The Flame

Title: The Flame

Author: Gabriele D'Annunzio

Translator: Dora Knowlton Ranous

Release date: October 31, 2019 [eBook #60601] Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60601

Credits: Produced by Andrés V. Galia, Sherry Kaufman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used has been kept.

Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.

The book cover was modified by the Transcriber and has been put in the public domain.

The Transcriber would like to point out to what are considered a couple of translation inaccuracies from the original Italian language version.

In page 59 the text reads:

"I know of no marsh capable of provoking in human pulses a fever more violent that that which at times steals up to us from the shadows of a silent canal."

While in the Italian edition (Publisher: Milano Fratelli Treves; year: 1900), the text reads:

"Io non conosco palude capace di provocare in polsi umani una febbre più violenta di quella che sentimmo talvolta venire verso di noi all'improvviso dall'ombra di un canale taciturno."

The Transcriber thinks a more adequate translation would be:

"I know of no marsh capable of causing a fever in human pulses more violent than the one we sometimes hear coming towards us suddenly from the shadow of a taciturn channel."

In page 195 the text reads:

"He had astonished even himself by that sudden apparition, that unexpected discovery which illumined the shadows of his mind, because exterior reality, and almost tangible."

While in the Italian edition the text reads:

"Si stupiva egli medessimo di quell'apparizione subitanea, di quella improvvisa scoperta che, illuminandosi nell buio del suo spirito si esternava e quasi diveniva tangibile."

The Transcriber thinks a more adequate translation would be:

"He was surprised himself by that sudden appearance, of that sudden discovery that, illuminating itself in the darkness of his spirit, it became external and almost became tangible."

THE LITERATURE OF ITALY

consists of sixteen volumes, of which this one forms a part. For full particulars of the edition see the Official Certificate bound in the volume entitled

"A HISTORY OF ITALIAN LITERATURE."

Literature of Italy 1265 1907.

Edited by Rossiter Johnson and Dora Knowlton Ranous

With a General Introduction by William Michael Rossetti and Special Introductions by James, Cardinal Gibbons, Charles Eliot Norton, S. G. W. Benjamin, William S, Walsh, Maurice Francis Egan, and others New translations, and former renderings compared and revised

Translators: James C. Brogan, Lord Charlemont, Geoffrey Chaucer, Hartley Coleridge, Florence Kendrick Cooper, Lady Dacre, Theodore Dwight, Edward Fairfax, Ugo Foscolo, G. A. Greene, Sir Thomas Hoby, William Dean Howells, Luigi Monti, Evangeline M. O'Connor, Thomas Okey, Dora Knowlton Ranous, Thomas Roscoe, William Stewart Rose, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, John Addington Symonds, William S. Walsh, William Wordsworth, Sir Thomas Wyatt

THE FLAME

(IL FUOCO)

BY

GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO

TRANSLATED BY DORA KNOWLTON RANOUS

.... fa come natura face in foco.

—DANTE

THE NATIONAL ALUMNI

[v]

COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY THE NATIONAL ALUMNI

CONTENTS

[vii]

ILLUSTRATIONS

[viii]

[ix]

INTRODUCTION

Gabriele D'Annunzio, poet, novelist, and dramatist, was born in 1864, on the yacht Irene near Pescara in the Abruzzi, his mother being the Duchess Maria Galesse of Rome. His education was begun in the College of Prato, in Tuscany, and finished in the University of Rome. His mind early showed signs of extraordinary power and brilliant versatility; he studied art and produced very creditable work while a mere lad, and at the age of sixteen he published his first poem, Primo Vere, which attracted flattering attention and caused him to be hailed as an infant prodigy. In 1880 he went to Rome and became a contributor to the Cronaca Bizantina, a magazine of art and literature. He remained in Rome three years, producing in that time Terra vergine ("Virgin Soil"), Canto novo ("New Song"), and Intermezzo di rime ("Intervals of Rhyme"), all of which were received with admiration and amazement, and with not a little criticism for their unconventional boldness of expression.

