“This Fabulous Rainbow of 
Sensations”: The Haptic Sublime 
in Modern Polish Mountaineering 
Literature
Przemysław Kaliszuk
Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Faculty of Philology, Department of Polish Philology, Plac Marii 
Curie-Skłodowskiej 4a, 20-031 Lublin, Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8668-3911
przemyslaw.kaliszuk@mail.umcs.pl
This article looks at Polish mountaineering literature in the context of modernist 
aesthetics. Selected extracts from nineteenth-century travel writing are presented in 
which the essence of one’s experience of mountains is associated with the sublime. 
The article then explores the emergence of a new type of climbing sensibility and 
its literary representation on the basis of twentieth-century mountaineering texts 
that show the inefficiency of earlier forms of the sublime. Polish mountaineers 
gradually developed a new language that allowed them to specify the experience 
of vertical space. The aesthetics of the haptic sublime, which was born of the clash 
of the literary discourse with the concreteness of the climbing experience, resolved 
the problem of satisfactory expression and introduced new narrative patterns. 
It placed the climbing experience in a new conceptual framework, deriving its 
unique character from the contradictions of modern culture. It also showed 
the autotelic character of climbing and constituted mountaineering literature 
as a type of narrative that is autonomous with regard to other kinds of travel 
narratives.
Keywords: literature and alpinism / Polish literature / mountaineering literature / 
modernism / the sublime / travel writing
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Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 45.1 (2022)
Mountaineering literature is a phenomenon that appeared relatively 
late in Polish culture, namely in the late nineteenth century, and in-
cludes both documentary non-fiction and narrative fiction related to 
mountains and mountaineering. Since then, the topic of mountains 
has become ever more popular due to the changes in the notion of 
mountain landscape that have resulted from a gradual development 
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80
of mountain tourism and the culture of health resorts. The turn of 
the century brought new ways of perceiving mountainous areas, which 
were then used and modified in various narratives and discourses on 
travel, climbing, tourism, and alpinism (see Hennel; Kolbuszewski, 
Góry 239–264). Although this new interest in mountaineering narra-
tives is associated with the post-war period as well as with Polish expe-
ditions in the Alps, Jerzy Kukuczka’s achievements in the Himalaya, 
and the Himalayan winter climbs of the 1970s and ’80s, a specific 
mountain culture developed as early as the late nineteenth century. 
Within this framework, diverse mountain experiences have been put 
on paper, preserved, transformed, and conceptualized, to a large extent 
independently of previous, pre-modern thought patterns related to the 
relationship between humans and the mountains.
In Western cultures, the perception of mountains has undergone a 
radical change under the influence of modern thought and its demy-
thologization of once horrifying mountains, now instrumentalized in 
new, often contradictory ways. The French Revolution was preceded 
by the conquest of Mont Blanc, whose discovery became the creation 
myth of alpine mountaineering and also a part of the narrative of moder-
nity (see Hansen 33). In the Polish context, analogous transformations 
occurred somewhat later and were spread over time, making them less 
apparent than, say, the British experience (see Bainbridge, “Writing”). 
A crucial manifestation of the taming of the mountains was the cultural 
and scientific activity of geographers, naturalists, writers, tourists, and 
climbers who, beginning in the early nineteenth century, regularly vis-
ited the Tatra Mountains, the only mountain range in Poland with an 
alpine character (see Roszkowska, Taternictwo 46–120).
On a symbolic level, the exploration of the Tatras, the later Polish 
equivalent of the Alps and a modern model of the mountaineering 
playground (see Anderson 99–138), begins with the publication of the 
book O ziemiorództwie Karpatów i innych gór i równin Polski (On the 
Earth-Forming of the Carpathian Mountains and Other Mountains and 
Lowlands of Poland), written in 1815 by the Enlightenment rationalist 
Stanisław Staszic (see Kolbuszewski, Literatura 147–171). Three years 
later, the poet Antoni Malczewski climbed Mont Blanc (see Kurczab 
30–36; Roszkowska, Taternictwo 250–251), but his account of the 
climb did not significantly impact the perception of mountains in 
Polish literature (see Kolbuszewski, Góry 134–136). Staszic’s previous 
work on the Tatras is viewed as the introduction of a new approach 
to mountains, one matching the standards established by Horace-
Bénédict de Saussure’s Voyages dans les Alpes (Voyages in the Alps).
Przemysław Kaliszuk:     The Haptic Sublime in Modern Polish Mountaineering Literature
81
From today’s perspective, it should be said that in his book, 
Staszic, who valued a rationalist approach based on empirical research 
(Matuszyk, U źródeł 68), relied on popular science to describe an 
unknown mountainous area. He provided essential information in a 
clear and accurate manner which enabled his readers to broaden their 
knowledge on the mountains. Initially an object of natural sciences and 
ethnography, the Tatras became an important part of cultural heri-
tage and a source of national identity (see Kolbuszewski, Tatry 34–35). 
Owing to Staszic’s work, “mountains knocked on the door of Polish 
culture, manifesting themselves […] as both the heart of the commu-
nity and a completely different realm” (Pacukiewicz, “Warstwy” 78). 
