Gabriele D'Annunzio

THE BEAST WHO WILLS

Il Ma ttin o (di Nap o li),
S u n d ay -M o n d ay 25-26 Sep t e m b e r, 1 892

Transla tor's In troductio n

The appearance o f D'Annunzio's "La bestia elettiva" o r "The Beast
Who Wills" in the Neapolitan daily fl Mattina in September of 1 892
marks the first moment in the reception of Nietzsche's thought in Italy.
Meshing Nietzsche's meditation on slave and noble morality from such
texts as Beyond Good and Evil; The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
with an irreverent analysis of the decay of Europe's traditional ruling
classes, "The Beast Who Wills" inaugurates a certain "literalizing"
reading of Nietzsche which will hold sway in Italy well into the twen­
ties and thirties . This reading is "literalizing" to the extent that, like
�early all of Nietzsche's early readers, D'Annunzio roots Nietzsche's
text in the concrete historical particulars of his own era. According­
ly, the chronologically indeterminate scene in Beyond Good and Evil
in which the moralities of noble and slave first come into being via
a series of acts of nami'n.g, distancing and differentiation appears in
D'Annunzio's essay not as a post-structuralist allegory of linguistic
deferral and difference, but rather as a concrete event whose value
is both diagnostic and prophetic.
For D'Annunzio , Nietzsche's scene is "diagnostic" in that it offers
a precise analysis of the origin of contemporary Europe's twin ills - a
decaying aristocracy and the triumph of bourgeois/mass values; "pro�
phetic" inasmuch as it proposes a solution to these ills : a return to

265
 2 66 Nietzsche in Italy

the noble morality and the advent of a new aristocracy. If to a con­

temporary reader's ears such an interpretation has a distinctly Fascist
ring, it is perhaps worth stressing certain tensions and discontinuities .
First o f all, there i s the matter o f Nietzsche's "solution" to Europe's
double crisis: a solution so internally fractured that it simply covers
up what can only be described as an aporia . A new master class will
rise up at some future date, D'Annunzio affirms at the beginning o f
the third section o f "The Beast Who Wills ," from within the modern
pluralist state and, seizing the reins of power, will place the masses
in its service.
At the close of the essay, however, this master class is not within ,
but instead outside the state. No longer a "class," the new aristocrat
is recast as an isolated individual whose emblematic gesture is one
of abdication and refusal. All that he wills is to avoid contagion: the
contagion of everyday life, of the state, and of the ballot box. While
such a schism between inside and outside, collective and individual,
bears the distinctive bivalent stamp of the phrase "Romantic in­
dividualism," it also describes a characteristically Dannunzian
blockage: the blockage which will structure D'Annunzio's earliest
Nietzschean texts, Il Trionjo della morte and Le vergini delle rocce.
Secondly, unlike the Fascist attempt to elaborate a concrete political
program on the basis of Nietzsche's writings, D'Annunzio's "literaliza­
tion" is in the end primarily "literary." "The Beast Who Wills" begins,
and, I would suggest, concludes, with the image of a litterateur at the
margins of society. First we encounter one of those "anonymous
unemployed scribes" who prostitutes himself to the public's basest tastes
"by compiling pornographic anthologies for underground publishers,"
and who (disingenuously) calls for a high-minded civic literature - a
literature of public service available to the mass reader - linked to the
project of reform and enlightenment. This description is followed by
a sequence of rhetorical questions which suggest that the latter pro­
ject is entirely at odds with the requirements of art.
Having provisionally disposed of the possibility of a socially in­
strumental mass art, D'Annunzio turns to an analysis of the decline
of Europe's traditional patronage class, her monarchs, only to find
that all is no less "old and ignoble" on this side of the social divide .
The problem, according to D'Annunzio , is that there now exists an
unprecedented disequilibrium between monarch and artist, between
the art of exercising power and the power of art. Having long ago
lapsed into decadence, Europe's monarchs are no longer capable of
 D'Annunzio: The Beast Who Wills 26 7

