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Part of Who says "Bonjour"to Whom on Mont Blanc / Polska Sztuka Ludowa - Konteksty 2014 Special Issue
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1.
J E R Z Y S. W A S I L E W S K I
The ethnographer who sets off on a tourist excur
sion into the mountains will from the professional
point of view find himself almost in a desert. There
is little material culture and a restricted domain for
observing culturally consolidated behaviour. Conse
quently, the temptation of introspection grows - one
may observe own experiences against the backdrop of
the majesty, beauty, terror, etc. of the mountains, and
then confront them with those recorded in culture,
in which the mountains are a source of rapture and
Romantic adulation. But how much can one experi
ence? Ultimately, the predominating feature is the
arduous labour of ascending and descending - hours,
day, weeks on the same slopes, rubble, and scree, in a
word - the ennui of the mountains.
The intellect, tirelessly transposing information,
seeks in the course of those monotonous wanderings
assorted themes for analysis, and wants to extract de
tails and arrange them into entities. In order to supply
it with material it is necessary to lower oneself to the
level of observations of commonplace, petty, and hap
hazard behaviour that appears in the course of contact
with the mountains at the time of mass-scale tourism.
Several years ago, I was in an Alpine hostel get
ting ready to spend several days on circumventing
Massif des Ecrins, encircled by the popular tourist
footpath G. R. 54. While trekking along it is possible
to carry out successively more ambitious excursions
to the centrally located peaks (I was particularly at
tracted by the almost 4 000 metre La Meije, climbed
by Wawrzyniec Żuławski, author of, i.a. Wędrowki al
pejskie and Tragedie tatrzańskie, the unforgettable, skil
fully didactic books of my childhood). When I asked
the person running the hostel about the best way to
set off along the circular trail, I heard: “Go together
with all the others, because if you head in the opposite
direction then tout le mond will say bonjour and you will
be forced to reply to everyone”.
True, this is actually the horror of the most popular
trails in the Alps - the unwritten obligation to con
stantly say or at least reply: bonjour, buongiorno or sa
lute, Gruetzi or Gruss Gott. Naturally, the same holds
true for both sides of the Tatra Mts.: cześć, dzień do
bry (depending on the age of the tourist) or: na zdar!
This is probably the case all over the world reached by
tourism: greetings in Russian in the mountains of Cen
tral Asia, in Nepalese along the Himalayan trekking
routes (the encountered monk or porter will accom
pany: namaste by clasping hands in front of his face), in
Japanese in the region of Nagano, the so-called Japa
nese Alps, where persons admiring koyo (golden-red
autumn) exchange three standard greetings, depend
ing on the time of day: o-hayo godzaimasu in the early
hours of the morning, konnichi-wa before noon, and
komban-wa in the afternoon. In turn, hagni haseio can
177
Who Says Bonjour to
Whom on Mont Blanc?
Attempted Anthropology of
Conventional Behaviour
be constantly heard in the national parks of Korea,
where, similarly as in Japan, the ideally maintained
and easy paths are full of excellently equipped tourists
(the ladies only lack toques on their heads, an item
de rigueur for their Japanese counterparts) who even
carry walking sticks, totally superfluous and devoid of
the function of providing support since these cheap
items were purchased in a souvenir shop at the foot of
the mountain.
The same situation prevails in the Western hemi
sphere. Along the trails of Yellowstone or the Grand
Teton National Park we encounter immaculate female
tourists in crisp shirts (sometimes even white - after all,
the campsite below is outfitted with a laundry), whom
one simply must greet with a smile and a hello! (the
requirement to buy a new set of clothes before leaving
on vacation in the States is stronger than anywhere
else). Things are slightly different in Yosemite Valley
full of half-naked climbers ascending El Capitan. They
do not greet us, busy approaching the wall and outfit
ted with special equipment. But this is already quite a
different, alienated world.
2.
Why do strangers experience the need to utter
or at the very least murmur or growl a conventional
greeting instead of passing each other on a mountain
path without a single word, as they do in all other life
situations? What is the meaning of such behaviour?
Does it make any sense to ask about its significance?
And, one would like to add, to whom are we supposed
to pose this question? A t least in the latter case the
answer is implied. True, this is a scene of ritual avoid
ance and thus as if an opposite of the customary greet
ing, but it can be referred to assorted forms of symbolic
behaviour.
Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde, act I, scene 5.
Tristan on board ship is taking Isolde to her future hus
band, and his uncle, King Marke. Isolde prefers to die
rather than marry Marke, and Tristan is ready to sac
rifice his life together with her. The servant Brangane,
Jerzy S. Wasilewski • WHO SAYS B o N J o u R TO WHOM ON MONT BLANC?
however, changed the vials and instead of poison they
drink a love potion. Tristan still tries to maintain his
role of an envoy- suitor, and Isolde is angry with him
for acting in this manner. Why do you avoid me? she asks. Sitte lehrt, wo ich gelebt: zur Brautfahrt der
Brautwerber meide fern die Brau - Tristan replies. Aus
welcher Sorg? - Isolde wishes to know. Fragt die Sitte! responds the young man, aware of the cultural impera
tive but not of its determinants.
