This new translation of D'Annunzio's masterpiece, the first in more than one hundred years, restores what was considered too offensive to be included in the 1898 translation-some of the very scenes that are key to the novel's status as a landmark of literary decadence.
Gabriele D'Annunzio was born in Italy in 1863. He published poetry and short stories from a young age, quickly gaining a reputation for his frank treatment of erotic subjects. He married in 1883 and had three children, but separated from his wife and began an infamous affair with the actress Elonora Duse. After stints as a journalist and politician, he enlisted as a fighter pilot in World War I, subsequently losing an eye in a flying accident. He became increasingly nationalistic and politically active after the war, and his views had a strong influence on Mussolini. In 1922 he survived a murder attempt, when an unknown assailant defenestrated him. He died in 1938. Lara Gochin Raffaelli is a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Alexander Stille is a frequent contributor on Italy to The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and The New Yorker and the author of several books, including The Sack of Rome. He lives in New York.
“A fascinating psychological novel about the mind of a seducer . .
. Lara Gochin Raffaelli has performed a real service by restoring
Pleasure to an English-speaking public, or rather giving it to us,
in effect, for the first time. . . . In the wake of Pleasure’s
spectacular and scandalous success, [Andrea] Sperelli became for an
entire generation a type that many chose to imitate—as Goethe’s
Werther was for readers of the Romantic era, or Jay Gatsby for the
Jazz Age.” —Alexander Stille, from the Introduction
“[A] superb new translation . . . The writing sparkles. . . .
Raffaelli preserves the florid musicality of D’Annunzio’s original
Italian, its muscular rhythm, and the precious constructions that
can make Italian seem like a foreign language in his hands. She
also provides a wealth of helpful notes, crucial for entering into
D’Annunzio’s museum-like imagination. . . . So much contemporary
writing gives us sex without sensuality; D’Annunzio revels in a
finer erotic touch. . . . The real events in D’Annunzio’s life were
too noisy to ignore, but they shouldn’t drown out the voice of his
writing. . . . A close reading reveals an astonishing streak of
literary innovation.” —The Times Literary Supplement
“Shockingly explicit . . . a kind of portrait of the artist as an
irresistible, corrupt young aesthete . . . [It] has now been lushly
translated in an uncensored version.” —Jonathan Galassi, The New
Republic
“Pleasure is truly a pleasure, and its potency is its own.
D’Annunzio’s . . . methods and vision are strikingly original, and
this novel confidently announces itself not just as a mere echo or
harbinger, but as a fully fledged advent of its own. . . . With
this new translation, the influence on the subsequent century’s
literature is now shockingly apparent. Both Marcel Proust and James
Joyce were great admirers of D’Annunzio’s work, and the influence
especially on Proust’s In Search of Lost Time makes itself
retrospectively evident on nearly every page. . . . Raffaelli’s new
translation of Pleasure will perhaps singlehandedly resuscitate
D’Annunzio as a world writer and place this glimmering first novel
in its key spot among Europe’s great works of Decadent literature.”
—Rain Taxi
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