Gabriele d'Annunzio

by SIR OSBERT SITWELL

1

GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO! The sound still carries with it a political as well as an aesthetic echo; yet who today remembers him as the Regent of Carnaro, and who, it may be, reads now the great poet who purified the Italian language, and wrote novels and plays which obtained a worldwide renown? Yet, in addition, D’Annunzio had long been a figure of universal fame, of a kind that scarcely attaches itself to anyone in this age. Indeed, it is difficult to find any just comparison for him, or prototype, except Byron.

Like Byron, he had become famous at a very early age — in his own case, in his teens — with his poems. The two men were alike in the shock their books created, in their force of character, and in their interests; though a great fire shone, too, in the oratory of D′ Annunzio — a gift denied to Byron. But Byron’s personality wielded as powerful an influence as D’Annunzio’s, and each left his mark on the world forever, even though his books were for a time not read. Both poets in the end turned men of action and eventually sought refuge, after lives of dissipation, in political adventure. Both men provided innumerable scandals for the boudoir and drawing room: since, again like Byron, D′ Annunzio, though he lacked the earlier writer’s personal beauty and aristocratic background, was the hero of love affairs that were most eagerly discussed in the worlds of art and fashion. If the truth was obscure, then stories, of the most improbable kind, were invented for the consumption of the inmates of the salons of America and Europe.

Even today I can recall hearing one of them related: D’Annunzio, it was said, was spending the end of a love affair, and a long Italian autumn, in a decaying castle in the hills. The place was enormous, the scenery appropriate, but as the season dragged into winter, a bitter dullness invested the castle, no less than the love affair it sheltered, until again the surrounding world of neighbors and peasants was fluttered by the news that a lady in a white cloak rode into the courtyard at midnight and ensuing midnights on a white horse— or should I write white palfrey? —the explanation of this singularly tall story being that the lady in the flowing cloak was D’Annunzio, who had thus clothed himself in order to reawaken interest and induce those who beheld the phantom to believe that a new love was beginning. Such anecdotes were swallowed easily, for undoubtedly an element of sensationalism existed in him, as in various other artists. Inherent even in the name he invented for himself and used —Gabriele D′ Annunzio—which attaches itself so easily to the titles of the Archangels of Italian Culture, is something of this qualily, as well as of the same free indulgence in obvious flights of poetry, the same fondness for the old poetic symbols, which is to be found equally in, for example, his assumption of the pomegranate as his personal emblem, and in the imagery of his books.

The English-speaking peoples, in spite of poetry being essentially their art, have rarely admired Poets as individuals: there has usually been, at any rate of recent centuries, a small and highly specialized audience for contemporary poetry and a popular dislike of it, and of those who write or are likely to write it. A poet, then, of D’Annunzio’s type, with his intensely Latin approach to life, will be necessarily more unpopular in Anglo-Saxon countries than even Shelley or Swinburne.

Usually, there is less chance of kicking him. But D′ Annunzio’s usurpation of Fiume provided just such a rare opportunity. The press imputed to him not only an imperialistic outlook but a love of money, of power, of sensationalism; in fact, whether rightly or wrongly, he was arraigned for those very faults he shared with his accusers. But the real crime he committed in their eyes, but which was seldom mentioned, was that he appeared to be a great artist and as such would naturally be unpopular with the leaders of commercial states, and their businessmen. Only occasionally did the truth peep out in such a heading as “Fresh Attempts on Life of Crazy Poet” — for, in this similar to Lenin, Trotsky, and later to Hitler and his lieutenants, D’Annunzio had been time and time again triumphantly consigned to the asylum or, more effectively still, assassinated in the columns of the world press. No Power, one should have known, would tolerate for an instant” the vicinity of a ruling poet; whatever might have been the artistic possibilities of his venture, they were killed, though the political and subversive ones were driven back to survive in a more acerbated form in their own country, for a time to conquer, and everywhere for many years to constitute a challenge to the established order that had been responsible for D’Annunzio’s defeat: for Fascism was the child of Fiume.

