The Tartar Steppe (Verba Mundi)

Rating:
Summary: 19th century adventure/20th century sensibilty
Review: After reading Dino Buzzati's short story collection The Siren I picked up Tartar Steppe(1945) and took it to the beach with me where I read it all the way through in about four hours. Its a captivating novel which takes place almost entirely in a remote hilltop fort which faces a foreboding desert that has never been crossed. The soldiers stationed at this remote outpost keep watch over the desert in anticipation of a confrontation with an enemy they have never seen. We learn about the history of the fort as well as those who occupy it when Giovanni Drogo, a young soldier, arrives there to begin what he hopes will be an illustrious career. Upon arriving at the fort Giovanni is immediately struck by the desolate atmosphere of the place and want s to leave but is coerced by the forts adjutant to stay for at least four months. Four months becomes four years and then four years becomes...... Giovanni like many young soldiers wants to advance his career and yet year after year he stays on in the fort and his career goes nowhere. As the years pass and Giovanni remains in the fort somehow unable to find the will to ask for a transfer Buzzati weaves in meditations on the passing of time, the fading of youth and youths dreams, as well mans infinitely renewable capacity for self-deception. Buzzati might be compared to Kafka for the parable like quality of his writing but Buzzati has his own style and Tartar Steppe is much more reader friendly than either of Kafkas novels. Jean Paul Sartre characterized Kafkas writing as "the impossiblity of transcendence" and that would fit Buzzati's writing as well. There certainly are similarities between the two authors but with Buzzati you feel much closer to real life than you sometimes do in Kafka (whose favorite author was Swift). I would call Tartar Steppe a very effective merging of nineteenth and twentieth-century style and content. Buzzati seems to me to be examining why 19th century adventure stories of war and travel appeal so much with a 20th century sensibility. The result is a mesmerizing read, like Giovanni you never stop believing that the enemy is about to show themselves. This book is often mentioned in the same breath as Julien Gracq's Opposing Shore, a book which I also highly recommend.

Rating:
Summary: The Lone Mountain
Review: Buzzati's two novels of the mountains, written in the style of traditional realism,"Barnabus of the Mountains" and "The Secret of the Ancient Wood", introduced the Kafkaesque surrealism, symbolism, and absurdity that suffused all of his writing.

This novel, generally considered Buzzati's finest, is a powerful and ironic tale of garrison troops at a frontier military post, poised in expectancy for an enemy who never comes and unable to go forward or retreat. Though influenced by Kafka, Buzzati has a devastating skill and a detached sort of irony and humour of his own, this is a lovely work of literature...

Rating:
Summary: An unusual but entertaining pearl of Italian literature
Review: Dino Buzzati's novel THE TARTAR STEPPE is a rather unusual piece of literature. Written while the author was in despair over a dead-end job in a newspaper, the book is a metaphor for the discontent that is life.

The plot of the book is that Giovanni Drogo, a newly-commissioned officer, sets out from his home for his first place of duty, Fort Bastiani, a place which symbolizes everyone's life and work. Disappointed at first by the loss of youth and innocence and the burden of manhood thrust upon him, Drogo at first wishes to leave. As time goes by, however, he sees the beauty of the fort and comes to enjoy his surroundings. On subsequent visits to his home town and family, he sees how alien his former world has become, spurring him to cherish the fort even more.

Fort Bastiani is a nearly-forgotten defense placed in a mountain range that looks over a vast wasteland, the steppe of the novel's title. The soldiers stationed there grow old waiting for an attack that never comes, representing the feeling that one's work ultimately means nothing. Towards the Drogo, an ailing old man, is taken away from the fort to a grey sea, representing Death. However, Buzzati's ending is a clever surprise that convinces the reader that hope is still possible.

The nature of this book may remind some of the works of Franz Kafka. Like in Kafka, THE TARTAR STEPPE takes place in an undefined time and place and is highly metaphorical. Nonetheless, I found this book much more tolerable than the depressing pessimism of Kafka. Whereas Kafka is obsessed with the idea that life is meaningless and inexplicable, Buzzati at least entertains the notion that glory is indeed possible

I cannot comment on this particular translation, having read the translation into Esperanto by Daniele Mistretta. Nonetheless, I believe that THE TARTAR STEPPE's good qualities come across not through the language of the novel, but rather through the characters and events. I'm pretty sure that this book would survive any translation relatively intact. Furthermore, the edition by Penguin Books offers a helpful introduction.

Although perhaps not a novel that must be read by all, THE TARTAR STEPPE is rather enjoyable and quick read. I'd recommend it if the plot seems interesting.

