Gabriele d’Annunzio
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
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Gabriele d’Annunzio
Torygraph: Gabriele d’Annunzio
This man was a sadomasochist, drug addict, fearless pilot – and politician. Only in Italy…
Have you ever heard of Gabriele d’Annunzio, the Italian poet and politician? If not, it might be time to remedy this situation. First, because he’s the subject of a brilliant book by Lucy Hughes Hallett, which last night won the Costa award as best biography; and, secondly, because d’Annunzio tells us something interesting about British politics. But let’s begin with d’Annunzio’s incredible life (to my mind, perhaps the single most extraordinary life in human history).
Born into minor gentry in central Italy, he achieved great fame, as a poet, at an early age. And he started as he meant to go on. D’Annunzio sired many children and talked to almost none of them, he earned millions but he was often so poor he couldn’t afford postage stamps, he wore a “pint of Coty’s eau de cologne every day”, bought “prodigious amounts of cravats”, kept dozens of purebred greyhounds which he dressed in haute couture outfits made by Worth, and he became so ugly he was called a “tragic gargoyle” with multi-coloured teeth.
Despite this he also bedded thousands of women; he was a sadomasochist who liked his bedmates to bite him; he kept his houses stupendously warm so his lovers could lie naked on the floor; he had a famous affair with the actress Eleonora Duse (the "most beautiful woman of her time"), who admitted she was helplessly addicted to his legendary lovemaking skills.
Wherever he was, his housekeeper was expected to sleep with him three times a day. He was also one of Europe's first cocaine users. He once claimed to have eaten the flesh of babies. He nearly decapitated a dining companion. He was a ferocious warrior, and one of Italy's greatest pilots – he was blinded in one eye as he tried to bomb Austro-Hungary (this is in 1917). He probably tried incest. He loved trench warfare. And he supposedly had several ribs removed so… but perhaps you already know that story.
In the midst of this, he tried to enter politics, got rejected, so began to flirt with Fascism while Mussolini was still a socialist. In 1918 he became the leader of his very own anarchic-Futurist city state, Fiume (now in Croatia). In Fiume the world famous writer d'Annunzio and his thousands of loyal soldiers ruled a world where free love reigned, where couples fornicated in cemeteries, where hard drugs were openly enjoyed, where soldiers were encouraged to have gay affairs: by the early 1920s, when the official Italian army retook Fiume, it seemed, for a moment, like d'Annunzio would become Italy's first dictator.
However, his friend Benito Mussolini seized the opportunity, ahead of d’Annunzio – mainly by copying d’Annunzio’s political style, and his Fascist demagoguery – and the poet-rapist-politician instead retired to his remarkable house by Lake Garda, where he bedded his first outright lesbian at the age of 63 (then had her thrown out so he could breakfast on tiny marmalade cakes and champagne), where he enjoyed drugged-up orgies until his 70s, where he installed half a naval battleship in the garden (it was a present from Mussolini) and where his beloved pet turtle died of a "surfeit of tuberoses". You can still see the half-a-battleship today, as I realised when I visited the poet’s lakeside house this summer. And you can see the turtle: d'Annunzio had it cast in bronze and put in his dining room – as a warning to guests not to overeat.
So there you are. It is a wildly compelling life story, all the more remarkable for being the life story of a politician. And this is where it teaches us a lesson. British “political characters” are, without exception, immensely dull and boring in comparison to d’Annunzio. Has Austin Mitchell ever ruled his own quasi-Fascist statelet where people copulate in graveyards? Has Boris Johnson ever bombed Trieste in a biplane while singing his own war cry? Does Dennis Skinner have an enormous collection of cravats? Clearly not......
