Other literary forms
The literary production of Gabriele D’Annunzio (dahn-NEWNT-syoh) encompasses many other genres: short stories, poetry, autobiographical essays, political writings, and several plays, both in Italian and French. It would appear difficult as well as arbitrary, however, to draw a sharp distinction between D’Annunzio’s fiction and his memoirs, for his works in both forms are eminently autobiographical. The only possible differentiation between the two genres depends on the mere change from first-person to third-person narration. Moreover, D’Annunzio’s fiction and nonfiction follow a pattern of parallel development that escapes chronological schematization. Finally, to exclude memoirs would present only a partial vision of the author’s work, thereby greatly reducing the understanding and appreciation of his achievements in this field.
G. Barberi Squarotti, in his book Invito alla lettura di D’Annunzio (1982), affirms that D’Annunzio’s work should be taken in its totality, openly opposing traditional literary criticism, which has constantly chosen an anthological approach, favoring one aspect or another of his work. This constant search for a formula that could define D’Annunzio to the exclusion of relevant parts of his work, aside from being substantially reductive, has given quite unsatisfactory results. The various labels of “decadent,” “nocturnal,” or “sensual” ignore the essence of his writing, which consists in the very plurality of its aspects, reflecting the motifs, themes, and poetics of fifty years of European intellectual life.
When D’Annunzio wrote his first book in prose, the dominant personality in Italian narrative was Giovanni Verga, a powerful writer whose main contributions consisted of a collection of short stories and two novels, I Malavoglia (1881; The House by the Medlar Tree, 1964) and Mastro-don Gesualdo (1889; English translation, 1923). These works, in their style and themes, represent a clear departure from academic prose of the day. Verga derived his inspiration from the humble life of Sicilian people and created a personal language, harsh and concise, to express these realities. The new generation was deeply influenced by the innovative impact of his writing and recognized in Verga the leader of a new literary trend, the Italian Verismo, which, in spite of some substantial distinctions, can be equated with French naturalism.
D’Annunzio’s first work in prose, Terra vergine, a collection of short stories, was published in 1882. Other collections followed, and finally all the short stories were included in two revised editions of Terra vergine (1884, 1902) and Le novelle della Pescara (1892, 1902; Tales from My Native Town, 1920). These writings, inspired by the folklore of the Abruzzi region, are clearly influenced by Verga’snarrative models, but some basic innovations are already present. Beyond the tranche de vie (slice of life), photographically faithful to a somber and modest reality, D’Annunzio pursues the extraordinary and the exceptional. The sober representation of basic human passions is replaced by the analysis of morbid sensations, the description of natural landscapes is heightened by feelings of panic participation, and the language becomes particularly expressive in its tones of exasperated chromatism. From the beginning, it was evident that D’Annunzio was taking new steps beyond the boundaries of naturalism toward “decadentistic” excesses.
Achievements
During his lifetime, Gabriele D’Annunzio, surrounded by the admiration of his contemporaries, met extraordinary success; his writings deeply affected Italian society, and most of his literary works were awaited and welcomed by an enthusiastic public. This favorable reception was followed by a period of neglect and even of open rejection. The negative judgment that fell on D’Annunzio’s works should be ascribed mainly to the sharp change of perspective that characterized the 1920’s intellectual debate in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Politically, D’Annunzio’s ideas, after being superficially assimilated into the fascist ideology, were harshly condemned; morally, his anticonformist lifestyle was stigmatized as decadent; aesthetically, his language, rich in lexical novelties and classical allusions, was rejected as a futile exercise in rhetoric. Now, most authoritative critics recognize D’Annunzio as the fecund interpreter of several generations of European intellectual life, whose greatest achievement remains the renewal of Italian culture.
Prior to the advent of D’Annunzio, the young Italian nation, absorbed in its political and economic struggle, was still dominated by provincial interests and the literary traditions of the past. D’Annunzio, a prodigious reader extremely receptive to the stimuli coming from abroad, renovated the literary scene, introducing new techniques and developing new themes.