Rating:
Summary: The Tartar Irony
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Rating:
Summary: Probably one of this century's true classics
Review: It is indeed a strange book. A young lieutenant is sent to a remote post in the Tartar frontier. At first, he hates it and wants to leave at any cost. Then he succumbs to the place's secret: some sort of masochism that acts like a drug, distorting the lieutenant's sense of time and consuming his life. Thirty years painfully fly, and then something happens. Theme and style are oddly alike in this book: you read and read and nothing happens, and yet it's fascinating. Slow as the book is, you breeze through it. In a stupor, you reach a beautiful ending, of which I am not going to tell you.

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Summary: El desierto de los tártaros
Review: La fascinación que desde su aparición en 1940 ha despertado EL DESIERTO DE LOS TÁRTAROS, la más célebre novela de DINO BUZZATI (1906-1972), proviene del paisaje formal de la fábula que narra, no de su significación oculta. Con todo, la historia del oficial Giovanni Drogo, destinado a una fortaleza fronteriza sobre la que pende una amenaza aplazada e inconcreta, pero obsesivamente presente, se halla cargada de resonancias que la conectan con algunos de los más hondos problemas de la existencia: la seguridad como valor contrapuesto a la libertad, la progresiva resignación ante el estrechamiento de las expectativas de hechos excepcionales que cambien el sentido de la existencia

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Summary: After all, this is life
Review: On first thought, this is a overwhelmingly desolate book. It is the life of Giovanni Drogo who, after graduation as military officer, is sent to Fort Bastiani, located on "the Northern frontier", and beyond which the Tartar steppe lies for miles and miles. At Fort Bastiani, nothing ever happens. Holding the absurd hope that some day something will happen that will bring him military glory, Drogo consumes his life amidst the boredom and the rutine of the site. But his hope never dies: as another reviewer correctly noted, it acts like a drug on him. I haven't spoiled anything about the plot: some day, something will happen.

This novel is pure literary magic, and it is a shame and a pity that it is so ignored, especially in English-speaking countries. Note: Enlgish-language literature is certainly one of the best corpus of literature in the world, but their ignorance of many other literatures is in their own detriment, unfortunately.

"The Tartar steppe" is a masterpiece which, with an ironic and subtle sense of humor, talks about the desolation, the apparent uselessness of living, the futility of existence. It talks about it, but in a subtle yet powerful manner contradicts those theses: Drogo will show the reader that, no matter how dull and empty your life is, there is ALWAYS something about life that makes it worth living. Fort Bastiani and the Tartar Steppe are both real and symbolic: they may be an office, a shop, a house or a city.

Read this novel and you will love it forever, not only for its content but for Buzzati's excellent handling of words. He showed he was a great writer. But beyond the style, you'll remember it every other time, when you feel you are Giovanni Drogo, eager for something to happen.

Rating:
Summary: Filling the gaps of existence... with sand
Review: This is a book about how absurd existence is and how men are deemed to deal with the fissure they find between life and its meaning. The question of whether this meaning must come from within man himself or from an event which is external to him lies beneath the whole novel.

Sharing this sense of absurdity with Kafka and Camus, Buzatti creates an atmosphere within which not only the main character gets trapped, but also the reader. They both expect something that never actually occurs, and the tension this anticipation generates page after page makes the novel a compelling read.

The story of Giovanni Drogo, a simple man who attempts to make of his destiny something grand without really doing anything but live and wait and let go, is one of the most fascinating and moving stories in the 20th century literature.

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Summary: Loneliness without being alone
Review: This is an extraordinary novel where the main character looks into the eternal, emptiness beyond - just as we all look into the unknowableness of the future. And as we do it - sometimes with intimations of things to happen, sometimes with firm and dreadful 'knowledge', and sometimes with hopes - we are alone in our journey, despite those around us. There is only true solace in looking back at the past, in seeing what we have experienced that no-one can take away from us.

There is little humour in this vision, little hope, little respite. Always an aching emptiness prevails. But for all that it does have a crystalline beauty - a clear and shining crystal with cold, sharp edges. Read if you dare, but brace yourself when you do. This is no roller-coaster of action, its pace is slow, slow, slow ......

Rating:
Summary: Achingly beautiful
Review: When I started this book, I had no idea how much it was going to affect me. The story is masterpeice -- a brutally honest but compassionate examination of our lives, no matter who or where we are. This story makes me smile every time I think about it, and I hope its message will stay with me for the rest of my life.