Will of a Poet

A cross between poet, pirate and posturer is Gabriele d'Annunzio, snatcher of Fiume for Italy, first in the romantic hearts of millions of his countrymen. Last week, having penned such a last will and testament as only he could write, he could not resist the temptation to let Italians read it now. After briefly, dramatically bequeathing The Place of Victory (his estate on Lake Garda) to the nation, the will rambles on:

". . . In the meantime I live and work and make music within the solitude of the Vittoriale, that I have donated. . . . Every room that I have ever carefully arranged, every object that I have ever chosen and made mine . . . has always been for me a means of self-expression, a medium of spiritual revelation, like one of my poems or my dreams, like any one of my acts, military or political. . . .

"Therefore is it that I venture to offer to the Italian people all that remains to me and all that from this date I may acquire to increase my inheritance. I, who once sang idly of ancient palaces and sumptuous villas; I have come to close my life in science in this peasant's house, not so much to humble myself as to test my own powers of creation and transfiguration."

From what was a "peasant's house" d'Annunzio created an exotic mansion and a shrine to genius (his). Its courtyard is the Piazza di Sospiri ("Palace of Sighs") because so many have waited there whom he has refused to see. The only entrance to his garden is too narrow for a fat man to pass, but the slender poet slips through easily. As a garden ornament the Italian Government erected at huge expense the entire forepart and bridge of the battleship Puglia, complete with searchlights and a working gun turret. Here Signore d'Annunzio fires eccentric salutes when not busy writing verses on small slips of paper bound like a check book. Inside the house every gamut of furnishing is run from monkish asceticism to regal luxury. Describing his amazing do main the will of Poet d'Annunzio continues:

"My love of Italy, my worship of memories, my aspirations toward heroism, my presentiment of my country's future -- they are all revealed here in every line, in every note of color. Here, too, are my books, not kept to collect dust, but as living entities, and perhaps no solitary student has ever had so many. As death will give my body to my beloved Italy, so let me be permitted to preserve the best of my life in this offering to Italy.

"I have founded an open-air theatre. I have organized schools and workshops to renew the Italian traditions of the minor arts. I beat on iron, I blow glass, I engrave hard stones, I print with my wood blocks, I color stuffs, I carve bone and boxwood, I interpret the recipes of Caterina Sforza and I distill perfumery. And I beg the head of the government of Italy to accept my offering whole and entire, and to declare it to be irrevocable and inalienable in any way or at any time; witness the living who are alert and the dead who watch."

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