Hinduism and the mystical aestheticism of Gabriele D’Annunzio: “Una sensualità rapita fuor de’ sensi”

Abstract

D’Annunzio’s cult of Beauty—his attention to, and interest in, all things beautiful—is well known and has been widely discussed. Yet, the nature of the spirituality which infuses this aestheticism has not been adequately explored due to (mis)interpretations or even an outright rejection of D’Annunzio’s religiosity. In discussing the relationship between Hinduism and D’Annunzio, this article reveals the relevance of Hinduism’s aesthetics to D’Annunzio’s, primarily in the shared concept of the artist’s ability—through his or her heightened senses—to perceive the union of the self with the universal soul, or to experience what D’Annunzio calls “una sensualità rapita fuor de’ sensi”. While placing D’Annunzio in the cultural environment of Orientalism, and noting that he accessed Hindu ideas not only through secondary sources such as Schopenhauer, Romain Rolland, and Angelo Conti, but also through his reading of Orientalist scholars and primary sources (translated into French or Italian), this article demonstrates that in Hindu thought, D’Annunzio found support for, and confirmation of, his own mystic aestheticism.