Pyreneanism

(foreground) and , seated near the entrance of the Russell Caves at the Vignemale, accompanied by their guides.|alt=Group of men posing in front of a mountain shelter dug into the rock. Pyreneanism ( ; alternatively Pyreneism) is a 19th-century sporting culture as well as an artistic and literary movement centered around exploring the Pyrenees in order to create works inspired by the experience, whether for contemplative, artistic, or scientific purposes. The term was coined in 1898 by the scholar Henri Beraldi in his book ( ), where he described a specific way of engaging with the Pyrenean mountains. According to his definition, "the ideal Pyreneist knows how to climb, write, and feel," setting them apart from the typical mountaineer through a more intellectual approach that goes beyond mere physical performance. The Pyreneist movement is generally considered to have begun with the publication of Louis Ramond de Carbonnières's ( ) in 1789. It reached its golden age in the second half of the 19th century with the generation known as the Pléiade, which included notable figures like Count Henry Russell and geographer Franz Schrader. It was led by a small group of individuals from the social elite (aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie) or the intellectual class, who made significant efforts to bring attention to their unique practice.…

(foreground) and , seated near the entrance of the Russell Caves at the Vignemale, accompanied by their guides.|alt=Group of men posing in front of a mountain shelter dug into the rock. Pyreneanism ( ; alternatively Pyreneism) is a 19th-century sporting culture as well as an artistic and literary movement centered around exploring the Pyrenees in order to create works inspired by the experience, whether for contemplative, artistic, or scientific purposes. The term was coined in 1898 by the scholar Henri Beraldi in his book ( ), where he described a specific way of engaging with the Pyrenean mountains. According to his definition, "the ideal Pyreneist knows how to climb, write, and feel," setting them apart from the typical mountaineer through a more intellectual approach that goes beyond mere physical performance. The Pyreneist movement is generally considered to have begun with the publication of Louis Ramond de Carbonnières's ( ) in 1789. It reached its golden age in the second half of the 19th century with the generation known as the Pléiade, which included notable figures like Count Henry Russell and geographer Franz Schrader. It was led by a small group of individuals from the social elite (aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie) or the intellectual class, who made significant efforts to bring attention to their unique practice. Pyreneanism is part of the broader development of the Romantic movement in Europe and the rise of spa tourism in France. It played a major role in the study and promotion of the Pyrenean mountain range, which its practitioners explored in a methodical way. By the turn of the 20th century, as mountaineering shifted toward greater physical commitment and technical difficulty, the distinction between pyreneanism and alpinism began to fade. The legacy of pyreneanism began to take shape in the early 20th century, particularly through the efforts of , who founded the . This legacy continues through a tradition of regularly publishing specialized release books and journals dedicated to the phenomenon. Many peaks in the Pyrenees have been named in honor of Pyreneists, some of whom are buried in the Pyrenean cemetery in Gavarnie. coined the term "pyreneanism".|alt=Black and white portrait of a man with a thin mustache. The term "pyreneanism" was coined in 1898 by the memoirist and writer Henri Béraldi in the first volume of his work Cent ans aux Pyrénées ( ), which traces the history of hikes, ascents, and the touristic discovery of the Pyrenees throughout the 19th century. From the very first pages, the author declares that the Pyreneist ideal is "to know how to climb, write, and feel" all at once. Historian Étienne Bordes argues that this triptych "sets pyreneanism apart through its grounding in a Romantic sensibility, in the contemplative ethos of discovering the world from above," and brings together a group of men and women who "described, sketched, cataloged, popularized, developed, and at times exploited the Pyrenean massif." According to geographer Xavier Arnauld de Sartre, pyreneanism "seeks to express a form of elective identification with a place and a social group of exceptional longevity ... while also constituting an intense and original sporting, artistic, and publishing activity." Pyreneanism stands apart from spa tourism and resort-based tourism due to the difficulty and risks inherent in its practice. While pyreneanism shares the same goal as Alpinism, it also includes, according to its advocates, "a passion for discovery, a love of art and science." One of the peculiarities of pyreneanism is that most of its members are not native to the Pyrenees, to the point that Louis Le Bondidier wryly remarked in 1907: "to become a true Pyreneist, it is almost essential not to have been born a Pyrenean. ... The native-born Pyrenean is immune to the Pyreneist bug." Étienne Bordes explains that the defense and promotion of a specific practice of the Pyrenean mountains "is the subject of a symbolic struggle by its practitioners," who thereby demonstrate their loyalty and attachment to the values and spirit of early alpinism, as described by sociologist Delphine Moraldo. At the turn of the 20th century, while alpinism "was becoming corrupted by an excessive use of muscle, rock-climbing techniques, and brute strength," Pyreneist "sought to preserve a way of engaging with and perceiving the mountain" with an artistic and scientific aim that combines discovery and self-improvement. This historical definition is the one adopted by Saule-Sorbé in the Dictionnaire des Pyrénées and by the IEC Dictionary of the Catalan Language. .