1 Cited in Mark Thompson, The White War (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 120.
2 Scipio Slataper, My Carso, trans. Gerald Moore (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2002), 98.
3 Severino Casara, L’arte di arrampicare di Emilio Comici (Milan: Hoepli, 1957), cited hereafter as AA, 12.
4 Spiro Dalla Porta Xidias, I Bruti di Val Rosandra (Bologna: Capelli, 1952), cited hereafter as Bruti, 68. Xidias later became an important biographer of Comici, partly because he was the first to have access to Emilio’s diaries, and partly because he was an insider of the Trieste scene and had conversations with Emilio’s friends, like Fabjan, Stefenelli and Brunner, in the 1950s and ’60s, after the need to protect their talented leader had passed.
5 Napoleone Cozzi, Alberto Zanutti and Nino Carniel, Albo, Estate, 1907 (self-published: Trieste, 1909), 34.
6 Livio Isaak Sirovich, Cime irredente (Turin: Vivalda, 1996), 158–59.
7 The Italian term palestra, which translates literally as gym, when applied to climbing can mean either a crag developed for rock climbing or an artificial climbing wall.
8 René Moehrle, “Fascist Jews in Trieste: Social, Cultural and Political Dynamics 1919–1938,” Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History 11 (October 2017), 3.
9 Rita Palmquist, “Emilio Comici e musica,” in Antonio Berti, Giorgio Brunner, Giordano Fabjan, Pietro Sagramora and Fausto Stefenelli, eds., Alpinismo Eroico (Milan: Hoepli, 1942), cited hereafter as AE, 200–2. There is also an abridged edition (Turin: Vivalda, 2012) with an excellent introductory essay by editor Elena Marco. All citations hereafter are from the 1942 edition, which gives full bibliographical information on the first place of publication of articles from the Rivista Mensile del Club Alpino Italiano and other periodicals.
10 Mario Carli, L’italiano di Mussolini: Romanzo dell’era fascista (Verona: Manadori, 1930), 56–58.
11 Camicie nere (blackshirts) and squadristi were interchangeable terms. By the time Emilio joined the blackshirts, after 1923, the group had evolved from bands of right-wing vigilantes into the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale (MVSN), a paramilitary organization roughly parallel to the SS in Germany, which answered directly to Mussolini. Emilio belonged to the Sixth Zona (Venezia Giulia) of the MVSN.
12 Johannes Mattes, “Underground Fieldwork: A Cultural and Social History of Cave Cartography and Surveying Instruments in the 19th and at the Beginning of the 20th Century,” International Journal of Speleology 44, no. 3 (2015), 251–66.
13 Duilio Durissini, “Abissi: scuola de altezze,” AE, 188.
14 Xidias, Emilio Comici: Mito di un alpinista (Belluno: Nuovi Sentieri, 1988), cited hereafter as EC, 19.
15 Gruppo Speleologico Geo CAI Bassano, “Storia della speleologia,” http://www.geocaibassano .it/storia-speleologia.
16 Rodolfo Battelini, Abisso Bertarelli, nelle sue emozionanii e tragiche esplorazioni (Trieste: Capelli, 1926), 47.
17 Julius Kugy, “Ricordando Emilio Comici,”AE, 194.
18 Sirovich, 111 ff.
19 Julius Kugy, Aus dem Leben eines Bergsteigers (Munich: Bergverlag Rudolf Rother, 1925). Translated as Alpine Pilgrimage (London: John Murray, 1934).
20 Julius Kugy, cited in “The Honourable Julius Kugy,” SummitPost, https://www .summitpost.org/the-honour able-julius-kugy/326920.
21 Paul Kaltenegger, “Dr. Julius Kugy,” trans. Hugh Merrick, The Alpine Journal, 1965, 88.
22 Antonio Berti, Le Dolomiti Orientali: Guida turistico-alpinistica (Milan: Treves, 1928), cited in Marco Armiero, A Rugged Nation: Mountains and the Making of Modern Italy (Cambridge: White Horse Press, 2011), 100.
23 Armiero, 88.
24 Domenico Rudatis, Das Letzte im Fels, translated from the Italian by Emmeli Capuis and Max Rohrer (Munich: Gesellschaft Alpiner Bücherfreunde, 1936), 19–20.
