Ii monologue — Shakespeare's treatment of love & marriage, and other essays

In the early eighties d’Annunzio had come to Rome. The little circle of young Carduccians in the capital welcomed the poet’s brilliant disciple, who was soon to outdistance them all in sheer splendour of literary gift. More important, however, than any literary or personal influence--for his hard encasing shell of egoism made him extraordinarily immune to the intrusion either of alien genius or of friendship or love--was the deep impression made upon the young Abruzzan by the splendour, the art glories, and above all the historic import of Rome. ‘The Abruzzi gave d’Annunzio the sense of _race_‘, says an excellent critic, ‘Rome gave him the sense of _history_.’ The magical effect of Rome had hitherto been rendered most vividly in the poetry of other peoples, to whom it was a revelation, or a fulfilment of long aspiration, of the ‘city of their soul,’ in Goethe’s _Roman Elegies_, _Childe Harold_, or _Adonais_. How overwhelming to an imaginative Italian the sight and living presence of Rome could be may be judged from the magnificent _Ode_ of Carducci. The Englishman who is thrilled as he stands in the Forum, or by the mossy bastions of our own Roman wall, may faintly apprehend the temper of a citizen of the ‘Third Italy’ who felt his capital, newly won from the Popes, to be once more in living continuity with the city of Cæsar. Both the nobility and the extravagance of Italian national feeling have their root in this sense of continuity with antique Rome, and this is to be remembered in estimating the perfervid _Italianità_ of d’Annunzio, the most striking example both of the sublime idealism and of the childish extravagance which it is able to inspire.