Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are really
glad to have you with us today because we're
opening a file that, honestly, it reads less
like a biography and more like, I don't know,
a fever dream. That's a good way to put it. Right.
It's like a script that was rejected by Hollywood
for being just too unbelievable. Yeah. If you
walked into a studio and pitched a character
who is all at once a world famous poet, a notorious
Casanova, a one -eyed fighter pilot, a war hero,
and then a dictator who... hijacks an entire
city to run it on the principles of music, you'd
be laughed out of the room. Oh, absolutely. They'd
tell you to pick one, maybe two. It sounds like
a composite character, doesn't it? Someone stitched
together from like four or five different historical
figures. But no, we are talking about just one
man. Gabriella D 'Annunzio. Gabriella D 'Annunzio.
Usually when we do these dives, we can sort of
categorize the subject. We can say, okay, today
we're looking at a politician or, you know, we're
analyzing a military strategist. DiNunzio seems
to actively fight against being put in any kind
of box. He doesn't just fight the box. He decorates
it with velvet, sets it on fire, and then flies
an airplane through the smoke. I mean, to really
understand the early 20th century, and I mean
properly understand that weird, dark, energetic
shift that ultimately leads to fascism, you have
to grapple with this man. He had all those titles
too. He did, and they sound like they belong
in a fantasy novel, right? Prince Montenavoso,
the prophet, or il profeta, and the one that
stuck the most, il vatte. Il vatte. It translates
to the poet, but with this added weight, like
the soothsayer or the seer. The prophet. Wow.
That takes a certain level of ego to even accept,
let alone encourage. A level of ego we are going
to become very familiar with. So here's our mission
for this deep dive. We need to connect the dots.
We have to figure out how a man who starts his
career writing this incredibly flowery, decadent
poetry about flowers and pleasure ends up seizing
a city by force, writing a constitution that
claims music is the central law of the state.
arguably inventing the entire visual aesthetic
of fascism before Mussolini even got his boots
on. It is a massive, massive trajectory. And
to get us there, we've combed through a pretty
heavy stack of sources, historical records, biographies,
his own letters, political manifestos, military
accounts. It's a complex puzzle because you have
to look at three very different worlds. Right.
First, there's the high art world of the decadent
movement in the late 1800s. Then the muddy, bloody
reality of the trenches in World War I. And finally,
this bizarre political theater he creates in
the city of Fiume. Fiume is the part I'm really
itching to get to. The whole idea of a poet dictator
running a rogue state is just, it's completely
wild. It's the centerpiece. But we have to build
the foundation first. We have to understand who
this guy was before he decided to become a warlord.
And the enigma starts right at the beginning.
You have to picture a man of just extreme contradictions.
He was capable of writing the most delicate,
sensitive, I mean, stuff that can genuinely make
you weep with its beauty. And yet he possessed
an appetite for violence and risk that would
make a stuntman blush. Extreme sensitivity and
extreme violence. OK, so let's go to the beginning.
Pescara, Italy, 1863. Right. He's born in the
Abruzzo region. His father is a man named Francesco
Paolo Rappagnetta, who is a very wealthy landowner
and the mayor. of the town. Now, I suspect you're
going to bring up the name issue. I have to because
I was going through the notes and this story
just kept popping up. The legend that Denuncio
is a fake name, that he was actually born Gaetano
Rapagnetta and he rebranded himself. Gabriele
D 'Annunzio, because he thought he looked like
the Archangel Gabriel. A very D 'Annunzio -esque
story. It is. But is there any truth to it? Because
let's be honest, Rapagnetta sounds a lot less
heroic than D 'Annunzio. It does. And his enemies
love to use that against him later in life to
sort of mock him as this provincial upstart.
But we can debunk that right now. The records
are crystal clear. His birth certificate says
Gabriele D 'Annunzio. The confusion and the myth,
it actually stems from his father. Ah, okay.
So the father was the one who changed his name.
