ABSTRACT
From his early poems to the decadent phase of It piacere, from his lyrical novel It fooco to the autobiographical works of his last years, the Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938) consistently investigated and pushed to the edge a leading idea: that art resists the utilitarian and materialist orientation of modern Western society by functioning as a gift. In D'Annunzio's ongoing meditation on aesthetic activity in terms of gift giving, the gift acquires the status of both a material and an ideational entity. It operates as a tangible ceremonial object that eschews the mercantile logic of the commodity by replacing value with worth. But, more abstractly, it is also the principle of a collective ritual founded upon unconditional expenditure. In other words, the gift becomes the catalyst, if not the metaphor, for a state of exaltation and creativity promoting emotional bonds among individuals, in a disinterested, hence noble, social space.
