“My whole life is intertwined with the life of my greyhounds”. A declaration by D’Annunzio reported by a journalist of the English Daily Mail in February 1914. Certainly in a biography of D’Annunzio normally the love for his greyhounds takes up little space, but in fact it is a passion that has occupied much the life of the poet.
“The long snouts of Gabriele D’Annunzio” (by Sonia Ragno and Angelo Anselmi, for the types of M-House, Milan, 38 euros) is a book that deals with outlining an aspect of the life of the poet that certainly for many can be almost unprecedented, through painstaking work, for a surprising result. And in some ways by returning a very human figure of the poet, as in the letters in which he explains how he took charge of renewing the bandage on one of his wounded greyhounds.
D’Annunzio’s long coexistence with his dogs
The book is an impressive collection of documents attesting to this long coexistence of D’Annunzio with his dogs, an article from La Tribuna dated 2 December 2013, where he reports on a successful performance by two of the poet’s greyhounds. The article concludes: “D’Annunzio appeared satisfied, cheerful, carefree. He really had the contented air of a happy man. It doesn’t happen every day that dogs procure a fleeting moment of joy for a dramatic author! ”.
Coursing
The type of racing the greyhounds in question participated in was coursing. A type of competition that still takes place today, under the patronage of the International Cynological Federation “, even in Italy, only that while the chronicles of the time spoke of the excitement of aristocrats and ladies of high society to see the dogs launched to chase a hare, currently dogs chase a laughing stock that once in motion is chased by greyhounds who are hunters on sight. D’Annunzio followed his dogs around Europe to follow their sporting events. So much more than a simple pleasure to have around the elegant figures of the greyhounds. Remember that in Italy betting on dogs is prohibited as well as hunting live animals with greyhounds.
The same D’Annunzio who has no qualms about bringing to court a farmer who had killed a greyhound and who saw the dog only for its appearance as an “inveterate exterminator of chickens” (as an article in The San Francisco Examiner of the October 7, 1906 (and this gives the idea of the resonance of the trial.) The article reports that the poet “with his voice broken by tears, told the court that the day the gray was murdered will remain in his heart as Calais in the heart of Queen Maria. “Despite the lawyers deployed by D’Annunzio and the figure of the offended party, the judges also had to understand the reasons for the farmer and his chickens, given that the poor man, as the lawyer Alessia Pontenani comments, all in all he received a mild sentence.