Exactly. The father was born Francesco Paolo
Rapagnetta. But when he was 13, he was adopted
by a wealthy, childless uncle named Antonio D
'Annunzio. So the father legally took the D 'Annunzio
name decades before Gabriele was even a thought.
So he really was born D 'Annunzio. He didn't
invent the name to sound like an angel, even
though it fit his ego perfectly. It was just
a happy accident of genealogy for him. But even
without a self -invented name, he was clearly
a prodigy. He was sent to a really prestigious
school, the Licio Cicudnini in Prado, and he
published his first volume of poetry, Primovere,
in 1879. And he was. What, 16? 16 years old.
That's just, I mean, most 16 -year -olds are
worrying about acne and geometry. He's out there
publishing poetry collections. And not just publishing
them into the void. He was incredibly savvy even
then. There's a famous story about how he sent
a letter to a newspaper pretending to be a friend,
announcing his own death in a horse riding accident
just to generate buzz for the book. No way. He
faked his own death at 16. He did. And it worked.
People started talking about this tragic young
poet. And then, surprise, he's alive and has
a book for sale. But the real breakthrough came
from a literary critic named Giuseppe Chiarini.
Chiarini read this teenager's work and wrote
a glowing article that hailed him as an enfant
prodigy, a child prodigy. And that review, that
one article, basically launched D 'Annunzio's
career overnight. He knew how to work the press
from day one. So he heads off to Rome to the
Sapienza University in 1881. And this is where
the D 'Annunzio persona really starts to bake,
right? This is where he creates himself. Rome
is where he invents himself. That's the perfect
way to put it. He joins all the fashionable literary
groups. He writes for papers like Chronica Byzantina.
And he adopts this very aristocratic pseudonym,
Duca Minimo, the lowest duke for his journalism.
A bit of false modesty there. Just a bit. But
most importantly, he dives headfirst completely
into the decadent lifestyle. Let's pause and
define decadent here. Because today, when we
say decadent, we're usually talking about a really
rich chocolate cake or, you know, a spa day.
But in late 19th century literature, it meant
something very, very specific. Very different.
Yeah. You have to think of the decadent movement
and the aestheticism that went with it as a rebellion.
It was a rebellion against the naturalism of
the time. Naturalism was hugely popular then.
It was about gritty reality, scientific observation,
writing about the poor, the dirt, the struggle
of daily life. Think Emile Zola. Okay, so naturalism
is a documentary film. And decadence is what?
A perfume commercial directed by a vampire. That's
not far off. Decadence is a fever dream. It's
all about sensation, mysticism, beauty for beauty's
sake. It loves to explore the darker, more sensual,
almost rotting side of human emotion. It's heavily
influenced by French symbolism and British aestheticism.
You know, Oscar Wilde, but maybe a bit darker,
a bit more intense. So Velvet Curtain's heavy
perfume, Moral Ambiguity. All of it. It's art
that doesn't try to teach you a lesson about
society. It just wants to make you feel something
intense, even if that feeling is revulsion or
decay. Perfumed, velvet -draped fever dream.
I like that. It's a good summary. And that is
Denunzio to a T. His first big novel, Il Piacere,
which gets translated as The Child of Pleasure,
came out in 1889 and made him a superstar. Then
you get books like The Triumph of Death and The
Flame of Life. He created a style that was incredibly
complex, filled with archaic words he dug up,
all this sensual imagery. He saw himself as resurrecting
a more glorious, sensuous Italian language. And
somewhere in this period, he discovers Friedrich
Nietzsche, which feels like a pivotal moment.
This is a crucial turning point. Now, whether
he truly, deeply understood Nietzsche's philosophy
or just cherry -picked the parts he liked is,
well, it's a matter of debate among scholars.
But he definitely liked one part. Oh, he latched
onto the concept of the Uberman. The Superman.
