The Child of Pleasure

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[Transcriber's note: although a number of obvious typographical errors
in the printed work have been corrected, the original orthography of the
book has been retained. This includes a number of compound words,
normally hyphenated, which retain their hyphenlessness.]

_The_
CHILD OF PLEASURE

GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO

TRANSLATED BY
GEORGINA HARDING

VERSES TRANSLATED BY
ARTHUR SYMONS

INTRODUCTION BY
ERNEST BOYD
[Illustration: The Modern Library logo]
THE MODERN LIBRARY
PUBLISHERS :: :: NEW YORK
_Manufactured in the United States of America
Bound for_ THE MODERN LIBRARY _by H. Wolff_

INTRODUCTION

It is characteristic of the atmosphere of legend in which Gabriele
d'Annunzio has lived that even the authenticity of his name has been
disputed. It was said that his real name was Gaetano Rapagnetta, and the
curious will find amongst the Letters of James Huneker the boast that he
was the first person to reveal to America the fact that d'Annunzio's
name was "Rapagnetto"--a purely personal contribution to the legend.
Yet, the plain fact, as proven by his birth certificate, is that the
author of "The Child of Pleasure" was born at Pescara, on the 12th of
March, 1863, the son of Francesco Paolo d'Annunzio and Luisa de
Benedictis. _Il Piacere_, to give this novel its Italian name, was
published when d'Annunzio was only twenty-six years of age, and except
for an unimportant and imitative volume of short stories, it was his
first sustained prose work. It is the book which at once made the
novelist famous in his own country and very soon afterwards in England
and France, where it was the first of his works to be translated. In
America d'Annunzio was already known as the author of a powerful
realistic novelette, "Episcopo & Co.," which was published in Chicago in
1896, two years before "The Child of Pleasure" appeared in London. As
has so often happened since, America led the way in introducing into the
English language a writer who is one of the foremost figures in
Continental European literature.

In order to realize the sensation which Gabriele d'Annunzio created, it
is necessary to glance back at the opinions of some of his early
champions in foreign countries. Ouida claims, I think rightly, that her
article in the _Fortnightly Review_, which was reprinted in her
"Critical Studies," was the first account in English of the author and
his work. In the main, although besprinkled with moral asides, it is,
with one exception, as good an essay as any that has since been written
on the subject. Ouida was sure that the wickedness of d'Annunzio was
such that the only work of his which will become known to the English
public in general will be the _Vergini delle Rocce_, because "(as far as
it has gone) it is not indecent. The other works could not be reproduced
in English." In proof of her contentions Ouida disclosed the fact that
the French versions of the trilogy, "The Child of Pleasure," "The
Victim," and "The Triumph of Death," were bowdlerized. At the same time
she obligingly referred her readers to some of the choicer passages in
the original, such as Chapter X of "The Child of Pleasure," where she
claimed that "ingenuities of indecency" had been gratuitously
introduced. For the guidance of those interested in such matters I may
explain that, by a coincidence, the "ingenuity" in question is almost
identical with that which was cited in the earlier part of _La Garconne_
as proof that Victor Margueritte was unworthy of the Legion of Honor.

After Ouida in England came the venerable Vicomte Melchior de Voguee in
France, who is best known to readers in this country for his standard
tome on the Russian novel. In the austere pages of the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_ he carefully explained to his readers that d'Annunzio's lewdness
must not be confused with the obscenities of Zola, whereat Ouida
protested that they were alike in their complacent preoccupation with
mere filth. The Frenchman is the sounder critic, it must be said, for
while d'Annunzio frequently parallels some of the most unclean--in the
literal, not the moral sense--scenes and incidents in Zola, his attitude
about sex is as unlike Zola's as that of the late W. D. Howells. Only in
"Nana" did Zola describe the life and emotions of a woman whose whole
life is given up to love, and then, as we know, he chose a singularly
crude and professional person, using her career as a symbol of the
Second Empire. D'Annunzio has never described women with any other
reason for existence but love, yet none of his heroines has poor Nana's
uninspiring motives. They are amateurs with a skill undreamed of in
Nana's philosophy; they believe in love for art's sake. Consequently,
the French critic was right in insisting that Zola and d'Annunzio are
two very different persons, although confounded in an identical obloquy
by the moralists. He is, however, not quite so subtle when he tries to
argue from this that, in the conventional sense, d'Annunzio is more
moral.