D’Annunzio’s vast work in prose, which registers the influence of the major European writers and follows the suggestions of the various literary movements, shows a steady evolution toward a greater freedom and richness of expression. Moving beyond the boundaries of naturalism, through a segmented process of experimentation and assimilation, D’Annunzio reached his expressive measure in the memoirs that are now considered his highest achievement in prose.
Biography
Gabriele D’Annunzio’s tumultuous life elicited great fascination from his contemporaries and nourished the works of his biographers with a number of romantic anecdotes. D’Annunzio himself orchestrated and publicized his “inimitable life,” paying careful attention to the preservation of his legend. His correspondence (more than ten thousand letters) also maintained and renewed, with countless details, the interest in his life.
This romantic aspect of D’Annunzio’s biography appears today outdated and even laughable; nevertheless, beyond the ostentatious facade there are elements of durable truth that bring into proper perspective the man and his work. D’Annunzio’s thirst for new experiences corresponds in fact to his indefatigable search for new literary solutions, and his existential adventures represent the prime source of his inspiration.
D’Annunzio was born in Pescara, a small and, at that time, somnolent little city on the coast of the Abruzzi region. His family belonged to the middle class and was wealthy enough to provide him with an excellent education. Young Gabriele did not feel a great respect for his father, nor did he show a particular attachment for his relatives, apart from a deep affection for his mother. It was not the family, but rather the Abruzzi region, with its primitive society dominated by ancestral laws, that influenced him deeply. The landscape, people, and folklore of his native land were to be a recurrent motif in D’Annunzio’s works.
D’Annunzio soon left his hometown for Prato, in Tuscany, where at the renowned Liceo Cicognini he received a solid preparation in the humanities. A brilliant student and a daring young rebel, D’Annunzio excelled in all his classes, protested against the strict discipline, and led his classmates in knavish escapades. Later, the recollection of these years would give substance to some beautiful pages of his memoir prose. D’Annunzio’s years in Prato culminated in 1879 with the publication of a collection of verses, Primo vere (early spring), which was very well received by the critics.
This first success opened the way to a brilliant literary career. In 1881, D’Annunzio was in Rome with the intention of pursuing his studies at the university, but soon he abandoned academia to embrace the elegant and worldly life of the capital. Brilliant contributor to journals and magazines, cherished guest of aristocratic and literary circles, D’Annunzio succeeded in combining an effervescent social life with unrelenting literary activity. After a romantic elopement, his marriage in 1883 to Maria Hardouin, duchess of Gallese, crowned the success of his social ambitions, and the publication of The Child of Pleasure (in Italian in 1889) consolidated his literary reputation. The marriage, which saw the birth of three children, was to last seven years. For the first four years, D’Annunzio seemed to accept an approximation of conventional domesticity, but in 1887, the encounter with Barbara, the wife of Count Leoni, precipitated the end of his already precarious union with Maria. His sensual passion for “Barbarella” inspired in part the novel The Triumph of Death and all the verses of Elegie romane (1892).
Naples, where D’Annunzio moved in 1891, represents another step in his life and writings. There he collaborated with his friend, Eduardo Scarfoglio, the editor of Il corriere di Napoli, in which he published his novel The Intruder in installments. D’Annunzio’s first engagement in politics dated from this time, with the publication of an article, “La bestia elettiva.” In this article he attacked universal suffrage, restating Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of the inevitable supremacy of one group over another. These aristocratic ideas constantly recur in his writings, and the influence of the German philosopher is particularly evident in the works of the next decade.
