Table Of Content‘D'Annunzio
Gabriele D’Annunzio
‘D'Annunzio
‘The
first
Duce
With a new introduction
6y the author
M ickdA . L eim
0
‘Transaction (PußCisfiers
9few Urunszinc^ (ll.S-%-) and London (11.%)
Third printing 2009
New material this edition copyright © 2002 by Transaction Publishers, New
Brunswick, New Jersey. Originally published as The First Duce: D’Annunzio
at Fiume in 1977 by Johns Hopkins University Press.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, record
ing, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Transaction
Publishers, Rutgers—The State University, 35 Berrue Circle, Piscataway, New
Jersey 08854-8042. www.transactionpub.com
This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National
Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 00-062924
ISBN: 978-0-7658-0742-7
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ledeen, Michael Arthur, 1941-
[D’Annunzio a Fiume. English]
D’Annunzio : the first duce / Michael A. Leeden; with a new introduction
by the author,
p. cm.
Originally published in English under the title: The first duce. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, cl977.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7658-0742-4 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 1863-1938—Political activity. 2. Rijeka
(Croatia)—History—20th century. 3. Italy—History—1915-1922. 4.
Fascism—History. I. Title.
DG575.A6 L43513 2000
949.72—dc21 00-062924
This book is dedicated to my teachers
Alvin Frank
Richard Heffner
George Mosse
Richard Popkin
Julius Weinberg
Contents
Introduction to the Transaction Edition ix
Preface xiii
1 The Star 1
2 The Stage 17
3 Setting the Stage 36
4 The Sacred Entrance 58
5 Searching for Definition 78
6 Behind the Stage Door 100
7 The Definition of the Adventure 115
8 The D Annunzian World 139
9 The March toward the Future 161
10 The End of the Fiuman Adventure 187
Note on Archival Sources 205
Notes 207
Index 223
Introduction to the
Transaction Edition
More than twenty-five years ago, I decided to study Gabriele D'Annunzio's
occupation of the beautiful coastal city of Fiume (at the time Rieka, Yugoslavia,
now Slovenia) at the end of the First World War, because most leading Italian
scholars considered it a major step on the path to Italian Fascism. The Italians'
interest in the Fiume adventure was not matched in the English-speaking commu
nity, and the lack of any extended account in English was a further stimulus to my
research. I hoped that by telling D'Annunzio’s story I could help explain
Mussolini’s success a few years later.
I had only recently begun to study Italian history. After several years as
research assistant to George L. Mosse at the University of Wisconsin, working on
his early books on the cultural origins of German National Socialism from 1962
to 1965,1 had had my fill of Nazis and, at Mosse’s suggestion, wrote a disserta
tion1 on Mussolini’s efforts to create a Fascist International. This was followed
by several articles on the "war generation," and it seemed a logical and useful step
to look at D'Annunzio. I was happy to find that the National Archives in Wash
ington had considerable raw material on the episode, as did the Italian Archivio
Centrale dello Stato in Rome, and there was a small museum and archive,
lovingly preserved by ex-Fiumans on the outskirts of Rome. I was also encour
aged by Renzo De Felice, the great biographer of Mussolini, who had done
considerable work himself and had stimulated further research by some of his
students.
Some of the research was as D’Annunzian as the subject matter. The corre
spondence between the Italian Government and D'Annunzio's "Free State" had
been carried back and forth by the Masons, and the letters were in their closely-
held archives in Palazzo Giustiniani in Rome. In order to gain access to these
important documents, it was necessary to enlist the assistance of a distinguished
ix
jr Introduction to the Transaction Edition
Vatican figure, Padre Giovanni Caprile, the official theologian of Paul VI who wa
negotiating the “normalization” of relations between the Church of Rome and th
Masonic Order. Padre Caprile was a brilliant and charming Neapolitan who, after
several months of conversations on everything from D'Annunzio to the devil
(Paul VI had recently issued a pronouncement on that subject), convinced the
Masons to let me look at the letters.
In the midst of my research, I fell in love, married Barbara Schlacter in the ole
Spanish chapel underneath the Synagogue of Rome, and honeymooned in
Gardone Riviera, where we spent several hours a day in the archives of the
Vittoriale, and evenings watching, among other things, the plays in the open air
theater D’Annunzio had created there.
It was a D’Annunzian experience from beginning to end.
I found the Fiume story was far more interesting, and of considerably broader
significance, than I had originally expected. Instead of a mere component of the
march toward fascism, D’Annunzio’s Fiume was a microcosm of the madness and
the magic of the twentieth century, an early laboratory in which the germs of mass
politics—of both left and right—were tested on human subjects. D'Annunzio wa
a master of the crowd (he was, after all, one of the most successful dramatists of hi
day) and he blended religion and politics in a way that had not been seen since
the Jacobin Terror during the French Revolution. Jacob Talmon, the author of a
magisterial work on “totalitarian democracy,” was well aware of the importance 01
what he termed “D’Annunzio’s operatic dictatorship in Fiume,” calling it “the
curtain raiser to graver things.”2
In this sense, Fiume was not only a precursor of fascism’s extraordinarily
successful enchantment and manipulation of the masses by infusing religious
ritual and symbolism into political events; it was a model for much of the mass
politics of the whole century. D’Annunzio was a passionate and charismatic
leader who blended religious themes-particularly themes of suffering and
martyrdom-into his political essays and oratory, as he had earlier done in his
plays and novels, and he turned Fiume into a living political theater. It was too
early in the century for the spectacular political rituals to be elegantly recorded
on film (although there are some “documentary” films), as Leni Riefenstahl did
for Hitler’s Nuremburg Party Day rally some two decades later, but anyone readinj
the many first-hand accounts will immediately see that D’Annunzio frilly devel
oped the art form.
Later leaders, during the inter-war years, were quick to imitate D’Annunzio.
Mussolini’s dialogues with the crowds in Piazza Venezia were obviously modelet
on D’Annunzio’s exchanges from his balcony in Fiume. On the other side of the
political spectrum, many of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s campaign speeches
belonged to the same species, especially the celebrated Madison Square Garden
speech in 1936 which was drenched in Biblical language. That left-wing politi
cal ritual should borrow from religion should surprise no one; it was, after all, the
Jacobins who first introduced it in the celebrations of the Revolution. Even the
