Buzzati's 'The Tartar Steppe' as Existential Classic

Dino Buzzati's 1940 novel 'The Tartar Steppe' is examined as a literary classic about wasted life and existential waiting. The story follows Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo, who is assigned to the remote Fortress Bastiani, where he and his fellow soldiers spend their entire lives anticipating an enemy attack that never comes. Buzzati, a journalist at Corriere della Sera, drew inspiration from the monotony of his own office routine. The novel is positioned as part of an 'Immobilism Trilogy' alongside Erich Maria Remarque's 'All Quiet on the Western Front,' though the two works differ: Remarque depicts collective generational waste in war, while Buzzati focuses on individual, self-inflicted existential waste. The article draws parallels to Kafka's 'Before the Law' and 'In the Penal Colony,' and notes Buzzati's surrealist and Poe-like tendencies in stories like 'Seven Floors.' The military setting is allegorical, representing the absurdity of waiting for meaning. The piece is authored by Vieri Peroncini for MIfacciodiCultura and published on Artspecialday.