At this point I will cite an unexpectedly intelligent witness, one of
the early admirers of d'Annunzio in English, and the author of an essay
on him which is assuredly the best which has appeared in that language.
This is what Henry James has to say of "The Child of Pleasure" in his
"Notes on Novelists": "Count Andrea Sperelli is a young man who pays,
pays heavily, as we take it we are to understand, for an unbridled
surrender to the life of the senses; whereby it is primarily a picture
of that life that the story gives us. He is represented as inordinately,
as quite monstrously, endowed for the career that from the first absorbs
and that finally is to be held, we suppose to engulf him; and it is a
tribute to the truth with which his endowment is presented that we
should scarce know where else to look for so complete and convincing an
account of such adventures. Casanova de Seingalt is of course infinitely
more copious, but his autobiography is cheap loose journalism compared
with the directed, finely-condensed iridescent epic of Count Andrea."

It would be difficult to find, couched in such euphemistically
appreciative language, so accurate a summary of the intention and
quality of this book. Casanova is pale, diffuse, and unconvincing,
indeed, beside the d'Annunzio who so early gave his full measure as the
supreme novelist of sensual pleasure in this book. As Arthur Symons so
well says, "Gabriele d'Annunzio comes to remind us, very definitely, as
only an Italian can, of the reality and the beauty of sensation, of the
primary sensations; the sensations of pain and pleasure as these come to
us from our actual physical conditions; the sensation of beauty as it
comes to us from the sight of our eyes and the tasting of our several
senses; the sensation of love, which, to the Italian, comes up from a
root in Boccaccio, through the stem of Petrarch, to the very flower of
Dante. And so he becomes the idealist of material things, while seeming
to materialize spiritual things. He accepts, as no one else of our time
does, the whole physical basis of life, the spirit which can be known
only through the body."

D'Annunzio has declared that the central male character in all three
novels, Andrea Sperelli in "The Child of Pleasure," Tullio Hermil in
"The Intruder" and Giorgio Aurispa in "The Triumph of Death," are
projections of himself. They are as autobiographical as Stelio Effrena
in "The Fire of Life," which is generally accepted as an elaboration of
the poet's life with Eleonora Duse. His attitude, therefore, is clearly
defined in the passage where he says: "In the tumult of contradictory
impulses Sperelli had lost all sense of will power and all sense of
morality. In abdicating, his will had surrendered the sceptre to his
instincts; the aesthetic was substituted for the moral sense. This
aesthetic sense, which was very subtle, very powerful and always active,
maintained a certain equilibrium in the mind of Sperelli. Intellectuals
such as he, brought up in the religion of Beauty, always preserve a
certain kind of order, even in their worst depravities. The conception
of Beauty is the axis of their inmost being: all their passions turn
upon that axis." He is, in other words, the re-incarnation of Don Juan,
pursuing in woman an elusive and impossible ideal.

If d'Annunzio had not gone into the adventure of the war, with its
sequel at Fiume, we might have continued to enjoy the spectacle of the
adventures of this restless soul amongst feminine masterpieces. As a
soldier and a statesman his prestige in the English-speaking world is
low, and we are apt to forget while reading the political bombast of the
years of the war and the period after the Armistice that it differs in
no respect from all other patriotic claptrap, except that it is the work
of the greatest living master of Italian prose. Of this fact his early
novels are a needed reminder to a generation which is making its
acquaintance with Italian writers of to-day through the intermediary of
a converted anti-clerical, who cannot even retell the story of Christ
without branding himself a vulgarian. In the prim days when young
d'Annunzio first flaunted his carnal delights and sorrows before a world
not yet released from Victorian stuffiness, the word "vulgar" was a
polite English epithet for "fleshly," an adjective much beloved by
indignant gentlemen who were permitting their wrath to triumph over
their desire to be respectable. It is a word which we apply nowadays to
the writings of a vulgarian like Papini, whose name is now as familiar
to the general public as d'Annunzio's was when "The Child of Pleasure"
was first translated. That is a measure of progress in this connection
which justifies the hope that the "idealist of material things" will
find again an audience which can understand and appreciate his quest.

