Gabriele D ' Annunzio Gabriele D ' Annunzio ( ; 12 March 1863 – 1 March 1938 ) , Prince of Montenevoso , sometimes spelled d ' Annunzio was an Italian writer , poet , journalist , playwright and soldier during World War I . He occupied a prominent place in Italian literature from 1889 to 1910 and after that political life from 1914 to 1924 . He was nicknamed " Il Vate " ( The Poet ) and " Il Profeta " ( The Prophet ) . D ' Annunzio was associated with the Decadent movement in his literary works , which interplayed closely with French Symbolism and British Aestheticism . Such works represented a turn against the naturalism of the preceding romantics and was both sensuous and mystical . He came under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche which would find outlets in his literary and later political contributions . His affairs with several women , including Eleonora Duse and Luisa Casati , received public attention . During the First World War , perception of D ' Annunzio in Italy would be transformed from literary figure into a national war hero . He was associated with the elite " Arditi " storm troops of the Italian Army and took part in actions such as the Flight over Vienna . As part of an Italian nationalist reaction against the Paris Peace Conference , he set up the short - lived Italian Regency of Carnaro in Fiume with himself as " Duce " . The constitution made " music " the fundamental principle of the state and was corporatist in nature . Some of the ideas and aesthetics influenced Italian fascism and the style of Benito Mussolini . Early life . He was born in Pescara , Abruzzo , the son of a wealthy landowner and mayor of the town Francesco Paolo Rapagnetta d ' Annunzio ( 1831 - 1893 ) . His father had originally been born plain Rapagnetta ( the name of his single mother ) , but at the age of 13 had been adopted by a childless rich uncle Antonio d ' Annunzio . Legend has it that he was initially baptized Gaetano and given the name of Gabriele later in childhood , because of his angelic looks . However there is wide documentation to disprove this story . His precocious talent was recognised early in life , and he was sent to school at the Liceo Cicognini in Prato , Tuscany . He published his first poetry while still at school at the age of sixteen with a small volume of verses called " Primo Vere " ( 1879 ) , influenced by Giosuè Carducci ' s " Odi barbare " , in which , side by side with some almost brutal imitations of Lorenzo Stecchetti , the fashionable poet of " Postuma " , were some translations from the Latin , distinguished by such agile grace that Giuseppe Chiarini on reading them brought the unknown youth before the public in an enthusiastic article . In 1881 D ' Annunzio entered the University of Rome La Sapienza , where he became a member of various literary groups , including " Cronaca Bizantina " and wrote articles and criticism for local newspapers . In those university years he started to promote Italian irredentism . Literary work . Here he published " Canto novo " ( 1882 ) , " Terra vergine " ( 1882 ) , " L ' intermezzo di rime " ( 1883 ) , " Il libro delle vergini " ( 1884 ) and the greater part of the short stories that were afterwards collected under the general title of " San Pantaleone " ( 1886 ) . " Canto novo " contains poems full of pulsating youth and the promise of power , some descriptive of the sea and some of the Abruzzese landscape , commented on and completed in prose by " Terra vergine " , the latter a collection of short stories dealing in radiant language with the peasant life of the author ' s native province . " Intermezzo di rime " is the beginning of D ' Annunzio ' s second and characteristic manner . His conception of style was new , and he chose to express all the most subtle vibrations of voluptuous life . Both style and contents began to startle his critics ; some who had greeted him as an " enfant prodige " rejected him as a perverter of public morals , whilst others hailed him as one bringing a breath of fresh air and an impulse of a new vitality into the somewhat prim , lifeless work hitherto produced . Meanwhile the review of Angelo Sommaruga perished in the midst of scandal , and his group of young authors found itself dispersed . Some entered the teaching career and were lost to literature , others threw themselves into journalism . Gabriele D ' Annunzio took this latter course , and joined the staff of the " Tribuna " . For this paper , under the pseudonym of " Duca Minimo " , he did some of his most brilliant work , and the articles he wrote during that period of originality and exuberance would well repay being collected . To this period of greater maturity and deeper culture belongs " Il libro d ' Isotta " ( 1886 ) , a love poem , in which for the first time he drew inspiration adapted to modern sentiments and passions from the rich colours of the Renaissance . " Il libro d ' Isotta " is interesting also , because in it we find most of the germs of his future work , just as in " Intermezzo melico " and in certain ballads and sonnets we find descriptions and emotions which later went to form the aesthetic contents of " Il piacere " , " Il trionfo della morte " and " Elegie romane " ( 1892 ) . D ' Annunzio ' s first novel " Il piacere " ( 1889 , translated into English as " The Child of Pleasure " ) was followed in 