Kobarid / Caporetto

As a long-term member of the Italian national school system, it’s impressive to arrive in Kobarid and discover that here the famous defeat is called čudez pri Kobaridu, das Wunder von Karfreit, or the miracle of Caporetto. Although this episode gives me proof of the need for continuous changes of perspective to create Europe, on the other hand it’s somewhat disappointing to recognize the same stupid patriotism on the other side of the border as well. A rhetoric capable of calling a battle in which tens of thousands of people died, a miracle. Yes, a miracle in the sense of a sudden and perhaps even unexpected resolution of a stalemate that had been going on in the trenches for almost two and a half years, but nevertheless... 

But it’s once again the location that’s striking, and it would really be worth having studied geology to better understand how the Nadiža took such a sudden curve to the south instead of continuing a little further on, throwing itself directly onto the Isonzo, right there on the slopes of the Baba hill, where Kobarid is located. For one reason or another the high valleys of Nadiža and Isonzo have ended up constituting one of the main connections between Friuli and Carinthia, and Caporetto has always lived with both Mediterranean and continental influences, often becoming a refuge for antagonistic beliefs, thoughts and practices as well.

It’s on a hill just above the modern town that Roman refugees took shelter during the invasions of the late ancient period, giving life along with non indigenous elements to a settlement where two basilicas coexisted with a third, of Arian worship, even in the aftermath of the Council of Nicaea. It is in the exact center, at Mrzli studenec, that next to a lime tree and a cold water spring the Slavic inhabitants of the area used to gather to celebrate pagan rites, at least until the intervention of the Inquisition of Cividale, which in 1331 eradicated the tree and sealed the spring with stones (the repression was not however sufficient and the ancient beliefs survived for a long time in these areas only to be defeated by the devastation brought by the First World War). 

And it is always here that there’s a monument dedicated to Marko Redelonghi (1912-44), a Friulian worker from Cividale who, despite his different nationality, immediately collaborated with the Slovenian anti-fascist movement of the TIGR. He was discovered, arrested and sent into confinement in Calabria but right after September 8th he returned here, becoming a commander of an Italian-Slovenian partisan battalion. Standing now in front of  this monument positioned willingly or by chance between the two rivers, the two valleys, the two worlds, I like to think that it also participates in this eccentric, perhaps marginal story that talks about Europe as the possibility of getting rid of the horror of the nation once and for all.