producing a spectacle worthy of her artificers and image-producers

(the lone exception being the ideal, albeit brief and fragile , duo per­
formed by Richard Wagner and Ludwig II) .
What then is to be the future of literature and the role of the author,
asks D'Annunzio, if he can serve !!either his traditional masters nor
the populace? The answer conies in the third and final section of the
essay, where D'Annunzio affirms the resurgence of a "realm of force"
within the horizon of egalitarianism, to be instituted by a new elite
through whom the master morality will again triumph. Seen first as
a collectivity on the verge of seizing political power, then as in­
dividualized and depoliticized, this elite is, I would suggest, but the
redeemed double of the anonymous unemployed littt!rateur with whom
the essay began: the modern(ist) author.
Unlike the "unemployed scribe," the modernist's marginality is not
a symptom of powerlessness or of a slavish self-immersion in the bain
des multitudes. Rather, it is the sign of his elevation, of his disdain for
the seductions of the vulgar herd, a sign that he inhabits the edge,
that he and his art stand for and with the future. Behind D'Annun­
zio's fractured promise of a new political dispensation, consequent­
ly, there lurks a new literary credo: a Nietzschean credo in which the
Slavic piety and Schopenhauerian pessimism of his earlier works are
overcome . On the one hand, this credo grants art and the artist ab­
solute power and autonomy: both are empowered to turn away from
all contaminated founts, both are freed from the burden of social
usefulness. On the other hand, the gesture of resistance and self­
distancing from social demands, the refusal to drink from any merely
common source, infuses art and artist alike with prophetic powers: their
task becomes that of providing an anticipatory enactment of an inex­
orable future, that of prefiguring certain transfiguring events still to
come.
While the philosophical substance of "The Beast Who Wills" has
been called into question by Guy Tosi's important discovery of D'An­
nunzio borrowings from an earlier essay by Jean de Nethy, its im­
portance remains, nonetheless, undiminished. Undiminished, because
there can be no doubt whatsoever that the structural matrix for the
first of the Romanzi del Giglio , the novella Le vergini delle rocce, finds
its source in this early essay. Not only does the action of Le vergini
unfold against the background of an identical double crisis scene, not
only is Claudio Cantelmo one who "withdraws from life" in order to
preserve such higher forms of life as those of the artist and the ruler;
 2 68 Nietzsche in Italy

but also , considerable portions of "The Beast Who Wills" are written
into the novella word for word. D'Annunzio's repetition of Jean de
N ethy' s repetition of Nietzsche is thus repeated once again in Le vergini
delle rocce, but within the last of these embedded Chinese boxes some
of the most resplendent jewels of decadent prose shine forth.

Part I

Every now and then in Italy an anonymous unemployed scribe of

the sort that makes ends meet by compiling pornographic anthologies
for underground publishers rises up with great dignity to deplore the
indifference exhibited by artificers of prose and of verse toward the
commonwealth , toward the political life of the nation. In the end the
accuser calls for a high-minded civic literature appropriate to the needs
of the new kingdom: for poets who will exalt the people's suffrage in
verse, for novelists who will represent their heroes intent upon resolving
some vexing social problem.
Why is it that poets and novelists do not respond to this appeal?
Why won't they renounce the proverbial man in love with two women
or the proverbial woman in love with two men? Why don't they apply
a little smattering of sociology, and favor the fall of kings , the aqvent
of republics, the accession of the populace to power?1 After all, critics
would surely forgive them for their feeble syntax in the name of a
certain "seriousness of content."
For the moment I remain within the narrow limits of my metrics
and my casuistry. Like the Mrs. Lee of the American novella, I need
to depart for Egypt: "Democracy has shattered my nerves. Oh, how
restful it would be to go and live in the great Pyramid and to gaze
eternally upon the Pole Star!" "That's strange,'' says the deputy Bonghi,
responsible for the translation's cacophonies, "or rather, a most natural
thing!"2
1 This paragraph and the preceding one are repeated almost verbatim in Le vergini

delle rocce : "Chiedevano intanto i poeti scoraggiati e smarriti, dopo aver esausto la
dovizia delle rime nell'evocare imagini d'altri tempi, nel piangere le loro illusioni
morte e nel numerare i colori delle foglie caduche; chiedevano, alcuni con ironia,
altri pur senza: 'Qual puo essere oggi ii nostro officio? Dobbiamo noi esaltare in
senarii doppii ii suffragio universale? Dobbiamo noi affrettar con Yansia dei decasillabi
la caduta dei Re, Y avvento delle Repubbliche, l'accesso delle plebi al potere? . . . '
"

