Impressions: The setting for the most part is the heart of Rome, essentially the area that surrounds Piazza di Spagna. The story traces the relationship between a young Roman aristocrat and two rich young ladies. The novel was written in the summer and fall of 1888, and it is therefore only fair to think that the centre of Rome as described in the novel is the Rome of d’Annunzio’s day, with its streets semideserted or at most walked-on by the occasional patrician man or woman. The young man, Andrea, is, by all appearances, handsome, refined, and cultured. The young women, Elena and Maria, are also both beautiful and at least outwardly refined. Elena is much sought after by the young patricians of the city, while Maria, the wife of a Guatemalan minister and mother of a six-year old girl, is, at least initially, a devoted wife and mother. Andrea is attracted to both. He seduces the first in the early part of the novel, and much of the rest of te novel is given to Andrea’s attempt to seduce the second one.
Andrea succeeds in seducing both women, though he eventually ends up by losing both of them. It becomes clear, in the course of the story, that Andrea has a high level of refinement: he is a poet, he is an artist, he is at home in the world of music, in other words he is thoroughly accomplished; and it is through this accomplished exterior that he proves irresistible to Maria. His outward accomplishment, though, is not matched by his complete lack of moral principles; and in the end he is doomed by his inner corruption.
It’s natural to ask, I suppose, if there is anything in the novel that the author wants us to identify with, or that indeed he himself identifies with. Andrea is innerly corrupt, so it’s unlikely that the author wants us to identify with him. Elena, it turns out, is, if anything, worse, her husband, or lover, being an avid collector of pornographical works, which she herself, we are given to understand, is also drawn to. So it’s unlikely that d’Annunzio wants us to feel any sympathy for these characters. And Maria? She is more of a puzzle. She too falls for Andrea and in the end becomes an adultress. But she resists, she resists for a long time before falling a helpless victim of Andrea’s charm. So maybe this is where we find the key to the novel. Its focus is Rome and all its irresistible charms; but its charms are are also fatal.
In the end the novel reminds us a bit of the recent movie La Grande Bellezza; it too shows us a Rome that at the same time that it is full of charms it is also decadent and corrupt.
I will add this: that D’Annunzio’s novel is a mirror into the ruling class of Rome, and therefore Italy. The other classes—especially the working class—are ignored completely. Should we also, then, see it as a mirror of today’s ruling Italian society?
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