Handing out beauty: Gabriele D’Annunzio’s ritual squanderers

Abstract

D’Annunzio’s approach to beauty has largely unnoticed connections with the anti-modern anthropological discourse on symbolic economy that at the turn of the 20th century begins to reject instrumentality in life and representation. From the cultural primitivism of his time, D’Annunzio develops a consistent reflection on the aesthetic and ethical significance of ritual exchange that informs his search for a higher morality through art. Focusing on the nexus of art, giving, and temporality, this article addresses the intuitions and the contradictions of unconditional expenditure in D’Annunzio’s works, analyzing the leitmotif of the hand as an ambivalent carrier of lavishness and power. From Trionfo della morte to Il fuoco, from Le vergini delle rocce to his autobiographical writings, the implications of D’Annunzio’s argument contribute to an extended theoretical debate that interrogates the role of value in aesthetic and social practices—from Nietzsche, Mauss, and Bataille to Heidegger and Derrida. Can art’s luxurious dissipation truly break the circle of speculation and restitution?

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