25 Bruti, 34–45.
26 Giani Stuparich, “Scuola di roccia,” Pietà del sole (Florence: Sansoni, 1942).
27 Roberto Santachiara and Wu Ming 1, Point Lenana (Rome: Einaudi, 2013), cited hereafter as PL, 195.
28 Emilio Comici, “Tecnica e spiritualità dell’arrampicata,” AE, 148–49.
29 Comici, “Sorella di Mezzo Terza Sorella, pareti Nord-Ovest,” cited hereafter as “Sorella,” Rivista Mensile (this periodical is cited hereafter as RM) (1930), 293; AE, 36.
30 Guido Rey, Peaks and Precipices: Scrambles in the Dolomites and Savoy, trans. J.E.C. Eaton (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1914), 129–30.
31 EC, 85.
32 Ibid.
33 Kugy later wrote a frank account of the hardships of early 20th-century guiding, Anton Oitzinger, Ein Bergführerleben (Graz: Leykam Verlag, 1935), translated as Son of the Mountains (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1938).
34 PL, 95.
35 Riccardo Cassin, Fifty Years of Alpinism (London: Diadem, 1981), 15.
36 “Sorella,” AE, 32.
37 Comici, “Cima di Riofreddo delle Madri dei Camosci, parete Nord” (cited hereafter as “Riofreddo”), RM, 1930, 156, Österreichische Alpenzeitung, 1932, 52, AE, 23.
38 Angelo Manaresi, “Un grande maestro, un purissimo eroe,” AE, 5.
39 “Riofreddo,” AE 25.
40 Ibid., 26.
41 Gino Buscaini, Alpi Giulie Italiano e Slovene (Milan: CAI Milano, Touring Club Italiano, 1974), 43.
42 AA, 31.
43 Emilio Comici, “Torre Dario Mazzeni,” RM (1930) 158, cited hereafter as “Mazzeni,” AE, 49.
44 Armiero, 13.
45 Dino Buzzati, “‘Direttissime’ sulla Civetta,” Corriere della Sera, October 22, 1934, I fluorilegge della montagna, Lorenzo Viganò, ed. (Milan: Mondadori, 2010), cited hereafter as Montagna, vol. 2, 26.
46 Julius Evola, Meditations on the Peaks, trans. Guido Stucco (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1974), 34.
47 Domenico Rudatis, “Civetta: palestra di ardimenti,” L’illustrazione veneta, 1929, cited hereafter as “Rudatis, ‘Civetta.’”
48 Vittorio Varale, Reinhold Messner, Domenico Rudatis, Sesto Grado (Milan: Longanesi, 1971), cited hereafter as SG.
49 Domenico Rudatis, correspondence with Vittorio Varale, April 19, 1930, Biblioteca Civica di Belluno, Fondo Varale.
50 Luigi Piccioni, Domenico Rudatis e la Storia dello sport dell’arrampicamento, 2, https://arrampicamento.wordpress .com/2014/02/24/la-storia -dellarrampicamento-uno -straordinario-quasi-inedito/. Rudatis considered Cassin and Gervasutti “Western” alpinists, because of their interest in big alpine peaks in the Western Alps, and despite Cassin’s record in the Dolomites.
51 Eric Roberts, Welzenbach’s Climbs (Seattle: Mountaineers, 1980), 98 ff.
52 Evola, 37. In a post–Second World War essay in Meditazioni, Evola cites Carlo Anguissola d’Emet citing a paragraph supposedly authored by Emilio Comici: “A real climber cannot be somebody who does not love, understand and pursue the fifth or sixth degree.” The sentence, which was often quoted, is likely apocryphal. Evola’s use of the quotation, however, is to show his approval of the sentiment.
53 Fritz Schmitt, “Emil Solleder,” Bergsteiger 6, no. 84 (1984), 62.
54 Giovanni Angelini, Civetta (Belluno: Fondazione Giovanni Angelini, 2009), 18.
55 Rudatis, “Civetta.”
56 Schmitt, 62.
57 Richard Hechtl, “Hundert Jahre Felsklettern: Die Geschichte eines gesellschaftlichen Phänomens,” (DAV, Bayerland, 2003), 70, http://www.alpen verein-bayerland.de/module _requirements/geschichte/hundert_jahre_felsklettern/pdf/001-214%20Hundert%20Jahre%20Felsklettern.pdf.
