Peter Wesel Zapffe
1) His Biography and Main Works:
Peter Wessel Zapffe was a Norwegian philosopher, novelist, artist, lawyer, and climber who lived from 18 December 1899 to 12 October 1990. He is well known for having a philosophically fatalistic and pessimistic outlook on life. His thinking was influenced by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who was a steadfast opponent of nationalism. In the article “The Last Messiah” (“Den sidste Messias”, 1933), he expresses his views on the fallacy of human life. The philosophical dissertation On the Tragic (Om det tragiske, 1941), which is his most well-known and untranslated work, is condensed into this article.
The Danish-Norwegian admiral Peter Tordenskjold was linked to Fritz Gottlieb Zapffe, son of the pharmacist, and Gudrun Wessel. Zapffe initially encountered mountaineering in Kristiania in 1921, where he began by taking on climbing obstacles on Baerum in Kolsas, his first mountain. He was the first to ascend Tommeltott in Ullsfjorden’s summit in 1924, Kvaløya’s Småting (south side), and the Bentsjordtind between Malangen and Balsfjorden in 1925. The same year, climbers also conquered Okshorn, Snekollen, and Mykkjetind.
He first reached a summit in Senja and the Hollenderan summit in Kvaloya in 1926. In 1987, the Hollenderan’s highest peak in Kvaloya was named in his honour. The summit is now referred to as “Zapffes tind” (the “top of Zapffe”). Zapffe was the first to climb the front side of Svolvaergeita and the first to reach the peak of Skamtinden in 1928. Zapffe applied to the Norsk Tindeklubb in 1940 but was denied. However, he was admitted as an honorary member to a mountaineering society in 1965 and to a Tromso mountaineering club in 1987.
Umberto Nobile’s zeppelin, the Italia, crashed in 1928 owing to a storm as it was returning to Italy. The Zapffe family’s friend Roald Amundsen and Zapffe participated in the effort to save the zeppelin crew. Zappfe acted as the expedition’s interpreter there. Later, the expedition attempted to locate the missing Amundsen on the icebreaker DS “Isbjørn,” on which Zapffe acted as German interpreter and his father was also there. However, the voyage proved fruitless. On June 5, 1929, Zapffe departed from Tromso. Living extremely simply and in a psychologically unstable state, he obtained a place on Erling Skjalgssøns Street in Kristiania: “The idea of death as the greatest consolation and escape, and which is always at hand, penetrates me with even greater force”.
He lived off state pension starting in 1978, just like Emil Cioran. He was given the Honour Award by the Fritt Ord Foundation in 1987 for “the original and versatile character of his literary work”. He gave an interview to Asker og Baerum Budstikke in his final years, when he was constantly visited by reporters, and identified himself as a nihilist: “I am not a pessimist. I am a nihilist. Namely, not a pessimist in the sense that I have upsetting apprehensions, but a nihilist in a sense that is not moral”.
Zapffe had a variety of interests, but he quickly developed a passion for painting. However, his father, who was also a photographer, introduced him to the hobby when he was 12 years old by lending his son his camera gear. This implied a form of myopia compensation as well. Rough Joys (1969), where it appears that he reconstructs ekphrase from his photographic documentation during his visits to the highlands, shows the influence of his work as a photographer. A large portion of his photographic output is now considered cultural heritage.
In 1935, Zapffe wed Bergljot Espolin Johnsen; their divorce occurred in 1941. He wed Berit Riis Christensen in 1952, and the two were together until his passing away in 1990. Berit passed away in May 2008. Zapffe chose to stay childless. Arne Naess, a fellow mountaineer and philosopher from Norway, was a long-time friend to him.
2) Main Themes in his Writings:
Philosophy:
According to Zapffe, humans are born with an overdeveloped talent (understanding, selfknowledge) that is incompatible with the way nature is intended to work. Humanity has a need that nature cannot fill because of the human desire for justification in subjects like life and death. According to this theory, the tragedy is that people spend their entire lives attempting to not be people. Therefore, the human being is a conundrum.
In “The Last Messiah,” Zapffe outlined four main strategies that humanity employs to avoid this conundrum. “A wholly arbitrary removal from consciousness of every bothersome and damaging thought and sensation” is the definition of isolation. The fixation of points within or the building of walls surrounding the liquid flow of awareness is known as anchoring. Individuals are given a value or ideal to continually focus their attention on by the anchoring process. The anchoring principle was also applied to society by Zapffe, who said that collective fundamental anchoring firmaments include “God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the laws of life, the people, the future”.
When one “limits attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions”, one is said to be distracted. Distraction keeps the mind from turning inward by concentrating all of one’s energy on an activity or subject. Refocusing energy away from destructive outlets and onto constructive ones is sublimation. The individuals step back and consider their existence from an aesthetic angle (e.g., writers, poets, painters). Zapffe acknowledged that the pieces he had created were the results of sublimation.
It’s not the will:
Zapffe read Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer, but he didn’t find any of them to be enough in explaining the essence of what it is to be a human being. The “will” serves as the metaphysical foundation for both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, which Zapffe thinks to be very dull.
