Thus, directly beneath the clothing, only the human Soul, his essence, is already hidden. Note, however, the peculiar oscillation between nakedness and clothing: in essence, the Philosophy of Dress articulates human nakedness. At the same time, the title of the novel, which can be translated as ‘The Tailor Retailored’, reveals that the text of the philosophy of clothing is the fabric from which human clothing is made. Applying this to the problem of the “naked mountaineer,” an analogous situation can be observed: a silent “baring” discourse envelops the figure of the mountaineer.
It is worth emphasising at this point that – from today’s point of view quite paradoxically – the mountaineer was not always the central figure of mountaineering. Andrzej Wilczkowski points out the parallel between two dates – 1786 (the conquest of Mont Blanc) and 1789 (the French Revolution): “[…] it is about the (bloody) hatching of the empowerment of the human individual in society as a whole” (1991: 42). Nevertheless, the rise of mountaineering was teambased and appeared in an ontological context. Although George Leigh Mallory was referred to as a Superman in the United States, he became famous for stating that he wanted to conquer Everest “because it is there,” so he placed the existence of the Mountain at the heart of mountaineering; interestingly, when Reinhold Messner conquered Everest without oxygen in 1980, he stated: “There is no answer. I am the answer” (Gillman 2000: 221–223), thus referred back to the man, though still contextualised [3]. Similarly, at the dawn of Polish mountaineering, the question of the subject was only a pretext for considering the meaning and model of contemporary mountaineering activities. It is therefore hardly surprising to learn about such words uttered by Roman Kordys in 1929:
[…] aside from “Tatra mountaineer” there is “Tatra mountaineering,” aside from “alpinist” there is “alpinism,” and therefore a certain common direction of thought and deed, not perishing with the individual, but alive and active throughout the generations. […] Tatra mountaineering, therefore, although from its innermost essence an extremely individualistic activity, becomes to a certain extent a social activity – albeit within a very strictly defined environment of people thinking and acting alike. (1976: 221–222).
[3] It is noteworthy that in Druga śmierć Mallory’ego. Zagadka Mount Everestu i jej rozwiązanie [The Second Death of George Mallory. The Enigma and Spirit of Mount Everest], Messner acknowledges the mountaineer – whose almost naked corpse was discovered on the slope of Everest in 1999 and whose photograph was made public on the Internet – as the creator of the myth of the Mountain of Mountains: “[…] Mallory is the man to whom the mountain owes its myth, a myth respected by all, an aura that cannot be picked up by walkietalkie or telephone, cannot be seen by telephoto lens or satellite and which television will not transmit. No diary of Mallory’s last expedition survives, no photograph, nothing. But even so, above all Mallory is and will remain the man who gave Everest life and history” (Messner 2000: 204) [translation from Polish:Katarzyna Strębska-Liszewska]. In what follows, I will attempt to indirectly revise this claim.