58 SG, 11.
59 Alessandro Pastore, “L’alpinismo, il Club Alpino Italiano e il fascismo,” Sport und Faschismen/Sport e fascismi, 2004, no. 1, 68.
60 Ibid., 85.
61 Rudatis later recognized Emilio Comici’s importance in climbing history. See SG, 1 ff..
62 Armiero, 149.
63 AA, 41.
64 Cassin, 34.
65 “Riofreddo,” AE, 23.
66 Kirsten Barnes and Nicholas J.S. Gibson, “Supernatural Agency: Individual Difference Predictors and Situational Correlates,” The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 23, no. 1 (2013), 42–62.
67 SC, 44.
68 “Riofreddo,” AE, 28.
69 Ibid., 29, 30–31.
70 Ibid., 31.
71 Ibid., 21.
72 “Atto costitutivo della ‘Scuola di roccia di Val Rosandra,’” April 14, 1933, https://www.scuoladialpinismo .eu/storia-scuola-alpinismo -emilio-comici.
73 Pastore, 69.
74 “Circolare,” October 1 (year unrecorded), https://www.scuola dialpinismo.eu/storia-scuola -alpinismo-emilio-comici; “1929–2019, Gli Anni di Scuola,” Alpi Giulie 113, no. 2 (2019), 52–61.
75 “Apunnti Sulla Scuola Nazionale di Alpinismo,” October 3, 1936, https://www.scuoladialpinismo .eu/storia-scuola-alpinismo -emilio-comici.
76 That summer, Casara began a one-sided correspondence with Emmy, to whom he was soon confessing his love, despite their both being married; she never reciprocated in her copious surviving polite responses. Personal Correspondence of Severino Casara, November 23, 1931, Biblioteca della Fondazione G. Angellini-Centro Studia sulla Montagna, Belluno.
77 Severino Casara states that Emmy met Emilio on top of the Dito di Dio and, after looking over the edge and watching him make the first ascent of the north face with Fabjan, said he climbed like Preuss (Casara, 40). The author agrees with Xidias that this is likely a story made up by Casara, partly because of the difficulty of watching anyone climb the north face from the summit and also because of Emmy’s questionable fitness for the standard route on the Dito di Dio in 1929 (EC, 49).
78 Moehrle, 4.
79 Dino Buzzati, “Severino Casara: Il caso degli strapiombi nord mise a rumore le Dolomiti,” Corriere della Sera, January 13, 1948, Montagna, 27–31; Alessandro Gogna and Italo Zandonella Callegher, La verità obliqua di Severino Casara (Turin: Priuli and Verlucca, 2009).
80 AA, 39.
81 Felice Benuzzi sent his young German girlfriend to stay with Emilio in Misurina so that Emilio could test her climbing skills and thus her suitability as a bride for Benuzzi. After the test, Emilio wrote Benuzzi “The girl will do quite well in the mountains” and sent her on her away. PL, 143.
82 Armiero, 18.
83 Cortina was renamed Cortina d’Ampezzo after the Great War but was typically still referred to as Cortina.
84 “Riofreddo,” AE, 35–36.
85 “Sorella,” AE, 36.
86 Ibid., 35.
87 Ibid., 44.
88 “Mazzeni,” AE, 46.
89 Ibid., 46.
90 Ibid., 47.
91 Ibid., 50.
92 The Zsigmondy hut beneath the north face of the Croda dei Toni was destroyed in the Great War; in 1928, it was rebuilt and renamed the Mussolini hut. In 1945, it was renamed the Comici-Zsigmondy hut, a name still in use at time of writing.
93 The peak is also known as the Zwölferkofel. The feature Emilio, Fabjan and Slocovich climbed was named Croda Antonio Berti after Berti’s death in 1956.
94 Emilio Comici, “Cima di Mezzo della Croda dei Toni, parete Nord-Ovest,” RM (1931), cited hereafter as “Croda dei Toni,” 115. AE, 53.