While in Naples, the love affair with Barbara came to an end, and the writer became involved with Princess Maria Gravina, who left her husband to live with him more uxorio. Two children were born from this union, but his love for Maria did not survive a cruise to Greece in 1904. Upon his return, he separated from her to start a new love relationship, this time with the great actor Eleonora Duse. Duse, an extremely intelligent and passionate woman, brought to D’Annunzio the most enriching and stimulating love of his life. Under her influence he began his career as a dramatist and with her, in the splendid retreat of La Capponcina, his Tuscan villa, he wrote the first three books of Le laudi (1949), which remain the greatest accomplishment of D’Annunzio the poet. The relationship also provided him with the narrative nucleus of the novel The Flame of Life, published in 1900, in which he did not hesitate to portray in the aging actor Foscarina the generous and loving Eleonora. Added to his chronic unfaithfulness, this portrayal was one of the factors that prompted their separation in 1905. During the exceptionally productive years from 1895 to 1905, D’Annunzio also published the novel The Maidens of the Rocks and actively engaged in politics. In 1897, his name appeared on the list of right-wing candidates, and he was elected as a representative to the Italian parliament.
This first contact with political life did not mark D’Annunzio deeply, since his attendance in parliament was sporadic and his interventions capricious. His boredom with the ruling conservative party, which he described as “a group of screaming dead men,” soon became open rejection. When, in 1900, the Pelloux government proposed its harsh reactionary laws, D’Annunzio, ostentatiously, moved his seat from the extreme right to the extreme left. Was this gesture dictated by his usual indulgence in theatrical effects or by genuine indignation? In D’Annunzio, it is difficult to separate the authentic from the artificial, since artifice was for him quite genuine. In an article that appeared a few days later, the writer justified his abrupt conversion by explaining that what he appreciated in the Socialist Party was its destructive potential—the same thing he admired in Nietzsche’s theories. For D’Annunzio, extreme right and left seem to have coincided in a type of anarchic program aiming at the destruction of sclerotic institutions, whose only function was to protect incompetence and corruption. The following year, D’Annunzio presented himself as a candidate for the Socialist Party, but he was defeated and subsequently retired from the parliamentary arena.
After his separation from Eleonora Duse, D’Annunzio continued his amorous career with new affairs: first, Marquise Carlotti, who, once abandoned by him, found peace in a convent; then Countess Mancini, who, shattered by the impact of their turbulent and precarious relationship, collapsed into moments of despair and mental insanity. It was a sad episode, recounted by D’Annunzio in Forse che si forse che no (yes or no) and in Solus ad solam, an autobiographical writing that was published only after his death, in 1939.
Although D’Annunzio was a skillful manager of his literary success, the costly experiments with cars and planes he financed and his extravagant tastes drove him to bankruptcy. In 1909, he was obliged to sell his mansion, La Capponcina, and, being pursued by his creditors, he decided to leave Italy for France. Friends and admirers welcomed the famous writer, and he remained in France until the outbreak of World War I. During his voluntary exile, he took an active part in the social and intellectual life of Paris and published several works in French. Among them, the most prominent work is Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien, a theatrical text with music by Claude Debussy, which was presented in Paris in 1911.
The most magnificent adventure of D’Annunzio’s life began with World War I. Upon his return to Italy in 1914, he campaigned for the intervention against Germany, and as soon as Italy entered the war, he enlisted as a volunteer. He fought first on the front line and at sea. Afterward he participated in several risky actions with the first military planes, until a plane accident cost him three months of immobility and the loss of his right eye. During this period of forced inactivity, he painfully scribbled a number of notes that were to become the nucleus of Il notturno (1921), one of his most valuable works in prose.
By the end of the war, D’Annunzio, quite naturally, assumed the role of the poet-prophet, voicing the feeling of frustration and discontent of the Italian people, confronted by an economic crisis and peace negotiations that did not favor Italian interests. Popular unrest reached its apex with the question of the annexation of Fiume, a city on the Dalmatian coast. D’Annunzio chose action; leading a group of volunteers in the famous Marci dei Ronchi, he occupied Fiume, where he established a temporary government. The Italian government, which was trying to avoid open conflict over this issue, first ordered D’Annunzio to leave the city, then sent the fleet with the order to bomb Fiume to force him to retreat.
