IDO MOVEMENT FOR CULTURE

The sketch „Model of alpine counter-culture” is devoted to the analysis of autobiographical narrations of Jerzy Kukuczka. Kukuczka was the outstanding Polish Himalayan Climber. He ascended all of the world's fourteen 8000 ers (two of them he reached twice), and he made 10 new routes. In 1988 the International Olympic Committee decorated Jerzy Kukuczka and Reinhold Messner with the Silver Medal of Olympic Order. The mountaineer is the author of several books translated into many languages. In particular two of them are worthy of notice: the interlocutory text „On the World's Peaks”, prepared with a co-operation of a journalist Tomasz Malanowski, who made a cycle of conversations with the mountaineer, and compiled the collected material; and the autobiography of Jerzy Kukuczka „My Vertical World, or 14 x 8000 meters”. The sketch has two goals. The first one is to show „counter-culture” features of Kukuczka's alpine activity. Sherry Ortner considers that the arising of „alpine counter-culture” (represented by the leading Polish Mountaineers: J. Kukuczka, W. Kurtyka, W. Rutkiewicz) had a connection with the exterior and a geopolitical situation in Poland. Ortner in his book „Life and Death on Mt. Everest” reduces „alpine counter-culture” to an economic dimension. In his autobiographical narrations Kuku¬czka writes about problems with equiping expeditions, bureaucracy (not only Polish), and typically Polish practice of evading regulations. In the sketch one more fact was emphasized – Kukuczka manifested his independence and dissimilarity, and he consciously separated himself from the western, „impure”, commercialized model of alpinism. As a representative of „alpine counter-culture” he kept away from fashion, dominant models, alpine ideologies, he was open to various forms of expressions and diversity of experiences. Kukuczka consciously climbed without the use of oxygen and pharmacological doping agents and that fact is considered to be the most important „counter-culture” feature of his activity. Kukuczka created his own legend of a globe-trotter from behind the iron curtain, the one who climbed 8000 peaks from a worse position. Kukuczka reflected his own way of conceiving „counter-culture” in his autobiographical narrations, straying from the models acknowledged by alpinists' circle. The second goal of the sketch was to show that his texts depart from the conventions of the classical narration as they are speech records. In autobiographical narrations of alpinists certain threads are repeated, situations are described in a similar way, certain current and common opinions are copied, there appear language cliches. Kukuczka as a representative of „alpine counter-culture” signs the conventional narration with idiolect. The mountaineer describes dramatic events in his own peculiar way – strong, expressive and ironical at the same time. Therefore, the „counter-culture” features occur not only in his alpine activity but also in his autobiographical narrations, in which his activity is presented.