Product Description

Gabriele D'Annunzio, 'Gabriel of the Annunciation', shocked and dazzled early twentieth-century Europe with his sexual exploits, military feats, and political escapades. In a blaze of self-publicity those activities provided material for his fiery journalism and the stunning literary creations which have influenced each succeeding generation of Italian writers. French translations of his scandalous novels first exposed Europe to his genius, but his roots lay deep in his native soil. A pivotal presence in the evolution of Italian literature, politics, society, and taste, he rarely allowed his name to fall from the public gaze during forty critical years, and more than any other Italian since the unification of his country, he casts a shadow forwards to the present day. D'Annunzio's sexual promiscuity was legendary, yet he was a somewhat unconventional Casanova: something under five foot six, prematurely balding, blinded in one eye during the war, and blessed with what his secretary-factotum called unfortunate teeth, he was the caricaturist's dream. At the age of sixteen he pawned his grandfather's watch for the money to visit a brothel. And though he was married for 55 years to Maris, Duchess of Gallese, his adult years witnessed a trail of discarded lovers, who were severally driven to drugs, suicide attempts, alcoholism, and madness. His countless liaisons involved a number of women cast as muses in his writings, including artistes such as Eleonora Duse, Ida Rubinstein, and Isadora Duncan. From his earliest years D'Annunzio set out to create a unique personality for himself, aided by friends who invented myths about his life and early writings. In adolescence he circulated rumours of his own death to the Italian newspapers, helping to stir up interest in the imminent publication of his latest work. That slim volume, mentioned in most of the ensuing obituaries, sold well and found sympathetic reviewers. As time passed, other stories accumulated and attached themselves to his public persona, until truth and fiction became indistinguishable. Had he been born during a storm at sea on the deck of the sailing-ship Irene? Was he involved in the celebrated theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911? Had he experimented with cannibalism during a journey through Libya? Was he, in the end, assassinated by a Nazi spy for his opposition in 1937 to the alliance between Mussolini and Hitler? The present biography is the first fully-documented appraisal of this extraordinary man's career, making use of previously unpublished manuscripts and new source material, and attempting to maintain a degree of objectivity never previously seen in Dannunzian scholarship.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #755169 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 434 pages

Review
"Woodhouse has written a solidly documented work which should serve as the standard biography of D'Annunzio for years to come."--International Review of Modernism
"In this admirably level-headed biography [Woodhouse] does full justice to the poet's genius and to the Nietzschean celebrity-hero's significant role in European cultural and political history. His elegantly written book is scrupulous enough to satisfy his fellow-scholars, but it is also racy enough to provide plenty of thrills for the lay reader."--The Sunday Times [London]
"Certainly the best biography to have appeared in English, and probably the most readable in any language.... a remarkable feat of concise storytelling."--Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher
Reviewed by, Sunday Times.
`In this admirably level-headed biography he does full justice to the poet's genius and to the Nietzschean celebrity-hero's significant role in European cultural and political history. His elegantly written book is scrupulous enough to satisfy his fellow-scholars, but it is also racy enough to provide plenty of thrills for the lay reader.' Lucy Hughes-Hallet, The Sunday Times

About the Author
John Woodhouse is Fiat-Serena Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.

Customer Reviews

Nietzschean superman or buffoon?
Most writers stick to their last, and their biographies get bogged down in petty histories of publication and royalties. D'Annunzio, however, -- rake and war hero, supreme decadent and precursor of Fascism, -- would be a fascinating subject for biography even if he had never written a line. This Life miraculously combines a wealth of information with unusual concision, elegance of style, and just the right degree of critical comment on the man and the writer. Woodhouse is a discriminating admirer of D'Annunzio's writings (though this is not a literary study), and combines a faithful record of what was genuinely impressive in his life (his verve, originality, and courage) with awareness of the absurdities to which his histrionic character could descend and acidic remarks on the way he exploited others, particularly his mistresses. The D'Annunzio that emerges from this study is both admirable as a truly Renaissance Man and despicable as a supreme egoist.I have never enjoyed a literary biography so much.