General Gabriele D'Annunzio OMS CMG MVM
Duce of the Carnaro
In office 12 September 1919 – 30 December 1920
Preceded by	Office created
Succeeded by	Office abolished (Riccardo Zanella as President of the Free State of Fiume)
Member of the Chamber of Deputies
In office 5 April 1897 – 17 May 1900
Constituency	Abruzzo
Personal details
Born	(1863-03-12)12 March 1863 Pescara, Kingdom of Italy
Died	1 March 1938(1938-03-01) (aged 74) Gardone Riviera, Kingdom of Italy
Resting place	Vittoriale degli italiani, Gardone Riviera, Lake Garda
Nationality	Italian
Political party	Historical Right (1897) Historical Left (1897–1900) Italian Nationalist Association (1910–1923)
Spouse(s)	Maria Hardouin (m. 1883–1938); his death
Domestic partner	Eleonora Duse (m. 1898–1901)
Children	Mario (1885–1964) Gabriellino (1886–1945) Ugo Veniero (1887–1945)
Parents	Francesco Paolo Rapagnetta and Luisa de Benedictis
Profession	Writer, journalist, poet, soldier
Religion	Deism (Martinism)
Signature
Military service
Nickname(s)	"The Vate"
Service/branch	Royal Italian Army Royal Airforce
Years of service	active: 1915–18
Rank	General (honorary) Lieutenant colonel Major Lieutenant colonel
Battles/wars	World War I Impresa di Fiume Tenth Battle of the Isonzo Flight over Vienna
Philosophy career
Notable work	Il Piacere Il trionfo della morte La Gioconda
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophers
School	Decadentism
Main interests	Poetry, politics
Notable ideas	Proto-fascism Italian irridentism
Influences[show] Friedrich Nietzsche Dante Ovid Francesco Petrarca Joris-Karl Huysmans Goethe Algernon Swinburne
Influenced[show] Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Claude Debussy Enrico Corradini Benito Mussolini Giovanni Gentile

General Gabriele D'Annunzio, Prince of Montenevoso, Duke of Gallese OMS CMG MVM (Italian pronunciation: [ɡabriˈɛːle danˈnuntsjo]; 12 March 1863 – 1 March 1938), sometimes spelled d'Annunzio,^[1] was an Italian writer, poet, journalist, playwright and soldier during World War I. He occupied a prominent place in Italian literature from 1889 to 1910 and after that political life from 1914 to 1924. He was often referred to under the epithets Il Vate ("the Poet")^[2] or Il Profeta ("the Prophet").

D'Annunzio was associated with the Decadent movement in his literary works, which interplayed closely with French Symbolism and British Aestheticism. Such works represented a turn against the naturalism of the preceding romantics and was both sensuous and mystical. He came under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche which would find outlets in his literary and later political contributions. His affairs with several women, including Eleonora Duse and Luisa Casati, received public attention.

During the First World War, perception of D'Annunzio in Italy would be transformed from literary figure into a national war hero. He was associated with the elite Arditi storm troops of the Italian Army and took part in actions such as the Flight over Vienna. As part of an Italian nationalist reaction against the Paris Peace Conference, he set up the short-lived Italian Regency of Carnaro in Fiume with himself as Duce. The constitution made "music" the fundamental principle of the state and was corporatist in nature.^[3] Some of the ideas and aesthetics influenced Italian fascism and the style of Benito Mussolini.