Exactly, look to manners! - a directive as enigmatic
as the words of a prophecy. The ethnographer, who
knows that his interlocutor can explain a lot, will agree
even though the response does not necessarily resolve
that with which he, an outside observer, is most con
cerned and which he is capable of encompassing only
in a general, naïve, and gauche question: why? He is
aware of the fact that he must first ask his informer,
but cannot stop at that stage since the latter will not,
after all, confirm or verify associations appearing in
the intellect of a well-read researcher who perceives
astonishing analogies and is open to distant deter
minants. The interlocutor is unable to either recon
struct the historical origin of those cultural contents
or discern all their profound meanings. He is capable
of recalling folk etymology, devise secondary rationali
sation, build the theory of the informer, and present
his personal connection with a given praxis, but as a
rule he will stop at some sort of: “This is the way our
grandfathers and great grandfathers did it, and we do
too” or simply: “This is our Mongolian custom”.
In order to understand more one must address the
questions to the custom. But how? Let us try to put
this recommendation into use. Generally speaking, it
is necessary to situate the given issue in the most suit
able context, to see it against the background of the
whole changing cultural environment without going
too far with abstract and arbitrary associations but also
without merely registering openly declared meanings.
Let us, therefore, start by putting intuitions into or
der.
3
.
One can unperturbedly presuppose that the dis
cussed custom that is, after all, a conventionalised
and petrified form of collective behaviour and not an
individual psychic reaction or an emotional surge, as
sumed form at a time when mountaineering was the
occupation of a few and was accompanied by fears
much more serious than is the case today since the
risks and threats were also greater. People who rarely
met others along a mountain trail let each other know
that they could rely on them. If only one could hear
those conversations resounding in the mountain air!
In a naïve reconstruction of that, which took place in
the Alps for, let us say, two and half centuries (and in
the Tatra Mts. for not quite two centuries) one can
178
imagine that at the time of the pioneers such dialogues
were composed of longer questions about the course of
the trail, the conditions higher up, the lurking peril.
These contacts were preceded by a conventional
greeting - naturally, differently uttered by the “gentle
men” and differently by the local guides or highland
ers encountered near their huts. All those: praise the
Lord..., may God guide you ..., stay with God..., and oth
er wishes of good luck ... Did they become the source
of some sort of tradition, non-formulated demands
of savoir vivre? Who should be the first to say: "good
day” - the person on his way up (as if the younger ad
dressing the older) or perhaps the one enjoying more
confortable conditions, or - as is always the case - the
more polite? After all, in the high mountains uncer
tainty gives rise to an intensified need for human soli
darity as well as a readiness to provide it. A conversa
tion expresses these hopes, even in a form reduced to
a one-word greeting (but assuming bilateralness) that
is not only a religious wish expressing hope that God
will guarantee good fortune, but also carries a com
muniqué: we have found ourselves in a small group
of daredevils entering a dangerous terrain and should
help each other - just as you many count on me so
I rely on you. The progressing process of taming the
mountains obviously resulted in rendering impressions
banal and a conventionalisation of the communiqué,
thus granting the greetings a stereotype quality.
Walking along well-trodden trails we should not
make light of the elements of horror, the unknown,
and the unpredictable in the perception of the first
explorers. After all, “wilderness” was in their Carte
sian minds a sphere of the unaccountable. 1 When on
18 June 1741 the Englishman William Windham ac
companied by eight fellow-countrymen and five locals
travelling with horses set off from “Chamougni” to the
Montenvers glacier (today we take a funicular to Mer
de Glace; on the margin, at present this is a banal jour
ney while several decades ago it was regarded as an im
portant event) all the Englishmen carried pistols. An
account of this excursion - not a single shot was fired
- containing advice and warnings is probably the first
modern Alpine tourist guidebook. 2 English gentlemen
were for long the pioneers of Alpine expeditions - first
tourist, then mountain climbing, but also intellectual,
a source of conceptual language to describe the high
mountain landscape up to then never seen so closely.
One of the most popular concepts was Burke’s aes
thetic category of the sublime, overwhelming might,
whose immeasurable enormity startles the tiny human
figure. Mountains became the image of metaphysical
or eschatological scenery: they forced to perceive the
first step towards the throne of Supreme Majesty, a
vestibule of lands that could be experienced only by
spirits freed of the body, as in American metaphysi
cal paintings, e.g. the works of Frederick Church. The
Jerzy S. Wasilewski • WHO SAYS BONJOUR TO WHOM ON MONT BLANC?
description coined by John Ruskin: Mountains are the
great Stanisław Witkiewicz recorded in his account of
great cathedrals of the earth, recurs also in Polish litanies
the Tatra Mts., recognised as the most outstanding of
of lofty expressions: the Tatras —the church of the worlds
its sort in Polish writings.
