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Print March 12, 2020

Approaching D’Annunzio

Margot Metroland

1,284 words

Reviewing a story collection in 1925, an American critic compared Gabriele d’Annunzio’s influence on the Italian mindset to that of Rudyard Kipling in England. “[T]o understand him is to understand pre-war and immediately post-war Italy.” [1] That sort of remark is almost inaccessible to us today; when we think of the Great War, if we think of the Great War at all, we surely don’t automatically think of Kipling or d’Annunzio. That is one hurdle in approaching d’Annunzio today.

Another is the peculiarity of his style, replete with obsessively detailed sex, gore, and flights of fantasy. That 1925 American reviewer took special exception to one of the stories at hand, “The Death of the Duke of Ofena,” in which in a few brief pages a half-dozen people are successively impaled, hanged, dismembered, and burned alive. [2]

Here and there you read that d’Annunzio’s fiction and poetry never gained much acclaim outside Italy, because his idiom and imagery defy faithful translation. And in the writer’s own time there was also the problem of censorship. Even in France, his works were often bowdlerized or never published at all. The Holy See put most of his works on its Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1911, and they remained there (I presume) until the Index ceased in 1966.

At root, d’Annunzio seems to have regarded himself as a Man of the Renaissance, rather than simply a “Renaissance man”: someone from the age of Benvenuto Cellini, a soldier-poet-dandy, full of sensuality and operatic emotions. Someone who understood that overwhelming passion is the fuel that makes the creative soul run. A “bold, bald-headed, perhaps a little insane but thoroughly sincere, divinely brave swashbuckler” — as a young sometime-fan named Ernest Hemingway once put it.

It’s hard not to think that d’Annunzio’s public persona was something of an act, a self-caricature put on to get attention. Maybe it was; certainly, he never seems to have shown self-consciousness about the whole thing. The self-promotion started early. When he was 17 and publishing his second book of poetry, he anonymously informed the Rome newspapers that the young genius d’Annunzio had just been killed by falling off his horse — alas! By the time the “error” was discovered, he was famous, and the public was thrilled to learn the brilliant young poet hadn’t died after all.

The arc of his life connects the epoch of aestheticism and “decadence” of the 1880s and 90s (Whistler, Huysmans, Swinburne, etc.), and the age of Italian Fascism, to which d’Annunzio contributed both style (black uniforms, Roman salutes) and song. He didn’t write “Giovinezza, Giovinezza,” but that was the marching song of his followers when he was dictator of the city-state of Fiume in 1919-1920. After that, the Fascisti appropriated it as their own anthem.

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Benito Mussolini called d’Annunzio a John the Baptist figure, “the first Duce,” and obsequiously modeled his own oratorical style on the poet’s. This admiration was not reciprocated. D’Annunzio considered Mussolini a buffoon, and the Fascisti a tawdry spoof of the heroic cult that d’Annunzio had hoped to lead. After Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922, relations between poet and Duce were frosty. D’Annunzio was excluded from the new Royal Academy of Italy until Mussolini decided it might be good public relations to extend a welcome to Italy’s greatest living writer. D’Annunzio slapped back the belated invitation with a snarl: “A thoroughbred horse should not mix with jackasses. This is not an insult, but a eugenic-artistic fact.” [3]

Nevertheless people blamed d’Annunzio for Mussolini. One of them was Hemingway, who long hero-worshipped d’Annunzio, and met him once in 1918. Five years later, covering a Mussolini speech for the Toronto Daily Star, he saw the mimicry and the bombast, and decided d’Annunzio was a “jerk.”

What had happened in the meantime was the pinnacle of d’Annunzio’s public career, his 1919 capture of Fiume. Fiume, on the Adriatic, was a mostly Italian town, but had long been under Austrian rule, as indeed much of Italy had been sixty years earlier. Off in Paris, the Allied leaders at the Versailles Conference had decided to award Fiume to the new made-up country of “Jugoslavia” (as it was then spelled). Captain d’Annunzio, with about 2,000 fellow mutineers from the Italian army, marched upon Fiume and claimed it for the Kingdom of Italy. The Kingdom demurred, however, and wouldn’t take it. (A purely diplomatic move; Italy was one of those victors meeting at Versailles, and couldn’t be seen treating with freebooting renegades.) D’Annunzio and his followers thereupon declared Fiume to be an independent city-state, under the leadership of the poet himself. Each morning he went to his balcony and declaimed poetry and speeches to the appreciative crowds.

