Erri de Luca is always one of the first to show up for breakfast at the Bilbao hotel The Artist, with its unique terrace overlooking the Guggenheim. He dresses like a climber, equipped from top to bottom in clothing from the Italian brand Montura: a sponsored 74-year-old man. Curious. He looks very thin, endless arms and legs, big hands, scrutinizing gaze. He usually gets up at five in the morning, a habit acquired during his time as a worker. In the capital of Biscay, De Luca presented a documentary written by and starring himself last December. It still resonates like a bomb. “In the 17 editions of the Mendi Film Festival, I have never witnessed such an enormous ovation than the one that greeted the end of his documentary and his subsequent appearance on stage,” said Jabi Baraiazarra, director of the event.
Huge references from the history of mountaineering or climbing, Golden Piolets, living legends, have paraded through Bilbao over the last three decades, but it has been Erri de Luca, writer, poet, journalist and fanatic climber who has captivated a public that greets him as if he were a new messiah. But he is just an elderly man who defends the right to continue living fully.
His documentary is titled The experimental age and should serve as an example for all those who wish to express their relationship with the mountains in images. Where unscripted footage abounds, superb images devoid of context, emotion or passion, Erri de Luca’s small masterpiece keeps the viewer with all their senses on, all attentive to their reflections.
Suddenly, climbing stops being a banal matter, fast food for social networks, posturing, and becomes, in the pen and example of De Luca, an act of rebellion in the face of death. The images, even though they are beautiful, only serve to adorn the words with meaning. Watching Erri de Luca climb without a rope, progressing on a limestone rock wall (which rises 200 meters from the forest) with the precision of a mantis reinforces the power of his reflections. They are images at the service of literature. Without the word, mountaineering or climbing lacks transcendent meaning, they are lost in the banality of any sporting endeavor.
Erri de Luca started climbing late, after she was 30 years old. But he soon succumbed to its charms and became fond of the challenge of climbing the most famous walls: he liked to place his fingers in the grips used by others. Also, he often states, he discovered that on the wall his body moves with the best possible balance: body and mind in perfect harmony. In fact, he reached a level of difficulty reserved for the chosen ones: 8b+, at 52 years of age. He also sought to get away from civilization, to reach mountains where there was no trace of human beings. Climbing has always seemed like a game to him, sometimes dangerous, but always a source of joy. He considers that as a worker at Fiat he took more risks than climbing, where certain dangers are assumed in search of “beauty.” Today he continues climbing while experimenting with an old age that is a mystery: “I have the strange feeling that no one has been old before me. The old age of those who preceded me does not serve as a model or prepare me for anything,” he writes.
Like a good climber, De Luca only walked to reach the bottom of the walls. Without the incentive of the rope, walking seemed boring to him… until the pandemic surprised him at his house in the countryside and he started walking for an hour in the morning and another in the afternoon. He believes that, like him, many elderly people discovered the virtues of walking during the pandemic. They rediscovered themselves, in a way.
“There have never been so many old people on earth, so it is an experiment. The elderly are now more active than their predecessors and with their activities they seek to give meaning to the time they have left,” he reflects, while remembering how not so long ago many people retired and went from the speed of everyday life to the slowness of movement. to stillness, they died quickly.
Perhaps for this reason, Erri De Luca wants to understand the mechanisms of her body and discover what it can expect: “The body is a mysterious and ancient machine. I enter his old age like an explorer. I am learning that there is room for improvement and physical enthusiasm in old age. My old age is going up, not down between resignations,” reads the text of the documentary.
De Luca, of Neapolitan origin, now resides on the outskirts of Rome, in the middle of nature, somewhat more alone than he once was: “In the rugged course of time, friendships come loose and fall like leaves. Only a handful remain. The sap that feeds them is loyalty, which is a branch that bears fruit,” he observes. He often spends his time playing solitaire and other games that exercise his mind, a healthy exercise to follow the train of his thoughts. At the end of the documentary, De Luca completes his ascension without a rope and walks towards the end of the route, climbed for the first time by his much admired Walter Bonatti: “At the end of this walk I can say that all the previous ages have prepared me for this . Old age contains a vastness unknown to previous ages. I conclude that this is my best moment.”
