A Love by Dino Buzzati: plot and analysis of the book. Characters, places, review and book sheet of one of his most famous novels
The story of Antonio Dorigo, a 49-year-old architect , unfolds in the setting of a grey, hazy and sad Milan, between the living rooms of brothels and streets filled with the smells of “chimneys, vents of oil boilers, smokestacks of the Coloradi refineries, roaring trucks and sewers”.
In the winter of 1960 Antonio meets Laide , a very young prostitute , who claims to be a dancer at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The maîtresse of a brothel, Signora Ermelina, introduces the woman to the protagonist in this way: «… what a child, you’ll see (she lowered her voice even more)… I recommend that you know, she’s a minor… a dancer».
Dorigo cannot do without prostitution : those twenty thousand lire spent for a date allow him to enter a forbidden universe, through which he feels he can finally understand women, “creatures from another vaguely superior and indecipherable world”.
After his first meeting with the dancer, Dorigo will begin to feel a lacerating passion inside himself, accompanied by an ever-increasing feeling of love, which will lead him to a slow and inexorable fall into his innermost being, since she will never reciprocate his feelings.
The architect, unable to escape from the role of the client in love, will endure mortifying humiliations in order to continue enjoying the girl’s company: he will play the part of an unlikely uncle in hotels and will pretend to believe in good faith in the friendship with his cousin Marcello. Laide , spoiled and capricious opportunist, will be supported by Antonio, deceiving him and giving herself to him with ever less desire and passion.
The love that Dino Buzzati tells is not that of an overwhelming passion between two lovers hindered by circumstances, nor the platonic love of a repressed and excessively shy man.
Instead, it tells of a desperate, one-way, cowardly but honest love that takes place in a city degraded in spirit. A love so intense and inadequate that it pushes the protagonist, a seemingly irreproachable bourgeois, to lie to himself several times in order not to accept reality, and to continue dreaming.
The love that Antonio feels does not allow him to go beyond the boundaries imposed by convention, but only to keep as a lover the frequenter of a brothel , who he accepts for what she is, without offering her an alternative life. It will be only in the terrible confrontation with Piera, another prostitute, that the man will be able to see his own cowardice, the lies and betrayals of which he has been a victim.
Piera will be his mirror . Thanks to this comparison, Dorigo will finally be free from jealousy and rancor. But the awareness of Laide’s absolute bad faith will not be enough to keep him away from the girl. After a period of a few months of reflection, he will not be able to stop himself from calling her back, thus returning to the ambiguous relationship, renewed only in her selfish desire for motherhood, and in his resignation.
A LOVE, CHARACTERS
Antonio Dorigo : The protagonist of the Roman novel is a 49-year-old architect who will be literally shocked by a heartbreaking experience, in love with a cruel woman who mistreats and neglects him at every moment.
Antonio believes that a sincere and authentic feeling is able to overcome any obstacle: his naivety, at times childish, will get lost in a world populated by the lies and cruelty of Laide, the woman he loves. Antonio rejuvenates in this relationship, doing things he had never allowed himself. Nevertheless, he constantly lives with the anxiety that the woman he loves may escape him.
Laide : The female protagonist is a very young prostitute, a self-styled dancer at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. A little liar who moves through the pages of the novel with perfidy and impudence, a “delightful little animal”. For Dorigo she will be both salvation and damnation, but above all a total upheaval of his life.
Piera : Prostitute who manages to make Dorigo understand Laide’s true face and free him from jealousy and resentment.
A LOVE, PLACES
The novel is set in Milan, a chaotic, mysterious and secret city. Buzzati sets his novel among the skyscrapers, the Scala, the Fiera, the Duomo, the market.
The squalid reality of things is revealed with delicacy and metaphors. Above all we find poetry for the beloved woman. Naturalistic elements are constantly present: clouds, beaches, rivers, forests, gardens and twilights. The author narrates on the one hand the hypocrisy of the cities in which the characters move that he makes emerge in all their squalor, on the other the desperate need to love, despite everything, and to believe in illusions.
