Read Online Pleasure by Gabriele D'Annunzio - Free Book Online
Authors: Gabriele D'Annunzio
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of Philippe de Bourgogne, ambassador of Emperor Maximilian to Pope Julius II, in 1508. He took up residence in Florence, where the main branch of his line continued to flourish; and had as a second teacher Piero di Cosimo, that jocund and easygoing painter, a strong and harmonious colorist who brought pagan fables freely back to life with his paintbrush. This Giusto was not a common artist, but he consumed all his strength in futile efforts to reconcile his primitive Gothic education with the recent spirit of the Renaissance. Toward the second half of the seventeenth century, the house of Sperelli relocated to Naples. There, in 1679, a Bartolomeo Sperelli published an astrological treatise,
De Nativitatibus;
in 1720 a Giovanni Sperelli gave the theater a comic opera entitled
La Faustina
and then a lyrical tragedy entitled
Progne;
in 1756 a Carlo Sperelli printed a book of amateur verse in which many lascivious mottos of classical derivation were rhymed with the Horatian elegance then in mode. A better poet was Luigi, a man of exquisite gallantry, at the court of the Beggar King 2 and Queen Caroline. He wrote verses with a certain melancholic and courteous Epicureanism, with great limpidity; and he loved like a very fine lover, and had abundant affairs, some of them celebrated, like the one with the Marchioness of Bugnano, who out of jealousy poisoned herself, and the one with the Countess of Chesterfield, whom, when she died of consumption, he mourned in songs, odes, sonnets, and elegies that were extremely sweet, though somewhat florid.
Count Andrea Sperelli-Fieschi of Ugenta, the sole heir, continued the family tradition. He was, in truth, the ideal type of young Italian gentleman of the nineteenth century, the legitimate defender of a lineage of gentlemen and elegant artists, the last descendant of an intellectual race.
He was, as it were, completely impregnated with art. His adolescence, nurtured with varied and profound studies, seemed prodigious. He had alternated, until the age of twenty, lengthy bouts of study with lengthy travels with his father and had been able to complete his extraordinary aesthetic education under his fatherâs guidance, without the restrictions or constrictions of pedagogues. It was indeed from his father that he had inherited his taste for objects of art, his passionate cult of beauty, his paradoxical scorn for prejudice, his avidity for pleasure.
This father who had grown up amid the extreme splendors of the Bourbon court knew how to live to the full; he had a deep knowledge of the voluptuous life and also a certain Byronesque inclination toward fanciful romanticism. His own marriage had taken place in almost tragic circumstances, after a furious passion. After that he had disturbed and tormented conjugal harmony in every possible way. In the end he had separated from his wife and had always kept his young son with him, traveling with him throughout Europe.
Andreaâs education had hence been, so to say, through life itself, namely not based so much on books as derived from the presence of human reality. His spirit was corrupted not only by high culture but also by experience: and his curiosity became ever sharper as his knowledge grew. Right from the start he had been lavish with himself; because his gift, the power of great sensibility, never tired of providing resources for his prodigality. But the expansion of that power of his led to the destruction in him of another strength, that of
moral strength,
which his own father had not been averse to discouraging. And he did not realize that his life was the progressive reduction of his own faculties, of his hopes, of his pleasure, almost a progressive renunciation; and that the circle was growing ever tighter around him, a process that was inexorable though slow.
His father had given him, among others, this fundamental maxim: âOne must
fashion
oneâs life, as one fashions a work of art. A manâs life must be of his own
De Nativitatibus;
in 1720 a Giovanni Sperelli gave the theater a comic opera entitled
La Faustina
and then a lyrical tragedy entitled
Progne;
in 1756 a Carlo Sperelli printed a book of amateur verse in which many lascivious mottos of classical derivation were rhymed with the Horatian elegance then in mode. A better poet was Luigi, a man of exquisite gallantry, at the court of the Beggar King 2 and Queen Caroline. He wrote verses with a certain melancholic and courteous Epicureanism, with great limpidity; and he loved like a very fine lover, and had abundant affairs, some of them celebrated, like the one with the Marchioness of Bugnano, who out of jealousy poisoned herself, and the one with the Countess of Chesterfield, whom, when she died of consumption, he mourned in songs, odes, sonnets, and elegies that were extremely sweet, though somewhat florid.
Count Andrea Sperelli-Fieschi of Ugenta, the sole heir, continued the family tradition. He was, in truth, the ideal type of young Italian gentleman of the nineteenth century, the legitimate defender of a lineage of gentlemen and elegant artists, the last descendant of an intellectual race.
He was, as it were, completely impregnated with art. His adolescence, nurtured with varied and profound studies, seemed prodigious. He had alternated, until the age of twenty, lengthy bouts of study with lengthy travels with his father and had been able to complete his extraordinary aesthetic education under his fatherâs guidance, without the restrictions or constrictions of pedagogues. It was indeed from his father that he had inherited his taste for objects of art, his passionate cult of beauty, his paradoxical scorn for prejudice, his avidity for pleasure.
This father who had grown up amid the extreme splendors of the Bourbon court knew how to live to the full; he had a deep knowledge of the voluptuous life and also a certain Byronesque inclination toward fanciful romanticism. His own marriage had taken place in almost tragic circumstances, after a furious passion. After that he had disturbed and tormented conjugal harmony in every possible way. In the end he had separated from his wife and had always kept his young son with him, traveling with him throughout Europe.
Andreaâs education had hence been, so to say, through life itself, namely not based so much on books as derived from the presence of human reality. His spirit was corrupted not only by high culture but also by experience: and his curiosity became ever sharper as his knowledge grew. Right from the start he had been lavish with himself; because his gift, the power of great sensibility, never tired of providing resources for his prodigality. But the expansion of that power of his led to the destruction in him of another strength, that of
moral strength,
which his own father had not been averse to discouraging. And he did not realize that his life was the progressive reduction of his own faculties, of his hopes, of his pleasure, almost a progressive renunciation; and that the circle was growing ever tighter around him, a process that was inexorable though slow.
His father had given him, among others, this fundamental maxim: âOne must
fashion
oneâs life, as one fashions a work of art. A manâs life must be of his own
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