(J. N. Kamiński), the Tatra temple (Zaruski), or the al
Before we find out what he had to say, recall that
tars of freedom and testimony of the greatness of God, the Witkiewicz, who in an introduction to his book was
critical of the highlanders and their mythologisation
nothingness of Creation (Rautenstrauchowa).
We search in vain for descriptions of greetings in by people from the lowlands (cepry), changed his style
portrayals of the Tatra Mts. inspired by the Roman once he entered a path leading to the mountains. The
highlanders now became the protagonists of an epic
tic spirit. After all, people went to the mountains to
challenge the Eternal and expected to see views dat poem (with Sabała as Homer) as if their villages were
located directly near Mt. Kościelec or Mt. Rysy; in
ing from a period inaccessible for the human gaze:
this pristine surrounding the author was even more
Some sort of chaos stretched all around us. A highlander
from Bukowina said that this is the way things looked prior distressed by the presence of an ethnically alien in
to creation, but it seemed to me that this is the way they
truder:
would appear after the end of the world.
All melts in the air and glimmering light, becoming im
maculately
clean as if it were pure crystal ... Eyes gaze
One was expected to behave as if under the impact
of a personal encounter with the Creator - or at least
upon this harmony of translucent hues.
A barren desert empty of people, full of ruins of the
to describe one’s impressions by resorting to a compar
world, enveloped in soft, purple mist loses its terror and
ison to such a meeting: I ran out, looked, and dropped
to my knees, covering my face with both hands, as if I wildness and stretches beneath our feet in the manner of a
calm and tranquil sea ...
had seen a reflection of God or at least His throne (both
fragments from a description of an excursion of Łucja
Suddenly, against the blue and opal backdrop, there
appears a comical figure wearing a sheepskin jerkin over
Rautenstrauchowa to Morskie Oko Lake in 1839).
Those informing about their “solemn impressions” a long coat and drooping trousers. He takes off his hat,
described experiences suggesting that they had set off bows, smiles with a trace of humility, fear, and desire to
into the mountains alone, without meeting another
ingratiate himself, marches in front of our group fawning
person. There simply is no place for anyone else in constantly and vanishes like a phantom, leaving behind a
such a landscape. The Tatra Mts. are a rocky desert — trace of a whiff so familiar in the lowlands. How did the
wild and dangerous, Zaruski wrote in as late as 1912, Jew find his way here? With whom did he come and whom
evidently oblivious of hundreds of summer visitors
did he follow? No one knows.
and resort patients on the already well-marked trails
A trivial, fantastic phantom, which in a single mo
outfitted with chains. Even if from such accounts we
ment populated Mt. Zawrat with crowds of men named
Mishures, tradesmen, small town troublemakers, dirt,
do find out how people reacted to the mountains (or
rather learn about the convention in which they de stench, the Jewish question...
scribed them) we are still totally ignorant about their
Foul "shadows” gathered soaring across the pure air
reaction to others, inevitably encountered on route,
and invaded our imagination.
This polite Jew arrived like the "shadow of the foe”,
unless they admitted to censoring descriptions of such
meetings. I do not repeat their [shepherds’] conversa who appears in Wallenrod "to mix blood in the chalices
tion since it left an indescribably unpleasant impression. I of merriment”.
believed that foulness and misdemeanours would not cross
Finally, we begin our descent down Mt. Zawrat (...) .3
the immense granite blocks built by the hand of God, but
The image of the anonymous Jew, a mixture of a
the exchange between those highlanders came as a horren trickster and a mishigene, outlined by Witkiewicz could
dous disappointment! ... Are you, my town dwellers, inca become part of the collections of the National Gallery
pable of restraining yourselves for even single minute so as
of the Excluded.
not to spread our decadence onto this poor and ignorant
people and of respecting its innocent simplicity? - cried
4.
out Lucjan Lipiński, a notary from Lwów, who bravely
Returning to meetings and greetings exchanged in
permitted several shepherds to transport him across
the mountains, try not to laugh at the “supposed” hor
Morskie Oko Lake (1860).
ror and “untrue” emptiness of rocky trails. The adven
ture experienced by Hans Castorp in a snowstorm in
Such a temple cannot contain any sort of impurity,
and such a church has no place for dissenters. Encoun dicates how easy it is to succumb to the temptations of
tering them we should keep silent or burst out in an being all alone in the magic mountains, for which one
may have to pay the price of, at the very least, a vision
ger. I take the liberty of recalling at least one enraged
text although today we find it embarrassing; consider of one’s death or descent into madness not even half
an hour from Sonnenhof Hotel. Each encounter of an
ing that much worse sins are being revealed there is
other person dispels terror and restores normalcy.
no need to despair that these are the reflections of the
179
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Jerzy S. Wasilewski • WHO SAYS BONJOUR TO WHOM ON MONT BLANC?
Change the context in which we usually examine
the titular custom, and from which we expect an an
swer to the question: “why?”. After all, danger is not
the sole context in which there emerges a community
expressed by a greeting. The same conventional words
can be heard along safe, lowland routes.