Staszic’s occasional aesthetic appraisals of the Tatras were also a source 
of a Polish ideology of mountaineering (see Matuszyk, U źródeł 152–
155). As shown by Andrzej Matuszyk, there is a close link between 
Staszic’s portrayal of the Tatras and the categories of the sublime in 
Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant (Matuszyk, U źródeł 107–155). 
The narrative persona is immersed in the landscape of the Tatras, 
notices its vastness, and pays attention to details such as the shape and 
texture of the rocks. He suffers the horror resulting from the danger of 
high altitudes, experiences the vastness and magnificence of the moun-
tains, feels the power and immensity of space, which he admires as he 
senses his own insignificance before returning to the reality that awaits 
outside that space (see Matuszyk, Humanistyczne 109–111). According 
to Matuszyk, Staszic, as a kind of climber avant la lettre, comes surpris-
ingly close to later accounts by high-mountain tourists and mountain-
eers in the Tatras. Staszic inserts narrative passages into his scientific 
treatise, evoking the sublime in his accounts of reaching the summits 
of Krywań, Łomnica, and Kołowy. In this regard, Staszic represents a 
surprisingly modern way of thinking: he is aware that the mountains 
are radically different from the lowlands, a dissimilarity that cannot be 
expressed without showing how people experience high altitudes, what 
they are capable of seeing, and what physical condition they are in. The 
verticality of the landscape and the record of motion are intrinsic ele-
ments of Staszic’s story, without which a discovery of the Tatras would 
be incomplete, if not impossible. “In Latourian terms, the experience 
of mountaineering accounts for both a purification and a translation of 
the landscape, which thereby undergoes transformation.” (Pacukiewicz, 
“Warstwy” 80) In this sense, in Staszic’s discourse, the description 
of a landscape seen from a mountain pass or a summit is related to 
the depiction of the sublime corresponding to concepts from around 
1800 (see Boman 811–817; Frydryczak 78–114). It has become a 
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fundamental cognitive and aesthetic pattern, allowing for the depiction 
of the Tatras and the core of the experience of the mountains.
Initially, the Tatras attracted the Romantics who, following Staszic’s 
example, travelled to this exotic and unusual region, even though 
not as visibly as in the case of British Romanticism (see Bainbridge, 
“Romantic”). Romantic texts, focusing mainly on descriptions of 
mountain landscapes, helped popularize the Tatras (see Kolbuszewski, 
Tatry 235). The next generation of writers explored the Tatras more 
intensely and introduced new components into the Romantic view of 
the mountains. This resulted in new literary and para-literary narra-
tives but also in the first professional tourist guidebooks. The Romantic 
travel text as a narrative genre was gradually transformed into mod-
ern travel reportage (see Kolbuszewski, Tatry 239). Romantic curios-
ity about unusual landscapes gave way to (high) mountain tourism 
and scientific activities. The mountains gradually became an object of 
not only contemplation and landscape description, but also utilitarian 
endeavors and leisure activities such as hikes, trips, and climbs. This 
was accompanied by the establishment of tourist, ethnographic, out-
door, and eventually mountaineering organizations in the Tatras and 
elsewhere which gradually systematized and institutionalized human 
interaction with the mountains through legal acts and regulations but 
also through periodical literature, meetings, and lectures.
One event that particularly influenced the perception of mountains 
in European mountaineering literature was the successful ascent of the 
last unconquered Alpine summit, the Matterhorn, in the second half of 
the nineteenth century (see McNee 16–17). Not accidentally, the most 
important figures in mountaineering literature of that epoch, Edward 
Whymper, Leslie Stephen, and John Tyndall, all published their 
respective accounts in the second half of the 1870s, thereby opening a 
new era in mountaineering history and its literary representations (see 
Reidy). At the same time, a new generation of climbers directed their 
attention to new climbing challenges in the Alps and subsequently to 
high mountains beyond Europe, which in some way linked their climb-
ing and literary activity to the pretense of imperial control maintained 
by the West (see Bayers). In Poland, one event that influenced moun-
taineering and its narration, albeit on a smaller scale, was the conquest 
of Ostry Szczyt in the Tatras in 1902, which, like the Matterhorn, was 
considered unreachable at the time. This event opened new climbing 
possibilities, following the model of British and European mountain-
eering (see Kolbuszewski, Góry 262–263; Roszkowska, Taternictwo 
100–120). Around the same time, the nature of mountaineering and 
Przemysław Kaliszuk:     The Haptic Sublime in Modern Polish Mountaineering Literature
83
the role of mountain guides began to be perceived differently: climb-
ing came to be seen as a sports activity, and climbers gradually ceased 
to rely on local guides (see Roszkowska, “The Alpine” 9–10). In the 
Polish context, a colonial attitude toward local mountain communi-
ties, especially local mountain guides, is not documented. The transfor-
mation of tourists into independent climbers is manifested gradually 
in subsequent mountain narratives. It is accompanied by a change in 
the use of narrative devices and descriptions of touristic and climb-
ing experiences. At the same time, at the level of the individual text, 
one can observe both a conceptual movement that demonstrates these 
changes and well-tried aesthetic solutions that do not allow for innova-
tive depictions of climbing or the landscape itself.