( Vergini 45).
2 The reference would seem to be to Ruggero Bonghi ( 1 826-1 895), the eminent
classicist, historian and philosopher, a frequent contributor to such reviews as Nuova
Antologia , and one of the leading and most cosmopolitan figures of the Cavourian
right. Bonghi served in the Camera dei Deputati for nearly three decades.
 D'Annunzio: The Beast Who Wills 269

The twilight of kings and princes does not seem to me today to

be a subject worthy of much attention. 3 Those who possessed a genu­
inely regal soul, having sought in vain to bring their lives into con­
formity with their dreams and unable to resign themselves to the in�
evitable contagion of vulgarity, h�ve already departed this world rapt
in the wings of their own chimeras. Ludwig the Second, the virgin
king, after communing for so many years with the resplendent heroes
that Richard Wagner gave him for his companions in supernatural
regions , immune to all feminine toxins, hostile to all outsiders, sens­
ing that the intensity of his pleasure had begun to exceed the capacities
of his organs, determined to transform himself into a higher being
through death and descended into the depths of his own lake to seek
the supreme vision. 4 Rudolph of Hapsburg, a contemplative prince,
deeply absorbed in the spectacle of the inner life , paid dearly for an
intellectual crime: for having killed a woman who bound him too close­
ly to the materiality of common existence. 5 Johann Orth , untameable
in spirit, intolerant of all forms of slavishness, one day turned his prow
in the direction of Infinity and was never again seen. 6
Those who remain are either like diligent functionaries, replaceable
and ever fearful of being dismissed, or they are entirely dedicated
to cultivating their petty and puerile obsessions and mediocre vices. 7
Only William II occasionally excites our curiosity with the swift and
3 Cf. "II crepuscolo dei Re e tutto. cinereo , cieco d'ogni splendore" ( Vergini 1 5 1 ) .
• D'Annunzio i s referring to Ludwig II of Wittelsbach ( 1 845- 1 886) who, after his
deposition due to increasing spells of madness, drowned himself in the waters of
L ake Starnberg . The passage reappears in Le vergini as follows: "I suoi sforzi per
rendere la sua vita conforme al suo sogno hanno una violenza disperata. Qualun­
que contatto umano lo fa fremere di disgusto e di collera; qualunque gioia gli sem­
bra vile se non sia quella che egli stesso imagina. Immune da ogni tossico d'amore ,
ostile a tutti gli intrusi, per molti anni egli non ha communicato se non con i fulgidi
eroi che un creatore di bellezza gli ha dato a compagni in regioni supraterrestri .
Ne! piu profondo dei fiumi musicali egli estingue la sua sete angosciosa de! Divino,
e poi ascende alle sue dimore solitarie ove sul mistero delle montagne e dei lag·hi
ii suo spirito crea l'inviolabile regno che solo egli vuol regnare . E incredibile ch'egli
. .

non si sia gia partito dal mondo trascinato dal volo delle sue chimere" ( Vergini 1 5 1 -52).
5 Archduke of Austria, Rudolph (1858- 1 889) was the son of Franz-Joseph I and
Elisabeth of Bavaria. The incident referred to is the apparent double suicide of
Rudolph and his lover, Marie Vetsera.
6 "Johann Orth" was the pseudonym adopted by the Archduke Giovanni Nepomuceno
S alvatore of Austria ( 1 852- 1 89 1 ?), son of Leopold II, the Granduke of Tuscany. In
1 890 he renounced his title and princely prerogatives and embarked as captain of
the ship Santa Margherita, which vanished at sea.
7 Cf. . . . poiche non si chiama Re un uomo ii quale, essendosi sottomesso alla volonta
"

dei molti nell'accettare un officio ben determinato e angusto, si umilia a compierlo