Let us descend from the mountains into a nature
reservation such as Chinconteague Bay along the A t
lantic coast of the USA. An idyllic landscape and a
paradise not only for ornithologists - nearby there is a
secluded beach for nudists, where in a state of undress
and resembling Biblical Adam we may return to heav
enly conditions. Mature ladies passing by along wood
land paths merrily chirp: hello! (unless we beat them
to it), and although the greeting could be perceived
as an American variant of sociotechnical prevention
of an unpleasant incident, in this wilderness its basic
meanings and contexts differ.
In such bucolic conditions, similarly as on arduous
mountain trails, we feel an obligation to demonstrate
our better, open, and unselfish side. Why?
More than a decade ago, when paradigms of sym
bolic anthropology were enthusiastically constructed,
I proposed a holistic answer: we act in this way to pre
serve a place in a certain system. Key importance for
comprehending human symbolic behaviour belongs to
the fact that, as a rule, it refers to images of an ideal
state, either totally impossible to attain (being mythi
cal and straight out of paradise) or non-existent on
a daily basis (and difficult to realise); nonetheless, it
remains postulated and symbolically recreated, espe
cially in situations of ritual beginnings and festivities.
This ideal state has different albeit overlapping levels,
and is expressed in several mutually exchangeable and
supplementary codes. It possesses a strictly mythologi
cal dimension (images of a golden age, which existed
and/or will occur), a personal dimension, in which
human condition is improved on an individual scale
(via an idealisation of childhood, specially the embry
onic state envisaged as a carefree period in contrast
to adulthood), and, finally, a social dimension; in the
latter, the ideal condition is attained by attempts at a
ritual realisation of communitas —a society of equality,
based not on domination and the games of roles played
according to a rigorous order, but on a communityfocused unhampered coexistence of personalities. 4
The space of Nature, contrasted with the contami
nation of Culture or the degeneration of Civilisation,
is also treated as an ideal domain both in archaic sys
tems, despite the entire ambivalence of “the wild”,
and in contemporary mythologies. The ritual realisa
tion of an ideal can take place only in a “pure” and
”unsullied” domain.
Nature enclosed in reserves, protected against
exploitation and pollution, deprived of its horror by
granting it the status of a “’national park” (after all, a
181
Fig. 3. Stanisław Witkiewicz, Na przełęczy
p a r k cannot be hostile - it is not a menacing f o r e s
t), is tin ideal environment for implementing the con
temporary festivity: Sunday-weekend, school holidays,
and vacations, and, at the same time, for improving its
social condition. Some sort of an automatism or spe
cial cultural coercion is at work here: having found
ourselves in natural space (at the time of festivities)
we return to our natural/ideal condition: when the
obligation to work, social oppression, and dependence
come to a halt, inter-personal distances decrease and
the feeling of a community comes into being. Greet
ings and smiles all around.
5
.
Such reflections as the ones presented above lead
to two equally justified aebeit basically? rather distant
vargets. The custom of greetings could be perceived
bothvs a reaction te a thrvat and as a demonstration
of amerry, ideal community?. Can thess conclusions,
readied by means of speculations, bis put to the test
in ethnographic observation, which would confirm
one of the hypotheses and, at the same time, endow
the findings withe morn real features? Nothing stands
in our way. Let us then set off for Mont Blanc and see
where people wiSl say: bonjour (non-Urench speaking
Sourists, as a rule, say: hello!).
From Chamonix we travel several kilometres to Les
Ouches, and from here apcend a steep forest path with
Jerzy S. Wasilewski • WHO SAYS BONJOUR TO WHOM ON MONT BLANC?
the Arandellys ravines to the left. The trail is narrow
and shady, with almost no one going down; once or
twice we are compelled to say something while passing
someone - all other forms of behaviour would be so
unacceptable as to become unnatural. We spend the
night in the woods, best: in the morning, aWeer a brief
walk, we finally seo the peeks. The path reaches the
tracks of the Vunicular, which several hundeed mevers
further, at th e last stop (at an altitude of only 2 327
metres), brings a crowd of thore for whom this is the
maximum attainable proximity to the White Mourn
tain. It is also exactly? here, some twenty meters from
the funicular than else bonjours start. Parents and. teen
agers, attractive ladies - hence the necessity for greet
ings and suitable facia1 vxpre ssions.
Soon the orail grows empty, the arid slopes of
Rognes appear, ending wiih an empty stone Baraque
Fosestiére —it is not quite clear whence the -forestière
in view of ihe face thao the foreat endv much lower
down. Since somtone is panning to spend the n^ht
here we are compeïled to talk a fittle and then go on,
towards the Tête Rousse hut below the summit. In the
morning, departure takes place in darkness; across the
snow-covered glacier (where someone is still sleeping
in pitched tents) we head for the celebrated Grand
Couloir, which has to be traversed.
