In two stories, written approximately three-quarters of a century apart – “Dino Buzzati’s “Qualcosa era successo” (“Something Had Happened,” 1949) and Sandro Veronesi’s “Qualcosa era successo” (2026) – an ordinary train ride becomes an allegory about fear of the unknown and powerlessness in the face of inexplicable events. In his preface to Caducità (La Nave di Teseo, 2026), the latest collection of his short stories, Sandro Veronesi singles out “Qualcosa era successo,” which appears in the volume for the first time, to explain to his readers that the story is, in fact, a “cover version,” that is, a reworking of a work created by someone else. “This is a practice that is quite commonplace in music,” he says, “but as far as I know uncommon in the publishing world; I wasn’t even sure if it was permitted…” (All translations, unless otherwise noted, are mine.) In this case the work in question is Dino Buzzati’s “Qualcosa era successo,” which Veronesi “reinterpreted quite freely, though not to the point of rendering the original unrecognizable.” Having obtained official permission to publish his version, he wanted to acknowledge the derivative nature of his rendering right up front.
What are we to make of this? Does this make Veronesi a translator of sorts? Does this mean that Veronesi has joined the “new breed” of translators who embrace “defamiliarization,” “going off-road,” “denaturing,” or even “rewriting”? One is tempted to think of Borges’ fictional Pierre Menard, who set out to “write” – not “rewrite” or “recreate”! – parts of Don Quixote. This turned out to be an impossible task that ultimately was never realized: we are told that not a single page survived the bonfires to which Menard subjected his notebooks. Do such translators fall into the category of “traduttore-traditore,” or are they transformers and re-creators, maybe even liberators of the original text? It raises questions about the line between translation and creation, target and source. As well as questions of authorship. Jordan Mackay, a reviewer of Borges’ Collected Fictions challenged the question of paternity: “If a text can be re-created by someone other than its author, what exactly is an author and how are we to understand his connection to his text? The death of the fictional author, Pierre Menard, comes to mean the theoretical death of the Author, or more precisely, authorship” (Mackay).
Which leads us to how two masters of the short form, Veronesi and Buzzati, find themselves on the same train to doomsday. This is not a Menardian paradox; as I see it, Veronesi is not trying to “rewrite” the story as if for the first time, as if Buzzati had not already done so. Translator Mark Polizzotti, borrowing Ralph Manheim’s formulation of “a performance to be appraised on its own merits,” might view it as “analogous to a good cover version of a favorite song, one that might not sound like the original but that finds the essence of the song and re-creates it differently; that makes the listener hear the song in a way that both preserves and renews it” (Polizzotti, 52-53). Moreover, there is a continuum here, a connection, whereby Veronesi’s version, in a sense, renews and intensifies what Buzzati’s story expressed. Both narratives recount a train journey from the South of Italy to the North, and the reactions of the passengers, particularly the unnamed narrator, to what they see unfolding outside their windows: “There was a certain agitation in the carriage. People talking loudly, protesting” (Veronesi). Several scenes of confusion and turmoil suggest frenzied flight and disorder. A world in disarray. Perhaps a touch of mass hysteria: There was… “a convoy of cars stalled on the road that cut across the countryside and led toward the railway. As the train drew closer to the station, the scene became clearer—an absurd scene, like an exodus. Mostly small cars—economy models—packed with people and with belongings strapped to their roofs. Hundreds of vehicles, stretching as far as the eye could see along the road, at a standstill” (Veronesi).
Clearly something has happened, an event of which the travelers on the train are unaware. All very unsettling. All of which would trigger an atavistic fear. The universality of a fear of the unknown expresses the inspiration behind the two renditions. Though both versions convey the same sense of anxiety, disquiet, and uneasiness, Buzzati’s story, shorter than Veronesi’s, is set in a simpler time: no traffic jams, no cell phones, country folk marveling at the passage of the “fast train.” People are seen running through the fields and countryside to warn of some danger: “I managed to catch sight of six or seven people rushing across the fields, the crops, and the alfalfa—it didn’t matter that they were trampling; it had to be something very important. … They were running—how they ran!—looking as though they had been startled by some sudden warning” (Buzzati).
