Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938). One of the most famous Italian poets of all time, known as the one and only Il Vate (The Poet), a great national war hero, a breakneck adventurer, a genius and a harbinger of the future (Il Profeta), and above all a defender of Italian greatness. D’Annunzio has thus entered the annals of Italian history, little changed in the period between his lifetime and the present day. But such a description of this man, who is certainly of great interest to history books, is deliberately incomplete. He can also be described as the spiritual father of fascism, a warmonger, a sex addict, a self-proclaimed superman and a failed revolutionary.
It sounds almost impossible, but D’Annunzio really was all of these things. As he said himself, every day of his incredible life proved that “the world must be convinced that I am capable of anything”. In our region, his name is most closely associated with the occupation of Rijeka after the First World War, when he and a handful of Goretti invaded the town in September 1919 to annex it to Italy. For fifteen months, Rijeka was under his rule, and he made it a true social and political laboratory.
The international community, which at the time was very much preoccupied with post-war arrangements, including Italian demands under the 1915 London Agreement, was incredulous at the unusual feat. It left it to Italy to resolve the situation. Italy was at first tacitly supportive of D’Annunzio and his territorial demands, but the poet’s eccentricities soon resembled one of his literary works rather than a serious political project.
But it would be naive to delude ourselves that the occupation of Rijeka was just another in a long line of adventures for a man who, thanks to his hypnotic personal charisma, had a legion of followers virtually at every turn from the moment he was born. D’Annunzio was the harbinger of the coming era of fascism and totalitarianism in the 20th century, and of a new generation of political leaders – performers, demagogues and, last but not least, dictators.
He was the inventor of the fascist cult of personality and fascist choreography, including the ‘Roman’ salute with an outstretched right hand, symbols and battle cries. His battle cry, borrowed from Greek mythology, Eja! Eja! Eja! Alala!! was adopted by the Italian Air Force during the war, then carried daily around the Rijeka until the Fascists adopted it as their own.
He was one of the first to use the emerging mass media to his advantage. First he used it as a springboard for his literary career, then to spread his reputation as a brave soldier and aviator, and finally as a bullhorn for his patriotic fervour and unfulfilled Italian irredentism. Along with the Futurist movement, he is also considered the founder of fascist propaganda, and his most gifted pupils were none other than Hitler and Mussolini.
D’Annunzio’s transformation from an inventive, self-absorbed and extremely talented poet into a proto-fascist is also a reflection of the times in which he lived. At the end of the 19th century, Nietzsche’s superman and Darwin’s evolutionary theory of natural selection were the intellectual fashion. Combined with the patriotic fervour of newly created countries such as Germany and Italy, and the tragedy of war and post-war Europe, the perfect recipe for the emergence of fascist ideology was thus created. It was already germinating in the ideological movements of the fin-de-siècle, such as Futurism and Modernism, which were also characterised by their contempt for liberal democracy.
D’Annunzio, through his literary work and his intellectual curiosity, was subject to all these influences, but at the same time he had a Nietzschean innate syndrome of his own sense of inferiority. Even as a young boy, his teacher wrote in his certificate that he was clearly committed to the goal of making a big name for himself. His teenage correspondence literally oozes an obsession with fame.
And he has easily achieved fame in all the fields he has tackled. His poetry collections and novels are still being reprinted, his films are being made, his plays are still being performed in theatres, and his many amorous and erotic adventures continue to attract interest. This short, balding man with rotten teeth, narrow shoulders and broad hips, one of the greatest conquerors of women’s hearts of his age, was almost morbidly promiscuous.
D’Annunzio the Literary
He showed a strong talent for the written word and storytelling from a very early age, and made a serious foray into literature with the publication of his first book of poetry, Primo vere, at the age of 16. With a natural flair for attracting media attention, he spread the word that the brilliant young author of the collection had tragically lost his life in a fall from a horse.
He was inspired to lie by the premature deaths of the poets Keats and Shelley, which made them national martyrs and heroes. Thus, D’Annunzio’s presence in the media began with his eight poems and has only grown since then, as has his ability to manipulate people. Throughout his life, he has calculatingly fed the media with stories about himself that have managed to keep him on the front pages.