95 Ibid., 59.
96 PL, 111.
97 Pastore, 69.
98 Pietro Crivellaro, “Nel CAI fascista irrompe lo sport,” Montagne 360 (April 2013), 54.
99 Rudatis: “Lo sport dell’arrampicamento,” Lo sport fascista, cited hereafter as Sport, 3 (1930), 33–39; “Dall’alpinismo tradizionale all’affermazione sportive,” Sport 4 (1930), 108–15; “L’ascesa dello sport dell’arrampicamento sino all’alba del nostro secolo,” Sport 5 (1930), 30–42; “Di scalata in scalata verso il limite del possible,” Sport 7 (1930), 34–45; “L’apogeo della tecnica d’arrampicamento,” Sport 8 (1930), 18–31; “L’estrema progressione dell’arrampicamento,” Sport 12 (1930), 32–42.
100 Riccardo Cassin, “Italian Climbing Between the Wars,” Alpine Journal (1972), 151.
101 EC, 34.
102 Emilio Comici, “La Civetta, direttissima italiana: Parete Nord-Ovest,” RM (1931), 799, and Annuario Club Alpino Accademico Italiano (1931), 268, cited hereafter as “Civetta, direttissima,” AE, 70.
103 Ibid.
104 Ibid., AE, 71.
105 A search of contemporary English climbing literature revealed no sources for the simile. Edward Whymper, whose Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the Years 1860–1869 (London: John Murray, 1871) was available in Italian translation and quoted by Emilio, preferred to make straight routes to summits, and chastised guides and other climbers for not doing so, but made no mention of the role of the water drop in route choice.
106 “Civetta, direttissima,” AE, 72.
107 Albert Frederick Mummery, My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (London: T. Fisher, 1895), 162.
108 “Civetta, direttissima,” AE, 75.
109 Cassin, 47–48.
110 “Civetta, direttissima,” AE, 79.
111 AA, 41.
112 “Sorella,” AE, 44.
113 According to German climber Hans Steger, for most of his climb, Emilio had thought he was on the Solleder-Lettenbauer, which would give him a reason to avoid comparisons between the two routes on the northwest face of the Civetta. The distance between the two routes for most of the wall makes Steger’s claim unlikely.
114 Doug Scott, “The Great Pioneers of the Eastern Alps, Part 2: The Mid ’Twenties to 1939,” Mountain 34 (April 1974), 31. Scott’s is the last in-depth treatment of climbing in the Eastern Alps in English, at time of writing. Scott outlined the careers and achievements of climbers in the Eastern Alps who were little known to English-speaking climbers, including Steger, Micheluzzi, Carlesso, Solleder and Comici, whom he sees as an era-ending figure.
115 EC, 77.
116 Armiero, 144.
117 EC, 94.
118 EC, 92.
119 Armiero, 135.
120 Kerwin Lee Klein, “A Vertical World: The Eastern Alps and Modern Mountaineering,” Journal of Historial Sociology 24, no. 4 (December 2011), 534.
121 Alessandro Gogna, “Angelo Dibona” (2013), Club Alpino Italiano website, http://www .caisem.org/pdf/csc_2013/Angelo_Dibona.pdf.
122 Emilio Comici, “La via eterna primo giro completo della Cengia degli Dei,” cited hereafter as “Cengia degli Dei,” AE, 60.
123 EC, 80.
124 AA, 196.
125 The investigation was undoubtedly influenced by a malicious rumour not only that Casara was a liar but that his cowardice and his numerous adoring comments on Emilio’s physique indicated that he was a homosexual, a serious crime in fascist Italy.
126 Cassin, 11.
127 Lida de Polzer, “I Bazzoni: Racconto incompleto della storia di famiglia, pieno in cambio di notizie che non interessano nessuno,” website of the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, http://www.oats.inaf.it/bazzoni/doc/storiabazzoni.pdf.
128 Cassin, 22.
129 AA, 44.
130 AA, 44.
131 Cassin, 34.
132 Dino Buzzati, “Strapiombi,” La Lettura, August 1933, cited in Montagne, 15.
133 Frank Smythe, The Spirit of the Hills (London: Hodder, 1935), 112.
134 J. Monroe Thorington, “Das Letzte im Fels, by Domenico Rudatis,” American Alpine Journal, 1937, 98.
135 EC, 98.
136 EC, 99.
137 Named after the American climber Miriam O’Brien Underhill, a client of the Dimais who was married to the American mountaineer Robert Underhill.
