Gazing at the horizon, lieutenant Drogo waits for the enemy to appear. Every day is a good day for getting ready, every signal is a war promise, and every legend whispered in the dark corridors of the fortress points to the imminent arrival of the Tartars. This endless wait slowly eats up lieutenant Drogo until the end of his days.
The second lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is promoted to lieutenant and assigned to start his new military duty at the fortress Bastiani, the last outpost on the far edge of the Tartar Desert. He is excited about the new adventures ahead of him: this desert has been a graveyard of past wars against the Tartars, and he is ready to defend the fortress and his land with bravery. Sad to leave the city and his affections but motivated by the prospect of a new military career, Giovanni Drogo starts his long journey to the fortress. The way is long and lonely, and Giovanni daydreams of his future, imagining himself living among war heroes and having opportunities to prove his courage. After a few days of horse riding, he finally glimpses another person on the way. It is Captain Ortiz, slowly returning to the fortress. The captain, curved on himself and devoid of enthusiasm, greets and tells him about life in the fortress. He refers to it as a dead, small, ancient frontier forgotten by the people of the city. Giovanni, who had quite different ideas about life in the fortress before leaving, begins to worry and wonder what kind of place he has been sent to, so far from the city and unknown to most. His doubts are soon cleared up, and he realises that he has ended up in a fortress that is now decaying and emptied of its strategic importance. As Giovanni arrives, the old lieutenants and officers immediately warn him to leave before it is too late, and he gets stuck there, as they are. Giovanni wastes no time and asks for a transfer back to the city, granted to him with the condition that he waits four months before leaving. Days go by, and Giovanni finds himself following the strict military rules and habits of the fortress put in place in the unlikely event of the enemy’s offensive. He starts appreciating the desert and rocky landscape and grows curious about what would happen if he sees the Tartars on the horizon and is among the few lucky ones who get to fight them. As his four months come to an end, the hope of seeing the enemy appearing on the horizon against everyone else's low expectations becomes an obsession and completely takes over him. Unable to find back his place in the city, unable to give up the idea of the hypothetical battle, and unable to resist to the temptation of the war, Giovanni remains stuck at the fortress, like the old officers before him. He grows old within its rocky walls, never tired of keeping his eyes fixed on the Tartar desert and feeling his heart throbbing at every slight movement. He meets the new lieutenants arriving enthusiastically at the fortress and thinks with regret about how he might have wanted to leave as soon as he arrived and return to the city to lead a social life. He understands what Captain Ortiz must have felt the first day he met him on the way to the fortress. The force that keeps him there, in the middle of nowhere with fanatic officers and lieutenants, is the hope for the battle. And this hope is the same for everyone else. He is slowly eaten up by it and falls ill. People suggest he goes back to the city to receive the appropriate treatment for his illness, but he fights until his last days to stay, hoping to get better for the fight. One morning, the sounds of war come in through the window of his room: the Tartars have arrived, but Giovanni is too weak to stand and too sick to fight. He must return to the city and leave his room to young strong lieutenants. On the only carriage that leaves the fortress that day, Giovanni sees the many soldiers, lieutenants and officers' carriages arriving and getting ready to fight the long-awaited war against the Tartars. He is the only one who misses it. Finally, Giovanni has his battle with death, not on the battlefield but in the unknown bed of an inn, alone in the dark. He dies fighting and winning, overcoming his fear of death and finding an intimate meaning in his life.
Dino Buzzati was a famous Italian writer and journalist at Corriere della Sera, where he worked as an editor, reporter and special correspondent for several years. This novel is perhaps his most famous work and is a clear allegory to his professional experience at Corriere della Sera, where he worked day and night from 1933 to 1939, hoping for his big dream to realise. Lorenzo Viganò, a fellow journalist at the Corriere della Sera, reports how, in that period, the days in the editorial office were all the same and motionless. During these months, Buzzati felt his dream was getting farther away the hardest he was working. However, in the end, the dream of glory came true for both Buzzati and Giovanni Drogo. The novel, simple and linear in its story, has a magnificent and timeless message. It is a clear example of how habits numb and make one lose track of time, and how hope blinds and immobilises. I appreciated Vigano's commentary on the book: he was the one who compared the novel to almost an autobiography of Buzzati.