Abstract

After examining the categories of the phantasmagoric, the phantasmatic and the fantastic, this article investigates the “phantasmagoric presencesµ in some of Buzzati’s works, meaning ‘visions’ that lead to an unprecedented cognitive experience. We will try to demonstrate how the use of phantasmagoria – to be read also in the rhetorical and argumentative dimension – is a figure of compensation for reality; a ‘real’, it must be said, that confuses and leaves bewildered, rich as it is in landslides, dark caves and nonsense. If the reason can only partially explain, the phantasmagoria tries to soothe.