Yet, though D’Annunzio was a poet, one would have expected the world public, or at any rate the Allied public of the 1914-1918 war, to have venerated him. By his reputation as a man of genius, and by his altogether exceptional powers of oratory and appeal, he had led Italy into the war on the side of the Allies. At least, then, those who admired and enjoyed the war should have admired D’Annunzio; no less for the great personal bravery he showed in the struggle, and for the inspiration his courage afforded to his countrymen, than for his success in political persuasion. But having incurred this heavy moral liability, D′ Annunzio was soon made to feel that he had brought the Italians into the conflict under false pretenses, because, albeit secret treaties between England, France, and Italy guaranteed the Italians certain territories if the Allies won, these conditions, entered into without the knowledge of President Wilson, were never recognized by him, or carried out. Arid it was D’Annunzio’s consequent feeling of being accountable for this failure, his belief that Italy had come out of the war on a par with the defeated nations, that made him risk his life once again at Fiume.

Thus, to the Italian people, who know no fear of poetry, D’Annunzio remained not only the man who had done more for their language than any other writer since Dante, and the patriot who had alone stood out against what they considered the futilities of the Peace Conference, but — it was a popular claim in Italy—he was supposed, by his seizure of Fiume, to have been the cause of the fall of President Wilson, to whom, in a speech, he had characteristically referred as “that cold hearted maniac who sought to crucify Italy with nails torn from the German Chancellor of the Scrap of Paper.”

2

IT WAS at the end of November, 1920, on the shores of the Neapolitan Bay, that the idea of Fiume first laid hold on us. My brother suddenly remarked to me, as we stood on a terrace overlooking the sea, mountains, and islands:—

“We never saw Lenin seize power in Petrograd: let us now go to Fiume to see D’Annunzio. It may be the beginning of something else.”

Immediately I realized with what truth he spoke; for here was a small state seized and ruled over by a poet, and who could tell but that it might develop into an ideal land where the arts would flourish once more on Italian soil as they had so often blossomed before. It might even offer an alternative or escape from the Scylla and Charybdis of modern life, Slum-Bolshevism or Democratic Bungalow-Rash — morbid states of the soul that are of no help to the artist.

Whatever, then, may be thought of the results of the Fiume adventure, my brother was right: the moment, the man, the place were of importance. I at once telegraphed to my friend Massingham, asking if I might write for the Nation, of which he was editor, an account of D′ Annunzio′ s Fiume, and obtained permission to represent the journal. My brother and I then decided to invite Orioli, the Florentine bookseller, to accompany us, for he was an entertaining and appreciative companion, and his knowledge of the ways of his countrymen and their language might prove invaluable.

We arrived in Trieste in the evening, just as dusk had fallen. The harsh north wind with the Greek name blew along the stony streets of the city and roared in the piazzas. The electric light failed— perhaps, for such was then its way, as a fresh tribute to the anarchist Malatesta— and the furcapped, flat-faced Slavonic peasants from outlying villages huddled together in clumps, speaking outlandish tongues, within the barren shelter of the great, drafty station. No one there, least of all guard or porter, seemed to know when the train would start for Fiume. Italian officers, Arditi, Wolves of Tuscany, gesticulated in groups outside an obsolete train. Cloaks, daggers, and the feathers of eagles proclaimed rather melodramatically that the Roman legions were assembling once more under a new Caesar, while, further, the flowing black ties of the Arditi indicated that the new Caesar was a poet. Through the pervading braggadocio atmosphere, through the noisy, vapid chatter, there flickered like a flame an unmistakable enthusiasm, not often at that time to be encountered.

At last the groups broke up, and the individuals who composed them settled noisily into then chosen places in the antiquated train. There was no light in carriages or corridors, but as the train jolted higher into the hills, the snow outside threw a ghostly, almost green illumination on the faces within. Even at this distance, the influence of D’Annunzio was omnipresent and his name scarcely ever left the conversation.