He had ambitions beyond Fiume. He was certain the new Jugoslavia would start to fall apart. And when it did, he and his army (with the aid of some unhappy Croats and Montenegrins) would seize territory from the oppressive Serbian regime in Belgrade. This, of course, didn’t happen. After 15 months d’Annunzio was forced out — but by Italy, which eventually agreed to annex Fiume. And Italian it remained until 1945. D’Annunzio in Fiume is often dismissed as a comic-opera figure whose coup ended in fiasco. But like Columbus with the egg, he showed Europe (and Mussolini) that the thing could be done.

The saga of this doughty little city-state on the Adriatic, standing fast against the might of the world, is something that ought to have appealed to Hemingway. But the mood of the time had shifted. Here was d’Annunzio in 1920, still exalting war in the style of 1914, calling for eternal vengeance and a ground soaked with blood. Hemingway took it all personally. He’d served as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, where he was wounded, decorated, and ever after appalled by the endless, meaningless carnage. Back home in Chicago, he wrote a little poem called “D’Annunzio.” It goes: “Half a million dead wops / And he got a kick out of it / The son of a bitch.” [4]

* * *

In her 2013 biography of d’Annunzio, [5] Lucy Hughes-Hallett says d’Annunzio’s life is the most thoroughly documented of any figure, in large part because he was an assiduous diarist, describing his daily doings in minute detail — the quality of the asparagus he was eating, the comeliness of the serving maid, and every lurid fantasy that sprang to his busy mind. Much of this note-taking served as raw material for his novels:

His works are full of descriptions of sex so candid they still startle . . . We have his descriptions not only of his lovers’ outward appearances but of the secret crannies of their bodies, of the roofs of their mouths, of the inner whorls of their ears, of the little hairs on the back of a neck, of the scent of their . . .

Et cetera. Too much information, suggests the biographer. For lack of a more precise category, his novels and poetry are grouped into the late-19th century Decadent school. But his obsession with the lurid and surreal probably has its closest approximation in the work of a painter, Salvador Dalí.

Images and ideas recur in d’Annunzio’s life and thought, moving from reality to fiction and back again: martyrdom and human sacrifice, amputated hands, the scent of lilac, Icarus and aeroplanes, the sweet vulnerability of babies, the superman who is half-beast, half-god. [6]

Notes

[1] Thomas Caldecot Chubb, “Sparks from the Hammer,” in The Saturday Review of Literature, June 24, 1925.

[2] Gabriele d’Annunzio, Le Faville del Maglio (Milano: Fratelli Treves), 1924.

[3] Marcel F. Grilli, “The Poet and the Duce,” The New Masses, July 12, 1938.

[4] Ernest Hemingway, Complete Poems (Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press), 1979.

[5] Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Gabriele D’Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), 2013. Published in England as The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio (London: Fourth Estate), 2013.

[6] Hughes-Hallet, Gabriele D’Annunzio.

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Tags

Artists of the RightBenito MussolinicommemorationsErnest HemingwayFiumeGabriele D'AnnunzioItalyMargot Metrolandpoetry

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    • The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      Jim Goad

      9

    • Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 1

      Travis LeBlanc

      4

    • Plastic Patriotism: Propaganda and the Establishment’s Crusade Against Germany and German-Americans During the First World War

      Alex Graham

    • Donald Trump: The Jews’ Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

      Travis LeBlanc

      12

    • Bad to the Spone: Charles Krafft’s An Artist of the Right

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      1

    • Independence Day

      Mark Gullick

    • The Unnecessary War

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • Bad Cop! No Baklava!

      Beau Albrecht

      7

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 552 Millennial Woes on Corporations, the Left, & Other Matters

      Counter-Currents Radio

      6

    • Remembering Charles Krafft: September 19, 1947–June 12, 2020

      Greg Johnson

    • Marx vs. Rousseau

      Stephen Paul Foster

      4

    • The Worst Week Yet: September 10-16, 2023

      Jim Goad

      21

    • The Tinkling Cherub of Mississippi

      Beau Albrecht

      2

    • A Deep Ecological Perspective on the Vulnerability of Eurodescendants

      Francisco Albanese

      3

    • Remembering Francis Parker Yockey: September 18, 1917–June 16, 1960

      Greg Johnson

    • The Counter-Currents 2023 Fundraiser: Idealism Alone Can’t Last Forever

      Pox Populi

      3

    • Ask Me Anything with Millennial Woes

      Greg Johnson

    • Most White Republicans at Least Slightly Agree with the Great Replacement Theory

      David M. Zsutty

      11

    • Field of Dreams: A Right-Wing Film?

      Morris van de Camp

      2

    • Rich Snobs vs. Poor Slobs: The Schism Between “Racist” Whites

      Jim Goad

      96

    • Memories of Underdevelopment: Revolution & the Bourgeois Mentality

      Steven Clark

      2

    • Diversity: Our Greatest Strength?

