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Rating: History has left us a legacy of endless tragedies. Some of these can be seen as periphrases and reflections of that latent madness of man that marks our existence from time to time. This is about a reckless project conceived by men who lived outside of reality; a fleet, made up of miserable ships, manned by farmers and shepherds, sent from the Baltic beyond the world's borders, all the way to Japan. There, this fleet must fight, crush the Japanese one, and save the besieged base, Port Arthur. A madness and one of the greatest tragedies of the absurd. The book is titled Tsushima (the English title is effective, The Voyage Of The Forgotten Men), by the German Frank Thiess, a journalist who lived through two world wars and recounts the Russo-Japanese conflict. Written in 1936 and published in Italy by Einaudi, the novel lives on a pressing dichotomy: the language is precise, the technicalities are not missing, because the material reality of the facts is indisputable. But beneath the surface of battles and political choices, a mocking surrealism buzzes, the unheard "why" of this senseless adventure lost in time echoes, whose reasons elude human comprehension.
But here we speak of Russia, a nation incomprehensible in some ways. Thiess is from Livonia, a Baltic region that has known the Swedes, the Teutonic Knights, and the Tsars. And Tsarist Russia is the pachydermic empire in decay, corroded by corruption, nepotism, the mindless hatred of revolutionaries, which has given birth to this enterprise. The few who want the good of Russia are isolated, unheard, hated. Like the practical soul of this adventure, Admiral Rozhdestvensky; he loves his country, and for this reason, he fights furiously against the mud of corrupt bureaucracy. For this, he is an enemy of the St. Petersburg caste, for whom war is a distant nuisance, or worse, a sure way to crush the rising revolution. He, alone, with inhuman tenacity and iron will, brought those despicable ships on a twenty-thousand-mile journey across three oceans and presented himself at the rendezvous with Admiral Togo and defeat. Or rather, with destruction, because the Russian fleet will be shattered. The description of the battle is terrible, where men are reduced to mush under enemy fire, the ships break apart, drown in their blood, are skinned alive, scuttle themselves or surrender to avoid massacre.
From the book emerges a grand, penetrating, sometimes poignant picture. The melancholic and silent figure of the Russian soldier, the "gray martyr," emerges, destined for defeat and humiliation, but enormous in his courage and determination even in ruin. Tsar Nicholas II emerges, cowardly, indecisive, mystically devoted to his country but unable to understand it. And there is the revolution, bloodthirsty "headless, only feet that crush", and for this reason doomed from the start. The tragic figure of Rozhdestvensky, the defeated, stands out. The men fear him, but they love him; they consider him a revolutionary because he is on their side, suffers what they suffer, and is an enemy of the "lords of St. Petersburg," who wanted to create this formless fleet and then forgot it. They are the real enemies; however, they will win. For another twelve years, Russia will be in their hands. But Thiess makes it clear that even the second revolution will not change things: it will only serve to replace one disastrous elite with a new one, which will strangle the country for seventy years until implosion.
Tsushima is a dense, not easy book, sometimes pathetically excessive, sometimes exasperated. But it is a human, disturbing, twilight, and unmissable story. An Odyssey that rewards suffering and death, and seems almost like a parable. That of a life that has no meaning, which unfolds among unknown seas, while the father who brought us into the world turns his back on us, gives us no answers. That has only one possible conclusion. It is difficult even to imagine the feelings of land men transplanted aboard inferior ships, lost in the vastness of the Oceans, sailing towards a desperate fight and towards death against the backdrop of a distant homeland inflamed by revolution, which no longer cares for them. It is one of those extreme events that only history can generate. And it is a human event, wanted by men and fought by men.
Rozhdestvensky, having survived the battle, will be pointed out by his government as responsible for the disaster. But the other survivors recount, they know, and the people are on their side, the admiral is acclaimed by all. They will not manage to accuse him, but they will isolate him with infamy; he will die shortly thereafter. There were those who had noble words of condolences for him and his men: Admiral Togo, his adversary, the winner. Both will mourn, after the battle, the death of so many of their sons. Perhaps a glimmer of greatness in the stormy sea of madness.
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