Reading Mont Blanc

Scene: the upper station of a cable car from Chamonix

The Tourist

I gotta get some film!! Hey, do you know where I can get some -- ah, what's the use, no one speaks English anyways. Oh wait, there! . . . Gimme a roll of these -- I said one. How much? H-O-W M-U-C-H?? What?? . . . All right, now I'm set! . . . So you're here to climb? I guess that's a dumb question. Look at you! . . . Wow, that's something -- climbing Mont Blanc! I just don't have that kind of time. The train for Paris leaves at 8:04 in the morning, sharp they tell me, and I have to be on it. $130 for a round trip ticket -- unbelievable . . . But I know it'll be worth it once I get home and show these pictures! You see, I've got this list of the ten things you have to see when you're in Europe -- and I've gotta get pictures of all of 'em . . . otherwise, what's the point of being here??? . . . I've already got a Santorini sunset (that was nice) . . . the Coliseum (too many people) . . . the Eiffel Tower (too many French people!) . . . and now Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe; I think some writer once called it "the monarch of mountains" or was it "a giant among pigmies"? . . . or maybe "a triple-headed monster"?? Well, in any case, I don't know what he was looking at -- all I've seen so far are a lot of clouds! Well, they better clear when I get up there!! If I don't get a good picture, this is all money out the window! 65 francs for a night at the youth hostel, and I had to share a room with these two fat Austrians, and that strange little Frenchman who thought I was from Quebec or something I don't even know where that is!! I'm an American. I'm from Fort Wayne, Indiana. I just put this Canadian flag on here 'cause I heard they don't like us for some reason . . . Yeah, they sure like our money though! $35 just for the cable car ride up here -- unbelievable. It was a nice ride though, if only I could've seen a little more, but those fat Austrians practically blocked out the sky!!! Oh well, at least I got the film. And once I get the picture, I can cross Mont Blanc off the list. What's next anyways? Oh yeah, the Hofbrauhaus in Munich!!! So, are we ready to go, or what?? . . .

The Mountaineer

Humph, what an attitude, typical American pretending he's Canadian. People will see right through him because no one in Canada has an attitude like that! What a waste; taking pictures of Mont Blanc when he could be CLIMBING it! At least I'm climbing it. It should be a challenge, but no different than anything else I've climbed; even the Jungfrau was probably more difficult; Mont Blanc's slopes aren't that steep, and the ice will be easy enough to tread across. I wish I were the first to climb Mont Blanc but the first successful attempt was in 1786 by Dr. Paccard and Jacques Blamat. There had been serious attempts since 1775 after de Saussure offered a reward to the first person to reach the summit of Mont Blanc. His party was actually the second one to reach the summit, in 1787. I guess there had been no successful attempts before his offer because the locals were superstitious and often afraid of the mysterious dangers lurking in the mountains. Can you believe those . . . wimpy locals? I mean, the tallest mountain in Europe's at their doorstep and they're afraid of it! I would've been climbing it when I was a baby if I lived there!

Well, mountaineers in the late 18th century and early 19th century did have much different attitudes from ours. In those days, "climbing for the pleasure of climbing was unheard of" (Engel 49). In fact, many of the climbers to reach the summit did so in the name of science, of all things. The scientists, which were naturalists, philosophers, and doctors, were interested in the types of plants growing in alpine regions and in the different types of rocks available here.

Women were not exempt from making the ascent either; the first female to reach the summit of Mont Blanc was a Chamonix maid-servant named Marie Paradis in 1808. I wish I could've been her, but I admit I like today's more technical equipment better.

In the time around the Romantic period, a conscientious climber would never attempt an ascent without, of all things, a pigeon, used as a homing device, an anti-flea bag to protect him or herself in the overnight huts, a barometer, thermometer, telescope, vessel to boil water, and if one were so inclined, he or she brought along writings pads or paint boxes. Climbers also often took along long poles and hardly even used rope! God, rope, I'd be lost without it!

