DOI Artikel:
Benson, Eugene: Gabriele d'Annunzio: the new poet and his work
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.38746#0297
By Eugene Benson 293
usually confined to clandestine books, and are seldom presented in
literature, seldom invested with art, at least outside France and
Italy. To match it you must go to that native of Roman Gaul,
the satirist of Nero, who alone is rivalled by the later Pagan, feel-
ing responsible not for the story he tells, but for how he tells it,
and determined to tell it in all its details with unmitigated truth.
He shows the utmost unconcern as to what you may think of it.
You have the right to say you do not like his choice of subject.
When Goethe was reproached for the injurious effect his
Werther had upon weak people, he said : u If there are mad
people for whom reading is bad, I can’t help it. The consequences
do not concern me.” The old Pagan felt himself to be like
nature, working inevitably, in no way responsible for results, which
are the individual’s affair. So d’Annunzio writes with the con-
science of an artist, but without the sensitiveness of a moralist ;
certainly without the restraints which regulate and sometimes
silence expression when there is question of a personal experience
which, as Hamlet says, it is not honest to set down in plain phrase.
In Italy the matter is not so considered.
D’Annunzio’s phrase as a prose writer is supple and opulent;
his word is vivid ; his feeling intense ; he is always serious. He
lacks playfulness. Without a sense of humour, seldom or never
with the purpose of a humourist, without the sport of wit, he yet
holds one fascinated by his word as he tells his tale ; while he tells
it he charms one with the music, the splendour, the colour and the
grace of his language, and one wonders at the sustained flow and
harmony of his periods. The secret of his style is that it is ever
informed by an imaginative mind, shaped by a never failing sense
of art. He seems denied lordship over laughter and tears. That
belongs to the poet, and the dramatist, and the story-teller of
simpler aims and humbler sympathies than the aristocratic and
fastidious.
usually confined to clandestine books, and are seldom presented in
literature, seldom invested with art, at least outside France and
Italy. To match it you must go to that native of Roman Gaul,
the satirist of Nero, who alone is rivalled by the later Pagan, feel-
ing responsible not for the story he tells, but for how he tells it,
and determined to tell it in all its details with unmitigated truth.
He shows the utmost unconcern as to what you may think of it.
You have the right to say you do not like his choice of subject.
When Goethe was reproached for the injurious effect his
Werther had upon weak people, he said : u If there are mad
people for whom reading is bad, I can’t help it. The consequences
do not concern me.” The old Pagan felt himself to be like
nature, working inevitably, in no way responsible for results, which
are the individual’s affair. So d’Annunzio writes with the con-
science of an artist, but without the sensitiveness of a moralist ;
certainly without the restraints which regulate and sometimes
silence expression when there is question of a personal experience
which, as Hamlet says, it is not honest to set down in plain phrase.
In Italy the matter is not so considered.
D’Annunzio’s phrase as a prose writer is supple and opulent;
his word is vivid ; his feeling intense ; he is always serious. He
lacks playfulness. Without a sense of humour, seldom or never
with the purpose of a humourist, without the sport of wit, he yet
holds one fascinated by his word as he tells his tale ; while he tells
it he charms one with the music, the splendour, the colour and the
grace of his language, and one wonders at the sustained flow and
harmony of his periods. The secret of his style is that it is ever
informed by an imaginative mind, shaped by a never failing sense
of art. He seems denied lordship over laughter and tears. That
belongs to the poet, and the dramatist, and the story-teller of
simpler aims and humbler sympathies than the aristocratic and
fastidious.