Meanwhile, Benito Mussolini had assumed the leadership of the nationalist forces. In 1920, when D’Annunzio returned from his unsuccessful enterprise, there was no place left for him on the political scene. Abandoning any hope of playing an active role in the country, D’Annunzio retired to a large estate on Lake Garda, later named Il Vittoriale (the name means “pertaining to victory”), where, in semi-isolation, he spent the rest of his life. Officially, he maintained his support for the Fascist government, although he despised Adolf Hitler and had no respect for Mussolini, whom he considered a bad imitator of his own style. Mussolini, who did not trust D’Annunzio as a friend and feared him as an enemy, approved his timely retreat and bestowed honors and subventions upon him.
D’Annunzio’s last years were devoted to the editing of his Opera omnia (1927-1936). He also gathered some of his previous writings, which he published in two volumes as Le faville del maglio (1924, 1928). Memories, erotic obsessions, and feelings of disillusionment fill the pages of Le cento e cento e cento pagine del libro segreto di Gabriele D’Annunzio tentato di morire (1935), which, apart from some privileged moments, lacks the vigor and drive of his other works. Without the fresh inspiration of a life intensely lived, literature had become for D’Annunzio an empty form. He died at Il Vittoriale in 1938 and lay in state in the uniform of an air force general.
Analysis
After testing his narrative potential in short fiction, Gabriele D’Annunzio confronted the challenge of long fiction with the novel The Child of Pleasure, which confirmed in his prose writing a success already established in poetry. During the next twenty years, seven other novels followed, including Leda Without Swan, which could be better defined as a long short story.
The passage from short to long fiction presents substantial changes. Abandoning naturalistic themes and atmosphere, the writer directs his attention to the aristocratic world of the capital: Natural landscapes are substituted for elegant interiors or closed gardens; simple characters with primitive passions are replaced with sophisticated figures corroded by subtle torments. The language, highly refined, flows with an even rhythm, avoiding chromatic effects, and the prevailing subdued tones cast an aura of imperceptible melancholy on characters and events. All the subsequent novels are patterned on the same narrative structure: Little action is involved in the plot, which centers on the figure of the hero, a man of exceptional qualities who is confronted by a vulgar and base society dominated by utilitarian interests and aspirations. The narration is punctuated by digressions on artistic issues, meditations, detailed descriptions of objects and landscapes, and above all, by the minute analysis of fugitive sensations.
The Child of Pleasure
In his first novel, The Child of Pleasure, D’Annunzio portrays the idle and decadent aristocratic society of Rome, totally absorbed in the pursuit of the most refined pleasures of the mind and of the senses. The autobiographical motif is evident in the projection of the author’s personality onto the figure of theprotagonist, Andrea Sperelli, a young aristocrat endowed with the spark of artistic genius.
A poet and a painter of great potential, Andrea wastes his intellectual energies in a futile worldly life; he finds his greatest challenges in his jousts of love. Forgetting his artistic aspirations, Andrea feels irresistibly attracted to the beautiful and sensuous Elena Muti, who responds with the same passion. The short season of their love comes to a sudden end when Elena abandons him for a rich husband. While trying to overcome his rejection with new conquests, Andrea is involved in a scandal and, in the duel that ensues, he is gravely wounded. After a long period of moral and physical prostration, love and life are revived by the apparition of Maria in the peaceful retreat where Andrea is slowly recovering. Maria, a beautiful and noble creature, endures with dignity the distress of an unhappy marriage, devoting her life to the education of her young daughter. Enticed by her sensibility and intelligence, Andrea discovers a new aspect of love, based on the communion of intellectual interests and spiritual aspirations. Maria tries to resist the growing attraction she feels for the young artist, which she confesses to her diary, but an amorous complicity has already flawed their friendship.