D'Annunzio left Rome in 1884 and returned to his native hills, where he wrote Il libro delle vergine ("The Book of the Virgins") in 1884; San Pantaleone (1886), and Isottèo Guttadauro. Then, abandoning his revolutionary and realistic though splendid and intoxicating poetry for prose, the young genius next surprised his public with a novel, Giovanni Episcopo, followed by Il Piacere ("The Child of Pleasure"), in 1889. The former is a strong yet repelling story of crude brutalism, told by a victim of relentless fate; the latter is a kind of poem in [x] prose, in which there is something above mere facility of literary touch; he shows the power of the master poet or painter to see the world at a glance, and with a dextrous hand to draw for eyes less keen that world in all its changeful aspects.

His next important novel, Il trionfo della morte ("The Triumph of Death") was produced in 1896. This brought upon him a storm of mingled applause and criticism—admiration for its marvelous beauty of literary expression, condemnation of the realistic study of a degenerate whose sins lead him to suicide. But, with a proud defiance of criticism, with eyes fixed only on his art, he dared after this achievement to write the self-revelatory novel that is known as his masterpiece—Il fuoco ("The Flame"). In this great novel, which may fairly be called unique, we recognize the personification of a renascence of Latin genius. Under the thinnest veil of disguise, the author presents his own figure and that of one of the world's greatest tragic actresses, revealing the most intimate details of their well known friendship. On this picture of the most romantic of love-affairs, in Venice, the most romantic of cities, he has lavished his finest strokes of genius, writing of feminine nature with rare truth and skill, and an exquisite intuition as to the workings of

a woman's mind and the throbbings of her heart.

Besides his poems and novels, D'Annunzio has written several plays, the best known being La Gioconda ("Joy"), La Gloria ("Glory"), La morta città ("The City of the Dead"), and Francesca da Rimini. He is unquestionably the greatest Italian writer of to-day, and few works of Italian fiction appear that do not show something of his influence. A European critic of keen discernment says: "Read his works, all ye men and women for whom life has no secrets and truth has no terror."

D. K. R.

BOOK I THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME

TO TIME AND TO HOPE

Without hope, it is impossible to find the unhoped-for.

—HERACLITUS OF EPHESUS.

He who sings to the god a song of hope shall see his wish accomplished.

—ÆSCHYLUS OF ELEUSIS.

Time is the father of miracles.

—HARIRI DI BASRA.

[1]

CHAPTER I THE BELLS OF SAN MARCO

"Stelio, does not your heart quail a little, for the first time?" inquired La Foscarina, with a fleeting smile, as she touched the hand of the taciturn friend seated beside her. "I see that you are pale and thoughtful. Yet this is a beautiful evening for the triumph of a great poet."

With an all-comprehensive glance, she looked around at all the beauty of this last twilight of September. In the dark wells of her eyes were reflected the circles of light made by the oar as it flashed in the water, which was illuminated by the glittering angels that shone from afar on the campaniles of San Marco and San Giorgio Maggiore.

"As always," she went on, in her sweetest tones, "as always, everything is in your favor. On such an evening as this, what mortal could shut out from his mind the dreams that you may choose to evoke by the magic of your words? Do you not feel already that the multitude is well disposed to receive your revelation?"

Thus, delicately, she flattered her friend; thus she pleased herself by exalting him with continual praise.

"It is impossible to imagine a more magnificent and unique festival than this, to persuade so disdainful a poet as you to come forth from his ivory tower. For [2] you was reserved this rare joy; to communicate for the first time with the people in a sovereign place like the Hall of the Greater Council, from the platform where once the Doge harangued the assembled patricians, with the Paradiso of Tintoretto for a background, and overhead the Gloria of Veronese."

Stelio Effrena looked long and searchingly into her eyes.

"Do you wish to intoxicate me?" he said, with a sudden laugh. "Your words remind me of the soothing cup offered to a man on his way to the scaffold. Ah, well, my friend, it is true: I own that my heart quails a little."

The sound of applause rose from the Traghetto di San Gregorio, echoed through the Grand Canal, reverberating among the porphyry and serpentine discs ornamenting the ancient mansion of the Dario, which now leaned over slightly, like a decrepit courtesan loaded with her jewels.

The royal barge passed.

"There is the one person among your audience whom etiquette demands that you shall crown with some of your flowers of oratory," pursued the charming flatterer, alluding to the Queen. "I believe that, in one of your earlier books, you own to a taste and respect for ceremonials. One of your most extraordinary flights of fancy is that description of a day of Charles the Second, King of Spain."

