 270 tourism, 9, 20, 142, 231, 273, 277 tracing, 37–55, 93, 100n17, 258 travelogues, 256, 262, 263, 267 Turner, J. M. W., 11, 249, 251, 252

V

Vega, 214, 215, 218, 223, 227–31 Veleta peak, 213, 223, 224 Victorian, 17, 21, 29, 262, 268, 278n6 views, 16, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 29, 43, 88, 91, 93, 95, 108, 113, 124, 159, 165, 174, 176, 190, 193, 194, 196–200, 202–9, 214, 226, 230, 238, 239, 242, 246, 249, 257, 264, 268, 269, 274, 275, 278n2, 278n6 Virgin of the Rocks, 199 W

walking, 43, 46, 51, 53, 54, 193, 208, 267 West Lothian, 171, 172 Whymper, Edward, 27, 29, 137 Wordsworth, William, 224, 238, 239, 277 Wren, Christopher, 226

U

UNESCO, 259, 260 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), 141, 142

Y

Young, Geoffrey Winthrop, 7, 155–7, 159–62, 165, 167 Young, James, 172