Erri De Luca, my mountains: “Thanks to them I learn my tiny size and respect for what dominates me”

Erri De Luca and the mountain. A strong, crystalline bond, which does not appear mocked by the age of the Neapolitan writer who, despite the seventy -fifth birthday to be celebrated in May, the mountain continues to attend it, and to write about it.

Thursday 27 February Erri De Luca will be atLumsa University of Rome, guest of the event The age of the mountainone of the meetings dedicated to the theme The signs of the Jubilee. The mountain protagonist 1900-2025 Designed by the Roman University and curated by Oscar Gaspari with the patronage of Italian Alpine Club Lazio Regional Group. The meeting will be an intertwining between words and images, edited by Ines Millesimi: a first introductory gaze dedicated to Sacred Scriptures that De Luca practices to every dawn and which ideally lead to biblicalamong all that of Sinai reached by Moses, the first mountaineer, as De Luca writes in his books Upside down (2007) ed And said (2013). From the sacredness of the mountain The writer will move on to sacredness of friendshipwho has linked him to the Alpine Guide for years Diego Zanescorecently precipitated by a wall that was climbing into the Dolomites and from which the book was born Speech for a friend (2023). At the end of the meeting, the special projection of the short docufilm The experimental age, Written and played by De Luca with the direction of Marco Zingaretti, whom the writer dedicates to his friend Diego: climbing, memories but also the experimentation of the mature age he is going through, with his new awareness.

We started from here, a backwards path that reconstructs, starting from the present, the importance of the mountain in his life. The responses, intense and never banal, return the clarity of a writer who in many consider among the best Italian voices of his generation.

The mountain and the ages of life. Is there a different mountain for each age?
“No, but the senile age must be satisfied with more modest difficulties, without getting lost in intensity of commitment and pleasure”.

In The experimental age She says that old age resembles “the ascent of a mountain forest”. Can the mountain help you get older?
«In this old age I see farther even in the future that I don’t have. In these decades of climbs I have trained the body and this exercise offers me a good maintenance. But the mountain is not needed for this. Everyone can get a good physical discipline in other ways, for example the bicycle, which does not make for me ».

What did the mountain taught her? What are the emotions that the mountain arouses?
«He transmits the feeling of being an intruder in his immensity, guest without invitation and without leaving. I learn my tiny size and respect for what dominates me. My admiration for beauty moves. I discover that the climb on the wall removes the awkwardness that I attribute to me as I walk ».

Why does the climb represent a symbolic path uphill towards the summit of life?
«Scalare represents nothing more than an exercise of precision and concentration. It causes me the most intense calm, the best use of the body. I have made many physical trades, the climb redeemed me, going from the performance of the workforce to freedom of movement ».

Is the mountains an exercise in self -awareness?
«I measure strength and resistance, which I continue to train. It allows me to adjust the weight that must remain light. I know my body better than before today I am old. For me it has no mental or spiritual repercussions. Allow me to be animal, a body that walks on the void ».

When was his relationship with the mountain born and how has he changed over the years?
«I owe my father to the mountains. He Alpine in the Second World War on the mountains of Greece transmitted to me his gratitude for that landscape that saved him a piece of his cursed time. I started climbing in the Dolomites in my thirty years and I did not stop. “

In his books Upside down And And said He investigated the relationship between the mountain and the divine. How does it manifest itself?
«The meetings between the divinity and his messengers take place in the solitudes, in the deserts, between the mountains. The Ararat, the Sinai, the Moori, the NEBO, the Carmel are mutual boundaries between the divinity and the prophets. Where the acoustics are perfect, without interference, his voice impresses himself in the hearing and can be reported “.

Because sharing the mountains and climbs makes a friendship a special friendship?
«The mountaineers often change chorded companions. These are easy nodes to dissolve. The difficult moments, sudden risks, rather than the photos of Cima, are remained in the nerves and memory, so all the same. It is agreed to face the dangers chosen freely, you share a limit, but no more than this. I wouldn’t say that it is something special ».

In Speech for a frienddedicated to Diego Zanesco, she seems to understand that the loss of a friend with whom the effort and love for the mountain has been shared is a different void. How?
«At my senile age, missing people are a crowd contained in me. They are their place, which is not the cemetery or an ash urn. The death of Diego Zanesco, a chorded companion, offered me the void of his favorite lonely climbing. Today I travel to them by going up some abyss. I do so not in memory of him, but followed. I do not go back, however, on the walls climbed together, that void is sealed ».

Do you seem to have a particular relationship with the Dolomites, are there other mountains with which he feels a special bond?
«I like the walls of limestone, rather than granite. Ultimately for me they are of cliffs that emerged from the sea, thrown up by the subcutaneous thrust of the planet. Their height is calculated starting from the sea level. I prefer the walls where I feel it ».

Thursday’s meeting is intended above all to young people. What relationship does it have with them? And what would you like to remember her after this meeting?
«I am not a father, therefore I don’t have the measure of the distance between the generations. I consider myself the same age as anyone, a newborn or centenary. I wish those present would not get bored to hear my stories, who passed an hour of leisure to forget quickly ».