Writing these words, with the route already behind
me, I am still unable to objectively describe the degree
Fig. 3. Stanisław Witkiewicz, Na przełęczy
182
of its danger. A competent author declared: It is esti
mated that some 7 000 people perished on Mont Blanc
alone (...). A large number were the victims of the infa
mous traverse of the great Aiguille du Goûter couloir on
the Gouter-Bossse, exposed to rock avalanches despite the
metal cables installed here [untrue: there are no cables
- J. S. W.]. Guides called this traverse a “Russian rou
lette", with rocks difficult to avoid, falling often and quite
unexpectedly.5
This is why we are here at dawn, when the rocks
are still frozen and the risk of being bombarded is less
er. On the other hand, the shelf along which the path
runs is much more dangerous now than during the day
- iced over and slippery it creates the threat of falling;
this is the first time that an ice axe and crampons are
useful as indispensable extensions of our cautiously
moving limbs.
No one has arrived yet, so that the problem of
greetings simply does not exist, but then everyone is
much too concentrated on his movements to notice
others. Not until we reached the other side of the cou
loir, vertical but secured with chains, could we relax
and feel just as if we were on Orla Perć (Eagle’s Path)
in the Tatra Mts. On the summit, or rather on a stone
edge, stands Refuge de l’Aiguille du Goûter bustling
with pre-noon activity. Busy, we do not expect to be
greeted, but when after a meal we once again set off
across the glacier we pass upon several occasions peo
ple returning from a stroll and exchange brief, oneword greetings and smiles.
A further route leads across a gentle snowy slope.
We are forced to spend the night in the last possible
shelter before the summit, the Vallota refuge (4 347
metres). This aluminium tin can, with an Arctic con
struction, is the target of a hurricane, which a narrow
entrance prevents from invading the interior. Inside,
some Germans who arrived earlier take photographs of
probably the messiest dwelling in Europe: piles of cans,
paper, and old and dirty mattresses. Many stay here,
but no one cleans up the rubbish - a good chance to
have a laugh at the slovenly French. A t dawn, still
in the dark, we begin the last stage of the climb. The
ascent along the summit arête is the most beautiful
episode of the expedition. Groups of mountaineers,
each composed of several persons sharing a rope, are
seen from afar as rows of ghosts. Only the lights of the
headlamps - firebugs - slowly move upwards. Everyone
walks carefully along an edge that would have been as
steep as a roof ridge had it not been for a thick layer of
snow, in which we create a safe path.
A t the top it is already quite bright. A brief mo
ment of triumph, some cries of joy, photographs are
taken, but everyone wants to look at the panorama of
the peaks and savour success on his own. In addition,
the wind is tearing our heads off and at this altitude we
are already suffering from a mild headache.
Jerzy S. Wasilewski • WHO SAYSBONJOUR TO WHOM ON MONT BLANC?
In other words - and in response to the titular
question - no one says bonjour on M on t Blanc. The
same holds true for the hurried descent, when every
one wants to quickly find himself at the bottom since
the worst that can happen is the weather changing for
the worse on the tcy fields with no orientation points
and, in addition, crisscrossed by fissures. Once again,
the Vallota refuge, with some taking photographs to
the accompaniment of convtntional half-smiles. The
same occurs prior to the arrival at the refuge, where
we can ainally afford to relax while eating.
Then, on rife steep way down no one iecls like
speaking to the inexperienced and panic-stricken
young American womrnwho attach themselves wifh
a short haeness to avery piece oa metal along this
laughingly e f sy traii, because there is onlyone thought
in our minds: what will the traverse of the couloir be
like? It is afternoon and rocks could be falling; fres
quently. "Will a hrlmec or a clever evading movement
oa the body offer pcotection?
¿An answer - decisively negative - comes immedi
ately when, after having aorived at the enit of the pcth,
I take a look erom behind thc couloir at the veftical
slope to see a veritable torpedo dtihing down - an
enormous block ialling in leaps and boundr tnd every
few metres bouncing off the wall. One may only? hope
that now all will be calm for the noxt few seconds re
quired to rapidly traverse the path, whichct this time
of the day is unfrozon and well-trodden. Mo chance to
speak to anyone either befooe or after. Art the other
end - a moment op relaxation since no more danget
looms ahead. Quite a few people probably experience
those seconds as a desperate leap b ° c condemned
man - if one succeeds then onr hao to rush on without
looking bacln. A t leaft this is whal comes to mind when
gaeing at dhe ctfnsfderable number of brnnd-name ice
picks left behind - obviously dimply forgotten - at the
spot where everyone takes off and puts away the no
longer required equipment. I too flee without speaking
to anyone.6
6.
Despite all the obvious faults of the above account
and the conventional nature of the accepted “’re
search procedure” we could hazard some sort of ten
tative conclusions. Once we find ourselves at a more
empirical level of studies, closer to reality, we notice
that humanbehaviour and activity (each realisation
of a gtven custom and its practise) tire dete rmmed by
totally different recrons thyn it sremed when seen
from a more distant, idealising, and speculative per
spective. One would like to add that ai that precise
moment psychology triumphs ovtr ethnology.