The first glimpse into D’Annunzio’s often disturbed sensual inner world came in his youthful poetry, full of erotic elements. His teachers even considered expelling him from school, so disturbing was the content of the young man’s poetry. But he was simply too good a pupil. Always the best in the class, he often set himself challenges. He wrote to his father: “I love praise because I know you will be delighted when I am praised; I love fame because I know you will be delighted when my name is celebrated.”
Although he had a derogatory attitude towards his father, a notorious womaniser, later in life, he could be grateful to him for the excellent education he had given his adored son. Gabriele was the family pet, even though he had a brother and three sisters. He fondly remembered sitting on a little stool in the middle of the room as a little boy, while all the women in the family looked at him like little angels.
Already self-important, he was even more sure of himself. Wherever he appeared, he was always the centre of attention, as he was destined to be from the moment he came into the world. D’Annunzio was the very embodiment of Nietzsche’s superman, and his role models were historical giants in their own right. He was, for example, a lifelong devotee of the cult of Napoleon.
As a teenager, he wrote in six languages, researched Italian and ancient history and its celebrities, and spent his holidays translating Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He sought inspiration in the grandeur of Ancient Greece and Rome and the aesthetics of ancient art and the Italian Renaissance. His works are full of this kind of symbolism.
Growing up in the times of Italian national unification and the cult of the great liberator Garibaldi, he was also strongly influenced by national awareness and pride in the spirit of the times. The young Gabriele was already a passionate patriot at the age of 13: “To teach people to love their country … and to hate to death all the enemies of Italy.”
The amoral heroes of his literary works, especially his novels, were often autobiographical. He did not shy away from dark themes such as incest, sadism, infanticide, dying mistresses, pornography, sexual cruelty, suicide, madness. While these were in line with the decadent trends that strongly influenced D’Annunzio’s art, they were also a vivid testimony to his personal, often painful, inclinations.
D’Annunzio took inventories of every moment of his life, and immediately after intercourse he was already taking notes on the juicy details of lovemaking and the most secret parts of his partner’s body. His writing is extremely experiential and convincing, as it is imbued with his own experience and experiences. He looked for inspiration to role models such as Goethe, Pushkin, Byron, Dostoyevsky and Flaubert, and was inspired by Wagner in music.
He didn’t have to wait long for fame, including worldwide fame. Perhaps the fact that his works were placed on the Vatican’s list of banned works contributed to this. For James Joyce, who was at that very moment in Trieste working on his life’s work, Ulysses, D’Annunzio was one of the most talented writers of the 19th century, because, like Joyce, he loved to experiment with new forms of literature. When he was inspired, he was able to write for up to fourteen hours a day, for weeks on end, without a break.
“When I write, I am overwhelmed by a special irresistible force, like an epileptic. I wrote L’Innocente in three and a half weeks in an Abruzzo monastery. If anyone had disturbed me, I would have shot him.” His life’s work comprised 48 works, including collections of poems, novels, novellas, plays and libretti for operas.
He earned well from his writing, but never enough to maintain a lavish lifestyle. He also worked for a time in Rome as a social chronicle reporter, enjoying covering scandalous news and gossip for the masses. He almost ended up in prison for his debts and even fled to France in 1910 to escape his creditors. There, he was embraced as a celebrity by an enthusiastic intellectual centre, and his extravagant lifestyle made him the darling of Parisian social life and of the beauties there.
D’Annunzio lover
Beautiful women were a constant in his life. He embarked on long-lasting love affairs, regularly spiced up by jumping over the fence, because he was painfully promiscuous. On the one hand, he worshipped his mistresses as deities, drowning them in attention and erotic pleasures; on the other, he drove them to despair with his infidelity and frequent eccentric behaviour.
He was only 165 centimetres tall, had such bad teeth that he never smiled for photographs, was blind in one eye due to a plane crash during the war, and lost his hair at an early age. But despite all this, according to Sarah Bernhardt, one of the two most celebrated actresses of the fin de siècle, he was “the most extraordinary lover of our time”. The man must therefore have had some kind of inexplicable unearthly sexual attraction. He said to himself that he had exquisitely shaped ears and that his bald head was not only beautiful but also a sign of a higher stage of development.