Accounts of authentic experiences gained on mountain trips, and 
then climbs in the Tatras, published since the late nineteenth century, 
created a very broad spectrum of texts situated on the border between 
the genres of literary narrative, documentary narrative, journalism, and 
science (see Stępień 93–94). Notwithstanding their diversity, one can 
discern in them the emergence of a new sensibility and a new aesthetic, 
one aimed at expressing the unique character of communing with 
mountain landscapes, which, since Staszic’s time, has been streaked 
with certain forms of the sublime (see Pacukiewicz, “‘Inaccessible 
Background’”).
Na przełęczy. Wrażenia i obrazy z Tatr (On the Mountain Pass: 
Impressions and Images from the Tatras), a book by Stanisław Witkiewicz 
published in 1889–1890, is located between two epochs. Witkiewicz 
used post-Romantic notions of the mountains, but he also perceived 
mountains in the context of early modernism, including the fin-de-
siècle period (see Kolbuszewski, Literatura 375–395). The author heads 
to the mountains, goes on trips, and experiences the rocky areas, over-
dramatizing their grimness and horror. He narrates the events in a sur-
prisingly anachronistic way, to a large extent consistent with the codes 
of the late Romantic period, which tended to discern the extraordinary 
in the mountains, including metaphysical aspects of reality. Although 
some modernist elements occur within the narrative—combining real-
istic, even naturalistic description with impressionist techniques, which 
sometimes brings Witkacy closer to the climber’s perspective—the 
self-registering sensations ultimately remain outside the landscape. It 
is clearly seen when the narrator observes one of the most characteris-
tic peaks in the Tatras, Giewont, from a distance: “Giewont is in the 
glare of the brightly shining midday sun […]. [T]he jagged contours of 
the ridge, touched by streaks of sunlight, are increasingly blurred and 
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softened; wild and steep walls of the hollows absorb water vapor from 
the air; dark forests are glistening with silver streaks, drizzling with 
blue, faint shadows—today, the entire mountainous area, usually so 
wild and inaccessible, is gentle and kind.” (Witkiewicz 58)
Similarly, the view from the Zawrat peak is mainly a description of 
the play of light, and the mountains—devoid of grimness and wild-
ness—serve as background for the magnificent spectacle of nature, 
painting the landscape with sunrays (see Witkiewicz 153).
Undoubtedly, the most interesting passages of the book Na przełęczy 
are the climbing parts that reveal the already mentioned aesthetic sen-
sibility of the climber, as the self is actively placed within a dynamic 
landscape:
We were walking up the mountain, stopping at each of the progressively 
higher floors of the granite edifice […]. [T]he higher we were, the more pal-
pable was the sense of being suspended in the air. However, the wall of rock 
we were approaching served as a shield, at least on one side. We are walking 
along a slippery […] slope, which is not that small in close-up […], yet it 
hangs over the throat of the couloir whose grey stony floor stretches from the 
summit to the bottom of the valley […]. We are following a path along the 
base of a granite wall, on the brink of a precipice, and we are climbing up the 
steep slope rising above the couloir. (Witkiewicz 230–231)
Sensuousness and kinesthetic imagery that appear in this passage, 
used by Witkiewicz to express the perceptible horror, are subordi-
nated to passive visual perception which creates a “painterly qual-
ity” (Witkiewicz 162) reminiscent of the aesthetic category of the 
picturesque (see Frydryczak 98–114). The sublime that appears in 
Witkiewicz’s account is marked by the physical experience of the con-
creteness of the mountains (the evocative style of the description of 
rock formations illuminated by sunlight), and yet the narrative persona 
chooses a conventional, effusive expression. This becomes clear in the 
description of the panorama from the summit or from the mountain 
pass. This return to the well-tested patterns for the expression of the 
sublime is surprising, if understandable. In his book, Witkiewicz pon-
ders the identity of the “taternik” (Witkiewicz 63–69, 138). The word 
itself had no precise meaning at the time; today used as a synonym 
for the Tatra mountaineer, it referred to both a tourist and a climber. 
Witkiewicz clearly defines the Tatra mountaineer as a climber, em-
phasizing the physical aspects and athletic character of mountaineering 
(see Roszkowska, Taternictwo 129–132), but he excludes himself from 
this definition. Hence, his construction of the sublime is in accordance 
Przemysław Kaliszuk:     The Haptic Sublime in Modern Polish Mountaineering Literature
85
with the pre-mountaineering notion of the relationship between man 
and mountains.
In “Ze wspomnień o Widłach” (“Memories of Widły”), a short story 
published in 1908, Roman Kordys passes a threshold that Witkiewicz 
did not cross. Kordys’ notion of the sublime reflects a clear shift toward 
a modern concept of mountaineering. The story places emphasis on 
the importance of presenting the relationship between climbing and 
the spiritual experience. At the beginning of the story, the narrative 
persona confesses: “We were supposed to enter the unknown world of 
crags and peaks that appeared strikingly inaccessible […]. It made the 
desire to take on challenges that seemed impossible even more intense, 
and the urge to wrest the secrets of the majestic crags more ardent.” 