First the somewhat Jugoslav lady in the corner, with eyebrows that even in this pallid obscurity could be seen to meet and intertwine, complained that the cause of Fiume had become a Massacre of the Innocents, a Children’s Crusade. And indeed tho officer who sat next me confessed that he was smuggling into the Regency the two enthusiasts of sixteen years of age who accompanied him. They had tried to become legionaries a year before, but on the score of their youth had been turned back by the Italian troops at the border. Both lads were evidently caught in the magic net of D’Annunzio’s words, and their pockets Mere heavy with his speeches, prayers, and threats, which at great labor to themselves they had copied out in a round but flowing hand. They vowed that if they could not get through to Fiume on the train, they would walk there, over the frozen mountains— and thousands of boys, they declared, would do ihe same from all over Italy: for Gabriele D’Annunzio remained until his death the idol of young Italy. Even the lady with the eyebrows admitted that when the Regent rode out through the stony countryside the people, whether Italian or Croat, would strew the ground with flowers.

3

EVENTUALLY we arrived at Fiume. Below us lay the giant warehouses and docks, in plain disproportion to the size of the town. In ihe harbor was congregated D’Annunzio’s by no means negligible fleet. Some of the vessels had been captured by the poet’s pirates, others—like the Dante, which had deserted to him from the Italian Navy—by his phrases. The leviathan outline of this great ship loomed up into the cold darkness, and its lights, and those of the smaller boats round it, flickered threateningly. Otherwise all was dark, and it was difficult to comprehend the conformation of the port until the next day. Then the sun sparkled and it was possible to appreciate the disposition of the place, with its clustered houses and its bay, a spur of hills sinking into the opalescence of the far seas, and the quivering misty outlines of the islands.

The cold, which was intense, crystallized each sound into a greater precision. But the human element was here of more interest than the form of hills or the incidence of climate. Outside our hotel was the chief Piazza, where the Governor had placed two flagstaffs, the idea of which derived from his beloved Venice. And in the Piazza at all hours of morning and afternoon loitered a crowd as fantastic as any — even when one recalls the tumblers and clowns, Turks and Oriental merchants in turbans — ever sheltered by the bubble domes of St. Mark’s. The general animation and noisy vitality seemed to herald a new land, a new system. ANe gazed and listened in amazement. Every man here seemed to wear a uniform designed by himself. Some had beards, and had shaved their heads completely, so as to resemble the Commander himself, who was now bald; others had cultivated huge lefts of hair, half a foot long, waving out from their foreheads, and wore, balanced on the very back of the skull, a black fez. Cloaks, feathers, and flowing black ties were universal, and every man — and few women were to be seen — carried the “Roman dagger.” Suddenly, as some messenger arrived — it might be an emissary of the Regent, himself—on a very palpitating motor bicycle, a stir would pass through the throng so full of swagger and of youth — and yet, as I write this, I recall that, included in the gathering, as if to prove that youth was not universal or eternal, were two Garibaldian veterans with red waistcoats and white hair. But even they seemed to possess some paradoxical secret, and behaved in a manner that gave the lie to their years.

As we walked up the hill to the Palace, we reflected how, by the singular magic of his personality, D’Annunzio had succeeded in uniting for a time those who loved the past of Italy with those who hated it. Some had been drawn to his cause by the fervor of his words, and by the glamour of ancient and decayed cities such as Torcello, Ravenna, or Mantua, while others, who agreed with Marinetti in thinking Venice a city of dead fish and rotting palaces, inhabited by waiters and touts, saw in the policy of the Regent the means of making Italy into a new Roman Empire, mighty in arms, a dangerous and insolent power with skyscrapers and an efficient train service — ideals, as it turned out, afterwards inherited and finally for a time achieved by Mussolini.

The hill was steep and we walked up it slowly to the Palace, built in the well-known Renaissancoelephantoid style that is the dream of every Municipal Council the world over—for it had formerly been the Town Hall. Everything was large and square — but in fact not quite large enough. You entered a large square hall, with pillars supporting a square gallery. D’Annunzio’s love of the exotic had caused this apartment to be filled with hundreds of pale plaster flowerpots of every size, but all incised with Byzantine patterns or Celtic trellis, and containing palms and succulents. Soldiers lounged among the greenery, and typists rushed furiously through swing doors.

