Archivio d’Annunzio | 2014 | N. 1

Gabriele d’Annunzio’s relationship with music may be considered under two points of view: firstly, his musical tastes, that is his Wagnerism and, later, his anti-Wagnerism and his envisioning of a ‘Latin musical drama’; secondly, the use of his poems in chamber vocal music and particularly in romanzas. An overall analysis of d’Annunzio’s texts for music shows how, depending on the composer with whom he cooperated, his texts are alternatively conservative, up-to-date or avant-gardist. A full transcription of d’Annunzio’s autograph version of his libretto for Alberto Franchetti’s La figlia di Iorio (The daughter of Iorio), containing the outline of the first act and a draft of the first and the third act, offers a glimpse on the stages of elaboration of his tragedy.

During d’Annunzio’s lifetime, a controversy arose concerning his alleged drawing from other literary sources – sources which he transformed in his writings through his own lyricism. Following the publication of d’Annunzio’s novel L’innocente (The intruder), Enrico Thovez instigated the so-called affaire des plagiats, in response to which critics such as Benedetto Croce took d’Annunzio’s part. By borrowing from French Symbolists and Russian writers, d’Annunzio wished to abandon 19th century realism so as to reflect fin de siècle irrationalism and spiritualism, but he proved unsuccessful in setting up an innovative narrative system. Apparently being more a poet than a novelist, d’Annunzio let the functions of poetry dictate narrative strategy; thus, another literary genre, the roman-poème, was founded.

Within the constant linguistic research performed by Gabriele d’Annunzio, the chromatic lexicon plays a fundamental role. In his prose work, d’Annunzio developed a lexicon which aimed at attaining the maximum precision and at the same time remained constantly refined and solemn. In this regard, chromaticism is considered the stylistic device to meet these requirements. D’Annunzio made use of all the lexical strategies offered to him by the Italian language, proposing a particularly large body, rich in derivatives, compounds and, especially, referential terms. He selected the words less frequently used, made up new etymologies and sought out constantly new meanings. Furthermore, the semantic field of colour allows to thoroughly investigate d’Annunzio’s role in the literary language of the 20th century and, consequently, to realize how deeply indebted the Italian advertising system of the early 20th century was to him.

Usually known as d’Annunzio’s Venetian novel, Il fuoco (The flame of life) is a complex work in which the Italian city is more a symbolic item than a geographical setting. At the beginning, Venice has an artistic function and is seen as the cradle of Art, but then she disappears from the plot as soon as the main character (Stelio Effrena) becomes aware that he can create Art by himself. On the other hand, in the novel, Venice is the icon of music and music represents her artistic value, but the second part of the novel («The Empire of silence») can be interpreted as an overtake of Venice musical function. D’Annunzio had worked at Il fuoco for more than ten years, and at the end of 19th century his poetry was changing and moving to the Laudi. The new lyrical turn changed the symbolic meaning of the novel.

In his tragedy Francesca da Rimini (1901) d’Annunzio refracts the famous figure of Dante’s lustful damned in the prism of his own artistic sensibility giving her characteristics that are tightly connected with his intimate vein. Through a close comparison between the tragedy text and the other works of d’Annunzio (particularly the novel Il fuoco [The flame of life], 1900) two Francesca’s hidden faces emerge: the one brings her near to the mythological figure of Persephone and the other makes her similar to the Foscarina, the female protagonist of Il fuoco. Moreover, a methodical comparison among d’Annunzio’s texts discloses how much the red rose that Francesca hands to Paolo during the first act is part of her, containing the lust and the blood, the love and the death that mark her destiny.

The retrieval of a letter written by Gabriellino d’Annunzio to Marino Moretti takes the reader behind the stage of the Manzoni Theatre in Milan on 27 March 1905. It was the first staging of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s play La fiaccola sotto il moggio (The light under the bushel), and Gabriellino played Simonetto, the female lead’s brother. His interpretation received mixed reviews, mainly due to the hysterical tone he gave to the character. Numerous sources refer to that première: not only Moretti’s writings but also various contemporary chronicles, as well as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’a volume Les dieux s’en vont, D’Annunzio reste, in which the author describes and comments the staging. The various sources testify to Gabriele d’Annunzio’s disillusionment towards his own directorial experiment.

Adolfo Re Riccardi was a theatrical producer who was active in the first two decades of the 20th century and staged some of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s dramas. D’Annunzio’s correspondence to Re Riccardi comprises 77 pieces: letters, telegrams, personal notes, a receipted bill, a visiting card, a draft contract, written mostly between 1906 and 1914. Read in its entirety, the body of these documents gives an insight on the writing process and the performances of works such as Più che l’Amore, Il Ferro and the unfinished Amaranta, of which Re Riccardi held the rights. Besides, the letters show to what extent the theatre of d’Annunzio was known in the U.S.A. and lastly they offer the chance to analyse the language that d’Annunzio used in his private letters of professional topic.

Abruzzo, d’Annunzio’s native region, represents a constant element in the production of the Italian writer. A series of textual patterns reveals how much Abruzzo was present in d’Annunzio’s existence and creativity. In Maia, the first book of the poems Laudi, the poet retrieves his native familial reality; in Comento meditato a un discorso improvviso («A considered commentary on a sudden speech») the regional identity (the abruzzesità) is contextualized in important details; in Libro segreto the native region is not just a landscape described with an impressionistic touch, but the centre of the author’s emotions.

At the Vittoriale degli Italiani, in the so-called «Leda’s room», Gabriele d’Annunzio’s own bedroom, there are two works by painter Astolfo de Maria, the Dogaressa (i.e. the «wife of the doge») and an Erotic allegory. D’Annunzio always refused to part with the former; and he was personally involved in the peculiar framing of the second, a real tableau de chevet since it was placed at the head of his bed. Several theories have been put forward as regards the possible sources for the subjects of the two apparently unrelated paintings, but d’Annunzio’s play Sogno d’un tramonto d’autunno («An autumn sunset dream») is the only one source that can be identified for both. The close connection between the literary work and the two paintings, and the meaning these must have had for d’Annunzio explain the role these pictures had as objects d’affection and the peculiar place they held in the poet’s bedroom since the first arrangement of the rooms of the Vittoriale.

Angelo Conti acted as a link between German and Italian cultures. His knowledge of the German language and thus his capability of reading original works remain however dubious, and he might have taken advantage of available translations in other languages. In his Giorgione, Conti refers to Julius Langbehn’s Rembrandt als Erziher, a work published in 1890 and not translated in Italian or French. Conti and Langbehn share similar views in fact of art, science and modern times, namely fostering the freedom of the spirit over industrialization.

Through the analysis of the text variants of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s Il fanciullino (such as the provisional titles of the seven ballads) and the study of the literary sources, the manuscript accounts for a series of intertextual references, namely the influence of Angelo Conti’s Betata riva as well as some analogies with a sonnet of Foscolo and Dante’s Commedia, in the loci where they write about Florence, and last but not least the contact with Pascoli’s Pensieri sull’arte poetica