Gabriele D'Annunzio

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Gabriele D'Annunzio, 'Gabriel of the Annunciation', shocked and dazzled early twentieth-century Europe with his sexual exploits, military feats, and political escapades. In a blaze of self-publicity those activities provided material for his fiery journalism and the stunning literary creations which have influenced each succeeding generation of Italian writers. French translations of his scandalous novels first exposed Europe to his genius, but his roots lay deep in his native soil. A pivotal presence in the evolution of Italian literature, politics, society, and taste, he rarely allowed his name to fall from the public gaze during forty critical years, and more than any other Italian since the unification of his country, he casts a shadow forwards to the present day. D'Annunzio's sexual promiscuity was legendary, yet he was a somewhat unconventional Casanova: something under five foot six, prematurely balding, blinded in one eye during the war, and blessed with what his secretary-factotum called unfortunate teeth, he was the caricaturist's dream. At the age of sixteen he pawned his grandfather's watch for the money to visit a brothel. And though he was married for 55 years to Mari

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