{"id":4677,"date":"2011-03-31T22:19:27","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T22:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=4677"},"modified":"2017-10-19T13:08:14","modified_gmt":"2017-10-19T11:08:14","slug":"jacques-brel-vs-colonel-gaddafi-zangra-meets-zenga-zenga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/jacques-brel-vs-colonel-gaddafi-zangra-meets-zenga-zenga\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacques Brel vs. Colonel Gaddafi: Zangra Meets Zenga Zenga"},"content":{"rendered":"

IF <\/strong>someone told you that Colonel Gaddafi<\/strong>‘s life-long vocation as a deeply confused\u00a0dictateur<\/em><\/strong> (dictator) traced back its origin to the military career of a World War II fascist foot soldier<\/strong>, whose mission was to resume the century-old Italian occupation<\/strong> of\u00a0la Lybie<\/strong><\/em>, you probably would wonder how that could be the case.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But what if, in addition to that, the so-far unsuspected intricacies of this histoire <\/em><\/strong>(story)\u00a0went back even further in time—much, much further in time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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In order to piece up this petit puzzle<\/strong><\/em>, involving as a key figure\u00a0un<\/strong> personnage<\/strong><\/em> (a character) that was until recently one of the\u00a0most intimate\u00a0copains<\/strong><\/em> (buddies) of\u00a0“scandal-prone” billionaire-turned-Italian PM\u00a0Silvio Berlusconi<\/strong> (among other powerful “notables<\/strong><\/em>” of this world, of course), let us first go back together several decades ago:<\/p>\n

Starting with l’Italie<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was barely one year after the outbreak of la Deuxi\u00e8me <\/em> Guerre Mondiale <\/em><\/strong>(the Second World War) when Italian writer and journalist\u00a0Dino Buzzati<\/strong> published what was to become his most successful work, “Il deserto dei Tartari<\/strong><\/em>” (“The Desert of the Tartars.”)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This intriguing\u00a0roman <\/em><\/strong>(novel), faithfully translated into French nine years later as “le d\u00e9sert des Tartares<\/a><\/em><\/strong>“,\u00a0and brought to the Italian grand \u00e9cran <\/em><\/strong>(big screen) under the same title in 1976<\/strong>, tells the ostensibly Kafkaesque story of a young Italian officer, Giovanni Drogo<\/strong>, who is dispatched by his military superiors to le d\u00e9sert <\/em><\/strong>(the desert) in order to safeguard the old fort Bastiani <\/em><\/strong>against a possible incursion of a little-known “Tartar army<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n