Gabriele D’Annunzio

Before he died, my uncle Tony gifted me his first Italian edition of Il Fuoco (The Flame, 1900), signed by Gabriele D’Annunzio himself.

I regret that I didn’t record where or why he acquired the book.

He did teach himself Italian, but I don’t know if he mastered it sufficiently to read the original. I cannot read Italian and had to content myself with the English translation and internet searches to read the work and better understand D’Annunzio.

D’Annunzio was born in 1863 to a plebian family but was given a Jesuit education, which provided him the classical tropes he used in his later verse, which tended to the erotic, to the great appeal of his countrymen. He was a poet of the senses and most fervently of the pleasures, and pain, of love, which documented his own Rabelaisian lifestyle. He pursued the opposite sex with insensate fury. Isadora Duncan [1] documented his several attempts at her in My Life and concluded, “That was the genius of D’Annunzio. He made each woman feel she was a goddess in a different domain.”

Of all his relationships, his liaison with the celebrated actress Eleonora Duse, had the most dramatic effect on his life and art. During their nine years together (1895–1904), she inspired him to write his major poetic and dramatic works. He paid her back with a series of infidelities that culminated with the publication of his thinly veiled confessional in which he portrayed her as a has‐been. But the real treachery occurred when he gave a drama written for Eleonora to Sarah Bernhardt, “her one and only rival,” to perform.

The biographical context provided historical depth to a novel that is florid and so sentimental that I can barely choke it down. The emotional tenor is on overdrive, as if every character is constantly consuming MDMA. It’s all art all the time and every encounter can trigger a revelation that shudders the soul.

They felt that in that one moment they had lived beyond all human limits, and that before them was opening a vast unknown, which they might absorb as the ocean absorbs, for, though they had lived so much, they felt their hearts were empty; though they had drunk so deep, they were still athirst. An overmastering illusion seized upon these rich natures, and each seemed to grow immeasurably more desirable in the other’s eyes. The young girl had disappeared. The expression of the despairing, nomadic actress seemed to repeat: “Embrace me wholly, and my love will render thee divine! One hour, one single hour with thee, and I shall be saved! Mine for a single hour! Thine for a single hour!”

(Perhaps I should give D’Annunzio a pass – his passages reminded me of Lovecraft’s purple prose of the unimaginable horrors. D’Annunzio is enjoying the bawdy life that Lovecraft denied.)

D’Annunzio considered himself Nietzsche’s superman and Henry James was inclined to agree, “Ostensibly, transcendentally, his is the most developed taste in the world. … Beauty at any price is an old story to him; art and form and style as the aim of the superior life style are a matter of course.” I am not sure Henry was as astute as his brother William (and I agree with Daniel Robinson that William was the better writer). D’Annunzio seems to have used his art as a means of seduction not transcendence. A hedonist, he used his fame to immerse himself in every kind of luxury. He built a soundproof thinking room filled with velvet cushions in his villa overlooking Florence where he wore lace underwear and mink‐collared robes, only forsaking them for the brown habit of a monk when working on a new project. His voluptuary habits bankrupted him so he fled his creditors for France.

Fortunately for D’Annunzio, The Great War gave him a new stage. In 1908 he had flown with Wilbur Wright, so he returned to Italy to become a fighter pilot. The war for him was a live-action play. His Wikipedia page sums it well:

In February 1918, he took part in a daring, if militarily irrelevant, raid on the harbour of Bakar (known in Italy as La beffa di Buccari, lit. the Bakar Mockery), helping to raise the spirits of the Italian public, still battered by the Caporetto disaster. On 9 August 1918, as commander of the 87th fighter squadron “La Serenissima”, he organized one of the great feats of the war, leading nine planes in a 700-mile round trip to drop propaganda leaflets on Vienna. This is called in Italian “il Volo su Vienna”, “the Flight over Vienna“

The war was his rebirth: the libertine became the Übermensch. He gave balcony speeches that contained all the elements of the Nietzschean tradition — will, sensuality, pride and instinct.[2] In 1919, with the war at an end, D’Annunzio led the invasion of Fiume. It was more a parade than an invasion, but for fifteen months he was comandante over his coastal kingdom.