It is (quite feasible that those concrtte determi
nants do not annul general ones; it must bc hooestly
recorded that mountain greetings do not take place at
183
Fig. 3. Stanisław Witkiewicz, Na przełęczy
moments of danger or while admiring; Nature (in both
situations a person concentrates on himtelf), but upon
the occasion of fleeting meetings. They are not the
outcome of profound experiences, but e way of react
ing to contingency in a situation generating; dilemmas
and calling for arbitrary decisions.
Inconvenience consists of the fact that in the con
ditions of surrounding emptiness even a fleeiing enaouetter with another person assumes the featuros of
o meeting. For a single moment a strangee becomes
physically close and outright t e sole encountered
person, a fact that has to be noted by greeting him
and entering into a relation. Actually, this differs lit
tle from situations with which every day abounds: in
an elevator, in a corridor, at a table. The emergent
social micro-relation could be either silently ignored
or conventionally accentuated with some sort of a la
conic communiqué: thank you, pardon me, bon appetite,
oops, etc. Universally accepted standards of personal
culture end this dilemma by? fallowing some sort of
ptychie economy: it makee more sense to smile at a
person sfaring a lift than to peer at the tips of one’s
shoes. Personal culture tells us to accentuate tine so
cial dimension of such a situation even though com
Portable egocentrism would prefer to ignore it.
The process of greeting is aonnected with the re
ception oC a given situatian at sociel, even in the cat
Jerzy S. Wasilewski • WHO SAYS B o N J o u R TO WHOM ON MONT BLANC?
egories of some sort of obligation. This is why parents
with children, concerned with the latter’s suitable up
bringing, will always say: bonjour, as will good-looking
women and aspiring beginners, attaching importance
to appropriate forms of behaviour more than old hands
are wont to do.
The gesture of greeting is also connected with rec
ognising a given situation as an inter-personal relation
and not as a fragment of an impersonal crowd. I would
be inclined to explain the existence of this perceptive
differentiation by the fact that it is not customary to
greet and thank, e.g. a person sharing a ski lift chair
(this habit is totally absent in overcrowded Alpine
conditions and is rapidly vanishing also in Poland).
On the other hand, persons skiing in the woodlands
of Warsaw suburbs greet each other. Naturally, this
is not the case of sharing all-human values in empty
high mountains but a temporary experiencing of kin
ship with scarce aficionados and perhaps something
more than conventional savoir vivre.
their avoidance). One method involves a verbal dec
laration of good will - a wish expressed aloud that the
people sharing our meal would benefit from it, even
more obligatory when one does not eat and thus acts
as a potentially envious witness, e.g. walking past the
table.
This sort of a witness, Foster noticed, is predomi
nantly the person serving the meal, i.e. in restaurants
it is the waiter who creates the threat and whom the
diners deprive of the magic power to grow. Some sort
of compensation is required. What should it be? A tip!
Not by accident does this word in various languages
refer to the fact that the waiter could buy himself
something to drink for the received money. Charac
teristically, the beverages vary and the expressions
refer to their general character: Trinkgled, propine,
gorgeta, napoynitsa, low alcohol content: pourboire, or
non-alcoholic properties: na chaj, chayeviye (dien’gi).
The proposal pertains to beverages since it is precisely
liquids that (as Fundes showed in a separate argu
ment) constitute the element of life.
7.
o r is it possible that conventional, desultory be
haviour - I treat this expression already as a technical
term both obvious and understandable, although as far
as I know no one has as yet used it in anthropology conceals some sort of a more profound mystery? Could
it be that it contains something recorded in an ancient
illegible script understood only by an etnologist?
The American folklore expert Alan Dundes tells
us on the margin of his study on beliefs about liquids
and moisture as the essence of life to pay attention to
expressions and greetings used in the course of a group
meal, functioning up to this day in assorted European
traditions. 6 Let us, therefore, ask why siting down to
a table or seeing people eating we say: enjoy your meal,
bon appetit, buen provecho, Guten Appetit, smacznego,
priyatnogo apetita, etc.
A t the onset of the contention we should recall
the conception formulated by George Foster (who in
spired Dundes) and concerning the existence in the
traditional mentality of assorted European cultures of
the following “folk idea”: the conviction that the world
has a limited number of goods, and hence the fear that
each object that feeds, grows, and develops does so at
the inevitable cost of another adjoining object, depriv
ing it of strength. Hence the belief in the failure of
two men sowing simultaneously, the evil impact of an
embryo upon the child held by an expectant woman,
the joint initiation of consumption. It is upon the basis
of this principle, claim Foster and Dudes, that in tradi
tional beliefs a shared meal must pose the threat of an
unequal benefitting from limited goods. (The reader
who finds such theses unconvincing is requested to re
call Frazer’s material in The Golden Bough about magic
threats in the course of joint meals and the ways of
184
8.