He also had an insatiable libido and, at the age of 16, bragged about how he had raped a peasant girl. Sexual adventures were one of the main inspirations for his work, and women were his muses and working tools. Of course, his pathological instincts quickly came out in his relationships too; he told his very first girlfriend that he wanted to see her dead body: “Yes! To bury you! I want you to die!”
At the same time, he indulged his partners immensely, the bedroom smelling of incense, the rooms and furniture decorated with precious damask and brocade, the bed and its owner dressed in soft silk. He changed his clothes several times a day and perfumed himself obsessively, always carrying a variety of talismans, because he was extremely superstitious. But money was always scarce, so he lived almost all his life on donations, loans or debt write-offs.
At the age of 20, he married the Duchess Maria di Gallese and had three sons and one daughter. He nearly drove his wife mad and when she could no longer cope with his dissolute life, she threw herself out of a window. She survived the fall with broken legs, but never fully recovered emotionally and mentally.
When his wife was pregnant with their third son, he became involved with Elvira Fraternalli, a beautiful but chronically ill epileptic: “I am attracted to you, so sick and tired. /…/ Your beauty in illness is more spiritual… your face takes on a deep, superhuman pallor… I think that when you are dead you will have attained a unique light of beauty.”
Elvira was undoubtedly one of those he loved most, or felt the greatest desire for. But when he met the famous actress Eleonora Duse in 1897, all other women paled in comparison. Eleonora was D’Annunzio’s great love and, during their eight years together, they were an inspiring artistic and celebrity couple who filled the front pages of newspapers all over the world. They were the most famous couple in Italy. They were both used to publicity, as Eleonora had stood on stage since childhood. A moody, melancholic, tubercular and wilful beauty, she was the perfect bait for D’Annunzio.
He entered the most creative period of his life and began to devote himself to drama. Eleonora brilliantly portrayed many of his theatrical works. In his own style, he gave her morbid roles, sometimes blind, sometimes mutilated, sometimes mad or murdered.
Soon he started cheating on her too, but she always forgave him as if she enjoyed the abuse. Her followers were scandalised when she coughed up blood for days on end during tubercular fits while D’Annunzio went after foreign wings. He finally hit her when he gave the role in the play Dead City to her eternal rival, Sara Bernhardt.
After his relationship with Eleonora ended, he had a number of longer relationships, most notably with the wealthy heiress Marquise Luisa Casati and with the pianist Luisa Baccara, who kept him busy during his adventures in Recife until her death.
But with all this lovemaking, which often left him physically exhausted, he still had time to flirt with politics.
D’Annunzio policy
As a follower of Garibaldi, a patriot and a worshipper of Italian greatness, D’Annunzio was convinced that the young country needed national heroes who, in the spirit of the ‘Risorgimento‘ (the process of unification of Italy), would continue to fight for the restitution of all the territories – so-called irredentism – which, for historical reasons, should belong to Italy. This was, of course, particularly the parts of present-day Slovenia and Croatia, as well as Tyrol, which at that time belonged to Austria-Hungary. Most of the territories in Istria and Dalmatia were formerly under Venetian rule, but in some places there was also a majority Italian population.
This, in his view, was reason enough to annex Italy and, at the same time, to whip up hatred against the hereditary enemy, Austria-Hungary. D’Annunzio, a skilled orator among other things, honed his rhetorical skills at public meetings, where he called for irredentism and, consequently, violence. His enthusiasm had the most hypnotic effect on young men eager for heroism and action. His new role as a national hero and unifier was tailor-made for him.
In 1897, he also had the opportunity to become a member of the Italian Parliament when his constituency seat became vacant. The visibility of the campaign made it a small treat for him, during which he promoted his personality and his literary works rather than a tangible political programme.
He was essentially uninterested in real political work and the management of state affairs, apart from public exposure and fame. Once elected as an independent MEP, he rarely appeared at meetings, preferring to tour Egypt and Greece with Eleonora. He also despised democracy, because in his view people were not equal and therefore did not deserve equal rights. Already during the election campaign, he was uncomfortable and it left a “bitter stench of humanity” in his nostrils.
