Pleasure (43 page)

—But what is wrong with you? What is wrong?

She wanted to look him in the eyes and understand that madness; and he hid his face, lost, in her breast, in her neck, in her hair, in the pillows.

Suddenly, she freed herself from his arms, with a terrible expression of horror manifest in her entire body, whiter than the pillows, more disfigured than if she had just leaped from the arms of Death.

That name! That name! She had heard that name!

Great silence emptied her soul. One of those abysses opened up inside her, into which the entire world seems to disappear under the blow of a single thought. She heard nothing else; she heard nothing more. Andrea shouted, begged, despaired in vain.

She did not hear. A kind of instinct guided her movements. She found her clothes and dressed.

Andrea sobbed on the bed, unhinged. He realized that she was leaving the room.

—Maria! Maria!

He listened.

—Maria!

He heard the sound of the door closing.

On the morning of June 20, Monday, at ten o'clock, the public sale began of the soft furnishings and movable fittings that had belonged to His Excellency the plenipotentiary minister of Guatemala.

It was a burning hot morning. Summer was already blazing in Rome. Trams ran up and down along Via Nazionale, constantly, drawn by horses that wore certain strange white hoods as protection against the sun. Long lines of laden carts cluttered the streetcar lines. In the stark light, between the walls plastered with multicolored notices, like leprosy, the blasts of horns mingled with the cracking of whips and the yells of the carters.

Before deciding to cross the threshold of that house, Andrea wandered along the sidewalks at random for a long time, feeling horrible tiredness, tiredness so void and desperate that it almost seemed like a physical need to die.

When he saw a porter come out of the door onto the street with a piece of furniture on his shoulder, he made up his mind. He entered the house and climbed the stairs rapidly. He heard, from the landing, the voice of the auctioneer.

—Do I hear . . . ?

The auction table was in the largest room, in the room containing the Buddha. All around, buyers were thronging. For the most part they were traders, secondhand furniture sellers, junk dealers: common people. As there were no connoisseurs around in summer, the dealers were rushing there, sure of acquiring precious objects at low prices. A bad odor spread through the warm air, emanating from those impure men.

—Do I hear . . . ?

Andrea was suffocating. He wandered through the other rooms, where only the wallpaper remained on the walls, and the curtains and the door curtains, since almost all the furnishings were gathered in the auction area. Although he was walking on a thick carpet, he heard his footsteps resound, distinctly, as if the vaulted ceilings were full of echoes.

He found a semicircular room. The walls were a deep red, scattered with sparkling flashes of gold. It resembled a temple or a sepulcher; it looked like a sad, mystical shelter, made for praying in and dying in. From the open windows the stark light entered, like a violation; the trees of Villa Aldobrandini could be seen.

He returned to the room where the auctioneer was. He again smelled the stench. Turning, he saw the Princess of Ferentino in a corner with Barbarella Viti. He approached them and said hello.

—Well, Ugenta, have you bought anything?

—Nothing.

—Nothing? I thought, rather, that you had bought everything.

—Whatever for?

—It was a . . . romantic idea I had.

The princess began to laugh. Barbarella imitated her.

—We're going. It's not possible to remain here, with this scent. Good-bye, Ugenta. Console yourself.

Andrea approached the table. The auctioneer recognized him.

—Would the Lord Count like something?

He answered:

—I'll see.

The sale was proceeding rapidly. He looked at the faces of the dealers around him; felt himself being touched by those elbows, those feet; he felt those breaths skimming him. Nausea choked his throat.

—Going once, twice, third and final call: SOLD!

The thud of the gavel resounded in his heart and gave him a painful jolt at his temples.

He bought the Buddha, a large armoire, some majolica, some fabrics. At a certain point he heard the sound of voices and feminine laughter, a rustle of feminine dresses, near the door. He turned. He saw Galeazzo Secìnaro entering with the Marchioness of Mount Edgcumbe, and then the Countess of Lùcoli, Gino Bommìnaco, Giovanella Daddi. Those gentlemen and ladies were talking and laughing loudly.

He tried to hide, to make himself smaller, amid the crowd that besieged the table. He trembled at the thought of being discovered. The voices and the laughter reached him above the sweating foreheads of the crowd in the suffocating heat. Luckily, after a few minutes, the cheerful visitors departed.

