Mysterious Apparitions in the Land of Darkness: The Influence of Conrad in Buzzati’s Short Fiction

A Journal published by theInstitute of Anglo-Italian Studies, University of Malta

Edited by: Peter VassalloVolume Editor: Gloria Lauri-Lucente

Journalof

Anglo-ItalianStudies

2012

Volume 12

(ii) Prelims (Vol. 12) 1/6/14, 11:52 AM3

First published by the Malta University Publishing in 2013

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(ii) Prelims (Vol. 12) 1/6/14, 11:52 AM4

Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Virgil’s Aeneid: Gonzalo onClaribel and ‘Widow Dido’

Robert Hollander 1

Dante, ‘The Prophet of Liberty’: The Mainstream IdeologicalParadigm in Romantic Britain vis-à-vis Isaiah Berlin’sReflections on Liberty

Edoardo Crisafulli 13

The Humanist Petrarch in Medieval and Early Modern EnglandAlessandra Petrina 45

Mia Bella Italia: Mary Shelley’s ItaliesTimothy Webb 63

‘The Burning Bush’: Browning’s First Visit to Asolo, June 1838Sue Brown 83

‘This Extraordinary Apathy’: Wilkie Collins, Italy and theContradictions of the Risorgimento

Mariaconcetta Costantini 95

The Italian Scenes in Anthony Trollope’sHe Knew He Was Right

David Farley-Hills 111

Gendering Madness: Shakespeare’s Macbeth re-visited by VerdiMaria Frendo 121

John Ruskin, Venice, and the ‘Stones’ of an Italian UtopiaMichela Marroni 147

William Morris’s Mediaevalism between Dante and Boccaccio:A Cognitive Approach to Literature

Eleonora Sasso 157

CONTENTS

(ii) Prelims (Vol. 12) 1/6/14, 11:52 AM7

testBy the Southern Sea: Gissing’s Meridian Flight from the

Realm of ModernityLuigi Cazzato 173

Modernist Myths. A Comparison between «La cognizione del dolore»and «Ulysses»

Valentino Baldi 183

Mysterious Apparitions in the Land of Darkness: The Influence ofConrad in Buzzati’s Short Fiction

Valentina Polcini 197

The Narrative of Realism and Myth in Francesco Rosi’sSalvatore Giuliano and Michael Cimino’s The Sicilian

Gloria Lauri-Lucente 221

Betrayal Italian StyleSara Soncini 229

Counterfeit Classics: Shakespeare/Camilleri Joking with Masks,Translations and Traditions

Carla Dente 245

Conducting the Orchestra: Recent Experiences in TranslatingItalian Fiction into English

Silvester Mazzarella 263

(ii) Prelims (Vol. 12) 1/6/14, 11:52 AM8

Mysterious Apparitions in the Land of Darkness 197

__________1. Antonia Arslan, Invito alla lettura di Dino Buzzati (Milan: Mursia, 1974), 34.2. Marcello Carlino, Come leggere ‘Il deserto dei Tartari’ di Dino Buzzati (Milan:

Mursia, 1976), 54.

Mysterious Apparitions in theLand of Darkness:

The Influence of Conrad inBuzzati’s Short Fiction

Valentina Polcini

The existence of an intertextual relationship between Dino Buzzati andJoseph Conrad has been pointed out by scholars since the 1970s, eventhough in many cases they did not go beyond a cursory acknowledgementof similarities in the works of the two authors. For example, AntoniaArslan just lists Conrad’s Lord Jim among Buzzati’s juvenile readingswhich might have left their imprint in his creative mind.1 Marcello Carlinomakes rather unconvincing associations between Buzzati and other writers,one of whom is Conrad:

Di Conrad si utilizzano, a scartamento ridotto, parvenze di immagini eclimi di sospensione, denotati da un ambiguo rapporto tra personaggi,personaggio e ambiente; ma, per quanto attiene alle innovazioni stilistichedell’esule polacco, al gergo e al disporsi allucinato del linguaggio, nessunatraccia si conserva nella scrittura di Buzzati.2

In general, when critics did not overtly accuse Buzzati of plagiarism,they brought to light only some similarities in the settings and characters,thereby confirming the Conradian influence but nevertheless deemingBuzzati a mere epigone.

