POET'S GREAT BEQUEST

Dunstan Times, Issue 3499, 15 December 1930, Page 3

POET'S GREAT BEQUEST

“ THE BEST OF MY LIFE " GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO’S GIFT. Severn years ago Gabriele D’Annunzio, the famous Italian poet, made known his intention of leaving ‘II Vittoriale,’’ his villa and estate on Lake Garda, to the State. The formal deed of gift was drawn up last month and signed in the presence of witnesses by the poet and by the Minister of National Education. The deed was written by D'Annunzio himself in his own peculiar style. It has therefore a vivid personal touch, generally absent from legal documents. After stating that at his death his whole property is to be inherited by the State, he goes on; — “ In the meantime I live and work and make music within the solitude of the Vittoriale that 1 have donated, and 1 dedicate to my walls the same assiduous love that I give to the pages of my new books. Every room that I have ever carefully arranged, every object that 1 have ever chosen and made mine at any period of my life, has always been for me a means of self-expression, a medium of spiritual revelation, like one of my poems or my dramas, like any one of my acts military or political, or any witness that f have ever borne to genuine, invincible faith. “ Therefore is it that I venture to offer to the Italian people all that remains to me and all that from this date I may acquire to increase my inheritance. I, who once sang idly of ancient palaces and sumptuous villas, f have come to close my life in silence in this peasant’s house, not so much to humble myself as to test my own powers of creation and transfiguration. “My love of Italy, my worship of memories, my aspirations toward heroism, my presentiment of my country’s future —they are all revealed here in every line, in every note of colour. Here, too, are my books, not kept to collect dust, but as living entities, and perhaps no solitary student has ever had so many. . .

“ As death will give my hotly to my beloved Italy, so lot me be permitted to preserve the best of my life in this offering to Italy. ... I have founded an open-air theatre, I have organised schools and workshops to renew the Italian traditions of the minor arts. I boat on iron, I blow glass, I engrave hard stones, I print with wood blocks, 1 colour stuffs, I carve bone and box-wood, T interpret the recipes of Caterina Sforza, and 1 distil perfumery. “ 1 beg the head of the Government of Italy to accept mv offering whole and entire, and to declare it to be irrevocable and inalienable in any way or at any time: witness the living who are alert and the dead who watch.”