A Review of The Tartar Steppe, by Dino Buzzati
Life doesn’t always go as planned. In my (admittedly lengthy) post about my past and future reading habits, I mentioned that I would start the year off with Jane Austen’s Emma. But alas, its beautiful orange cover is hidden behind a glass shelf above my writer’s desk, its spine completely intact. I will get to it, but something came up…
There is a YouTube channel called “Better Than Food Book Reviews” run by a fantastic gentleman named Clifford Lee Sargent. Cliff is my kind of guy. We share pretty similar reading interests and I always look forward to his honest, often funny, reviews of his latest reads. Wanting to support his channel, I purchased some of his bookmarks and asked him to write on two of them book recommendations for, as I described myself, a “25 year old in the midst of a decent existential crisis.” Cliff did not disappoint and I am forever in debt to him for suggesting I read The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati.
The Tartar Steppe, written in 1938, is about a young idealistic Italian officer named Giovanni Drogo. Full of determination to not only serve his country but to acquire military glory, Drogo is sent to be stationed at Fort Bastiani, a fort nestled high in the mountains, behind which lay the vast expanse of the Tartar desert. Fort Bastiani, however, has never seen battle. Its veteran soldiers have grown old waiting for the mysterious Tartars to approach from beyond the steppe, but war never comes. Drogo, who initially plans to stay a mere four months before returning to the city, will spend the rest of his life at the fort, waiting for glory, intoxicated with the high of hope (what some call “hopium”). And as those years go by, his family and friends back in the city have moved on with their lives, building families, starting careers and swooning lovers. Drogo feels like a stranger in his own home when he returns to the city on a short leave. But the high is too great, so he returns to Fort Bastiani, still hopeful that he will achieve military glory when the Tartars finally invade. I shall not spoil the end of the story and will only say that the reader’s heart is held in suspense until the very end.
This novel is decidedly unique in that it ought to be read like a poem, with the reader coming to it with her own baggage, his own glasses. It is a book that becomes intimately personal and reflective as you grapple with its questions. Broadly speaking however, it seems that there are two ways to read The Tartar Steppe. Many reviewers insist that we glance upon Drogo and his fellow brothers in arms with a sense of disgust and judgement. Do something! we scream. Behold, men wasting their lives, waiting for something that may never come their way. How sad and pitiful! The world passes them by because they are duped by the false promises of hope and grand dreams. One reviewer described Drogo as “pathetic.” We follow Drogo’s life as if he believes that the world owes him the fulfillment of his dreams. One is reminded of Stephen Crane’s famous poem “A Man Said to the Universe” (thanks Lee!):
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
In this way, the novel stands as a call to arms, that man ought not let the world pass him by. Carpe diem, in this reading, is the novel’s central theme and Drogo’s inability to do so serves as a wake up call to the reader.
Perhaps. But there is an opposite reading, one that renders Drogo perhaps the most noble, honest and authentic character I have ever encountered.
In the end of this thing we call life, we all suffer and die alone. Whatever it is we make of life, we take it unto death. As we follow Drogo from his first day at the fort to his last, we are forced to ponder the same question Hamlet asked: how does one live so that he can bear the whips and scorns of time? Something has to make the roller coaster of life meaningful. Something has to compel us to continually “grunt and sweat under a weary life.” For Giovanni Drogo, that something is hope, the belief in a dream of grand ambitions. For others, like Drogo’s friends and family back home, they seem to merely “get on with their lives,” perhaps settling down and marrying. Yet while the “exciting” city life is meant to serve as a foil to life in the fort, one gets the sense that Drogo is not moved by the city’s culture. Life in the fort, Drogo’s ex-lover Maria tells him, must be dreadfully “boring,” while her trips trotting around Europe are filled with excitement. But Drogo is not interested in her trips, nor in the world she inhabits. In a beautiful turn of phrase, Buzzati describes Drogo’s exit from Maria’s home and the city by saying that Drogo felt that “he had no roots there anymore, a world of strangers where his place had been easily filled.” What a beautifully sad description. There are no roots; life in the city for all its inhabitants has become shallow. There is no depth there, nothing to keep them grounded. They have nothing that anchors them, that ensures that they remain upright when the turbulent winds of life inevitably blow. Perhaps they live, but live for what? Come hell or high water, at least Drogo knows what he lives for.
I cannot help but feel that all the reviews that trash Drogo and his mates for letting life sweep them by are missing the point entirely. Perhaps in our modern foolishness, we are too quick to dismiss dreams, hopes and aspirations. We look at Giovanni Drogo and feel sorry for him, begging him to bury his childlike idealism and embrace something “practical.” But it is he who feels sorry for us, for Drogo never resigns. We do. Drogo leads an examined and introspective life, (and a bookish one, mind you) and that makes it intrinsically meaningful. Drogo knows what he will die for, which gives him the power to live. And it is precisely because he knows what he will die for that the journey towards death itself has meaning. How many of us can say that we’ve bothered to question what motivates us? How many of us truly believe in the road we travel towards death? If anything, the speed of modernity prevents that from ever happening.
Moreover, Drogo’s job atop the fort was a shit job, no doubt. But it was not a bullshit job, which is what many of us are destined to fall into when we stop believing in the power of dreams and ideals. It is us, not Drogo, who are inebriated, only we by the mediocrity and transience of modern life. Drogo speaks of dreams, we speak of “advancements.” Drogo seeks glory, we seek more money and a nicer car. Drogo is a man of principle, we a people of addictions. Cioran once quipped that “some have misfortunes; others, obsessions. Which are worse off?”Buzzati’s masterpiece tips its hand at an answer.
By the time you reach the end of the novel—the summit, if you will— you learn its central lesson: find what you love and let it kill you. I doubt any of us have bothered to let that happen.
The Tartar Steppe was perhaps the greatest book I have ever read. It is as close to perfect as man can achieve on this side of Heaven. Every page forced me to ponder my own existence and question my own values, which is what the best of literature inspires in its reader. It is a redemptive, cathartic, inspiring and hopeful book, one whose story I will forever carry in my heart.
Buzzati wrote The Tartar Steppe in 1938. Just one year later, the world would question its own values. Let us hope that we never need war, conflict or strife to force us into contemplating the singular roads we all travel...
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