The Fiume writings of the D'Annunzio legionary Comisso
The Bloody Christmas days in December 1920 put a bloody end to the Fiume enterprise of Gabriele d'Annunzio and his Legionaries: among the witnesses of this page of history of the Adriatic frontier was the writer Giovanni Comisso (Treviso 1895-1969), first as a soldier and then as a volunteer in the experience of the Italian Regency of Carnaro.
Ungrateful Italy. Written by Fiume edited by Alessandro Gnocchi, for the first time collects Comisso's writings born in the context of the Fiume experience and presents a large collection of rare texts, never published in volume and unpublished, including a work divided into two sections, Poems and Short Poems, of which all traces had been lost for almost a century.
These are writings that have historical value, because they help to understand the spirit of D'Annunzio's enterprise. Patriotic but not nationalist, Italian but aware and respectful of ancient autonomies, libertarian and far-sighted on the subject of rights.
This production can be considered “metaphysical” in the name of Giorgio de Chirico (a decisive but underestimated influence) and is also of crucial importance from a philological point of view. In fact, it allows us to enter Comisso's “workshop” and understand the reasons for the writer's style and objectives.
The lyrical fragment dominates, continually reworked and ready to pass into different works. The narrator Comisso, with his sudden illuminations, is born here.