‘D'Annunzio Gabriele D’Annunzio ‘D'Annunzio ‘The first Duce With a new introduction 6y the author M ickdA . L eim 0 ‘Transaction (PußCisfiers 9few Urunszinc^ (ll.S-%-) and London (11.%) Third printing 2009 New material this edition copyright © 2002 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Originally published as The First Duce: D’Annunzio at Fiume in 1977 by Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, record­ ing, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Transaction Publishers, Rutgers—The State University, 35 Berrue Circle, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854-8042. www.transactionpub.com This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 00-062924 ISBN: 978-0-7658-0742-7 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ledeen, Michael Arthur, 1941- [D’Annunzio a Fiume. English] D’Annunzio : the first duce / Michael A. Leeden; with a new introduction by the author, p. cm. Originally published in English under the title: The first duce. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, cl977. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7658-0742-4 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 1863-1938—Political activity. 2. Rijeka (Croatia)—History—20th century. 3. Italy—History—1915-1922. 4. Fascism—History. I. Title. DG575.A6 L43513 2000 949.72—dc21 00-062924 This book is dedicated to my teachers Alvin Frank Richard Heffner George Mosse Richard Popkin Julius Weinberg Contents Introduction to the Transaction Edition ix Preface xiii 1 The Star 1 2 The Stage 17 3 Setting the Stage 36 4 The Sacred Entrance 58 5 Searching for Definition 78 6 Behind the Stage Door 100 7 The Definition of the Adventure 115 8 The D Annunzian World 139 9 The March toward the Future 161 10 The End of the Fiuman Adventure 187 Note on Archival Sources 205 Notes 207 Index 223 Introduction to the Transaction Edition More than twenty-five years ago, I decided to study Gabriele D'Annunzio's occupation of the beautiful coastal city of Fiume (at the time Rieka, Yugoslavia, now Slovenia) at the end of the First World War, because most leading Italian scholars considered it a major step on the path to Italian Fascism. The Italians' interest in the Fiume adventure was not matched in the English-speaking commu­ nity, and the lack of any extended account in English was a further stimulus to my research. I hoped that by telling D'Annunzio’s story I could help explain Mussolini’s success a few years later. I had only recently begun to study Italian history. After several years as research assistant to George L. Mosse at the University of Wisconsin, working on his early books on the cultural origins of German National Socialism from 1962 to 1965,1 had had my fill of Nazis and, at Mosse’s suggestion, wrote a disserta­ tion1 on Mussolini’s efforts to create a Fascist International. This was followed by several articles on the "war generation," and it seemed a logical and useful step to look at D'Annunzio. I was happy to find that the National Archives in Wash­ ington had considerable raw material on the episode, as did the Italian Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome, and there was a small museum and archive, lovingly preserved by ex-Fiumans on the outskirts of Rome. I was also encour­ aged by Renzo De Felice, the great biographer of Mussolini, who had done considerable work himself and had stimulated further research by some of his students. Some of the research was as D’Annunzian as the subject matter. The corre­ spondence between the Italian Government and D'Annunzio's "Free State" had been carried back and forth by the Masons, and the letters were in their closely- held archives in Palazzo Giustiniani in Rome. In order to gain access to these important documents, it was necessary to enlist the assistance of a distinguished ix jr Introduction to the Transaction Edition Vatican figure, Padre Giovanni Caprile, the official theologian of Paul VI who wa negotiating the “normalization” of relations between the Church of Rome and th Masonic Order. Padre Caprile was a brilliant and charming Neapolitan who, after several months of conversations on everything from D'Annunzio to the devil (Paul VI had recently issued a pronouncement on that subject), convinced the Masons to let me look at the letters. In the midst of my research, I fell in love, married Barbara Schlacter in the ole Spanish chapel underneath the Synagogue of Rome, and honeymooned in Gardone Riviera, where we spent several hours a day in the archives of the Vittoriale, and evenings watching, among other things, the plays in the open air theater D’Annunzio had created there. It was a D’Annunzian experience from beginning to end. I found the Fiume story was far more interesting, and of considerably broader significance, than I had originally expected. Instead of a mere component of the march toward fascism, D’Annunzio’s Fiume was a microcosm of the madness and the magic of the twentieth century, an early laboratory in which the germs of mass politics—of both left and right—were tested on human subjects. D'Annunzio wa a master of the crowd (he was, after all, one of the most successful dramatists of hi day) and he blended religion and politics in a way that had not been seen since the Jacobin Terror during the French Revolution. Jacob Talmon, the author of a magisterial work on “totalitarian democracy,” was well aware of the importance 01 what he termed “D’Annunzio’s operatic dictatorship in Fiume,” calling it “the curtain raiser to graver things.”2 In this sense, Fiume was not only a precursor of fascism’s extraordinarily successful enchantment and manipulation of the masses by infusing religious ritual and symbolism into political events; it was a model for much of the mass politics of the whole century. D’Annunzio was a passionate and charismatic leader who blended religious themes-particularly themes of suffering and martyrdom-into his political essays and oratory, as he had earlier done in his plays and novels, and he turned Fiume into a living political theater. It was too early in the century for the spectacular political rituals to be elegantly recorded on film (although there are some “documentary” films), as Leni Riefenstahl did for Hitler’s Nuremburg Party Day rally some two decades later, but anyone readinj the many first-hand accounts will immediately see that D’Annunzio frilly devel­ oped the art form. Later leaders, during the inter-war years, were quick to imitate D’Annunzio. Mussolini’s dialogues with the crowds in Piazza Venezia were obviously modelet on D’Annunzio’s exchanges from his balcony in Fiume. On the other side of the political spectrum, many of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s campaign speeches belonged to the same species, especially the celebrated Madison Square Garden speech in 1936 which was drenched in Biblical language. That left-wing politi­ cal ritual should borrow from religion should surprise no one; it was, after all, the Jacobins who first introduced it in the celebrations of the Revolution. Even the