He opened up a passage for himself among the crowded bodies, overcoming his revulsion, making an enormous effort not to faint. In his mouth he had the sensation of an indescribably bitter and nauseating taste, which was surging up inside him from the dissolving of his heart. It seemed that he was leaving that place infected with obscure and immedicable ills, from the contact with all those strangers. Physical torture and moral anguish mingled in him.

Once he was in the street in the harsh light, he felt a slight dizziness. With an uncertain step he began to seek a carriage. He found one in Piazza del Quirinale and had himself taken to Palazzo Zuccari.

But toward evening, an invincible craving invaded him to see those uninhabited rooms once more. Once again, he climbed those stairs, and entered under the pretext of asking whether the porters had taken the furniture to his building.

A man replied:

—They're taking them right now. You must have seen them on your way here, Lord Count.

Almost nothing remained in the rooms. From the curtainless windows, the blushing splendor of sunset entered; all the clamor of the street below entered. Some men were still detaching some wall-hangings from the walls, uncovering the vulgar flowered wallpaper on which holes and tears were visible here and there. Others were removing the carpets and rolling them up, generating a dense cloud of dust that glinted in the rays of sunlight. One of them sang a lewd song under his breath. Dust mixed with pipe smoke floated up to the ceiling.

Andrea fled.

In Piazza del Quirinale, before the royal palace, a brass band was playing. The ample waves of that metallic music spread through the burning air. The obelisk, the fountain, the colossi, towered in the red glow and took on a purple tint as if penetrated by an impalpable flame. Immense Rome, dominated by a battle of clouds, seemed to illuminate the sky.

Andrea fled, almost out of his mind. He turned into Via del Quirinale, walked down past the Four Fountains, brushed past the gates of Palazzo Barberini, which cast glints of light from its windowpanes, and finally reached Palazzo Zuccari.

The porters were unloading the furniture from a cart, shouting. Some of them were already carrying the armoire up the stairs, with difficulty.

He entered the building. As the armoire took up the entire breadth of the staircase, he could not overtake it. Very slowly, he followed it, step by step, into his house.

FRANCAVILLA AL MARE: JULY–DECEMBER 1888.

With infinite thanks and appreciation to:

George C. Schoolfield, Yale University, for his advice, encouragement to undertake the endeavor of translating this novel in its entirety, and invaluable support.

John Siciliano, Taylor Sperry, and the production editors of Penguin Classics, for their enthusiasm, assistance, and dedication to ensuring the quality of this translation and its notes.

David Wardle, University of Cape Town, for his enormous patience and great help in providing translations, interpretations, and derivations of phrases in Latin and Greek.

Giuseppe (Pino) D'Errico, of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, for his unflagging readiness to assist with bibliographical queries, information on Rome, and other matters.

John Woodhouse, Oxford University, for providing me with a copy of his invaluable article “La fortuna inglese del
Piacere
(1897–1920).”

Giuseppe Stellardi, Oxford University, for kindly contacting John Woodhouse and forwarding said article to me, as well as advice at the outset of this project.

Alexander d'Angelo, University of Cape Town Humanities Library, for kind assistance in tracing arcane terms.

The late Nelia Saxby, University of Cape Town, for unraveling some syntactical and other mysteries.

Matthew Shelton, University of Cape Town, for his hugely appreciated assistance with Latin and Greek.

Misha Galoukhin, University of Cape Town Fencing Club, for his kind assistance with fencing terminology.

Brigitte Selzer, Gunther Pakendorf, and Annette Behrensmeyer, University of Cape Town, for their kind assistance with German.

Jean-Louis Cornille, University of Cape Town, for his kind assistance with French.

Ainoa Polo, University of Cape Town, for her kind assistance with Spanish.

Davide Shamà for assistance with the complexities of Italian noble titles.

Michela Rizzieri of the Fondazione “Il Vittoriale degli Italiani,” D'Annunzio's curators, for reassurance regarding copyright issues.

The “Eros from Sappho to Cyber” class of 2010, University of Cape Town, for their encouraging reaction to the first draft of this translation, which was used as the study text in the Decadent literature module of the course, and for their welcome and valuable feedback about aspects of the text.