Correct. But, and it's an important but, not
a guy in a cape saving cats from trees. The Nietzschean
Übermensch is a being who creates his own morality,
who rises above the common herd of ordinary people
through sheer force of will. D 'Annunzio started
to see himself and his literary characters as
these supermen. You see it clearly in characters
like Stelio Afrena in The Flame of Life. They
are artists. geniuses beings destined to dominate
others through will through aesthetics through
their sheer vitality that is a very dangerous
self -image to cultivate it is because if you
genuinely believe you are a superman and that
the rules of ordinary people like say paying
your bills or being faithful to your wife don't
apply to you you're going to leave a lot of wreckage
in your wake And he did. His life was a trail
of wreckage. He lived like a Renaissance prince,
but without the bank account to back it up. He
was constantly in debt. He bought castles. He
had dozens of greyhounds, customized clothes,
rare art. By 1910, his debts were so catastrophic
that he actually had to flee Italy. Wait, he
pulled a midnight run to France. Just skipped
town on his creditors. He did. He went to Paris
to escape. But because he's D 'Annunzio, he didn't,
you know, hide in some dingy attic. He immediately
became the toast of Parisian society. He's collaborating
with Claude Debussy, one of the most famous composers
in the world, on a musical play called The Martyrdom
of Saint Sebastian. I seem to recall reading
that the church wasn't a particularly big fan
of that one. That is the understatement of the
century. The Holy See was so offended by the
mix of sacred and... frankly, erotic imagery
that they placed all of D 'Annunzia's works on
the index of forbidden books. All of them. Every
single thing he had ever written was officially
banned for Catholics to read. That's almost an
achievement in itself, getting your entire bibliography
banned by the Pope. It's like the ultimate badge
of honor for a bad boy poet. It certainly added
to his mystique as this dangerous, edgy figure.
And he wasn't just writing plays. He worked with
the composer Pietro Moscani on an opera called
Parasina. And here's a detail that just screams
DiNunzio. The libretto, the lyrics he wrote for
the opera, was so long and so dense that they
had to cut an entire act just so the audience
wouldn't, you know, fall asleep or leave before
the end. He was incapable of self -editing. He
loved the sound of his own voice, both on the
page and off. And speaking of love, we really
can't talk about the poet without talking about
the lover. He wasn't just a writer. He was arguably
one of the first modern celebrity tabloid stars.
His private life was public property. His romantic
life was pure performance art. He married a noblewoman,
Maria Hardwin, in 1883, and they had three sons,
but he was never, ever going to be a faithful
husband. That marriage fell apart pretty quickly.
The relationship that really captivated the world
was with Eleonora Deuce. And for anyone listening
who might not know, Deuce wasn't just an actress.
She was the actress of her time. Think Meryl
Streep mixed with a global rock star? She was
an international icon. famous for her naturalistic
style of acting. Their affair lasted from about
1894 to 1910, and it was incredibly passionate,
public, and incredibly toxic. He wrote roles
for her, though, right? He did. He wrote plays
specifically for her, like La Tita Morta and
Francesca da Rimini, which certainly helped her
career. But he also cannibalized their relationship
for his art. What do you mean by cannibalized?
He published the novel Il Fuoco, The Flame of
Life, which is a fictionalized story about a
That is just unbelievably cool. It fits the Superman
theory, though, doesn't it? My art, my genius
is more important than your feelings. People
are just material for the masterpiece that is
my life. And Ducey wasn't the only one. There
was also the Marchesa Luisa Cassati. Oh, what
a character she was. A perfect match for him.
She was an eccentric heiress who famously walked
pet cheetahs on diamond leashes and wore live
snakes as jewelry. Their affair was this turbulent
on -again, off -again thing that lasted for decades.
She was another one of his great muses. So it's
all one big performance. His personal life, his
art, the scandals, it's all part of the Denunzio
brand. Exactly. So up until 1914, this is the
picture we have. A peacock. A brilliant, scandalous
peacock writing flowery books, dating famous
women, running up massive debts, and living in
a cloud of perfume and controversy in France.
