Writer, born in Pescara, E Italy. He studied at Rome, and during the 1890s wrote several novels, influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche, notably Il trionfo della morte (1894, The Triumph of Death). His best-known poetic work is Laudi del cielo del mare della terra e degli eroi (1899, In Praise of Sky, Sea, Earth, and Heroes), and his major plays include La figlia di Iorio (1904, The Daughter of Jorio) and the tragedy La gioconda (1899), which he wrote for the actress Eleonora Duse. Their tempestuous relationship was exposed in his erotic novel, Il fuoco (1900, trans The Flame of Life). An enthusiastic patriot, he urged Italian entry into World War 1, and served as a soldier, sailor, and finally airman. In 1919 he seized and held Fiume, despite the opposition of the Italian government and the rest of Europe, and ruled as dictator until he was removed by the Italian government (1920). He became a strong supporter of the Fascist Party under Mussolini.
Gabriele d'Annunzio (12 March 1863, Pescara – 1 March 1938, Gardone Riviera, province of Brescia) was an Italian poet, writer, novelist, dramatist, daredevil and war hero, who went on to have a controversial role in politics as a precursor of the fascist movement.
Life
Gabriele d'Annunzio was of Dalmatian extraction. He was born in Pescara (Abruzzi), the son of a wealthy landowner and mayor of the town whose name was originally Francesco Rapagnetta, to which he legally added d'Annunzio. With the Intermezzo di Rime we have the beginning of d'Annunzio's second and characteristic manner.
Meanwhile the Review of Angelo Sommaruga perished in the midst of scandal, and his group of young authors found itself dispersed. Gabriele d'Annunzio took this latter course, and joined the staff of the Tribuna. Il Libro d' Isotta is interesting also, because in it we find most of the germs of his future work, just as in Intermezzo melico and in certain ballads and sonnets we find descriptions and emotions which later went to form the aesthetic contents of Il Piacere, Il Trionfo della Morte, and Elegie Romane (1892).
D' Annunzio's first novel Il Piacere (1889)--translated into English as The Child of Pleasure--was followed in 1891 by L' Innocente (The Intruder), and in 1892 by Giovanni Episcopo. His next work, Il Trionfo della Morte (The Triumph of Death) (1894), was followed at a short distance by La Vergini delle Rocce (1896) and Il Fuoco (1900), which in its descriptions of Venice is perhaps the most ardent glorification of a city existing in any language.
D' Annunzio's poetic work of this period, in most respects his finest, is represented by Il Poema Paradisiaco (1893), the Odi Navali (1893), a superb attempt at civic poetry, and Laudi (1900).
A later phase of d' Annunzio's work is his dramatic production, represented by Il Sogno di un mattino di primavera (1897), a lyrical fantasia in one act; and then Francesca da Rimini (1901), a perfect reconstruction of medieval atmosphere and emotion, magnificent in style, and declared by one of the most authoritative Italian critics--Edoardo Boutet--to be the first real although not perfect tragedy which has ever been given to the Italian theatre.
In 1883 d'Annunzio married Maria Hardouin di Gallese, and had three sons, but the marriage ended in 1891. He provided leading roles for her in his plays of the time such as La Città morta (The dead city) (1898) and Francesca da Rimini (1901), but the tempestuous relationship finally ended in 1910.
In 1897 d'Annunzio was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for a three-year term, where he sat as an independent. There he collaborated with composer Claude Debussy on a musical play Le martyre de Saint Sébastien (The Martyrdom of St Sebastian, 1911, written for Ida Rubinstein.
After the start of World War I, d'Annunzio returned to Italy and made public speeches in favor of Italy's entry on the side of the Allies. the Bakar Mockery), helping raise the spirits of the Italian public, still battered by the Caporetto disaster.