My mother, Carole-Ann Gochin, for help with the English language, which sometimes eludes me.

My sister, Jeni Ruth Gochin, for her infinitely valued and invaluable assistance.

My daughter, Isabel Raffaelli, for her long-suffering patience with my absent mind and her fledgling yet commendable efforts at translation from Italian into English.

My husband, Sandro Raffaelli, for his bountiful assistance in reading aloud to me, for help in deciphering D'Annunzio's often cryptic meaning, and for his eternal loving support, my appreciation for which can never be expressed sufficiently.

FOREWORD

1
. I must at the outset acknowledge my indebtedness to George Schoolfield and John Woodhouse, whose work on D'Annunzio's reception in Anglo-Saxon countries, particularly in connection with the effect of the bowdlerization of his novels, catalyzed and informed this project.

2
. John Woodhouse,
Gabriele D'Annunzio: Defiant Archangel
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 83.

3
. George Schoolfield,
A Baedeker of Decadence: Charting a Literary Fashion 1884–1927
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 31.

4
. Ibid., pp. 30–31.

5
. Woodhouse,
Defiant Archangel,
p. 85.

6
. Woodhouse,
“La fortuna inglese del
Piacere,”
Il Piacere, Atti del XII Convegno,
a cura di Edoardo Tiboni (Pescara: Centro Studi Dannunziani,
1989),
p. 231.

7
. See, for instance, Clarence R. Decker, “Zola's Literary Reputation in England,”
PMLA
49, no. 4 (Dec. 1934), pp. 1140–53; Raymond S. Nelson, “Mrs. Warren's Profession and English Prostitution,”
Journal of Modern
Literature
2, no. 3 (1971/1972), pp. 357–66. There is a good bibliography concerning this censorship in Anthony Cummins, “Émile Zola's Cheap English Dress: The Vizetelly Translations, Late-Victorian Print Culture, and the Crisis of Literary Value,”
Review of English Studies
60, no. 243 (2009), pp. 108–32.

8
. Woodhouse,
“La fortuna inglese del
Piacere,”
p. 233.

9
. Woodhouse,
Defiant Archangel,
p. 85.

10
. Ibid.

11
.
Comstock:
Anthony Comstock was a much-feared anti-obscenity campaigner who suppressed many authors' works for decades in the United States in the early 1900s, both literary and other.

12
. G. B. Rose, “Gabriele D'Annunzio,”
The Sewanee Review
5, no. 2 (Apr. 1897), p. 148.

13
. Ibid., p. 150.

14
. Woodhouse,
Defiant Archangel,
p. 86.

15
. G. B. Rose, “Gabriele D'Annunzio,” p. 152.

TO FRANCESCO PAOLO MICHETTI

1
.
ex-voto:
An offering to show gratitude or dedication.

2
.
Paolo Veronese:
Italian sixteenth-century artist.

3
.
Ajax:
Mythological Greek hero; symbol of constancy and perseverance.

4
.
pastorals:
Possible reference to musical compositions commonly played during the Christmas season, evoking rustic life.

5
.
semihiante labello:
“With lips half open.” From Catullus's
Carmina,
poem 61 (Latin).

6
.
January 9, 1889:
In the original Italian, D'Annunzio signs with
“secondo Carmine 1889,”
which signifies “the second Wednesday” of 1889—namely, January 9, 1889. “Carmine” was the name given to Wednesday by Abruzzese peasants. Wednesday was the day dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and specifically to the Madonna del Carmine.

FIRST BOOK, CHAPTER I

1
.
blue-black cobalt:
Zàffara
in D'Annunzio's original text, or rather
zaffera,
also called Florentine blue, was an Asian blue-black cobalt pigment that came into use in Florence in the 1500s.

2
.
buen retiro:
“
Pleasant retreat” (Spanish).

3
.
the Pincian Hill:
Monte Pincio, located in the northeast section of Rome.

4
.
ever-moving light
:
From Percy Bysshe Shelley's “The Witch of Atlas” (1820), stanza XXVII, lines 259–61: “Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is / Each flame of it is as a precious stone / Dissolved in ever-moving light.”