If the story stopped there, he'd just be an interesting
footnote in literary history. But then, World
War I breaks out, and the peacock decides he's
actually a hawk. The warrior poet. This transformation
is what truly baffles people and what makes him
so historically significant. When the war starts,
D 'Annunzio returns to Italy. He completely reinvents
himself as the loudest, most passionate voice
for interventionism. He campaigns aggressively
for Italy to abandon its neutrality and join
the war on the side of the triple entente Britain,
France, and Russia. And he's not just giving
speeches from a balcony. He actually signs up
to fight. But he's not some young recruit, is
he? No, he's 52 years old in 1915. He is well
past military age. He's a grandfather, for crying
out loud, but he volunteers. And he refuses to
sit at a desk. He wants to be on the front lines.
He had been fascinated by aviation since 1908.
He had actually flown with Wilbur Wright himself,
so he uses his fame and connections to get himself
commissioned as a fighter pilot. A 52 -year -old
poet becoming a fighter pilot? It just sounds
completely absurd. It was. But here's the thing.
He was genuinely brave. recklessly, suicidally
brave, and he paid the price for it. In 1916,
during a rough landing, he wasn't wearing his
seatbelt properly, some sources say, because
he thought it ruined the line of his custom -tailored
uniform, and he smashed his head against the
machine gun mount. The injury was severe. He
lost the sight in his right eye permanently.
This is what led to that famous period of him
writing in the dark, right? The book Nocturno.
Yes. To save the sight in his remaining eye,
doctors ordered him to lie in total darkness
for months, completely immobile. During that
time, he composed Nocturno, which means nocturne.
He wrote it on thousands of thin strips of paper,
blindly scrawling one line at a time, unable
to see what he was writing. It's this haunting,
fragmented book about pain, sensation, and darkness.
Most people would probably call it a day after
an injury like that. A 50 -something one -eyed
man has earned his retirement from active duty.
Not Denunzio. As soon as he could stand up, he
was back in the cockpit. He learned to fly and
fight with only one eye. And this brings us to
the two exploits that made him an immortal legend
in Italy. The first is the flight over Vienna
in August 1918. I love this story because it
is so uniquely, perfectly Denunzio. Paint the
picture for us. Okay, so he's the commander of
the 87th Fighter Squadron, which they nicknamed
a La Serenissima, a tribute to the old Venetian
Republic. He leads nine planes on this incredibly
dangerous 700 -mile round -trip flight over the
Alps to Vienna, the capital of the enemy Austro
-Hungarian Empire. Now, usually, when you fly
over an enemy capital during a total war, you
drop bombs. You drop bombs. You try to destroy
infrastructure, instill terror. But not him.
D 'Annunzio didn't drop a single explosive. He
dropped paper. Propaganda leaflets. 50 ,000 of
them printed in the green, white, and red of
the Italian flag. Just imagine being a citizen
in Vienna. You hear the air raid sirens. You
hear the engines. You look up at the sky. You
brace for death. And instead, it rained poetry.
It was a psychological masterstroke. The leaflets
basically said, we are here. We could have bombed
you, but we chose not to. We are artists. We
are Italians. Your government can't protect you
from us. It was a profound humiliation for the
Austrian authorities and a massive, massive morale
boost back home in Italy. It was style over substance.
But in a war of grinding attrition, that kind
of style became substance. And then there was
the Baccar mockery. What was that? The Befe di
Bucari. This was a bit earlier, in February 1918.
He participates in this daring naval raid. He
and two other men take three small MAS torpedo
boats right into a heavily fortified Austrian
harbor at Bacar, militarily. It was a complete
failure. A failure. I thought it was a famous
victory. It was a propaganda victory. In military
terms, their torpedoes got stuck in the defensive
nets. They didn't manage to sink any major ships.