The War stengthened his nationalist and irredentist views, and he campaigned widely for Italy to assume a role alongside her wartime Allies as a first-rate European power. D'Annunzio then declared Fiume an independent state, the Italian Regency of Carnaro with a constitution foreshadowing much of the later Italian Fascist system, with himself as "Duce" (dictator). D'Annunzio ignored the Treaty of Rapallo and declared war on Italy itself, only finally surrendering the city in December 1920 after a bombardment by the Italian navy.
After the Fiume incident, d'Annunzio retired to his home on Lake Garda and spent his latter years writing and campaigning. Although d'Annunzio had a strong influence on the ideology of Benito Mussolini, he never became directly involved in fascist government politics in Italy.
In 1924 he was created Prince of Monte Nevoso and in 1937 he was made a president of the Italian Royal Academy. D'Annunzio died of a stroke at his home on 1 March 1938.
Politics
D'Annunzio is often seen as a precursor of the ideals and techniques of Italian fascism. De Ambris provided the legal and political framework, to which d'Annunzio added his skills as a poet. De Ambris was the leader of a group of Italian seamen who had mutinied and then given their vessel to the service of d'Annunzio. The constitution established a corporatist state, with nine corporations to represent the different sectors of the economy (workers, employers, professionals), and a tenth (d'Annunzio's invention) to represent the "superior" human beings (heroes, poets, prophets, supermen).
It was rather the culture of dictatorship that Benito Mussolini imitated and learned from d'Annunzio;
D'Annunzio was said to have originated the practice of forcibly dosing opponents with large amounts of castor oil to humiliate, disable or kill them.
D'Annunzio advocated an expansionist Italian foreign policy and applauded the invasion of Ethiopia.
Literature
At the height of his success, d'Annunzio' was celebrated for the originality, power and decadence of his writing. Although his work had immense impact across Europe, and influenced generations of Italian writers, his fin de siècle works are now little known, and his literary reputation has always been clouded by his fascist associations.
A prolific writer, his novels in Italian include Il Piacere (The Child of Pleasure, 1889), Trionfo della Morte (The Triumph of Death, 1894), and Le Vergine delle Rocce (The Virgin of the Rocks, 1896). D'Annunzio's literary creations were strongly influenced by the French Symbolist school, and contain episodes of striking violence and depictions of abnormal mental states interspersed with gorgeously imagined scenes. One of d'Annunzio's most significant novels, scandalous in its day, is Il Fuoco (The Flame of Life) of 1900, in which he portrays himself as the Nietzschean Superman Stelio Effrena, in a fictionalized account of his love affair with Eleonora Duse.
The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica wrote of him:
…The work of d' Annunzio, although by many of the younger generation injudiciously and extravagantly admired, is almost the most important literary work given to Italy since the days when the great classics welded her varying dialects into a fixed language.
His creative power is intense and searching, but narrow and personal; In his later work [meaning as of 1911], when he begins drawing his inspiration from the traditions of bygone Italy in her glorious centuries, a current of real life seems to run through the veins of his personages. And the lasting merit of d'Annunzio, his real value to the literature of his country, consists precisely in that he opened up the closed mine of its former life as a source of inspiration for the present and of hope for the future, and created a language, neither pompous nor vulgar, drawn from every source and district suited to the requirements of modern thought, yet absolutely classical, borrowed from none, and, independently of the thought it may be used to express, a thing of intrinsic beauty. As his sight became clearer and his purpose strengthened, as exaggerations, affectations, and moods dropped away from his conceptions, his work became more and more typical Latin work, upheld by the ideal of an Italian Renaissance.
In Italy some of his poetic works remain popular, most notably his poem La Pioggia nel Pineto (The Rain in the Pinewood), which exemplifies his linguistic virtuosity as well as the sensuosness of his poetry.
Museums
The life and work of d'Annunzio is commemmorated in a museum called Il Vittoriale degli Italiani.
His birthplace is also open to the public as a musueum, the "Casa Natale di Gabriele d'Annunzio" in Pescara.
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