An exemplary novel, written from one of the greatest European authors of the early twentieth century: Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, better known as Joseph Conrad, a Pole who, in English, tells a surprising French story. More: Napoleonic. A fresco of a world, that of cavalry and nineteenth-century armies, which from there to short would be swept away by the new weapons and military logics of the twentieth century: the introduction of weapons from fire to repetition and the super power of industrialists in the management of war profits would throw out ancient rules, military ethics and make massacres on the battlefields disproportionate.

The brilliant idea on which Conrad builds _The Duel _is that the two adversaries do not face each other on opposite sides of the battlefield: they are officers of the same army, Napoleon Bonaparte's Grande Armée. Hussars, to be exact.

For reasons to all unknown - and in reality trivial, to the point from bordering on the ridiculous - they ring to duel challenges that accompany them throughout their respective careers, without anyone knowing why this hatred runs so deep. And, precisely because of the mystery they manage to to preserve, the two become very famous throughout Napoleon's army: not so much and not only for their merits on battlefields throughout Europe, but for their heroic loyalty to their mutual challenge, which will accompany them for twenty years, until the decisive duel.

A'opera about a rapidly dying world, and at the same time a masterpiece of the absurd, about how the threads of life and fate get out of hand and override all common sense and predictability.

Gabriel Florian Feraud, a wrathful and disgruntled Gascon, and Armand D'Hubert, a posh and charming northern man, are not simply two promising young men, and bewildering officers in the greatest army of the nineteenth century, but to their way embody nightmares and obsessions that - from Melville to Faulkner, from Kafka to Albert Camus - accompany Western culture until the debacle of World War II.

This is work on the opponent and becoming an adult.

_For me in the _Duellants _there exists a simple yet twisted issue: the fiercest adversary you have within you and you cannot to get rid of it for the simple fact that it is you who do not want to get rid of it. It is the call of the forest, the desire for freedom, the pleasure of risk and conquest. And it doesn't lie elsewhere, it lies within and feeds on you and you on it. I love those stories where I can read one plot, and at the same time another completely different one, and the two coexist perfectly. This is one of those cases: Feraud exists and he is a real, live opponent, ruthless, fierce, even stupid in some ways but very determined. He will never give up. Yet, at the same time, Feraud is D'Hubert's dark half: he is that part of you that resurfaces whenever you let your guard down, whenever - looking around you - you discover a forbidden desire that you do not want to deny yourself, such as a full-blown duel, even though the rules of duels were abolished from Napoleon, who hated duels. Eraldo Affinati, in commenting on The Secret Companion, a Conrad short story from the same years as The Duel, writes: "The Secret Companion explains how to to become an adult: you have to choose, but that means giving up to something of yourself, not only the dry branches, which would cost nothing; also to the flowering ones, even the most beautiful ones. And this is much less easy. It is a real spiritual amputation: those who do not accept it, do not grow." This seems to me a perfect snapshot for our Duelists as well, and it makes this story an ante litteram Fight Club: a violent and inevitable, desired confrontation where - in reality - your real opponent does not exist. In fact, much worse: it's you. As if, in the moment of starting the duel, when you are shoulder to shoulder, and you take your steps to move away, in turning toward your Feraud, you see yourself. And you need that duel more than the air you breathe. Without it, you are dead. _

Francesco Niccolini

SYNOPSIS

**How long is a duel? **

Our stage version of _The Duelists _shows how impossible it is to give an unambiguous answer to the question. For a duel can last little longer than the time it takes to to draw sabers and give the opponent a wound too deep to continue. Or, conversely, it can last 20 years. Or again, just long enough for - out from a forest - the two godfathers of one of the duelists, while waiting for the developments of what is happening in the trees - to try to to reconstruct the mysterious affair that binds two officers of the Napoleonic army, Armand D'Hubert and Gabriel Florian Feraud. It is precisely the two of them who, in the woods, and along twenty years, never stop dueling. And it is always the two of them who to horse or on a meadow, skewer each other with sabers and foils. They started when they were lieutenants, after a trivial squabble, and never stopped. D'Hubert, well-regarded by his superiors, an elegant northern man, and Feraud, the Gascon who hates pandering and cicisbey damsels, like his adversary: the former increasingly disenchanted with Napoleon's exploits and defeats, the latter loyal beyond reasonable doubt to the emperor, for better or worse. From duel to duel, D'Hubert and Feraud participate in the conquest of Europe and the rise of Napoleon, then experience the defeat in Russia on their own skin, never ceasing to find opportunities for duels that, from time to time, become more and more epic for the whole Army, especially since no one knows the deep motives of the dispute: a woman? Napoleon? An unmentionable offense? Something that comes even from further back in time and in their lives? What secret so fierce and shameful binds them? Impossible to give an answer, since the two protagonists talk to no one about it. The few things that are clear about this affair are that Feraud does not intend in any way to discount to D'Hubert, that D'Hubert does not want to shirk to Feraud, and that-probably-one cannot do to less than the other. The two military men (who meanwhile have risen through the ranks and have come to to be captains, then colonels and finally generals) are so used to to fighting and to risking their lives, that those duels become willingly or unwillingly a fundamental part of their lives, an obsession that the two live out in opposite ways: with furious rancor Feraud against the damsel and traitor, with resigned inability to to evade D'Hubert. All this until the day Napoleon's fall and exile precipitates things: D'Hubert finds himself among the loyalists of the restored monarchy and is saved, while Feraud plummets with Napoleon and risks execution. Only the (secret) intervention of his enemy D'Hubert saves him: and while the "dandy" prepares for marriage to a young and beautiful niece of an aristocrat from the south of France, Feraud is forced to a sort of forced domicile and to an early and forced retirement, under threat of arrest if he misbehaves.

All this does not prevent to Feraud from organizing a new and final duel at the pistol. Subtracting himself from the orders of the Monarchy, and together to two surreal, aging godfathers, the Gascon joins D'Hubert in Provence and prepares for the final confrontation: at the pistol and in a forest, practically blind. D'Hubert - waiting for the duel - spends the most difficult night of his life: he who is used to to fighting on the battlefield and to seeing death in the face, for the first time, doubts not only Napoleon, but also that life, and whether it is really time to stop living sword in fist and think about his new family. Perhaps for the first time he is afraid.But it all disappears when the two are confronted and, guns in hand, they penetrate inside the woods, leaving Feraud's two godfathers (D'Hubert has decided not to have any) to await developments. This is the time of the tale and the duel: twenty years, or just over an hour. Until the surprising final discovery.