Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
“Paris salutes the triumph of the conquerors of Annapurna”; then, “Herzog—his
life, his struggles, his defeats, his victories.” The text hailed Herzog as “our number
one national hero.” As for the film premiere and the subsequent
séances
at the Salle
Pleyel, the reporter gushed about the “enormous crowd” that “every night shouts it-
self hoarse, crying out its pride in the conquerors of the Himalaya.”
The article devolved into a profile of Herzog. Incredibly, in six pages of adulatory
prose, not once did the reporter mention Lachenal. Instead, “On June 3, 1950, at 2:00
P.M.
, Maurice Herzog marked the triumph of his tactical campaign by planting his ice
axe at 8,078 meters on the summit of Annapurna.” The photos dwelt on Herzog at his
parents' house in Saint-Cloud, Herzog as a young climber, Herzog front and center
in a group photo with all “the greatest explorers of France.” The reporter had visited
Herzog at home, surrounded by his souvenirs, including “The 'Foca' that took, at 8,078
meters, the famous photo immortalizing the French victory, which was a cover photo
of
Paris-Match.
” A caption referred to “the Foca that accompanied him to the sum-
mit.” It was as if the camera had been Herzog's only teammate on the summit, and the
photo had taken itself.
Thus began the insidious process by which Lachenal would come to be all but writ-
ten out of the story. Whether this focusing on the leader to the exclusion of his team-
mates was due to the workings of Lucien Devies's publicity machine (in his preface to
Annapurna,
Devies wrote, “The victory of the whole party was also, and above all, the
victory of its leader”), or whether the credulous public needed to single out a “number
one national hero,” a myth had begun irreversibly to form about the distant mountain.
“
Paris-Match
. . . today presents you the man who has won the greatest glory because
he underwent the greatest suffering.”
Six months after returning from Annapurna, Herzog could walk in special shoes
only with short, shuffling, uncertain steps. He had learned to grasp a pencil with sev-
eral stumps on his right hand and produce a shaky scrawl. In the Neuilly hospital,
Herzog prepared to “write” his book.
According to the version of that process described in
L'Autre Annapurna,
each
morning Herzog's personal secretary, Nicole, sat by his bedside taking dictation. In the
afternoon, back in her office, she typed up the text. The pair then went over it, making
corrections.
Like the strings of a violin, Nicole cried or laughed with me, as was the case. . . . Profoundly
moved, even scarred, by my sometimes violent emotions, she announced, after the last sen-
tence had been written, that since our mission was accomplished she was going to enter the
Dominican order of the Campagnes under the name Sister Marie-Isaïe.
