On Decadence

Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Pleasures (1889)

Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Pleasures (1889) concerns and advocates for an extreme aestheticization of life. The book obsesses over the ideas of living one’s life as art, and worshipping at the altar of beauty. The hero, if he can be called that, Andrea Sperelli, is born into wealth and to a cultured father. He’s the “last of the great race”¹, a gentleman of the higher class, with money and without a formal career, with leisure to refine and pursue his aesthetic tastes. The plot is insubstantial, instead relying on description to espouse the aforementioned philosophy. Andrea indulges in a series of highly sexual affairs, buys dozens of roses for his first lover, goes to the best parties, meets princesses and foreigners, overbids on art at auctions, and once, injuries himself by participating (and losing) a dual. He floats about through life, anxiously analyzing every flutter of eyelash, every word and gesture of the woman he falls in love with, and merely having loveless sex with the women he doesn’t deem his type. The novel begins with a scene in which Andrea is anxiously pining for the loves the most, Elena Muti. She is so stunning that everyone who is so privileged as to gaze upon her comments on her beauty, which is that late Victorian ideal of white skin and dark hair. Elena is a young widow between marriages, she leave Andrea to marry an Englishman and Andrea takes on many lovers while still in love with Elena. He eventually falls for the beautiful, virgin-like (with a child) Maria, and Elena comes back to him when she sees him with Maria.

D’Annunzio writes the women as simple archetypes: the cool-hearted seductress/whore (Elena) and the pure, good-hearted Madonna (Maria). He writes them in such a way as to advocate for falling in love and/or lust based on a physical ideals and aesthetics rather than character or personality. There are liquid eyes, milky skin infused with amber tones, hair so lushly black that it almost appears purple. He compares their appearance to several Italian works of art (the book itself has extensive footnotes so as to give the reader insight into the D’Annunzio’s vague artistic references). These flights of fancy that call to mind what Virginia Woolf critiqued in Orlando, in that those descriptions do not capture the beauty or the essence of the subject described. Like Orlando, Andrea appears so wholly sheltered by wealth and privilege as to be somewhat isolated while surrounded by others, yet they both have enormous charisma and good looks (and money) to live outside the rules of conventional society. Their lives are charmed, the authors who create the character in love with them. In the case of D’Annunzio, the character of Andrea was based on D’Annunzio himself.

D’Annunzio was part of the Decadence movement, as were Stéphane Mallarmé, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey, Joris-Karl Huysmans’ À rebours (Against Nature)². I haven’t read the latter, but have greater appreciation for the former three than I do for D’Annunzio. As well, Natalie Barney shared part of D’Annunzio’s philosophy, of having many lovers and more clearly, of living one’s life as a work of art. The other writers mentioned balance decadence and aesthetics with brevity, whereas D’Annunzio’s is (IMO) less effective in his lengthy indulgence. D’Annunzio’s life was similar. He has several torrid love affairs, even leaving a famous actress once she was “too old” for him. He had a close friendship with Romaine Brooks (my favorite)³. She painted his portrait⁴, and he wrote a poem that accompanied the opening of one of her more famous works. One of the incidents in their friendship involved a spurred ex-lover of D’Annunzio’s nearly physically attacking Brooks. When their friendship ended, she wrote him a scathing letter, including saying something about herself being a good person and him not. If Pleasures is any indication, one can discern why…the pursuit of aesthetics over the emotions and connections with interiority of people does not make for good relationships.

1. D’Annunzio was influenced by Nietzsche, and uses the idea of the Übermensch in works that were barely disguised fictions of his real-life love affairs; this means he cast himself as the übermensch, and some of that is present in Pleasures also. Andrea Sperelli and Gabriele D’Annunzio are/were white European, and there are passages in this book about a Japanese lord interacting with white Italians that’s uncomfortable, though not egregiously racist.

2. The three great works of the Decadent movement are Joris-Karl Huysmans’ À rebours (Against Nature) (1884), Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Pleasures (1889), and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).

3. If you’re paying close attention, you might have noticed that I mention Romaine Brooks frequently. Yes, I bought this book because I saw in at City Lights, and I knew D’Annunzio through his friendship with Brooks.

4. See above; I’ve included it here instead of a photo of the book cover…because the Penguin book cover is fairly tasteless. Note how Brook painted his mouth: it’s almost gaping, there’s something tragic and/or soulless about it.