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Jon Stewart’s Irresistible: An Election in Flyover Country

      Beau Albrecht

      2

    • Apocalyptic Summertime Fun

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      1

    • Genius Loci: The Rise and Fall of the Great Comedian Peter Cook

      Mark Gullick

      12

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 551: Ask Me Anything with Matt Parrott

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • It’s Time to Wind Down the Empire of Nothing

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • Should Whites Turn Their Backs on the US Military? A Response to Padraig Martin of Identity Dixie

      Spencer J. Quinn

      47

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 550: Catching Up with Matt Parrott

      Counter-Currents Radio

      5

    • Race and IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 1

      Arthur Jensen

    • Otázka ženského masochismu

      F. Roger Devlin

    • The Worst Week Yet: September 3-9, 2023

      Jim Goad

      33

    • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s The Real Anthony Fauci, Part Two: The HIV Swindle

      Jef Costello

      33

    • Born Innocent

      Travis LeBlanc

      6

    • The Counter-Currents 9/11 Symposium

      Greg Johnson

    • Remembering D. H. Lawrence: September 11, 1885–March 2, 1930

      Greg Johnson

      4

    • Nothing KKKompares to the KKK

      Jim Goad

    • Catching Up with Matt Parrott

      Greg Johnson

    • Sexuální utopie v praxi, část 4

      F. Roger Devlin

    • Prepping for the Collapse

      Greg Johnson

      9

    • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s The Real Anthony Fauci, Part One

      Jef Costello

      44

    • October ’44 — The Liberation of Nemmersdorf: A Graphic Novel

      Clarissa Schnabel

      9

    • Nothing KKKompares to the KKK

      Jim Goad

      17

    • They Burn Churches Too, You Know

      Spencer J. Quinn

      16

    • There Is a Political Solution: A Review of Guido Taietti’s Political Witchcraft

      Pox Populi

      2

    • Nueva Derecha vs. Vieja Derecha Capítulo 8: La Psicología de la Conversión

      Greg Johnson

    • Is Kosher Pro-White Identity Politics Coming?

      Travis LeBlanc

      19

    • Democracy in Soviet America

      Stephen Paul Foster

      6

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 549 Pox Populi and CasaPound Activist Guido Taietti on Italian Politics

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • Pictures at an Exhibition: British Post-Punk Album Art

      Mark Gullick

      2

  • Classics Corner

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 1

      Greg Johnson

      22

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 2

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 3

      Greg Johnson

      13

    • Remembering H. Keith Thompson
      September 17, 1922–March 3, 2002

      Kerry Bolton

      1

    • Be All You Can Be: On Joining the Military

      Ash Donaldson

      22

    • Transcript of FOX News’ Banned Report on Israel & 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

    • The Banned FOX News Report on Israel’s Role in 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

      12

    • The Psychology of Conversion

      Greg Johnson

      43

    • Animal Justice?

      Greg Johnson

      18

    • Uppity White Folks and How to Reach Them

      Greg Johnson

      6

    • Lord Kek Commands!
      A Look at the Origins of Meme Magic

      James J. O'Meara

      7

    • Major General J. F. C. Fuller
      (September 1, 1878–February 10, 1966)

      Anonymous

      5

    • Remembering Johann Gottfried von Herder
      (August 25, 1744–December 18, 1803)

      Martin Lichtmesz

      2

    • Moral Seriousness

      Greg Johnson

      13

    • Columbus Day Special
      The Autochthony Argument

      Greg Johnson

      8

    • Remembering Knut Hamsun
      (August 4, 1859–February 19, 1952)

      Greg Johnson

      8

    • Sir Reginald Goodall: An Appreciation

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • 7-11 Nationalism

      Richard Houck

      28

    • Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as Anti-Semitic/Christian-Gnostic Allegory

      Greg Johnson

      7

    • Eraserhead:
      A Gnostic Anti-Sex Film

      Trevor Lynch

      17

    • Remembering Revilo Oliver
      (July 7, 1908–August 20, 1994)

      Greg Johnson

      17

    • Lars von Trier & the Men Among the Ruins

      John Morgan

      16

    • Heidegger without Being

      Greg Johnson

      17

    • Junetarded Nation

      Jim Goad

      8

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 338
      Ted Talk

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Hegemony

      Greg Johnson

      11

    • Cù Chulainn in the GPO:
      The Mythic Imagination of Patrick Pearse

      Michael O'Meara

      5

    • Remembering Dominique Venner
      (April 16, 1935 – May 21, 2013)

      Greg Johnson

      11

    • A Robertson Roundup: 
      Remembering Wilmot Robertson
      (April 16, 1915 – July 8, 2005)