In the square gallery, and leading out of the side situated nearest the sea, were the rooms of the poet, always closely guarded: because he would often remain for eighteen hours at a time shut up in his apartment, and during these periods of thought he would take no food and must on no account be disturbed. Today, as it happened, one of these stretches of work had begun, and in consequence, since no one knew when he would return to life, we More forced to pass two days of an incredible monotony, broken solely by a lecture on the political situation of the Regency of Carnaro, which was delivered to us by the Foreign Minister. This gentleman held the unique distinction of being the only bore in Fiume — a fact proclaimed by all who knew him, but which we were destined to find out for ourselves. In looks, he belonged to the small mustachioed, tactical-authority type and, while my brother and I balanced tall frames in agonized positions over diminutive maps, he laid down the law in that flowery French, reinforced with a twang like a guitar, which is the official language of so many Italians and Spaniards. . . . At last, just as the lecture ended, we were informed that the poet would receive us the next day.

4

AT five o’clock the following evening we were, accordingly, conducted to D’Annunzio’s study. Our sole interview with him lasted only three quarters of an hour, but it would be impossible soon to forget it. As we entered, I recall a Portuguese journalist was just being shown out, reiterating fulsomely in Italian as he stepped backward out of the presence: “The Portuguese nation regards you as the Christ of the Latin World — the Christ of the Latin World — the . ..” When he had gone, in the ensuing silence, the repetition of the words could still be heard from the next room, and then gradually died away.

The study was fairly large, and contained little furniture. Its walls were almost enlirely covered with banners. On the inner side, supported by brackets, stood stiflly two gilded saints from Florence, their calm, wide-open eyes gazing out over the deepening shades of the Fiumian sea. Near the fireplace, on one of the tables, rose the shape of a vast fifteenth-century bell, made by the famous bellmaker of Arbe, and presented to D’Annunzio by the people of that island. At the central desk sat the Commander himself, with his pomegranate in front of him, behind inkstand and pens.

Often an analogy in appearance will summon up more effectively for the reader the look of a man than can the most elaborate and precise description. What can one say? That D’Annunzio was small, lightly made, dressed in gray uniform, had a face of rather Arab cast — he came from the southeast of Italy — and streaky mustache and embryo beard. But if I write that — as was the case—the first thing that struck one was that he bore it distinct resemblance to Igor Stravinsky, the admirers of that great genius can picture D’Annunzio more easily. The poet wore many ribbons and on his left shoulder carried the Italian Gold Medal for valor, the equivalent of our Victoria Cross. Though he was completely and grotesquely bald, though only his left eye remained — for he had lost the other in the war — though he was nervous and exhausted, yet at the end of a few seconds the extraordinary charm he possessed, which had enabled him on many occasions to change mobs of enemies into furious partisans, had exercised itself on us.

He began to speak. The first words he addressed to us were, “Well, what new poets are there in England?” (Not, you will notice, “What new generals are there?” or “Who plays for Woolwich Arsenal?”) Then he went on to talk of our country, and of his fervent admiration for Shelley, whose death he himself had tried to imitate at the age of fifteen in the Bay of Castellammare. In his discourse there was not a little, to northern ears, of absurdity, but through it ran the hypnotic thread of his eloquence. He switched soon from poetry to sport, and talked of English greyhounds — which, after poetry, he considered evidently the greatest national specialty — “running wild over the moors of Devonshire.” He proceeded to tell us of the strange conversations which he held with the people. A silent crowd would begin to collect, and then swell quickly outside the Palace. He would go out onto the balcony and demand what it was they wanted. A voice would answer, and thus would gradually build itself up a system of direct intercourse between the people and their ruler. This he claimed to be the first example of such interplay since Greek times.

He told us, too, of Fiume and of his intense loneliness there; of how he, who had always loved books and music, had remained in his city for fifteen months, surrounded solely by peasants and soldiers, while the Italian government, relying on his roving temperament, tried to “bore him out.” He spoke of the enthusiasm of his legionaries, and declared how difficult it was to keep them at peace: weary of waiting for battle, they would fight one another in some sham contest, and it was by no means unusual for there to be serious casualties from bombs and bullet wounds.

Soon after his proclamation, for instance, of the Fiumian Constitution, in which he had announced that music was to be the “Religious and Social Institution of the Regency of Carnaro,” he had invited an eminent Italian conductor to bring his orchestra over from Trieste and give a series of concerts, and had provided for him a fight for the orchestra to witness. Four thousand troops, among whom were the two Garibaldian veterans whom we had seen — one aged seventy-eight and the other eighty-four—had taken part in the contest, and one hundred men had been seriously injured by bombs. The members of the orchestra, which had been playing during the quieter intervals, fired by a sudden access of enthusiasm, dropped their instruments, and charged and captured the trenches. Five of them were badly hurt in the struggle.