5
.
Carmelite fabric:
Likely to be brown wool used to make the habits of Carmelite monks.

6
.
Chimeras:
In Greek mythology, the Chimera was a fire-breathing monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent, slain by Bellerophon.

7
.
Nelly O'Brien:
Portrait by Joshua Reynolds, c. 1763. Nelly O'Brien was a courtesan, the mistress of the third Viscount Bolingbroke.

8
.
From Dreamland—A stranger hither:
From the poem “To a Dragon Fly” by A. Mary F. Robinson (1878): “You hail from Dream-land, Dragon-fly? / A stranger hither? so am I, / And (sooth to say) I wonder why / We either one of us came.” In English in D'Annunzio's original text.

9
.
Mona Amorrosisca or for a Laldomine:
Names of beautiful ladies found in Agnolo Firenzuola's
Dialogo delle bellezze delle donne
(Dialogue on the Beauties of Women, 1541) (Mona Amorrosisca); and in his
Ragionamenti,
“Novella terza,” 1548 (Laldomine).

10
.
rose:
The recurring references to roses in this novel are significant. Roses have many meanings, but with regard to this novel there are two that are most significant: that of symbolizing the female sex organs, and that of being associated with the Virgin Mary. In this novel, which frequently juxtaposes the sacred and the profane, the rose could be seen to be the most representative symbol of this juxtaposition.

11
.
A stranger hither:
Words in italics here are in English in the original Italian text.

FIRST BOOK, CHAPTER II

1
.
Simonetta:
Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci (c. 1453–1476) was reputed to be the most beautiful woman in Florence. She was the mistress of Giuliano de' Medici, and was possibly the model for Venus in Botticelli's
The Birth of Venus
.

2
.
Beggar King:
The “Beggar King” (Re Lazzarone) was Ferdinand IV of Naples, later becoming Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies.

3
.
“Habere, non haberi”:
“I possess, but I am not possessed” (Latin).

4
.
springtime of the dead:
In Italy (and other Latinate cultures), November is considered the “month of the dead”—the
mese dei morti,
in which each family honors the memory of its dead relatives, especially on November 2 (the Commemoration of the Dead), when it is a tradition to visit the cemeteries where one's loved ones are buried. This day follows November 1, All Saints' Day.

5
.
“I know you love me not”:
In English in original text.

6
.
daimyo:
Japanese feudal lord (Japanese).

7
.
gibus:
Opera hat (French).

8
.
Sanzio:
The surname of the artist Raphael (1483–1520) of Urbino.

9
.
domus aurea:
“Golden house,” i.e., Nero's palace in Rome (Latin).

10
.
luigi:
Ancient French coin of gold, first minted in 1640 under Luigi (Louis) XIII. Also has generic sense of coins, money (Italian).

11
.
All the perfumes:
In English in the original text.

12
.
myrtle:
Latin poets who sang of love were crowned with leaves of myrtle; hence in Italian poetic language, the term “mirto” became a metaphor for love. The laurel, especially the laurel wreath or crown, is the symbol of the poet, of victory, of wisdom.

13
.
Ut:
Ut was, in Italy until the 1600s, the name given to the musical note that in English is called C. It is now called Do (as in Do, Re, Me, Fa, So, La, Si). The names of the musical notes originate from the hymn
“Ut queant laxis,”
dedicated to Saint John the Baptist
.
Perhaps D'Annunzio derived his sense of the note C denoting love from Christian Schubart's
Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst
(1806), which ascribed characteristics and emotions to each key: C minor, for instance, is associated with declarations of love, love-sickness and unhappy love.

14
.
Je crains ce que j'espère:
“I fear that which I hope for” (French).

15
.
La cote:
“The odds.” Refers to the custom of bookmakers of shouting out the odds they are willing to offer for bets (French).

16
.
Lucrezia Crivelli:
In a portrait by Leonardo called
La Belle Ferronnière,
Lucrezia Crivelli was a mistress of Ludovico Sforza and bore a son by him.

17
.
netsuke:
In Japanese custom, a small, intricately carved toggle used to secure a tobacco pouch or other container to a sash (
obi
); often of great value.

