The Desert of the Tartars

Extracted text from SLIDES_The_Desert_of_the_Tartars_or_The_Tartar_Steppe.ppt:

Nida Institute Inter-semiotic Translation Seminar Misano Adriatico, Italy March 7-11, 2011 The Desert of the Tartars (or The Tartar Steppe) between Literature and Film

Nicola Dusi University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

INTERSEMIOTIC TRANSLATION AND THE DEGREES OF INDETERMINATION 1) Reception theory-based narratological studies that have compared literature and cinema have for the most part dealt with the problem of the specificity of each medium in phenomenological and referentialist terms. They suggest that the fundamental difference in semiotic systems lies in the different ways in which they represent the so-called real world, by distinct degrees and areas of indetermination (Ingarden (1931; Chatman 1978; Genette 1982; Gaudreault 1988).

INTERSEMIOTIC TRANSLATION AND THE DEGREES OF INDETERMINATION 2) Eco (2003) maintains that Intersemiotic Translation cannot be anything other than adaptation because it transforms the previous text often radically. This inevitably explicates the unsaid, showing something in image form and therefore establishing a point of view precisely where the novel is vaguest.

INTERSEMIOTIC TRANSLATION AND THE DEGREES OF INDETERMINATION 3)

In my opinion cinema, like literature, can create variable degrees of indetermination. Its peculiar status as a syncretic semiotic system (Metz, 1971), gives the cinematic text plenty of scope for "narrative", "figurative" and "discursive" implications (Greimas 1984). The audiovisual image may be deliberately open to interpretations and is free to not-show and not-say and to create implicit meaning. For example, it may employ contrasts in sound, unfocused or point-ofview images, partial shots of actors limited to specific details, all of which can create potential elements of indetermination that enable the target text to translate the ambiguities and the semantic openendedness of the source text.

Translating, Adapting, Transposing I propose to talk about transposition: in the etymology of the word, the use of the prefix /tras/ (which is analogous to /trans/) entails both trespassing (as in transgressing) and transferring (as in transfusing), drawing attention on the act of going beyond the source text by passing through it or by multiplying its potential. While the term adaptation calls to mind an inevitable form of reduction, speaking of transposition carries with it the idea of something that survives the passage from one text to the other respecting differences and elements of continuity.

The Desert of the Tartars, between Buzzati (1940) and Zurlini (1971) some basic problems: magic realism and visual arts

1. The perturbing magic realism of Buzzatis writing, (the fantastic or

metaphysical subtext of the novel), is not lost in the realistic linearization of it that Zurlini makes in the film. It survives beneath the surface, above all tied to aspects of the film apparently marginal

and less strictly figurative. 2. These aspects of the film have a kind of common land with Buzzati's poetic in his love of the visual arts and, in particular, of metaphysical painting.

The Desert of the Tartars between Buzzati (1940) and Zurlini (1971) some basic problems: resemantization

3. The filmic transposition reopens the textual dynamics of the novel at its affective and rhythmic levels. It works as a resemantization of the meanings and the tensions of the source text. The film takes into account the romantic and decadent world of the

novel, it also brings the work up to date politically.

In a novel, space, light, noises, as the others forms of the world present themselves as figurative elements.

Figurative / Figural

They may also, however, construct a singular system along with the narrative rhythm, the methods of telling the story, and dimension of percepts and affects that permits a reading in filigree that textual semiotics calls a semi-symbolic system or a figural system. My challenge here is to verify how such a textual strategy transforms itself into a filmic version in specific discursive and

enunciative ways.

Dino Buzzati, The Desert of the Tartars the realization of nothingness

• story of the life of the young officer Giovanni Drogo : an antiheroic hero - a lucid description of the hollow ideal that permeates military rhetoric and its defining power relationships - THEMES: variation about the modes of uneasiness and the waiting

for a denied glory; sense of death; the unawareness of the passing of time and the realization of nothingness; - recurring theme of the Unheimlich (unconfortable) which is a base for the fantastic genre.

Drogo in the Doctors Office: The Creation of the Mystery

Chapter IX: It seemed like yesterday [that he had arrived], and

yet time had slipped away with its unvarying rhythm, no slower for the happy man nor quicker for the unlucky ones of the world.

Another three months had passed passed neither slowly nor quickly.

Dino Buzzati, The Desert of the Tartars, cap. IX the fall into illusion In the novel, we are present at his first fall into illusion, as if a disease or a malady were taking hold of him: It is his fascination with the Fortress that overcomes him exactly at the moment of choosing and makes him back off his previous desire to leave. Beginning of the sequence.... cap. IX (...) The window looked out on to the courtyard from which there rose the sound of regular pacing to and from because it was evening already and the changing of the guard was about to begin. From the window one caught sight of a part of the outer wall and the extraordinarily serene sky. The two officers saluted and Giovanni Drogo saw that the doctor was fully informed of his case.

