the Desert of the Tartars is a Romance of Dino Buzzati published in Italian in 1940. The French translation will be published only in 1949.
Presentation
The novel treats in a suggestive and poignant way of the vain escape of time, waiting and failure within the framework of an old man extremely isolated at the border where lieutenant Drogo awaits the glory of which the disease will deprive it. Indeed after a long career ritualized by the routine activities of the garrison of the old man strong Bastiani, he sees finally specifying the attack of the Tartars whose existence appeared increasingly mythical; but evacuated for medical reasons, Drogo cannot take part in the combat and realizes, with the threshold of its death, that its only adversary is not the Tartars, but death. Thus, it realizes that the Tartars were only one entertainment, an occupation, which enabled him to forget death, him which was extremely afraid of it.
Comments
This work returns for a share to the influence of Kafka (influence that Buzzati always refuted) by the spirit of derision and the expression of the human impotence vis-a-vis the labyrinth of an incomprehensible world but also to the current Existentialiste of the years 1940-1950 and of Jean-Paul Sartre with Nausea (1938) or of Albert Camus with the Foreigner (1942), to quote only contemporary major works of the Désert of the Tartars . But Buzzati was especially influenced by Pascal, in his manner, for example, to apprehend death. In addition this novel, which has work with the notoriety of the author and was a world success, is not stripped of report/ratio in its description of a present perpetual and interminable with two other great classics: the Things , of Georges Perec (1965) and the magic Mountain of Thomas Mann (1924). Julien Gracq takes again as for him in 1951 the problems of the present perpetual in the Shore of Syrtes (Prix Goncourt) to describe the long delay before the entry of the hero in the History and the moment when this one rocks.
This work is, above all, a lawsuit at time. All the novel is centered on the escape of time. One can all attach to this topic. For example, the cutting of the book in thirty short chapters and of the same size gives the illusion of a regularity in the projection of the novel.
In the same way, the inhabitants of the fort are patients of time. I.e. they belong to the unlucky persons who, according to Buzzati, are subjected to a terrible conscience of the time which passes and dead which approaches. Thus, the two groups, the civilians against the soldiers, are two groups that all tends to move away. As of chapter 1, Drogo and its friend separate and will not speak again themselves any more, in the future, like front. In the same way, they want to go to the castle only for glory, but when they arrive there, they want to set out again before being able and to want about it to leave it, which shows their attachment with their dehumanization: by always making the same tasks (what transforms the time which passes in one perpetual present, Drogo is very surprised the day when he discovers that it is an old man and that it did not do anything of his life); by always seeing the same people (what leads to a lifestyle very making safe), they do not think any more of dead and thus won their bet. These soldiers, who are thus very afraid of death, have the hope to take part in an great event, i.e. to triumph over the Tartars, which would enable them to be eternal, the posterity retaining them. The absurd payment of the fort enables them to occupy their spirit. The plain, always filled with fog, is favorable to their imagination, the dream, the hope. The prohibition of optical instruments to scan the plain can be perceived to maintain the mystery. Lastly, the construction of the road can be perceived like a metaphor of the life: the life is built, and when the enemy, namely death, attacks, there is nothing to face this superhuman force. The inhabitants are overcome by the Tartars, therefore by death.
Prolongations
Valerio Zurlini made a very successful film adaptation of the novel in 1976: the Desert of the Tartars, turned in the Fortress of Bam, in the south of the Iran.
Jacques Brel took as a starting point the character of Drogo in his song Zangra which takes again in some stanzas the ridiculous destiny and tragic of the officer in garrison “at the height of Belonzo/which dominates the plain/from where the enemy will come/who (it) will make hero… ”.
Quotations
" It was one morning of September which Giovanni Drogo, which had just been promoted officer, left the city to go Bastiani at the height, its first affectation." (First sentence of the novel)" It seems to me that it was yesterday that I was arrivé" (page 74)
" But a question came to him then to mind: and if all were an error? " (last page)
" However, time passed, increasingly faster; its quiet rate/rhythm stresses the life, one cannot stop even only one moment, even not for jetter a glance behind. “Stops! Stop! ” Would like one to shout. But one realizes that it is useless. Very flees, the men, the seasons, the clouds; and it is useless aggripper with the stones, to stud itself at the top of a quelquonque rock, the tired fingers are loosened, the arms fall down inert, one is always pulled by this river which seems slow, but which does not stop jamais." (Chapter 24).
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