D'Annunzio has nothing to offer the sterile theorists of the new
illiterate literature, who are as incapable of appreciating his refined
and subtle perversities as they are of admiring the beautiful form in
which his full-blooded and exuberant imagination clothes his
conceptions. He is an aesthete, but his aestheticism has never expressed
itself in barren theory, but has always turned to life itself. He
realized at the outset of his career that life is a physical thing,
which we must compel to surrender all that it can offer us, which the
artist must bend and shape to his own creative purposes. It has been
said that d'Annunzio had a philosophy and Nietzsche and Tolstoy were
invoked as influences, but there is as little of Tolstoy's moralizing in
"The Intruder" as of Nietzsche's pessimistic idealism in "The Child of
Pleasure" or "The Triumph of Death." Whatever conclusions may be drawn
from the problem of the Eternal Feminine as postulated in all his
novels--and that is the only problem which he confronts--it is hardly to
be dignified by the name of a philosophy. One gathers that men can be
exalted and destroyed by the attraction of women, but the author
remains to the end--as late certainly as 1910, when the last of the
novels in the first mood, _Forse che si, forse che no_, appeared--of the
opinion that they are the one legitimate preoccupation of the artist in
living. Elena Muti in "The Child of Pleasure," Foscarina in "The Flame
of Life," Ippolita in "The Triumph of Death" are superb incarnations of
the one and ever varied problem which troubles the world in which
d'Annunzio lives.

An American critic, Mr. Henry Dwight Sedgwick, once demanded in tones of
passionate scorn that d'Annunzio be tried before a jury of
"English-speaking men," and he called the tale: "Colonel Newcome! Adam
Bede! Bailie Jarvie! Tom Brown! Sam Weller!"--notes of exclamation
included, from which one was to conclude that the creator of Sperelli,
Hermil and Aurispa would slink away discomfited at the very sound of
those names. Yet, on the other hand, can one imagine Andrea and Elena,
Giorgio and Ippolita arguing with our advanced thinkers of the moment:
Is Monogamy Feasible? or Can Men and Women be Friends? D'Annunzio is not
to be approached either in a mood of radical earnestness or of
evangelical fervor. He must be regarded as an artist of sensations, an
Italian of the Renaissance set down in the middle of a drab century. He
began his life by a quest for perfect physical pleasure through all the
senses, and inaugurated its last phase with a gesture of military
courage which was not only a retort to those who, like Croce, had called
him a dilettante, but an earnest of his conviction that he was a great
artist of the lineage which bred men who were simultaneously great men
of action.

Ernest Boyd.

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

Andrea Sperelli dined regularly every Wednesday with his cousin the
Marchesa d'Ateleta.

The salons of the Marchesa in the Palazzo Roccagiovine were much
frequented. She attracted specially by her sparkling wit and gaiety and
her inextinguishable good humour. Her charming and expressive face
recalled certain feminine profiles of the younger Moreau and in the
vignettes of Gravelot. There was something Pompadouresque in her manner,
her tastes, her style of dress, which she no doubt heightened purposely,
tempted by her really striking resemblance to the favourite of Louis XV.

One Tuesday evening, in a box at the Valle Theatre, she said laughingly
to her cousin, 'Be sure, you come to-morrow, Andrea. Among the guests
there will be an interesting, not to say _fatal_, personage. Forewarned
is forearmed--Beware of her spells--you are in a very weak frame of mind
just now.'

He laughed. 'If you don't mind, I prefer to come unarmed,' he replied,
'or rather in the guise of a victim. It is a character I have assumed
for many an evening lately, but alas, without result so far.'

'Well, the sacrifice will soon be consummated, _cugino mio_.'

'The victim is ready!'

The next evening, he arrived at the palace a few minutes earlier than
usual, with a wonderful gardenia in his button-hole and a vague
uneasiness in his mind. His _coupe_ had to stop in front of the
entrance, the portico being occupied by another carriage, from which a
lady was alighting. The liveries, the horses, the ceremonial which
accompanied her arrival all proclaimed a great position. The Count
caught a glimpse of a tall and graceful figure, a scintillation of
diamonds in dark hair and a slender foot on the step. As he went
upstairs he had a back view of the lady.

She ascended in front of him with a slow and rhythmic movement; her
cloak, lined with fur as white as swan's-down, was unclasped at the
throat, and slipping back, revealed her shoulders, pale as polished
ivory, the shoulder-blades disappearing into the lace of the corsage
with an indescribably soft and fleeting curve as of wings. The neck rose
slender and round, and the hair, twisted into a great knot on the crown
of her head, was held in place by jewelled pins.

