Gabriele D'Annunzio

by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

  His domain became ever more fantastical as his foibles were actualised in plaster and stone. He planned an amphitheatre, a version of the one he and Duse had wanted half a lifetime earlier. He built a paved piazza surrounded by curved loggias and marble benches with a flagstaff at its centre adorned with a tragic mask. There he staged concerts and performances which were part ritual, part drama. The garden was designed to delight the nose as well as the eye. Antongini estimated that d’Annunzio planted 10,000 rose bushes there over the years. He converted the modestly proportioned house’s outbuildings into showrooms and shrines which towered over it, and filled them with trophies celebrating his exploits.

  The house itself took on the character of a claustrophobe’s nightmare. It had never been spacious. D’Annunzio’s remodelling converted it into a disorienting warren of overcrowded little rooms. “One can imagine secret passages behind the panelling,” wrote an early visitor, “an alcove behind a tapestry. Everything is padded, smothered, cluttered like a seraglio.” Wherever there might have been some open space, d’Annunzio introduced an oversized sculpture or a marble screen. Even the entrance hall was all but blocked by a marble column. The whole was overheated, heavily scented and swathed even at midday in a crepuscular gloom. The only bright room was d’Annunzio’s study, and even there any sense of openness was negated by a doorway so low that even its diminutive master had to bend down to pass through it.

  While d’Annunzio wove his extraordinary cocoon about himself Mussolini warily scrutinised his agents’ reports on his activities and the company he kept. It suited Mussolini that the Italian public should believe that d’Annunzio was wholeheartedly behind the new regime, but in truth dictator and poet remained suspicious of each other. At times d’Annunzio assumed a paternal stance, pointing out (correctly) how much Mussolini and his followers had learned from him. Mussolini was more than happy to agree. But still the poet withheld any public demonstration of support. He was untrustworthy and dangerously influential: he had to be kept on side. Mussolini granted him every favour he requested, with one exception. He was refused permission to build a private airfield near his villa. He was to have anything he wished for except an escape route.

  Strange stories circulated about the life he led in his seclusion. One visitor reported that he liked to sit naked under a fountain reading an edition of Dante especially printed for the purpose on sheets of rubber; another that he had had two ribs removed to allow him to perform fellatio on himself. Some of these stories are credible, others were invented by imaginative reporters or by d’Annunzio himself, who liked to have his own eccentricities talked about. Once, at a pre-war dinner party, he had remarked musingly, to the thrilled consternation of his fellow guests, that the meat of human children tasted remarkably like spring lamb. He hadn’t lost his taste for teasing. The story goes that when a Russian emissary visited him at the Vittoriale he entertained him to a splendid dinner à deux. As they sat at table two fearsomely accoutred Arditi entered carrying a damascened scimitar. They handed it to d’Annunzio and went out, locking the dining room doors behind them. D’Annunzio, in tones of polite regret, informed the visitor that he had resolved to decapitate him. Some minutes passed before he announced that after all he wasn’t in the mood.

  His health was deteriorating. He was fifty-seven when he came to the Vittoriale, half blind, and even his prodigious energy undermined by five years of exhausting activity. He almost certainly had syphilis. While he was in Fiume, Father Macdonald had written: “The Poet’s constant orgies, and the disease from which he was commonly reported to be suffering, so affected his brain as to render him irresponsible alike for his words and for his actions.” Behaviour normal to d’Annunzio might have appeared pathological to the priest, but Macdonald was probably right. Over his years at the Vittoriale, d’Annunzio’s letters became increasingly incoherent: something was playing havoc with his mind. Drugs didn’t help. He took various opiates to control the pain in his eyes, and to help him sleep, and certainly by the mid-1920s—probably earlier—he was taking copious quantities of cocaine.

  Lurking in the self-created lair which was also to be his mausoleum, he seemed to outsiders as baleful and forlorn as a fairy-tale beast. “Poor decrepit old bard! I pity him,” wrote Walter Starkie. But the truth is he was often happy during these last years. His notebooks are full of evidence of his continuing zest for pleasure. He writes with gusto about lamb cutlets, about the exquisite gradations of colour on the mountains at sunrise and about his sexual experiments. He entered with enthusiasm into his role as patron to a new legion, one not of warriors, but of artists and artisans. His letters show him playful and funny. Hidden from the world behind his high walls he dropped the grand roles of Vate and Commandant and indulged a sense of humour of which, as he himself remarks, his published works allow no inkling.

