In many respects D’Annunzio presents a strong affinity to Keats; but to the innocent sensuousness which rejoices in the reproduction of sumptuous beauty, he adds that which purposely ministers to voluptuousness. This might be forgiven as the failing of a youthful and ardent poet, and becomes, indeed, much less obtrusive in his later poetical writings. The misfortune is that nothing seems to be taking its place. Had years brought D’Annunzio “the philosophic mind,” had his third volume compared with its predecessors as Locksley Hall and In Memoriam compare with the Lotus Eaters, he would be at the head, not merely of Italian, but of European poets. His most recent productions, while indicating, as must almost inevitably be the case, an impoverishment of the merely sensuous opulence of his youth, manifest but slight advance in power of thought, in dignity of utterance, in human or national sympathies, in anything that discriminates the noon of poetical power from its morning. The Canto Novo (1881) and the Intermezzo (1883) were a splendid dawn; and L’Isotteo (1885) and La Chimera (1888) revealed further development, not indeed in power of thought, but in objectivity and in mastery of form. Much of all these volumes is mere voluptuous dreaming, but the pictures of nature are marvellously vivid; such pieces as the little unrhymed lyric of twelve lines, O falce di luna calante, reveal the natural magic which is perhaps the rarest endowment of genius; and the melody is such as is only granted to a true poet. In the Poema Paradisiaco, the joy of life is evidently on the wane, and, except in a few pieces of exquisite pathos, such as Consolazione, seems in danger of being replaced, not by a nobler and more serious theory of life, but by the worst kind of pessimism, that born of mere satiety. The most recent poems, the Odi Navali (1893), though patriotic in theme, appear tame and artificial in comparison with earlier work. The epilogue to the Poema Paradisiaco, nevertheless, argues progress in the right direction, and leaves room to hope that D’Annunzio may yet take rank not merely with poets eminent for melody, fancy, and imagination, but with those who have counted among the shaping forces of their time.
The general impression of D’Annunzio’s poetry is one of dazzling splendour and intoxicating perfume. The poet seems determined to leave no sense ungratified, and not to omit a hue, an odour, or a cadence that can by any possibility be pressed into his service. It says much for the genuineness of his poetical faculty that he should actually be able to perform this without falling into extravagance; but although his lavish luxury of phrase and description is kept within the limits of taste, the too uniform splendour satiates and fatigues. Mr. Greene’s translations in his Italian Lyrists convey a very good notion of D’Annunzio’s most usual manner. The following sonnet may serve as a specimen:—
Beneath the white full-moon the murmuring seas
Send songs of love across the pine-tree glade;
The moonlight filtering through the dome-topped trees
Fills with weird light the vast and secret shade;
A fresh salt perfume on the Illyrian breeze
From sea-weeds on the rock is hither swayed,
While my sad heart, worn out and ill at ease,
A wild poetic longing doth invade.
But now more joyous still the love-songs flow
O’er waves of silver sea; from pine to pine
A sweet name echoes in the winds that blow;
And, hovering through yon spaces diamantine,
A phantom fair with silent flight and slow,
Smiles on me from its great-orbed eyes divine.
At the same time D’Annunzio has another style, principally exhibited in his minor lyrics and his ballad romances, where simple but perfect melody is mated with hearty vigour. The contrast between Tennyson’s Palace of Art and his Edward Gray is hardly greater than that between the brilliant poetical landscape just quoted, and this joyous aubade:—
While yet the veil of misty dew
Conceals the morning flush,
(How light of foot the foxes’ crew
Are scampering in the bush!)
On damask bed my Clara spends
In dreams the idle hours:
(Warm the wet meadow’s breath ascends,
And herbs are sweet as flowers.)
Lift, lovely lady all amort,
The glory of your head.
(The hounds are yelling in the court
Enough to wake the dead.)