But the sheer audacity of it, sailing right into
the enemy's lair. And before they left, they
dropped three sealed bottles into the harbor
with mocking messages for the Austrian Navy.
He turned a tactical failure into another huge
PR win. He really understood the power of the
viral moment a century before the Internet existed.
He was a master of it. And the military just
loaded him with medals, the gold medal of military
value. which is Italy's highest award for bravery.
Multiple silver medals, the Military Order of
Savoy, the French Legion of Honor, the British
Military Cross. The official citations talk about
his youthful courage and audacious persistence.
By the end of the war, he wasn't just a poet
anymore. He was the most famous and decorated
soldier in Italy. So November 1918, the war ends.
D 'Annunzio is a national hero, a living legend,
but peace. peace is boring for a superman and
italy as a nation is angry This is the context
we absolutely need for the next chapter for Fiume.
Italy was on the winning side of the war, but
the Italian people felt cheated. They called
it the Vittoria Mutilata, the mutilated victory.
Why mutilate? They had joined the war because
the Allies in the secret Treaty of London had
promised them huge chunks of territory from the
collapsing Austro -Hungarian Empire. But at the
Paris Peace Conference, President Woodrow Wilson
and the others pushed back. They were all about
national self -determination now and didn't want
to just hand over territories with non -Italian
populations. to Italy. And the flashpoint for
all this anger was the city of Fiume. Correct.
Fiume, which is now Rijeka in modern -day Croatia,
was a multicultural port city. The city center
itself had a majority Italian -speaking population,
but the surrounding suburbs and countryside were
overwhelmingly Croatian. The Allies proposed
handing the city over to the new kingdom of Serbs,
Croats, and Slovenes, which would become Yugoslavia.
And DiNunzio saw this as a betrayal. A profound
betrayal. He saw it as a slap in the face to
the 600 ,000. and Italians who had died in the
war, he wasn't going to let it stand. So what
does a poet warrior aviator do when he's angry
at a peace treaty? He doesn't just write a strongly
worded letter to the editor. No. In September
of 1919, he goes rogue. Completely rogue. He
gathers a force. It starts incredibly small,
about 186 grenadiers, who basically mutiny from
the Italian royal army to follow him. They start
to march from a town called Ronci towards Fiume.
186 men. That's not an army. It's a parade. But
as they march, it snowballs. Soldiers desert
their posts to join his column. Veterans, futurist
artists, adventurers, they all flock to his banner.
By the time he reaches the city gates, he has
a force of about 2 ,500 troops, including the
elite Arditi shock troops. And what about the
allied forces who are occupying the city? The
Americans, the British, the French? They just
left. They were completely taken by surprise.
The Italian general in charge of the allied contingent
came out to confront... Denunzio, and Denunzio
just unbuttoned his coat to reveal all his war
medals and said, then you will have to fire first
on me. And the general backed down. He backed
down. The Allied forces withdrew. They didn't
want to start a shooting war with Italy's greatest
war hero over a city. Denunzio walked in and
took control of Fiume without firing a single
shot. He hijacked a city, an entire city. He
did. He declared it the Italian Regency of Carnaro,
and he gave himself the title of Deuce Leader.
And it's really important to note, this is the
first time we see that title being used in this
modern, charismatic, authoritarian context, years
before Mussolini. Okay, so he's the deuce of
Fiume. He's now running a country. What does
that actually look like? I'm guessing he wasn't
spending his days focused on sanitation policy
and tax codes. It was. It was the wildest political
experiment of the 20th century. It lasted for
about 15 months. The city became a haven for
pirates, artists, rebels, futurists, anarchists,
and... A lot of cocaine users. It was one long
drug -fueled party. But legally, he did try to
create a new order. He co -authored a constitution
called the Charter of Carnaro with a radical
syndicalist named Alceste Ambrose. Syndicalist.
Can you just quickly unpack that for us? Sure.