Mont Blanc has been described as an easy but very dangerous peak. Did you know that Mont Blanc holds the record for number of deaths occurred while climbing in Europe? But hey, that just makes it more of a challenge, right?

Anyway, there are a whole bunch of routes that I'm thinking of taking to reach the summit. This book describes one: "If you go by the Aiguille du Gouter, you take advantage of the Tramway du Mont Blanc up to a height of 8,000 feet. Two hours' easy walking along a path takes you to Tete Rousse where there is a hut. You must then climb the steep Aiguille du Gouter, often snow-covered, fairly precipitous and fatiguing at the end of a long day. Climbing it will take two to five hours according to conditions and the stamina of the party . . . The climb beyond the hut demands four or five hours. You go up by the steep but broad, easy and airy slopes of the Dome du Gouter to the Col du Dome and the Vallot hut at 14,300 feet, where you join the route from Chamonix via the Grands Mulets . . . We feel sure that the Grands Mulets route, the more reasonable and the least tiring, in spite of appearances, will once again enjoy the popularity it had for nearly a century . . . Experience shows that parties from the Grands Mulets have always reached the Col du Dome and the summit first" (Frison-Roche and Tairraz 201, 202) I have a description in this book of why the infamous ancient passage is so dangerous. "On August 18, 1820, a caravan of eleven persons . . . was following the ill-fated passage. There was much fresh snow, when suddenly the whole layer tore itself free from the underlying ice, dragging the party down in indescribable confusion. The great white wave hurtled down the slope, grasping the men and their loads in its wild embrace, then stopped short and froze at once." (Engel 62).

Three of the climbers were killed. I'm sure many of these deaths could have been prevented simply if climbers were less anxious and more alert. I've never had any problems ascending a mountain because I choose a period when the weather is fine and I'm careful while ascending. There simply is no reason for those careless deaths.

The Poet

Well, I must say I find your perspectives to be indeed . . . interesting. You recall to mind an anecdote related in an letter of Lord Byron, and pertaining, in fact, to an excursion much like our own. Do you mind if I relate it to you? It comes from his tours through the Alps:

Went to Chillon through scenery worthy of I know not whom . . . On our return met an English party in a carriage; a lady in it fast asleep! -- fast asleep in the most anti-narcotic spot in the world -- excellent! I remember, at Chamouni, in the very eyes of Mont Blanc, hearing another woman, English also, exclaim to her party "did you ever see any thing more rural?" -- as if it was Highgate, or Hampstead, or Brompton, or Hayes -- "Rural!" quotha! -- Rocks, pines, torrents, glaciers, clouds and summits of eternal snow far above them -- and "Rural!"

I, like Lord Byron, am a poet -- and rather than coming to gawk mindlessly at some "rural" quaintness, I have come to hear the mountain speak to my soul. And I have come prepared, foretaught, familiarized. Harken unto this:

Mountain of mountains, Europe's mystery,
Brow of Minos calm and terrible,
Brow of Minos giving judgement,
Calm and white and smooth and terrible.

That was George Hookham. All right, not the best of the lot, to be sure, but a sound example of the incredible synergy that has existed, for centuries, between the poetic spirit and the soul of Mont Blanc.

In the age of high Romanticism, poets truly recognized the great spiritual significance of the Alps in general, and of Mont Blanc in particular. You might say it spoke to them -- which sounds like an idiomatic turn of phrase but which is, in some cases, entirely literal. If you look at their descriptions of the mountain, you'll see how important it was to them, as a symbol -- yes, an enormous, majestic symbol. They used "majestic" quite a bit, actually.

But Coleridge! Just listen to what Coleridge said in "Hymn Before Sunrise." You'll see at once how the mountain distinguishes itself. Initially, Coleridge addressed these lines to the Chamouny valley in general, but later he changed it to speak specifically to Mont Blanc:

O sovran Blanc,
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge!