18
.
“Ich kann's nicht fassen, nicht glauben”:
“I cannot grasp this, cannot believe it” (German).

FIRST BOOK, CHAPTER III

1
.
“Maria Leczinska”:
Marie Leszczyńska was a Polish princess who married King Louis XV of France during the 1700s.

2
.
RUIT HORA
:
Literally, “the hour has fled” (Latin).

3
.
TIBI, HIPPOLYTA
:
“To you, Hippolyta” (Latin; Ippolita is pronounced “
IP
PO
LITA
”).

4
.
Andrea del Verrocchio:
(1435–1488), Italian Renaissance sculptor and painter.

5
.
pao rosa:
Rosewood oil used in perfumes, from the Amazonian Pao Rosa tree.

6
.
corsage:
The bodice of a dress.

7
.
Alma-Tadema:
“The paintings of Lawrence Alma-Tadema [1865–1940] had a real impact on the young D'Annunzio, stimulating his interest in English art, and Pre-Raphaelitism in particular. Above all, they provided him with a feminine type that he was later to develop, under the combined influence of D.G. Rossetti, into his own feminine icon.” Giuliana Pieri, “D'Annunzio and Alma-Tadema: Between Pre-Raphaelitism and Aestheticism,”
Modern Language Review
96, no. 2 (April 2001), pp. 361–69.

8
.
She came forward:
The concordances with Dante's sonnets from
Vita nuova,
“Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore” (In her eyes my lady bears Love) and “Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare” (So gentle and so pure does my Lady appear) are notable in this description of Elena, which could be seen to be paralleled with the passage of Beatrice through crowds of people: the passage of the lady arousing intense interest in all those she passes; the description of the mouth, the eyes, the pallor, the thoughtfulness she inspires in men who see her pass; the effect on each person's heart. The greatest difference is that where Beatrice inspires uplifting and sanctifying feelings of humility and sweetness in those who observe her, Elena Muti arouses feelings of disquiet, regret, and sensual agitation, as each man longs for her to become his lover.

9
.
“
Ludovic, ne faites plus ça en dansant; je frissonne toute”
:
“Ludovico, don't do that while dancing; I quiver all over” (French).

10
.
life of my life:
Yet another example of the mingling of sacred and profane, as “life of my life” is found commonly in various prayers to Jesus.

FIRST BOOK, CHAPTER IV

1
.
velarium:
In ancient Rome, a large protective awning extended over an amphitheater against rain or sun.

2
.
Bonne chance:
“Good luck” (French).

3
.
the rose petal:
This expression, a variation of the Italian saying “the drop that made the pot overflow,” is the equivalent of the English “the straw that broke the camel's back.”

4
.
that verb:
The verb “to like” in Italian is
piacere
—here D'Annunzio is referring to the seductiveness of the lips opening to say “
piace
.”

5
.
Goethe:
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832). Prolific German poet, playwright, novelist, and artist.

6
.
“La
ß
dich”:
Goethe's
“Laß dich, Geliebte,”
III, Erstes Buch,
Römische Elegien,
1795.

7
.
Faustina's divine elegiac poet:
Goethe, during his sojourn in Italy (1786–1788), had a lover by the name of Faustina, whom he described in his
Elegien.

8
.
a memory of love:
Here, D'Annunzio's association of Rome with love is a covert reference to Goethe's personal philosophy, expressed in the
Römische Elegien,
which embraced the palindrome “Roma-Amor” (amor = love).

9
.
caryatids
:
Sculpted female figures serving as columns.

10
.
herms:
Four-cornered pillars topped by a head or bust, usually that of the god Hermes. Statues such as these were often found in ancient Athens, used as milestones, signposts, pillars, and so on.

11
.
Juno, whom Wolfgang adored:
A very large sculpted head of Juno, once housed in Villa Ludovisi, so admired by Goethe that he had a copy of it made for his home.

12
.
of the market and of death:
This cryptic description refers to the building speculation of those years, around 1889, which saw many green spaces and ancient constructions destroyed.

13
.
“Of what use is blazing nature”:
In the text is my translation of D'Annunzio's interpretation of Goethe's “Monolog des Liebhabers” (Monologue of a Lover), which I retain for the sake of authenticity.