ABSTRACT
While clearly a major figure of twentieth-century Italian literature, Dino Buzzati is not easy to situate in the context of his contemporaries. His lifetime (1906–1972) spanned some of Italy’s greatest political upheavals and cultural movements and coincided with changes in both the status of literature and approaches to literary criticism. While these developments provide a relevant context for Buzzati’s literary production, he nevertheless stands apart from the period as a lone figure who did not take an explicit political stance and who cannot be classified as a member of a school of writing. And if the term fantastico has frequently been used by critics when referring to Buzzati’s work, it does not seek so much to connect him to a literary school as to identify certain preoccupations which are also evident in the works of his contemporaries. Often mentioned in connection with Buzzati is Kafka, though Buzzati’s knowledge of the Czech author whose writings preceded him was scant (Veronese Arslan 1974, 20). These affinities are best understood as elements of a common zeitgeist, rather than influences. Stephen Martin cautions readers against facile intertextual assumptions which “are not helpful in elaborating a full meaning for a Buzzati text” (1995, 72). Yves Frontenac (1982) draws links between Buzzati and his contemporary Julien Gracq, though, once again, the two authors worked independently, perhaps drawing on some common sources. Buzzati has been compared and contrasted with Bontempelli (Airoldi Namer and Panafieu 1992) and Calvino (Lagoni Danstrup 1992). Claudio Toscani points out that Buzzati’s work follows on from a continuum of writers of racconti fantastici, including Tarchetti, Govoni, Palazzeschi, Bontempelli, Savinio and Delfini, but also emphasises that, with respect to his contemporaries, he stood apart: “Buzzati stands to one side… in the literary scene of the time” [“Buzzati è in un angolo… nel panorama letterario dell’ora”] (1987, 25).