 2 70 Nietzsche in Italy

variegated shows he puts on within his empire and beyond. 8 He is

truly the busy bee of this lugubrious company of the crowned. His
labours are truly amazing. He changes uniforms more frequently dur­
ing a single day than a fashionable cocotte changes her outfits over the
course of an entire year. He traverses Europe from one end to the
other, appearing in every train station in a new heroic pose. His
ministers are now at a loss as to how to dissuade him from going to
America to show off his international military trousseau. No human
activity is unknown to him. He knows everything and does everything:
the consummate strategist when he rides at the head of his Guard
through the blaring of fanfares; the consumate orator when, erect on
the prow of his ship , he projects his voice out over the waters; the
consummate actor when and if he should decide to walk the stage
in the armor of the hero in one of those dramas that a doggerel
Shakespeare (whose name at present escapes me) has been commis­
sioned to knead together with plenty of flattering leaven.
And the others! The Czar, his herculean muscles eaten away by
the wood-worm of suspicion, consumes himself all alone in a gloomy
misanthropy, lacking even the courage to parry the little chemical for­
mulas of his rebels with the sort of magnificent bare-weaponed
massacre needed to irrigate and fertilize his sterile lands .9 Franz­
Joseph, the Austrian , having lost his sole heir, until only yesterday
did little more than soothe the miseries of his old age with purgative
waters ; that is, until the once unheard cries of his people proclaimed

con la diligenza di un publico scriba che la tema d'esser licenziato aguzzi senza tregua"
( Vergini 1 50); "All'ombra di troni posticci vedrete falsi monarchi compiere con esatezza
le loro funzioni publiche in aspetto di automi o attendere a coltivar le loro manie
puerili e i loro vizii mediocri" ( Vergini 1 5 1 ) .
8 D'Annunzio's reference i s t o the extravagant series of excursions embarked upon
by William ( 1 859- 1 94 1 ) in 1 888, right after his coronation as King of Prussia and
Emperor of Germany. In less than seven months, William made official visits to
Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Greece and Turkey, as well as traversing
much of Germany.
9 The allusion is to Czar Alexander III ( 1 845-1 894), described in Le vergini as: "II
piu potente, ii padrone di piu vaste turbe, corroso nei suoi muscoli erculei dal tarlo
de! sospetto, si consuma solo in una cupa misantropia, non avendo nemmeno il gusto
di contraporre alle piccole formule chimiche dei suoi rebelli una qualche magnifica
strage ad arme bianca per irrigare e concimare le sue terre isterilite" ( Vergini 1 5 1 ) .
The phrase "formule chimiche" had already appeared with reference t o the power
of the poetic verbum: "un ordine di parole puo vincere d'efficacia micidiale una for­
mula chimica" ( Vergini 46) .
 D'Annunzio: The Beast Who Wills 271

to him that the grace of God had reserved for his final years quite
a different sort of comfort . 10 It is already widely known that, to the
great jubilation of the archduchesses and other ladies of the court ,
negotiations with an Italian impressario are underway to arrange for
the transfer to the Imperial Gou� of the prodigous melodramatist
and the additional transfer (for a modest price) of Metastasio
Daspuro . 1 1 But, bad news at the last minute! The latest telegrams
threaten a visit by William II to Vienna. And William, a man of primal
impulses and an authoritarian, is more than capable of having the
maestro kidnapped and carted off to Berlin in order that all the military
regulations governing the use of arms on foot and on horseback, as
well as accounting procedures and ambulances, be put to music .
And yet others? Queen Victoria, in her lucid moments , busies
herself with rearranging the museum of her dolls and the dolls of
her daughters and grand-daughters, in a touching return to childhood
innocence. The Prince of Wales, now bald and graying but, as always,
the perfect clubman, may very well die as the crown prince, content,
perhaps, never to have inherited the crown. Every year, in order to
accommodate his slowly expanding Epicurean girth, he is forced to
loosen his belt an additional loop, overcoming his gentlemanly
repugnance for all ridiculous masquerades whenever obliged to repre­
sent his aged Mother at an official ceremony. The Russian Grandukes
leave Saint Petersburg from time to time to go shake hands with the
engineer Sadi Carnot, renewing thus the illusion of an alliance for
the obliging French populace and in return obtaining certain advan­
tages from the Republic in the pursuit of their favorite pastimes . 1 2
As regards pretenders: Victor Napoleon, having lost any hope of
artificially stirring up a renewed heroic frenzy in the blood of the First
Consul, which in him stagnates, limits his political interventions to
the occasional modest epistle , which, filled with regret, he writes from
1 0 D'Annunzio seems to be alluding to the numerous tragedies that beset Franz­

