“Why climb when you are already hurtling down the other side of life? To impose such an ordeal on yourself and derive such joy from it, a quasi-bliss? asks Pascal Bruckner with his last essay, In the friendship of a mountain.
A “little treaty of elevation” with which the French novelist and essayist, sharing his love of snow, vibrant with the memory of Montreal and the Laurentians in winter, risks surprising many.
“My primitive landscape is snowfall. Every time the snow falls, I’m euphoric, I have the impression that it’s a bit of purity falling from the sky”, confides Pascal Bruckner, contacted at his home in Paris, just back after a trip of three days in the Mont Joly massif, in Haute-Savoie.
At 73, the author of The temptation of innocence and D’An almost perfect culprit (Grasset, 1995 and 2020) pays homage to the mountains. A passion that stems from a childhood spent between Austria, Switzerland and France. For health reasons and because his father, a “passionate anti-Semite and adulator of the IIIand Reich”, wanted to make him an Aryan, Pascal Bruckner will live until the age of six in a sanatorium in Austria. A part of his life that he evoked in a good son (Grasset, 2014).
From this childhood in the “pays d’en haut”, in the center of Europe, he has remained an unfailing passion for the mountains – with the challenges it poses and the immense joys it can offer. As well as an immoderate taste, perhaps, for thinking at altitude. As soon as he exceeds 1000 meters in altitude, Pascal Bruckner admits to breathing better. He feels at home in the heart of these alpine landscapes.
The ascent as asceticism
Without being a believer, the writer does not hesitate to speak of the ascent as an almost religious activity. “For me, climbing is first of all about praying, entering into a relationship with higher forces. It is not faith that moves mountains, it is mountains that lift our faith and challenge us to climb them,” he writes. In an interview, he adds: “It’s a kind of prayer that you address to yourself, to your own body. Because there are times when we stall, it must be said. In my personal case, it’s more the fear that paralyzes me than the lack of training. It is also a kind of prayer that we address to the mountain to let us walk it for a few hours. It’s a way of paying homage to the beauty of the massifs. »
In his book, Pascal Bruckner recalls that the geographer and anarchist activist Élisée Reclus, in his Story of a mountain (1880), had described the civilized man at altitude stretched between two passions, that of the “climber” and that of the “walker”.
“I am more of a walker, admits Pascal Bruckner, but a walker who also likes to climb. I have friends who were mountaineers, with whom I’ve done quite a few summits, but now I have a guide and, every summer, I do two or three summits with him, with rope, helmet and preparation. I train all year round for the two or three mountain weeks in the summer. For me it has become a kind of obsession. »
In his eyes, “climbing is asceticism”. Why inflict such suffering on yourself? Is the ecstasy on top of a mountain still worth (no pun intended) the suffering one has to endure to get there? “The answer varies for everyone. But it is above all the will to surpass oneself and, precisely, to convert this suffering into pleasure. We are in pain, we are carrying bags that are too heavy, we are out of breath. And yet, one expects from this effort a sort of superior enjoyment. Each time it’s a victory, not on the mountain, but on oneself. That’s the wonderful thing about ascension. »
In a few chapters, the essayist thus breaks down his subject, making good use of memories and anecdotes. As when he delivers a vibrant eulogy of the cow, his favorite animal since childhood, producer of this other white matter that we still find, like snow, everywhere in the mountains: milk. “For me, Alpine culture goes hand in hand with the cult of fresh milk, hot from the udder…”
Praise of the shelter
In the same way, Pascal Bruckner also makes no mystery of his “blind love” for Switzerland, a love nourished by cogwheel trains, folk costumes and yodelling: “Switzerland is the quintessence of my passion for the mountains” , he writes again.
Mountain huts also figure prominently in his mountain pantheon. In another life, he admits, he would have even seen himself as a refuge guard. ” It’s true. I really like the idea of being isolated in a place far from everything in an enclosed environment. A small house, you are alone against the elements with others. Night falls early, we go to bed at 7 p.m. and get up at 3 or 4 a.m. It’s like a small boat in a storm. That’s what we like. And the food isn’t bad at all, he adds. Which is still, when you think about it, far from everything on the mountainside, a kind of small miracle.
“I am very sensitive to this poetry. I become lyrical very quickly,” admits Pascal Bruckner, whose enthusiasm is contagious.
But the mountain remains a rare pleasure. A rare pleasure, which itself condenses several. “Luxury today resides in everything that is becoming rare, he writes: inviolate spaces, rediscovered slowness, meditation, the pleasure of living out of time, the enjoyment of major works and of the mind, so many privileges which cannot be bought and which are literally unaffordable. »