ABSTRACT
The years few are left. For Richards, mountaineering was an intellecLive as on a mountain. tual passion: "The frequentation is physical, the -Marcus Aurelius passion is of the mind." 1 He did not think of it
in terms of a mere pastime or escape. It was "what my wife and I have both given up most of our lives to ... we've been in the service a/high mountaineering. And that stands first."2 But no matter what stood first in his private life, his ideological ban on biography and memoir prevented him from writing about it. Exceptions are few and mostly technicaP Only late in his career did he give way, in his poetry and plays, where he may have felt protected by the impersonal forms and dramatic characterization (the Plentys, Erna; even Faustus seems to have been a rock-climber). Then he drew freely on his mountaineering adventures and reexamined the themes and values that had informed his career.