Joseph I ( 1 830- 1 9 1 6) before 1 892 : the death of his son Rudolph of Hapsburg, the
1 867 execution of his brother Maximilian in Mexico , and the suicide of his mad
cousin, Ludwig II, in 1886.
1 1 The "prodigious melodrammatist" is perhaps identical to the unnamed "doggerel

Sh akespeare" mentioned above. D' Annunzio seems to be imagining a sort of comic

reenactment of events from the eighteenth century Viennese. court, where Pietro
Metastasio presided as "poeta cesareo" from 1 729 until 1 782.
12
Sadi Carnot had been president of the Third Republic for five years at the time
D'Annunzio composed the present essay. As for the Russian granddukes, D'Annun­
zio seems to have in mind the Grand Duke Cyril ( 1 87 6- 1 938) and his family.
 2 72 Nietzsche in Italy

a hotel table on a day of spleen 13 The Count of Paris is no less passive

.

and resigned. 1 4 And the young Duke of Orleans appears to give

credence to those who argue for the impurity of his blood on the basis
of his plebian lineaments .15 Indeed, he seems properly fit and disposed
only to fulfill his duties as a male, as a groom in the royal stables .
After hoisting the white flag over his own barracks in a show of puerile
weakness, he quickly shoved it like a useless rag under the bed of a
popular singer.

Part II

As a result it is necessary to lean towards Democracy. But, alas! . . .

everything is old and ignoble on this side as well.
The dogma of Eighty-Nine, the fundamental axiom of modern
societies- that to the People belongs the sovereignty of States, that
the authority of subjects is greater than that of their King-had already
been taught, accepted and practiced in all Christian communities ;
in fact, it was especially fought for.. by the Jesuits. 16 How many sound­
ings of apocalyptic trumpets, ho� many rumblings of thunder, how
many flashes of lightning, simply to place at the summit of a great
knotty and twisted pole a placard inscribed in letters of blood with
13 Victor Napoleon Bonaparte ( 1 820-1904) inherited the claims of his father "Prince
Napoleon" (Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte) to the French throne, but,
like his father, never became ruler of France. Championed by the reactionary wing
of the Bonapartist movement, he broke with his father in 1 884 and went into exile
in Belgium after the passage of a parliamentary edict in 1886 which banished from
France all of the heirs and pretenders to the throne.
1 4 The Count of Paris or the "Prince Royal'' was Louis Philippe (VII) Albert of
Orleans ( 1 838- 19 1 9), who, like Victor Napoleon, was banished in 1886 by parliamen­
tary edict . Although initially protesting his expulsion both in print and by giving
encouragement to the royalist party, the Count of Paris eventually resigned himself
to his exile.
1 5 Eldest son of the Count of Paris, the Duke of Orleans was Louis Philippe (VIII)
Robert of Orleans ( 1 869- 1 932). In early 1 890 (at the age of 2 1), he returned on his
own initiative to Paris in order to enroll in the military service, despite the 1886
order banishing all potential heirs to the French throne. The result was a trial at
which he was convicted to two years of imprisonment at Clairvaux. He did not,
however, serve out his full sentence, since after only four months he was granted
(and accepted) a presidential pardon from Sadi Carnot . It is to the latter event that
D'Annunzio would seem to refer.
16 Cf. "O dobbiamo noi (patrizi) ricono scere ii gran dogma dell'Ottantanove , aprire
i portici dei nostri cortili all' aura popolare, coronar di lumi i nostri balconi di traver­
tino nelle feste dello Stato . . . " ( Vergini 46).
 D'Annunzio: The Beast Who Wills 273

