Marja Härmänmaa
University of Helsinki email: marja.harmanmaa@helsinki.fi
NeMLA 2014 paper:
In Italy, a famous literary critic Francesco De Sanctis (1817-1883) had stressed the civil responsibility of writers and insisted on their socio-political role. According to De Sanctis a writer is not an introverted intellectual isolated in his ivory tower, but in interaction with the surrounding reality, with his culture and his society. The lesson was fully understood by Giosuè Carducci, the Italian national poet (1835-1907), who during his lifetime was socially and politically strongly engaged. Successively, this activism was further developed by D’Annunzio.
Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938), an Italian poet, writer, WWI hero, and politician, has also been indicated as the founder of modern political discourse. D’Annunzio initiated his political career as a MP in 1897, and culminated it with the occupation of the city of Fiume in the Dalmatian coast, where he, disappointed with the treaty of Versailles, established a corporatist State under his leadership after the WWI (12.9.1919 –
18.1.1921).
In a nutshell, D’Annunzio aimed at aestheticization of both politics and political discourse. In the eve of the mass society he aimed at the participation of masses in politics by transforming the political action into a dramatic one. Instead of informing the audience about the socio-political facts, the leader needed to arouse enthusiasm; instead of rational analysis of social problems, the new political style needed to be melodramatic and poetic, based on myths and symbols. According to Michael Ledeen D’Annunzio knew the ways in which the crowd reacts, he manipulated it, forged it and inspired it until he had completely bent it to his will. He made the crowd become an active element of his speeches, by speaking directly to the people, asking questions, and asking for their participation. In this regards, the relationship between the orator and the audience had something similar to that between the artist and his creation.
i
Regardless of his activity, D’Annunzio never wrote an explicit political program. Also while MP, he suddenly changed from right to left, and declared simply to be “beyond right and left”. Nevertheless there are two concepts that well define D’Annunzio’s politics: the above mentioned aestheticism and nationalism. The unification of the country had ended in 1861 with the foundation of the kingdom of Italy. Like many other intellectuals in the young Italy of the pre WWI period, D’Annunzio was a nationalistic dreaming of a strong, imperialistic Italy that would count on the international level, too. He expressed his nationalistic aspiration in different writings. His political articles of the period are collected in Armata d’Italia (The Italian Army,
1888). The first militaristic poems are now in Odi navali (The Navy Odes, 1893), and the poems about the

Italian-Turkish war in Libya (January 1912) are gathered in Merope, also entitled Canzoni della Gesta
d’oltremare (Songs of the Overseas’ Gestures, 1911-1912).
When the First World War started in August 1914, Italy was nominally allied with the Central Powers.
However, she refused to join them, and remained neutral till May 23, 1915, when she finally entered the war as an ally of France and the UK. During the period of neutrality, many of the intellectuals in Italy propagated in favor of the country’s participation to the war.
ii In May 1915 also D’Annunzio joined them.
He returned to Italy from France, where he had escaped his creditors in 1910. Before and during the war
D’Annunzio gave several speeches to promote Italy’s participation as an ally of France, in the name of the common Latin heritage, and against Austria – in order to gain territories belonging to her. During the socalled Maggio radioso, (Radiant May, 2.-20.5.1915) D’Annunzio delivered various orazioni and messages that are now included in a collection entitled Per la più grande Italia (For the Greater Italy) Plus, he wrote several poems. The most part of these Canti (Asterope) were published in the leading Italian newspaper, Il
Corriere della Sera, and only in 1933 they were published as a book for the first time.
