Abstract
Gabriele D’Annunzio, born in 1863 in Pescara, Abruzzo, is the best-known and most controversial Italian writer of the fin de siècle. He was not only a renowned lyrical poet, dramatist and novelist, but also a notorious playboy and dandy, as well as a politician and war hero.138 The British journalist Sisley Huddleston had already singled him out in 1924 as Mussolini’s John the Baptist, and consequently his reputation suffered after the Second World War on account of his affinity with Fascism. Yet D’Annunzio remains as a literary point of reference — if only for those who wish to mark a distance from his exalted Symbolist style. Despite the undisputed quality of his work, Il vate (the “Bard”) — as he is widely known in Italy — commanded so much attention because of his extravagant lifestyle and amorous adventures, which turned him into a media icon during his lifetime. Far from shunning the limelight, D’Annunzio knew well how to attract it. Il Vittoriale, his villa near Gardone on Lake Garda, is one token of this.139
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Notes
The villa-museum also houses the D’Annunzio Archive. For an overview, see http://www.vittoriale.it. See also Wolfgang Ernst, “Museale Kristallisation: Il Vittoriale degli Italiani,” in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht/Friedrich Kittler/Bernhard Siegert (eds.), Der Dichter als Kommandant. D’Annunzio erobert Fiume, Munich 1996, pp. 309–20.
On the background and references of the Icarus poems, especially the Ditirambo IV, di Icaro, see Pietro Gibellini, “Il volo di Icaro,” in Gibellini (ed.), Logos e Mythos. Studi su Gabriele D’Annunzio, Florence 1985, pp. 119–32. [All English versions are by the present translator–Trans. note.]
Gabriele D’Annunzio, “L’ala sul mare,” in Id., Laudi del cielo, del mare, della terra e degli eroi, Libro Terzo Alcyone, Milan 1956 [orig. 1903], p. 760.
On Warburg’s study of the Florentine nymphs, Ulrich Raulff, Wilde Energien. Vier Versuche zu Aby Warburg, Göttingen 2003, pp. 17–47.
Renzo De Felice/Emilio Mariano (eds.), Carteggio D’Annunzio–Mussolini (1918–1938), Milan 1971, p. 38.
On the Archigallus and his role in the Kybele cult of antiquity, see Sarolta A. Takács, “Kybele,” in Hubert Cancik/Helmuth Schneider (eds.), Der Neue Pauly, vol. 6, Stuttgart 1999, cols. 950–56.
Gabriele D’Annunzio, Taccuini, ed. Enrica Bianchetti and Roberto Forcella, Milan 1965, pp. 713–15.
On the negotiations and motivations behind the Protocol, see Gian Enrico Rusconi, “Das Hasardspiel des Jahres 1915. Warum sich Italien für den Eintritt in den Ersten Weltkrieg entschied,” in Johannes Hürter/Gian Enrico Rusconi (eds.), Der Kriegseintritt Italiens im Mai 1915, Munich 2007, pp. 13–52; and Holger Afflerbach, “Vom Bündnispartner zum Kriegsgegner. Ursachen und Folgen des italienischen Kriegseintritts im Mai 1915,” in ibid., pp. 53–69.
Bernhard Giesen, Triumph and Trauma, Boulder, CO 2004.
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George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars, New York, NY 1990.
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See George L. Mosse, “The Poet and the Exercise of Political Power: Gabriele D’Annunzio,” in Mosse, Masses and Man. Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of Reality, New York, NY 1980, pp. 87–103; here 93ff.
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Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion, Princeton, NJ 2006, p. 2.
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and Klaus Vondung, Magie und Manipulation. Ideologischer Kult und Politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus, Göttingen 1971.
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Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich. A New History, London 2000; and, on the development of political religion in the long 19th century, Earthly Powers. Religion and Politics in Europe from the Enlightenment to the Great War, London 2005.
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see Emilio Gentile, “Fascism, Totalitarianism, and Political Religion. Definitions and Critical Reflections on Criticism of an Interpretation,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 5/2004, pp. 326–75; here p. 364.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, NY 1951.
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On the concept of palingenesis in relation to fascism, see Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism, London 1993 [repr.], pp. 26, 32–6;
and Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism. The Sense of a New Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler, Basingstoke, UK 2007.
See Manfred Frank, Der kommende Gott. Vorlesungen über die Neue Mythologie, Frankfurt/Main 1982, pp. 188–211.
See Otto Gerhard Oexle (ed.), Krise des Historismus–Krise der Wirklichkeit: Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur 1880–1932, Göttingen 2007, pp. 11–116.
See Douglas Forsyth, The Crisis of Liberal Italy. Monetary and Financial Policy 1914–1922, Cambridge 1993;
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To make it more attractive for Italy to join the war on their side, the Entente powers had offered it the prospect of territorial booty in the shape of the Trentino and South Tyrol, the Brenner frontier area, Trieste and Istria as far as the Kvarner Gulf (Fiume was not part of the deal), Dalmatia, a kind of protectorate over Albania, sovereignty over the Dodecanese islands and parts of the Ottoman bankruptcy estate, and a clarification of border issues in the cases of Eritrea, Somalia and Libya. See Nicola Tranfaglia, La prima guerra mondiale e il fascismo, Turin 1995, p. 46.
On the history of Italian Socialism and the labor movement, see Gaetano Arfè, Storia del socialismo italiano 1892–1926, Turin 1992 [repr.];
Zeffiro Ciuffoletti, Storia del PSI, vol. 1, Le origini e l’età giolittiana, Rome 1992. On the biennio rosso, the wave of strikes, occupations and fear of revolution in 1919 and 1920
see Nolte, Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, New York 1969, pp. 248ff.;
Nicola Tranfaglia, Fascismi e modernizzazione in Europa, Turin 2001, pp. 180–92;
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Alexander J. De Grand, The Italian Nationalist Association and the Rise of Fascism in Italy, Lincoln, NE 1978;
Emilio Gentile, La Grande Italia. The Rise and Fall of the Myth of the Nation in the Twentieth Century, Madison, WI 2008; and Tranfaglia, La prima guerra mondiale, pp. 147–65.
Hans Schwarz, Die Wiedergeburt des heroischen Menschen. Eine Langemarck-Rede vor der Greifswalder Studentenschaft am 11.11.1928, Berlin 1930, p. 13.
On the “theologeme of salvation,” discussed in greater detail below, see Gumbrecht, “I redentori della vittoria.” On the nexus of sacrifice, purification, violence, nation and political religion, see Emilio Gentile, “Der Liktorenkult,” in Christof Dipper/Rainer Hudemann/ Jens Petersen (eds.), Faschismus und Faschismen im Vergleich. Wofgang Schieder zum 60. Geburtstag, Cologne 1998, pp. 247–61, esp. p. 251.
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Esposito, F. (2015). Icarus Rising: D’Annunzio, the Flying Artificer of Myth. In: Fascism, Aviation and Mythical Modernity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137362995_3
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