A page of the roman Dino Buzzati, Il deserto dei Tartari, cap. IX, pp. 70-71; engl. transl. pp. 54-55)

KEY: We employ italics for expressions of emotion (affects) and synesthesia; boldface for chromatic representations; boldface italics for forms and figures (eidetic and topological categories); and underlining for perceptual and cognitive expressions of the gaze.

Dino Buzzati, The Desert of the Tartars, cap. IX Instead of sitting down Giovanni had gone over to the window and every now and then

looked down on the soldiers drawn up on the white snow. The sun had barely set; a blue shadow had spread over the walls. After three or four months, more than half of you people want to get away, the doctor

was saying with a certain sadness in his voice; he too was now wrapped in shadow so that it was difficult to see how he could write. If I could have my time again I would do the same. Yet its a pity. Drogo listened without interest, so intent was he on looking from the window. Then he seemed to see the yellowing walls of the courtyard rise up into the crystal sky, with above them, higher still, solitary towers, crooked battlements crowned with snow, airy outworks and redoubts which he had never seen before. A bright light from the west still illuminated them and thus they shone with an inscrutable life. Never before had Drogo noticed that the Fort was so complicated and immense. At an almost incredible height he saw a window or perhaps a loophole open onto the valley. Up there must be men whom he did not know perhaps even an officer himself with whom he could be friends. In the abyss between bastion and bastion he saw geometrical shadows, frail bridges suspended among the rooftops, strange postern gates barred and flush with the walls, ancient machicolations now blocked up, long roof-trees curved with the years.

Dino Buzzati, The Desert of the Tartars, cap. IX Against the dark blue background of the courtyard he saw in the light of the lanterns and torches soldiers of great height and proud bearing underneath their bayonets. On the brightness of the snow they formed black, immobile files, as if made of iron. They were very beautiful to see and stood like stone while a trumpet began to sound. The blasts spread through the air, gleaming and alive, and struck straight into the heart . . . Down in the courtyard the trumpet was calling, the pure sound of brass and human voice together. It shook once more, warlike and dashing. When it fell silent it left even in the doctors office an enchantment no words could describe. The silence became such that you could hear someones long pace crunch on the frozen snow. The colonel had come down in person to take the salute. Three trumpet calls of extraordinary beauty cleft the sky.

KEY - italics for expressions of emotion (affects) and synesthesia; - boldface for chromatic representations; - boldface italics for forms and figures - underlining for perceptual and cognitive expressions of the gaze.

Short textual analysis (1 of 6).

• Subjective vision of Drogo : everything assumes the cognitive outlines of a grandiose and aesthetically pleasing hallucination. - It is difficult for the reader to decipher whether something is part of Drogos mental constructions, a hallucination, a daydream, or rather is something that the narrator believes to be a part of Drogos acute

sensibility. Definition of magic realism in (Italian) Literature : such writing is a true product of a vision (...) that substitutes for the

laws of the real : incarnations of the fantastic that are, however, treated realistically (Maria Corti, 2000)

Short textual analysis (2)

• we can extrapolate from the narrative some guidelines (or isotopies) embodying figurative, thematic, and valorized concepts, along with some elements of the gaze.

Short textual analysis (3)

• Drogo looks from above down on what is below. This is an

omniscient point of view that permits him to see without being seen, like a voyeur, and to enjoy some of the spatial symmetries and the chromatic contrasts provided by the movements of the soldiers .

• the soldiers are a compact and earthbound element compared with the diffusion and airiness of the light and the blue shadow that, as if free from chains, transfigure the fortress in the sense of opening up the figures, the surroundings, and the associative possibilities.

Short textual analysis (4) Then Drogo looks up higher : chromatic diffusion of color (the yellowing walls); - realistic description shifts into a fantastic, visionary mode

(he seemed to see) that develops isotopies of airiness (airy outworks and redoubts) and of diffusion in terms of elongation (above them, higher still, solitary towers).

thematic

isotopy

of

ordinary/extraordinary

or

of

human/superhuman (or even supernatural) - a spatial isotopy of verticality and diffusion in its multiplicity of geometrical shadows and its abyss between bastion and bastion.

Short textual analysis (5) When Drogos gaze descends again to the courtyard, he has altered his affective values and his conjecturing. His mind has moved away from the distraction of his initial purpose to get

the transfer document -- to a kind of attentiveness : the soldiers appear very beautiful to see

• the sound of the silver trumpet expands and gains color in blasts gleaming and alive that seem to consecrate Drogos decision (they struck straight into the heart) - the sound rises from below to merge with the fantastic visions

Short textual analysis (6): conclusions It is an attentiveness to looking outside that becomes a stupor, a fascination (never before had Drogo noticed) and an almost nostalgic curiosity. It is a moment of aesthetic fusion, a

perceptual and affective fusion (Greimas 1987) between the subject and the world.