1891 by " Giovanni Episcopo " , and in 1892 by " L ' innocente " ( " The Intruder " ) . These three novels made a profound impression . " L ' innocente " , admirably translated into French by Georges Herelle , brought its author the notice and applause of foreign critics . His next work , " Il trionfo della morte " ( " The Triumph of Death " ) ( 1894 ) , was followed soon by " Le vergini delle rocce " ( 1896 ) and " Il fuoco " ( 1900 ) ; the latter is in its descriptions of Venice perhaps the most ardent glorification of a city existing in any language . D ' Annunzio ' s poetic work of this period , in most respects his finest , is represented by " Il Poema Paradisiaco " ( 1893 ) , the " Odi navali " ( 1893 ) , a superb attempt at civic poetry , and " Laudi " ( 1900 ) . A later phase of D ' Annunzio ' s work is his dramatic production , represented by " Il sogno di un mattino di primavera " ( 1897 ) , a lyrical fantasia in one act ; his " Città Morta " ( 1898 ) , written for Sarah Bernhardt . In 1898 he wrote his " Sogno di un pomeriggio d ' autunno " and " La Gioconda " ; in the succeeding year " La gloria " , an attempt at contemporary political tragedy which met with no success , probably because of the audacity of the personal and political allusions in some of its scenes ; and then " Francesca da Rimini " ( 1901 ) , a perfect reconstruction of medieval atmosphere and emotion , magnificent in style , and declared by an authoritative Italian critic — Edoardo Boutet — to be the first real , if imperfect , tragedy ever given to the Italian theatre . In 1883 D ' Annunzio married Maria Hardouin di Gallese , and had three sons , but the marriage ended in 1891 . In 1894 he began a love affair with the famous actress Eleonora Duse which became a cause célèbre . He provided leading roles for her in his plays of the time such as " La città morta " ( " The Dead City " ) ( 1898 ) and " Francesca da Rimini " ( 1901 ) , but the tempestuous relationship finally ended in 1910 . After meeting the Marchesa ( Luisa ) Casati in 1903 , he began a lifelong turbulent on again off again affair with Luisa , that lasted until a few years before his death . In 1897 D ' Annunzio was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for a three - year term , where he sat as an independent . By 1910 his daredevil lifestyle had forced him into debt , and he fled to France to escape his creditors . There he collaborated with composer Claude Debussy on a musical play " Le martyre de Saint Sébastien " ( " The Martyrdom of St Sebastian " ) , 1911 , written for Ida Rubinstein . The Vatican reacted by placing all of his works in the Index of Forbidden Books . The work was not successful as a play , but it has been recorded in adapted versions several times , notably by Pierre Monteux ( in French ) , Leonard Bernstein ( sung in French , acted in English ) , and Michael Tilson Thomas ( in French ) . In 1912 and 1913 , D ' Annunzio worked with opera composer Mascagni on his opera " Parisina " , staying sometimes in a house rented by the composer in Bellevue , near Paris . Flight over Vienna . After the start of World War I , D ' Annunzio returned to Italy and made public speeches in favor of Italy ' s entry on the side of the Triple Entente . Since taking a flight with Wilbur Wright in 1908 , D ' Annunzio had been interested in aviation . With the war beginning he volunteered and achieved further celebrity as a fighter pilot , losing the sight of an eye in a flying accident . In February 1918 he took part in a daring , if militarily irrelevant , raid on the harbour of Bakar ( known in Italy as " La beffa di Buccari " , lit . " the Bakar Mockery " ) , helping to raise the spirits of the Italian public , still battered by the Caporetto disaster . On 9 August 1918 , as commander of the 87th fighter squadron " La Serenissima " , he organized one of the great feats of the war , leading 9 planes in a 700 - mile round trip to drop propaganda leaflets on Vienna . This is called in Italian " il Volo su Vienna " , " the Flight over Vienna " . Fiume . The War strengthened his ultra - nationalist and irredentist views , and he campaigned widely for Italy to assume a role alongside her wartime Allies as a first - rate European power . Angered by the proposed handing over of the city of Fiume ( now Rijeka in Croatia ) which had an Italian majority population , at the Paris Peace Conference , on 12 September 1919 , he led the seizure by 2 , 000 Italian nationalist irregulars of the city , forcing the withdrawal of the inter - Allied ( American , British and French ) occupying forces . The plotters sought to have Italy annex Fiume , but were denied . Instead , Italy initiated a blockade of Fiume while demanding that the plotters surrender . D ' Annunzio then declared Fiume an independent state , the Italian Regency of Carnaro ; the Charter of Carnaro foreshadowed much of the later Italian Fascist system , with himself as " Duce " ( leader ) . Some elements of the Royal Italian Navy , such as the destroyer " Espero " joined up with D ' Annunzio ' s local forces . He attempted to organize an alternative to the League of Nations for ( selected ) oppressed nations of the world ( such as the Italians of Fiume ) , and sought to make alliances with various separatist groups throughout the Balkans ( especially groups of Italians , though also some