Gabriele D’Annunzio, Francesca da Rimini, translated by Arthur Simons. New York: F.A. Stokes Company, 1902.
Call number: PQ 4803 F7 E5 (Main Library)
On the Column: “Appropriations of the Divine Comedy in Other Media, Languages, and Cultures”
Francesca da Rimini is Italian decadent poet Gabriele D’Annunzio’s theatrical representation of a classic tale of love and death set in thirteenth-century Italy and based on canto 5 of the Divine Comedy. It was performed for the first time in 1901 by Eleonora Duse, one of the greatest actresses at the time as well as D’Annunzio’s lover since 1895. D’Annunzio dedicated his work to the “Divina Eleonora” [“Divine Eleonora”], and this exhibited English edition of Francesca da Rimini features an image of Duse playing the character of Francesca at the Victoria Theater in New York City in August 1902.
D’Annunzio’s interpretation of Dante’s episode revolves around two individuals who feel intense bodily desire (“The passion of the ardor of our life”; Act 5). Because of it, the tragic lovers defy their families, classes, and genders until they pay for their actions with their own lives (“We have been one life; it were seemly thing that we be also one death”; Act 5). Francesca’s last words, which constitute the play’s final lines (“Ah, Paolo!”) show how she wishes to embrace Paolo for eternity, even beyond death. D’Annunzio’s text is a “poem of blood and lust” with which the author tried to make audiences experience irresistible passions, as well as sensual and profound emotions.
A testament of the legacy of D’Annunzio’s work can be found in Riccardo Zandonai’s 1914 opera Francesca da Rimini, which recounts a story of discord between Guelfs and Ghibellines.