Childhood[edit]

D'Annunzio's birth museum house in Pescara

He was born in Pescara, Abruzzo, the son of a wealthy landowner and mayor of the town Francesco Paolo Rapagnetta d'Annunzio (1831–1893). His father had originally been born plain Rapagnetta (the name of his single mother), but at the age of 13 had been adopted by a childless rich uncle Antonio d'Annunzio.^[4][5] Legend has it that he was initially baptized Gaetano and given the name of Gabriele later in childhood, because of his angelic looks.^[6] However, there is wide documentation to disprove this story.^[7] His precocious talent was recognised early in life, and he was sent to school at the Liceo Cicognini in Prato, Tuscany. He published his first poetry while still at school at the age of sixteen with a small volume of verses called Primo Vere (1879), influenced by Giosuè Carducci's Odi barbare, in which, side by side with some almost brutal imitations of Lorenzo Stecchetti, the fashionable poet of Postuma, were some translations from the Latin, distinguished by such agile grace that Giuseppe Chiarini on reading them brought the unknown youth before the public in an enthusiastic article. In 1881 D'Annunzio entered the University of Rome La Sapienza, where he became a member of various literary groups, including Cronaca Bizantina and wrote articles and criticism for local newspapers. In those university years he started to promote Italian irredentism.

Literary work[edit]

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D'Annunzio in 1889

He published Canto novo (1882), Terra vergine (1882), L'intermezzo di rime (1883), Il libro delle vergini (1884) and the greater part of the short stories that were afterwards collected under the general title of San Pantaleone (1886). Canto novo contains poems full of pulsating youth and the promise of power, some descriptive of the sea and some of the Abruzzese landscape, commented on and completed in prose by Terra vergine, the latter a collection of short stories dealing in radiant language with the peasant life of the author's native province. Intermezzo di rime is the beginning of D'Annunzio's second and characteristic manner. His conception of style was new, and he chose to express all the most subtle vibrations of voluptuous life. Both style and contents began to startle his critics; some who had greeted him as an enfant prodige rejected him as a perverter of public morals, whilst others hailed him as one bringing a breath of fresh air and an impulse of a new vitality into the somewhat prim, lifeless work hitherto produced.^[8]

Meanwhile, the review of Angelo Sommaruga perished in the midst of scandal, and his group of young authors found itself dispersed. Some entered the teaching career and were lost to literature, others threw themselves into journalism.^[8]

Gabriele D'Annunzio took this latter course, and joined the staff of the Tribuna. For this paper, under the pseudonym of "Duca Minimo", he did some of his most brilliant work ^{[according to whom?]}. To this period of greater maturity and deeper culture belongs Il libro d'Isotta (1886), a love poem, in which for the first time he drew inspiration adapted to modern sentiments and passions from the rich colours of the Renaissance.^[8]

Il libro d'Isotta is interesting also, because in it one can find most of the germs of his future work, just as in Intermezzo melico and in certain ballads and sonnets one can find descriptions and emotions which later went to form the aesthetic contents of Il piacere, Il trionfo della morte and Elegie romane (1892).^[8]

D'Annunzio's first novel Il piacere (1889, translated into English as The Child of Pleasure) was followed in 1891 by Giovanni Episcopo, and in 1892 by L'innocente (The Intruder). These three novels made a profound impression. L'innocente, admirably translated into French by Georges Herelle, brought its author the notice and applause of foreign critics. His next work, Il trionfo della morte (The Triumph of Death) (1894), was followed soon by Le vergini delle rocce (1896) and Il fuoco (1900); the latter is in its descriptions of Venice perhaps the most ardent glorification of a city existing in any language.^[8]

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).^[8]

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; his Città Morta (1898), written for Sarah Bernhardt. In 1898 he wrote his Sogno di un pomeriggio d'autunno and La Gioconda; in the succeeding year La gloria, an attempt at contemporary political tragedy which met with no success, probably because of the audacity of the personal and political allusions in some of its scenes; and then Francesca da Rimini (1901), a perfect reconstruction of medieval atmosphere and emotion, magnificent in style, and declared by an authoritative Italian critic – Edoardo Boutet – to be the first real, if imperfect, tragedy ever given to the Italian theatre.^[8]

In 1883, D'Annunzio married Maria Hardouin di Gallese, and had three sons, but the marriage ended in 1891. In 1894, he began a love affair with the famous actress Eleonora Duse which became a cause célèbre. 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. After meeting the Marchesa (Luisa) Casati in 1903, he began a lifelong turbulent on again off again affair with Luisa, that lasted until a few years before his death.

