ABSTRACT
The new nationalist streak of Italian letters saw Nencioni by and large as irrelevant and did not understand or approve of his passion for foreign literatures. In the post-war period, scholars have paid indirect attention to Nencioni through the publication of his correspondence with D'Annunzio. Focusing on the cultural exchanges between Italy and Europe, he portrays the new Italy inhabited by Nencioni and his friends. As Nardi has rightly pointed out, between Nencioni and his disciple-friends there was a powerful cultural osmosis. Nencioni's friendship with Primoli, albeit also showing examples of mutual cultural exchange, followed the more traditional relationship between the maestro and his aristocratic pupil/patron. Nencioni's aesthetic preoccupations and his guiding principle, beauty, made him a crucial point of reference for Italy's young esteti and Aesthetic dilettanti. Nencioni's writings are certainly less innovative than those of the English and Italian Decadents he so much admired.
