GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO DEAD

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22341, 3 March 1938, Page 11

GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO DEAD

STRANGELY VARIED CAREER IN ART AND POLITICS

ROME, March 1. The death has occurred of Gabriele d'Annunzio, the Italian author and poet. He died suddenly of cerebral hemorrhage. D'Annunzio, whose real name was Kapagnetta, had an extraordinary career in literature, war, and politics. Of Dalmatian extraction, he was born at Francavilla, Pescari, in 1864, and studied at the University of Rome, and at the age of 15 had already published a book of poems. From 1890 to 1905 he was a member of the Chamber of Deputies. Later he urged his country to declare war on the Central Powers, and so persistent was his propaganda that it undoubtedly influenced Italy to join the Allies. D'Annunzio's seizure of Fiume in 1920, and his retention of the city against the Italian Army, was his most dramatic act after the war, and brought him to the attention of all the world. In 1922 he saw Signor Mussolini carry out what he had dreamed of doing during his Fiume days. In recognition of his services, he was in 1924 created Count of Fiume, and then Prince of Montenivoso. As a writer of poems, novels, and plays, d'Annunzio was distinguished by his voluptuous style and command of language. In his early days some denounced him as a per verier of morals, and others hailed him as a revivifying force. In January, 1928. the organ of the Vatican, the "Osservatore Romano," made a scathing attack on d'Annunzio. It declared that the monumental edition of his works was out of all proportion to the artistic merits of the poet, all of whose writings are on the Church's index of forbidden books. In February the Pope, in a Lenten message to preachers, though not mentioning d'Annunzio's name, referred to a man who, though favoured by God with wonderful gifts, yet left a trace of "impiety and immorality" in nearly all his works, undermining the fountains of morality itself, and preaching the doctrine of the superman, by which the practice of morals was left to common men, and the superman was free to set his own moral standard.