Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on texts
- 1 The modern novelist as redeemer of the nation
- 2 The crisis of liberal nationalism
- 3 “His sympathies were in the right place”: Conrad and the discourse of national character
- 4 Citizens of the Plain: Proust and the discourse of national will
- 5 “Il vate nazionale”: D'Annunzio and the discourse of embodiment
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
5 - “Il vate nazionale”: D'Annunzio and the discourse of embodiment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on texts
- 1 The modern novelist as redeemer of the nation
- 2 The crisis of liberal nationalism
- 3 “His sympathies were in the right place”: Conrad and the discourse of national character
- 4 Citizens of the Plain: Proust and the discourse of national will
- 5 “Il vate nazionale”: D'Annunzio and the discourse of embodiment
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
Gabriele d'Annunzio's political opinions and activities seem the polar opposites of Proust's. Where Proust took the Dreyfusard, anti-nationalist side in the Dreyfus affair and deconstructed the idea of the moral unity of the nation in his novel, d'Annunzio, a hero of the Italian nationalists, proclaimed himself the “vate nazionale,” national poet-prophet. When he first came to play an important part in Italian politics, during the First World War, d'Annunzio had already been a famous poet and novelist since his youth in the 1880s, and had been a member of Italian parliament, where his erratic voting record enacted his political slogan (adapted from Nietzsche), “beyond right and left.” After a stay in Paris, where he managed to avoid his Italian creditors while at the same time learning the art of French nationalist propaganda, he returned to Italy as a hero of the movement in favor of intervening in the First World War. When Italy did intervene, in May, 1915, d'Annunzio, who was fifty-two years old, joined the Italian armed forces as a freelance thrill-seeker, participating in a number of dangerous missions as both soldier and propagandist. His favorite task was accompanying aviators on dangerous fights over Austrian territory. During a crash-landing after a reconnaissance mission over Trieste in 1916, d'Annunzio lost the sight in one eye and badly damaged the other.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Modernism, Nationalism, and the Novel , pp. 175 - 209Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000