D’Annunzio e Skrjabin, in D’Annunzio e la Musica. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studio, edited by E. Ledda e A. Bassi, Gardone Riviera-Milano 1988, Il Vittoriale degli Italiani 1989, pp.47-78.

The life and works of Skrjabin and D’Annunzio show many singular analogies: if the poet was born in 1863 and the musician in 1872, with nine years separating them and in completely different geographical and cultural contexts, yet their lives seemed to develop in parallel, marked by the same influences and by similar ideals,  perfectly in tune with the symbolistic climate of the end of the 19th century.  From the portraits available and from a few descriptions, we know that they also looked like each other as regards their appearance and gait. Plechanov describes Skrjabin as an “ elegant, harmonious and delicate feminine figure” and D’Annunzio himself describes his juvenile image in the Notturno in these terms: “the forehead is smooth under thick masses of hair. The eyebrows are outlined  with such a purity in a way as to give something inexpressibly virginal to the melancholy of the big eyes”. Although their field of action was different,  D’Annunzio, according to his own assertions, aspired to solve poetry in music all over his life, and similarly Skrjabin always tended to illustrate his music with poetry. Yet , it is not proved that the two artists  met personally, nor that the musician  read something by D’Annunzio, even if the poet was translated in Russian by Jurgis Baltrusajtis, a brotherly friend of Skrjabin’s; there is also little chance that D’Annunzio knew about Skrjabin’s writings, which at that time did not circulate but in Russian, yet he might have known about Skrjabin’s aesthetic theories, which his several disciples used to spread in Europe; what is sure is that from the moment he heard his music , he became passionately fond of it. It is  therefore worthwhile specifying  under which circumstances D’Annunzio’s interest in the Russian composer’s work was born.

Click here to request the complete text (Italian version only)