On “Savage Thought”: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Guido Boggiani, and Italy’s Transatlantic Mediterranean Empire

Abstract

Critics have long debated the degree to which Gabriele D’Annunzio should be viewed as a fascist and an imperialist, a virtual daguerreotype for Mussolini. But D’Annunzio’s evolving investment in an Italian empire-state suggests that we should complicate our understanding of his links to fascism. This essay traces correspondences between “savage thought,” coming out of ethnographic anthropology from Latin America, and D’Annunzio’s “recovery” of Hellenistic Greece at the turn of the century. It examines three important moments in D’Annunzio’s literary career: his tour-de-force novel of scandal, Il piacere (Pleasure, 1889), his famous 1895 yachting tour of the Greek islands, and then the writing of Maia (1903), the first book of his epic poem in praise of empire, Le laudi (1903-1917). By reexaming these texts through a transnational lens, the essay demonstrates the global scope of the author's avant-garde literary project and considers its impact on colonial contexts across the Atlantic.