Slavic groups ) , although without much success . D ' Annunzio ignored the Treaty of Rapallo and declared war on Italy itself , only finally surrendering the city in December 1920 after a bombardment by the Italian navy . Later life . After the Fiume episode , D ' Annunzio retired to his home on Lake Garda and spent his latter years writing and campaigning . Although D ' Annunzio had a strong influence on the ideology of Benito Mussolini , he never became directly involved in fascist government politics in Italy , being temporarily crippled and shocked after an attempted murder in 1922 . Shortly before the march on Rome , he was pushed out of a window by an unknown assailant , surviving but badly injured , and did not completely recover before Mussolini had been appointed Prime Minister and hailed by the fascists as " duce del fascismo " . In 1924 he was ennobled by King Victor Emmanuel III and given the hereditary title of Principe di Montenevoso . In 1937 he was made president of the Royal Academy of Italy . D ' Annunzio died in 1938 of a stroke , at his home in Gardone Riviera . He was given a state funeral by Mussolini and was interred in a magnificent tomb constructed of white marble at Il Vittoriale degli Italiani . He was an atheist . Politics . D ' Annunzio is often seen as a precursor of the ideals and techniques of Italian fascism . His own explicit political ideals emerged in Fiume when he coauthored a constitution with syndicalist Alceste de Ambris , the Charter of Carnaro . De Ambris provided the legal and political framework , to which D ' Annunzio added his skills as a poet . De Ambris was the leader of a group of Italian seamen who had mutinied and then given their vessel to the service of D ' Annunzio . The constitution established a corporatist state , with nine corporations to represent the different sectors of the economy ( workers , employers , professionals ) , and a tenth ( D ' Annunzio ' s invention ) to represent the " superior " human beings ( heroes , poets , prophets , supermen ) . The " Carta " also declared that music was the fundamental principle of the state . It was rather the culture of dictatorship that Benito Mussolini imitated and learned from D ' Annunzio . D ' Annunzio has been described as the John the Baptist of Italian Fascism , as virtually the entire ritual of Fascism was invented by D ' Annunzio during his occupation of Fiume and his leadership of the Italian Regency of Carnaro . These included the balcony address , the Roman salute , the cries of " " Eia , eia , eia ! Alala ! " " , the dramatic and rhetorical dialogue with the crowd , the use of religious symbols in new secular settings . It also included his method of government in Fiume , the economics of the corporate state ; stage tricks ; large emotive nationalistic public rituals ; blackshirted followers , the Arditi , with their disciplined , bestial responses and strongarm repression of dissent . He was even said to have originated the practice of forcibly dosing opponents with large amounts of castor oil , a very effective laxative , to humiliate , disable or kill them , a practice which became a common tool of Mussolini ' s blackshirts . D ' Annunzio advocated an expansionist Italian foreign policy and applauded the invasion of Ethiopia . Rivalry with Mussolini . As John Whittam notes in his essay " Mussolini and The Cult of the Leader " : This famous poet , novelist and war hero was a self - proclaimed Superman . He was the outstanding interventionist in May 1915 and his dramatic exploits during the war won him national and international acclaim . In September 1919 he gathered together his ' legions ' and captured the disputed seaport of Fiume . He held it for over a year and it was he who popularised the black shirts , the balcony speeches , the promulgation of ambitious charters and the entire choreography of street parades and ceremonies . He even planned a march on Rome . One historian had rightly described him as the ' First Duce ' and Mussolini must have heaved a sigh of relief when he was driven from Fiume in December 1920 and his followers were dispersed . But he remained a threat to Mussolini and in 1921 Fascists like Balbo seriously considered turning to him for leadership . In contrast Mussolini vacillated from left to right at this time . Although Mussolini ' s fascism was heavily influenced by the Carta del Carnaro , the constitution for Fiume written by Alceste De Ambris and D ' Annunzio , neither wanted to play an active part in the new movement , both refusing when asked by Fascist supporters to run in the elections of May 15 , 1921 . Before the March on Rome , De Ambris even went so far as to depict the Fascist movement as : " " a filthy pawn in Mister Giolitti ' s game of chess , and made out of the least dignified section of the bourgeoisie " " D ' Annunzio was seriously injured when he fell out of a window on 13 August 1922 ; subsequently the planned " meeting for national pacification " with Francesco Saverio Nitti and Mussolini was cancelled . The incident was never explained and is considered by some historians an attempt to murder him , motivated by his popularity . Despite D ' Annunzio ' s retreat from active public life after this event , the Duce still found it necessary to regularly dole out funds to D ' Annunzio as a bribe for not re - entering the political