Dino Buzzati(1906-1972)

Born in 1906, Dino Buzzati was the second of his Venetian parents' 4 children. In 1917, a year after Buzzati started to study at the Parini school in Milan, Austrians occupied his family's villa, which was partly destroyed after that. After the end of the war, Buzzati's father, Giulio Cesare Buzzati died in 1920, and at the same time, 14-years-old Dino started to show the first signs of his future passions: mountains, drawing and writing. In December of the same year, he wrote his first story, "La canzone delle montagne." In 1924, he started to study law at the University of Milan, where his father used to teach international law; then he did his military service in 1926-27. On July 10, 1928, he started to work for Milan daily paper Corriere della sera, where he stayed until his death. The same year, in October, he obtained his diploma in law. In 1933, he publicized his first novel, "Bàrnabo delle Montagne," and the Corriere della sera sent him in Palestine. His second novel, "Il Segreto del Bosco Vecchio," came two years after. In 1939, while he was Addis-Abeba for his work, Buzzati was enlisted by the army. In June 1940, his masterpiece "Il Deserto dei Tartari" was publicized for the first time in Milan. Then he spent 3 years as a war correspondent on warships Fiume and Trieste. At the end of the war, "Il Deserto dei Tartari" was released in the whole of Italy and its writer became famous. International success then started by the publication of the book in French in 1949 (with the title "Le Désert des Tartares"), before being translated into about 20 other languages. In 1953, it was the premiere of his most successful play "Un caso clinico" (that was adapted in French 3 years later by Albert Camus). Later, Buzzati made his first personal painting exhibition in Milan in 1958 and publicized his only science-fiction novel, "Il grande ritratto," in 1960. In 1961, 41 years after her husband, Buzzati's mother, Alba Mantovani, died. In 1964, Buzzati released his fifth and last novel, "Un amore," and two years later publicized his other masterpiece, "Il Colombre," a collection of 51 short stories, and married Almeria Antoniazzi on December 8 of the same year. In 1969, he released "Poema a fumetti," a modern vision of the myth of Orpheus mixing poetry and comic strips. In 1970, he received the prize of journalist Mario Massai for his articles he wrote about the first man on the moon during summer 1969. After a last book in 1971, "Le notti difficili" (his sixth collection of short stories, whose title shows that he was aware of his illness), Dino Buzzati died of cancer on January 28, 1972.