THE PRIVATEERING POET.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 November 1919, Page 12

THE PRIVATEERING POET.

i. :a .sketch of:d*annunzio. I. . '';., i i i(By Ferdinand Tuohy;) Rupert Brooke said the three greatest things in life were to read poetry, to write it, and to live rt. Few poets are vouchsafed all three. Byron was, for one, and now a century later a lesser immortal, yet one of strange likeness to the wayward genius of ''.Don Juan," is living the Roetry of life, fiercely, exultantly. We may not like fia'brielc d'Annunzio's raid u*i Finnic, nor _ the hauling down of the TJni.jii .lack by "him who wears the Military' Cross, \ct we in England are ever ready to salute a Han. And d'Annunzio assuredly is one. The trouble with d'Annunzio—or Signer Papagnetta, to give him his real name—is th«jt he does nit belong to this age at all. He is a rare, exotic, cultured aUer-growth of flic. Renaissance Ilowcring 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. He is doing it now. He has done it all his life. Listen to this and you imagine yourself reading once, again of Byron: "As a boy he followed the cultc du Moi. and to come between him and the least of his desires was to arouse n storm of furious anger At (seventeen he burst upon society, and in the double role of artist and rake lie dazzled and scandalised even Rome for a number of years." Like Byron, again, d'Annunzio is it grotesque dandy and poseur; had once, with his fairTiair and blue, eyes and finely chiselled features, a rare physical charm, and Was for long years an emigre from his native land, at war with society. In character the resemblance is indeed striking. "He is a creature of complex sensations, of capricious senses, of angry passmn and flaming emotions, of nervous susceptibilities and distressed sentiments, elaborately and utterly himself." The Italian, too, draws upon himself, his own life, his own sensuality, his Qwn misanthropy, for the creatort of 'his works, such as "The Triumph of Death" and "The Flame of Life." D'Annunzio works by night; perhaps that is why he sees but darkness and is champion of the decadent. All this is Byron, in a minor kev, but that is the end. Byron fought, and died for a small nation: d'Annunzio is today, with the grand flourish, attempting to tramp 1 •> on n nascent little race. Yet our respect endures for this firebrand poet. He 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 a<ro d'Annunzio was 4S. and securely bracketed iviMi such contemporaries as Maeterlinck. Hardy, Anatote France, and Kipling. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred in d'Annunzio's position would have rested on their laurels. For literary genius hardly goes hand in hand with arms. Bravery in battle mar come easily to the man not over-gifted with the power of deep thinkinrr: for the m-.i eternally analysing, probing, sifting ihe horrors of war. for the man with a brain capable of reasoning if out in all it* dreadful detail, and doing so despite himself, courage heforo the enemy is a double cross to bear ... . D'Annunzio lifted it on to his shoulders. Tie did every single thing human- ■ ly possible to try and get killed in the ; war. In the nir. in suhmnrini*. on the ! battlefield. Tin wears eighteen decora- '. tions, over half of them for valor be- ' for" the enemr. To h«(ir Italians say "Ecco 'd'Anmin- ' zio." with awe in their voices, as T of- 1 ten heard them say last year as the ' modest maior strolled around Ginconila's at Treviso. was to what this man meant to Ttnlv—this hothead, if ron will, but none the less this ■ human phenomenon rarer than radium. ! one who combines the delicacy of mind of a Dante with the physical .courage of ! a lumberman from across the Rockies.