(13) Valentina Polcini 1/6/14, 11:44 AM197

VALENTINA POLCINI198

It is only in the mid-1980s that scholars began to apply an intertextualapproach, resulting in a reassessment of Buzzati’s work and its dialoguewith other texts. In this respect, Judy Rawson’s first-ever presentation ofBuzzati to the English-speaking public in 1984 represents a landmark.Taking into account the link with Conrad that Buzzati himself mentionsin the book-length interview Un autoritratto,3 Rawson recognizesConrad’s Lord Jim as a hypotext for Buzzati’s first novel Bàrnabo dellemontagne. She draws a connection between the two protagonists andinterprets Bàrnabo as an anti-hero because of his lack of courage andeventual understated redemption:

He is a Lord Jim figure who fails his fellow forest wardens when they areunder attack from bandits. He retreats to the tame peasant life of theplains, but returns finally to make good in his own unspectacular way asthe solitary warden of an outpost in the high mountains near the frontier.4

Further investigation on this point has been carried out by Nella Giannetto,who writes:

[…] entrambi sono in realtà degli antieroi, cui toccano in sorte soprattuttosconfitte e che riescono alla fine a riscattarsi parzialmente solo accettandocon dignità e una nuova intelligenza delle cose un epilogo del tutto diversoda quello al quale hanno mirato per tutta la vita.5

In addition, Giannetto associates the protagonist of Buzzati’s shortstory ‘Il borghese stregato’ with that of Conrad’s Victory for theirdetachment from reality.

Starting from Giannetto’s suggestion, in this article I will illustratehow Conrad’s narrative inspired Buzzati’s short fiction, precisely someAfrican reportages with a conspicuous fictional component and shortstories tout court. Whereas the influence of Lord Jim on Bàrnabo delle__________3. Buzzati says: ‘Quali sono i personaggi letterari che mi hanno più incantato?... Sono

Lord Jim di Conrad, e quell’altro suo protagonista (di cui non mi ricordo più ilnome) nel libro Vittoria, che è una vicenda molto simile a quella di Lord Jim’; YvesPanafieu, Dino Buzzati: un autoritratto. Dialoghi con Yves Panafieu. Luglio-settembre1971 (Milan: Mondadori, 1973), 112.

4. Judy Rawson, ‘Dino Buzzati’, in Writers and Society in Contemporary Italy, ed. byMichael Caesar and Peter Hainsworth (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1984), 191–210 (191).

5. Cf. Nella Giannetto, ‘Dino Buzzati e la letteratura inglese’, in Dino Buzzati, ed. byFelix Siddell (Spunti e Ricerche, 13, 1998), 38–58 (52).



montagne is recognizable mainly on a thematic level, the focus onBuzzati’s short writings allows us to appreciate a variety of intertextualstrategies he used, ranging from literary memory to direct and indirectallusion. This opens up new perspectives concerning Buzzati’s creationof settings and characterization as well as the fictionalization of hisexperience in Africa and the dualism between journalistic and fictionalwriting dominating his career.

Before passing to textual analysis, it is important to contextualizeBuzzati as a reader of Conrad’s works. Buzzati first read Conrad in hisyouth and soon made him one of his favourite writers. A reference toConrad can be found in the letter Buzzati sent to his lifelong friendArturo Brambilla on 25th July 1925, when the writer was almost nineteen.After inviting Arturo to spend some days in the family villa outsideBelluno, he writes about his summer reading and concludes with atelegraphic request: ‘Portami Lord Jim’.6 Many years later Buzzatiacknowledges his youth predilection for Conrad:

Nella mia giovinezza, nella mia adolescenza, ci furono gli inglesi: OscarWilde, Poe […]. Naturalmente un po’ Stevenson. Conrad, eh, Conrad,parecchio! Dickens, anche. Per esempio, ciò che in Conrad per me è ilmassimo della bellezza è Cuore di tenebra.7

