Composed during a period of extended bed rest, Gabriele D'Annunzio's Notturno is a moving prose poem in which imagination, experience, and remembrance intertwine. The somber atmosphere of the poem reflects the circumstances of its creation. With his vision threatened and his eyes completely bandaged, D'Annunzio suffered months of near-total blindness and pain-wracked infirmity in 1921, and yet he managed to write on small strips of paper, each wide enough for a single line. When the poet eventually regained his sight, he put together these strips to create the lyrical and innovative Notturno. In Notturno D'Annunzio forges an original prose that merges aspects of formal poetry and autobiographical narrative. He fuses the darkness and penumbra of the present with the immediate past, haunted by war memories, death, and mourning, and also with the more distant past, revolving mainly around his mother and childhood. In this remarkable translation of the work, Stephen Sartarelli preserves the antiquated style of D'Annunzio's poetic prose and the tension of his rich and difficult harmonies, bringing to contemporary readers the full texture and complexity of a creation forged out of darkness.
Author
Gabriele D'Annunzio, Prince of Montenevoso (12 March 1863 – 1 March 1938), was an Italian poet, playwright, orator, journalist, aristocrat, and army officer during World War I. He occupied a prominent place in Italian literature from 1889 to 1910 and later political life from 1914 to 1924. He was often referred to under the epithets Il Vate ("the Poet") or Il Profeta ("the Prophet"). D'Annunzio combined in his work naturalism, symbolism, and erotic images, becoming the best interpreter of European Decadence in post-Risorgimento Italy. His love affairs, relationship with the world-famous actress Eleanora Duse, heroic adventures during World War I, and his occupation of Fiume in 1919 made him a legend in his own time.