The collection of the poems D’Annunzio wrote before and during the WWI had previously also two other names: Gli inni sacri della guerra giusta (The Holy Hymns of the Right War), Canti della guerra latina
(Cantos of the Latin War) that well synthesises the main rhetoric devices D’Annunzio used in the poems: religiosity and the Roman heritage. With the final title Asterope, D’Annunzio inserted the poems into a larger collection of Versi d’amore e di Gloria (Verses of Love and Glory). In this collection all the five parts have a name of one of the Pleiades (Maia, Electra, Alcyone, Merope). Asterope (or Sterope) is the one of the Pleiades who, according to one version, married Mars. The collection contains 23 writings of lyric poems and rhythmic prose, of which five are in French. They were all written between 1914 and 1918, and they are thus D’Annunzio’s last poems.
iii
As the first titles of the collection well indicate, the poems were written in order to glorify the WWI, and to urge Italy’s participation to it together with France. In addition of being a mosaic of quotations of his previous texts, in all his interventionist writings D’Annunzio combined all the ideological and political traditions of the country.
iv Rhetoric devices vary from the myth of Rome to the Italian Risorgimento and
Garibaldi; from popular songs to diverse religious elements, such as allegories, liturgical formulas (that
D’Annunzio inherited from Swinburn, Hugo, Whitman), direct quotes from the Bible, and numerous religious terms (such as “salmo”, a psalm “preghiera”, a pray). D’Annunzio’s public was the cultivated middle class who could understand and appreciate his rhetoric. According to Mario Isnenghi, the fact that the Italian press constantly published D’Annunzio’s writings, made him the country’s pseudo official orator, who significantly influenced on the opinion of the middle class reading public.
v
“L’Ode pour la résurrection latine” (The Ode for the Latin Resurrection) is the first one of the poems in
Asterope.
vi It is a long poem, divided in eleven parts, each containing 21 verses, of total 231 free verses.
Written in French, it was first published August 13, 1914 in the leading French newspaper Le Figaro. The poem was greatly appreciated by French writers, in particular by Maurice Barrès, Romain Rolland, and Paul
Adam.
vii
D’Annunzio’s goal was to get Italy involved in the war as an ally of France and against Austria, with which
Italy still at this moment was allied. In the Ode the Franco-Italian alliance is justified by their common Latin legacy. The Latin race is the “elected” one, thanks to the heritage of the antique Rome that distinguishes them from the Teutonic barbarians. Rome is also the stimulus that inspires the Poet, and it is present in the poem with two concrete examples. When the Poet understands his mission as a war orator, he hears the

horses of the Dioskouri, Castor and Pollux, neighing, which is to be understood as a symbol of the country’s will to fight: ”Et j’entends les chevaux des Dioscures hennir.” [v 42] Successively, he hears the steps of goddess Victory on the pavement of the ruins of the antique city Ostia, where one of her statues is located.
The Poet turns to Victory to get help and strength to deliver his message: ”ô Vierge, accompagne mon message, affermis ma voix!” [v 84]
What Mario Isnenghi calls “the intellectual use of the war” as a remedy to both collective and individual pathologies, was widespread among both the Italian and European writers and intellectuals. In Italy the idea of war as the solution to the socio-political problems was particularly cherished by those who were disappointed with the unification and the political life of the country. In the interventionist writings this inner enemy was first of all the neutralist who opposed Italy’s involvement in the conflict, and successively the defeatist who wanted to betray the nation and to continue to impose to it a “servile mark”.