The harmonious gait of this unknown lady gave Andrea such sincere
pleasure that he stopped a moment on the first landing to watch her. Her
long train swept rustling over the stairs; behind her came a servant,
not immediately in the wake of his mistress on the red carpet, but at
the side along the wall with irreproachable gravity. The absurd contrast
between the magnificent creature and the automaton following her brought
a smile to Andrea's lips.

In the anteroom while the servant was relieving her of her cloak, the
lady cast a rapid glance at the young man who entered.

The servant announced--'Her Excellency the Duchess of Scerni!' and
immediately afterwards--'Count Sperelli-Fieschi d'Ugenta!' It pleased
Andrea that his name should be coupled so closely with that of the lady
in question.

In the drawing-room were already assembled the Marchese and Marchesa
d'Ateleta, the Baron and Baroness d'Isola and Don Filippo del Monte. The
fire burned cheerily on the hearth, and several low seats were
invitingly disposed within range of its warmth, while large leaf plants
spread their red-veined foliage over the low backs.

The Marchesa, advanced to meet the two new arrivals with her delightful
ready laugh.

'Ah,' she said, 'a happy chance has forestalled me and made it
unnecessary for me to tell you one another's names. Cousin Sperelli,
make obeisance before the divine Elena.'

Andrea bowed profoundly. The Duchess held out her hand with a frank and
graceful gesture.

'I am very glad to know you, Count,' she said, looking him full in the
face. 'I heard so much about you last summer at Lucerne from one of your
friends--Giulio Musellaro. I must confess I was rather curious--Besides,
Musellaro lent me your exquisite "Story of the Hermaphrodite" and made
me a present of your etching "Sleep"--a proof copy--a real gem. You have
a most ardent admirer in me--please remember that.'

She spoke with little pauses in between. Her voice was so warm and
insinuating in tone that it almost had the effect of a caress, and her
glance had that unconsciously voluptuous and disturbing expression which
instantly kindles the desire of every man on whom it rests.

'Cavaliere Sakumi!' announced the servant, as the eighth and last guest
made his appearance.

He was one of the secretaries to the Japanese Legation, very small and
yellow, with prominent cheek-bones and long, slanting, bloodshot eyes
over which the lids blinked incessantly. His body was disproportionately
large for his spindle legs, and he turned his toes in as he walked. The
skirts of his coat were too wide, there was a multitude of wrinkles in
his trousers, his necktie bore visible evidence of an unpractised hand.
It was as if a _daimio_ had been taken out of one of those cuirasses of
iron and lacquer, so like the shell of some monstrous crustacean, and
thrust into the clothes of a European waiter. And yet, with all his
ungainliness and apparent stupidity there was a glint of malice in his
slits of eyes and a sort of ironical cunning about the corners of his
mouth.

Arrived in the middle of the room, he bowed low. His gibus slipped from
his hand and rolled over the floor.

At this, the Baroness d'Isola, a tiny blonde with a cloud of fluffy
curls all over her forehead, vivacious and grimacing as a young monkey,
called to him in her piping voice:

'Come over here, Sakumi--here, beside me.'

The Japanese cavalier advanced with a succession of bows and smiles.

'Shall we see the Princess Isse this evening?' asked Donna Francesca
d'Ateleta, who had a mania for gathering in her drawing-rooms all the
most grotesque specimens of the exotic colonies of Rome, out of pure
love of variety and the picturesque.

The Asiatic replied in a barbarous jargon, a scarcely intelligible
compound of English, French, and Italian.

For a moment everybody was speaking at once--a chorus through which now
and then the fresh laughter of the Marchesa rang like silver bells.

'I am sure I have seen you before--I cannot remember when and I cannot
remember where, but I am certain I have seen you,' Andrea Sperelli was
saying to the duchess as he stood before her. 'When I saw you going
upstairs in front of me, a vague recollection rose up in my mind,
something that took shape from the rhythm of your movements as a picture
grows out of a melody. I did not succeed in making the recollection
clear, but when you turned round, I felt that your profile answered
incontestably to that picture. It could not have been a divination,
therefore it must have been some obscure phenomenon of memory. I must
have seen you somewhere before--who knows--perhaps in a dream--perhaps
in another world, a previous existence--'

As he pronounced this last decidedly hackneyed, not to say silly remark,
Andrea laughed frankly as if to forestall the lady's smile, whether of
incredulity or irony. But Elena remained perfectly serious. Was she
listening, or was she thinking of something else? Did she accept that
kind of speech, or was she, by her gravity, amusing herself at his
expense? Did she intend assisting him in the scheme of seduction he had
begun with so much care, or was she going to shut herself up in
indifference and silence? In short, was she or was she not the sort of
woman to succumb to his attack? Perplexed, disconcerted, Andrea examined
the mystery from all sides. Most men, especially those who adopt bold
methods of warfare, are well acquainted with this perplexity which
certain women excite by their silence.