This new principality seemed full of paradox and of hope, as well as of a certain menace; but the Muse of History had decreed that it should fall within a few weeks of our visit. Giolitti showed his native cunning and unrivaled experience by the way in which he brought matters to a head. D’Annunzio had always relied on the fact that feeling in Italy was so strongly in his favor that no Italian government would dare openly to oppose him, still less to use its forces against him; but Giolitti, the crafty old politician, contrived that the whole affair should be over before the Italian people could be aware that it had begun. He waited until the night before Christmas Eve, so that he could be sure that no newspapers would appear for three days, and then sent the fleet to Fiume, with instructions to bombard the place to pieces if the poet remained there. There seemed only one thing for D’Annunzio to do: to leave before the inhabitants were exposed to the fulfillment of this threat. . . . When the news of the fall of Fiume spread, on the morning after Boxing Day, shops and theaters in all parts of Italy were closed as a sign of popular mourning, but it was too late for public opinion to exercise any force—if ever it can in modern conditions.

This rather pitiful end of the poet’s adventure was hailed with relief by the press. It was supposed to finish “an awkward incident,” while the poet himself— for whom no word had been good enough when his eloquence had so largely helped to persuade Italy to enter the war —was now abused and insulted. In some instances, this frail little genius, who had flown over Vienna during the war, as well as over the most perilous of battlefields and over the Austrian fleet, of which he had destroyed two battleships, was now accused of cowardice in leaving Fiume — a charge that he could afford to spurn.

In some cases the writers who attacked him showed hitherto unsuspected powers of imagination. Thus one journalist, in an article published in an English daily paper, headed Chorus Girls and Champagne, declared that one could tell from “the glassy glitter of D’Annunzio’s snake-like eye” that he was addicted to cocaine! This compelled me — for D’Annunzio had not many champions at that moment — to write a reply, in which I pointed out that this “glassy glitter” was not lo be attributed to the drug habit, but to the fact that one of the poet’s eyes was, in fact, made of glass, since he had lost his own in the war, so recently over, while fighting on behalf of the Allied peoples, among whom the proprietor of the paper in which the libel appeared, and the writer of it, were numbered.

The poet has long been dead, and is today neither insulted daily nor praised. Together with the majority of the great army of the dead, he is out of fashion. Yet truly, though I have here written an impression of an episode in his life, it is his writings, more than his actions, which are of interest, as must always be the case with an author. His novels, so tremendous in their power of evoking emotion, and in their poetic eloquence and rhetoric - books such as Il Fuoco, Le Vergini delle Rocce, Il Piacere, plays like La Cittὰ Morta — are there for us to reawaken and revive by our interest. In them is to be found often an overwhelming force of imagery, and sometimes a certain quality of lushness — though this does not apply to his poems—that might be cloying, were not its sweetness also contaminated and reduced by the morbidity prevalent at the end of the old century.

The public always clamors for a message in poetry or prose; seldom is it more angry than when it gets one. But what words can picture its rage when a poet, having for years preached his message, proceeds, as did Tolstoy and D’Annunzio, for example, to translate it into action? Tolstoy, abandoning wealth and family, and finally running off to die in the snow at a wayside railway station, in an attempt to hide from those he had abandoned to their worldly fate, was accused of insincerity; so was D’Annunzio. He had for years preached the importance of being a leader of men, the importance of staying for years immured in the dark strength of your travertine palace, impervious to the light and clamor of the democratic days outside, of waiting for your moment to emerge, armed in the full panoply of your strength, then to act swiftly and with decision. He followed his own advice. For a time he led and acted swiftly. Today his polities belong to I he past, so derided by the Futurists who supported his actions, where his written words, which they criticized, belong to the present and the future, and are still there for us to read, their meaning moving and flickering through the immortal phrases, in the same way that a salamander, in part obscured by the smoke of a great fire, might be seen to glow.