138 AA, 44.
139 AA, 44.
140 EC, 95–103. The Longeres hut was bombed in the Great War, rebuilt and named Principe Umberto after the crown prince of the Italian royal family. In July 1957, it burned down; the hut rebuilt on the site is named the Auronzo hut.
141 Buzzati, “Cima Grande di Lavaredo,” La Domenica del Corriere, 37 (1935), cited hereafter as “Buzzati, ‘Cima Grande.’”
142 Buzzati, “Cima Grande.”
143 Comici, “Anticima della Piccola di Lavaredo, Spigolo Giallo Sud,” RM (1934), cited hereafter as “Spigolo Giallo,” 524, AE, 81.
144 Ibid.
145 Ibid.
146 “Spigolo Giallo,” AE, 83.
147 EC, 101.
148 EC, 101.
149 Buzzati, “Cima Grande.”
150 SC, 43.
151 Personal letter, Angelo Manaresi to Emilio Comici, April 4, 1934. Sass Balòss blog, https://sass baloss.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/emilio-comici-e-la-lettera -al-presidente-generale-del-cai/.
152 In 1929 Aimone de Savola-Aosta, the nephew of the Duke of the Abruzzi, led an expedition not primarily concerned with mountaineering, to explore the upper Baltoro glacier, near to K2. In the same year, a small trip with three Italian climbers visited eastern Greenland.
153 Brunner was not a typical working-class Val Rosandra climber disposed by poverty and a childhood under occupation towards fascism. Xidias suggests that a family fortune protected Brunner from the consequences of repudiating the party. See Giorgio Brunner, Un uomo va sui monti (Bologna: Alfa, 1957).
154 General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, who called himself the “Chilean Mussolini,” had been recently ousted, but his followers were still highly influential in the cabinet and anticipated (correctly) their leader’s return. Chile was blockading arms shipments to neighbouring Bolivia, which was at war with Paraguay in the Gran Chaco region. Mussolini wanted to increase his influence and prestige by instating cordial relations between two conservative states, shoring up the failing, German-trained Bolivian army and selling Italian military hardware to the landlocked Bolivians, which would have to be delivered through Chilean territory.
155 Evelio A. Echevarria, The Andes (Augusta, MO: Joseph Reidhead, 2018), 280–85.
156 In 1934, for instance, he spoke only to the local sections of the CAI in Venice, Milan, Rome, Genoa, Bergamo and Vicenza.
157 AA, 10. Casara says that Emilio’s usual fee was 250 lire, of which 100 lire was spent on the train ticket and 100 on lantern slides. The remainder would be easily spent on meals and accommodation.
158 Emilio Comici, “Tecnica e spiritualità dell’arrampicata,” AE, 146.
159 Emilio Comici, “Arrampicata in Grecia” (1934), AE, 86–87.
160 Ibid., 94.
161 Ibid., 96.
162 Museo Nazionale della Montagna – CAI Torino, Cinema delle Montagne (Turin: Utet Libreria, 2004), 121.
163 Cinema delle Montagne, 89.
164 Jacqueline Reich, Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015), 241.
165 Giuseppe Inaudi, “Emilio Comici e la Scuola Centrale Militare di Alpinismo di Aosta,” AE, 162.
166 EC, 208, 218.
167 AA, 44.
168 EC, 87.
169 Ibid.
170 In EC, Xidias accuses Casara of having made up the story about Bruna’s ghost, and references Emilio’s diary (a document unavailable to Casara) to show that the event could not likely have occurred when Casara claimed it had. Allowing for some exaggerations and inaccuracies by Casara, including the date of the event, the story is more or less in harmony with Emilio’s other experiences of the supernatural.
171 EC, 93.
172 Benito Mussolini, My Autobiography, trans. Richard Washburn Child (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2006), 11.
173 SC, 58.
174 AA, 34.
175 In the 1930s, Cassin mixed nationalism and fascism with his climbing. The season before, in 1934, he named the new route he had climbed on the Cimone della Bagozza with Aldo Frattini, Luigi Pozzi and Rodolfo Varallo “XXVII Ottobre – Achille Starace.” Starace was a colourful, floridly corrupt, right-wing militant fascist party secretary and soldier. October 27 was the anniversary of the fascist March on Rome.