Autobiographical evidence confirms Buzzati’s profound literary interestin Conrad, thus partly explaining why Conrad became such an inspiringmodel when Buzzati set to write fiction. Moreover, from Lettere aBrambilla and Un autoritratto it is also possible to determine whichConrad books Buzzati read. They are: Lord Jim (first serialized inBlackwood’s Magazine in 1899–1900 and published as a book in 1900),Heart of Darkness (first serialized in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1898–1899 and published in book form in 1902), and Victory (1915).8

Tracing the possible intertextual archetypes for Buzzati’s landscapes,Caspar talks of ‘influence culturelle’ and lists Conrad among those authors__________

6. Dino Buzzati, Lettere a Brambilla, ed. by Luciano Simonelli (Novara: IstitutoGeografico De Agostini, 1985), 173.

7. Panafieu, Dino Buzzati: un autoritratto, 28.8. A clarification should be made that Buzzati could not read English, so he would

generally read English books in either Italian or French translation. This must havebeen the case for Conrad’s fiction too. As Giannetto points out, this linguistic issueis of some import when studying Buzzati’s intertextuality (see Giannetto, ‘DinoBuzzati e la letteratura inglese’, 38).



—such as Hans Christian Andersen, the Grimm brothers, E.T.A.Hoffmann, R. L. Stevenson, E.A. Poe—, who inspired Buzzati with ‘uneprédilection très nette pour les paysages “nordiques” lui rappelant seschères Dolomites.’9 This link between Conrad—whose stories are mainlyset at sea and in exotic colonial outposts in the Pacific—and Buzzati’sliterary preference for northern mountainous scenery may sound far-fetched, but it hints nonetheless at Buzzati’s protean idea of landscape. Insome passages of Un autoritratto, Buzzati compares the mountains ofnorthern Italy (that he had known since childhood) with the Africandesert (where he spent some time as a war correspondent for the Corrieredella sera),10 not just for their morphologic likeness but, more specifically,because they aroused similar emotions in him:

Effettivamente, quando sono stato in Africa mi sono reso conto che c’eramolta somiglianza tra gli uadi del deserto, sempre secchi – pioverà unavolta in cinquant’anni – e i greti dei nostri fiumi, che sono una delle pochecose che diano il senso della solitudine nella natura, almeno quale ce lavediamo intorno adesso […]11

L’Abissinia allora, era come un western favoloso. L’Africa dei deserti miha fatto un’immensa impressione, che però si ricollega per infinite analogiealle esperienze di montagna.12

In the introduction to the collection of Buzzati’s African writings, Casparplaces him in the line of those authors who—since the late nineteenthcentury—have described Africa as a primeval, mythical and impenetrablecontinent. Conrad with his Heart of Darkness is obviously named amongthem.13 It is also relevant to note that Buzzati enjoyed re-reading thisnovel when he was onboard the battle cruiser Trieste in 1941: ‘D’altro,niente di speciale. Ho riletto con molto piacere Cuore di tenebra diConrad; leggo qualche libro yogi e niente altro.’14 The reasons why hepicked from the shelf a book he had presumably read as a teenager__________

9. Marie-Hélène Caspar, Fantastique et mythe personnel dans l’oeuvre de Dino Buzzati(La Garenne-Colombes: Erasme, 1990), 146.

10. For a complete biographical account of Buzzati in Africa see Lorenzo Viganò,Album Buzzati (Milan: Mondadori, 2006), 151–184.

11. Panafieu, Dino Buzzati: un autoritratto, 48.12. Quoted in L’Africa di Buzzati. Libia: 1933; Etiopia: 1939–1940, ed. by Marie-

Hélène Caspar (Nanterre: Université Paris X, 1997), 33.13. Ibid., 60.14. Letter dated R. Nave Trieste, 2nd August 1941, in Buzzati, Lettere a Brambilla, 262.



around fifteen years before may be various, but we can quite rightlyassume that it was not just for pleasure. In all probability, Buzzatisomehow associated Kurtz’s story with his own African experience. Hewas trying to find a measure with which to compare the Italian colonialenterprise, or even an access key to the unfathomable mysteries of Africa,by juxtaposing his own response with the viewpoint expressed by Conradin Heart of Darkness—which is also based on its author’s autobiographicalexperience.