Upon their return to Rome, the idyll continues, until it becomes for Maria a total engagement that overcomes her last resistance. Andrea, on the contrary, is torn between conflicting sentiments and impulses. In the elegant circles of the capital, he has seen Elena, and once again he has been captivated by her charm. His feelings become troubled and confused; he slips into morbid fancies in which the images of the two women coalesce; old memories creep into new sensations, and in Maria’s transports of love, Andrea savors Elena’s gestures. The ambiguous situation explodes when, in a moment of total abandon, he calls Maria by the name of Elena. Maria, horrified by the brutal discovery that his thoughts are of someone else, runs away, and Andrea is left with nothing but the sad realization of his inability to love.
The novel ends with a melancholic scene that symbolizes Andrea’s failure; his personal experience parallels the irreversible process of dissolution of a society whose only aspiration is the pursuit of pleasure. Maria’s husband, a notorious gambler of ill repute, has lost his entire fortune at the game table. Now the creditors are auctioning his mansion. A horde of greedy merchants fights over the possession of precious furniture and artistic objects, while Andrea wanders in the empty rooms, aware of the spiritual ruin of an entire society and of his own life.
The story is told, according to traditional rules, by the omniscient author, but the protagonist acts as a center of consciousness, reflecting the outside reality through his own sensibility. Rather than seeing the events themselves, the reader knows the sentiments, sensations, and reactions that those events provoke in Andrea. As for the other characters, they seem to exist only in relation to the protagonist; when the author deems it necessary to present their feelings, he chooses an indirect approach, resorting to literary devices such as the introduction of intimate diaries or confessional letters.
In addition to being D’Annunzio’s most popular novel, The Child of Pleasure offers a particular interest for its original interpretation of the decadent hero. Des Esseintes, the protagonist of Joris-Karl Huysmans’s À rebours (1884; Against the Grain, 1922), remains the prototype of the genre, and, compared with him, Andrea Sperelli appears a superficial character. A spectator rather than an actor on the stage, Andrea lacks the tension for transgression, the turbid introspective search, the attraction to the abyss of nothingness that characterize Huysmans’s hero; and the weary melancholy of The Child of Pleasure does not attain the disturbing depth of Against the Grain. Nevertheless, the two novels present a remarkable parallelism in their approach and technique. Both, in fact, restrict the parameters of the inquiry to a vision of the world filtered through the exacerbated sensibility of the hero, developing a rather tenuous plot in a rich texture of descriptions and analysis.
Episcopo and Company and The Intruder
The next two novels, Episcopo and Company and The Intruder, represent a new phase of D’Annunzio’s constant exploration of new motifs and techniques. In these works, the author experiments with the psychological and humanitarian themes proposed by the great Russian writers of the nineteenth century. Exploring the ambiguities of the human soul, he portrays tormented characters who are torn between guilty complexes and pretensions of innocence, wicked tendencies and aspirations to purity. In an attempt to render the inner struggle of the protagonists, the already slow rhythm of the narration is interrupted by exclamations, self-accusations, and justifications until it dissolves in tedious repetition. The great dilemma of good and evil was not a burning issue of D’Annunzio’s moral sensibility, and these sordid stories of moral degradation appear today quite monotonous and artificial.
The Triumph of Death
In The Triumph of Death, D’Annunzio reiterates the theme of The Child of Pleasure in a more dramatic contest. In this novel, inspired by the author’s personal experiences with Barbara Leoni, the dualism of sensuality and spiritual love becomes the conflict between lust and intellectual achievements. The protagonist, Giorgio Aurispa, is a writer who fails to realize his dream of artistic creativity because of his love for the beautiful Ippolita. The woman, a nymphomaniac afflicted with sterility, appears here as the enemy whose dangerous power hinders humankind’s greatest aspirations. Giorgio, slave of his passion, is confronted by the prospect of a future of physical and intellectual impotence: Ippolita’s sterility frustrates his natural desire for biological procreation; her lust destroys his creative potential. Unable to overcome his plight, Giorgio chooses suicide, plunging into a violent death with Ippolita.