Schopenhauer gave us the idea that the “will” is nothing more than an organism’s self-interest in surviving and attaining its biological ideal state. We all possess the selfish gene, which only desires things that will benefit our own survival. The will ensures our survival and is an inherent trait of all living things. Regardless of whether it is a blind will, a will for power or for life, it is not what is to blame for our sorrows and sufferings. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche determined the characteristics of the will, which brings us closer to the mechanisms supporting an organism but does not address the difficulty of being a human.
Zapffe believes that there is something about our species that does not seem to mesh well with everything else. Jacob von Uexküll, an Estonian scientist, and his writings on the “inner and outer world” had a major influence on Zapffe. These words were crucial in helping Zapffe formulate his ideas. What the inner and outer worlds claim is that there appears to be a symbiotic interaction between an animal’s internal and external environment.
Animals have needs, desires, and mental capacities that are equal to those of nature and the responsibilities that nature has assigned to them—survival and reproduction. In other words, it appears to correlate with the animals’ internal and external environments. Considering this, Zapffe believes that evolution has ended where it should, leaving other creatures to develop in accordance with their biological and mental needs. However, the human being is a very different matter. According to Zapffe, human evolution fell short in this regard. One of the cornerstones of his ideology is this.
Human — an evolutionary miss:
Peter Wessel Zapffe cites several explanations for why this might be the case. One difference is that humans appear to have a lot of undifferentiated protoplasm in their bodies, whereas other animals hardly have any. Our limbs have the capacity to change into other configurations, giving us abilities more in tune with nature, claims Zapffe. We don’t appear to possess any unique abilities that could direct or instruct our behaviour. Since there is no one habitat we seem to fit into, our absence of any such art-specific abilities makes us sort of exiles in nature.
We appear to have halted our physiological development before it was fully complete. We have five fingers on each hand, free will, and limitless potential. Not any defining qualities. Every decision we make, from what to do with our lives to picking the correct kind of butter at the store, is now fraught with dread and uncertainty. According to Zapffe, the human being is put in a dreadful condition by their physical limitations as well as their free will.
Although there is no right or wrong in how evolution works, it does appear to make species fit for survival, something a human would not be able to do based just on physical prowess. However, we have managed to live, which is undoubtedly a result of our intelligence. We have learned how everything around us works and have taken advantage of it because nothing comes naturally to us.
But instead of stopping when it should have, our mental progress just appeared to keep going. We developed a keen interest in metaphysics for absolutely no reason. From a biological perspective, it is an exceptional privilege that we can stand outside of existence and consider life itself. Therefore, Zapffe contends that on this level, we are intellectually over-equipped.
The Irish giant:
Overall, Zapffe’s goal is to demonstrate how the evolution of the human species has been exceedingly bad. Then, a reasonable query would be whether this has happened before and whether other species have suffered as a result of evolution. The answer, in Zapffe’s opinion, is affirmative. The Irish giant elk, whose crown would not stop growing, is one illustration of this. In fact, it grew to such a size that the elk was ultimately unable to flee from predators and survive off the land. It eventually went extinct.
3) His Legacy:
Zapffe’s quotes have been classics for a very long time. They shine like gold flecks in river gravel among the stacks of Norwegian mountain literature. Norwegians enjoy trekking and are happy to share their travel tales. The section labelled “this year’s mountain novels” won’t be the tiniest in any bookstore in Norway.
Putting the mighty mountain peaks that one sees, into words on a page is not simple. It’s common for writers to fall victim to cliches (words like “towering peaks” and “awe-inspiring” are frequent offenders), so Zapffe’s descriptive prowess is all the more impressive. He describes the intimidating initial impression that the Piggtind peak in Balsfjord left: Both the headmaster and the omnipotent God came to mind. No other words were needed to be said.
The Norwegian Mountain Festival’s organisers asked a jury to choose the canonical works of Norwegian mountain writing in 2008. The field was very open when measured in terms of volumes. There was never any question about the winner when excellence was the standard. The best Norwegian mountain book of all time, according to rankings, is Barske Glaeder.
One wonders what topics Zapffe would have focused on if he were still alive today. What sarcastic remarks would he have made regarding our own outdoor activities? What types of metaphors would he have enjoyed? How successfully would today’s outdoor enthusiasts and fans of extreme sports have survived a run-in with Zapffe’s rapier-sharp pen? He might have taken on new forms, but his old-fashioned “swaggering modesty” would have made fun of us all.
Salomon Andrée’s 1897 effort to use a hydrogen balloon to reach the North Pole was first documented by Zapffe in 1930. On the very northern end of Svalbard’s Kvitøya, he captured photos of the depressing expedition remnants. What would he have thought about today’s arctic expeditions and explorers, not to mention how would he have come to those conclusions? What would he think about those who turned the arctic ice cap into a sporting event with an “official starting point,” stopwatches, competition guidelines, and “unsupported” traverses.
Peter Wessel Zapffe’s impeccable sketches, which reveal the secrets of the sleeping bag or list what would have to be referred to as the equipment, make us chuckle, if not actually laugh out loud. He was an equally skilled illustrator and writer. However, it’s possible that not much has changed since then. Consider the countless equipment evaluations and star ratings that exist for everything from orthotics to earmuffs.
