By Cian Duffy (auth.)
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Extra resources for The Landscapes of the Sublime, 1700–1830: Classic Ground
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34 Proceeding with ‘determined resolution’ higher up the glacier itself, Bourrit’s expedition gets its reward, which Bourrit himself, with the eye of an artist, describes at some length: what a picture was before us ! ] we beheld a spacious icey plain, entirely level; upon this there rose a mountain all of ice, with steps ascending to the top, which seemed the throne of some divinity. 36 However, even this ‘astonished’ halt is momentary: continuous new discoveries in scenery and natural philosophy seem possible.
My purpose in this chapter is to chart the contours of that wider engagement. My argument here is that eighteenth-century exploration of the Alps, and, again, of Chamonix-Mont Blanc in particular, generates something which I want to call the ‘discourse of ascent’: a discourse which consistently correlates the physical ascent of the Alps with a variety of ostensibly unrelated forms of elevation: moral, political, epistemological, aesthetic – as well as religious. Obviously, this ‘discourse of ascent’ has some important precursors in Renaissance writing, notably in Petrarch’s ‘Ascent of Mont Ventoux’, in which Petrarch records having gained not only moral and spiritual insight during his ascent, but also having acquired a new perspective on his own subjectivity.
To Wordsworth’s striking claim that our seemingly innate taste for mountainous landscapes actually originated in the seventeenth century, we can add the fact that the valley of Chamonix, the scene of so many Romantic-period engagements with the Alpine sublime, was only discovered by mainstream European culture in the mid-eighteenth century. 10 In the second half of the eighteenth century, in other words, the ‘singularly interesting’ valley of Chamonix came to be identified as a site of immense scientific importance, as a ‘rich store’ of ‘lively images’ for the artist, as a locus of ‘fortification’ and ‘consolation’ for the physically or emotionally ‘afflicted’, and as the destination of choice for those simply seeking ‘some enjoyment from the contemplation of nature’.