Pescara Tales (1902): Spirit and Flesh: Images of Abruzzo Tapa blanda - 2017

From the back cover: Short, thin-legged, bald at 24, with bad teeth and breath, by his mastery of poetic language D'Annunzio willed himself into the company of supermen, was the first to introduce that Nietzschean concept into Italy. Novelist, poet, dramatist, military and political celebrity, sailor, aviator, journalist, patriot, orator, womanizer, symbol of Italian Decadentismo - what needs to be added, with reference to this collection of his short stories, is 'Abruzzo's literary anthropologist'. While the late 19th century study of the 'primitive' began to flourish as a discipline investigating cultures in distant and unknown lands beyond the seas, he was someone who could detect in his own birthplace, in a corner of ancient and civilized Europe, the same meld of barbarism and innocence, to be explored and its curiosities revealed in all their complex and gorgeous variety.