IL SOLDATO INESISTENTE DI BUZZATI E KADARE (IL DESERTO DEI TARTARI E IL GENERALE DELL'ARMATA MORTA)

Abstract

The two novels, Deserto dei Tartari (The desert of the Tartars) (1940) by Dino Buzzati, of the early twentieth century in Italy and Il Generale dell'armata morta (The general of the dead army) (1963) by Kadare, an Albanian writer of the second half of the twentieth century, are considerably successful books of a wide reception and translated into several languages. The background to both works is the Second World War. A war that is about to begin in Buzzati and the memories and consequences of this war in Kadare. A general and a lieutenant have almost the same mission and the same duty, that of leading an army of soldiers and preparing to fight. But neither of them carries out his military duty, there is no enemy to fight against. In both novels the war turns out to be a strong disappointment. The lust for glory of both the general and the lieutenant is contrasted with strong symbolism by the search for a definitive truth about his own existence. The only truth that unites the two authors is death. The lieutenant who awaits death and the general who gathers it everywhere are another common aspect that unites them. The strong presence of nature could not be a random element, it is the ongoing background to the mood and human emotions. Although they do not claim to be exhaustive, these observations want to highlight the fact that these two beautiful novels have many things to say and represent a beautiful literary heritage, shared between two writers joined and separated by the same sea, the Adriatic.