11. “TOO YOUNG TO BE OLD”

In the 1930s, on this trail, number 215, heading towards Lake Sorapis, walked the future Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Eugenio Montale (1896-1981). By his own admission, he was not a lover of mountains, preferring the sea and the Mediterranean landscapes whose elements provided so much inspiration for his poetry, as seen in Ossi di seppia (“Cuttlefish Bones”). Yet Montale dedicated a poem of extraordinary beauty exclusively to this lake. It is titled Sorapis 40 years ago and is included in the collection Diario del ’71 e del’72, published by Mondadori in 1973. The lake’s colors and superb location had also attracted other writers such as Antonia Pozzi (1912-1938), in Salita, Misurina, January 11, 1936, and the English writer and translator Ada Galsworthy, who mentions the lake in Over The Hills and Far Away (1937), adding with British humor: “At the nearby hut we tasted the best caked and the worst wine we had ever encountered.” Eugenio Montale frequented Cortina between the two wars, with his future wife Drusilla Tanzi, whom the poet playfully called “Mosca” (“fly”). “Among lakes, our only great find was Sorapis. It had the solitude of marmots, more often heard than seen, and the air of the Celestials; but the road that took you there! At first I traveled it alone to see if your eyes could penetrate the clouds zigzagging through lofty slabs of ice. And such a long journey! The only solace in the first stretch, through dense conifers, was the alarmed screeching of the jays. Then I took you by the hand and led you to the summit and an abandoned hut. It was our lake, its waters a few spans wide, and we were two lives too young to be old, and too old to feel young. Then we discovered what aging is. It has nothing to do with time, it’s something that makes us say we’re here, a miracle that happens only once. By comparison, youth is the vilest of illusions.” (Translated by William Arrowsmith).