(Kordys 71) The persona experiences intense emotional reactions to 
the mountain which are obviously born of the climber’s sensibility 
expressed through stylistic devices typical of early modernism. Kordys’ 
narrative re-enacts the connection between the physical features of the 
climber’s body, vertical movement, and the mountain. Kordys treats 
the climb itself instrumentally, as a prelude to another experience; the 
essence of mountaineering is a spiritual experience that opens subjectiv-
ity to unparalleled transcendent experience and induces self-reflection. 
Having reached the eastern summit of Widły, the narrator rhetorically 
indicates the difficulties in expressing his experiences: “It is humanly 
impossible to depict the intensity of sensations and the depth of feel-
ings we were bursting with. We sat down quietly in silence to deco-
rously celebrate this shining moment in our lives.” (76) At the end of 
the story, when the mountaineers manage to climb the ridge, Kordys 
encapsulates the endeavor in a pompous and lofty tone, almost mak-
ing an apologia for human expansion across the world: “We wrested 
the secrets of the summit of Widły. Feelings burned out forever, only 
memories remained […]. [A]nd so on and so forth, endlessly, higher 
and higher, driven by the lofty and ardent desire to achieve unknown, 
unreachable goals! Excelsior!” (85)
In his 1910 collection W Tatrach (In the Tatras), Kordys’ fellow 
climber Mieczysław Karłowicz deploys a similar strategy of defin-
ing one’s own subjectivity and a similar narrativization of climbing. 
Karłowicz undertakes high-mountain hikes accompanied by a guide, 
but it is him who actually initiates escapades and selects relatively ambi-
tious goals. In a story about the ascent of Gerlach, the highest summit 
of the Tatras, one can notice a subtle modification of the aesthetics of 
the sublime. While Karłowicz is enjoying the panorama on the sum-
mit of Gerlach, his admiration of the aesthetic beauty of the menacing 
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mountain landscape is accompanied by a suggestion that the peaks vis-
ible way off in the distance might become (or have already been) a goal 
of other expeditions. The description is delivered by an active narra-
tive persona who shares his satisfaction at being surrounded by unique 
space, at such high altitude where, for a brief moment, a human being 
is higher than the giant peaks of the Tatras:
What a view! […] [H]ere I felt that I was up at the top of the Tatras: I saw the 
horizon line circled around me. In front of me Vysoka bowed its head, that 
Vysoka, pristine and proud, which makes such an impression from the sum-
mit of Rysy. Behind it Rysy, also diminished, it does not dare to raise above 
the horizon. Around, at the precipice and down below your feet, stretch the 
Big Valley and the Batizovská Valley. And what wonderful weather! […] Here 
the Krywań Mountain, the tall Krywań, for a long time considered the highest 
peak in the Tatras, stretches its long arms. And over there, in the plains, cities 
and towns with the roofs of churches. I stood there for a long time, looking 
around. (Karłowicz 30)
The feeling of enthrallment evoked by the view after reaching the sum-
mit stems from a realization that only a skilled mountaineer can access 
this landscape. In another text from his book, Karłowicz is more than 
just a tourist collecting the views as he also reveals his knowledge of the 
pragmatics of the climb, focusing on the issues related to efficient and 
safe hiking through rocky surface: “We stepped on the rock for the first 
time. Here I had the immediate feeling that Mięguszowiecki does not 
mean the same as Garłuchowski and that one can’t mess around with 
that. Right after passing through the couloir, I felt a tingle slip up my 
back at the sight of its smooth slippery walls […]. I steadfastly climbed 
over the steep rocky walls whose advantage was that the granite was 
firm and that it had not let me down even once.” (36)
To a large extent, Karłowicz’s prose is situated at the transition 
stage between early modernist accounts of mountain hikes and mod-
ern mountaineering literature. Throughout the book, Karłowicz draws 
attention to the practical aspects of climbs, and his descriptions of the 
landscape are enriched by visual and even tactile and kinesthetic ele-
ments. His expressions of the sublime resemble the then new aesthetics 
of modern mountaineering literature: his experiences are undoubtedly 
embedded in vertical movement.
In 1912, Ferdynand Goetel published a very important text in the 
history of Polish mountaineering literature, titled Wycieczka—jak się 
o niej nie pisze (Excursion—How Not To Write About It). Goetel used 
parody to sharply criticize the methods of recording summit climbs 
Przemysław Kaliszuk:     The Haptic Sublime in Modern Polish Mountaineering Literature
87
and hikes in the Tatras. He ridiculed the linguistic structure of those 
records which remained largely under the influence of Romantic jour-
neys and depicted extraordinary impressions or sensations in accordance 
with the literary style of post-Romantic modernism of the fin-de-siècle 
period. Goetel managed to capture and ridicule the conventionality of 
two complementary methods of expressing mountain experiences. He 
laid bare the effusive emotionality that treated the mountain landscape 
as a pretext and evinced excessive literariness in order to express spiri-
tual experiences evoked by the view, thereby diminishing the impor-
tance of the climb itself. Goetel describes the climax of a model account 
of a mountain hike as follows:
The summit! The view—the feeling—I knew mountaineers who felt nothing 
after having eaten something—but I’ve never known anyone who would feel 
something after not having eaten […]. It is necessary to have the desire to feel, 
to be aware of your feelings, and to be proud of the fact that you have better, 
deeper feelings than your neighbor. It is also important to mark the moment 
at which the emotions are about to reach their maximum intensity, and at this 
very moment it is advisable to close one’s eyes and hold one’s breath. Who-
ever fulfills all these conditions will experience the wonderful feeling of being 
merged with nature, full of contempt toward people and the world—then 
they can go ahead and write an article. Of all these conditions, I then man-
aged to fulfill only one—I ate something—so it is no wonder that I now don’t 
remember much about the moments spent on the summit. (Goetel 107)
Goetel also drew attention to the hermetic professionalism of the 
climbing discourse, which seemingly aimed at achieving precision 
and concreteness of the description of vertical movement through 
the use of terms describing space (ridge, route, overhang, holder, 
etc.), all borrowed from the climbing sociolect (107–108). This re-
sulted in tedious repetitions of simplified climbing route itineraries. 
