D'Annunzio's "Notturno,' rediscovered

Whosoever does not fear death does not die. And death wants not him who seeks it.

Yale University Press and Margellos Republic of Letters Books have rescued yet another forgotten reputation. Last year I reviewed their excellent new translation of Theophile Gautier's Lyrics (click here); this time it's Gabriele D'Annunzio's turn.

D'Annunzio (1863-1938) is almost a literary creation himself. His own hectic life could fill up several novels. At his height in 1920s, all of his major novels and most of his important dramas were available in English translations, and he was a mainstay of the old Modern Library series. But changing tastes and his near-fatal link to the rise of Italian Fascism conspired to all but erase D'Annunzio from the literary landscape.

Lately he has begun a slow comeback. Halcyon, his most important volume of poetry, was finally translated in the 1980s; and The Flame of Life, his most approachable novel, dealing with his tempestuous relationship with the great actress Eleanora Duse, has also become available in a modern translation. Now we have a new, complete translation of D'Annunzio's last great work, his Notturno of 1921.

Notturno is unusual for both its form and its content. But first, a bit of background.

Blinded in a crash

When Italy entered the World War I, D'Annunzio was 52 years old. He could have followed the lead of the Belgian Emile Verhaeren and Frenchman Maurice Barres and placed his pen at the service of the Allied war effort. But D'Annunzio was determined to do more.

Entering active duty, he served first in the navy aboard a torpedo boat, then transferred to Italy's newly formed air corps. As a member of that air corps that he flew his legendary flight over Vienna, but a later flight ended in a disastrous forced landing in which his co-pilot Giuseppe Miraglia was killed and D'Annunzio himself was badly injured. Notturno is the work of his convalescence.

Temporary blinded as the result of a detached retina in his right eye, the man of action was forced into inactivity, confined to a bed, his eyes swathed in bandages. D'Annunzio literally wrote Notturno a line or two at a time on strips of paper.

Mingling past and present

As a result, this author of highly wrought (some would say overwrought) prose in his early novels stumbled upon an almost stream-of-consciousness approach in which he mingled past and present events. Notturno is neither novel nor non-fiction memoir; instead, it's a prose poem.

The work's first part, divided into three long "Offerings," dwells largely on Miraglia's death. After a straightforward introduction in which he explains how he wrote his work, D'Annunzio segues into a commemoration of his young co-pilot, which in turn becomes a reminiscence of Giorgio Fracassini— another departed member of his squadron— and then a reminiscence of flights that he and Miraglia made together.

The second Offering deals with the men D'Annunzio knew while serving aboard the torpedo boat, but he interrupts this recollection several times, at one point creating a poem about flight, apparently inspired by his memory of the music of Russian composer Alexander Scriabin.

The third Offering deals with D'Annunzio's slow recovery, which corresponds to the approach of Easter Sunday.

He concludes the work with a "Post Scriptum." No longer bandaged and confined to his bed, D'Annunzio is able write at greater length. Sadly, the immediacy of the short staccato entries is lost as he relates incidents that took place in the closing days of the war, including his decision to lead Italian veterans in their defiance of the League of Nations by their occupation of the city of Fiume, a move that inspired another writer/ex-serviceman, Benito Mussolini.