ABSTRACT
In this sentence, d'Annunzio reflects on his own interior processes, using several of the keywords that he endowed with special meaning: instinct, awareness, power. Self-obsessed to an extreme, d'Annunzio constantly reflected on his own creativity and his own development, though always with insistence on a series of factors upon which he based both his public and private lives. Those factors include a belief in his own strength, physical, sexual and psychological, a belief in the superiority of his lineage and his mind and a belief in his special role both as artist and as Italian patriot. D'Annunzio developed his own particular version of the Superman, modelled upon himself, and no study of any of his works can fail to take into account the deliberate process of self-dramatization that went on throughout his life. His last home, the Vittoriale on the shores of Lake Garda, is an extraordinary monument to that life. There is not a single room that is not crowded with objects, all endowed with a particular symbolic significance, from the dead tortoise on the dining room table, a reminder to guests of the consequences of over-indulgence, to the coffin on rockers in which he sometimes slept, a simultaneous symbol of life as an interlude between infanthood and death.