In 1897, D'Annunzio was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for a three-year term, where he sat as an independent. By 1910, his daredevil lifestyle had forced him into debt, and he fled to France to escape his creditors. 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. The Vatican reacted by placing all of his works in the Index of Forbidden Books. The work was not successful as a play, but it has been recorded in adapted versions several times, notably by Pierre Monteux (in French), Leonard Bernstein (sung in French, acted in English), and Michael Tilson Thomas (in French). In 1912 and 1913, D'Annunzio worked with opera composer Pietro Mascagni on his opera Parisina, staying sometimes in a house rented by the composer in Bellevue, near Paris.

Flight over Vienna[edit]

Italian translation of the propaganda leaflet which D'Annunzio threw from his airplane during his flight above Vienna.

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 Triple Entente. Since taking a flight with Wilbur Wright in 1908, D'Annunzio had been interested in aviation. With the war beginning he volunteered and achieved further celebrity as a fighter pilot, losing the sight of an eye in a flying accident.

Gabriele D'Annunzio (left) with a fellow officer

In February 1918 he took part in a daring, if militarily irrelevant, raid on the harbour of Bakar (known in Italy as La beffa di Buccari, lit. the Bakar Mockery), helping to raise the spirits of the Italian public, still battered by the Caporetto disaster. On 9 August 1918, as commander of the 87th fighter squadron "La Serenissima", he organized one of the great feats of the war, leading 9 planes in a 700-mile round trip to drop propaganda leaflets on Vienna. This is called in Italian "il Volo su Vienna", "the Flight over Vienna".^[9]

Fiume[edit]

1921 Postcard from Fiume and postage stamp with D'Annunzio's portrait. (The motto Hic Manebimus Optime is Latin for: "Here we'll stay wonderfully.")

The War strengthened his ultra-nationalist and irredentist views, and he campaigned widely for Italy to assume a role alongside her wartime allies as a first-rate European power. Angered by the proposed handing over of the city of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) whose population was mostly Italian, at the Paris Peace Conference, on 12 September 1919, he led the seizure by 2,000 Italian nationalist irregulars of the city, forcing the withdrawal of the inter-Allied (American, British and French) occupying forces.^[10] The plotters sought to have Italy annex Fiume, but were denied. Instead, Italy initiated a blockade of Fiume while demanding that the plotters surrender.

Fiume residents cheering D'Annunzio and his raiders, September 1919

D'Annunzio then declared Fiume an independent state, the Italian Regency of Carnaro; the Charter of Carnaro foreshadowed much of the later Italian Fascist system, with himself as "Duce" (leader). Some elements of the Royal Italian Navy, such as the destroyer Espero joined up with D'Annunzio's local forces.^[11] He attempted to organize an alternative to the League of Nations for (selected) oppressed nations of the world (such as the Irish, whom D'Annunzio attempted to arm in 1920),^[12] and sought to make alliances with various separatist groups throughout the Balkans (especially groups of Italians, though also some Slavic and Albanian^[13] groups), although without much success. 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.

Later life[edit]

Villa of Vittoriale degli italiani

After the Fiume episode, 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 1922, shortly before the march on Rome, he was pushed out of a window by an unknown assailant. He survived but was badly injured, and only recovered after Mussolini had been appointed Prime Minister.

In 1924 he was ennobled by King Victor Emmanuel III and given the hereditary title of Principe di Montenevoso. In 1937 he was made president of the Royal Academy of Italy. D'Annunzio died in 1938 of a stroke, at his home in Gardone Riviera. He was given a state funeral by Mussolini and was interred in a magnificent tomb constructed of white marble at Il Vittoriale degli Italiani.

He was an atheist.^[14]

His son Gabriellino D'Annunzio became a film director. His 1921 film The Ship was based on a novel by his father. In 1924, he co-directed the historical epic Quo Vadis, an expensive failure, before retiring from filmmaking.