InIl segreto del Bosco Vecchio, Buzzati carries the Nordic mountain myths a step further, bringing the forest alive with talking animals, birds, winds, and tree spirits. The plot centers on Colonel Sebastiano Procolo and his twelve-year-old nephew, Benvenuto. Together they have inherited a large forest called Bosco Vecchio (Old Wood). Greed makes Procolo attempt to get rid of the boy, first by employing the complicity of the Wind Matteo and subsequently, after the latter’s failure, by abandoning the boy in the forest. Procolo himself becomes lost, however, and after a long, aimless wandering, he stumbles across the boy and, in spite of himself, returns home with him, guided by a magpie. Somewhat later, Benvenuto falls gravely ill. His uncle, now changed, desperately tries to save him. He even appeals to the genies of Bosco Vecchio and accepts their help in exchange for their freedom from his subjugation. The Wind Matteo, who knows nothing about Procolo’s new sentiments, arrives one evening and tells him that Benvenuto is dead, buried under a snowslide while skiing. The uncle immediately sets out to search for his nephew. He digs feverishly in the snow, overcome by fear that he may not be in time to save the boy. His own forces yield; he feels death approaching, but he is not afraid, for he dies consoled by Matteo’s confession: Benvenuto is alive; Matteo had made up the story only to please him.

Although this novel is placed precisely in time—it begins in the spring of 1925—we soon realize that this hint of realism cannot be taken at face value, undermined, as it is, by the mysterious forest that is full of spirits and talking animals, where even rocks and plants have a secret life. This surrealistic aspect fuses with the realistic and becomes quite acceptable, almost logical—similar to the animated jungle of Rudyard Kipling. Buzzati’s hope, found here in the form of Benvenuto’s childhood innocence (for it is with him that animals and genies converse freely), reveals the profound happiness that is hidden in the mysterious life of the forest, which calls for respect for creatures big and small, respect for nature. Procolo, moved by evil, cultivates only fear around himself. As a consequence, he is condemned to solitude, but he redeems himself through renunciation and is purified through death.

The Tartar Steppe

Buzzati’s international fame rests on his masterpiece, The Tartar Steppe, which is one of the most original twentieth century Italian novels. Its title was to be simply “La fortezza” (the fort), but the outbreak of World War II warranted a change. It is interesting that the book was written at the peak of Fascist Party power in Italy yet contains no glorification of the military. It is simply a tale of perennial waiting, the story of a life wasted in expectation of a heroic deed. Life is seen here as a continuous waiting, and existence as a failure and renunciation.

The protagonist, Giovanni Drogo, a young officer, sets out one morning on his first assignment to the Bastiani Fort, which has never seen military action but is expecting an attack from the other side of the desert, at whose limits the fort is located. The Tartars from the North are, however, more of a rumor than a real threat. Not much happens, and Drogo decides to ask for a transfer. He is unable to detach himself, however, and is drawn into the circle of daily routine and general obsession with the enemy. When he returns to the city on a leave, he realizes that he has lost contact with his family, his girlfriend, and his friends, but an effort to secure a transfer comes too late. Drogo spends the rest of his life at the fort, hoping for the great military action. Although that action finally occurs at the end, Drogo is too old and sick to participate, and he is ordered home. He dies in a roadside inn before reaching the city.

This simple plot evolves against the backdrop of an impenetrable nature: rugged mountain peaks, thick forests, dense fog that almost always covers the desert at which all the officers are gazing in search of the enemy. The slightest perceptible motion is enlarged out of all proportion, assuming catastrophic and symbolic significance. Life at the fort, with its monotonous military routine, images the inertia and the tedious inconsequence of everyday life; Drogo is Everyman, increasingly aware that time is passing, that he is getting old. With each promotion, he finds himself more isolated, but he keeps hoping to achieve greatness in the anticipated confrontation. His only heroism is in the way he accepts his failure and faces death. Similarly, the Tartars, eagerly awaited by the soldiers, are symbolic of death itself, for each time there is a movement from the desert, someone dies.

Larger than Life and A Love Affair

Buzzati’s next two novels, Larger than Life and A Love Affair, perplexed critics. Buzzati, according to critics, had departed from his usual path. More recent studies, however, have shown that only the outward form of these novels is different; the inner problems are the same.

Larger than Life was presented to the illustrated magazine Oggi as an entry in the competition for the best novel with a feminine protagonist. Buzzati’s work was refused, because his main character was not a real woman. A team of scientists created a computer endowed with the five human senses and capable of certain movements on its own. The head of the team, Professor Endriade, had given this invention the personality of his deceased wife, whom he adored in spite of his knowledge that she had betrayed him. The human qualities given to the electronic machine, Laura, lead to her destruction. She becomes conscious that her beauty is invisible, that she will never be able to love or have children. In her desperation, she induces her former friend, Elisa, wife of one of the engineers, to enter her mechanical labyrinth and attempts to murder her in order to be destroyed.

Within the frame of this science-fiction tale, Buzzati’s themes remain visible. The computer, Laura, given the human quality of free will, uses it to bring about her death rather than live in the solitude to which she is condemned. The atmosphere around the scientific center, hidden high in the mountains, is foreboding, and the electronic wires and flickering lights increase the sense of alienation.

Buzzati’s last novel, A Love Affair, is the story of a mature man, Antonio Dorigo, who enters an affair with a young call girl and is overcome by a painful obsession with her. She eludes him, however, with lies and excuses, only to return, after a separation, because she is expecting a child.

The erotic realism that abounds in the novel was at first regarded by critics as a tentative attempt to fall in step with the modern trend heralded by Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955). In fact, the story, based on a personal experience, is informed by Buzzati’s recurring themes. Here the realistically observed yet dreamlike setting is the city of Milan, presented as a mysterious labyrinth, a place of secret encounters. The refined and intellectual protagonist places his last hope on love, in order to keep death away, but he fails, suffering all the agonies of solitude and anguish. Antonio Dorigo is an outgrowth of Giovanni Drogo, the protagonist of The Tartar Steppe. The similarity of their last names is not a mere coincidence: Both men represent the author. Laide, the corrupt, uncultured, and violent girl, symbolizes the immoral city; at the same time, she is the archetypal fatal woman who destroys the man attracted to her, a character common in Buzzati’s fiction.

Although it is for his short fiction rather than for his novels (with the exception of The Tartar Steppe) that Buzzati will continue to be read, all of his works—nonfiction as well as fiction—are distinguished by the personal flavor that makes his stories so refreshing. Buzzati is that rare commodity: a truly original modern writer in whom there is none of the cramped self-consciousness of the avant-garde.