Slast: roman iz života rimske aristokracije
Sweetness is the first novel by Gabriele d'Annunzio, written in 1889 in Francavilla al Mare, and published the following year by Fratelli Treves.
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.
One copy is available
- Traces of patina