the most Catholic of commonplaces! 1 7 Louis XVI was executed in

accord with the very same principles that had armed Jacques Clement ,
Balthazar Gerard, and Ravaillac. 18
Shall poets sing the populace's triumphal accession to Power? But
universal suffrage was invented .with extraordinary cunning in order
to strip the populace of its rights. The common people's lot remains
always the same, whether the governing will be that of a tribune or
of a king, whether the privileged class be the nobility or a majority
of Parliament. The common people remain forever enslaved and con­
demned to suffer, no less under the shadow of feudal towers than under
the shadow of the feudal smokestacks of modern factories. Never shall
they have within them the feeling of freedom. 19
It is in vain that contemporary Cleons shout to the multitudes: "You
are not only power, but also light, thought, wisdom."20 Perhaps even
the multitudes are not taken iii by these sorts of blandishments. They
believe but in a single form of progress: the increase in their own
physical well-being. The leaven of the spirit cannot lighten up a dough
so heavy, coarse and dull. To mobilize a mob one needs to counter
its vice with another vice. And Cleons understand this psychology
well: they give the impression of idolizing the great marionette whose
strings they themselves pull.
Democracy is thus little more than a battle of vain egotisms, made
possible by the systematic erosion of all legitimate and just forms of
superiority. It marks the triumph of the bourgeois , of the philistine ,
17 D'Annunzio is deliberately conflating Christ's crucifix, long referred to as the antenna

crucis in the patristic tradition, with the "Trees of Liberty" or "Liberty Poles" which
were planted throughout revolutionary France between 1 790 and 1 793 as symbols
of the revolution. These bore a placard with the inscription "liberte, fraternite, egaiite"
as well as a red pileus cap (standing for emancipation from slavery) upon their summit.
18 Jacques Clement, Balthasar Gerard and Franc;:ois Ravaillac were the assassins

of, respectively, Henry III ( 1 589), William of Orange (1 584) and Henry IV ( 16 1 0) .
All three murders were motivated by religious zealotry.
1 9 Cf. "Le plebi restano sempre schiave, avendo un nativo bisogno di tendere i polsi

ai vincoli. Esse non avranno dentro di loro giammai, lino al termine dei secoli, il
sentimento della liberta" ( Vergini 47).
2 o Cleon was an Athenian political and military leader in the fifth century B. C . D'An­
nunzio's characterization of him would appear to be dependent upon Thucydides
and Aristophanes. Compare the corresponding passage in Le vergini: "Non e in Roma,
come gia fu in Atene, un qualche demagogo Cleofonte fabbricante di lire? Noi potrem­
mo, per modesta mercede, con i suoi stessi strumenti accordati da lui, persuadere
gli increduli che nel gregge e la forza, il diritto, il pensiero , la saggezza, la luce . . .
"

( Vergini 45).
 2 74 Nietzsche in Italy

of the hypocrite, of the presumptuous ass, of the pedant who pretends

to be in-the-know, of the idiot who thinks he is equal to a man of
genius, of mediocrity and baseness in all of their various forms. While
Nature tends to multiply all differences without limit, Democracy tends
instead to render all men equal: to imprint a precise stamp upon each
soul as if upon a social implement, to manufacture human heads as
if they were simply pinheads. 2 1 It is concerned neither with individual
activity, nor with free and spontaneous energy, nor with the authen­
tic and vital man; but instead with an abstract formula. To create
movement within the State, it takes into consideration only the ac­
tion of the masses and molecular forces .
But from within Lady Democracy's turbid bowels is born a tyrant
much more menacing than those she herself had to defeat : the Royal
State, the Providential State, the State Producer of the Public
Happiness- a monstruous Polyphemus who will shear and butcher
his own flocks. All the apostles of the populace, all our future-gazing
prophets invoke this newest shepherd of nations!
And all the while, Demos deludes himself. His stupidity (oh, ine­
quality!) has no equal in the world. Under the wings of the implacable
vulture that devours his liver, he deposits the miraculous egg from
which the Golden Age is supposed to hatch.