He did not prove himself as a Member of Parliament, devoting little time to politics and being a man of inconsistent political views and thoughts. The only noteworthy act of his three-year term (1897-1900) was the change of political camps. At the beginning he sat with the monarchists and the nationalists, but he was too bored with them. One day, when he witnessed a lively debate among the Socialists, he decided that they were much more interesting, and so he sovereignly swung from the far right to the far left of the parliament and sat with the Socialists. But he never made a clear public political statement himself, and he certainly did not consider himself a socialist.
D’Annunzio was not re-elected, but remained active on the political stage and wrote a series of political plays. As early as 1901, he called for a war to cleanse Europe, inspiring the Futurist movement and its famous father, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
At the outbreak of the First World War, he saw a new opportunity for Italy to show its courage and regain its ‘lost’ territories and pride. He therefore advocated participation on the side of the Entente Powers and an early entry into the theatre of war.
D’Annunzio soldier
Italian neutrality was shameful for him, but it was a tactical move by the calculating Italian political top. On the one hand, they were waiting to see which side would offer them more territory in the event of victory, but on the other, they were aware of the poor readiness of their troops, which meant that they were in no hurry to engage in fighting. They therefore initially respected the 1882 non-aggression agreement with Germany and Austria-Hungary, the so-called Triple Alliance.
D’Annunzio furiously delivered speech after speech and his followers grew in number. He called for a violent uprising of the people, for terrorism, for the killing of opponents of the war, and encouraged the creation of ‘squadrons’, special military formations and precursors of fascist gangs. Overnight, he became the face of the mass pro-war movement and transformed himself from a poet into a national saviour.
After the signing of the London Agreement on 26 April 1915, Italy did indeed enter the war on the side of the Entente Powers, which offered it more post-war territorial spoils. D’Annunzio’s incendiary rhetoric was not to blame for this, as the negotiations were secret and protracted, but in the popular perception it was he who deserved the credit.
At the age of fifty, he was looking forward to entering the war in a childlike way. His fame so far had given him almost unlimited powers, he could choose where he wanted to operate on the front and which manoeuvres he wanted to take part in. The authorities saw his presence among the fighters as an important factor in maintaining morale, and so they obliged him in every way. And he was also well groomed to the last at the front – perfumed in the most resplendent uniform and boots, he was accommodated in one of the most luxurious hotels in Venice instead of at headquarters.
Initially, he joined the command ship of the torpedo boat flotilla, although he did not have proper training. But he was extremely brave and quickly learned military skills. Always physically active, celebrating the ancient cult of the body, he was also obsessed with speed and motorised means of transport. He wrote romantically of heroic death: “Death is here /…/ beautiful as life, intoxicating, full of promise, transfigurative.” And he waited for the chance that would make him a war hero.
Even before the war, he was fascinated by aviation, then still in its infancy. He loved going to air shows, where reckless daredevils performed dizzying feats in untested aerial vehicles, often paying with their lives for their bravery. As early as 1910, he urged Italy to establish a wartime air force. In poetry, too, he has for many years dealt with the myth of Icarus.
He was thinking of a feat that would once again fill the headlines, while at the same time shaming the hated Habsburgs. So he became interested in flying to Trieste, an incredible feat for those days. Between Venice, where he was based, and Trieste, there was an air distance of 150 kilometres, which no Italian aviator had ever flown. At first he was almost forbidden to fly, because his life was too valuable for the morale of the Italian soldiers. But with special permission, he carried it out brilliantly in tandem, shaking thousands of leaflets and ribbons in the colours of the Italian flag at Trieste in an extraordinary propaganda campaign. This became the hallmark of D’Annunzio’s propaganda air war.
He also flew over the front line several times, and when he returned to Venice in the evening, tired, he never ran out of time to pamper his mistresses. He once wrote to his private secretary immediately after landing from a flight during which half the planes of his expedition had been shot down, asking him to provide him with women’s slippers with heels and gold brocade. He was a fan of tall women.
In January 1916, his plane was hit by an anti-aircraft mine and he narrowly escaped death. He lost one eye in the crash and had to lie motionless in the dark for several months with a bandage over both eyes to preserve the sight of the other. He relieved the pain with drugs, which became a regular part of his daily routine. But during this time, he managed to write one of his most important works, Il Notturno, in almost total blindness, which he clumsily scrawled on ten thousand strips of paper.
