Il fuoco; d’Annunzio

The first and second image are taken from photo spread entitled The Randy Dandy photographed by David Slijper. The shoot, heavy on pieces by Giorgio Armani and Burberry, was inspired by the 19th century Italian decadent movement and the controversial Italian poet, journalist, novelist, dramatist, ultra-nationalist, soldier and daredevil Gabriele D’Annunzio.

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.

D’Annunzio has thus 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; theatrical coreography as applied aesthetics; large emotive nationalistic public rituals; use of the blackshirted followers, the Arditi, with their disciplined and fierce behaviour as shocktrooops against enemies.

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.

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. 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.

Novels

• Il piacere (The Child of Pleasure, 1889)
• Giovanni Episcopo (1891)
• L’innocente (1892)
• Il trionfo della morte (The Triumph of Death, 1894)
• Le vergini delle rocce (The Maidens of the Rocks, 1895)
• Il fuoco ( The Flame of Life: A Novel, 1900)
• Forse che sì forse che no (1910)

Tragedies

• La città morta (The Dead City: a Tragedy, 1899).
• La Gioconda (Gioconda, 1899).
• Francesca da Rimini (1902). [2]
• L’Etiopia in fiamme (1904).
• La figlia di Jorio (1904).
• La fiaccola sotto il moggio (1905).
• La nave (1908).
• Fedra (1909).

Short story collections

• Terra vergine (1882)
• Le novelle della Pescara (1884–1886)

Poetry collections

• Primo vere (1879)
• Canto novo (1882)
• Poema paradisiaco (1893)
• The five books of Laudi del cielo, del mare, della terra e degli eroi(1903–1912)
  • Maia (Canto Amebeo della Guerra)
  • Elettra
  • Halcyon, Alcyone
  • Merope
  • Asterope (La Canzone del Quarnaro)
• Ode alla nazione serba (1914)

Autobiographical works

• La Leda senza cigno
• Notturno
• Le faville del maglio
• Le cento e cento e cento e cento pagine del Libro Segreto di Gabriele D’Annunzio tentato di morire o Libro Segreto (as Angelo Cocles)

Hunting Season

Fear and Loathing: No Sympathy

Sympathy?

Not for me. No mercy for a criminal freak in Las Vegas. This place is like the army: the shark ethic prevails-eat the wounded. In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.

-Raol Duke-

Der Arbeiter

Cult of Power

To form a concept of the Godhead that one worships, the idea of Shakti, or power, is for the devotee a surer guide than the nebulous idea of atman. It is very hard for those who have no faith in Shakti to trace the “one without a second” through the physical to the spiritual plane of existence, there being no appreciable link to chain the planes together. But a worshiper of Shakti need contend with no such difficulty. In all planes of existence he finds the one power all-pervading. It is therefore laid down in the Tantras: “O Devi! without a knowledge of Shakti, mukti [liberation] is mere mockery!”

-Tantrattva 2:46-47

Thoroughbred

We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who died at his post during the eruption of Vesuvius because someone forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one that can not be taken from a man.

— Oswald Spengler.

Tweedy

Art of Conquering

Conquer thyself, till thou hast done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another’s appetite as to thine own.

-Sir Richard Francis Burton-