"Un anno sull’Altipiano" di Emilio Lussu. La guerra smitizzata.

Abstract

Emilio Lussu - antifascist, Socialist, federalist - played an important part in Italian politics, both nationally and in the regional context of Sardinia. But he must also be recognized as an important writer for his long story Il cinghiale del Diavolo, and for his memoirs Marcia su Roma e dintorni and Un anno sull’Altipiano. This last is generally considered the best Italian memoir of the First World War. Quite apart from its specific narrative genre, it is also one of the best narrative works of the early Twentieth Century in Italy. Written between 1936 and 1937 at Clavadel, near Davos in Switzerland, it was published in Paris in 1938. It tells the story of a segment of Lussu’s experiences in the war: one year, as indicated in the title. The thoroughly critical picture of the arrogant behaviour and professional incompetence of the Italian officers, the description of the moments of desperation among the combattants, obliged to kill without hatred, the widespread presence of alcoholism, must not be taken to suggest that the author wished to retract his past interventionist stance. In the important dialogue contained in chapter XXV, the confrontation is between ‘Ottolenghi’, for whom the war in progress is unjustifiable, and ‘The commanding officer of the 10th company’, namely Lussu himself, who by contrast, and in spite of everything, continues to justify it. And it is to be observed that neither of the two positions prevails over the other.