Veronesi’s introduction of modern touches makes the element of time more present in his version than in Buzzati’s: “He looked at his watch: they had been traveling for an hour. How long had they been stopped? He couldn’t have said.” Opening the story with avant-garde writer Giorgio Manganelli’s words about reading (“Nowadays, when we take the train, we no longer ask ourselves where it will take us, but rather which book we will read during the journey”) foreshadows the addition of further signs of modernity such as cars, earphones, and, of course, the cell phone. Perhaps the most significant innovation introduced by Veronesi is the idea of regression, of moving backwards. Though Buzzati’s train slows and stops at times, it continues moving forward to meet its fate; Veronesi’s train, on the other hand, proceeds in quick leaps forward before reversing its course, advancing and regressing – two steps forward, three steps back – like our modern age. “We are moving backwards, he thought. It was the umpteenth time he had thought this, for it was an undeniable phenomenon: the Western world—his world—was moving backwards. Every innovation, trumpeted as an achievement—of technique, of technology—was in reality a step backward” (Veronesi).
Buzzati uses the word fuga, flight, to describe the scene beyond the train windows: “Entire populations had taken to immediate flight,” while Versonesi goes a step further and refers to a fuga collettiva, a collective flight, and an esodo, exodus: “from what could be seen, a full-blown mass exodus was underway.” In his novel A Devil Comes to Town (2019), Paolo Maurensig describes “an entire community, in the grip of collective hysteria, … drawn into a series of incidents that transport us back to the Middle Ages.” This atavistic, irrational panic triggered by a perceived threat is exactly what happens to those on the train. The inability to communicate with the outside world once the doors are blocked and the cell phones no longer work makes it impossible to obtain information and clarity, heightening the sense of disorientation, impotence and mounting tension: “Mobile telephony was the triumph of this race toward backwardness: by then, mobile phones hardly got a signal anywhere, and calls kept dropping constantly” (Veronesi). With no idea of what has happened, the passengers’ minds tend to amplify their fears and intensify their anxiety.
In Buzzati’s version the focus is more on anxiety of the unknown. The parable revolves around the subjectivity of that fear and anxiety, and the contrast between individual perception and external reality. The surreal, unsettling atmosphere and how it is perceived results in possible misinterpretations that bode evil. Veronesi’s narrative adds another layer, relating the events to our current society, hurtling toward an unknown future. The more we advance – space exploration, bio-engineering, the AI evolution – the more we move backwards in terms of losing our humanity. We live in an age of information overload, yet we, like those on the train, suffer from a dearth of genuine information. Instead fake news gives rise to misinterpretations of reality, transforming ordinary occurrences into ominous portents of catastrophe. Though the train, like life, moves forward ceaselessly in Buzzati, Veronesi’s train starts, stops, and regresses, increasing the potential for ambiguous, incomprehensible signals.
When the train finally stops and the passengers find themselves in a deserted city, both versions end with the same phrase: “Then a woman’s voice—piercingly high and violent as a gunshot—sent a shiver through us… “Help! Help!” she screamed, and the cry reverberated beneath the gleaming vaults with the hollow resonance of places abandoned forever” (Veronesi and Buzzati). What are we to make of the fact that the same sentence concludes each of the stories? Who is the author of these words? Buzzati, because he wrote the story first? Veronesi, because he “freely reinterpreted” it for his own ends? And what of the translator of that sentence and other selections from the stories, whose words you have just read? Is the translation merely an invisible screen through which Buzzati’s and Veronesi’s words pass, unfiltered? Thinking about what may have motivated Veronesi to write his “cover” version of Buzzati’s racconto, I hypothesized an added layer that might express the substance of the original work in a different way – much like a translation adds the layer of another language, of another’s rendition – so as to both “preserve and renew” it. When I consulted him, Veronesi confirmed my interpretation.
Anne Milano Appel has translated texts by a number of leading Italian authors for US and UK publishers. Her shorter works have appeared in a variety of literary journals. Her website is: https://amilanoappel.com/
Works Cited
Buzzati, Dino. “Qualcosa era successo,” Corriere della Sera, July, 1949; Il crollo della Baliverna, Mondadori, 1954; Sessanta racconti, Mondadori, 1958.
Mackay, Jordan. Review, Austin Chronicle, 18:12, November 20, 1998.
Maurensig, Paolo. A Devil Comes to Town. World Editions, 2019. Anne Milano Appel, tr.
Polizzotti, Mark. “Beautifully Unfaithful,” Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto. MIT Press, 2018.
Veronesi, Sandro. “Qualcosa era successo,” Caducità, La Nave di Teseo, 2026.