After the accident, he became an even bigger star and the myth of his immortality spread. “I lost one eye. Does it even matter? The other one will do. Cyclops can do his work in any forge.” Despite the explicit advice of his doctors, he was back in a plane in September of that year and continued to fly regularly until the end of the war. He discussed his vision for the future of air warfare with generals and ministers, and was even consulted by arms manufacturers.
Shortly before the signing of the Armistice, he crowned his military career with a most magnificent feat. He led a fleet of nine planes on a 1000-kilometre flight to Vienna. Tens of thousands of leaflets, written by D’Annunzio himself and pressed on red, white and green paper, were dropped over the Austrian capital. In them, he called on the Viennese people to renounce the government and ask for peace. On the way back, he was on the verge of death three times when the engine of his plane stopped. He was already reaching for the poison he always carried just in case.
The news of the Vienna flypast immediately spread around the world and D’Annunzio became Italy’s most celebrated war hero, decorated with many of the highest honours, not only Italian, but also French and British.
Immediately after the war, he began to insist that victory must be followed by the rise of a new, greater Italy, “something stronger, something more beautiful. Happy are those who will see this new world”. D’Annunzio’s irredentism and calls for the annexation of the Austro-Hungarian territories, including Rijeka, became a central theme of the post-war bargains.
A resounding victory for the Italians
“I smell the stench of peace” were D’Annunzio’s words at the end of the war, when he quickly began to miss the thrill of wartime. He was also disappointed with the peace negotiations, during which the Italians did not fare very well. Despite the temporary occupation of Primorje, Istria and parts of Dalmatia at the end of the war, in accordance with the London Agreement and with the consent of the “Big Four”, the formal entry into force of the treaty was not accepted by US President Wilson. Wilson was opposed to secret agreements, but at the same time, in line with his “Fourteen Points” programme, he was in favour of the rights of the newly created states, such as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
The latter also claimed most of the territories occupied by Italy. Wilson’s new borders were to follow as clearly defined national boundaries as possible. This made disputable the vast amount of territory where the population was ethnically mixed and there were no clear majorities.
When Wilson declared the 1919 Treaty of London invalid, D’Annunzio went mad and Prime Minister Orlando wept pathetically. The Allies were to stab Italy in the back and amputate its limbs. But the Italians’ manipulative inter-war calculations earned them the contemptuous nickname “the beggars of Europe”.
Given their relatively modest success in the war, and the contempt the other victors felt for them, they ultimately carried it off well. The Allies left it to bilateral relations to resolve territorial issues between Italy and the Kingdom of the SHS. The 1920 Treaty of Rapallo, which in a sense replaced the unenforced Treaty of London, gave them Tyrol, Trieste, parts of the Dalmatian coast and several Aegean and Adriatic islands in return for recognition as a new South Slav state. The river was given the status of an independent city-state.
The Italian demands for Rijeka were also legitimate and in line with the Wilson Doctrine, as more than fifty percent of the city’s population was Italian. But together with the suburb of Susko, the calculus was in favour of the Kingdom of the SHS. A recipe for trouble.
Orlando, humiliated by his early departure from the Versailles negotiations, threatened the Allies with unrest on home soil if their demands for Rijeka were not met. This was, of course, more an attempt to preserve pride than an actual key geostrategic gain.
And it really did boil over on home soil. Fear of Bolshevism was spreading across Europe after the successful Russian Revolution, and this, together with the Versailles disgrace and the “tainted, mutated” victory in the Apennine Peninsula, gave rise to fascist and ultra-nationalist movements. Many of the childless soldiers returning from the front began to organise themselves in the so-called Union of Combatants (Fasci di combattimento), later the Fascist Party.
The national hero D’Annunzio was the most influential role model of the nascent fascist movement, and was also held in high esteem by their leader Benito Mussolini. He incited them to violence with his speeches and incendiary writings: “Not only is the war not yet over,” he wrote at the beginning of 1919, ” it is only now reaching its climax.”
The international humiliation has been compounded by domestic economic problems, rising inflation and unemployment, street violence, left and right extremism. The weak liberal regime was in its last gasps.