When the royal barge passed the gondola, the man and the woman saluted it. The Queen, recognizing the [3] poet, the author of Persephone, and the distinguished tragic actress, turned to gaze at them with a movement of instinctive curiosity. She was blonde and rosy, and her face was lighted by her ever-ready smile, as she looked out from the cloud of creamy Buranesi laces clinging around her shoulders. Beside her sat Andriana Duodo, the patroness of Burano, where, on that industrious little island, she cultivated flax, and raised the most marvelous old-fashioned flowers.

"Does it not seem to you that the smiles of those two women are so similar as to be twin-like?" said La Foscarina, gazing at the silvery ripples in the wake of the barge, wherein the double light seemed to prolong its self.

"The Countess has a magnificent and ingenuous soul—one of those rare Venetian spirits that preserve their warmth, as their ancient paintings retain their vivid color," said Stelio, earnestly, as if in gratitude. "I have an absolute devotion for her sensitive hands. They fairly quiver with pleasure when they touch rare lace or rich velvet, lingering over the texture with a grace that seems almost shy of betraying such voluptuous joy in mere touch. One day, when I had accompanied her to the gallery of the Academia, she stopped before the Massacre des Innocents by the first Bonifazio. You recollect, of course, the green robe of the prostrate woman that one of Herod's soldiers is about to kill—a thing impossible to forget! She paused long before it, seeming fairly to radiate from her own person the perfect joy that filled her senses; then she said to me, 'Let us leave this place [4] now, Effrena! Take me away, but I must leave my eyes on that robe—I cannot look at anything more!' Ah, do not smile at her, dear friend! She was perfectly simple

and sincere in saying that: she really did leave her spiritual vision behind her on that bit of canvas which Art, with a touch of color, has made the center of an infinitely pleasurable mystery. Besides, it was really a blind woman that I accompanied there, but I was suddenly seized with reverence for the privileged soul for whom the magic of color had power to abolish for the moment all memory of commonplace life, and to cut off all other worldly communication. What should you call such a state of mind? A filling of life's goblet to the brim, it seems to me. It is exactly what I should like to do to-night, if I were not discouraged."

A new clamor, louder and more prolonged, rose between the two guardian columns of granite, as the royal barge approached the bank of the Piazzetta, now black with the waiting throng. During the slight pause that followed, the movement of the crowd shifted, like the changing of eddies in a current, and all the galleries of the Palace of the Doges were filled with a confused buzzing, like the mysterious murmur within a sea-shell. Suddenly the buzz rose to a shout, rending the clear air and finally dying away in the gathering twilight. The multitude seemed to realize the divinity of that poetic hour, amid those incomparable surroundings; and perhaps, in its acclaim to youthful royalty and beauty, it expressed a vague longing to forget its prosaic existence, [5] and to revel in the gift of eternal poetry with which its storied walls and waters were endowed.

"Do you know, Perdita," Stelio suddenly exclaimed, "of any other place in the world that possesses, like Venice, at certain times, the power to stimulate all the forces of human life by the exaltation of all desires to a feverish intensity? Do you know of any more irresistible temptress?"

She whom he called Perdita did not reply; she bent her head as if from desire to concentrate her thoughts; but through all her being she felt the indefinable thrill always felt at the sound of the voice of her friend when it revealed the vehemence and passionate soul toward which this woman was drawn by a mingling of love and terror that had no limit.

"Peace! Oblivion! Do you find them down there, at the end of that deserted canal, when you go home exhausted and fevered after inhaling the commingled breath of the crowd that you are able to rouse to wild enthusiasm by a single gesture? As for myself, when I float on these dead waters, I feel my vital powers increase with bewildering rapidity; at certain times my brain seems on fire, as if I were in delirium."

"The flame and the power are within yourself, Stelio," said La Foscarina almost humbly, without raising her eyes.

He was silent, absorbed. Poetic imagery and impetuous music took form within his brain, as if by virtue of some magic fecundation; and his spirit reveled in the unexpected delight of that flood of inspiration.

[6]

It was still that hour which, in one of his books, he had called "Titian's hour," because all things glowed with a rich golden light, like the nude figures of that great painter, appearing almost to illumine the sky rather than to receive light from it.

