D'Annunzio and the Great War deals with the role that World War I played in the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio's life and literary imagination. For many years, he had called for war; when it came, he plunged into it with a passion. War turned out to be the central experience in his life and work.

When conflict burst upon Europe and raged on its battlefields for more than four years, D'Annunzio, unlike the many Italians who meekly marched to the frontlines to fight, die, or survive, viewed it as something for which he had wished and prepared, for both political and personal reasons, for many years.

It is hard to understand why a man, who by the spring of 1915 had achieved an extraordinary national and international success as a man of letters and had become a prominent public figure, came to look on the war that could destroy him and the world in which he enjoyed such prominence as a godsend. D'Annunzio's uncanny gift of foreseeing the future revealed to him that war would come because it was an integral part of both his country's destiny and his own.

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D'Annunzio fought the war on land, sea and in the air with boldness, enthusiasm, and recklessness, emerging from it as the most decorated Italian soldier. He conferred veracity and credibility on his war deeds and experience not only by taking part in enormously risky actions and placing himself in mortal danger, but also by gaining a professional knowledge of military strategies, by devising such new ones as the cooperation of air and naval forces in battle, by applying them, and by writing about them.

He paid dearly for his martial heroism; the loss of his right eye would cause him emotional and physical suffering for the rest of his life. But his heroism also enabled him to produce his best prose work, Notturno (Nocturne), which deals with his hopes, exhilaration, and finally, his delusion as a warrior.