V.V. (12) Siege at Fiume

[jbor]

Vera, reminiscing to Godolphin:

    "I was given the Duse too, by the man in fact who gave her to Europe,
    over twenty years ago, in _Il Fuoco_. We were in Fiume. ..." (247.30)

Eleonora Duse (1859-1924), Italian actress, rose to international fame in
the 1890s. She returned to the stage briefly in 1921 after years of
retirement. Known as "the Duse", she is said to have been one of the
greatest actresses of all time, and D'Annunzio apparently "owed much to her
histrionic genius."

There is a _Life_ written by Signorelli (trans. 1959), and a film starring
Rossano Brazzi:

http://www.neponset.com/brazzi/duse.htm

A more recent biography here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/080930631X/ref=ase_therossanobrazzi/0
02-7316447-5248066

_Il Fuoco_ (1900), the novel written by Gabriele D'Annunzio, first of a
"Pomegranate" series. (il fuoco = the fire, the novel is also known in
English as _The Fire of Life_) The two characters are based on D'Annunzio
and Eleanora Duse. Excerpt here:

http://www.muranonet.com/information/fire.htm

D'Annunzio (1863-1938), Italian nationalist poet, novelist, dramatist,
journalist, airman, Principe (1924); urged war against Austria, served, and
was wounded (1916); voluptuous, graceful, affected, he is described as "an
apostle of a new Renaissance".

Fiume, a port town on the northern Adriatic (now called Rijeka) with a mixed
Croatian/Italian population. When the future of the port was under
discussion at the Paris Peace Conference, D'Annunzio seized the town with a
band of fanatics (September 1919) and defied the Allies until January 1921.

Q. Is D'Annunzio yet another Badass? What about Foppl? Or even V herself?


       _The Flame of Life_ (and other works), by Gabriele D'Annunzio

       Or take the development of Fascism. How did Italy move so quickly
  from the late 19th-century idealism of Mazzini to the blockheaded
  authoritarianism of Mussolini? According to biographer Anthony Rhodes, the
  answer, to a surprising degree, is the influence of the poet and novelist
  Gabriele D'Annunzio.
       No one reads D'Annunzio today; the only English versions of his work
  popularly available are in a British series celebrating decadence. But in
  the decades before World War I, he was hugely popular. Perceived as a
  Byronic figure who combined art, eroticism, and action, D'Annunzio
  produced a body of work mixing nationalism, sensualism, and the evocation
  of the Superman. In such overwrought novels as The Flame of Life (which
  exploited his affair with actress Eleonora Duse), D'Annunzio considers at
  length the rhetorical manipulation of the masses. As biographer Rhodes
  points out, it is D'Annunzio who, in his poetry, introduced his readership
  to such concepts as "Mare Nostrum," ("Our Mediterranean") and "duce."
       But D'Annunzio did much more than that. When Italy was not given
  control of the Istrian coast after World War I, D'Annunzio brought his
  work to life: He marched on the town of Fiume and occupied it with a small
  force for 16 months. D'Annunzio cannot be called a Fascist, but in Fiume,
  he created what was to become the Fascist political style. As Michael
  Ledeen points out in The First Duce: D'Annunzio at Fiume, the balcony
  address, the "Roman" salute, the dialogue with the crowd, and the
  political manipulation of religious symbols and "martyrs" are all
  D'Annunzio's inventions. Mussolini, then floundering politically, was
  paying close attention; without D'Annunzio, there may not have been a
  Mussolini.

from:

http://slate.msn.com/Concept/96-10-16/Concept.asp


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