|alt=Black and white photo, a man stands holding a walking stick. Although the memoirist Henri Beraldi was the first, at the turn of the twentieth century, to compile an inventory of these figures of nineteenth-century Pyrenean mountaineering, it was the Pyreneist themselves who, through their abundant literary output, constructed the history of their own group. In 2024, Étienne Bordes undertook the first "collective biography of Pyreneist," intended to "outline the contours of this elite of ascent in order to distinguish Pyrenean mountaineers from other mountain users." In Cent ans aux Pyrénées, Beraldi distinguishes three periods in the history of pyreneanism: an early phase represented by Louis Ramond de Carbonnières, a French politician, geologist and botanist; a middle age associated with , a former topographer; and a modern era embodied by Henry Russell, an explorer known for his obsession with the Vignemale. A century later, the historian Étienne Bordes retains this tripartite framework while shifting its chronological boundaries. He instead brings together the first two ages identified by Beraldi, describing these early explorers of the massif—active between the late eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century—as pioneers. He then distinguishes the representatives of the golden age of pyreneanism in the second half of the nineteenth century, those whom Beraldi grouped under the term Pléiade, describing those mountaineers toward the end of the nineteenth century, who turned to a form of mountaineering focused on difficulty and less marked by literary expression than by physical or technical achievement. , Luchon (1875), near the France–Spain border.|alt=Black and white photo, a group of five people stand near a path that eventually winds between two snow-covered peaks. Henri Beraldi retrospectively gave the name "Pléiade" to the second generation of Pyreneist who, according to Étienne Bordes, "undertook a codification process, established a grammar of ascent, wrote, and created, through the founding of journals and associations, a means of regulating the emergence of a quasi-professional practice". Bordes summarized the ethos of this group with four terms: walking, exploring, knowing, and sharing. The Pyrenean mountaineers of the Pléiade, who sought to promote a specific practice of the Pyrenean mountains, systematized and intensified their explorations, valuing "both endurance and physical excellence, a certain spirit of discovery and adventure, a desire to know things and people, and an endeavor to share through writing and through the places of these experiences". Under this designation, Beraldi brings together a group of individuals centered around seven learned mountain enthusiasts of the mid-nineteenth century: Henry Russell, , , Franz Schrader, , , and Ferdinand Prudent. Like those of the previous generation, the members of the Pléiade belonged to the same elite social world, but its center of gravity shifted from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie established in the towns of southwestern France, so that pyreneanism in the second half of the 19th century was more the domain of a local or regional elite. Although they represented only 2.2% of the French population in 1866, Protestants were overrepresented within this intellectual and cultured bourgeois elite, as exemplified by the pastor , the geographer Franz Schrader, and the engineer and politician . Representatives of the aristocracy, though fewer in number, continued to hold influential positions and brought their class practices to the mountains, as demonstrated by Russell, who held lavish receptions at nearly 3,000 meters altitude in caves he had built on the slopes of Vignemale. Even more so than for the previous generation, conquering high peaks was a priority for the members of the Pléiade, who displayed exceptional physical abilities: Henry Russell's record in this regard is considerable, with some thirty first ascents. Furthermore, the Pyrenean mountaineers of the Pléiade systematized multi-day treks and did not hesitate to stay at altitude, even spending the night on summits, so that the ascent of a peak was sometimes only one episode of a long high-altitude journey. Unlike their predecessors, who concentrated on the mountains around the major thermal spas, they now ventured into long-deserted areas such as the massifs in Ariège, the Posets massif, and the sierras in Aragon. (date unknown), founded by Vaussenat and General de Nansouty.