176 Cassin, 60.
177 AA, 50–51.
178 Inaudi, 228.
179 Il Popolo, October 18, 1932, 1.
180 Emilio Comici, “Alpinismo Solitario,” cited hereafter as “Alpinismo Solitario,” AE, 133.
181 Ibid., 141.
182 EC, 159.
183 Marco Dalla Torre, Antonia Pozzi e la montagna (Assago: Ancora, 2009), 97.
184 AA, 55–56.
185 Emilio Comici, “Spedizione alpinistica in Spagna,” AE, 98–99.
186 Ibid.
187 Umberto Pacifico made one significant but short route, the Spigolo Pacifico on the Castelletto Inferiore, in 1941, and then retreated to his first love, Val Rosandra. He eventually became the head of the mountaineering school, based on his reputation for a love of the Carso and patience with ambitious young climbers.
188 EC, 140.
189 “Mary Varale, ‘la signora di Milano,’” Qvota 864: Quaderni di Vita di Montagna website, http://qvota864.it/mary-varale.html.
190 After the first ascent, Giuseppe Novello tore the page out of a hut register describing Emilio, Sandro del Toro and Piero Mazzorana’s first ascent of the north face of the Dito di Dio in 1936, and added his name to the list of first ascensionists. When Novello’s page became public after his death, a rumour that Novello had been on the first ascent was born. “Il mistero del Dito di Dio,” GognaBlog (personal blog of Alessandro Gogna), February 9, 2019, https://www.gognablog.com/il-mistero-del-dito-di-dio/.
191 SC, 58.
192 EC, 221.
193 EC, 145.
194 Ibid.
195 Ibid.
196 Ibid., 146.
197 “Mazzeni,” AE, 50.
198 AA, 62.
199 “Cengia degli Dei,” AE, 62.
200 Emilio Comici, “Cima d’Auronzo, Südwand,” Österreichische Alpenzeitung 67 (1941), AE, 108.
201 Ibid., 111.
202 EC, 221.
203 AA, 67.
204 E-mail from Reinhold Messner to David Smart, August 6, 2019: “P. Aschenbrenner (1933) found the things on the end of the big difficulties. There is no doubt that Comici left them on the last Bivy-Place.”
205 EC, 103.
206 “Alpinismo Solitario,” AE, 141–42.
207 AA, 67.
208 Antonio Pozzi, “For Emilio Comici,” cited in David Smart, “Blood that Dreams of Stones: Antonia Pozzi, Climbing Poet,” Alpinist 68 (winter 2020), 98.
209 “Alpinismo Solitario,” AE, 145.
210 EC, 162. Casara reported that the news of Emilio’s solo of the north face of the Cima Grande “fell on the heads of his detractors like an axe” and silenced any serious criticism. It is more likely that the Cortinesi guides did not care, or thought his solo an unnecessary flourish, but there is no evidence that they wrote the derogatory comment in the summit register.
211 Belgian climber Claude Barbier made the second solo ascent of the north face of the Cima Grande, in 1961.
212 Evola, 35.
213 AA, 70.
214 Emilio Comici, “Cima,” AE, 104.
215 PL, 137.
216 SC, 80–81
217 SC, 80–81.
218 Österreichische Alpenzeitung 67 (1941), 104.
219 Emilio Comici, “La falciata della morte,” AE, 114.
220 EC, 37.
221 AA, 83.
222 SC, 78–79.
223 See entries for 1920 to 1940, Cinema delle Montagna, 49–172.
224 Official CAI Presidenza Generale letter, “Medaglie al Valore Atletico anno XV,” Angelo Manaresi to Riccardo Cassin. June 14, 1938, GognaBlog, https://www.gognablog.com/wp-content /uploads/2017/10/Montagna-uomini -idee-3-6.jpg.
225 AA, 77.
226 “Anche il Centro Alpinistico epurato dei soci ebrei” Notice, Il Piccolo, November 17, 1938. Sirovich, tavola XVII.
227 Goffredo Plastino and Joseph Sciorra, Neapolitan Postcards (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), 192.
228 Fabio Presutti, “The Saxophone and the Pastoral: Italian Jazz in the Age of Fascist Modernity,” Italica 85, no. 2/3 (summer/autumn 2008), 273.
