The light that blinds: On art in D’Annunzio’s La Gioconda

Abstract

This article analyzes Gabriele D’Annunzio’s 1898 play La Gioconda as a form of modern tragedy with respect to Friedrich Nietzsche’s duality of the Apollinian and Dionysian, and with particular emphasis on the motif of light as it appears both in the author’s stage directions and in the dialogues. The story of the play revolves around the recurrent Dannunzian theme of the love triangle. A young sculptor of a Nietzschean sensibility struggles with the dilemma between a peaceful family life and the stormy lifestyle of an artist, played out in his relationships with a gentle and caring spouse and his seductive and implacable model, or la nemica. A study of the diverse ways in which the light motif is used and discussed from one act to the next vis-a-vis the Nietzschean duality, while also considering the stylistic contradiction between a bourgeois domestic drama, on the one hand, and a philosophical and lyrical treatise on aesthetic experience, on the other, the article challenges the dichotomy of spouse vs. lover and argues that the artist’s imagination conflates the two figures in formulating the ideal of a modern muse, a new ‘Gioconda’, a timeless figure that synthesizes an ancient primal dynamism, a restrained Renaissance harmony, and a resounding modernity.