Gabriele D’Annunzio "The Innocent"

Publisher: Antares Language: Armenian Number of pages: 312 Binding: hardcover Gabriele D’Annunzio’s novel “The Innocent” (1892) is a prime example of Italian decadence, incorporating elements of the psychological novel, detective fiction, and philosophical narrative. D’Annunzio blends Oscar Wilde’s aestheticism, eroticism, and the psychological realism characteristic of Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s novels. The main character, Tullio Hermil, is a late 19th-century dandy and aesthete endowed with the cruelty, cynicism, and contempt for moral norms typical of Nietzsche’s übermensch. Yet within this unrelenting and capricious hedonist—who rejects the constraints of morality—arise compassion and a sense of guilt, inevitably leading to an existential crisis and repentance.