"Perdita," said the poet, who, at the sight of so many things multiplying their beauties around him, was conscious of a kind of intellectual ecstasy, "does it not seem to you that we are following the funeral train of the dead Summer? There she lies in her funereal barge, robed in golden draperies, like a Doge's wife, like a Loredana, a Morosina, or a Soranza of the golden age; and her cortège conducts her toward the Isle of Murano, where some lord of the flames will place her in a coffin of opaline crystal, so that, submerged in the waters of the lagoon, she can, at least, through her transparent eyelids, behold the supple movement of the seaweed, and thus fancy herself enwrapped in the undulating tresses of her own hair, while waiting for the sun of resurrection to dawn."

A spontaneous smile spread over La Foscarina's face, born in her eyes, which glowed as if they really had beheld the vision of the beautiful dead.

"Do you know, Perdita," resumed Stelio, after a moment's pause, during which both gazed at a file of small boats filled with fruit, floating upon the water like great baskets, "do you know anything about a particularly pretty detail in the chronicles of the Doges? The Doge's wife, to meet the expenses of her robes of ceremony, enjoyed a certain percentage of the tax on fruit. Does not [7] this seem delightfully appropriate? The fruits of these isles clothed her in gold and crowned her with pearls! Pomona paying tribute to Arachne! an allegory that Paolo Veronese might well have painted on the dome of the Vestiario. When I conjure up the figure of the noble lady, tall and erect in her high, jeweled buskins, it pleases me to think that something fresh and rustic is connected with the rich folds of her heavy brocade: the tribute of the fruits. What a savor this seems to add to her magnificence! Only fancy, my friend, that these figs and grapes of the new-come Autumn are the price of the golden robe that covers the dead Summer."

"What delightful fancies, Stelio!" said La Foscarina, whose face became young again when she smiled, as a child to whom one shows a picture-book. "Who was it that once called you the Image-maker?"

"Ah—images!" said the poet, his fancy warming. "In Venice, just as one feels everything to a musical rhythm, so he thinks of everything in poetic imagery. They come to us from everywhere, innumerable, diverse, more real and living to our minds than the persons we elbow in these narrow streets. In studying them, we can lose ourselves in the depths of their haunting eyes, and divine, by the curve of their lips, what they would say to us. Some art tyrannical as imperious mistresses, and hold us long beneath the yoke of their power. Others are enfolded in a veil, like timid virgins, or are tightly swaddled, like infants; and only he that knows how to rend their veils can lead them to the perfect life. This morning, when I awakened, my soul was filled with images; [8] it was like a beautiful tree with its branches laden with chrysalides."

He paused, with a laugh.

"If they come forth from their prison to-night," he added, "I am saved; if they do not, I am lost!"

"Lost?" said La Foscarina, gazing earnestly at him, with eyes so full of confidence that his heart went out to her in gratitude. "No, Stelio, you will not lose yourself. You are always sure of yourself; you bear your own destiny in your hands. I think your mother never could have felt any apprehension on your account, even in the most serious circumstances. Is not that true? Pride is the only thing that makes your heart falter."

"Ah, sweet friend, how I love you—how I thank you for saying that!" said the poet frankly, taking her hand. "You continually foster my pride and encourage me to believe that I have already acquired those virtues to which I never cease to aspire. Sometimes you seem to have the power of conferring I know not what divine quality on the things that are born in my soul, and of making them appear adorable in my own eyes. Sometimes, too, you fill me with the awe-struck wonder of the sculptor who, having in the evening borne to the sacred temple the marble gods still warm from his hands—I might say still clinging to the fingers that moulded them—the next day beholds them standing on their pedestals, surrounded by clouds of incense, and seeming to exhale divinity from every pore of the insensate matter from which he fashioned them with his perishable hands. And so, each time that Fortune grants me the favor of [9] being near you, I realize that you are necessary to my life, although, during our long separations, I can live without you, and you without me, despite the fact that

both of us well know what splendors would be born of the perfect union of our lives. Thus, knowing the full value of that which you give me, and, still more, of that which you could give me, I think of you as lost to me; and, by that name which it pleases my fancy to call you, I try to express at the same time this consciousness and this regret."

He interrupted himself, because he felt a quiver of the hand he clasped in his own.