  The coming man was modelling himself ever more markedly on the “decrepit old bard.” In October 1922, the month of Mussolini’s seizure of power, an article in the fascist magazine Gerarchia (Hierarchy) described the distinguishing marks of public life under fascism: “The banners fluttering in the wind, the blackshirts, the helmets, the songs, the cries of ‘Eia, Eia, Eia, Alalà!’ the Roman salute, the recital of the names of the dead, the official feasts, the solemn swearing-in occasions, the parades in military style.” It could be a description of d’Annunzio’s Fiume. Margherita Sarfatti, editor of Gerarchia and Mussolini’s mistress, paid tribute to d’Annunzio as the originator of the “rites that under fascism became an art form and a way of life … at once gay and austere, carefree and pregnant with religious and moral content.”

  D’Annunzio had often been accused of plagiarism. Now the tables were turned. Angelo Tasca, one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party, observed how, “the occupation of Fiume … furnishes fascism with the model for its militia and its uniforms, the names for its squads, its war cry and its liturgy. Mussolini commandeers from d’Annunzio the whole of the stage scenery, including the dialogues with the crowd.” He had commandeered as well much of the poet’s mindset. D’Annunzio, concluded Tasca, became under fascism, “the victim of the greatest piece of plagiarism ever seen.”

  D’Annunzio’s decline. Mussolini’s ascent. Here are some of the stations along their two trajectories.

  JANUARY TO MAY 1921. During the five months after d’Annunzio left Fiume, over 200 people were killed and about a thousand wounded in clashes between fascist squads and socialists. Like Keller on the night preceding the Sacred Entry, the fascists got hold of lorries—legally or otherwise. They roared around the countryside, terrorising anyone who was, or in their opinion might be, socialist. They did so with impunity. “The carabinieri travel around with them in their lorries … sing their hymns and eat and drink with them,” reported a priest. A lot of those lorries were provided by the army, many high-ranking officers being kindly disposed towards the squads. People were being killed on both sides of what was fast beginning to look like a civil war. Judges were partisan: a disproportionate number of those fascists accused of murder were acquitted, while socialists received maximum sentences. Anti-authoritarian, scattered through the countryside, the squads were a loose association of independent groups, each obeying only their local capo or ras (the latter word borrowed from the Ethiopian tribal chieftains). Mussolini didn’t create the wave of violence, but he was good at riding it.

  1 FEBRUARY 1921. D’Annunzio, waiting to move into his new home, writes to de Ambris lamenting the state of Italian political life. “It is all corrupted. It is all gone astray.”

  De Ambris has been instrumental in setting up the National Federation of the Legionaries of Fiume. There was a Fascio di Combattimento in Fiume. D’Annunzio joined, but he kept his distance, staying away from the fascio’s rallies. Fascism was not his movement; he wanted nothing to do with it. Now he writes that he wishes his legionaries’ Federation to keep itself from contagion by any other organisation. “Today in Italy there is no sincere political movement.” />
  MARCH 1921. In Florence, fascists break into the offices of the socialist journal La Difesa, smashing everything they find. Between February and May, 726 buildings—libraries, print shops, employment offices, socialist headquarters—are attacked and wrecked by fascist squads. Those who used them are beaten up, or murdered.

  5 APRIL 1921. Mussolini visits d’Annunzio. There is an election in the offing. Mussolini proposes that d’Annunzio stands as a candidate for Zara, and that he writes something—a proclamation, a programme—of which the fascists can make use in their campaign. D’Annunzio declines both proposals. He disdains parliament: he has no desire to “line up” in another man’s phalanx.

