The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati

The Tartar Steppe is a 1940 novel by Italian author Dino Buzzati. Since its publication, the novel has been hugely influential, with many writers crediting Buzzati as an enormous influence on their work. The book also notable for being a progenitor for the technique of magical realism, that went on to become amongst the most important and enduring literary genres of the 20th century.

Buzzati’s novel tells the story of a young officer, Giovanni Drogo, who is sent to the remote border outpost of the Bastiani Fortress. Drogo is convinced that he will win fame and glory in an upcoming war with the Tartars, but when he arrives at his station he finds it a wasteland manned by wraithlike soldiers who have grown old waiting for an enemy that will never come…

The Tartar Steppe is a meditation on waiting – a parable about how life can slip through your fingers without you even noticing. No matter your plans, your ambitions, your motivations, or your feelings; life will always make its own arrangements. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that life doesn’t know or care who you are. We are but motes of dust dancing our way to oblivion…and that oblivion invariably comes sooner than for what we are prepared.

Below is perhaps my favourite fragment of this remarkable novel. I believe this will do more to convince a potential reader of Buzzati’s worth than anything I myself could say:

“Up to then he had gone forward through the heedless season of early youth — along a road which to children seems infinite, where the years slip past slowly and with quiet pace so that no one notices them go. We walk along calmly, looking curiously around us; there is not the least need to hurry, no one pushes us on from behind and no one is waiting for us; our comrades, too, walk on thoughtlessly, and often stop to joke and play. From the houses, in the doorways, the grown-up people greet us kindly and point to the horizon with an understanding smile. And so the heart begins to beat with desires at once heroic and tender, we feel that we are on the threshold of the wonders awaiting us further on. As yet we do not see them, that is true — but it is certain, absolutely certain that one day we shall reach them.
Is it far yet? No, you have to cross that river down there, go over those green hills. Haven’t we perhaps arrived already? Aren’t these trees, these meadows, this white house perhaps what we were looking for? For a few seconds we feel that they are and we would like to halt there. Then someone says that it is better further on and we move off again unhurriedly.

So the journey continues; we wait trustfully and the days are long and peaceful. The sun shines high in the sky and it seems to have no wish to set. But at a certain point we turn round, almost instinctively, and see that a gate has been bolted behind us, barring our way back. Then we feel that something has changed; the sun no longer seems to be motionless but moves quickly across the sky; there is barely time to find it when it is already falling headlong towards the far horizon. We notice that the clouds no longer lie motionless in the blue gulfs of the sky but flee, piled one above the other, such is their haste. Then we understand that time is passing and that one day or another the road must come to an end.
At a certain point they shut a gate behind us, they lock it with lightning speed and it is too late to turn back. But at that moment Giovanni Drogo was sleeping, blissfully unconscious, and smiling in his sleep like a child.”

There are so many more passages as beautiful and haunting as this one. The most beautiful and haunting of all, however, is the passage of time.

Rating – 7/10