Part III

Fortunately, the State founded on universal suffrage and on equal­

ity, held together mostly by fear, is not only an ignoble edifice, but
also a precarious one. Within the economic and political equality to
which socialist and non-socialist democracy aspires, a new oligarchy
will gradually form, a new domain of force; and little by little this
group will seize the reins of power, harnessing the masses for its own
benefit and destroying all empty dreams of equality and justice. 22
2 1 C f. "Bollate voi [poeti] sino all'osso le stupide fronti di coloro che vorrebbero mettere

su ciascuna anima un marchio esatto come su un utensile sociale e fare le teste umane
tutte simili come le teste dei chiodi sotto la percussione dei chiodaiuoli" ( Vergini 45) .
22 Cf. "Per fortuna lo Stato eretto su le basi de! suffragio popolare e dell'inugualian­

za, cementato dalla paura, non e soltanto una costruzione ignobile ma e anche
precaria . . . . Su l'uguaglianza economica e politica, a cui aspira la democrazia, voi
andrete dunque formando una oligarchia nuova, un nuovo reame della forza; e
riuscirete in pochi, o prima o poi, a riprendere le redini per domar le moltitudini
a vostro profitto" ( Vergini 4 7) .
 D'Annunzio: The Beast Who Wills 275

Force i s the founding law o f Nature, indestructible and inexorable .

The world can only b e founded o n force , no less in times of civiliza­
tion than in primeval epochs. 23 Nature is unjust. We are the products
of this Nature. As a result, we are unable to aspire to justice , rebel­
ling against our very origin. Whoever protests this and dreams and
prophetizes is either ingenuous or is a rhetor.
If all the earthly races were to be destroyed in another deucalian
flood and new generations - as the fable has it - were to arise from
stones, men would fight amongst themselves from the very instant
they were thrust up out of Mother Earth, until one , the most power­
ful, succeeded in ruling over the others . 24
Now, for some four centuries Europeans have done nothing but
despoil and exterminate other racial stocks. European civilization,
like a voracious spider , has wrapped the whole globe in its web . In
the Americas entire races have vanished upon contact with the white
man; the Oceanic peoples are disappearing, pursued even into remote
hideaways; Africa has been invaded in its entirety. By what right?
By the right of him who is most strong. H igh rhetorical sermonizing
in the name of brotherhood under a common Sun is merely a stratagem
to cover over the .noise of the weapons factories . The innocent
silhouette of Peace emerging from the waters of Genoa brings to mind
that cliff in the Sicilian sea into which the nymph Scylla was trans­
formed. The cliff had the soft contours of a woman, her bust rising up
over the sea foam, while all around her the jaws of six ghastly dogs
ceaselessly barked. The jaws of War howl at the sides of the invoked
Peace. The latest ode of our greatest living poet is filled with the sounds
of bellicose trumpets and with lightning flashes. 2 5
After a century of humanitarianism - a word as ugly and ridiculous
as the thing to which it refers - we have arrived at this: every citizen
2 3 Cf. "La forza e la prima legge della natura, indistruttibile , inabolibile . . . . II mon­

do non puo essere constituito se non su la forza, tanto nei secoli di civilta quanta
nelle epoche di barbarie" ( Vergini 46).
2 4 Cf. "Se fossero distrutte da un altro diluvio deucalionico tutte le razze terrestri
e sorgessero nuove generazicini dalle pietre, come nell'antica favola, gli uomini si
batterebbero tra loro appena espressi dalla Terra generatrice, finche uno, ii piu valido,
non riuscisse ad imperar su gli altri" ( Vergini 46-47).
2 5 The allusion is to Giosue Carducci, who, after publishing the third edition of his
Ode barbari in 1889 , had begun to compose a series of bellic odes, later collected in
the volume Rime e ritmi ( 1 889). The precise ode that D'Annunzio has in mind is pro­
bably "La guerra" (composed in November of 1 89 1 ) .
 2 7 6 Nietzsche in Italy

a soldier, twenty million men in uniform; Europe, an encampment.

