Gabriele D'Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War
608Gabriele D'Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War
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Overview
Winner of the Costa Biography Award
**Washington Post Best Books of 2013**
**Economist Best Books of 2013**
This fascinating life of Gabriele d’Annunzio—the charismatic poet, bon vivant, and virulent nationalist who prefigured Mussolini—traces the early twentieth century’s trajectory from Romantic idealism to Fascist thuggery.
D’Annunzio was Italy’s premier poet at a time when poetry could trigger riots. A brilliant self-publicist, he used his fame to sell his work, seduce women, and promote his extreme nationalism. At once an aesthete and a militarist, he enjoyed risking death no less than making love, and he wrote with equal enthusiasm about Fortuny gowns and torpedoes. In 1915 his incendiary oratory helped drive Italy into the First World War, and in 1919 he led a troop of mutineers into the Croatian port of Fiume, where he established a delinquent utopia. Futurists, anarchists, communists and proto-fascists descended on the place, along with literati and thrill-seekers, drug dealers and prostitutes. Three years later, when the fascists marched on Rome, they belted out anthems they’d learned in Fiume, while Mussolini consciously modeled himself on the great poet. Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s compelling biography is a revelation both of d’Annunzio’s flamboyant life and of the dramatic times he helped to shape.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780307276551 |
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Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 05/06/2014 |
Pages: | 608 |
Sales rank: | 924,761 |
Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d) |
About the Author
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Copyright © 2014 Lucy Hughes-Hallett.
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Table of Contents
I Ecce Homo
The Pike 3
Sightings 17
Six Months 39
II Streams
Worship 69
Glory 79
Liebestod 90
Homeland 100
Youth 107
Nobility in Beauty 122
Elitism 129
Martyrdom 132
Sickness 138
The Sea 144
Decadence 149
Blood 155
Fame 158
Superman 161
Virility 180
Eloquence 187
Cruelty 193
Life 201
Drama 208
Scenes from a Life 211
Speed 241
Kaleidoscope 272
The Dogs of War 299
III War and Peace
War 317
Peace 379
The City of the Holocaust 409
The Fifth Season 442
Clausura 481
Notes 547
Select Bibliography 555
Acknowledgements 559
Illustration Credits 561
Index 563
What People are Saying About This
“Remarkable . . . a terrific piece of work—as audacious as it is gripping, as thorough as it is insightful and as stirring as it is shocking.”
—John Preston, The Daily Mail
“Deeply evocative . . . It is not easy to make sense of the life of a man who was a silk-swathed aesthete, prophetic versifier, manic aviator and martial demagogue all in one. But in telling the story of his life, Ms Hughes-Hallett deftly unpicks the strands that compose and ultimately resolve these incongruities. She is a strong match for her subject, something that so many of the women in d’Annunzio’s life were lamentably not. Her style is rich, ironic and pugnacious; she jousts willingly with him and the reader becomes a spectator of this subtle and fascinating contest.”
—The Economist
“Exceptional.”
—Stuart Kelly, scotsman.com