The Maidens of the Rocks
According to Carlo Salinari, the publication of The Maidens of the Rocks in 1896 marks the official birth of the superman in Italian literature. The protagonist, Claudio Cantelmo, disgusted with the corruption and degradation of political institutions, pursues a dream of national renewal. Realizing that only the next generation will be ready to follow his program, Claudio leaves the capital with the firm resolution of devoting his life to the education of a son who, under his guidance, will become the superman for whom history is waiting. Following his project, he decides to choose among three sisters, descendants of a noble family, the spouse who will bear his child, the future leader of national renovation. From the beginning, Claudio realized that his program is condemned to fail. The three sisters live in a secluded world of physical and spiritual beauty outside reality and time, and the rocks surrounding their estate symbolize the barrier that separates them from the historical context. Idealistic aspirations and concrete action belong to two distinct levels of reality that Claudio cannot bridge. Renouncing every hope of active engagement, he leaves the sisters in the cloistered serenity of their retreat.
Formally, the novel repeats the narrative structure of the preceding works; ideologically, through the protagonist, D’Annunzio conveys his own political dream of aristocratic supremacy, spurning barbarian masses and greedy bourgeoisie, both responsible for the destruction of art and beauty in the world.
The Flame of Life
If all of D’Annunzio’s heroes are projections of his personality and aspirations, the autobiographical inspiration is especially vivid in The Flame of Life. In the love story of Foscarina, an aging actor, and Stelio Effrena, a young intellectual, D’Annunzio revives his own relationship with Eleonora Duse. Stelio is in Venice to present a program for a national theater, based on the fusion of poetry, music, and dance; the new theater, instead of being restricted to an elite audience, will be addressed to the people. The ambitious project is an attempt to rescue theater from the monopoly of the bourgeoisie, which, while despising art, pretends to control it.
In Venice, Stelio meets the famous Foscarina, who falls in love with him. At first, he thinks he loves her with equal passion; in reality, he is seduced by the art of the actor rather than by the charms of the woman. The realization of the true nature of his sentiments strikes him when, in the young and pure Donatella Arvale, he recognizes the ideal woman he has desired all of his life. The brief period of elation associated with Donatella’s appearance acts as a catalyst for Stelio’s awareness of himself. When she disappears, Stelio abandons himself to his involvement with Foscarina and accepts being loved rather than loving. With acute analysis, the author dissects the sentiments of the two lovers, tracing step-by-step the dissolution of their union. For Stelio, the initial passion rapidly becomes a habit and then degenerates into fatigue and boredom. For Foscarina, it turns into an obsession. Constantly afraid of being abandoned, she oppresses the young man with her neurotic and pathetic attachment; Stelio, aware of his power, plays the game with a hint of cruelty, feeling at the same time a sincere compassion for the vulnerability of the woman. The painful romance is ended by Foscarina, who accepts an acting tour overseas, leaving Stelio to his artistic dreams.
The degenerative process of the love affair is paralleled by the progressive decay of Venice and its surroundings. Wandering in the countryside, Foscarina and Stelio come across the once-splendid Venetian villas on the river Brenta, now abandoned to deterioration and oblivion. In the silent parks, mutilated statues, covered with moss, look with blind eyes at piles of manure and the cultivation of cabbages. Images of death and ruin punctuate the narration, and the city itself seems to decompose among the stagnant waters of the lagoon. The same irreversible process of dissolution seems to supersede love, art, and beauty.
Forse che si forse che no
A noble style, compatible with aristocratic ideals and a mood of slight melancholy, prevails in all of D’Annunzio’s novels published between the years 1894 and 1900. His next novel, published in 1910, presents a sharp change of perspective, theme, and style. In Forse che si forse che no, D’Annunzio introduces a new type of hero, a young man who embodies the hopes, risks, and excitements proposed by the rising technology. While the protagonists of the other novels were intellectuals absorbed in artistic dreams, Paolo Tarsis is a man of action; he is an airplane pilot and an exalted worshiper of speed and cars. The author’s own experiences give substance to this celebration of the machine. In 1909, D’Annunzio, with the American pilot Glenn Curtis and the journalist Luigi Barzini, accomplished the first aeronautic experiment in Italy. This fact, while verifying once more the intrinsic unity of D’Annunzio’s life and art, also confirms his avant-garde role in Italian literature: D’Annunzio’s revolutionary concept of the hero anticipated the Futurists’ celebration of the power of technology in modern society.
