The Artist on the Mountain

By Michael Krüger –
05/21/2026

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Source: published by Meinen, Suhrkamp Verlag

Writer, poet, and publisher Michael Krüger

For much of human history, neither the artist nor the philosopher belonged on the mountain. The mountaintops were believed to be the dwelling place of the gods – beings best left undisturbed while creation itself was still unfolding. And if not actual gods, then spirits capable of bringing misfortune upon humankind. Lower down, near springs and streams, there might occasionally be nymphs or gnomes, though they too were rarely believed to have benevolent intentions.

Since antiquity, nature was regarded primarily as something to be used and therefore as the domain of natural historians and empirical observers – Pliny being the classic example. Famous, too, is Socrates’ remark to Plato: “Forgive me, my friend, but I can learn nothing from trees and open country, while men in the city can teach me.” In other words: Athens was the center of knowledge, of intellectual debate, and of the arts. Later Rome, then Florence and Venice, and so on, as the history of civilization tells it. This was where people went in search of beauty and inspiration.

And then came April 26, 1335, when the writer Francesco Petrarca – who had settled in Avignon during the schism, in a small house along the banks of the Sorgue – decided to climb Mont Ventoux with his brother.

Today, Mont Ventoux is known above all from the Tour de France, when once a year exhausted cyclists struggle up its barren slopes under the blazing sun. But in Petrarch’s day, the mountain was not barren at all. It was covered in dense scrubland – tangled blackberry brambles and thorn bushes everywhere, and no visible path to ease the ascent.

It is no wonder, then, that historians have questioned the account Petrarch dictated immediately after his descent in a letter to one of his patrons – a text that would go on to enter literary history. At the time, they argued, it would have been impossible to climb the mountain alone.

Whatever the truth may be, Petrarch’s account of the ascent of Mont Ventoux fundamentally changed the Western world’s relationship with nature. For the first time, landscape was perceived as an aesthetic phenomenon. From that moment on, there existed not only the rapidly developing natural sciences – which led to increasing exploitation and control of nature – but also contemplation of nature, images of nature, immersion in nature. This sparked an extraordinary movement across every form of art, one that – thank God – endures to this day. Without this continual engagement with nature, we would have remained one-dimensional beings, scarcely worth speaking of.

Alpspitze and Zugspitze: Alpine icons rising above the spectacular backdrop of Schloss Elmau.

Source: Timo Maier

Today, seven hundred years after Petrarch, we look with anxiety upon the natural world that revealed itself to Renaissance humanity in such astonishing beauty: rivers and mountain ridges, peaks and green plains – an ensemble of elements he had never before seen together in this way.

The question now is how humanity itself can be saved from its own ever-expanding civilization. Until the nineteenth century, the future was bound to the idea of the city: Paris was the capital of the nineteenth century, London drove the era’s decisive cultural movements, and Madrid stood at the center of an empire stretching across continents. But already, at the heart of the great cities, the seeds of discontent had begun to appear – setting in motion the countermovement against the domination of nature: exhaustion with civilization, escape from the city, a longing to return to nature.

And this is where the mountains re-enter the imagination, for they remain among the hardest landscapes to conquer. Great operas, complex novels, and modern art may continue to be produced and exhibited primarily in urban studios and institutions, but they must engage with nature if they are to retain their authenticity and credibility.

So then – if only for a while – back to the mountain, to look out once more across the landscape, to renew the spirit. But best not to say too much about it. Otherwise the mountains will soon become crowded, and before long you may find yourself knocked aside by an overzealous cyclist.