What difference is there between our century and those first years
of barbarism when each man defended his cavern with a bow ready
and strung?
So force is still the supreme law. And so should it be; and it is right
and proper that this be the case until the end of time. Equality and
justice are empty abstractions and the doctrines which derive from
them are unacceptable to superior men.
The new aristocracy shall form itself, accordingly, by restoring the
feeling ef power to its rightful place of honor, by raising itself beyond
good and beyond evil. 26
According to the doctrine of Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the reasons
for our generalized state of decadence is the following: that Europe
as a whole has been irrevocably marked by notions of good and evil
as defined by the slave morality.
There are two moralities: one appertaining to the "nobles" and one
to the servile herd. Now, because noble and good are synonymous terms
in all primitive languages and because the word noble also designates
a social class , it clearly follows that the ruling caste was the first to
create the notion of the Good . Its entire morality is rooted in a
sovereign conception of its own dignity and aims at the proud glorifica­
tion of life .
The genesis of the Good is necessarily different in the case of the
slave. By instinct he mistrusts that which the ruler identifies as the
Good, since precisely that which is deserving of such an affirmative
label for the ruler is for the slave bad and hence represents Evil.
But, unfortunately, the slave morality has defeated the other. In
order to assure its victory, it needed a certain power of seduction.
This Jesus of Nazareth brought to it through the ruse of love, so draw­
ing to himself the malcontent and the abject. All the sufferings of the
weak and the oppressed were thence transformed into virtues; and
the strong man who derived his laws from contrary principles became
abhorrent. Asceticism extended a veil of pallor and sadness over all
things.
This morality is, consequently, nothing but the instinct of the herd.
Superior men, leaving to the naive the tasks of improving the sort
26The bulk of the material D'Annunzio plagiarized from Jean de Nethy's "Nietzsche­
Zarathustra" begins with this paragraph and extends to the end of the paragraph
below which begins "But, unfortunately, the slave morality. . . . " On this subject see,
once again, Guy Tosi , "D'Annunzio decouvre Nietzsche ( 1 892- 1 894)," esp. 503-04 .
 D'Annunzio: The Beast Mo Wills 277

of the multitudes and of practicing the Christian virtue of charity,

shall dedicate their every effort to its destruction.
Is it perhaps worth prolonging the lives of the miserable? To what
end? To be preoccupied with the mob to the detriment of the "nobles" :
isn't that a bit like passing over the most vigorous trees in a wood
so as to nurse some poor lymphatic shoot or common weed?
Mankind will be divided into two races . To the superior race, lifted
up by the sheer energy of its will, all shall be permitted; to the in­
ferior race, little or close to nothing. The lion's share of well-being
will belong to a privileged few whose personal nobility is such that
it will make them worthy of every privilege .
The true "noble" is in no way similar to the decrepit heirs of the
ancient patrician families . The essence of the "noble" is an inner
sovereignty. He is the free man, stronger than circumstances, con­
vinced that the value of personality exceeds that of all secondary at­
tributes. He is a force that governs itself, a freedom that affirms itself
and regulates itself according to the ideal of dignity. He has an in­
fallible eye when he looks into himself. And in this autocracy of con­
science is the distinctive feature of the new aristocrat . 2 7
A single one of his joys is preferable to the jubilations of the entire
populace.
For the moment, however, he has renounced his role as sovereign.
Never will an election ballot contaminate his hands.
Life is a wellspring of joy - says Friedrich Nietzsche - but, where
the rabble comes to drink, all the founts are poisoned. 2 8
And later: - he who withdrew from life, was simply turning away
from the rabble . He didn't wish to share the fount, the flame and the
fruit with the rabble. 29
Translation and commentary
by Jeffrey Schnapp
27 Cf. "Siate convinti (voi patrizi) che l'essenza della persona supera in valore tutti
gli attributi accessorii e che la sovranita interiore e ii principal segno dell'aristocrate .
Non credete se non nella for:za temprata dalla lunga disciplina" ( Vergini 46).
2 s Thus Spoke Zarathustra 2 "On the Herd."

2 9 Thus Spoke Zarathustra 2 "On the Herd." This retreat is of course none other than
that of Prince Luzio (and Claudio Cantelmo): "Piuttosto che rinunziare al privilegio
e prendere un'attitudine disconveniente al vostro orgoglio legittimo, piuttosto che
apparire il superstite di voi medesimo, vi siete ritratto dal mondo . . . e siete venuto
in solitudine ad aspettar I' evento che il Destino riserba alla vostra Casa" ( Vergini 1 49).