Gabriele D'Annunzio 's use of the Bible in war|L'uso bellico della Bibbia in Gabriele d'Annunzio

This paper examines the war discourse of the soldier Gabriele D'Annunzio, a discourse characterized stylistically by massive recourse to Biblical symbols and terminology together with a rhetoric that weaves together religion and the Fatherland, in order to base the former on the latter. His sacralization of the conflict, an approach which had already been employed at the time of the war in Libya 1911-12, leads the poet to identify the Fatherland with God and God with the Fatherland, Christ with the warriors and the warriors with Christ, and even to enlist the aid of St Francis of Assisi under the national flag, as «the most saintly of the Italians, the most Italian of the Saints». Many of the specific elements of this «Religion of the Fatherland» - developed in the trenches - would again be used by D'Annunzio during the occupation of Rijeka 1919-1920, creating a reservoir of themes and proposals on which fascism would later draw heavily.