Still, such implications can hardly be detected in the articles Buzzatiwrote from Africa for the Corriere della sera, since they are mainlydocumentary pieces and did not escape the Fascist censor. There arenonetheless some rare occasions in which Buzzati’s fictional vein takesover the journalistic restraints imposed by Fascist rhetoric and the imageof an alluring Africa breaks through.15 In this regard, the ending of a longarticle about centurione Bertoglio and his plan to rebuild the desertedcity of Gildessa is a notable example:

Ce n’andammo verso il tramonto, lasciando il regio residente ai piedi dellabandierina tricolore che tra poco sarebbe stata ammainata. Allontanandocisi ebbe l’impressione che dietro a noi si chiudesse una porta invisibile. Eche dietro questa porta fosse rimasto esiliato il centurione Bertoglio, piùsolitario e tranquillo che mai, mentre sipari neri si alzavano dai funestivalloni e i fuochi fatui uscivano fuori delle tombe per terrorizzare le iene.16

In this excerpt, the appeal of the exotic landscape is combined with theuncanny feeling that the Italian settlers will never penetrate the depths ofAfrica, although they have marked this land with familiar signs, such asthe tricolore. This cultural divide is symbolized by the image of a doorclosing behind the group of visitors; since they cannot comprehend Africa,the natural scenery lying on the other side of the invisible barrier assumesa phantasmagorical connotation. Like Conrad’s Kurtz, Bertoglio is amongthose very few Europeans who have found a key to the mysteries of theContinent and have thus embarked on a one-way journey into the ‘heartof darkness’. The chosen ones have undergone a transformation that ledthem to abandon their former selves; for this reason, they have become__________15. For further reading on the interconnections between journalistic and fictional writing

in Buzzati’s fantastic, see Luciano Parisi, ‘Dino Buzzati: l’ambiguità della fantasia’,Forum Italicum, 39, 1 (2005), 83–99.

16. Dino Buzzati, ‘Un uomo bianco solo nella città morta’ (1° gennaio 1940), in L’Africadi Buzzati, ed. by Caspar, 169–175 (175).



legendary figures—half mystic half mad—in the eyes of their fellows. Inshort, Bertoglio, marooned in such a lonely spot, is one of those inscrutablecreatures produced by Italian colonialism, just as Kurtz can be regardedas a historical outcome of the contradictions of British imperialism.

If in Buzzati’s reportages Conrad’s shadow comes out only in theoverlap between journalistc writing and fiction, it is more patent in hisfictional stories. The short story ‘Uomo in Africa’, that Buzzati wascommissioned to write by the journal Primato in 1940, deals with theidea of inevitably being dragged into the heart of Africa. The protagonistis an Italian whose name remains deliberately vague being alternativelyspelt as Bondini, Bondrini and Brondini. Because of his unspecifiedidentity, this man can be seen as embodying every European colonizerwho went to Africa searching for personal fulfilment. The narrator firstcomes across the B-character in a hotel hall in Addis Abeba: the mysteriousman in a grey suit is sitting in an armchair patiently awaiting his chance.Afterwards, he reappears in various places involved in differentoccupations: in Dassiè building new roads, in an unknown district of theinterior working as a charcoal burner, and in the Ethiopian desert servingas an army officer. Moreover, the B-character eventually takes off hisworn-out suit and puts on a Sahara tunic: this act is an index of hiscomplete detachment from the homeland. For both Kurtz and the B-character, Africa triggers a process of self-discovery ending in aconfrontation with their souls:

Mano mano che l’Africa si andava impadronendosi di lui e della sua vita, idesideri di Bondini parevano ridurre progressivamente il loro respiro. Unavolta era il ritorno in Italia ad apparirgli l’unica speranza. Poi fu l’Asmarache risplendeva alla mente sua – giù nelle solitudini dancale – come unconturbante miraggio, per nulla dissimile dalle grandi città dei romanzi,popolate di occasioni e di amori. Oggi niente più di Diredaua bastava adappagare i suoi sogni mondani.

