D’ANNUNZIO THE COMPLEX.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLV, Issue 11960, 11 December 1919, Page 7

D’ANNUNZIO THE COMPLEX.

EIGHTEEN DECORATIONS WON,

IDOL OF HIS COUNTRYMEN. Rupert Brooke 'said the three greatest things iu life were to read poetry, to write it, and to live it. Few poets are vouchsafed all three. Byron was, for one, and now, a century later,* a lesser immortal, yet one of strange likeness to the wayward genius of “Don Joan,” is living the poetry of life, fiercely, exultantly, writes Ferdinand Tuohy. We may not like Gabriele d’Annunzio’s raid in Finme, or the hauling down of the Union Jack by him who wears the Military Cross, yet we in England are ever ready to salute *a man. And d’Annunzio assuredly is one.

The trouble with d’Annnnzio—or Signor Papagauetta, to give him his real name—is that he does not belong to this age at all. He is a rare, exotic, cultured aftergrowth ofjthe Renaissance, flow’ering iu a grim, efficient, materialistic world. The ideal of d’Annuuzio—it permeates liis work —is to Jgive away to every natural emotion, and damn the consequences, He is doing it now. He has done it all his life. Listen to this, and yon imagine yourself reading once again of Bj'ron : “As a boy he followed the culte du Moi, and to come between him and the least of his desires was to arouse a storm of furious anger. . At 17 he burst upon society, and in the double role of aritst and rake he dazzled and scandalised Rome for a number of years. ’ ’ Like Byron, again d'Annuuzio is a grotesque dandy and poseur; had once, with his fair hair and blue eyes and finely chiselled features, a rare physical charm, and was for long* years an emigre from his native land, at war with society. In character the resemblance is indeed striking. “He is a.creature of complex sen- , sations, of capricious sense, of angry passions, and flaming emotions, of nervous susceptibilities and distressed sentiments, elaborately and utterly himself,” The Italian, too, draws upon himself, his own life, his own sensuality, his own misanthropy, for the greatest of his works, such as “The Triumph of Death” and “The Flame of Life. ” D’Annunzio works by night; perhaps that is why ho sees but darkness and is champion of the decadent. 1 All this in Byron, in a minor key, hut that is the end. Byron fought and died for a small nation ; d’Annunzio is to day, with the grand flourish, attempting to trample on a nascent little race. Yet our respect endures this firebrand poet. He swayed Italy into tlio war; that to-day; is historical fact. And having done so, he went one further. You want to remember that four years ago d’Annuuzio was 48, and securely bracketed with such contemporaries as Maeterlinck, Hardy, Anatolo France, and Kipling. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred in d’Annunzio’s poeitiou'wouid have rested on their laurels, for literary genius hardly goes hand in hand with arms. "Bravery in battle may come easily to the man not overgifted with the power of deep thinking ; for the man eternally analysing, probing, sifting the horrors of war, tor the man with a brain capable"of reasoning it out in all its dreadtol detail, and doing so despite himself, courage before the enemy is a double cross to bear. . . D’Annunzio lifted it on to his shoulders. He did every simple thing humanly possible to try and got killed iu the war. In the air, in •submarines, on the battlefield. He •wears eighteen decorations, over > half of them for valour before the enemy. To hear Italians say “Ecco d’Aununzio” with awe In their voices, as I often heard them say last year, as the modest major strolled around Glacouda’s walls at Trevisco, was to understand what this man meant to Italy—this hotuead, if you will, but none the less this human phonomen--1 on, rarer than radium, one who \ combines the delicacy of mind of a i Dante with the physical courage of • a lumberman from across the | Rockies,