Syndicalism is a form of revolutionary socialism
where instead of political parties running the
state, society is organized by syndicates, which
are basically trade unions. So the charter set
up a corporatist structure where everyone belonged
to one of nine corporations. based on their job.
One for industrial workers, one for farmers,
one for professionals, and so on. Nine corporations.
But DiDenzio had a little twist, didn't he? He
added his signature flourish. He created a tenth
corporation. The other nine were for, you know,
regular jobs. The tenth corporation had no specific
members. It was reserved for superior human beings.
It was for the heroes, the poets, the prophets,
the supermen, and I quote, the most energetic
and audacious geniuses. So there was a government
department for cool people. Essentially, yes,
a state -sponsored club for Superman. And the
charter famously, bizarrely, declared that music
was the fundamental principle of the state. Music,
not justice, not liberty, not equality. Music.
Music. The idea was that the state should function
with the harmony and passion of a grand symphony.
It was a government based on pure aesthetics.
And his foreign policy was just as chaotic. He
tried to organize an anti -league of nations
for all the oppressed peoples of the world. He
reached out to Irish separatists, Egyptian nationalists,
Indians, anyone who wanted to overthrow the British
or French empires. So he's an ardent Italian
nationalist, but he's also trying to lead a global
anti -colonial revolution. That is incredibly
inconsistent. Consistency was never... the goal.
Excitement was. And this is where we have to
look at the very dark side of this experiment.
Because while Fiume might have seemed like a
poetic state, it was also the laboratory of fascism.
Historians often call D 'Annunzio the John the
Baptist of fascism. Why? What specific things
did he do there that Mussolini later copied?
Almost everything visual. If you close your eyes
and picture a classic fascist rally, you are
picturing something D 'Annunzio invented in Fiume,
the dramatic balcony speech. That was his signature
move. He would stand on a balcony and hold these
dialogues with the crowd below, asking them questions,
getting them to roar back answers in unison.
The Roman salute, the stiff raised arm. D 'Annunzio
brought that back from what he believed was ancient
Roman history, the black shirts. His elite Arditi
shock troops wore black shirts with skull and
crossbones emblems. Mussolini saw how effective
it was and adopted that exact look for his own
squads. The war cry, ea, ea, ea, ea, allah. D
'Annunzio claimed he took that from the warriors
in Homer's Iliad. Mussolini took it directly
from D 'Annunzio. The whole call and response
with the crowd. It was all pioneered in fume.
And there was a specific form of torture that
also began there. The castor oil. Yes. This is
grim, but it's important. Denuncia's men originated
the practice of forcing political dissidents
and opponents to drink massive amounts of castor
oil. It's a powerful, and I mean powerful, laxative.
That sounds almost juvenile. But it was clearly
more than just a prank. It was calculated psychological
humiliation. The point wasn't just to make the
enemy sick. It was to make them soil themselves
in public, to strip them of all dignity. It was
a way of saying you are not a political opponent
to be debated. You are a dirty object to be cleansed.
Mussolini's black shirts use this tactic on a
massive, brutal scale across Italy a few years
later. It's terrifying to think that these things,
which became the hallmarks of a brutal totalitarian
regime, really start. in this so -called city
of art. That's the entire paradox of Di Nunzio.
He saw politics as a form of theater. He wanted
passion, fervor, myth, beauty. Mussolini was
watching from the sidelines, taking careful notes.
He realized that these tools, the balcony, the
chants, the uniforms, the ritualized violence,
were incredibly effective technologies of power.
Di Nunzio created the ritual. Mussolini came
along and built the church. So how did the party
in Fiume end? Did it just collapse under its
own chaotic weight? It ended in fratricide, really.
The Italian government in Rome finally had enough.
In late 1920, Italy signed the Treaty of Rapallo
with Yugoslavia, which officially settled the
border issues and made Fiume a free city, not
part of Italy. D 'Annunzio, in his arrogance,
refused to accept it. He actually declared war
on Italy. He declared war on his own country.