Goetel’s Wycieczka provided a clear indicator that the pool of nar-
rative and linguistic devices, which became rigid and inadequate in 
modern climbing, has exhausted itself (see Pacukiewicz, “Literatura” 
497–498). According to Jacek Kolbuszewski, the publication of 
Wycieczka marked “the birth of modern mountaineering literature, 
in which the very fact of undertaking a climb becomes far more im-
portant than any literary attempt to recount the mountaineering 
experience” (Kolbuszewski, Tatry 471). It also indicates a concep-
tual transformation of the notion of the sublime, which appears as 
a kind of grotesque anachronism in Goetel’s narrative. Goetel em-
phasizes the physical aspects of vertical movement, whose peculiar 
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absoluteness does not allow for metaphysical reflections during the 
climb or even ex post. Goetel also outlines the problem of the dia-
lectic between authenticity and the new concept of concrete experi-
ence embedded in a state of physical exhaustion. “As the suffering 
body denied aesthetic pleasure […] the mountaineers’ afflicted atten-
tion shifted slowly from the mountains into their own selves,” writes 
Philipp Felsch of a process that started already with de Saussure atop 
Mont Blanc (Felsch 347).
Goetel’s parody can be read as a clear manifestation of the grad-
ual development of a new sensitivity that Alan McNee defines as the 
haptic sublime. According to McNee, “[t]he haptic sublime involves 
an encounter with mountain landscapes in which the human subject 
experiences close physical contact—sometimes painful and dangerous, 
sometimes exhilarating and satisfying, but always involving some kind 
of transcendent experience brought about through physical proximity 
to rock faces, ice walls, or snow slopes” (McNee 151). Like the eigh-
teenth-century sublime, the haptic sublime is an aesthetics of overcom-
ing a threat or difficulty, but “its emphasis on the physical proximity of 
the human subject to the object of sublime experience and its insistence 
on the privileged status of the mountain climber […] involve quite a 
new type of subjectivity” (151).
The seismic shift in the conceptualization of climbing and climbing 
narrative that occurred in the interwar period is at work in Wiesław 
Stanisławski’s short story from 1930, titled “Zrobiliśmy Małą Śnieżną” 
(“We Did Mała Śnieżna”). Stanisławski’s story imitates the arduous, 
strenuous vertical motion consisting of repetitive movement and at 
the same time evokes a full sensual engagement without unnecessary 
redundancy. Stanisławski’s narrative is terse and devoid of the sche-
matism ridiculed by Goetel. Reaching the summit is described in 
accordance with the rhetoric of the shame of feelings: Stanisławski 
makes no attempt to solve the problem of effability through the exces-
sive use of descriptive devices intended to describe emotion accurately 
and capture the essence of climbing (see Pacukiewicz, “‘Inaccessible 
Background’” 222). The narrator closes the story with this metaliter-
ary device: “We are on the summit. Why on earth should I spoil the 
pleasure of a sixteen-hour struggle and describe my feelings or refer to 
my ideology? A hundred pages wouldn’t be enough to describe but a 
shadow of this fabulous rainbow of sensations […]. Some reader would 
surely fall asleep over the book that includes some of the most beautiful 
moments in my life, as did I over ‘The Epic of Mięguszowiecka Pass’.” 
(Stanisławski 278)
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89
The author avoids derivative philosophizing. He uses brevity as a 
convenient and efficient stylistic device to capture both physical activity 
and the concreteness of space. This concealment enables him to evoke 
his sublime experiences, even if this sublimity of movement has dis-
tinctive features of mountaineering. It is closer to a physiological affect 
that escapes precise definition than to an intellectual reflection which 
is somehow built around an inexpressible experience. Stanisławski 
also recalls Na przełęczy by Witkiewicz (periphrased as “The Epic of 
Mięguszowiecka Pass”) and humorously refers to an anachronistic way 
of describing one’s relationship with the Tatras.