He lived as he wrote; overwrought and loud. Until he was bombarded into submission, he was the dictator of Fiume. Most critically, consider closely how he solidified power: he coauthored a constitution that played to the crowd (nine corporations representing the productive sectors of the economy) with the tenth to represent superior humans. He declared that music was the fundamental principle of the state. This is Nietzsche’s love-affair with Wagner politically embodied. He knew how to play the masses with symbols and speeches and was brutal enough to strongarm opponents with blackshirted followers.

Mussolini was a rival (and I suspect played a role in D’Annunzio’s 1920 defenestration) who adopted all D’Annunzio’s tactics – politics as theater. Who better than a poet and playwright to script the strategy? One should argue that Niccolò Machiavelli wrote the rules of engagement 400 years earlier in The Prince. But as sound as Machiavelli’s advice is, the spectacle is missing: D’Annunzio knew the stage before he knew politics. Machiavelli was just a diplomat who taught the evils of power.

As a novel, Il Fuoco, doesn’t seem to be my uncle’s flavor. (I remember him saying he didn’t see Pretty Woman because it glorified prostitution.) Perhaps the repressed sexuality of a New Englander was given relief because written in Italian (when in Rome…). I suspect some of his interest could have been salacious, but the greater interest was historical. D’Annunzio’s importance as a literary figure would have been less interesting than his role in history. I share that belief. D’Annunzio’s poetry and prose are of that time, but his political contribution has deep repercussions.

In the United States, Trump spring-boarded from The Apprentice to the presidency with the pussy-grabbing, tax-evading, aplomb of a true hedonist: A very plebian version of D’Annunzio’s life as art (Chappelle’s honest liar). Then Trump rallied his blackshirts on January 6th in an attempt to retain power.

And in Italy, Giorgia Meloni‘s ascent is seen as a resurgence of fascism and she did (at age 19) proclaim Mussolini was good leader. But if Meloni is able to hold a coalition, she will only be head of a country with a declining population, systemic corruption, and crippling debt. She (and Italy as a country) is beholden to the EU central bank. The danger she can do to Italy could be profound, but the danger she could do with it on the world stage is trifling.

That is not the case for in America. On November 15, some guy in Florida announced he would again run for the office of president. De Tocqueville saw the fragility of the American experiment in 1835, and he saw it clearly. The character of key election officials held in 2020 and saved the experiment. I fear that the abject stupidity of the many and the incredulity and cupidity of a few may cause its collapse.

Whatever the prerogatives of the executive power may be, the period which immediately precedes an election and the moment of its duration must always be considered as a national crisis, which is perilous in proportion to the internal embarrassments and the external dangers of the country. Few of the nations of Europe could escape the calamities of anarchy or of conquest every time they might have to elect a new sovereign. In America society is so constituted that it can stand without assistance upon its own basis; nothing is to be feared from the pressure of external dangers, and the election of the President is a cause of agitation, but not of ruin

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume I

Let us hope De Tocqueville is proven correct once more in 2024.

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[1] Isadora Duncan died because her silk scarf, draped around her neck, became entangled around the open-spoked wheels and rear axle, and pulled her from an open car. While tragic and horrific, her death has a twinge of the comic reminding me of The Incredibles: No Capes!

[2] I proffer the prosaic presentation of Nietzsche – a glorified individualistic power-grabber: An individual that shall take and keep what he can and who believes that it is false consciousness to play at altruism and to encumber ourselves with hypocrisy. The Nazi corruption and simplification of Nietzsche where power has rights of conquest; that a chosen race is entitled to all the advantages accruing from conquest. Thus D’Annzunio lives in this mode of obtaining from life all that it has to give. Art is his watchword, the art of life is his text. Know the beautiful, enjoy all that is new and strange, be not afraid of moral law and of human tradition for they are idols wrought by the ignorant. I do not subscribe to this hedonistic interpretation of Nietzsche. The true Übermensch needs to become a god unto himself: to set forth goals and creation-affirming actions independent of an adherence to empty tradition. God is dead. That places the crushing burden of independence upon the Übermensch. It is not the ultimate freedom from rule, but the inexorable need for self-rule: which is a far more difficult task than obedience.

REFERENCE DRILLS

Class outline

Present from shomenuchi because it is more familiar to Aikidoists, but the class is just as easily presented from jodan tsuki (the line vs the point – all points are lines and lines are points).