viii In the
Ode, D’Annunzio too first points the inner enemy who are people ”vêtu d’ignominie e de paix” [vv 74-75],
”l’astuce et la peur, vaches baveuses, / [qui] ruminaient le mensonge” [vv 78-80] Thus, Italy is ”Corrompue et pollué par les mains des vieillards” [v 81]
Regardless his nationalistic convictions, it is well justified to ask D’Annunzio’s motivations for his energetic engagement in the political life. D’Annunzio urged to become Il Vate, the illuminated spiritual guide of the nation. Also at the beginning of the Ode D’Annunzio takes the role of the promulgator of the ”Rénaissance latine”: ”Je suis une offrande d’amour, / je suis un cri vers l’aurore, / je suis un clairon de rescousse / aux lèvres de la race élue.” [vv 18-21] The need to create the personal cult as a consequence of his innate narcissism definitely played a crucial role in his political involvement. However, also the concrete reasons, namely the will to annex Austrian territories in the north and northeast of Italy, are not to be forgotten: for
Italy, as the country gained the majority of these territories, the WWI was actually the last war of the unification. The last poem of Asterope, “Cantico per l’ottava della vittoria,” (Song for the Octave of Victory) published for the first time in Il Corriere della Sera 12 November 1918, right after the armistice, is partly dedicated to the Dalmatian cities that Italy wished to annex but that she did not get. Thus, in addition to purify the country, in the Ode already war is between the Latin civilization against Barbary; it is the holy combat between the elected people to whom belongs the role to lead the civilization, and the disgusting animal savagery. ”Nous sommes les nobles, nous sommes les élus; / et nous écraserons la horde hideuse.”[vv 211-212]
To arouse hatred and aggression towards the Austrians, the enemy is colorfully depicted with the traditional connotations of barbarism, such as livestock, sexual orgy and alcohol abuse. To make the image even further disgusting, D’Annunzio adds a rotting carcass that the stinking two-headed vulture, parody of the two-headed eagle, symbol of Austria, vomits:
”La force barbare nous appelle / au combat sans merci. / Comme la horde traînait / dans ses chariots couverts de peaux fraîches / les concubines innombrables / pour les rassasier de carnage / et les enivrer d’hydromel, / ainsi elle [la force barbare] amène toutes les hontes / derrière ses hommes comptés en bétail à deux pieds [livestock on two feet], / pour qu’ils couchent avec toutes dans leur sang èpaise / qui est le rouge frère de la boue, / tandis que le vautour à deux têtes [vulture, eagle with two heads, symbol of Austria], / le maître puant au double cou dénudé, / pousse son cri lugubre et rejette / la charogne mal digérée.” [vv 133-
145]

About D’Annunzio’s image of the First World War itself in his poetry, Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti has characterized it as “a sacred and liturgical exaltation of sacrifice for the homeland, in which the dead are made "holy" by the fact that the war is a religious duty and the love of the fatherland has assumed the character of the new faith”. In the Ode, written before Italy’s involvement in May 23, 1915, D’Annunzio dedicates only few verses at the beginning and at the end to the war itself. Right at the beginning,
D’Annunzio depicts war as an abstract, cosmic experience, both beautiful and horrifying: “Quelle horreur et quelle mort / et quelle beautés nouvelles / sont partout éparses dans la nuit?” [vv 1-3] Yet it is a holy moment that will mark the rebirth of the Latins. The entire IX part, the last one of the poem, is dedicated to the image of war as harvest. To emphasize the resurrection of the Latin people with the war, D’Annunzio serves metaphors related to agriculture, the basic activity of humans in order to survive. The battle is juxtaposed to harvest; after the women will reap the crop; ‘bread’ and ‘hunger’, the fundamental elements, are the metonymies of the new life; and the men fiercely fighting are like ears, or coarse grain in the wind:
”Car, pour les Latins, c’est l’heure sainte / de la moisson [harvest] et du combat. O femmes, / prenez les faucilles et moissonnez! / Apprêtez le pain nouveau / à la faim nouvelle! Vos hommes / frapperont fort, serrés comme les épis, / dans la bataille, rang contre rang, / comme les blés drus sous le vent d’est.” [vv 215-222] ix i About D’Annunzio’s political career and his political style and discourse, see especially Michael A. Ledeen: The First
Duce: D'Annunzio at Fiume. Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. ii About the interventionist literature in Italy, see Mario Isnenghi: Il mito della grande guerra. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997. iii Gabriele D’Annunzio: Versi d’amore e di Gloria, vol. II. A cura di Annamaria Andreoli e Niva Lorenzini. Milano,
Mondadori 2001. iv Isnenghi 1997, pp. 106-107. v Isnenghi 1997, p. 106. vi D’Annunzio, Versi d’amore e di gloria, vol. II, pp. 761-768. vii Guy Tosi: La vie et le rôle de d’Annunzio en France au début de la grande guerre, 1914-1915. Florence 1961. viii Isnenghi 1997, p. 107. ix Some verses later, D’Annunzio calls Victory is a fierce harvester: ”O Victoire, moissonneuse farouche” [v 223].
Soldiers are seeds for the new world: ”Vous êtes la semence d’un nuoveu monde.” [v 229]