Admittedly, we no longer live in times to which
such folk ideas are applicable. What is, therefore, the
most contemporary and, desired or not, super-modern
and postmodern context of the Alpine greeting cus
tom? After all, its backdrop and scenery were not only
the Alps bereft of people but also social Alps, civilised
and outright cultured. A t this point it is impossible to
even outline the history of this process, but let us at
least put certain obvious findings into order.
The natural landscape of the Alps has been for
centuries subjected to a transformation into its cul
tural counterpart. If one were to write a history of hu
man work and material means applied for this trans
figuration of the mountains then we could accept as
its symbolic onset the famous wine vinegar applied by
Hannibal to crush rocks on his way to Italy. In later
epochs use would have been made of picks and vari
ous other tools belonging to miners, alchemists, and
treasure hunters. 7
I
would happily read an opus magnum containing
an anthropological summary of subsequent periods:
the process of rendering mountains accessible via a
network of roads with impressive tunnels, gigantic
hydro-technical ventures, the creation of a colossal
skiing and tourist infrastructure, anti-avalanche pro
tection devices, etc.
Who should be appointed the symbolic patron
of those undertakings? Forget Hannibal and his el
ephants, for whom the Alps were only an obstacle and
not an objective, although we should add to his credit
that he chose beautiful Chamonix for his passage way.
Actually, this is probably only a legend: today, it is ac
Jerzy S. Wasilewski • WHO SAYS B o N J o u R TO WHOM ON MONT BLANC?
cepted that Hannibal and his animals crossed Alpes
Cottiennes, probably by way of the Petit Mont Cenis
Pass; all told, there are about thirty similar hypoth
eses.
Perhaps we should go back to the Bronze Age making use of a discovery made 12 years ago on a pass
above the Ötztal Valley along the Austrian-Italian
frontier - and give pride of place to that perfectly
preserved man who for reasons totally unknown ven
tured onto eternal snow at an altitude of 3 200 metres?
This astonishing episode probably has a logical expla
nation: since Ö tzi was killed there (he was wounded
in the back) then he probably died as a victim of as
sault - perhaps during an attempted robbery of grazing
sheep.
Sheep farming, poverty, and a sparse population
- the history of human penetration of the Alps sym
bolically starts with these motives that will remain
its symbols until the contemporary invasion of massscale tourism. Reinhold Messner, born in a poor Ty
rolean village, repeats ad nauseam in his most recent
book containing reflections produced by meetings
with highlanders on all continents, that his childhood
took place in conditions not very different from the
life of the Sherpas and the Dardic and Kalash peo
ples - hence his excellent communication with them.
Everywhere in the mountains he saw the same para
doxical phenomenon: progressing tourist exploration
accompanied by demographic and ecological regress,
i.e. the lowering of the limit of permanent settlements,
the abandoning of arduous and risky sheep raising, the
depopulation of villages caused by seeking employ
ment in the all-absorbing tourist industry 8.
We are probably unaware of the multiple changes
that are the outcome of the last half a century. In
1949 the village of Saas Fee, today: a resort near
Zermatt and the destination of a mass- scale in
flux of visitors, was connected with the rest of the
world only by a narrow mule trail and its wooden
houses seen in pre-war photographs resemble Nepal
or the Balkans. On the other hand, we also have
to remember what could be paradoxically encoun
tered in those houses. Professor Dynowski told me
how already before the war he once entered such a
cottage (you wouldn’t give three groszy for it, sonny)
from which one could hear a steady rattle: inside,
a bearded highlander using a foot-propelled lathe
made cogwheels for watches probably commissioned
by some less renowned firm. A n historian of mental
ity should be asked about the significance for the on
set of Swiss watchmaking of Protestant thoroughness
and respect for time among the highlanders from the
region of Geneva; an ethnographer will add that an
other consequence of such attitudes was lacemaking
or the production of music boxes - ideal occupations
for long winter months.
185
Someone might claim that these are mere anec
dotes and individual examples. But a tourist for whom
particular observations could create an identical pat
tern: modern accessories with an archaic foundation,
might say something quite different. After all, even at
the height of 3 200 meters above sea level he still en
counters the same sheep as those from the era of homo
tyrolensis, the only difference being that their ears have
plastic triangles with a barcode. The sheep are prob
ably managed by great companies, such as Danone
or Bridel, and soon there will come a day when a ge
ostationary satellite will read those codes and use a
computer to steer the movement of the flocks. The
spiritual culmination of the cultural conquest of the
natural environment involves placing in the moun
tains material props of the cult. Here closes the largest
circle in history - from the 20 000 years-old enigmatic
signs in
Val Camonica and many other places in the Alps,
shrines on the spot of old pre-Christian cults, and
crosses towering over valleys to contemporary art on
the peaks. Spiritual experiences in the mountains were
always assisted by religious sets - today, they assume
increasingly often an extra-confession and abstract
form. Along the route to Roterrothorn near Zermatt
there appeared recently a set of five quasi-shrines contemplation objects. Metal stands support colourful
glass sheets with brief inspirational texts, enigmatic
but arranged in a legible order: the first, at the foot of
the summit, is about geological beginnings, the next
are about Nature and living creatures, and the one at
the very top is the loftiest and most general. A n exam
ple of complete universality, and in four languages to
boot: French, German, English, and Japanese.