This mythical and sensitive aspect permeats the novel from the first chapter : here incarnates a call to destiny and the transformation of our hero.

The Desert of the Tartars by Valerio Zurlini

• slow pace of the film as a stylistic trademark of the author and the sense of waiting that every gesture seems to evoke in Zurlinis films in general;

• the choice of the environment and the costumes by Zurlini for The Desert of the Tartars is motivated by a kind of cinema verite`

that places the story in a middle-European setting during the decadence of the Hapsburg Empire (while the historical context is never mentioned in Buzzati's novel).

Drogo and the Uncertainty

• the scene in the doctors office in the film is resolved in a very fast

and friendly manner without any reference to the dreamlike unrest of Drogo or to his gaze outside from the window in the novel.

• Drogos decision not to depart is instead presented through a series of moments of negative evaluations performed by various characters, either verbally or through muted glances : it is rather

the force of social constriction that overcomes Drogos wish to leave. It becomes a story of humanity at its moment of truth.

The Wind and the Desert

The scene of Drogos choice is preceded by a brief important sequence:

• the fortress, shot from the exterior (by an omniscient narrator), seems well defined; then we hear in the distance the chants of the

soldiers at Easter mass. Little by little, everything becomes foggy and out of focus...

• the wind grows slowly in intensity, the desert fills with a fog and swirls of dust. The howling of the wind and the increase in density of the fog and dust reach the fortress and envelope it.

Opponents and instructions This play between visibility and partial invisibility serves as a

transition device between the scenes, as we pass from exterior to interior. - it is a kind of gaze other in respect to an "usual" one...

• it give voice to the desert of Tartars that becomes the opponent actant in the narrative fabula;

• this play of in-focus and out-of-focus, visible and invisible, functions as a sign (i.e. an instruction) referring to Buzzatis various transfigurations in his novel.

Figuration/De-figuration: Death in the Whiteness

• A further sequence : a platoon of soldiers is dispatched toward

the high peaks with a mixture of patriotism and a sense of competition with the enemy. Major Maggi is assigned command of the expedition, and Drogo and Lieutenant Almerling are to serve under him. Almerling, decked out in full dress uniform, appears visibly weak with consumption.

• in the novel this mission culminates in the death of Almerling; in the film, however, we do not see Almerlings demise...

Figuration/De-figuration: Death in the Whiteness

• conclusion of the sequence : the squadron of heroes moves

farther away into the whiteness of the snow and then disappears into the snowstorm and the fog; - the sense of honor and patriotism is depicted in ephemeral and tragic essence, as the soldiers become black shapes who grow cloudy and indistinct and then nothing more than opaque splashes

on the screen, monochromatic and rippling.

• (intertextual) reference to the paintings by Alberto Burri or the

disappearing forms stylized and rarified by Giorgio Morandi.

Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta (1950)

Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta (1955)

Albero Burri, Cretto bianco (1970-75)

Albero Burri, Combustion (1960-64)

The Figurative - the dissipation of forms caused by the (human) figures that go

out of focus, loose form, and disappear.

• Two ways of vision and of meaning : the figurative and the figural : - the figurative is a denotative and referential gaze (i.e. instructions for reading the fictional world). The soldiers

advance into nothingness and go on the mission in defiance of all common sense. Their forms dissipate and resonate

with each other, their identities are lost.

The Figural -the figural (plastic) vision: the screen is no longer a conveyor of a narrative with characters, spaces, and time, but becomes instead topological space, a frame of light and shadow, sound, noises, forms or surroundings and movement. - we cease to look at a squad of soldiers and we discern threads (or shapeless forms) vibrating up and down on a dirty white, pulsating background : a pictorial mode. - a figural (semisymbolic) rhythm created by opposing plastic contrasts : (of space) distant/near, open/closed, dispersed/defined; (of colours) black versus white, saturated/unsaturated; (of light and visibility) well-defined versus out of focus, opaque. All these contrasts are bound to the opposing content terms of life and death, presence and absence.

The Gradualness of the Transfiguration

The path we have followed through the snowstorms, the fog, the wind and the desert make us discover how Zurlini, in his film, recreates an aesthetic of emptiness between desert and the fortress (or the wall-like mountains). We define this aesthetic a spiritual realism. In Zurlinis film this becomes a way to translate the sense of the unknown, the mystery and the enchantment of Buzzatis novel.

Nida Institute Inter-semiotic Translation Seminar Misano Adriatico, Italy March 7-11, 2011 The Desert of the Tartars (or The Tartar Steppe) between Literature and Film

mail to: nicola.dusi@tiscali.it