Un Uomo va Sui Monti

Publication Year: 1958.

Un Uomo va Sut Monti, by Giorgio Brunner. Bologna: Edizione Alfa, 1957. 499 pages; ills.; drawings. Price 1500 lire.

This is a long and unusual book about mountains by a man who cares for them passionately. Giorgio Brunner is an engineer from Trieste; he is a husband and the father of two children, but after reading this book one is left with the impression that he is a lover of mountains first and foremost. He says himself that all his life has been lived actually and figuratively against a background of peaks.

If you want technical talk about climbing techniques, racy descriptions of expeditions, gossip about mountaineers, this book is not for you. If your approach to the high hills is a mystical one, if you have been guilty of solitary climbing, if you are a lover of mountain scenery in all its moods and aspects, you will feel sympathy for this lonely enthusiast. (However, this is rather a book to dip into, not to read straight through!)

Brunner started his climbing career as a small boy when he accomplished startling ascents and traverses on a large pile of old carpets in the attic. As he grew older, his passion found no encouragement from his family, and none of his friends cared for climbing, so he went off alone to his beloved Julian Alps, walking thirty and forty miles a day, taking incredible risks in his ignorance, learning everything the hard way—a great gangling boy who was set to be a mountaineer. He survived it all; he began to make mountain friends here and there: the guide Bernhard Biner in Zermatt, the celebrated rock climber Emilio Comici. He went off on organized expeditions, but still from time to time he would run away from the world up a solitary peak. Comici recognized his ability and shared his enthusiasm, and the two men became responsible for a splendid list of new winter and summer ascents in the Julian Alps and the Dolomites.

The first part of this book is the history of the making of a mountaineer, illustrated by Brunner’s diaries, until the moment when he meets his wife, a good climber in her own right. (His courtship of Massimina appears to be the only time in his life when he was content to amble up little hills!) The second part of the story tells of trips to the Andes, the Pyrenees, the Mont Blanc district, the Bernese Oberland, and Zermatt. Always Brunner returns happily to the Julian Alps, to Triglav and Montasch and Bela Pec, and he knows and loves every part of their wild and stern beauty.

In the mechanical and over-practical world of today, this book is refreshing. My supreme happiness is on the solitary summit of a high mountain,” says Giorgio Brunner at the end of his book. He takes us there with him, and we are the richer for it.

Ursula Corning