|alt=Two men stand between two rock faces with a stone foundation behind them in the distance. They are facing the direction of the camera looking right. The man on the right is pointing upwards off camera. With the exception of Russell, for whom mountaineering was more contemplative, the climbers worked for a scientific purpose. For example, Franz Schrader, inventor of the orograph, mapped the cartography of the range, a task also undertaken by in , the mountains of the Luchon; developed a passion for archaeology and the study of the cromlechs of the ; studied hydrology and the Pyrenean lakes; Émile Jeanbernat continued the botanical exploration of the range; and and devoted themselves to the creation of the observatory on the Pic du Midi de Bigorre. For the Pyreneist of the Pléiade, the mountain adventure was coupled with an institutional adventure: founded in 1864¹ on the model of the British Alpine Club, the Société Ramond aimed to promote the scientific study of the mountain range in all its aspects, and brought together the main players of the period. It represented the first step toward the construction of a collective memory, reinforced by the annual publication of the society's bulletin, which functioned as an "official organ and a space for group communication". Pyreneist were also heavily involved in the development of the French Alpine Club (CAF), founded in 1874¹, with nearly 25% of the articles in the club's yearbook devoted to the Pyrenees between 1875 and 1885. The first Pyrenean sections of the CAF were created in 1876, and Franz Schrader served as club president from 1901 to 1904. Accounts of ascents constituted the largest share of articles published by Pyreneist, to the point that some of them, such as Henry Russell, edited a compilation, but the sharing also took place through the writing of tourist guides. Paradoxically, Pyreneanist publications led to increased visitation of the massif as well as a greater understanding of its geography. At the same time, the systematic exploration of the range reduced the number of unclimbed summits, so that the focus of Pyrenean excellence gradually shifted toward other criteria. The first ascent of Vignemale via the Gaube couloir, undertaken on 7 August 1889, by , , , and their guides Célestin Passet and , marked a crucial step in the emergence of challenging Pyrenean mountaineering. According to Étienne Bordes, this approach made it possible "to maintain a symbolic gap between the mass of tourists... and the members of the mountaineering elite." by the Endron slot.|alt=A landscape of a photo of a mountain with a route along minor peaks supperimposed in red. At the end of the 19th century, as physical and technical difficulty of the routes Pyrenean became the new standards of mountaineering excellence, great climbers gradually turned away from the Pyrenees in favor of the Alps, but also of extra-European massifs such as the Andes. The Pyrenees lost their distinctiveness and became just one playground among many: men like Henri Brulle, Jean Bazillac and René d'Astorg accomplished many of their feats in the Alps, in addition to their Pyrenean expeditions. At the same time, the reforms of higher education initiated by Victor Duruy and institutionalized scientific research within universities, making it inaccessible to the "dilettantes" that the leading figures of the Pléiade might have been. Consequently, few Pyreneists at the end of the 19th century reported scientific activities and publications, with the exception of the geographer Maurice Heïd, the cartographer , and the abbé , who continued the study of Pyrenean lakes and chasms. As Étienne Bordes points out, "the writings of Pyreneist of this period break with the heroic genre of adventure narrative so prevalent in the previous generation: the account becomes more specific, more technical." Mountain experience tends to align itself with purely physical criteria, and few stand out more for their exploits than for their writings, as demonstrated by the memoirist Henri Beraldi. The end of the 19th century was thus marked by a growing fascination with the most inaccessible routes and summits, while the winter practice of ascents became increasingly systematized. Ski mountaineering developed under the impetus of and Louis Falisse, who on 4 April 1904 carried out the first ski ascent of Aneto together with Maurice Heïd. Other Pyreneists such as husband and wife and encouraged the development of this practice and, through the efforts of these pioneers, local elected officials, and the Touring Club de France, the first permanent facilities were established: the resorts of Superbagnères in Luchon and in Font-Romeu both opened between 1912¹ and 1913. At the same time, following the long stays at altitude promoted by Henry Russell, multi-day treks developed, and several Pyreneists undertook complete traverses of the range, such as the British writer Harold Spender or the Haute-Garonne deputy . The undertook an unprecedented linked-ascent of the Pyrenean three-thousanders during the summers of 1902 and 1903. Under the impetus of the French Alpine Club, accommodations were developed, such as the , designed by and inaugurated in 1890, the Packe refuge in 1895, and the in 1899. , whose genus was named for Louis Ramond de Carbonnières.|alt=A collection of purple flowering plants growing from a fractured rock face. The genus Ramonda, which comprises four species of flowering plants native to shady, rocky places in north eastern Spain, the Pyrenees and south eastern Europe, is named for the French explorer.

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