Slast: roman iz života rimske aristokracije

The novel's main character and central theme is the decadent aesthete. The novel is a central text of the Italian decadent literary movement, Decadentism. D'Annunzio was inspired by Huysmans's pioneering work À Rebours, which also strongly influenced Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The aesthete Andrea is a nobleman who loves only art and is devoted to the worship of his wife Elena. Elena's chimerical nature, however, destroys the protagonist's balance and reveals her as a kind of femme fatale. The style of the novel is also of paramount importance: d'Annunzio adopts a unique writing style full of courtly neologisms, often alternating with assonance and consonance. The work's insistence on a unique, pure language may explain its quasi-manneristic and baroque tones.