Brave soldier became a bestselling novelist
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| Mario Rigoni Stern pictured in 1958 |
The novelist Mario Rigoni Stern, who was a veteran of World
War II, died on this day in 2008 in Asiago in the Veneto region.
His first novel, Il sergente della neve - The Sergeant in the
snow - was published in 1953. It drew upon his experiences as a sergeant major
in the Alpine corps during the disastrous retreat from Russia in the Second
World War. It became a best seller and was translated into English and Spanish.
Rigoni Stern had been a sergeant commanding a platoon in
Mussolini’s army in the Soviet Union during the retreat of the Italians in the
winter of 1942.
His book was inspired by how he succeeded in leading 70
survivors on foot from the Ukraine into what was then White Russia - now part of Belarus - and back to Italy.
It won the Viareggio Prize for best debut novel and went on
to sell more than a million copies.
At the time the author said it was not written to claim a
role for him as a hero, but as a tribute to his fellow soldiers and the
ordinary Russians who gave them shelter.
Rigoni Stern was born in Asiago in the Veneto and became a
cadet at the military academy at Aosta in 1938. He became a sergeant in the
Alpine corps - the Alpini - and was posted to the eastern front.
After the Italian armistice with the allies in 1943 he
refused to continue serving in the army of Mussolini’s puppet republic of Salò
and was interned in a German prison camp.
At the end of the war he returned to Asiago and got a job
working for his local council.
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| Rigoni Stern at a celebration of the Alpini Corps in 2006 |
In 1953 he sent the manuscript of his book to the Einaudi
publishing house. They agreed to publish it but said they didn’t think he had a
future as a writer.
They were proved wrong as he went on to publish more than a
dozen novels and collections of short stories and was awarded three literary
prizes.
His novel, The Story of Tonie, published in 1978, was about
a peasant smuggler in the mountains who lived between the end of the 19th
century and the beginning of the First World War.
Tonie was a simple shepherd who couldn’t avoid getting
caught up in the outside events of the new century leading up to the war.
Rigoni Stern described vividly this world where no one had a distinctive
nationality and citizens had to struggle to preserve their identity.
Rigoni Stern was in his 80s before he saw The Sergeant in
the snow recreated on stage and screen by Marco Paolini, an actor and author.
The production had been staged at Milan’s Piccolo Theatre
and was then filmed in 2007 in front of an audience in a disused quarry near
Vicenza, from which the architect Palladio had once extracted the material to
build his villas.
It was shown on Italian television to an audience of in
excess of five million people.
Mario Rigoni Stern died the following year, at the age of
86, having been diagnosed with a brain tumour in November 2007.
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| Piazza Il Risorgimento in Asiago |
Travel tip:
Asiago, where Mario Rigoni Stern was born and died, is in
the province of Vicenza in the Veneto, halfway between Vicenza to the south and
Trento, the capital of Trentino-Alto-Adige, to the west. It is now a major ski
resort and famous for producing Asiago cheese.
Travel tip:
The town of Vicenza, where The Sergeant in the snow was
filmed, is about 60km (37 miles) to the west of Venice. Known as ‘the city of
Palladio’, it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. You can see
Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico in the centre of town and visit the elegant villas
he designed in the surrounding area. His most famous villa, known as La
Rotonda, is just outside the town.
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