A servant threw open the great doors leading to the dining-room.

The Marchesa took the arm of Don Filippo del Monte and led the way.

'Come,' said Elena, and it seemed to Andrea that she leaned upon his arm
with a certain abandon--or was it merely an illusion of his
desire?--perhaps. He continued in doubt and suspense, but every moment
that passed drew him deeper within the sweet enchantment, and with every
instant he became more desperately anxious to read the mystery of this
woman's heart.

'Here, cousin,' said Francesca, pointing him to a place at one end of
the oval table, between the Baron d'Isola and the Duchess of Scerni with
the Cavaliere Sakumi as his _vis-a-vis_. Sakumi sat between the Baroness
d'Isola and Filippo del Monte. The Marchesa and her husband occupied the
two ends of the table, which glittered with rare china, silver, crystal
and flowers.

Very few women could compete with the Marchesa d'Ateleta in the art of
dinner giving. She expended more care and forethought in the preparation
of a menu than of a toilette. Her exquisite taste was patent in every
detail, and her word was law in the matter of elegant conviviality. Her
fantasies and her fashions were imitated on every table of the Roman
upper ten. This winter, for instance, she had introduced the fashion of
hanging garlands of flowers from one end of the table to the other, on
the branches of great candelabras, and also that of placing in front of
each guest, among the group of wine glasses, a slender opalescent Murano
vase with a single orchid in it.

'What a diabolical flower!' said Elena Muti, taking up the vase and
examining the orchid which seemed all blood-stained.

Her voice was of such rich full _timbre_ that even her most trivial
remarks acquired a new significance, a mysterious grace, like that King
of Phrygia whose touch turned everything to gold.

'A symbolical flower--in your hands,' murmured Andrea, gazing at his
neighbour, whose beauty in that attitude was really amazing.

She was dressed in some delicate tissue of palest blue, spangled with
silver dots which glittered through antique Burano lace of an
indefinable tint of white inclining to yellow. The flower, like
something evil generated by a malignant spell, rose quivering on its
slender stalk out of the fragile tube which might have been blown by
some skilful artificer from a liquid gem.

'Well, I prefer roses,' observed Elena, replacing the orchid with a
gesture of repulsion, very different from her former one of curiosity.
She then joined in the general conversation.

Donna Francesca was speaking of the last reception at the Austrian
Embassy.

'Did you see Madame de Cahen?' asked Elena. 'She had on a dress of
yellow tulle covered with humming birds with ruby eyes--a gorgeous
dancing bird-cage. And Lady Ouless--did you notice her?--in a white
gauze skirt draped with sea-weed and little red fishes, and under the
sea-weed and fish another skirt of sea-green gauze--Did you see it?--a
most effective aquarium!' and she laughed merrily.

Andrea was at a loss to understand this sudden volubility These
frivolous and malicious things were uttered by the same voice which, but
a few moments, ago had stirred his soul to its very depths; they came
from the same lips which, in silence, had seemed to him like the mouth
of the Medusa of Leonardo, that human flower of the soul rendered divine
by the fire of passion and the anguish of death. What then was the true
essence of this creature? Had she perception and consciousness of her
manifold changes, or was she impenetrable to herself and shut from her
own mystery? In her expression, her manifestation of herself, how much
was artificial and how much spontaneous? The desire to fathom this
secret pierced him even through the delight experienced by the proximity
of the woman whom he was beginning to love. But his wretched habit of
analysis for ever prevented him losing sight of himself, though every
time he yielded to its temptation he was punished, like Psyche for her
curiosity, by the swift withdrawal of love, the frowns of the beloved
object and the cessation of all delights. Would it not be better to
abandon oneself frankly to the first ineffable sweetness of new-born
love? He saw Elena in the act of placing her lips to a glass of pale
gold wine like liquid honey. He selected from among his own glasses the
one the servant had filled with the same wine, and drank at the same
moment that she did. They replaced their glasses on the table together.
The similarity of the action made them turn to one another, and the
glance they exchanged inflamed them far more than the wine.

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