Not the choicest metaphor, I'm afraid. But really, the important thing was what Coleridge was saying about the mountain. It stood out, you see -- not just because of its size or majesty, but because it distinguished itself from the rest of nature around it, it transcends the chaos and mutability. It speaks volumes with its silence!

Coleridge, however, attributed the grandeur of Mont Blanc to God. Other poets -- well, like Byron, for example -- associated it with mythology. Why else would he depict the mountain as if it were Jove himself in Manfred? Listen:

Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains,
They crowned him long ago
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds
With a diadem of snow.

So who knows for sure where Mont Blanc's power comes from? All we know is that it stands out from its surroundings in a way that poets can relate to. Even Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, recognized it. She called it "the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc, [which] raised itself from the surrounding aiguilles." Not terribly imaginative, but you get the point.

Now Percy Shelley -- it is his poem entitled "Mont Blanc" that makes the clearest statement about the mountain's relationship to man. When Shelley gazed on Mont Blanc, this is what he felt:

My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around.

The mountain acts like a, a sort of transmitter -- it filters out all the background static that Shelley feels is in nature and makes everything clear and harmonious. You see, Shelley doesn't think the mountain transcends nature per se -- he says "thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion," so he thinks that really the mountain encapsulates it all, and makes it comprehensible.

But only to a few! Just as Shelley felt that only some people were capable of being poets, he realized that some people--unenlightened viewers -- would fail to hear the mountain's clear transmission:

Thou hast a voice, great mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

The majority of mankind is composed of busy and riotous elements -- and nature, too, is entropic, or daedal, as Shelley writes. But the soul of man is clear and harmonious, and in holding conference with the soul of nature, it can achieve a far greater revelation than any one can get through climbing or snapping photographs. And the soul of nature it is; that is what Mont Blanc signifies. The soul of nature; come, and we shall see.

The Poet

That day we first
Beheld the summit of Mount Blanc, and grieved
To have a soulless image on the eye
Which had usurped upon a living thought
That never more could be.

Oh, Wordsworth, Wordsworth, why didn't I listen to you before? How was I to know that you alone were right, and all the rest of those fanciful fools were wrong? It really is soulless! What a horrendous disappointment! I think I may have to give up poetry forever!

Oh, I mean, sure, it was tall enough, and all that, but there was nothing really coherent about it. I was expecting something perfect, and precise, but this was just a vast, lumpy, asymmetrical mass. I found my eye moving across its peaks and crevices and domes, searching for something to rest upon, something final and definitive. But there was no such point. It kept wandering, always shifting, just as chaotic as anything else around it--only more so.

I say! I wonder if that's what Shelley meant in his poem, when he described himself as "Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep." I never really understood that line until now. It was just like that -- I kept expecting to hear the mountain speak to me, but it kept slipping by me, as if it was trying to deny all the things I'd read about it, without giving me anything substantial in exchange.

Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe;

That's it, isn't it. That's what Mont Blanc is really about, not supplying new information to the poet's soul, but invalidating everything that has come before. It doesn't mean one single thing -- that would be impossible, wouldn't it, if it's the epitome of nature, or the connection between nature and man. How can that be stable, or stationary, or even fathomable?

Wordsworth was right; Mont Blanc is soulless. It just reflects aspects of what is around it -- the perpetual flow and flux of nature and humanity -- as if it were a, a sort of free, floating . . . signifier. Yes! I think that's what they were all trying to say! That's really it!

Now if only I can figure out how to turn that into a poem . . .