This man was a sadomasochist, drug addict, fearless pilot – and politician. Only in Italy…
Have you ever heard of Gabriele d’Annunzio, the Italian poet and politician? If not, it might be time to remedy this situation. First, because he’s the subject of a brilliant book by Lucy Hughes Hallett, which last night won the Costa award as best biography; and, secondly, because d’Annunzio tells us something interesting about British politics. But let’s begin with d’Annunzio’s incredible life (to my mind, perhaps the single most extraordinary life in human history).
Born into minor gentry in central Italy, he achieved great fame, as a poet, at an early age. And he started as he meant to go on. D’Annunzio sired many children and talked to almost none of them, he earned millions but he was often so poor he couldn’t afford postage stamps, he wore a “pint of Coty’s eau de cologne every day”, bought “prodigious amounts of cravats”, kept dozens of purebred greyhounds which he dressed in haute couture outfits made by Worth, and he became so ugly he was called a “tragic gargoyle” with multi-coloured teeth.
Despite this he also bedded thousands of women; he was a sadomasochist who liked his bedmates to bite him; he kept his houses stupendously warm so his lovers could lie naked on the floor; he had a famous affair with the actress Eleonora Duse (the "most beautiful woman of her time"), who admitted she was helplessly addicted to his legendary lovemaking skills.
Wherever he was, his housekeeper was expected to sleep with him three times a day. He was also one of Europe's first cocaine users. He once claimed to have eaten the flesh of babies. He nearly decapitated a dining companion. He was a ferocious warrior, and one of Italy's greatest pilots – he was blinded in one eye as he tried to bomb Austro-Hungary (this is in 1917). He probably tried incest. He loved trench warfare. And he supposedly had several ribs removed so… but perhaps you already know that story.
In the midst of this, he tried to enter politics, got rejected, so began to flirt with Fascism while Mussolini was still a socialist. In 1918 he became the leader of his very own anarchic-Futurist city state, Fiume (now in Croatia). In Fiume the world famous writer d'Annunzio and his thousands of loyal soldiers ruled a world where free love reigned, where couples fornicated in cemeteries, where hard drugs were openly enjoyed, where soldiers were encouraged to have gay affairs: by the early 1920s, when the official Italian army retook Fiume, it seemed, for a moment, like d'Annunzio would become Italy's first dictator.
However, his friend Benito Mussolini seized the opportunity, ahead of d’Annunzio – mainly by copying d’Annunzio’s political style, and his Fascist demagoguery – and the poet-rapist-politician instead retired to his remarkable house by Lake Garda, where he bedded his first outright lesbian at the age of 63 (then had her thrown out so he could breakfast on tiny marmalade cakes and champagne), where he enjoyed drugged-up orgies until his 70s, where he installed half a naval battleship in the garden (it was a present from Mussolini) and where his beloved pet turtle died of a "surfeit of tuberoses". You can still see the half-a-battleship today, as I realised when I visited the poet’s lakeside house this summer. And you can see the turtle: d'Annunzio had it cast in bronze and put in his dining room – as a warning to guests not to overeat.
So there you are. It is a wildly compelling life story, all the more remarkable for being the life story of a politician. And this is where it teaches us a lesson. British “political characters” are, without exception, immensely dull and boring in comparison to d’Annunzio. Has Austin Mitchell ever ruled his own quasi-Fascist statelet where people copulate in graveyards? Has Boris Johnson ever bombed Trieste in a biplane while singing his own war cry? Does Dennis Skinner have an enormous collection of cravats? Clearly not......
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ORAC, you seem to have missed off the last sentence from the article...so here it is...
And, given what d’Annunzio’s charismatic Fascism did to Italy, and then the world, perhaps it is for the best that we are governed by bores.
And, given what d’Annunzio’s charismatic Fascism did to Italy, and then the world, perhaps it is for the best that we are governed by bores.
ORAC,
Good write up but....
For those of us who have lived sheltered lives - please fill us in?
Good write up but....
And he supposedly had several ribs removed so… but perhaps you already know that story.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Thread Starter
For those of us who have lived sheltered lives - please fill us in?
