THE REBEL POET

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 49, 21 November 1919, Page 7

THE REBEL POET

9 D'ANNUNZIO TO-DAY. By Ferdinand Tuohy in the "Daily Mail.) Rupert Brooke 6aid the three groatest things in life wero to read poetry, to writo it, and to live it. Few poets are vouchsafed all threo. Hyrou was, for one, and now a century lator a lesser immortal, yet ono of sLrnngo likeness to the wayward gonius of "Don Juan," is living tho poetry of life, liercoly, exultantly. Wo may not like Gabriclo d'Aj>nuiizio s raid ou Fiumo, nor tho hauling down of the Union Jack by him who Weal's tho Military Cross, yet wo in Eng.l , ?, ro cver . rea(1 > r to Sill « te a MmAnd dAnnuuzio assuredly is one. The trouble with d'Annnnzio—or Signer Papagnetta, to give him hig real name—is that he does not belong to this age at all. He is a rare, exotic, cultured after-growth, of the Renaissance jloworlng in a grim, efficient, materialistic world. The ideal of d'Annunzio— it permeates his works—is to give way to every natural emotion. And damn the consequences. Ho is doing it now. He has dono it all his life. Listen to this and you imagine yourself reading once again of Byron: "As a boy he followed the culto du Moi, and to como jietween him and tho t °f ,lis desires was to arouse a storm ot furious angor. ... At seventeen lis ourst upon society, and in tho double role of artist and rake he dazzled and scandalised even Rome for a number of years." Liko Byron, again, d'Annunzio is & grotesque dniuly and poseur: had once, with his_ fair hair ar.d blue eyes and •i/iely chiselled features, a rare physical charm, and wns for long years an emigre from his native land, at war with so. ciety. In character tho resemblanco Is indeed striking. " "Ho is a creature of complex sensations, of capricious senses, or angry passion and flaming e,motions, of nervous susceptibilities nnd distressed sentiments, elaborately and utterly himself." Tho Italian, too, draws upon himself his own life, his own sensuality, his own misanthropy, for tho greatest of his works, such ns "The Triumph of Death" and "The Flame of Life." D'Annunzio works by night; perhaps that is why ho sees but darkness and is champion of tho decadent. All this is Byron, in a minor key, but. that is the end. Byron fought and died for a small nation; d'Annunzio is today, with a grand flourish, attempting lo trample on a nascent littlo race. Yet our respect endures for this firebland peel. Ho swayed Italy into the war; that, to-day, is historical fact. And having done so, he went one further. You want to remember that four years ago d'Annunzio was 48, and securely bracketed with such contemporaries an Matorlinck, Hardy, Auntolo Prance, and Kipliug. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred in d'Aiinunzio's position would liavo rested ou their laurels. For literary genius haid.y goes hand in hand with arms. Bravery in bntllo may oomo easily to Hie man not over-gifted with the power of deep thinking; for tlio man eternally analysing, probing, sifting the horrors of war, for the man with a brain capable of rensoning it out in all its dreadful detail, and doing so despite himself, courage before the enemy is a double cross to bear. . . D'Annunzio lifted it on to bis shoulders. He did every sinele thing humanly possible In try nnd get killed in the war. In the air, in submarines, on the battlefield. He wears eighteen decorations, over luilf of them for valour beforo tlio enemy. To hear Italians say "Ecco d'Aiimuizio." with awe in their voices, as T often heard them «iy Inst year as the mo'M ma ; "r strolled around fHaeonda's walls at Treviso. wns <o understand what fir's mm meant to Italy—this hothead, if vnn will, but none the less lhi= hiimnu phenomenon rarer than mdium, one who combiner the delicacy of mind of a TWIo with the physical courage of a lumber--1 man from aoross tho Rookioa,