The Vittoriale degli Italiani It is a monumental palace made up of a complex of buildings and gardens that Gabriele D'Annunzio commissioned from the architect Giancarlo Maroni in 1921 , to celebrate the exploits of the so-called Vate (Prophet) and Italian forces during World War I. There he spent the last years of his life, alone, isolated, but also feared. D'Annunzio, the free. His ideas of him, always revolutionary, his aesthetics, always attractive, had decisively influenced Mussolini and his followers , but the fascist dictator had never managed to get him to form part of his government, to hold public office. D'Annunzio, the uncontrollable. At the Vittoriale he would die in 1938 and be buried along with some of his beloved legionnaires who would accompany him in the Company of Fiume , one of his many feats of a complex and polyhedral man.
he was born in 1863 in Pescara, into a wealthy family, being the third of five children. His childhood was happy, soon standing out for a lively intelligence and sensitivity. Already as an adolescent he would show signs of character that would lead him to consecrate him as one of the greatest poets of Italian literature . Thus, at age 16 he published his first book of poetry, Primo Vere , which receives rave reviews and soon becomes a bestseller, in part because D'Annunzio himself spread the news of his own death, which necessarily caught the attention of the Italian public. Thus, the young poet also revealed himself as a creator of fake news avant-la-lettre . A brilliant student, in 1881 he began his studies at the Faculty of Letters of the Roman Sapienza, although he never finished them.
A turbulent youth
The years in Rome They will be fundamental in the life of D'Annunzio, in an effervescent city that for just over a decade has become the capital of the nation unified by Garibaldi . And in the midst of all this hubbub, D'Annunzio feels like a fish in water. He leads an ostentatious life of luxury, which leads him to suffer serious economic hardships that force him to work as a journalist. He unleashes his insatiable sexual appetite , impregnating Maria Hardouin, none other than the daughter of the Duke of Gallese, which leads him to marry the future Duchess. With Maria Hardoiun he will end up having three children, but the couple is far from happy and, faced with D'Annunzio's constant infidelities, they end up amicably separating. In 1889 he publishes his first novel, Il Piacere . The style is revolutionary. The success, overwhelming. It breaks with the naturalistic and positivist style, giving birth to decadence , a new movement embodied by the main character of the novel Andrea Sperelli, whose family origins, his hedonism and aestheticism are reminiscent of that of the author himself, who becomes a star beyond Roman intellectual circles.
In 1891 he went to live in Naples, where he soon became the lover of Maria Gravina Cruyllas di Ramacca, wife of the Count of Anguissola , one of the oldest Italian families. The situation is complicated when the count surprises the couple in "flagrant crime" of adultery, for which he denounces them and they are sentenced to five months in prison , ultimately being saved by a royal pardon. Renata was born from that relationship in 1893, the Vate's favorite daughter. After the birth of his daughter, he goes to Florence. This last period will be his culmination as one of the great Italian writers in history, standing out both in his poetic production, as well as in prose and in his plays, which will lead him to meet the overwhelming actress Eleonora Duse who will become the great love of his life.
In 1897, he entered politics, changing parties numerous times and, usually, aligning itself with the most controversial decisions. But his luxurious wasteful life has caused him to contract vast debts that not even his opulent income as a successful writer are able to cover. So he makes the drastic decision to leave Italy (well, his creditors), going to live in Paris, where he is received as a great celebrity and where he can continue his life of luxury, hedonism and the acquisition of new debts , in addition to cultivating an intense friendship with outstanding French artists, such as Claude Debussy.
The militarism of D'Annunzio
In 1915, he returns to Italy and when the Alpine country enters the First World War , he volunteered for the Lancieri di Novara Regiment. In August of that year, he obtained the observer pilot license. and he begins flying combat missions. His experiences in combat will be reflected in his novel Notturno , published in 1921, thanks above all to the help of his devoted daughter Renata, who would not be separated from him for a minute, especially when in 1916, the Vate suffered a war wound that caused him to lose sight in one eye, although this does not stop him from flying in the most dangerous missions, against the advice of his doctors and common sense. In March 1918, he was given the rank of commander and command of the San Marco air squad and, in August of that same year, the 87th Squadron, known as Serenissima. It was with this unit that he made the daring flight over the city of Vienna on which he dropped hundreds of propaganda leaflets . At the end of the war, D'Annunzio received the highest decorations for valor in the Italian Army, such as the Military Order of Savoy or the Cross for Military Valor in the Gold category, in addition to the French Legion of Honor and War Cross or the British Military Cross.
