Dino buzzati

Dino Buzzati Traverso (16 October 1906 in Belluno – 28 January 1972 in Milan) was an Italian novelist and short story writer, as well as a journalist for the Corriere della sera.

Biography

He was born into a wealthy family: his father, Giulio Cesare, was a professor of international law at the University of Pavia and his mother, Alba Mantovani, of Venetian origin, was the sister of the writer Dino Mantovani. His real name was Dino Buzzati Traverso, and he was the second of four brothers. From a very young age, he manifested what were to be his lifelong hobbies: writing, drawing, studying violin and piano, in addition to his passion for the mountains to which he dedicated his first novel, Bárnabo de las montañas (Bàrnabo delle montagne) (1933).

At the behest of his family —especially his father— he undertook to study law, but in 1928, before graduating, he began an apprenticeship at the Corriere della Sera, the newspaper in which he He collaborated throughout his life.

The success obtained with his first novel, the aforementioned Bárnabo de las montañas, was not repeated with the following The secret of the Old Forest (Il segreto del Bosco Vecchio) (1935), which was received with indifference.

Special envoy of the Corriere to Addis Ababa in 1939 and war reporter in 1940 on the Rio cruise ship, that same year he published the book with which he achieved international fame and which is unanimously considered his work teacher, The desert of the Tartars (Il deserto dei Tartari): on the eve of the conflict, she imagined the existential allegory of Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo, destined for his existence to take place in a lost fortress, at an unspecified time, in the futile wait for an enemy that does not arrive (in 1976 Valerio Zurlini adapted it and made a very suggestive film).

From 1936 he wrote numerous stories for the Corriere and other newspapers, later compiled in The Seven Messengers and Other Stories (I sette messageggeri) (1942), Paura alla Scala (1949), Il crollo della Baliverna (1954), Sessanta racconti (1958, Strega prize), Esperimento di magia (1958), Il colombre (1966), The difficult nights and other stories (Le notti difficili) (1971).

In 1960 The Great Portrait (Il grande ritratto) came out, almost an experiment in a science fiction novel, where the female universe enters the scene, which until then had very little explored. Three years later, in Un amor (Un amore) he told the story of Antonio Dorigo, a man who finds love at the age of fifty: it presents probable autobiographical features, since at sixty Buzzati married Almerina Antoniazzi.

Buzzati and painting

It remains to remember the interest of this author in painting, which was evidenced in works born from the mixture between text and illustrations (Poema a fumetti, 1969; I miracoli di Val Morel , 1971). The magical, [surreal], Gothic atmospheres of his prose are suffused with a sense of anguish (think of the justly celebrated tale "Sette piani," where the itinerary through illness is suffused with an omen of death), discouragement in the face of the inevitability of an ironic destiny; the reader's pleasure is guaranteed by a fast, captivating writing, as a journalistic note.

Buzzati and literature

The literary work of Dino Buzzati refers, on the one hand, to the influence of Kafka for the derision and the expression of human impotence faced with the labyrinth of an incomprehensible world. But he also refers to surrealism, as happens in his stories where the dreamlike connotation is always very present. Although perhaps the most convincing of the attempts to establish relationships must be found in its relationship with the existentialist currents of the years 1940-1950. Or in proximity to the spirit of Nausea (1938) by Jean-Paul Sartre; or in that of Albert Camus with The Stranger (1942). It was translated into Spanish by J. Rodolfo Wilcock, with whom he shares certain similarities in style. On the other hand, we must once again emphasize that The Tartar Desert has generated the total notoriety of the author, who met with worldwide success with this novel; A work not devoid of a certain relationship with a perpetual and endless present in its descriptions, which links this topic with two other great classics: Georges Perec and Things, and Thomas Mann with his Magic Mountain.

Remarkably, Buzzati never accepted being considered a writer. He defined himself, rather, as a simple journalist who wrote from time to time fiction or nouvelles , to which he did not attach great value. The judgment of posterity and that of his contemporaries has profoundly contradicted Buzzati's own point of view.

The desert of the tartars

It was Buzzati's best-known and most important work. It was written in 1940 and later released into various languages (in French, in 1949). Its atmosphere, for many critics, is definitely Kafkaesque. Later, J. M. Coetzee, a writer also greatly influenced by Kafka, took up the idea again in Waiting for the Barbarians.

In 1976, director Valerio Zurlini released a film version of the novel.

His work includes

• Bàrnabo of the mountains(Bàrnabo delle montagne, 1933)
• The Secret of the Old Forest, 1935
• The desert of the Tartars(Il deserto dei pierí, 1940)
• The seven messengers and other accounts(I sette messaggeri, 1942)
• The famous invasion of Sicily by the bears1945
• Sixty stories(Sessanta racconti, 1958)
• The great portrait, 1960
• Love1963
• Poem in vineyards1969

Editions in Spanish

• Bàrnabo of the mountains. Gadir Editorial. 2007. ISBN 978-84-936033-3-5.
• The Secret of the Old Forest. Gadir Editorial. 2007. ISBN 978-84-933767-1-0.
• The desert of the Tartars. Gadir Editorial. 2008. ISBN 978-84-934439-1-7.
• The famous invasion of Sicily by the bears. Gadir Editorial. 2007. ISBN 978-84-935382-0-0.
• Sixty stories. Acantied. 2006. ISBN 978-84-96489-61-5.
• Hard nights. Acantied. 2010. ISBN 978-84-92649-27-3.
• The mouth. Acantied. 2008. ISBN 978-84-96834-33-0.
• The great portrait. Gadir Editorial. 2006. ISBN 978-84-934439-9-3.
• Love. Gadir Editorial. 2007. ISBN 978-84-933767-9-6.
• Poem in cartoons: graphic novel. Gadir Editorial. 2006. ISBN 978-84-935237-2-5.
• The seven messengers and other accounts
• El Giro de Italia. Gallo Nero Editions. 2014. ISBN 978-84-942357-1-9