D’Annunzio was busy with a new love affair at the time, but he was still actively calling for the “return” of Rijeka to Italy. The plans for the occupation of Rijeka were conceived by a group of disgruntled military officers and industrialists, and there could be only one choice for the leader of the expedition – Gabriele D’Annunzio.
River or death!
He set off from Venice on 12 September 1919 in his shiny new red Fiat 501, full of the flowers the poet loved so much, and slightly feverish, with about 200 followers. The Allied army, which guarded the city but was mostly made up of Italian soldiers, did not oppose him; in fact, many regular army soldiers joined the legionnaires. Two thousand armed men entered Rijeka.
D’Annunzio, exhausted and hot after arriving at the city’s best hotel, simply collapsed into bed and, with no other plans to start with, had a good night’s sleep.
The Italian navy, anchored off the coast of Rijeka, also supported the occupiers. The coup succeeded without a single shot being fired. The crowds gave them a roaring welcome, and D’Annunzio called his feat “The Holy Arrival”. He symbolically compared it to Garibaldi’s famous expedition to Sicily in 1860. At that time, the great liberator was accompanied by only about a thousand volunteers during his attack on the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled by the French Bourbon dynasty.
The river was one of the two main Adriatic ports of the Habsburg Monarchy – while Trieste was the main outlet to the sea for Austria, it was the river for the Hungarian part of the kingdom. From the 18th century onwards, it changed rulers like shirts – first it was granted the status of a virtually autonomous city by Maria Theresa, then for a while it was under Hungary, then Napoleon, then Hungary again, then between 1848 and 1867 it was under Croatian administration, and then finally under Hungary again.
The Hungarians supported the settlement of Italians in this industrially prosperous and wealthy city as a counterbalance to the often rebellious Slavs, but also to encourage closer trade relations with Italy. Thus, by 1915, Italians were already in the majority in the central part of the city, while Croatian inhabitants were the majority in the wider urban area. Hungarians and Slovenes were also numerous.
The post-war atmosphere in Rijeka was explosive. The Italians behaved like its masters, intimidating the Croats, destroying their shops and property. They were delighted at D’Annunzio’s arrival. The beautiful Governor’s Palace, with its large balcony, became the seat of the new administration and became its stage. One of the first moves of the master of public relations and propaganda was to set up an information department. News of the heroic takeover spread like wildfire around the world.
On 14 September, the American, French and British troops simply marched out, with instructions to avoid incidents. Il Commandante, as D’Annunzio was henceforth known, kissed the Italian trumpet and declared: “/…/ The river is a symbol of freedom.”
Marinetti declared the city “truly futuristic”. Mussolini, still the editor of a nationalist newspaper, who liked to identify himself with D’Annunzio, published many articles on the occupation of Rijeka as the first act of resistance against Versailles. Thousands of young men, hoping for a life of rebellion, made the “pilgrimage” to Rijeka. But more than the latter, they found there a place of sin, debauchery and notorious rejoicing.
D’Annunzio’s paradise on earth
It is hard to believe all that happened during the fifteen months of D’Annunzio’s occupation of Rijeka. The result was a mixture of a political laboratory and a hippie den of drugs and sex, spiced up with proto-fascist rituals, sometimes invented on the fly by Il Commandante. The whole thing was more like one of his eccentric tales than reality.
The river was a non-stop performance. Flags and huge portraits of D’Annunzio flew on buildings, military parades, fireworks, endless speeches and, above all, parties took place every day. Prostitution flourished. People were flooding into the city, eager to get debauched. Sexual diseases were so widespread that there was one hospital dedicated exclusively to treating them. Drugs were available at every turn; D’Annunzio himself had been a cocaine addict since the accident in which he lost an eye.
Even more worrying were the beginnings of fascist choreography and rituals. Black shirts, the salute with the raised right hand, battle cries like Achilles’ alleged Eja! Eja! Eja! Alalà!, the worship of the cult of the leader and of manhood, the singing of Giovinezza (Youth), which later became the anthem of the fascist party, and so on.