In 1919 what is probably the moment of his political career:the Company of Fiume . Today it may seem incredible madness to us, but anything could happen in that Europe between the wars. It all started at the beginning of the First World War, when the western powers (Great Britain and France) had promised Italy to keep part of the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire if she joined their alliance in the war. The Italians acceded to the pretensions of their new allies and attacked the decaying empire of central Europe. After the war, Italy received its reward, although among the new territories incorporated into the Italian Crown was not the long-awaited city of Fiume (today, Rijeka, in Croatia), where the majority of the population was of Italian origin.
D'Annunzio, outraged because he felt that the Italian victory had been mutilated, recruited a few hundred unrepentant soldiers, each one more patriotic, and headed towards Fiume , where he made a grand entrance on September 12, 1919, with his mythical Fiat T4 that is still preserved in Il Vittoriale . A kind of proto-fascist experiment, known as the Regency of Carnaro took place there. , leading to the creation of a truly revolutionary constitution for the time and that, in some points, was closer to the Soviet Union than it would be to the fascist state.
That constitution gave a wide range of freedoms:press, religion, divorce... And it was a magnet for hundreds of Europeans who wanted freedom. Mussolini also visited him , which at that time had hardly any followers and was steeped in the attractive aesthetic that D'Annunzio had implanted in his small kingdom: black shirts, Roman salutes and the foundations of an ideology that would later exploit in Italy to turn it into one of the totalitarian powers. But the Free State of Fiume inconvenienced powerful enemies:both Yugoslavia and Italy itself. D'Annunzio was a bad example and so was his little kingdom. So, fifteen months after its creation, the Italian army sent a contingent of troops who, after an intense bombardment, convinced Vate and his followers to end their stimulating experiment.
The last years of Vate
That spelled the beginning of the end for D'Annunzio, at least as a public figure. Humiliated, he was forced to return to Italy . It didn't take long for him to commission Maroni to build Il Vittoriale . The Vate is discovered almost sixty, bald, one eye, short stature, decadent. That tireless hedonist, womanizer and charismatic leader was rapidly becoming an old man, eaten away by his many addictions, especially to cocaine. And speaking of marches, D'Annunzio showed a certain indifference to the one carried out by Mussolini in October 1922 and that would elevate him to power.
The Vate and the Duce will not have an easy relationship . In the same year, the Vate suffers a mysterious accident, falling out of a window. Incident from which he is badly injured and from which what happened is never clarified, although there are well-founded suspicions that it was an attempt by Mussolini to silence the indomitable writer, who refused to be part of the Duce's guidelines. D'Annunzio ended up locking himself in the lavish mausoleum built to his greatest glory where he will unleash his lust, cocaine use and, every morning, megalomaniacal speeches before the inhabitants of his palace, many of them servants, all of them enthusiastic supporters of the Vate, generously financed by the Italian government. In 1924, King Victor Emmanuel III granted him the title of Prince of Montenevoso and in 1927 he was appointed president of the Royal Academy of Italy . The following year, he died of a heart attack, receiving a state funeral presided over by the Duce himself.
Enter his poetic work , apart from the aforementioned Alcyone , it is also worth mentioning his trilogy the laudi :Lauds of the sky, the sea, the earth and the heroes . As for the works in prose, apart from The pleasure and Notturno , we cannot fail to quote The innocent , The triumph of death or The virgins of the rocks (1895). No less important is his theatrical production of him , among which we will highlight The martyrdom of Saint Sebastian , Francesca da Rimini or The dead city which is probably the most important of all. An extraordinary literary work which has been clouded by the scandalous life of its author, always involved in controversy, a slave to his addictions and the spiritual father of a political movement that would envelop the world in one of his darkest clouds.> .