That's a bold move for a guy running one city.
A very, very bad move. In December 1920, during
what became known as the Bloody Christmas, the
Italian navy sailed into the harbor and bombarded
Fiume. An Italian warship fired a shell that
actually hit Di Nunzio's palace while he was
inside. After five days of fighting and dozens
of deaths on both sides, Di Nunzio surrendered.
He drove out of the city, defeated, and the regency
of Carnaro was over. So the great experiment
failed. He gets kicked out. And now we enter
the final and maybe strangest phase of his life.
The relationship with the man who would take
all of his ideas and run with them. Brita Mussolini.
It was a relationship defined by, I think, jealousy,
admiration, and fear. You have to remember, in
1920, 1921, DiNunzio was still much more famous
and revered than Mussolini. He was the first
deuce. Many of the early fascists actually wanted
DiNunzio to lead their movement, not Mussolini.
So D 'Annunzio was a potential rival, a massive
threat. A massive threat. And then a very convenient
event occurred. In August 1922, just a couple
of months before Mussolini's march on Rome, the
event where he seized power at D 'Annunzio fell
out of a window. He fell. You're saying that
with some skepticism. Well, that's the official
story. He fell from a high window at his villa
on Lake Garda. Now, maybe he slipped. He was
known to drink. He used cocaine. He was getting
older. But the timing is just incredibly suspicious.
Many historians, and certainly Denuncio himself
at times, suspected he was pushed by a fascist
agent to get him out of the way. Defenestration
is a very classic way to solve a political problem.
It is. And whether it was an accident or an attempt,
it worked. He was badly injured, a skull fracture,
broken ribs. He was out of commission for months.
By the time he had recovered, Mussolini was the
prime minister of Italy. The moment, his moment
to lead, had passed forever. So Mussolini wins.
But he still has this hugely famous, unpredictable,
and frankly embarrassing war hero sitting around.
How did he handle it? Mussolini was very clever
about it. He had a strategy. He is famously quoted
as saying, when you have a rotten tooth, you
have two possibilities. Either you pull the tooth
or you fill it with gold. And he chose to fill
it with gold. He filled Denuncio with gold. He
showered him with state funds. He financed the
lavish publication of his complete works. He
gave him the title of Prince of Montenavoso in
1924. He paid for the creation of his extravagant
villa. He basically bribed him into a golden
retirement to stay out of politics and keep his
mouth shut. But did Denuncio stay quiet? Or did
the tooth keep aching? For the most part, he
stayed in his golden cage. But he had his moments
of rebellion. His politics were always fluid,
always theatrical. You have to remember, back
in 1897, he'd been elected to parliament as a
man of the far right. And then one day, he just
dramatically walked across the floor of the chamber
to join the far left, the socialists, shouting,
I go towards life. He never really fit into the
rigid discipline mold of the fascist party. And
there's a really surprising twist involving his
feelings about Hitler, right? This is one of
the most fascinating parts of his later life.
You would think the inventor of the fascist salute
would be a big fan of the Nazis. But D 'Annunzio
despised Hitler, absolutely despised him. He
called him a ferocious clown and a horrible painted
pagan. Really? Why the hostility? He was a passionate
Italian nationalist. He viewed the Germans as
the historic enemy of Italy, the barbarians from
the north. He didn't buy into the Nordic racial
theories at all. In 1933 and 1934, he wrote frantic
letters to Mussolini, begging him not to form
an alliance with Hitler. He even wrote a satirical
pamphlet mocking Hitler's mustache and his screeching
voice. That is not the history we usually hear.
We tend to just lump all these guys together.
No, he saw the danger. In 1937, he was old and
frail, but he traveled to a train station in
Verona to meet Mussolini one last time to try
and talk him out of the Axis alliance. He failed,
obviously, but he saw the disaster that was coming.
So let's talk about where he spent all that gold
Mussolini gave him. He retired to this place
he created. called Il Vittoriale degli Italiani.