Ch’egli si fosse veramente dimenticato l’esistenza dell’Europa, dell’umanitàdiversa ed immensa, accalcata tra meravigliosi palazzi (anche se tetri)lungo strade fiammeggianti tutta notte di candide luci? Erano le aspirazionisue divenute in un certo senso provinciali e meschine? Oppure si eracompiuta una sempre maggiore rinuncia, un fondo mutamento d’animo,lui stesso inconsapevole?17

__________17. Dino Buzzati, ‘Uomo in Africa’ (2 marzo 1940), ibid., 320–326 (323).



Bondini/Bondrini/Brondini’s one-way journey to Africa, like that of Kurtz,stands for a metaphorical journey into the darkness of the human soul.What he finds there is ‘soltanto una specie di vuoto immobile e caldo’,18

but—similar to Kurtz crying out ‘the horror’ with his last breath—thediscovery of this void will change him completely, because it representsthe ultimate shocking truth about human existence.

Along with the mountains and the desert, the sea is another Buzzatiansetting. However, as Lazzarin explains in relation to ‘La corazzata Tod’,Buzzati’s personal experience of the sea was so limited that he had toresort to his literary memory. Conrad was of course one of the writers herecalled:

D’altro canto, la descrizione dell’affondamento di una nave e della grandetranquillità dell’oceano subito dopo la catastrofe sembra essere in qualchemisura canonica nella narrativa ottocentesca: si pensi ancora a L’uomo cheride di Hugo e a Lord Jim di Conrad. Può dunque risultare difficile, intanto numero di riferimenti, e tanto ‘nobili’, ricostruire l’iter delle influenzetestuali; tuttavia, al di là del dubbio sullo statuto della fonte, tra recuperodiretto e materiale di genere, resta la conformità della descrizione buzzatianaa un canone.

Nella narrativa buzzatiana il mare è contesto ambientale di scarsa rilevanza.Talora però criteri di coerenza ed economicità ne impongono l’utilizzazione:la memoria letteraria esercita in questi casi una funzione di supplenza,sostituendosi a un’esperienza biografica inesistente o poco marcata. Uncerto coefficiente di convenzionalità della descrizione, che esibisce il suocarattere letterario, sembra inevitabile.19

Lazzarin’s argument is backed by biographical evidence. Even though‘La corazzata Tod’ first appeared in Sessanta racconti in 1958 and thereforewas supposedly written after the war, Buzzati’s direct involvement inocean battles had been rather insignificant, as he himself admits:

[…] Io non conosco il grande oceano, o meglio, essendo stato in marinacon delle grandi navi, non è che io abbia combattuto con l’oceano…D’altra parte non ho mai assistito a grandi tempeste, salvo una volta di

__________18. Ibid., 324.19. Stefano Lazzarin, ‘Immagini del mondo e memoria letteraria nella narrativa

buzzatiana’, in Dino Buzzati. Immagini del mondo, Proceedings of the Conference,Paris X-Nanterre, 28 May 1994, ed. by Marie-Hélène Caspar (Paris: Publidix, 1994)(= Narrativa, 6, 1994), 139–154 (153).



notte, nel Mediterraneo, in cui delle navi erano andate a fondo… Ma perquesto non posso dire di avere proprio assorbito la bellezza dell’oceano[…]Per il deserto invece è stato diverso. Ci sono rimasto abbastanza. Sia neldeserto piatto, quello del Sahara, sia nel deserto tipo brousse o savana. Lìè una cosa stupenda[...]20