  APRIL 1921. A story appears in a Roman newspaper, and subsequently in the New York Times, claiming that d’Annunzio, having instituted new, permissive divorce laws in Fiume, has freed himself from his first marriage and made Luisa Baccara his wife. This is not true, but Luisa is with him as his mistress, hostess, resident musician, librarian, procuress and companion in games of dressing-up. Her clothes are becoming increasingly fantastical. Tall and thin, she wears mediaeval-style gowns in silver tissue and cut velvet, with floor-sweeping pointed sleeves, “Romanesque” embroidery and braided girdles. D’Annunzio has taken to calling her the Papessa (the female Pope).

  24 APRIL 1921. Elections in Fiume. Riccardo Zanella’s Autonomist Party wins the majority of votes. His opponents—fascists, nationalists and followers of d’Annunzio—invade government offices, smash the ballot boxes and seize power regardless. D’Annunzio fires off congratulatory telegrams to the insurgents, and sends Mayor Riccardo Gigante the gilded bayonet that was presented to him in San Vito the previous year, the one that Zanella claimed was to be used to assassinate him. D’Annunzio does not, however, go to Fiume, as many of his legionaries are urging him to do. He writes to a friend that “these are sad and clouded days.” (To his chagrin, he never gets the bayonet back.)

  15 MAY 1921. General elections in Italy. Giolitti, in a characteristic attempt to subsume and control the fascists by a process of “transformism,” has invited them to form a part of his “national bloc.” “The fascist candidates will be like fireworks,” he says privately. “They will make a lot of noise but will leave behind nothing but smoke.” It is the worst mistake he has ever made.

  The results are excellent for Mussolini. He is one of thirty-six fascist deputies elected to parliament. They promptly renege on their deal with Giolitti, and join the opposition. Mussolini is no liberal: he announces that he has “lead and fire” ready for the bourgeoisie, and that most parliamentary business is “useless chatter.”

  Now he is within reach of legitimate power he makes well-publicised efforts to control the violence of the squads, telling them the “civil war” is over and Bolshevism is defeated; but when the fascist chief Roberto Farinacci beats up a communist deputy Mussolini does not disown him.

  JUNE 1921. D’Annunzio collaborates in the making of a documentary film about himself. He poses at his desk. He is a writer now, not a Commandant.

  Eleonora Duse, aged sixty-three, is touring again. He writes in his usual florid style to tell her that he had thought he might be capable of bestirring himself to come and watch her performance, that he might have had the courage to allow her to see him, “injured by years” as he is, but he finds that actually, no, he can’t do it. He can’t face the crowds.

  On 19 June he sends a message to the Arditi, who are gathering for a congress in Rome, reiterating his advice that they should hold themselves aloof from any existing political formation—meaning, by clear implication, from fascism.

  AUGUST 1921. D’Annunzio tells his friend Boulanger that he aspires to being the person of whom, one day, people will say: “Come then! There is no one but him!” When that day comes though, he lets the opportunity pass.

  Mussolini, more interested now in extending his power than in terrorising his opponents, has proposed a “pact of pacification” with the socialist unions. His more militant followers are outraged, the bullyboys of the squads and the powerful local bosses alike. After furious disputes, Mussolini resigns from the fascists’ executive committee. “If fascism does not follow me, no one can force me to follow fascism.” The fascist ras resolve to find a replacement for him. Two of the most prominent among them, Dino Grandi (who first vents his fury by beating up the socialist leader in the parliamentary chamber) and the celebrated aviator Italo Balbo, visit d’Annunzio at the Vittoriale. They invite him to assume the leadership of “national forces.” As usual when confronted with a decision, d’Annunzio dithers, and takes refuge in real or pretended superstition. He must first consult the stars, he says. The night sky is overcast. His visitors will have to wait.

  Perhaps changing their mind about his suitability, Grandi and Balbo leave unanswered. But the possibility that d’Annunzio might one day come out of seclusion continues to haunt the minds of both those who long for and those who dread it. Two years later, the socialist historian Gaetano Salvemini, is worrying that Mussolini could be ousted by d’Annunzio, “the maddest of all,” with a “Superfascist programme.”

  10 SEPTEMBER 1921. Three thousand fascists, led by Italo Balbo, converge on Ravenna for a brutal attack on the city’s socialists. Afterwards they celebrate their victory over the unpatriotic Reds by filing solemnly past the newly erected monument to Dante. They have learnt from d’Annunzio how politic it is to claim that Italy’s great poet is on their side. He frequently quotes a line from Dante—“Up in beautiful Italy there lies a lake …”—as an endorsement of his choice of home.