In his 1935 book Zdobywanie Mercedario (The Conquest of Merce-
dario), Adam Karpiński describes his ascent of an Andean summit 
somewhat differently. The Polish expedition set off for the Andes and 
headed to the Puna de Atacama region at the very end of 1933 with 
the view to exploring unknown mountainous areas; their aim was to 
make topographic and cartographic measurements, collect rare botani-
cal specimens, and determine the effects of high altitudes on the physi-
ological processes in the human body. As official reports revealed (see 
Daszyński; Narkiewicz-Jodko 18–21), the teleology of the expedition 
combined exploratory and scientific objectives, while the athletic goals 
of climbing were somewhat secondary. Karpiński describes his impres-
sions, combining the enthusiasm of an explorer with a faith in human 
cognitive faculties. He starts with specific observations to finally con-
nect climbing with the idea of progress:
The summit—2.05 p.m. A spacious platform covered with screes, elevated 
by natural forces to a height of about 6,800 meters […]. I am measuring the 
altitude and temperature […]. Photographs, azimuths—everything hampered 
by clouds […]. [A]nd then making a mound of rock upon the peak […]. Is 
that all? No. Because there is a strong urge to reach higher and larger peaks, 
to make sure that nothing on earth will remain unknown and unreachable—
and nothing higher than the signs made of stones by the Victorious Man. 
(Karpiński 134–135)
The mountaineer uses a lofty tone and places his achievement within 
the context of a modern vision of humanity according to which the 
human being dominates nature. The sublime, which resonates loudly 
in the final part of the story of the conquest of Mercadario, is consti-
tuted here under the influence of the aesthetic and sensual sensitivity of 
a climber immersed in modern anthropocentric myths (see Simpson).
No story by a Polish mountaineer matches the pathos that Karpiński’s 
text derives from a faith in modern rational thought. Faith in progress 
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90
and science clearly began to weaken after the outbreak of World War II, 
and climbing itself gained relative autonomy at the time. For example, 
in 1945, Jakub Bujak, who climbed Nanda Devi East, filled his memoir 
with an imagery that placed his essayistic disquisition in the context of 
the aesthetics of the haptic sublime. For Bujak, the Himalayan achieve-
ment alone provides a sufficient explanation and does not require any 
other conceptual framework than the pure motivation for climbing. This 
is the sole and the most satisfactory reward. Later on, Jerzy Kukuczka 
will write in a similar vein.1
On the other hand, writing about his pre- and post-war Alpine 
expeditions, his climbs in the Tatras, and his rescue operations, 
Wawrzyniec Żuławski used a fixed set of stylistic devices that enabled 
him to crystalize the haptic sublime. He continued to employ the 
narrative techniques used by Stanisławski. He described each ascent 
in detail, but without wrapping it up in layers of tedious verbiage, 
with the feelings and accompanying reflections expressed in a laconic 
style. For Żuławski, the mountains are a site of autotelic human activ-
ity associated with voluntary risk and the pleasure deriving from it 
(see Dutka). The story “Innominata” (1939/1956) begins as follows: 
“Innominata—‘A crag not named!’—a slender pyramid disappearing 
against the background of the enormous mass of Mont Blanc […]. [T]
he wall engulfs you like a sea. You can see rocky crags towering above 
you; they present a riot of color in the sunshine […]. You can see the 
surrounding colossal gullies, depressions, crevices, in which blue-green 
mounds of ice sparkle in the sun.” (Żuławski, Wędrówki 63) A simi-
lar passage can be found in “Zamarła turnia” (“Dead Crag”), which 
Żuławski wrote in 1958 and is dedicated to a rock wall in the Tatras 
(see Żuławski, Trylogia 152–153).
Jan Długosz, one of the best writers among Polish mountaineers 
according to Agnieszka Szymaszek (see Szymaszek), was also influenced 
by the modern aesthetics of the haptic sublime. His texts evince an 
undertone of unaffected existential reflection, while also referring to 
specific climbs (see Kolbuszewski, “Kilka”). His 1955 book Piosenka 
Brassensa (Brassens’ Song) tells the story of the first ascent of Kazalnica 
Mięguszowiecka in the Tatras. Długosz’s text evokes vertical move-
1 In Kukuczka’s Challenge the Vertical, the haptic sublime is a dialectical coupling 
of concrete reality and reflexivity. The tension (or passion) between the concrete and 
the abstract is particularly strong whenever mountaineers reach an eight-thousand-
meter peak (see Kukuczka 37, 65–66, 210, 235–236). The story is not a diary but 
rather a reconstruction of memories (see Kaliszuk). It is an example of a mature form 
of the haptic sublime as a reflective-pragmatic aesthetic and a cognitive construct.
Przemysław Kaliszuk:     The Haptic Sublime in Modern Polish Mountaineering Literature
91
ment, the bodily presence of the human subject anchored in rocky 
space, subsequently providing philosophical insights as well. Długosz 
somehow reverses the conditions that led the proto-alpine narratives of 
early Polish modernism to a state of exhaustion. Here, the haptic sub-
lime, operating on a conceptual and aesthetic level, determines further 
choice of narrative techniques that enable reflective effort and intel-
lectual work; observations are made with regard to interpersonal rela-
tions or the condition and nature of a human being as a creature that 
confronts the natural world.2 Nevertheless, the reflective effort requires 
the physical effort involved in vertical movement on the rock wall. The 
climax of Piosenka Brassensa—reaching the summit—encourages self-
reflection, though made ex post, while working on the literary record 
of the impressions and finding adequate verbal expression for them:
We are simul-climbing over easy terrain, on the crest of buttress situated here. 