When uke strikes, nage has precisely four means to address it:

  1. Outside line forehand
  2. Outside line backhand
  3. Inside line forehand
  4. Inside line backhand

Because I presented ude kimi nage as the responding technique, the required ashi-sabaki was irmi-tenkan for the outside line and ushiro-tenkan for the inside line.

Each presentation also required specific beats to effect the technique.

  1. Outside line forehand (Shibata sensei) is a pak sao catch that feeds the backhand as the irimi-tenkan moves nage behind uke’s hip and shoulder – trapping uke’s elbow against nage’s torso which allows nage to do a forceful (fajin) hit to the elbow with the intercepting hand. (This is RvL, LvR)
  2. Outside line backhand is the kihon presentation – cross arm intercept with a rolling cam to feed uke’s striking arm to nage’s waiting back hand which is already below uke’s elbow. (This is RvR, LvL)
  3. Inside line forehand (modified biu sao) is more familiar as a yokomen interior blend. From shomen, nage will receive the R attack with L (or the L with the R) and use the back hand to immediately attack uke’s center (eye spear). Nage deploys the hands in unison – prayer entry – and then completes ushiro tenkan to redirect uke’s motion 90-degrees. (This is RvL, LvR)
  4. Inside line backhand requires nage to torque his hips into the strike to get the backhand catch, feeding the waiting low line front hand for the fajin hit to the elbow when the uke’s body is 90 degrees to the original line of attack. (This is RvR, LvL)

All these responses are predicated on a mid-arm meet (at the elbow and humerus) – move the distance closer and nage should move up one body joint: elbow becomes neck (kubi shimi)- and move the distance farther and nage should take the more distal joint, uke’s hand (kote gaeshi).

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Photos by Russ Gorman

DISPLAYS OF POWER

“Son, there are assholes everywhere” was my father‘s pithy rejoinder when I complained about some idiot or another – something I did frequently as a teenager. That reminder didn’t mean that assholes are the most common form of people, but that everyone had the capacity to be one. Hence my axiomatic approach – “trust but verify.” I assume people are self-interested but benign and largely unaware, so I am always pleasantly surprised when they prove me wrong. Fortunately, that happens frequently.

Nevertheless, I am warry of intent – hence situational awareness. A recent vignette:

Heidi ordered some replacement panels for our new refrigerator which were being shipped to the house. Freight is usually delivered by the lowest-cost independent carrier and the quality of the workforce is always a question. As the team hefted the panels inside, one of them said “nice house.” A potentially innocent compliment, but something about his tone gave me pause. His colleague was trying to scan the labels as proof of delivery, but his cell service wasn’t working so he needed to remove them for his records. He didn’t have a knife, so I offered mine – my Cold Steel Frenzy, “Wow, big knife,” he exclaimed with genuine surprise.

I wanted to send the message – this nice house is well-defended. Psychological warfare. Psyops. I am willing to give you my knife to use because I know I don’t need it – I have plenty more and better than what I gave you. My trust results from greater skill. Skill banishes fear.

Did I really believe that these delivery men were using their day job to case potential victims? No, but a flicker in my gut said it was a potential. They knew my address, my wife’s cell number and saw the general layout of the first level. So I listened to that flicker and acted upon it by producing a ferocious and effective weapon from my pocket and handing it to them.

My inspiration was Commodore Perry when he gave cannon to Japan to force a trade agreement. The gift was a naked display of power: here, you can have these cannon because we have plenty and we can return with more at any time. Gunboat diplomacy.

However, in trying to find that reference (trust but verify), I cannot corroborate my memory. The Brief Summary of the Perry Expedition to Japan, 1853, doesn’t list “cannon” in the official list of gifts. So perhaps my memory fails me, or that story I recalled from high school was apocryphal. Regardless, the story imparts the lesson: displays of power coerce compliance and act as deterrents.

Raw displays message at a biological level and thus are vulgar in polite society. Too many folks believe displays are no longer necessary because violence is not necessary – believing in our Better Angels. Nietzsche saw to the truth of the matter:

“Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra
Second Part 35, The Sublime Ones

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The Substitute (1996) Tom Berenger sizing up Richard Brooks – both looking over the clues that signal each of them are capable predators. Richard Brooks makes the first overt display, “Power perceived is power achieved.” Yes indeed! Just know there is always a more deadly predator than you.