Pleasure by Gabriele D'Annunzio

Author:Gabriele D'Annunzio
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Literary, Psychological, Italian Literature, Classics, Fiction
ISBN: 9781101616772
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2013-07-29T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IV

Maria Ferres had always remained faithful to her youthful habit of noting daily in an intimate journal her thoughts, joys, sadness, dreams, troubles, aspirations, regrets, hopes, all the events of her inner life, all the episodes of her outer life, composing almost an Itinerary of the Soul, which from time to time she loved to reread, in order to draw from it a rule for her future journey and to rediscover the trace of things that had long been dead.

Forced by circumstances constantly to withdraw into herself, always locked in her purity as in an incorruptible and inaccessible ivory tower, she felt relief and comfort in that kind of daily confession entrusted to the white page of a secret book. She complained about her troubles, she gave herself up to tears, she sought to penetrate the enigmas of her heart, she interrogated her conscience, she drew courage from prayer, she fortified herself through meditation, she banished all weakness and every vain image from herself, she placed her soul in the hands of the Lord. And every page shone with a common light, that of Truth.

September 15, 1886 (Schifanoja). —How tired I feel! The journey fatigued me somewhat and this new sea and country air has dazed me somewhat. I need rest; and it already seems to me that I can foretaste the goodness of sleep and the sweetness of reawakening tomorrow. I will awaken in a kindly home, to Francesca’s cordial hospitality, in this Schifanoja that has such beautiful roses and tall cypresses; and I will awaken with a few weeks of peace before me, twenty days of spiritual existence, maybe more. I am very grateful to Francesca for the invitation. Seeing her again, I saw a sister once more. How many changes have taken place in me, and what deep ones, since the lovely Florentine years!

Francesca was remembering today, with regard to my hair, all the passions and melancholy of that time, and Carlotta Fiordelise, and Gabriella Vanni, and that whole long-ago story that now doesn’t seem to me to have been lived through, but rather read about in an old forgotten book, or seen in a dream. My hair has not fallen out, but very many other more living things have fallen from me. As many hairs I have on my head, so many wheat spikes of pain do I have in my destiny.

But why is sadness overcoming me once more? And why do the memories cause me pain? And why is my resignation being shaken from time to time? It’s pointless lamenting over a grave; and the past is like a grave that does not give up its dead. My God, let me remember this, once and for all!

Francesca is still young, and still preserves that lovely frank geniality of hers that exerted such a strange charm at boarding school on my somewhat dark spirit. She has a great and rare virtue: she is cheerful, but she can understand the sufferings of others and also knows how to soothe them with her mindful compassion.

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