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An unoccupied tomb on the banks of the great river is a testimony to the emptiness after the glorious battles and the infinite foolishness of heaven in the history of men called to die. The pen of Claudio Magris is the philosopher's stone that transmutes that vision into high-flying litera
Danube by Claudio Magris
A book often republished, admired and loved by critics and readers, Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea, by Claudio Magris, situates the intellectual world of Mitteleuropa through a journey along the river that bathes its lands. The erudition and, also, sensitivity of this Germanist born in Trieste (Italy) in 1939 compose, through the pages, a story that is an autobiography, a travel diary, and an essay, in the manner of the Memoirs from beyond the grave of the famous diplomat Chateaubriand.A story at street level, on the way, along the intricate route that the great river draws, as a reflection of the complex history that its banks testify.
Two Passages on Death
In the desire to recommend its reading to those who have not yet done so, and sticking to the theme of the blog, we want to highlight two passages of this extraordinary The Danube, related to an empty tomb and Slovak cemeteries.
The empty tomb that Magris finds in a tiny piece of land belonging to France, "among the forests and meadows of Oberhausen" (east of Neuburg, Germany), should preserve the mortal remains of Théophile Malo Corret de Latour d'Auvergne. But the sarcophagus is empty. According to his patriotic biography, Latour (1743-1800) was the first grenadier of the French army, a fighter in the American Revolution and in Spain, and a scholar of Celtic languages. He met his death on the banks of the Danube, serving as a soldier under the Napoleonic army.
An Empty Tomb
As Magris recalls, Latour's tomb is empty. However, the pantheon keeps the body of a second person, Commander De Forty, fallen on the same day as the Grenadier. And who, in any case, takes the glory of France is the private soldier: his remains were transferred to the Panthéon in Paris, in the celebration of the centenary of the French Revolution, in 1889. Our traveling writer, on the former battlefield of Oberhausen and in front of the orphaned sarcophagus, has a critical thought:
"This deserted tomb is (...) glory and at the same time its uselessness; It contains the meaning of a life that wields the sword for faith in a new flag (...) and it also contains the great void that emerges behind each glorious ride and each flag in the wind, that is, the infinite and senseless background of heaven, against which it is cut, in the film of universal history, the mounted army of men called to die."
The Proximity of Death
The second passage to which we alluded refers to the Slovak town of Matiasovce, where Magris reflects, in front of a small cemetery, on the image of death in Western societies. On his trip through the area, the writer finds open cemeteries, which run between the roads, in the fields, without walls that surround them.
"This epic familiarity with death – which can also be seen, for example, in the Muslim tombs of Bosnia, quietly placed in the garden of the house, and which our world tends, on the contrary, more and more neurotically to push away – possesses the measure of justice, it is the sense of the relationship between the individual and the generations, the earth, nature, the elements that compose it and the law that presides over its combination and disintegration".
Danube is published in English by Vintage Classics, with an introduction by Richard Flanagan.