In the novel, the engine constitutes for Paolo the way to salvation, the means to overcome the plights of a vulgar existence oppressed by utilitarian interests and temptations of lust. With the two sisters, Isabella and Vana, D’Annunzio reenacts the drama of dual love he had already explored in The Child of Pleasure and The Flame of Life. Like Elena and Foscarina, Isabella is a sensual and possessive woman who enslaves the man in the vortex of passion; the pure and spiritual Vana belongs instead to the same category of ideal woman as Maria Ferees and Donatella Arvale. Both sisters are in love with Paolo, who is attracted to the sensitive Vana yet cannot resist Isabella’s erotic seductions. This favorite theme here assumes a tragic depth. The characters are vividly drawn, and the conflict reaches unprecedented intensity, increasing the tension until tragedy explodes in the final catastrophe. Vana kills herself after revealing to Paolo Isabella’s incestuous love with their brother Aldo; Isabella, after a devastating confrontation with Paolo, becomes totally insane. In the anguished scene of Isabella roaming semiconscious in the desert city, the author recalls with documentary simplicity the tragic end of his relationship with Giuseppina Mancini.
The degrading aspects of life lead Paolo to seek purification in an extreme challenge with death. Without a precise destination, he flies with his plane away from reality. After an elated flight in the purity of the sky, the plane crashes on the desert coast of Sardinia. Paolo, injured, crawls painfully to the sea to find solace in the calm waters. In front of him, the sea suggests purification and renewal; behind him, the burning wreck of the plane implies the failure of the engine ideology. The novel ends on this uncertain note, restating the ambiguous meaning of the title: “perhaps yes, perhaps no.”
In this novel, D’Annunzio gives a virtuoso performance, mastering all the inspirations and techniques of his previous writings. Powerful descriptions of natural landscapes, erudite evocations, naturalistic motifs, erotic scenes, memories, subtle analysis of sensations—all merge in this prose, unified by the fluidity of the language, constantly sustained by lyric intensity.
Leda Without Swan
Leda Without Swan, a short novel written in 1912 and published in 1916, explores a theme already implicit in the perspective of Forse che si forse che no. The ivory tower of art and beauty does not offer a safe refuge from the assaults of life. The vulgar and the sublime, farce and tragedy are tightly intertwined, and it is impossible to isolate the one from the other. Thus, D’Annunzio’s meditations on life and art had come to a turning point. The writer who had affirmed that “Il verso e’ tutto” (the verse is everything) realized that life cannot be controlled by literature; consequently, he turned to action. D’Annunzio’s decision is prefigured in his new perception of the hero-protagonist, as if in Paolo Tarsis he had unconsciously projected his own tension toward his future engagement.
Leda Without Swan was D’Annunzio’s last purely fictional prose work. The war absorbed all of his energies, and when he resumed writing, he chose the more direct expression of autobiographical prose. Ettore Paratore suggests an interesting hypothesis to explain the drastic elimination of the third-person narration in D’Annunzio’s prose. According to Paratore, the writer, who shared with his generation the cult of the hero, felt compelled, at first, to represent in his fictional writings a hero-protagonist with whom he could identify. After the war, D’Annunzio, who had lived his heroic hour, discarded fiction, now useless, and assumed for himself the role of the protagonist.
Thus, total disillusionment sealed the prestigious adventure of D’Annunzio’s life. His art remains as a literary monument to fifty years of European culture. In its variety, D’Annunzio’s work mirrors the multiform aspects of the process of renovation that characterizes the passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, constituting a timeless testimonial of the Italian contribution to Western literature.