Buzzati: Waiting for some news

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To some, paradise, should there be one, is the ultimate library (recall the library scenes from Wim Wenders's Der Himmel ueber Berlin?). Perennially at the end of a never-ending afternoon, when honey light, warm and thick, percolates through its windows, the lamps already on but still almost unnecessary, the scent of books, leather and wood, a fireplace, angelic librarians silently walking among the shelves...

In this library, there are millions of texts, and each of them is worth reading. There is no hurry, no shortage of copies, no lack of comfortable space, no noise nor vandalism. We read and re-read them, we sail across this sea with favorable, gentle winds, following footnotes and curious associations, exploring islands, joining paths unsuspected, diving in corners unexplored. And then, meeting occasionally but purposefully, drinking and eating and listening, we converse (not talk, not chat), lightly but not frivolously, about them with other readers, enthralled by semantics.

One of these books is Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe (1940) which I've been re-reading recently, with the excuse of the centenary of his author's birthday.

I won't tell you the plot, but just two brief comments.

One slightly personal. I had alreadyy heard from my father that you know you are no longer young when you start walking upstairs one step at a time. It's not just the muscles, I would add, but the spiritual spring that has changed. I know people in their twenties who would not dream of skipping a step. Not being there yet, when I read the two-steps at a time test in the book I was not impressed. What surprised me, however, was my natural re-identification, no longer with the young officer, Giovanni Drogo, but with the older captain Ortiz, whom Drogo meets on his way up to the fortress. Ortiz is coming down. When a student, it was easy to have my gaze towards the mountain while reading the book. I discovered it seems now more natural to look at the valley. Touche. And by my own sword.

The other comment has got to do with the topic of this blog.

At the Fortress Bastiani, officers are constantly waiting for some news, indeed any news, of the enemy, who fails to materialise. They lead an empty and meaningless present life, hoping that the future will bring battles and glory. It is a great metaphor, half way between Waiting for Godot and The Castle.

In this suspended state of expectation, Drogo is incapable of understanding that no information is information. And in his stubborn inability to "inhabit" his present, to enjoy life "now" instead of mentally projecting his life into a future that is not coming, he commits a typical gambler's fallacy. He redoubles the post at stake at every bad run, to win and win back al that has been lost before. He bets his life hoping that some future information will pay him back, retrospectively and with plenty of interests, for all his then-no-longer-wasted years in the fortress.

The risky strategyy might work if life were an endless resource. Sooner or later ("endless" being quite a long stretch of time) the investment would become reasonable. Drogo and his fellow officers would be rewarded for their patience and endurance. In reality, we regularly run out of time.

So the lesson is simple: it is the present that should give meaning to the future, not viceversa. Past information should have priority on future expectations. It is a lesson most difficult to learn. We are hopeful animals. Yet running upstairs two-steps at a time is possible only if your feet safely push you up propelled by solid past memories, not pulled by doubtful dreams.

Comments

  1. AnonymousThu Oct 26, 06:57:00 am

    "the older captain" - surely not? The answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is 42, is it not?

    ReplyDelete
  2. MPThu Oct 26, 12:03:00 pm

    I have read the book in my first year at the University of Gent -Belgium - in a Dutch translation: de tartaarse woestijn. I was flabbergasted by the content. The story is placed in a quaint space-time frame. Waiting - irreversible time - in a desolate landscape - changeable space - leads only to distress. The same theme can be found in Le mythe de Sisyphe, L'étranger, L'homme révolté de Albert Camus and La naussée de Jean-Paul Sartre. The human condition is at the centre of these books.
    The book has been adapted for a motion picture in 1976, directed by Valerio Zurlini.
    The book is still modern in a capitalist world where humans never have enough. TIME CAN'T BE BEATEN BY HUMAN BEINGS.

    ReplyDelete

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