The Shrine of the Italian People's Victories.
It's in Dardoni Riviera, on the shores of Lake
Garda. And if you think his life was eccentric,
you should see his house. It's a national monument
in Italy now, and it is a complete trip to visit.
What makes it so strange? It's a claustrophobic,
cluttered, mystical labyrinth. It's part military
museum, part library, part temple, part mausoleum.
The rooms are deliberately kept very dark. He
had sensitive eyes, remember? And they're just
crammed with thousands of objects, books, statues,
and relics. But the outside is even crazier.
He has the actual torpedo boat, the MAS -96 from
the Bakar raid, preserved in the gardens. He
kept the boat in his garden. He kept the boat.
He also has the SVA -5 aircraft. He flew over
Vienna, hanging from the ceiling of an auditorium
he built. But the wildest thing, by far, is the
battleship. The prow of the cruiser Puglia. A
battleship. How'd he get a battleship in a garden
on the side of a lake? The Italian Navy donated
the front third of the warship Puglia to him.
He had it dismantled, hauled up the side of a
hill by military engineers using a special railway,
and reassembled in his garden, with the prow
pointing out towards the Adriatic Sea. He used
to go up on the deck and fire the cannons on
special occasions. That is the ultimate dictator
chic, having a literal battleship in your backyard.
It reflects his mind perfectly. It's grand, it's
aggressive, it's theatrical, and it's completely
disconnected from everyday reality. He lived
there as the strained hermit king, surrounded
by relics of his own glory, engaging in bizarre
rituals, using drugs, and writing endlessly.
And that's where he died. Yes. He died of a stroke
in March 1938 right at his desk. Mussolini ordered
a massive state funeral. It was a huge national
event. Probably the biggest sigh of relief Mussolini
ever had. Very likely. The rotten tooth was finally
and permanently gone. And Mussolini was now completely
free to march Italy into the disaster of World
War II without D 'Annunzio, the old prophet,
chirping in his ear. So we've covered the poet,
the lover, the pilot, the dictator, and the hermit.
I mean, it's an exhausting life just to talk
about. But let's bring this home for you listening.
Why does D 'Annunzio still matter today? Why
should we care about a dead Italian poet from
a century ago? I think D 'Annunzio matters because
he unlocked something terrifyingly modern, the
raw power of aesthetics in politics. He proved
that you didn't need a coherent economic plan
or a rational platform to capture the masses.
You needed style. You needed emotion. You needed
a good story and a catchy chant. He turned politics
into a performance art, the ultimate reality
show. Exactly. He showed the world that if you
can capture the imagination of the crowd with
beauty, with myth, with spectacle, they will
follow you anywhere, even into a disastrous war
against their own interests. When we look at
modern politics, when we talk about optics or
controlling the narrative or the atmosphere of
a rally rather than the policy details, all of
that traces a direct line back to Fumé. He was
the ultimate influencer before the word even
existed. He curated his life, his image, and
for a short time, his own country. And he left
a legacy that is just incredibly complicated.
He's a literary giant who revolutionized the
Italian language. He was a war hero of genuine,
undeniable courage. But he was also the architect
of a style of politics, a style of dictatorship
that caused immense suffering across Europe.
He embodied the contradictions of the 20th century,
that violent clash between the old world of aristocracy
and high art and the new world of mass. media,
populism, and violence. It really makes you look
at the leaders we watch on our screens today
differently, doesn't it? How much of what we
see is substance and how much is just? The balcony
speech. The clever chant. The a la... That is
the question DiNunzio forces us to ask every
single day. And I think somewhere he would be
absolutely delighted that we're still talking
about him, still puzzled by him, almost a century
after his death. The show goes on. You definitely
would be. Well, that's our deep dive on Gabriele
DiNunzio, the man who lived a dozen lives and
filled them all with gold, poetry, and castor
oil. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next
time.