Gabriele D'annunzio

Gabriele d'Annunzio

Father of Italian Fascism?

Gabriele d'Annunzio, born Gaetano Rapagnetta (12 March 1863 – 1 March 1938) was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, dramatist, womanizer and daredevil who went on to have a controversial role in politics as figurehead to the Italian Fascist movement and mentor to Benito Mussolini. Although present-day critics find little of permanent value in his works, his extraordinary ability to translate sensations into language is undeniable. His florid style mirrored the romantic, flamboyant quality of his career and personality.

Biography

D'Annunzio was born in Pescara, Abruzzi, on March 12, 1863, and educated in Florence and at the University of Rome. He left Abruzzi in 1881 for Rome. There he wrote essays for the newspaper Tribuna. A year later he won fame with Canto nuovo (New Song, 1882), a volume of poems that dealt with the joy of living. D'Annunzio then turned to the novel, producing The Triumph of Death (1894; trans. 1896), which has colorful descriptions of Abruzzi life.

After 1898, the theater held D'Annunzio's attention. During a love affair with the Italian actor Eleonora Duse, which lasted from 1897 to 1902, he wrote several plays for her, including Gioconda (1898; trans. 1902) and Francesca da Rimini (1902; trans. 1902). The novel The Flame of Life (1900; trans. 1900) is a candid and cruel account of their relationship. The Daughter of Jorio (1904; trans. 1907), widely regarded as his most vital play, was drawn from Abruzzi peasant life.

In 1912 D'Annunzio was left bankrupt and fled to France to escape his creditors. While in France he wrote several works in French; the most famous is Le martyre de Saint SÈbastien (The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, 1911), a play in verse, to which the French composer Claude Debussy set incidental music.

D'Annunzio served with distinction in the Italian armed forces during World War I. Immediately after the war he won notoriety by leading soldiers to occupy Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) in defiance of the Allied powers. After he was forced to leave the city he retired to his estate on Lake Garda, where he lived until his death on March 1, 1938. He was an outspoken supporter of Italian fascism.

Politics

D'Annunzio is often seen as a precursor of the ideals and techniques of Italian fascism. His own explicit political ideals emerged in Fiume when he coauthored a constitution with national syndicalist Alceste de Ambris, the Charter of Carnaro. 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). The Carta also declared that music was the fundamental principle of the state.

It was rather the culture of dictatorship that Benito Mussolini imitated and learned from d'Annunzio; his method of government in Fiume, the economics of the corporate state; stage tricks; large emotive nationalistic public rituals; the Roman salute; rhetorical questions to the crowd; blackshirted followers, the Arditi, with their disciplined, bestial responses and strongarm repression of dissent.

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. This practice became a common tool of Mussolini's blackshirts.

D'Annunzio advocated an expansionist Italian foreign policy and applauded the invasion of Ethiopia.

Influence on Mussolini

D'Annunzio was the outstanding interventionist in May 1915 and his dramatic exploits during the war won him national and international acclaim. In September 1919 he gathered together his 'legions' and captured the disputed seaport of Fiume. He held it for over a year and it was he who popularised the black shirts, the balcony speeches, the promulgation of ambitious charters and the entire choreography of street parades and ceremonies. He even planned a march on Rome. One historian had rightly described him as the 'First Duce' and Mussolini must have heaved a sigh of relief when he was driven from Fiume in December 1920 and his followers were dispersed. But he remained a threat to Mussolini and in 1921 Fascists like Balbo seriously considered turning to him for leadership.

Although Mussolini's fascism was heavily influenced by the Carta del Carnaro, the constitution for Fiume written by Alceste De Ambris and d'Annunzio, neither wanted to play an active part in the new movement, both refusing when asked by Fascist supporters to run in the elections of May 15, 1921. Before the March on Rome, De Ambris even went so far as to depict the Fascist movement as: "a filthy pawn in Mister Giolitti's game of chess, and made out of the least dignified section of the bourgeoisie"

D'Annunzio was seriously injured when he fell out of a window on August 13th 1922; subsequently the planned 'meeting for national pacification' with Francesco Saverio Nitti and Mussolini was cancelled. The incident was never explained and is considered by some historians an attempt to murder him, motivated by his popularity. Despite d'Annunzio's retreat from active public life after this event, the Duce still found it necessary to regularly dole out funds to d'Annunzio as a bribe for not re-entering the political arena. When asked about this by a close friend, Mussolini purportedly stated: "When you have a rotten tooth you have two possibilities open to you: either you pull the tooth or you fill it with gold. With d'Annunzio I have chosen for the latter treatment."

Nonetheless, d'Annunzio kept attempting to intervene in politics almost until his death in 1938. He wrote to Mussolini in 1933 to try to convince him not to take part in the Axis pact with Hitler. In 1934, he tried to disrupt the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini after their meeting, even writing a satirical pamphlet about Hitler. Again, in September 1937, d'Annunzio met with the Duce at the Verona train station to convince him to leave the Axis alliance.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_D'Annunzio

Encarta 1994, http://www.uib.no/ped/dannunzio.html