Cover Carlo Pastorino and Savior on the Horn of Vallarsa Donzelli, 1917. It 's a great feeling to keep this book in my hands, finally found, after more than two decades of neglect.
He stands there, silent, smelling of fresh paper, in its clear as clear, simple and straightforward, like the prose of the writer that the rod, almost eighty years ago.
E ' "The acid test" , Charles Pastorino, in its new edition Egon - Emanuela Zandonai Publisher.
Why this book was so much at heart to lead us, Mario Martinelli and I, looking for more than two years, with insistence and stubbornness, a publisher willing to give him new life? And not just any publisher, of those who in recent years fill the shelves of books printed with a laser that will last two months or three.
No, we were looking for a publisher sensitive, educated, able to understand the value of this text, and give them the visibility and the length it deserves.
The fact is that living in 
Vallarsa one has the feeling of walking in the midst of a silent crowd, even when you are totally alone. Trampling the walk on this earth that summer glow green and flowers of Turk's cap lilies, feels strongly the presence of who has spent his days here before us.
It 's a small valley this, enclosed between the solid and that of the Pasubio Carega, so short that it can embrace all with the look, from top to bottom. Few people, a handful of houses sprayed on her hips shaggy woods and heather of pillows. Very little traffic. Very quiet.
And so, in the morning, standing on top of the hill, beneath the soaring pinnacles of the Small Dolomites that seem so close that you can tap with your fingers, eyes and spacing for all this green earth that stretches clear to our feet , it is really hard to believe that here we have fought some of the fiercest battles of the First World War.
Looking at the hill of Parmesan over there, a few hundred meters, a cake of soft shapes and nursery ground, it must make an effort to remember that there, between 8 and June 12, 1916, died two thousand soldiers. Two thousand men, in just four days. In vain, because the Italian assault the enemy positions that did not move a few meters futile.
Not far away is what the locals call "the meadow of the buttons." The bodies were dissolved in the ground, and they remained just that. Buttons.
So you could go on forever. Why here every corner, every round, every ridge, every valley gathers its dead silent. Tens of thousands. Some say one hundred thousand. All enclosed in this little green bowl.
is because it gives us great excitement to keep his hands 
this new edition of the book by Pastorino. He was here, then. He saw. He lived. E 'for months remained stubbornly clinging to the rocks "like the swallows to the eaves of a house" , to use his own words. And despite what I went through is to take your sleep experience and reason, failed to return a narrative clear and dry. Moved often. But even extremely lucid, and capable, in the minutes of the bare facts of war, to achieve a crude concrete and essential that we make clear the horror before her eyes. "Scagnetti brought a ravine. I took the ravine and dug in the open space on which was the tent. The sharp tip penetrated into something soft, and I do not know that the liquid splashed on. And with the liquid hit us a horrible stench. Scagnetti turned away in horror. - It 's a dead man! - He cried, then, at a distance. It was a nem ico. Poor enemy! And I had slept the night above him. Now cover it very well, with lots of land, and the tent was taken away. "
So it Pastorino. Unveiled. Not rhetorical. Detector, in this, his peasant origin, in its concreteness is not marred by literary studies completed just before it worsens the story here, on the steep edges of these rocks. Towards the rhetoric continue to feed, after all, a desolate aversion. Too terrible evidence of what lies beneath the eye, able to withstand the words of those who sail and rouge. "Come, read this - I am Donzelli said another. It was a magazine with poems of war and led a famous signature. I read, he listened to me silently. All of Suddenly I snapped and threw away the magazine. There was so much emptiness in those poems, we felt that we hit as an offense against ourselves. (...) It was in us the impression that the poet did not understand anything about war, that nothing felt, that for him the war were nothing more than a field of new images of unexpected choreography, great performances: this, and nothing more. And, ever wonder why, my thoughts ran to Nero and the burning of Rome. "
farmer's son, born in Mason, in Liguria, in 1887, succeeds, despite the conditions of the humble family, to carry on with his literary studies. Door, in hard experience of the war years, this wealth of culture and sensitivity, which will give you sharp eyes and moved to see the misery of the condition he shares with his men, and men, a few yards away, which is given the name of enemies. "The guide stops and beat his forehead. E 'disoriented: there understands nothing, and it is not so sure if it will ever walk. However, we continue to move: with care and feeling with his hands. The star can not stop the rain. Our condition is very pathetic: the cold gets to the heart. They beat the teeth you chicks wretched: any residual force will disappear. " And again " From the highest peaks and the slits of the galleries I also see some slopes of the mountains held by the enemy. I look at the open trails in the snow, where a long procession of blacks moving dots. They are men, the enemies. I stay there a long time through the binoculars to the eyes, and think, poor enemies them there, suffering like us here. They also walk in the snow and also shed tears stealth: and the tears frozen edge of the eye. Rise, slowly, tired: carrying loads on their shoulders: food and ammunition. They go to their line which, to look at here, is highly visible: it is also similar to a meandering lane of a mole, a few meters on the other, the enemy, which is the n ostra. Why us, for them, we are enemies. "
Yet, despite the acute awareness of death and destruction around him, unable to cross this Pastorino disarticolante experience without ever losing his dignity human. Able even in the midst of a world where "everything appears to me shapeless, chaotic, without any stability" , to see the beauty of the world around him and came to love deeply inaccessible places in which the fate forced him to live. Thus, for example, returning from a licensed home "Keeping the snow was very high in the Dolomites. The truck went into a magnificent gallery, opened in it, and when he emerged, he had in Vallarsa. I greeted her with joy, Vallarsa, and I thought of being back at home. Review all My mountains: they were white, and shone in the sun. I had never appeared so beautiful. "
And so, as his eyes follow the movement of Pastorino along the flanks of the mountain
(that's the trap there, his first arrival stage, and there on the Horn Battisti, where he defended his men spent months and months of endless tough front line. And there under the military cemetery Anghebeni, which has given rise to intense pages on the fate of the poor, destined to be cannon fodder, while those who can live, well, ambush in the rear), the heart is running out for us the emotion, because we know that now this book is returned to its rightful place. On the shelves of libraries, schools, and in the hands of readers. As a reminder, along with works by Remarque, of Junger, of Lussier, what was really the Great War.
Fiorenza Aste
Photo archive of Vallechiara Masone, courtesy Family Pastorino. All rights reserved.
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