A similar case can be added to the one identified by Lazzarin. Thisis also linked to Conrad and the seascape but establishes a different typeof intertextual connection, perhaps more explicit yet equally interesting.The protagonist of ‘Lo scoglio’ inquires into the legend of a father,whose sorrow of having lost his son at sea was so unbearable that he wastransformed into a rock off the coasts of Lipari. The narrator is taken tothe place by a strange boatman, who turns out to be the ghost of anotherfather whose son had died twenty-five years before in the battle of CapeMatapan. The motif of the mournful parent undergoing sea change isdoubly intensified by the use of the narrative frame of a story within thestory. However, the mise-en-abyme structure is in turn interrupted by thehistorical-autobiographical reference,21 thus resulting in a typical Buzzatianblending of genres: while the first story is a mythological tale, the secondcan be defined as semi-realistic. The sea, that constitutes the backgroundfor them both, is represented as the mysterious abode of awful creatureswhose unheard-of stories at once frighten and intrigue. The two fathersare telling examples: one has become an unnaturally twisted rock coveredwith seaweed, the other looks like a dead jellyfish and:

Era alto, scheletrico, intensamente pallido e gli si sarebbero dati per lo menonovanta anni se il volto, affilatissimo, avesse avuto una sola ruga. Anche peril singolare cappello di paglia a tesa orizzontale larghissima ricordavacerte meridiane apparizioni dei tropici cariche di fatalità, balenanti dallepagine di Conrad. Ma ciò che più colpiva era la sua totale ‘assenza’ quale èdei fantasmi, i quali ignorano tutto quello che avviene intorno.

Notai che le scarne braccia terminavano in mani morbosamente nocchiuteche si muovevano con fatica, a rivelare lunghi travagli di artrosi. Anche ilpasso era stento e alquanto tremulo. Se il mare non fosse stato cosìrassicurante, mai avrei accettato un accompagnatore tanto problematico.22

__________20. Panafieu, Dino Buzzati: un autoritratto, 48.21. Buzzati took part in the battle of Cape Matapan on board Italian battle cruisers on

28–29 March 1941 (see Viganò, Album Buzzati, 176).22. Dino Buzzati, ‘Lo scoglio’, in Le notti difficili, ed. by Domenico Porzio (Milan:

Mondadori, 2006), 26–31 (29), my italics.



Instead of providing the readers with an imitative description, Buzzatiappeals to their literary memory, taking for granted their acquaintancewith Conrad’s fiction, and especially with his characterization of certainseafaring figures. The passage quoted above offers a physical descriptionof the boatman, which corresponds to the norms of the Buzzatian fantastic:a creature poised between reality and dream. If, on the one hand, hiswasted appearance makes him a man of flesh and blood, on the other, histotal unconcern for the world characterizes him as a ghost. As oftenhappens in Buzzati, ambiguity is left unsolved thereby lingering on beyondthe material boundaries of the text. What is quite unusual is the explicitallusion to Conrad in the narration. It seems almost as if Buzzati feelsunable to reproduce the typical Conradian aura that surrounds thecharacters inhabiting the seascape and thus he resorts to mentioning hismodel directly. To say it in Harold Bloom’s terms,23 Buzzati might havefelt the weight of his own belatedness and preferred to simply declareConrad’s superiority as master of sea narrative, instead of daring toconfront him on a fictional ground.

More than other intertextual practices, allusion demands from thereader an adequate literary background as well as an active role in decodingclues and making connections with other texts. The figure picked out byBuzzati is a recurrent one in Conrad’s fiction. The detail of the wide-rimmed pith hat is highly evocative of the paradigm of tropical heat,which causes hallucination—even madness—and which is related to thesense of fatality experienced in extreme weather conditions. The followingextract from Heart of Darkness makes clear what Buzzati is hinting at:

Through my glasses I saw the slope of a hill interspersed with rare treesand perfectly free from undergrowth. A long decaying building on thesummit was half buried in the high grass; the large holes in the peakedroof gaped black from afar; the jungle and the woods made a background.There was no enclosure or fence of any kind; but there had been oneapparently, for near the house half-a-dozen slim posts remained in a row,roughly trimmed, and with their upper ends ornamented with round carvedballs. The rails, or whatever there had been between, had disappeared. Ofcourse the forest surrounded all that. The river-bank was clear, and on thewater-side I saw a white man under a hat like a cart-wheel beckoningpersistently with his whole arm. Examining the edge of the forest aboveand below, I was almost certain I could see movements—human forms

__________23. My reference is of course to Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of

Poetry (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).



gliding here and there. I steamed past prudently, then stopped the enginesand let her drift down. The man on the shore began to shout, urging us toland. ‘We have been attacked,’ screamed the manager. ‘I know – I know.It’s all right,’ yelled back the other, as cheerful as you please. ‘Comealong. It’s all right. I am glad.’

