Elena Muti in "The Child of Pleasure," Foscarina in "The Flame
of Life," Ippolita in "The Triumph of Death" are superb incarnations of
the one and ever varied problem which troubles the world in which
d'Annunzio lives.
An American critic, Mr. Henry Dwight Sedgwick, once demanded in tones of
passionate scorn that d'Annunzio be tried before a jury of
"English-speaking men," and he called the tale: "Colonel Newcome! Adam
Bede! Bailie Jarvie! Tom Brown! Sam Weller!"--notes of exclamation
included, from which one was to conclude that the creator of Sperelli,
Hermil and Aurispa would slink away discomfited at the very sound of
those names. Yet, on the other hand, can one imagine Andrea and Elena,
Giorgio and Ippolita arguing with our advanced thinkers of the moment:
Is Monogamy Feasible? or Can Men and Women be Friends? D'Annunzio is not
to be approached either in a mood of radical earnestness or of
evangelical fervor. He must be regarded as an artist of sensations, an
Italian of the Renaissance set down in the middle of a drab century. He
began his life by a quest for perfect physical pleasure through all the
senses, and inaugurated its last phase with a gesture of military
courage which was not only a retort to those who, like Croce, had called
him a dilettante, but an earnest of his conviction that he was a great
artist of the lineage which bred men who were simultaneously great men
of action.
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