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The Alps
Amongst the millions of tourists who roam the Alps from end to end each year in search of pleasure, health and adventure, few would be likely to consider him as a forerunner of such recreations. Yet it was in fact his master poem that first stirred people's interest in the Alps, fostering a movement that from small beginnings turned into an avalanche which has not yet come to a halt. He wrote his enthusiastic stanzas at a time when high mountains were considered to be harsh and fear-inspiring.
48 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1732
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June 10, 2020
Albrecht von Haller was a Swiss natural philosopher, mostly famous these days for his contributions to neurology. But he also published some important poetry, especially this collection of alexandrines released as Die Alpen in 1732, which became an unlikely hit among Europe's intellectual elite. Inspiring a widespread philhelvetism, it led Goethe and many others to visit the Alps for themselves, and eventually installed Switzerland firmly as a stop on the Grand Tour.
To modern ears, it all seems rather insipid stuff, with lots of high-flown bluster about hills ‘heavy with a hundred herds’ (von hundert Herden schwer), where a ‘cheerful race’ (vergnügtes Volk) while away their time in a prelapsarian wonderland, unsullied by the toils or temptations of smoke-filled towns. But at the time, it was a new departure entirely. Back then, people generally found the Alps rather ‘repulsive’ (in the words of Johann Füssli) – ‘those horrid structures the Alps’, as Hirschfeld called them. Haller for the first time imbued them with a sense of awe and romance that would come to be important in later generations' conception of the ‘sublime’.
Alpen, in German, can mean either the mountains themselves, or the grazing pastures found on the slopes. Haller conflates the two uses, so that he can turn the mountains into a kind of bucolic paradise in line with classical ideas of the ‘pastoral’ (which had never previously extended to mountains). His exhortations of hearty peasant life are filled with a scientific attention to the flora and fauna of the area – Haller was a prolific naturalist, and would later compose Switzerland's first botanical handbook. Interestingly, the clichés of modern Alpine biology are not yet quite formed here – we have chamois and ibex, but no marmots; clover and gentian, but no sign of an edelweiss.
Haller tries hard to turn the poverty (Armut) of mountain-folk into a richness (Reichthum) of non-material blessings, but this is mainly done by completely ignoring the harsh realities of endless, backbreaking labour that were involved in village life in the mountains in the eighteenth century, not to mention the crushing isolation. Readers outside Switzerland, perhaps, didn't know any better.
This particular volume comes with an uninspiring rhymed English translation from Stanley Mason, and a few unidentified contemporary engravings. If you are heading for the Alps, or interested in their changing image, this may be of interest.
To modern ears, it all seems rather insipid stuff, with lots of high-flown bluster about hills ‘heavy with a hundred herds’ (von hundert Herden schwer), where a ‘cheerful race’ (vergnügtes Volk) while away their time in a prelapsarian wonderland, unsullied by the toils or temptations of smoke-filled towns. But at the time, it was a new departure entirely. Back then, people generally found the Alps rather ‘repulsive’ (in the words of Johann Füssli) – ‘those horrid structures the Alps’, as Hirschfeld called them. Haller for the first time imbued them with a sense of awe and romance that would come to be important in later generations' conception of the ‘sublime’.
Alpen, in German, can mean either the mountains themselves, or the grazing pastures found on the slopes. Haller conflates the two uses, so that he can turn the mountains into a kind of bucolic paradise in line with classical ideas of the ‘pastoral’ (which had never previously extended to mountains). His exhortations of hearty peasant life are filled with a scientific attention to the flora and fauna of the area – Haller was a prolific naturalist, and would later compose Switzerland's first botanical handbook. Interestingly, the clichés of modern Alpine biology are not yet quite formed here – we have chamois and ibex, but no marmots; clover and gentian, but no sign of an edelweiss.
Haller tries hard to turn the poverty (Armut) of mountain-folk into a richness (Reichthum) of non-material blessings, but this is mainly done by completely ignoring the harsh realities of endless, backbreaking labour that were involved in village life in the mountains in the eighteenth century, not to mention the crushing isolation. Readers outside Switzerland, perhaps, didn't know any better.
This particular volume comes with an uninspiring rhymed English translation from Stanley Mason, and a few unidentified contemporary engravings. If you are heading for the Alps, or interested in their changing image, this may be of interest.
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