Angelo Cocles - 1935 - Dannunziana - Cento e Cento e Cento pagine del libro segreto di Gabriele D'Annunzio - 1935

Published in 1935 after seven years of creative silence, this volume represents the true literary and spiritual testament of the “Vate.”

The work belongs to the era of the so‑called “Prose di ricerca,” a phase in which d’Annunzio abandons the structure of the classic novel and heroic narration to fold into an intimate, fragmentary, and nocturnal dimension. Now old and self‑isolated in the mausoleum of the Vittoriale degli Italiani, the poet speaks exclusively with his memories and with the obsession of the end.

The title page attributes the text to Angelo Cocles. It is not a publisher, but a brilliant literary device devised by d’Annunzio himself. In the text, the poet pretends to have received a private notes notebook from this mysterious figure before he took his own life. The name “Cocles” (from Latin, “one-eyed” or “with one eye”) directly recalls Horace Cocles, but it is above all an ironic and tragic allusion to the poet’s partial blindness, who had lost an eye during the Great War.

The confession of the “vile”: d’Annunzio renounces the mask of the sunny superman. He lays himself bare, showing his weaknesses, his deep aridity, and taedium vitae (the boredom and disgust for life).

The temptation of suicide: The subtitle “attempt to die” is central. In the book the poet reveals a remarkable backstory: his mysterious fall from the window at the Vittoriale in 1922 (the so‑called “flight of the archangel,” which physically excluded him from the days of the March on Rome) was not an accident, but a real attempt at suicide. Death is described as a constant attraction from childhood.

From a stylistic standpoint, modern criticism places this work alongside the great masterpieces of European modernism (such as Proust or Joyce). The writing proceeds through streams of consciousness, diary entries, visions in the half‑sleep, and lyric fragments detached from any plot.

The Secret Book is perhaps d’Annunzio’s most modern, bold, and psychologically complex work. If his early output can today seem redundant or dated due to excessive aestheticism, this twilight diary strikes with its mercurial phosphorescence and ruthless honesty. It is a “laic” Way of the Cross in which the Vate no longer seeks to become God, but accepts his own physical and spiritual decomposition, turning silence and memory into the only true work of art remaining. A monumental and indispensable work for understanding the man behind the myth.