      Margot Metroland

      13

    • Metapolitics and Occult Warfare

      Greg Johnson

      2

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • Jonathan Bowden’s Final Lecture on Video: Charles Maurras, Action Française, and the Cagoule

      Jonathan Bowden

      1

    • Who Was Lawrence R. Brown? Biographical Notes on the Author of The Might of the West

      Margot Metroland

      16

    • California Discontent, Part 2: Frank Norris’ The Octopus

      Steven Clark

      1

    • California Discontent, Part 1: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden

      Steven Clark

    • 12 More Sex Differences Due to Nature

      Richard Knight

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 545 Pox Populi and Morgoth on the Age of Immigration and More 

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • When White Idealism Goes Too Far: Saints of the American Wilderness

      Spencer J. Quinn

      10

    • A Compassionate Spy?

      Beau Albrecht

      11

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 544 Pox Populi, American Krogan, & Endeavour on the Metaverse

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Left, Part Two

      Collin Cleary

      2

    • Thoughts on an Unfortunate Convergence: Doctors, Lawyers, and Angry Women

      Stephen Paul Foster

      5

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 3: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 2: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 1: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part IV

      Kenneth Vinther

      2

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part III

      Kenneth Vinther

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 543 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 4

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part I

      Kenneth Vinther

      1

    • Jack London’s The Iron Heel as Prophecy, Part 2

      Beau Albrecht

    • The Scottish Mr. Bond? An Interview with Mystic

      Travis LeBlanc

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 542 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 3

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The Bard Across Three Reichs: Germany, Shakespeare, and Andreas Höfele’s No Hamlets, Part II

      Kathryn S.

      4

    • The Bard Across Three Reichs: Germany, Shakespeare, and Andreas Höfele’s No Hamlets, Part I

      Kathryn S.

      3

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Introduction, Part III

      Alain de Benoist

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Introduction, Part II

      Alain de Benoist

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Introduction, Part I

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • Süssical: Jud Süß, Part 2

      Steven Clark

      3

    • Michigan’s Yankees

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • Die große Liebe: The Nazi Casablanca

      Travis LeBlanc

      8

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 539 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 2

      Counter-Currents Radio

  • Recent comments

    • James Kirkpatrick

      Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 1

      There are two watershed moments in a white man's life on which hinge his own and society's well-...

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 1

      Excellent article.  I can’t wait to read the conclusion, even if you’re decimating a few guilty...

    • DarkPlato

      Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 1

      I disagree.  Taboos on adult cartoon watching are a silly case of hide bound thinking.  Japanese...

    • Myron James

      The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      My hat is off, sir.

    • JC

      Donald Trump: The Jews’ Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

      This was so funny I read it twice and laughed out loud each time. Great job!

    • Fionn McCool

      Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 1

      What about Belladonna of Sadness or, say, Princess Mononoke?   Also pretty sure you're...

    • J Webb

      The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      To put it in trad-Cath terms, you biblically smoted him.  Let’s see if he can come up with something...

    • Chad Walker

      The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      I’m a millennial who just recently found your work and I’m enjoying your content. The whole reason I...

    • Jim Goad

      The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      She is. She's also beautiful.

    • Jim Goad

      The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      As I said, he only agreed to a single one-on-one chat with me, and that was back in 2017....

    • T Steuben

      The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      I’d like to see a debate between Goad and Fuentes about this and any other matters that arise. I’...

    • Weave

      Should Whites Turn Their Backs on the US Military? A Response to Padraig Martin of Identity Dixie

      The data is that since 9/11/2001 four times as many veterans/active military kill themselves than...

    • Edmund

      The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      This is gold. And your wife is very funny.

    • Weave

      The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      Good Lord, that right there is beautiful writing. You get praised a lot for your funny stuff, but...

    • Al Dante

      The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      The world would be a lesser place without Havana browns, Peterbalds, Pixie-bobs, Ragamuffins,...

    • Beau Albrecht

      Bad Cop! No Baklava!

      True indeed.  They don't play around in those camel countries.  Those governments wouldn't cotton to...

    • Martin Lichmez

      The Unnecessary War

      2008 wasn't "height of the Iraq war".

    • Beau Albrecht

      Donald Trump: The Jews’ Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

      What never occurs to those giant brains of theirs is that we could all be getting along if they'd...

    • James J. O'Meara

      Bad to the Spone: Charles Krafft’s An Artist of the Right

      Great review of a great book, and a great introduction to a great artist/craftsman. I don't know...

    • Mike Bennett

      Donald Trump: The Jews’ Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

      What the “chosenites” don’t realize is, after they destroy the white race (god forbid!), who will...

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