The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts - UCLA Department ...

DAPAWinter 1987
maker of woodcus, was deeply influenced by Pre-Raphaelite and Decadent
iconography (e.g., BurneJones and Rrvis de Chavannes), as well as by the art of
the Italian Renaissance. From the earlyyears of the twentieth century on, he
worked in close collaboration with D'Annunzio, producing exquisite and justly
famous woodcuts for the covers of D'Annunzio's works (usually published by
Treves in Milan); he also designed wax seals, stamps, and many remarkable ex
libris for the poet and for Il Vittoriale. In the "Foreword" to Il Libro Segreto, an
imaginary character namedAngelo Cocles (that is ro say, a "blind angel," like
D'Annunzio, who shared the name of the Archangel Gabriel and was blind in
one eye) recounts in1935 how he came thirteen years earlier to visit the poet
in his study in order to give him a rare edition of madrigals by Monteverdi in
exchange for the famous woodcut "Dante Adrinats" bl,'Adolfo de Karolis."
"D'Annunzio"
was about to attempt to commit suicide by throwing himself out
of the window of the "Music Room," and before doing so he gave Cocles some
ofthe "hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds ofpages" of
Il Libro Segreto. This book, actually published in 1935, is a fragmentary self
portrait of the poet, as well as a literary testament that D'Annunzio left to future
generations as "a fistful of my ashes." Angelo Cocles describes the "almost four
thousand sheets of paper from Fabriano, with on them the watermark'In order
not to sleep'. . . ;they were all filled with a crowded and nervous script." He
describes, furthermore, the setting of the "\Torkshop":
In the workshop of so much toil one truly seemed to breathe the odor and
the heat of the brain, as he himself used to saywith a smile, hoc opus hic labor
est. all the casts from the Parthenon were arranged along the high and
extensive walls of the room, but without their original raw whiteness, and
skillfullyveiled by an uneven ivory-colored patinawhich he himself had applied....
There were not only the Panathenean equestrian metopes, but
also the most lovely fragments from the east pediment. Imitating the prosody
of the Greek chorus, the raised and reclining statues, and the seated groups
-like that of Demeter and Kore-all would answer to each other as do the
strophe, antistrophe, and epode (I am citing his own words here); nor
were the finest fragments from the west frieze missing: the metope of the
Centaurs and the Lapiths interposed with the uncertain m)'ths of Attica. . .
Mantegna, painter of "Caesar,"
and Michelangelo, maker of the Sistine Chapel
and the Medici Tombs, were also present (Plosell,642-3).
Even though 'Angelo Cocles" does not mention them, in the study are also
found a cast of theNrke of Samotbrace from the Louvre, and a plaster bust of
Eleonora Duse, who is here a veiled divinity figure like Maja or like Beatrice in
Dante's Pttrgatory.D'Annunzio did in fact fall, on August L3,1922, from the
window mentioned by "Cocles," suffering a brain concussion from the impact
with the ground. This suicide attempt maywell have been another of
D'Annunzio's inventions (another "mad flight"), like his youthful prank announcing
his own death; even so, it is very much in the mood of the anguished
and nocturnal Libro Segreto. A book of memories and a self-portrait, Il Libro
Segreto,like Il Vittoriale, accumulates in its hundreds and hundreds of pages
images, anecdotes, and bits and pieces of previous works. It is a labyrinth
which vainly tries to define D'Annunzio's true self, and appears as a permanently
unfinished discourse that only the fiction of the poet's "suicide" can
restore to a precarious and provisional organicity.
In the modifications made to the Priory Maroni above all else added architectural
details to the existing structures. Following D'Annunzio's instructions, he
inserted decorative fragments, cornices, moldings, colonnades, loggias, arches,