A stay in the mountains obviously intensifies the
need for mysticism. This can be seen in particular in
resorts in the Italian Alps, where bookshops are full
of titles about local mysterious rituals (masqueraders,
demonology, the Carnival), but also the mysticism
of Tibet and hermetic mythologies of the mountains
spanning from the esoteric-Himalayan interests of
the founders of the SS to works about mystical lands:
Shambhala, Shangri-La and Agartha. It is there, in
the book stores, that one should examine present-day
spirituality and then construct a new definition of cul
ture to replace the old proposals made by Taylor or
Malinowski: culture is a system of measures used for
the production and, predominantly, sale and distribu
tion of goods.
The times of kitschy statues of the saints, such as
the monstrous gold Madonna on the much-frequent
ed Monte Moro Pass above Macugnaga, have come
to an end. Now it is not the popularity of a site that
qualifies it for installing a statue but its inaccessibility.
In the rocks of Congo Star, a difficult peak soaring
above Mer de Glace, there stands on the edge of a
Jerzy S. Wasilewski • WHO SAYS B o N J o u R TO WHOM ON MONT BLANC?
chasm a large figure made of rust-free steel glistening
in tide sunshine; its h and h urls into the air an object
resembling tin airplane or a bird. It was placed in a
spot inaccessible and even invisible to all but the most
experienced climbers (a T D + trail).
What theoretician of postmodernism should we
ask; for an apt characteristic of phenomena that com
prise the new? aestheticization of the Alps? I hazard
the observation that even an advertisement placed
in Alpine scenery (billboards, posters showing luxury
jewellery, waeches, and sweets) causes some sort of
censenpiences reverse from the ones anticipated npto
now. It is not the mountains that are adding attrac
tion to the consumer goo°s advertised sgainst their
backdrop - it is the attractiveness of those gods that; is
transferred onco the peaks in whose stenery they tire
demonstrated (adeertised in funicular stations, dis
played inshops with the best location, or with views of
the mountains in the background).
Chocolate with the regular-shaped pyramid of the
Matterhorn on the wrapping adds a certain nobility
to an, after all, extremely rocky and avalanche-prone
mountain, which thanks to the product becomes easier
to tame. Omnipresent depictions of Swiss watches, all
set at the smiling hour of 10.09 a.m., magnified on ad
vertisement posters and thus greatly evocative, endow
the mountains with additional gracefulness, especially
if the makers are Breguet, Blancpain or VacheronConstantin (to mention only those among the most
exclusive brands established in the eighteenth centu
ry; after all, Onegin wore a Breguet, albeit still made in
Paris, before the firm moved to Vallee de Joux in the
Swiss Jura). Associated images of punctuality, infal
libility, and sophistication are transferred to the sur
rounding landscape, encircling it - just like K-2 with
metal cables in the famous photograph illustrating the
ecologists’ slogan: “Free the m ountains” - with a net
of associations dom esticating it and robbing it of its
wild and unpredictable features. Only a person with
the chara cter of Diogenes would not succumb to the
pressure of those icons of elegance and refuse to notice
that; they elevate the status of tire traveller, add finesse
to Iris sojourn, and render ihe Alps more dignified.
The mountains are becoming increasingly elegant
and they expect the same of all those who have found
themselves in their midst. They make us pay for our
stay not only with a plastic card but also with the con
ventional coin of good upbringing.
Endnotes
1
M. Oelschlager, The Idea of Wilderness, New Haven
1995.
2 W. Windham, An Account of the Glaciers or Ice Alps of
Savoy, London 1744.
3 S. Witkiewicz, Na przełęczy, Warszawa 1891, p. 147.
4 J. S. Wasilewski, Tabu a paradygmaty etnologii, Warszawa
1989.
5 G. Hattingh, najpiękniejsze drogi wspinaczkowe świata,
Katowice 2000, p. 82.
6 A. Dundes, Wet and Dry, the Evil Eye. An Essay in IndoEuropean and Semitic Worldview, in: Interpreting Folklore,
Bloomington 1980, pp. 102-105.
7 It is worth recalling the charming publication by Jacek
Kolbuszewski: Skarby króla Gregoriusa, Katowice 1971
and a collection of studies by Józef Szaflarski: Poznanie
Tatr, Warszawa 1972. An unequalled erudite work about
the perception of the mountains is still: Góry niewzruszo
ne. O rożnych wyobrażeniach przyrodyw dziejach nowożyt
nej kultury europejskiej by Jacek Woźniakowski (Warszawa
1974). '
8 R. Messner, Bergvoelker. Bilder und Begegnungen,
München 2001.
Afganlstan.An route to Jalababach. Photo Anna Beata Bohdziewicz
186