Gabriele d'Annunzio

Gabriele d'Annunzio is a writer and national hero whose reputation in the novel rests on a striking mixture of talent, courage, moral flaws, and performance. In Colonel Richard Cantwell's recollections, d'Annunzio attracts genuine affection, but his conspicuous gestures as a military figure also sharpen Cantwell's distinction between public heroism and the particular demands of infantry service.

Identity and Public Reputation

Cantwell describes d'Annunzio as a gifted and rhetorically powerful man, admired despite being mean and miserable in character. He recalls him as a brave figure who had stormed the country through talent and speechmaking. Cantwell's account of d'Annunzio's origins is less certain: he pictures a poor Jewish youth, then questions whether d'Annunzio was Jewish at all. The hesitation makes the recollection as much a portrait of Cantwell's uncertainty about public legends as a settled account of the man's background.

The affection d'Annunzio inspires is tied to his capacity to make a bold impression. Cantwell's judgment is not simply dismissive: he acknowledges the writer's courage and the hold he had on people, while resisting the idea that celebrity or conspicuous bravery alone proves a man has mastered the soldier's work.

Military Service and Cantwell's Doubts

D'Annunzio moved among different branches of the service and flew as an observer. After losing an eye in a crash over the area of Trieste or Pola, he wore a patch. Cantwell remembers that people who did not know the circumstances assumed the eye had been lost in combat at places on the Carso, where soldiers were killed or disabled. The patch thus became part of a heroic appearance that could suggest a different military history from the one Cantwell believed had occurred.

For Cantwell, d'Annunzio's movement between branches did not make him an infantryman in the deeper sense. He could have served in the air and in the infantry, Cantwell reflects, without truly belonging to either; the distinction between holding a military role and knowing its trade is central to the Colonel's judgment. He calls infantry service a strange, perhaps uniquely strange, profession, and measures d'Annunzio's gestures against the sustained exposure and responsibilities he associates with it.

The Speech and the Platoon

One of Cantwell's most vivid memories places d'Annunzio before assault troops during an interminable winter rain. Then a lieutenant commanding a platoon, Cantwell listens as the white-faced, eye-patched d'Annunzio addresses the soldiers and invokes the dead. Cantwell follows the speech, but his men, too far away to hear clearly and without loudspeakers, do not. At the pause intended for silence, they give d'Annunzio a ringing cheer instead.

The response has a history: the platoon had heard him speak after victories and before defeats, and knew what to shout whenever an orator paused. Cantwell joins them, using his command voice to lead the cheer. He understands this as a small way of sharing responsibility with men who had not heard the speech, and as one of the limited acts a lieutenant could attempt when faced with the greater burdens of holding a position or directing an attack. The episode complicates his skepticism: he doubts d'Annunzio's claim to the infantryman's identity, yet remembers his own affection for the platoon and his willingness to stand with them in a collective, imperfect response to the speaker.

Residence and Remembered Legacy

Years later, passing a small villa close to the water, Cantwell tells Ronald Jackson that it belonged to d'Annunzio and identifies him as a great writer. The Colonel privately sees the villa as an unattractive place, its trees badly managed, yet notes that d'Annunzio lived there. His measured introduction to Jackson—who has never heard of the writer—turns the passing view into an occasion to transmit a literary reputation, with Cantwell offering to test Jackson on d'Annunzio's work and pointing out that fair English translations exist.

D'Annunzio's place in the novel is therefore defined less by an independent account of his life than by the gap between reputation and military judgment. Cantwell can recognize his talent, courage, and popular appeal while questioning whether the dramatic image of the soldier matches the infantryman's work. The remembered cheer, in which the Colonel himself participates, keeps that criticism from becoming simple rejection: the public performance is open to doubt, but the human loyalties formed around it remain real.