Park parków, plac zabaw i okolica. Doświadczenie przestrzeni górskiej w „Wędrówkach alpejskich” Wawrzyńca Żuławskiego

Abstract

The work presents an interpretation of Wawrzyniec Żuławski’s Wędrówki alpejskie [Wandering in the Alps], a book which is regarded as an example of classic mountain literature, republished several times. The author focuses her reflections on the description of the Alps, noticing in it three key ways of presenting this mountain range: as “a park of parks”, a playground and a neighbourhood. The analysis of Wawrzyniec Żuławski’s exceptional style unravels the author’s attempts to capture in words “the beauty of mountain experiences.” However, while reading Wędrówki alpejskie, what comes to the foreground is the book’s factual dimension. In his accounts of the expeditions from the 1930s and 1940s, a passionate mountaineer and an artist (a writer and a composer) reports on the changes in civilisation which took place in the area of the most important (in cultural terms) European mountain range as a result of the process of park creation. Moreover, Żuławski depicts in his notes significant cultural transformations in the consciousness of people coming to mountain national parks and in their attitude to the mountainous landscape. On the one hand, what seems to be striking in the accounts which are the subject of our interpretation are the tensions between the ideals of protecting “wild” nature and the development of mass tourism. On the other hand, what is particularly thought-provoking is the sense of melancholy, caused by the awareness of the old “romantic” alpinism being displaced by a sport model, aimed not at “metaphysics of the mountain”, but at achievements and records.