The Waiting is the Hardest Part
References to the passage of time permeate throughout “The Seven Messengers.” Indeed, the second line of the story informs the reader that the narrator “began the trip when I was just over thirty and more than eight years have passed, exactly eight years, six months and fifteen days of uninterrupted travel.” It is a journey without any the arrival at any real destination, just a constant progression forward in anticipation of something happening. As a portrait of the grueling effect on existence of constantly waiting for things to happen, of the anticipation that never seems to pay off, it is emotionally exhausting despite being a very short tale. The same holds very much true of the hospital patient in “Seven Stories” which also commences with a reference to time: “One March morning, at the end of a day’s journey by train, Giuseppe Corte arrived in the city where the famous nursing home was located.” From that point on, the story essentially becomes an intolerable waiting game in which almost nothing happens.
Allegory
Buzzati is most assuredly not an example of what would term a realistic writer. Not that he is writer of fantasy or science fiction indulging in fanciful flights of the outrageous. Technically speaking, very little in his stories could not actually—realistically—occur in the big wide world outside his pages. The rejection of realism is more along the lines of specificity of event and character. Those who populate his stories are not multi-dimension, rounded and fully fleshed out. They exist to serve the purpose of the plots are usually played out in setting confined either spatially or narratively. “The Seven Messengers” is an ideal demonstration of his short fiction as a whole in that the narrative perspective is limited to a single consciousness that is conveyed through a flat style lacking depth of emotion or expanse of purpose. The story which proceeds from the opening line promising an exploration of a kingdom is notably lacking in action or even much description of that kingdom. It exists to be interpreted on a more general level as allegory applicable to a multitude of narrative possibilities.
Existential Dread
The unbearable heaviness of waiting is, of course, an essential them in existentialist literature evocatively expressed by means as varied as Sartre’s vision of hell and the choice of Sisyphus by Albert Camus as his representative hero of an absurd world. A direct line links the image of Sisyphus patiently pushing that rock up the hill only to watch it fall back again every time and the prince whose exploration of his father’s kingdom in “The Seven Messengers” concludes on the imagery of the narrative’s observation that “once more I will break camp while Domenico disappears over the horizon in the opposite direction, taking my useless message to the far-away city.” These are both portraits of an existential dread that life is meaningless and even the attempt to impose meaning is ultimately an exercise in pointlessness.