His aspect reminded me of something I had seen – something funny Ihad seen somewhere. As I manoeuvred to get alongside, I was askingmyself, ‘What does this fellow look like?’ Suddenly I got it. He lookedlike a harlequin. His clothes had been made of some stuff that was brownholland probably, but it was covered with patches all over, with brightpatches, blue, red, and yellow – patches on the back, patches on front,patches on elbows, on knees; coloured binding round his jacket, scarletedging at the bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made him lookextremely gay and wonderfully neat withal, because you could see howbeautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face, veryfair, no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles andfrowns chasing each other over that open countenance like sunshine andshadow on a windswept plain. ‘Look out, captain!’ he cried; ‘there’s asnag lodged in here last night.’ What! Another snag? I confess I sworeshamefully. I had nearly holed my cripple, to finish off that charming trip.The harlequin on the bank turned his little pug nose up to me. ‘YouEnglish?’ he asked, all smiles. ‘Are you?’ I shouted from the wheel. Thesmiles vanished, and he shook his head as if sorry for my disappointment.Then he brightened up. ‘Never mind!’ he cried encouragingly. ‘Are we intime?’ I asked. ‘He is up there,’ he replied, with a toss of the head up thehill, and becoming gloomy all of a sudden. His face was like the autumnsky, overcast one moment and bright the next.24

This long passage is worth quoting in its entirety. Indeed, it makes usrealize how the sudden apparition of this bizarre man is not so incongruousas it might seem with the luxuriant and imposing landscape behind him.His large hat, harlequin-like appearance and changing countenance are,in fact, as cryptic as the tangled vegetation, which has obliterated thedecaying signs of human presence.

Considering the element of the hat, what Buzzati alludes to in theexcerpt from ‘Lo scoglio’ quoted above is perhaps a strong sense ofunpredictability and the awareness of the inevitable appointment with

__________24. Joseph Conrad, ‘Heart of Darkness’, in ‘Heart of Darkness’ and Other Tales, ed. by

Cedric Watts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 101–187 (157–158), myitalics.



fate, which always lurk in Conrad’s landscapes—irrespective of whetherit is the forest of Congo, the open sea, or a tropical island. Rather thanbeing inscribed in Buzzati’s landscapes, such uncanny feelings areembodied in the characters’ indecipherable behaviour and unearthlyappearance. Bertoglio, the B-character and the ghost of the boatman canbe grouped with other ‘meridiane apparizioni’ à la Conrad inhabitingBuzzati’s fiction, such as the characters presented in ‘Ombra del sud’and ‘Gli strani rumori di Peterborough.’

Both stories are set in Africa, where the two protagonists havemysterious encounters. The narrator of ‘Ombra del sud’ is on a touraround the Italian colonial settlements. During his journey from PortSaid (Egypt) down to Massaua (Eritrea) and Harar (Ethiopia) he repeatedlynotices the same white-clad figure25:

[…] un uomo, un arabo forse, vestito di una larga palandrana bianca, intesta una specie di cappuccio – o così mi parve – ugualmente bianco.Camminava lentamente in mezzo alla strada, come dondolando, quasi stessecercando qualcosa, o titubasse, o fosse anche un poco storno.26

The lines I have emphasized are repeated with slight variations throughoutthe narration, to mark with a peculiar rhythm each time ‘l’araboindecifrabile’ appears. Notwithstanding a growing sense of anxiety, thenarrator becomes acquainted with his visitor, as if the latter were a friendlyyet enigmatic presence accompanying him through an unknown land.The narrator eventually gives his own explanation of the phenomenon:

Considerato a distanza, quell’essere mi risultava adesso come unapersonificazione, racchiudente il segreto stesso dell’Africa. Tra me e questaterra c’era dunque, prima che lo sospettassi, un legame. Era venuto a meun messaggero, dai regni favolosi del sud, a indicarmi la via?27

__________25. The protagonist of ‘Scorta personale’ has a similar experience. On the outskirts of

the various cities where he travels, he spots the same man staring and waving at himwith a stick. These encounters go on throughout his life. This story can be considereda variation on the theme, since it has an urban setting and the mysterious figurerepresents death patiently waiting for every man to come to the end of life; see DinoBuzzati, ‘Scorta personale’, in Paura alla Scala, ed. by Fausto Gianfranceschi (Milan:Mondadori, 2006), 83–87.

26. Dino Buzzati, ‘Ombra del sud’, in Sessanta racconti, 47–53 (47), my italics.27. Ibid., 51.



La faccenda non è molto chiara ma mi pare di avere capito che tu vorresticondurmi più in là, ogni volta più in là, sempre più nel centro, fino allefrontiere del tuo incognito regno.28

Apart from identifying the mysterious man with Africa, the conclusionsdrawn by the narrator are incomplete: the content of the secrets carried bythe Arab are not revealed and his origins remain unknown. When the storyends, the narrator is still undecided whether to follow the visitor or not.

At the core of ‘Gli strani rumori di Peterborough’ is an encounter ofMr Austin Munsel-Dorr, an English doctor specialized in tropical diseases.During a scientific expedition in the Egyptian desert he bumps into acaravan and is asked if he will see a man suffering from malaria. Thedoctor saves the life of a soi-disant Arab prince, Sadi Ben Houssan, andreceives from him a magic ring that, ten years later, will save him fromdeath. The apparition of the prince is so striking that the doctor speculatesabout the identity of this man lying in a little tent in the middle of thedesert and surrounded by luxurious carpets and objects:

Chi era veramente? Un principe arabo? Ma cosa era andato a fare laggiùtra le sabbie eterne? O era un europeo inabissatosi nelle tenebre dell’Africaper qualche dolente segreto? Un mercante di schiavi? Un avventuriero?Avrà avuto una sessantina d’anni, piccolo e segaligno. Il volto sfuggiva aogni decifrazione: arso dal sole e immobile, dolce e insieme inespressivo.Soltanto gli occhi parlavano di Oriente. Lenti e pigri sguardi ne uscivano,privi di intelligenza. Eppure dopo, ripensandoci, ci si domandava se dietronon ci fosse nascosta una energia indomabile.29

Buzzati’s mysterious apparitions often carry incomprehensible secrets,obscure or saving messages, but they all reach beyond rational control.The indirect allusion to Kurtz shows once again the pivotal role Conradplayed in the construction of Buzzati’s exotic and sea imagery.

In presenting such an interesting case of intertextual and interculturalexchange, my analysis has stressed Buzzati’s original treatment of theConradian sources and his use of intertextual strategies in general.Moreover, it has offered new insights into Buzzati’s fiction by describing

__________28. Ibid., 52.29. Dino Buzzati, ‘Gli strani rumori di Peterborough’, in Le cronache fantastiche di

Dino Buzzati, ed. by Lorenzo Viganò, 2 vols (Milan: Mondadori, 2005), (‘Fantasmi’),261–270 (p. 264), my italics.



its interplay of appropriation and innovation. In particular, Buzzati’s exoticsettings and the colonizer type are borrowed from Conrad but at the samethey are sourced from Buzzati’s own experience of Italian colonialism inAfrica, which is thus historically and symbolically connoted. What makeshis short stories even more remarkable is the typically Buzzatian blurringof reality and imagination as well as the coexistence in his style ofjournalistic account and fiction.

G. D’Annunzio University, of Chieti–Pescara


Mysterious Apparitions in the Land of Darkness: The Influence of Conrad in Buzzati’s Short Fiction

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