The route seems endless. More and more crags, gullies, grasses, and flowers 
appear on the path. We are extremely tired and tormented by constant thirst 
[…]. And when I completely lose hope of reaching the top of the wall—I walk 
onto a mound. I look with disbelief at […] the path leading to the Pass pod 
Chłopkiem. The summit […]. For the three days spent at Kazalnica I would 
gladly give up even the seventh ascent of the Petit Dru—the hardest alpine 
wall […]. Well, some experiences are inimitable and unique. (Długosz 39)
The concept of the haptic sublime appears in Polish mountaineering 
literature also in the form of humorous anecdotes which are incorpo-
rated into the stories of mountaineers who have been embracing trivial-
ity ever since Goetel’s time. The bantering parody used by Goetel, who 
ridiculed the statuesque solemnity of early modernism, revealed the 
ordinary nature of mountaineering life. Goetel has shown that false ag-
grandizement removes the physical aspects from the climbing process, 
making it primarily a spiritual practice. This process of de-heroization 
2 The haptic sublime also unexpectedly reveals itself in texts that functioned in 
wide literary circulation. Jan Józef Szczepański, a writer and reporter who can be 
included in the group of Polish post-war founders of high modernism, was also a 
mountaineer in the Tatras. In his work, mountain-related experiences are a regular 
theme, and one can even identify a certain mountaineering thread in his stories (see 
Pacukiewicz, “Climbing”). The short story “Sizal” (1973) is dedicated to the memories 
of his first climbs in the Tatras during World War II. In this text, Szczepański reveals a 
tangle of contradictions that define climbing. A particular occurrence triggers him to 
create a certain kind of modernist philosophy of climbing as a form of self-reflective 
praxis. For him, climbing is an emanation of modern human subjectivity facing the 
world (see Szczepański 92–93).
PKn, letnik 45, št. 1, Ljubljana, maj 2022
92
and de-sublimation became the norm in Polish mountaineering litera-
ture, as writing straightforwardly about prosaic but necessary activities 
entered the repository of those texts and was no longer viewed as an 
embarrassing background.
“Zimą za Bonattim” (“Following Bonatti in Winter”), a short story 
from 1977 in which Tadeusz Piotrowski depicts his winter ascent of 
Mont Blanc along the Walker Buttress, includes a very characteris-
tic scene that illustrates in an anecdotal mode the narrativization of 
mountaineering within the aesthetics of the haptic sublime. This is 
undoubtedly a continuation of Goetel’s kind of ironic dismantling of 
turgid loftiness. Piotrowski and his fellow climber found themselves 
in a difficult situation; bad weather conditions forced them to stop 
climbing, they were exhausted, frostbitten, and in dire need of shelter. 
Unexpectedly, the dramatic situation reveals its humorous side. The 
narrator describes a unique view in a sketchy manner and even captures 
his partner’s critical response:
At the jagged ridge, the wind plays its ghastly melody of death […]. The scen-
ery is fantastic […]. It is so unusual and beautiful in its horror that I need to 
express my feelings with words, share my impressions […] “Look, what fan-
tastic things. It was worth coming here just to admire the views.” For a brief 
moment, he looked at me as if I were out of my mind and blurted out in one 
breath: “I don’t give a shit, you hear me, I don’t give a shit about your fantastic 
views. I can’t feel my legs! They are frostbitten again! You must be out of your 
mind!” (Piotrowski 192)
The author constructs a picture which, on the one hand, shows the 
beauty of the landscape that requires verbal expression and could lead 
to aesthetic contemplation while, on the other hand, the paralyzing 
physical suffering unceremoniously removes reflective intellectualiza-
tions, demonstrating their absurdity. The fascination with the aesthet-
ics of the panorama clashes with the concreteness of physical life which 
is impossible to ignore. Beauty is brutally dominated by physiological 
discomfort but, paradoxically, a view that is only available to a climber 
may be expressed thanks to this physiological contrast which it was 
dialectically coupled with. The passage reveals a specific usage of the 
aesthetics of the haptic sublime which is shared by a certain text from 
the twenty-first century.
Artur Paszczak’s 2001 piece “Filar Ganku” (“The Ganek Buttress”) 
records an interesting moment of his climb, focusing on pragmatic 
aspects of effort, which leads to a description of a unique state of 
the self which involves the haptic sublime. Like Piotrowski’s fellow 
Przemysław Kaliszuk:     The Haptic Sublime in Modern Polish Mountaineering Literature
93
climber, the protagonist and narrator of Paszczak’s short story focuses 
on the basic needs of his body—safety, comfort, food—as well as the 
pure joy of occupying vertical space. Taking care of oneself seems para-
mount when climbing a rock wall. Happiness does not manifest itself 
as triumph over the world, one’s own weakness, or encounter with 
transcendence, but as the prosaic need to relax: “I make a belay position 
and I feel great. I succumb to euphoria, soak up the mountain scenery, 
the fact that I am here, that I am with my friends, that we are doing so 
well, I think about the descent, which I know so I don’t need to worry, 
about calling home, maybe even from the peak, about beer, a good din-
ner, and lots of other nice things.” (Paszczak 76)
Modern Polish mountaineering literature has employed the haptic 
sublime in two basic ways. The first is reflective, while the second is 
pragmatic. They complement each other and rarely exclude each other 
within a single text, especially when a story refers ironically both to the 
sublime itself and to the tradition of writing about mountaineering.