The Tourist

I don't know what to say. It was not what I expected. No. Our guide led us up the Aiguille du Midi. It was tough walking, but at least it was cool, cold even. I began to trail behind the group. I don't know why . . . tired I guess. Anyway, after a while I couldn't even hear them anymore -- only my own breathing. I wanted to call ahead and ask them to wait for me. But I didn't. I got used to the silence. It poured into my ears. I couldn't even hear my breathing anymore. And then suddenly the sun broke over the mountain and I stopped -- And there it was! -- Not threeheaded, but it filled the eye, the mind, like nothing I've ever seen before. I remember reading Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad. He talks about looking at this mountain and seeing such "exquisite prismatic colours", he called them, playing about some white clouds so thin and delicate that they resembled "gossamer webs". I guess it's like what you see in a soap-bubble that's just drifting along, catching and refracting changes of tint from the objects it passes. So there I stood, transfixed, watching a sky of soap-bubbles, some bursting on the needles of Mont Blanc. And suddenly I could hear again. I heard these bubbles bursting . . . I didn't take any pictures. I couldn't. I just sat on the path, holding my knees . . . I don't know how long. I'm here now, so I must have come down . . . without pictures, but with everything else . . .

The Mountaineer

Hey, you guys, the most terrifying thing happened to me while I was climbing! The most terrifying and possibly the most wonderful too 'cause I now know that my attitude was all wrong. I was climbing the south face and it turns out the weather was 3 degrees warmer than forecast which, of course, leads to softer snow. So anyway, I was trudging through the snow when I fell into this stupid crevice that was right there in my path! Luckily it wasn't deep, but my whole life flashed in front of my eyes just like it does in the movies, and I realized just how insignificant my life is. I told you before that Mont Blanc holds the record for amount of deaths and you know what? Few remember the ones who have perished on this mountain. I don't know the accomplishments of even one climber who died here. This would have happened to me if I died! I know this is a bleak view and I don't mean to depress you. In fact, I find this revelation really good 'cause from now on, I'm going to cherish every moment of my life and the lives of those close to me. Climbing Mont Blanc wasn't like climbing any other mountain; I mean, I climbed Mont Blanc! Now I finally understand that one passage I have. Let me read it to you!

"If you are looking from Dijon, from the Puy de Dome or from Lyons in clear weather, a faint white shadow, assuming the shape of a high cone, looms up on the horizon, hardly more distinct than a cloud. From Neuchâtel, whence the Alps are seen to stretch along in an endless line, parallel to the general range, supported on both sides by satellite mountains of almost perfect symmetry. But at Geneva a whole ice world comes within sight. Snow slopes descend from the cone, while a lower dome leads the eye down to the forests below. Fantastic rock steeples, coloured purple or dark blue by distance, soar up on the left of the mountain. Though dwarfed by the huge snowy mass, they have an unexpectedly and unbelievably beautiful architecture. At sunset the whole range is steeped in a red-gold glow which deepens to scarlet with turquoise shadows. The intervening foothills, with their forests of beech and pine, give a dark frame to this majestic landscape" (Engel 42).

Works Cited

Engel, Claire Eliane. Mountaineering in the Alps: An Historical Survey. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. 1950. 42, 62.

Frison-Roche, Roger, and Pierre Tairraz. Mont Blanc and the Seven Valleys. Paris: Arthaud, 1961. 201, 202.

See separate document with reports by Markus, Kalyn, and Scott.

I really enjoyed your presentation! You showed Mont Blanc from three very different perspectives, and all three came across effectively unique. The music also conveyed different "feelings." I think you combined the visual, the auditory, and the written word to show us a place we've never been. Very well done!

Congratulations! I really liked the idea of showing the experience of the sublime from three different perspectives. It was also very informative, and it made me think back to my experiences of the Rockies from Jasper and Banff (I was eager to capture it all on video, but luckily I had a chance to enjoy it for what it is too!). Good job, well researched.

I think this presentation was well researched, rehearsed and executed. I enjoyed the dramatization and the multimedia approach. As to the content, the travel writings were interesting in the range of experience/perception expressed. How does the search for personal connection with nature influence its expression -- are the writers trying to construct a universal experience?

Excellent! Enjoyed the presentation. Overheads of pictures and music really expressed the different views and yet all views come to a conclusion that is most appropriate for the individual. "Play" was a very interesting and exciting format of presentation. Left with the feeling that all views of Mont Blanc form the entire picture and that nobody is wrong, but maybe some are less imaginative.

Document revised April 2, 1997