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one hand, he gave a brutal description of the military world, showing
its baseness, its mediocrity and its contradictions; on the other, he
imagined the valourous career he was unable to achieve in real life.
Thanks to writing, Savinio went beyond individuality, and was led by
ambition toward social engagement, becaming a supporter of a pro-
cess of cultural renewal tinged by nationalism and based on the dream
of change induced by the war.

The “furrows of death” and the Darker Realism of Guido Cavani
FABIO MARRI
The poet and novelist Guido Cavani (Modena, 1897-1967), private sol-
dier at the Italian-Austrian front on the Asiago plateau in 1917-18,
transferred his trench experience to some early poems, still unpub-
lished: in the longest one, Il sabato santo, he provides the poignant de-
scription of the death of a fellow soldier shot by a sniper. Several years
later, he dealt again with those memories in a series of short stories,
first published in newspapers or magazines then almost all collected
in a volume in 1967, where the brutality and sometimes the moral
degradation caused by the war predominate over the sacrifice and
heroism of the soldiers. These stories deserve the same recognition as
some of the most famous products of the Italian literature of the Great
War, from Monelli to Lussu, from De Roberto to Stuparich, and the
poems of Jahier and Rebora.

“War was beautiful and befi ing to my spirit”. Luigi Bartolini as
War Writer
LUCIO VALENT
th
Luigi Bartolini was a quintessential 20 century Italian intellectual. A
painter, sculptor, poet, and writer, he practised most of the artistic
forms of his time and was one of Italy’s greatest engravers. Between
1915 and 1918 he took part in the First World War as a gunner and
wrote about his experience in Il ritorno sul Carso, printed in 1930. This
book stands apart from war memoirs of the time: it makes no conces-
sions to the interventionist pomposity that was rife after 1918 and has
no strong ideological streak, although it is imbued with strong and
yet imprecise war-rhetoric. With vivid accounts of Bartolini’s life, ex-
periences, thoughts and personality, Il ritorno sul Carso is also as a con-

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