Modern Polish mountaineering literature is diverse in terms of 
genre, while its central conceptual objective is to narrate the experience 
of communing with the mountains. Since around 1900, the time of 
tourist mountain narratives and proto-Alpine literature, writers have 
been interested not only in defining mountain landscapes in opposition 
to lowland areas, but also in learning about what triggers their desire to 
come into close relationship with the mountains. Rather than a purely 
cognitive matter, this was an attempt to create a new perception of 
space and landscape related to cultural transformations in the mod-
ern world as well as new practices with which people shape themselves 
and their surroundings (see Berleant 53–75; Frydryczak 217–234). 
Mountaineering is a specific manifestation of these vast changes in the 
human attitude to and perception of the natural world. The haptic sub-
lime appeared in modern mountaineering narratives when it became 
clear that experiences resulting from high-mountain travel cannot be 
made to fit any existing narrative scheme, ideology, or aesthetics. The 
initial difficulties in portraying otherness began to disappear. Literature 
gradually led to the realization that this unique experience has sensual 
spatial characteristics without, however, being confined to a physical 
experience. Vertical motion in mountainous areas required a new lan-
guage. The modern model of the sublime soon became insufficient. 
With the advancement of techniques for hiking in the mountains and 
the development of new climbing practices and technologies, moun-
tains became more accessible and people entered into a new, previously 
unimaginable relationship with space through their own bodies. The 
PKn, letnik 45, št. 1, Ljubljana, maj 2022
94
sublime gradually gained a pragmatic dimension. Accounts of moun-
taineering eliminated sentimentality and limited metaphysical and 
spiritual considerations. They abandoned the instrumental approach to 
climbing and hiking and focused on the autotelic nature of commun-
ing with mountain landscapes, which encouraged active participation 
rather than passive admiration.
In modern Polish mountaineering literature, the haptic sublime 
manifests itself in varying proportions in descriptions of topography 
and movement, in depictions of the physiology of the human body 
functioning in vertical space, in attempts to record and express sensu-
ousness, tactility, and spatiality, and, eventually, in imperfect linguis-
tic representations of climbing as a complex human spatial machinery. 
The haptic sublime is also featured in the definitions of mountaineer-
ing as well as in explanations of the motivation for climbing. At the 
same time, if we consider the haptic sublime as a basic determinant 
of Polish mountaineering literature, it cannot serve as a precise tool 
for periodization within a broadly understood framework of modern 
literature, since it manifests itself in different, often contradictory ways. 
Polish mountaineering literature seems to be so integrally linked to the 
concept of the multiform haptic sublime that it is difficult to determine 
when it becomes a form of the denied sublime of modernism rather 
than its critical and polemical continuation (see Felsch 357–360). This 
problem appears, for example, in Jon Krakauer’s bestselling book Into 
Thin Air. On the one hand, this is a postmodern mountaineering nar-
rative that comprises an ambiguous critique of imperialism (see Bayers 
127–141); on the other hand, it uses the category of the haptic sub-
lime in the same way that modernist mountaineers used to (see Colley 
217–228; Mazzolini 85–109; McNee 221–223). In this context, the 
tradition of the haptic sublime appears to be an interesting problem 
that brings together cultural determinants of contemporary climbing 
and its literary representations.
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Przemysław Kaliszuk:     The Haptic Sublime in Modern Polish Mountaineering Literature
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»Ta čudovita mavrica zaznav«: haptično sublimno 
v moderni poljski alpinistični literaturi
Ključne besede: literatura in alpinizem / poljska književnost / alpinistična literatura / 
modernizem / sublimno / potopis
Članek obravnava poljsko alpinistično literaturo v kontekstu modernistične 
estetike. Uvodoma predstavi izbrane potopise iz 19. stoletja, ki posameznikovo 
doživljanje gora povezujejo s kategorijo sublimnega. Nato se posveti vzniku 
nove vrste doživljanja alpinizma in njegovih literarnih upodobitev; v ospredju 
so alpinistični spisi iz 20. stoletja, ki kažejo na nezadostnost starejših oblik 
sublimnega. Poljski alpinisti so postopoma razvili novo govorico za izražanje 
doživljanja vertikalnega sveta. Estetika haptičnega sublimnega, ki je izrasla iz 
trka literarnega diskurza in konkretnosti plezanja, je rešila problem zadovolji-
vega izraza in vpeljala nove pripovedne obrazce. Izkustvo plezanja je umestila v 
nov konceptualni okvir, s tem ko ga je izpeljala iz protislovij moderne kulture. 
Poleg tega je pokazala na avtotelični značaj alpinizma, alpinistični literaturi pa 
zagotovila avtonomijo v odnosu do drugih tipov potopisne pripovedi.
1.01 Izvirni znanstveni članek / Original scientific article
UDK 821.162.1.09:796.52
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/pkn.v45.i1.05