Mouth of the Serchio

Gabriele d'Annunzio may be better known now as a precursor of Mussolini than a poet and so I hesitate to write a blog post about Halcyon (1903), even if it is his most widely admired book. But as J. G. Nichols says in his introduction, there are hardly any signs here of what he was to become. The eighty-eight lyrics form a 'solar diary' inspired by the Tuscan summers he spent with his lover, the world-famous actress Eleonora Duse. In Lucy Hughes-Hallett's fascinating d'Annunzio biography The Pike, she describes him writing lyrics of 'limpid elegance' while swimming and riding on the beach; on one unfortunate occasion he fell from his horse, although as he bathed his bleeding face in the sea he got the idea for a poem about a sea nymph. Halcyon drew on 'the Tuscan landscapes around him, all gilded by his imagination, stripped of intrusive modern buildings and vulgar modern people, and inhabited instead by nymphs and gods and hybrid mythological creatures.' She is right about this, but…

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