  D’ANNUNZIO IS STILL SHOPPING. A year earlier Tom Antongini was Fiume’s emissary to the Paris peace talks. Now, back in Milan, he is once more d’Annunzio’s errand boy. D’Annunzio writes to him frequently. “Please collect my parcel from Vogue. Please ask Corbella for six pairs of blankets, wool, and six pairs, linen. Please bring dead-leaf-green varnish. Please bring me 20,000 lire.”

  D’Annunzio tells Antongini he is in a very good mood and “libidinosissssimo”—verrrrry randy.

  1921. Mussolini is making a speech. Ugo Ojetti, d’Annunzio’s old friend, is watching. As Mussolini finishes, two blackshirts, with tears of emotion in their eyes, take him by the waist and lift him above the crowd “with the air of a priest elevating, within a monstrance, the sacred host.” Like d’Annunzio in Fiume, Mussolini is becoming an idol.

  OCTOBER 1921. With the help of a bank loan which will not be repaid in his lifetime, d’Annunzio buys the Villa Cargnacco, with its gardens and olive and lemon groves, and renames it the Vittoriale. It is the first house he has ever owned. He has already met Gian Carlo Maroni, the architect who will work with him for the next seventeen years on the expansion and remodelling of the house and grounds.

  It is the latest of his many homes to be nicknamed the Eremo (the Hermitage). He refers to it also as the Canonica, the house of the Canon. The central wing is called the Priory. He calls himself the “poverello,” dresses on occasion in vaguely Franciscan-looking robes and alludes to the women of his household as “Clarissas” after the nuns of the order of St. Clare. Paul Valéry, visiting him, finds he is required to ask for “my sister water” or “my brother bread,” as though dining with St. Francis.

  There is still no evidence to suggest d’Annunzio has any religious feeling. He is dressing up and teasing his public with the decadent frisson of blasphemy (those “Clarissas” are far from chaste).

  NOVEMBER 1921. At a congress in Rome, Mussolini renounces his “pact of pacification” with the socialists and reclaims control of the fascist movement. For years he has been insistent that fascism is a fluid, ever-creative phenomenon not to be confined within the old-fashioned terms of party politics. Now he changes his mind, and proclaims the founding of the “National Fascist Party.”

  D’ANNUNZIO’S STUDY IS CALLED THE “WORKSHOP.” The Vittoriale at large is a workshop in the wider sense. It hums with activity. The never-ending process of construction and decoration keeps a tro
op of artisans on the place. This is d’Annunzio’s new court. He is at ease with the people working to realise his fantasy. He teases them and calls them by nicknames. He sends them little notes of praise and encouragement. He makes jokes.

  DECEMBER 1921. The programme of the National Fascist Party is published. It is full of sentiments and proposals which d’Annunzio has been espousing for years. The nation as an “organism” enduring through history, and therefore far greater than the sum of its living members. Corporations as the proper unit of social organisation. Italy as a “bulwark of Latin civilisation.” The imperative need for Italy to attain “geographical unity,” and to defend the rights of Italians abroad. The necessity of building up Italy’s armed forces, and training its young people to be ready at all times for “danger and glory.”

  The squads and their violent practices are not disowned—quite the reverse. “They are a living source of strength in which and through which the fascist idea embodies itself and defends itself.”

  D’ANNUNZIO’S POLITICAL POSITION IS UNCLEAR. His legionaries, he complains, pester him, looking to him still for leadership, but he has no appetite for public life.

  He publishes an account of himself in which he seems to take on the roles of Virgil’s Aeneas and of Jesus Christ. Like Aeneas he has fled from a burning city “with a few of the faithful” (the fact that his little band consists not of warriors but of lovers and domestic servants is glossed over). The Vittoriale, he says, is a palladium and a shrine. There he will honour those who died at Fiume and keep alive the spirit that moved them. There is nothing left of his “city of life” but “a stain of dark blood.” But that stain may yet spread, as the blood dripping to the foot of Christ’s cross has spread across the world.