Daily Chronicle.—'The little effects of landscape are skilfully touched in and harmonised with the emotion of the moment. The incidental pictures of peasant life are most interesting, and the terrible pandemonium at the shrine of Casalbordino is described with Zolaesque vigour.’
Scotsman.—'The imaginative and penetrative force, the eloquence and the artistic skill, are beyond question.’
Westminster Gazette.—'For a vivid and searching description of the Italian peasant on his religious side, written with knowledge and understanding, these pages could hardly be surpassed. We see their Paganism, and their poverty, and their squalor, yet also that imaginative temper which lends a certain dignity to their existence. The narrative is remorseless ... yet it is rich and full of atmosphere. M. D’Annunzio has a tender eye for natural detail; the landscape of Italy, its flowers and trees, kindle him to genuine poetry. We are left at the close of his story with a feeling that something like genius is at work. This book is one which will not yield to any simple test. It is a work of singular power, which cannot be ignored, left unread when once started, or easily banished from the mind when read.’
The Morning Post.—'It compels attention for its intense and minute “realism” in the presentation of the relations of the man and the woman, and equal intensity and minuteness in the description of things in general.’
THE CHILD OF PLEASURE
Uniform with this Volume.
Literature.—'For the work of a man of twenty-five, this book is nothing less than marvellous. There is no stumbling or hesitation in it. The command of language, the confidence of thought, the knowledge of character and sensation, displayed by D’Annunzio, at an age when the majority of novelists and poets have been groping in the dark for style and substance, are ever awe-inspiring. D’Annunzio began his career as a writer of verse; his prose is written with the delight in language, the love of words, of a poet.’
Manchester Guardian.—'Wonderfully absorbing, for it is written with a strange psychological intelligence, it is full of vivid descriptions, vehement narrative, and contains pages of rare beauty in which an ideal language really evokes the moods of the soul that it interprets. There is in the novel some lovely verse which has been rendered with rare felicity by Mr. Symons.’
Daily Graphic.—'The wonderful beauty of the descriptions, the wealth of colour, and most of all the realisation of a certain emotional pleasure which the contemplation of the beautiful produces in some natures, this is all so finely given, that if only as a study of human character the work would be interesting. But the greatest merit of the book is the poetic beauty and richness of the language, which makes it a glowing poem in prose.’
THE VICTIM