arena . When asked about this by a close friend , Mussolini purportedly stated : " When you have a rotten tooth you have two possibilities open to you : either you pull the tooth or you fill it with gold . With D ' Annunzio I have chosen for the latter treatment . " Nonetheless , D ' Annunzio kept attempting to intervene in politics almost until his death in 1938 . He wrote to Mussolini in 1933 to try to convince him not to take part in the Axis pact with Hitler . In 1934 , he tried to disrupt the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini after their meeting , even writing a satirical pamphlet about Hitler . Again , in September 1937 , D ' Annunzio met with the Duce at the Verona train station to convince him to leave the Axis alliance . Mussolini in 1944 admitted to have made a mistake not following his advice . Literature . At the height of his success , D ' Annunzio was celebrated for the originality , power and decadence of his writing . Although his work had immense impact across Europe , and influenced generations of Italian writers , his " fin de siècle " works are now little known , and his literary reputation has always been clouded by his fascist associations . Indeed , even before his fascist period , he had his strong detractors . A " New York Times " review in 1898 of his novel " The Intruder " referred to him as " evil " , " entirely selfish and corrupt " . Three weeks into its December 1901 run at the Teatro Constanzi in Rome , his tragedy " Francesca da Rimini " was banned by the censor on grounds of morality . A prolific writer , his novels in Italian include " Il piacere " ( " The Child of Pleasure " , 1889 ) , " Il trionfo della morte " ( " The Triumph of Death " , 1894 ) , and " Le vergini delle rocce " ( " The Virgins of the Rocks " , 1896 ) . He wrote the screenplay to the feature film " Cabiria " ( 1914 ) based on episodes from the Second Punic War . D ' Annunzio ' s literary creations were strongly influenced by the French Symbolist school , and contain episodes of striking violence and depictions of abnormal mental states interspersed with gorgeously imagined scenes . One of D ' Annunzio ' s most significant novels , scandalous in its day , is " Il fuoco " ( " The Flame of Life " ) of 1900 , in which he portrays himself as the Nietzsche an " Superman " Stelio Effrena , in a fictionalized account of his love affair with Eleonora Duse . His short stories showed the influence of Guy de Maupassant . He was also associated with the bizarre Italian noblewoman Luisa Casati , an influence on his novels and one of his mistresses . The 1911 " Encyclopædia Britannica " wrote of him : The work of d ' Annunzio , although by many of the younger generation injudiciously and extravagantly admired , is almost the most important literary work given to Italy since the days when the great classics welded her varying dialects into a fixed language . The psychological inspiration of his novels has come to him from many sources — French , Russian , Scandinavian , German — and in much of his earlier work there is little fundamental originality . His creative power is intense and searching , but narrow and personal ; his heroes and heroines are little more than one same type monotonously facing a different problem at a different phase of life . But the faultlessness of his style and the wealth of his language have been approached by none of his contemporaries , whom his genius has somewhat paralysed . In his later work [ meaning as of 1911 ] , when he begins drawing his inspiration from the traditions of bygone Italy in her glorious centuries , a current of real life seems to run through the veins of his personages . And the lasting merit of D ' Annunzio , his real value to the literature of his country , consists precisely in that he opened up the closed mine of its former life as a source of inspiration for the present and of hope for the future , and created a language , neither pompous nor vulgar , drawn from every source and district suited to the requirements of modern thought , yet absolutely classical , borrowed from none , and , independently of the thought it may be used to express , a thing of intrinsic beauty . As his sight became clearer and his purpose strengthened , as exaggerations , affectations , and moods dropped away from his conceptions , his work became more and more typical Latin work , upheld by the ideal of an Italian Renaissance . In Italy some of his poetic works remain popular , most notably his poem " La pioggia nel pineto " ( " The Rain in the Pinewood " ) , which exemplifies his linguistic virtuosity as well as the sensuousness of his poetry . Museums . D ' Annunzio ' s life and work are commemorated in a museum , " Il Vittoriale degli Italiani " . He planned and developed it himself , adjacent to his villa at Gardone Riviera on the southwest bank of Lake Garda , between 1923 and his death . Now a national monument , it is a complex of military museum , library , literary and historical archive , theatre , war memorial and mausoleum . The museum preserves his torpedo boat " MAS 96 " and the SVA - 5 aircraft he flew over Vienna . His birthplace is also open to the public as a museum , the " Casa Natale di Gabriele D ' Annunzio " in Pescara Works . Autobiographical works . His epistolatory work , " Solus ad solam " , was published posthumously .