229 Rita Palmquist, “Emilio Comici e la musica,” AE, 200.
230 Ibid.
231 AE, 203.
232 Emilio Comici, Con me, a scuola a sci (Milan: Hoepli, 1945).
233 Smart, “Antonia Pozzi,” 101.
234 Dalla Torre, 100.
235 Antonio Pozzi, Parole (Milan: Mondadori, 1939).
236 PL, 230.
237 Il Prefetto della Provincia di Bolzano, “Certifica che il Signor Comici Leonardo Emilio,” Bolzano, April 23, 1940.
238 PL, 232.
239 Carlo Rossi, “Local Government in Italy under Fascism,” American Political Science Review 29, no. 4 (August 1935), 658.
240 Eduard Reut-Nicolussi, Tyrol unter dem Bell (Munich: 1929) published in English as Tyrol under the Axe of Italian Fascism, trans. K.L. Montgomery (London: Unwin Brothers, 1930), 253–54: “the [prefectural] commissioners… rivalled each other in patriotic lavishness to Italian societies, travel associations, memorials, and charitable foundations. The Fascist administration announced the town of Bozen as a perpetual member of the Dante Alighieri Society, presented a thousand metres of land to an Italian Kindergarten Union, allotted to the Italian lessee of Bozen theatre, on account of his losses during the Italian representations, an annual supplement of 100,000 lire, together with the expenses of lighting, fitting-up, advertising, theatre staff, such as dressmakers and hairdressers, etc. They further gave a thousand lire for the Italian war memorial on Monte Grappa and many hundred thousands to Italian War Unions, Invalid Days, receptions of students out of every imaginable Italian town, and members of the Royal Household. As all set in for the communal officials, with numberless banquets… at the cost of the townsfolk.”
241 Casara’s observation that Emilio “went about his job in climbing pants and a T-shirt” was based on his visits during Emilio’s off-duty days.
242 Reut-Nicolussi, 250.
243 Armiero, 134.
244 Istituto Luce Cinecittà YouTube channel, “Giovanni balilla in un Campeggio presso S. Cristina in Val Gardena” (1936), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6IU9nBAo40.
245 Reut-Nicolussi, 69, 273.
246 Ibid., 273.
247 Reinhold Messner, “Sudtirolo e nazionalsocialismo,” Messaggero Veneto 02 (2006), 14, http://ricerca .gelocal.it/messaggeroveneto/archivio/messaggeroveneto/2006/02/14/NZ_21_MON3.html?refresh_ce.
248 AA, 23–24.
249 Ibid., 23.
250 James R. Dow, Heinrich Himmler’s Cultural Commissions: Programmed Plunder in Italy and Yugoslavia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2018), 13.
251 AA, 95.
252 Sirovich, 312.
253 EC, 178.
254 “Riofreddo,” AE, 22.
255 Dante Alighieri Society, “Stelutis Alpinis,” http://danteact.org.au/dante-musica-viva/repertoire/stelutis-alpinis/.
256 AE, 132.
257 EC, 208. Franz Rudowsky, editor of the Österreichische Alpenzeitung (Austrian Alpine Journal), was the first climber to compare Emilio’s climbing style to an angel’s.
258 PL, 106.
259 Sirovich, 326.
260 Ibid., 326–38.
261 Bruti, 76–77.
262 Rudatis, “Color Television System, U.S. patent number 3,053,931, 1958,” Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office (Washington: United States Government Printing Press, 1962), vol. 7612566.
263 Reinhold Messner, “L’assassinio dell’impossibile,” RM, October 1968; Ken Wilson, “Cerro Torre: A Mountain Desecrated,” Mountain 23 (September 1972).
264 Scott, 29.
265 Bernadette McDonald and John Amatt, eds. Voices from the Summit: The World's Great Mountaineers on the Future of Climbing (New York: National Geographic Society and Banff Centre for Mountain Culture, 2000), 190.
266 Psalms 8:4–5 (King James Version).
267 Buzzati, “Mezzo secolo di scandalo sulle più aeree Dolomiti,” Corriere d’informazione, Nov. 26–27, 1947, cited in Montagna, vol. 2, 17.
268 Buzzati, Montagna, vol. 2, 10.
269 Antonia Pozzi, “For Emilio Comici,” Smart, 98.