How to Dethrone the Ego

A handful of Italian soldiers, clinging to the crest of Monte Pasubio, checked the Austro-Hungarian advance. Whenever an expedition attempted to bring them food, water, weapons, and ammunition on the backs of mules, the Austro-Hungarians bombarded it. So the Italians carved an astonishing path into the vertical walls of Pasubio, shielded from enemy artillery: they opened 52 galleries in the limestone rock and carved ledges into the chasms, along a 6.5-kilometer route that alternates claustrophobia with vertigo. They laid it out wide enough for two pack mules to pass, one going up and one down, wide enough so that a century later we walk in single file the ten writers and forty readers who took part in the Geografie sul Pasubio literary festival: an itinerant festival that for four days traverses this Trentino massif, with morning hikes and evening talks in the shelters, to discuss borders, wars, mountains and cultural blends. It struck me that they invited journalists, travel chroniclers, historians and philosophers, with no room for the burgeoning literature of the self, but I quickly realized that the path of the 52 galleries is ideal for thinning out the troops of narcissism: watch out for selfies, the signs warn, because from time to time someone poses, smiles, steps back to frame themselves and tumbles over the edge. Those alpine warnings are excellent pieces of literary critique.