A short time before his death Peter Wessel Zapffe was interviewed.
In the interview he said that he during his time had been struggling a bit with the question about the existence of God. After a while the question had lost all interest to him. If he was forced to choose between calling himself religious or atheist he would choose atheist. It does not matter if there is a God or not.
Zapffe has a certain sympathy and is to a certain degree interested in Jesus, but in today's world we will have to see him as a psychopath - a person willing to die a terrible death on the cross because he believed he would become crown prince in heaven. It is evident that he must have been mad.
Being an old man, the only thing Zapffe has to meet death with is a silly smile - and that is the best he can do.
Zapffe is seeing the philosophy of nothingness as liberating. A death where you return to a nothingness or eternity that happened before you were born leaves no need for expectations and no fear for lurking evil. We just decompose and return back to the elements.
Zapffe says he has come to his inner pole where there is no advancement, no movement in the direction of progress. The inner pole is a condition of the soul where there is no possibility of getting longer in any direction, where nothing is the background for everything. This is also what he thinks about the condition of man in the world. Behind there is a large nothingness.
Human life can be seen as a theater - there are passions, striving and concerns - everything happens/everybody is stumbling around with a horizon of nothingness around. This is how it is - Zapffe says he can stand for that, the final answer is nothing, everything is nothing.
When we are first thrown into the world, sitting in it, we are doing the best we can. If we see the human world from outside, however, we will find no refuge in this.
I don't know. Zapffe read a lot and had his connections. There may have been an influence. There may also have been an influence the other way around. Z had a very distinct style.
zBrown
Every crowd needs a jerk or a rotation of jerks. Thanks to you and to Mouse! And thanks to every non-jerk and jerk in rotation.
I see Samivel & Zapffe as being men of the mountains, of similar age ( Samivel was 8 yrs younger ) and illustrators. As for influencing one another ? Hard to say.
I see a fair bit of Zapffe in Sheridan Anderson's work. Anderson was both cartoonist and excellent illustrator - along the lines of our own Jer Collins.
I would have also lost my sense of humour in the North Sea but I'd have also lost my lunch. I've never been seasick in the mountains.......... :-)
Thanks for the post, Marlow. I learned something new today!!!!
As far as this thirties artwork goes (most of the way thru the war, for that matter), it all looks kind of similar in the pen & inkish mode. Cute mis-shapen figures, sweet and grotessque at the same time. Caricature to a large extent. And skill in rendering, generally.
Good thread, Marlow.
edit: Please note that I am being facetious in regard to S & T. My oold fantasy was to cruise the Chilean archipelago, but I found I hate brine.
ALSO, I thought I'd mention the similarity in looks between John Skaglund, a Camp 4 res in 1970, and PWZ. Just add a greasy down parka.
Hmm, well I have been called misdirected before. I race sail boats and I climb. I think of sailing like being in the mountains. I like it best when the wind is howling. The difference is that I am lazy and don't have to work nearly so hard to get on a sailboat as I do to get high up in the mountains. Two passions in life are always better than just one.
there's lots of similarity with samivel and SA too. It must just come with the territory. They are absurdists ( thats my invented term, trademark pending.....) which makes sense considering the absurdity of our obsession. I mean just look at those drawings - double rope pitoning up a wall like some drunk ant, A totem pole of climbers giving some guy a shoulder stand to the top of the crag, those garage sale skiers. Its all over the top self mockery.
Like that Tami Knight character for instance. Absolute absurd mockery like the best of Monty Python's Upper class Git of the year award.
Tami - I bet you used to get off on Len Norris cartoons when you were a kid huh?
Thanks Marlow .... I particularly like his take on God - what does it matter?
Zapffe is seeing the philosophy of nothingness as liberating. A death where you return to a nothingness or eternity that happened before you were born leaves no need for expectations and no fear for lurking evil. We just decompose and return back to the elements.
Zapffe says he has come to his inner pole where there is no advancement, no movement in the direction of progress. The inner pole is a condition of the soul where there is no possibility of getting longer in any direction, where nothing is the background for everything. This is also what he thinks about the condition of man in the world. Behind there is a large nothingness.
Human life can be seen as a theater - there are passions, striving and concerns - everything happens/everybody is stumbling around with a horizon of nothingness around. This is how it is - Zapffe says he can stand for that, the final answer is nothing, everything is nothing.
It's a pleasure to share. Thanks to all for the feedback!
The book - Barske Glæder - has been published many times before. It was first published in 1969 and was republished in 2012 with the addition of four essays and a lot of pictures taken by Zapffe himself.
Askeladden with the queen, the king and the princess from Ivo Caprino's animation of the fairytale. Askeladden is the main person in many of the most loved Norwegian fairytales.
"Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990) was the philosopher, humorist and mountaineer, who wrote his Candidate of Law Paper in rhyme. During his studies in Oslo he made acquaintance with Arne Næss and learned climbing at Kolsås. Back in his hometown, Tromsø, he succeeded in more than 20 first ascents. Zapffe was an outstanding character in the Norwegian climbing scene with his many literary contributions and humoristic drawings. This is what he said about climbing “… a sport for individualists, original characters and outsiders. A sport related to other sports in the same way as champagne is related to bock beer, and for this reason it can never be a sport for the masses in Norway. And who could seriously think of bringing the masses to places with hardly enough space for one single seeking soul?”
Zapffe is especially well known for his literary descriptions of climbing. In several essays and stories he speaks subtly and humorously of his escapades in nature. His essay "Stetind" first appeared in the 1937 yearbook of the Trekking Association. The mountain is described as a giant, titan, majesty and horn of hell: "an anvil upon which the gods can hammer." "In 1904 Slingsby himself had failed to become the first to climb Stetind: "The ugliest mountain I ever saw. There is nothing like it in the world." A picture was taken of the peak in 1904 that crucially prompted the Norwegian climbing trio of Schjelderup, Bryn and Rubenson to become the first to ascend Stetind 30 July 1910.
Several of Zapffe's essays are collected in the 1969 book "Barske glæder" ("Rough joys"), among them "Stetind" and an extended, previously unpublished version of "Fire Korstog til Piggtind" ("Four Crusades to Mt. Piggtind"). This selection is regarded today as classics that opened the world of the mountains of North Norway. Through his writings Zapffe has united northern Norwegian humour with an authentic intellectual's clear thought and sharp pen. He himself never climbed Piggtind, in spite of his four attempts in winter to reach the top - the first time during Christmas of 1922. In fact, the first successful winter ascent of the peak took place as late as in 1971."
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