Week 114

 

On December 28^th 1920, after the Italian forces had had engaged his “legionnaires” on the 24^th and subsequent four days in order to secure the execution of the Treaty of Rapallo (signed on November 12^th – with the consequent ultimatum of the Italian Command for the delivery of the city expiring on December 22^nd 1920), Gabriele D'Annunzio, who had entered Fiume on September 12^th 1919 and taken control of the town and of its immediate surroundings during the following days, resolved to end his regency and to return his powers, temporarily and symbolically, to the National Council led by Antonio Grossich, expression of the annexationist party and of the urban Italian majority. He would then spend three more weeks in Fiume, until the blockade established around the city was lifted on January 17^th 1921, to leave the few scattered remains of his legions who still lingered in town on the 18^th and make his way back to Italy, perhaps defeated, yet among cheering crowds.

The poet, novelist and playwright, who had sung the Italian intervention and the Italian victory, championed the Italian aspirations over the Adriatic, promised to bring the fight to the enemies of Italy, internal and external, and indeed never to abandon Fiume, was at last forced to leave the scene he had chosen for his greatest performance. The changed international situation, where the relative strength of the Italian position had led the Yugoslavs to assume a less intransigent disposition and concede to certain demands they had expressly rejected in the Summer of 1919, the lack of internal support, with the Italian establishment increased focus and concern for the persistent climate of social unrest, and the opposition of Fiume's citizenship to the extension of an exceptional state which had begun to appear more damaging than the regime of temporary internationalization and autonomy ensured by the Treaty of Rapallo, as well as the resolute measures adopted by the Italian Army under command of gen. Enrico Caviglia; all these aspects certainly provided a reasonable and concrete motive for D'Annunzio's choice.

At the same time, as recurrently and somewhat insistently pointed out, it's difficult to recognize a coherent political idea behind D'Annunzio's actions during the fifteen months he spent in charge of the Adriatic port town; rather, D'Annunzio appeared to embody and, to an extent, deliberately perform themes and fascinations which inhabited the public mind of postwar Italy, a space where his “political” and artistic experience could continue to exist in substantial contiguity. That these themes – elitarianism and populism, authoritarianism and anarchism, militarism and individualism, leaderism and forms of violent, “spontaneous” democracy – displayed a tendency to gravitate towards a subversive, radical platform, appears to have been both a consequence of D'Annunzio's practical situation, where he repeatedly (and, again, somewhat deliberately) found himself, matter of fact, on the opposite side to Italy's government, and of his personal inclination to seek the most intense and dramatic expressions of art and life.

The various, and often conflicting, social and political ideas (as well as the various personalities who came to surround and assist him in the execution of practical matters; Giuriati, Grossich, Host Venturi, Sinigaglia, De Ambris, to cite a few) which found their incarnation in his persona appear at times to be the true driving forces behind his action – which was, after all, D'Annunzio's most urgent and deeply felt necessity, to take action, to find a place where he could again appeal to Italy, to the Nation, or at least to those within it who would hear and understand his call and thus ignite a palingenetic transformation, a revelation of the true Italian spirit and a consecration of the Italian fates. How much of this abstract and fantastic picture took, in the Vate's mind, the form of a ministerial crisis, with the fall of Nitti and his replacement with a Ministry willing to declare the unilateral annexation of the city, is difficult to say. Whether D'Annunzio was aware of how remote such an eventuality was, in consideration of the true sentiments of the Italian establishment, or whether he chose to listen to the appealing echoes of a sudden, lightning “pronunciation”, able to determine the resolution of the long drawn Adriatic question which the inept liberal government had failed to achieve. Whether he had hoped for a frontier incident to create the circumstances for a localized conflict with Yugoslavia – which, with few exceptions (and sporadic belligerent declarations), neither of the two neighbors was seriously looking forward to – or envisioned a future, radical, national-democratic transformation, with himself as ideal founding father and Alceste De Ambris as legislator; across his trajectory as “regent” of Fiume, D'Annunzio appeared to oscillate between all those extremes, progressively caught in a narrowing political space which would have been difficult to inhabit even for a much more competent political mind, and where his artistic inspiration could not escape the ultimate need to provide a concrete form to all those themes and ideas which had failed to find a practical representation of their own.

We'll be able to return over these points in the following (and longer – cooking takes time on Christmases) weeks, and possibly to investigate the substance of D'Annunzio's initiative more closely. In the meantime, we still have to conclude our examination of the original circumstances of his occupation of Fiume.

As discussed during previous weeks, the Italian Government led by Prime Minsiter F.S. Nitti (in Rome) and by Foreign Minister T. Tittoni (in Paris) was in the process of seeking a compromise solution of the Adriatic question, based on the establishment of Fiume with its surroundings as a free state – which, in the substance of the Italian proposals, amounted to preventing its annexation to Yugoslavia. This belabored diplomatic effort, which more or less directly affected the definition of the various issues still unresolved at the Peace Conference (the Treaty of Saint-Germain with Austria, which was signed on September 10^th 1919, had no bearing on the Adriatic question per se, but might have exacerbated those sectors of the public opinion which had come to expect a resolution of the Italian claims in conjunction to the definition of peace terms with the old enemy and thus contributed to increase the appearance of an Italian diplomatic failure), as of early September 1919, appeared quite unlikely to succeed, due to the strong opposition of US President Woodrow Wilson – who clearly intended for the city to go, in the end, to the Yugoslavs – and to the, open but unsubstantial, support provided by France and Great Britain. Consequently, the Italian Government was forced to contemplate the perspective of a further postponement – if necessary, until the end of Wilson's Presidential mandate – with the dramatic diplomatic and financial consequences of such a deliberation, or of a – perhaps even less viable – substantial surrender to the American positions.

The difficult Italian situation had been summed up by the increasingly disillusioned Foreign Minister Tommaso Tittoni, in a telegram where the moderate conservative had offered his advice, as well as his resignation, and which reached Nitti on the 12^th of September, at 12.30 am, a few hours before the Italian Prime Minister was informed of D'Annunzio's march.

[…] This being Wilson's answer, we'd be left with two choices: either to leave it [sic], or to wait. This would now be possible on political grounds, because, while Orlando and Sonnino would have been forced to wait against the US, France and Great Britain, we'd be emboldened by the French and British sympathy. Yet this is entirely impossible on economical grounds.

It is for us a true case of force majeure, so that we have to settle this matter at all costs. Yet a statesman can sign an agreement, even the most accommodating one, but not an act of submission like the one demanded by Wilson. If we have to, it's better to make recourse to that honorable and serious act of protestation […] which is to say, to appoint Minister of Foreign Affairs and Head of Delegation a functionary, and have them sign. […]