All this was later successfully taken over by Mussolini, who was “only” a cheap imitator of D’Annunzio’s fascist symbolism. He came to Rijeka very often as an observer and learned from his role model. Years later, when Mussolini rode around Rome with a lion cub in the next seat, a foreign diplomat thought it strange, but declared: “The Italians seem to like that sort of thing.”
Many people thought at the time that D’Annunzio’s ultimate plan was to take over the whole of Italy and sooner or later, in a similar way to his invasion of the Rijeka, to invade Rome. Mussolini did something similar three years later, but D’Annunzio was not very interested in politics and the day-to-day affairs of government. The river was just the playground for him, where he could indulge in all the pleasures he was used to. Of course, he had plenty of affairs to keep him company.
In March 1920, the occupiers presented a new constitution for Rijeka, the so-called Kvarner Charter, based on the ancient models and institutions of the Venetian Republic. It was a strange mixture of anarchist, proto-fascist and republican ideals. Compulsory exercise for young people, generous pensions, an advanced education system, unemployment benefits and so on. Workers were divided into six classes, like the guilds of medieval Florence. Music became a social institution.
There was a Parliament, but it had few powers. After the Constitution was proclaimed, a mock battle was staged with 4 000 legionnaires, but real bullets and grenades were used, and as many as 100 people were seriously wounded. Then, in September, the Italian administration of Kvarner was proclaimed, headed by the dictator D’Annunzio, known as Il Duce. So he was the original Duce!
The Italian government and the international community were getting increasingly nervous. The economic blockade of Rijeka was causing its economy to crumble and the people were slowly yearning for a return to normalcy. With the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo, Rijeka was granted the status of an independent territory, but D’Annunzio refused to recognise this, even though the people begged him to accept the agreement. A plebiscite was even organised to give the people the opportunity to vote for either the independent authority or D’Annunzio. The latter was defeated, but he refused to accept that defeat either.
The Italian government had had enough of its hero and decided to expel him by force. In December 1920, it sent a navy and twenty thousand soldiers after him. After five days of fighting, Il Commandante finally surrendered and theatrically left the city in tears.
But in 1924, Italy did annex Rijeka. D’Annunzio could in good conscience take some of the credit.
Sanctuary of your own ego
He spent the last seventeen years of his life away from the wild world on an estate on Lake Garda, where he slowly transformed his villa, called Vittoriale, into a huge shrine to himself. There is also his tomb. Of course, he was never prosecuted for this illegal gesture. Many people tried to persuade him to continue his political activities, either on the side of the fascists or against them, but he persistently evaded them. I suppose he was simply exhausted.
He was back to enjoying the carefree lifestyle of his youth, and this time he never ran out of money. When Mussolini took power, he financed all his desires, with the exception of the airport runway. He obviously wanted to keep an eye on him at all times. For Mussolini knew only too well that D’Annunzio was his eternal rival, despite his withdrawal from the public eye. He visited him regularly and even offered to stand as a candidate in the parliamentary elections for the deputy of Zadar. The King, in turn, conferred on him the aristocratic title of Prince of the Snowy Mountains (Principe di Montenevoso).
But he was much more interested in women and drugs. His behaviour was often even more bizarre and probably the result of syphilis. In August 1922, he fell out of a window under unusual circumstances, but miraculously got back to his feet after three days in a coma. The fall has never been definitively explained. Perhaps a murder ordered by his political opponents, perhaps even Mussolini? Perhaps he was driven mad by a jealous mistress when he courted her sister in her presence? Or did he just stumble under the influence of drugs, drink or medication? Perhaps a suicide attempt? All explanations would be consistent with D’Annunzio’s lifestyle.
He died of a heart attack in March 1938, aged almost 75. One of his domestic helpers went to work in Berlin for Nazi Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop immediately afterwards. Did this mean that he was also spied on by the Nazis?
The way in which Gabriel D’Annunzio is remembered remains controversial. Our neighbours still erect monuments to him, organise exhibitions and honour him as a national hero and one of the greatest Italian writers of all time. He was undoubtedly the latter, but he was also a self-confessed megalomaniac and, above all, a connoisseur and adherent of one of the deadliest ideologies of the 20th century, fascism. It is both morally and intellectually difficult and dangerous to judge a man selectively and not as a complete personality. D’Annunzio should therefore not have entered any history with a positive assessment.
