The publisher themselves notes, with regard to the book: “Gabriele D’Annunzio, a poet, a soldier, and an indefatigable adventurer, writes Canto Novo, his second collection of poems, at the age of only nineteen, at a moment when the young Kingdom of Italy, following the political Risorgimento, was undergoing a cultural and literary revival.
It is in this newly unified Italy that D’Annunzio will become the supreme poet, il vate, but also a war hero after his daring flight over Vienna in World War I and, ultimately, a standard-bearer for Italian nationalism through the invasion of the territory of Fiume, a gesture of political and poetic rebellion against a victory that Italy had its gains cut by the Allied powers.
Canto Novo is a poetic composition that fuses the Florentine trecento tradition with a complex and richly resonant syntax inspired by Latin poetry. This blending of literary traditions corresponds, in turn, to a vast formal variety that accommodates the sonnet, the ode, the elegy, or the song. All of this is no accident in a poetry collection that exalts not only the young poet’s personal amorous experience but also a magical and mythologized homeland, where a renaissance of myths and ancient deities takes place.”
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Author: Gabriele D’Annunzio. Title: Canto Novo. Publisher: Visor Libros. Available at: Todos tus libros.