Exceeding Modernism: Romantic Artists in the Twentieth Century

This article examines two artists who are simultaneously exemplary and atypical of their era: Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863–1938) and Abel Gance (1889–1981). Each migrated from literature to theater and cinema, were inspired by their experiences during the Great War, pursued political projects in the 1920s, and became marginalized in the 1930s. Yet despite a sustained engagement with cultural modernity (aesthetic, social, technological), both men were accused of being reactionary—nineteenth-century throwbacks masquerading as twentieth-century radicals. Their most recent biographers are willing to call them "modern" but balk before adding an "-ism." Lucy Hughes-Hallett refers to D'Annunzio as such just once and to only one work as "modernist"—even here, the word appears in a subordinate clause.¹ Roger Icart never calls Gance a modernist and the word "modernism" is entirely absent from his voluminous study.² And while Hughes-Hallett links D'Annunzio to romanticism nine times, and Icart makes twenty-three references to romanticism, neither biographer qualifies their definitions.

This reticence is understandable: delineating "romanticism" and "modernism" is not so simple. The linguistic origins of "romanticism" are ambiguous enough to suggest its "essence" consists "in that which cannot be described"; the word has become "an epistemological bucket-with-a-hole into which any number of definitions [can] be poured."³ Romanticism's starting point is not regularly placed before 1770, yet its usefulness as a descriptor means "there is nothing to be gained by stipulating a precise definition of the romantic which would confine it to modernity."⁴ Its end point is no more settled: "late romantic" is liable to have different date ranges in literature/philosophy (1820–50?) and in music/painting (1850–1914?). Then there is the halfway house of "postromantic," where such interchangeable modes as "symbolism" and "decadence" may be found, waiting in expectation of "modernism." But whither "modern"? The notion of temporal (and therefore cultural) "modernity" arises in the Middle Ages, while the word "modernism" appears only in the 1700s. As Matei Calinescu chronicles, the suffix -ism was "indicative, among other things, of irrational adherence to the principles of a cult"—"modernism" was used as an insult until the 1890s.⁵ Any singular definition of "modernism" is swiftly confused amid swarms of competingisms: naturalism, impressionism, expressionism, futurism, cubism, surrealism all claimed to reveal new aspects of modernity.

Though they flourished amid these overlapping movements, D'Annunzio and Gance confound contemporary labels. D'Annunzio is commonly deemed "decadent," a term associated with the decline of romantic energy after 1860 into morbid abstraction—and thence destruction in 1914–18. This label tidies his work into a cultural dead end and enables the claim that he "left no durable imprint" on twentieth-century culture.⁶ Gance is primarily linked to filmic "impressionism"—a term associated with French avantgardism during 1918–27 and thus another terminus: the coming of sound.⁷ Scholars may flatter D'Annunzio and Gance by citing them as high points of "decadence" and "impressionism" but doing so circumscribes their broader contextual status. As Luca Somigli and Mario Moroni illustrate, cultural boundaries are more often set by taste than by identifiable aesthetic or intellectual properties.⁸ I concur with Paolo Valesio's recommendation to banish the "dross of all those artificial labels," especially from artists who embody "the equivalent of four or five creative lives."⁹ D'Annunzio and Gance are extraordinary precisely because they span cultural time and space, engaging "in a sort of semiotic nomadism."¹⁰ Since these artists sought to transgress established aesthetic and social boundaries, my aim is not to produce a more refined categorization of their work. Rather, this article employs the word "romantic" as a more productive means of exploring their wider relationship with modernity. By investigating the remarkably diverse projects of D'Annunzio and Gance, I seek to convey the generative influence of "romantic" creativity within "modern" culture.

Exceeding Definition: Romantic Artists, Modern Imaginations

Nineteenth-century romantics saw in Icarus the greatness and tragedy of their own creative endeavors. Théophile Gautier fondly recalled:

The fate of Icarus frightened no one. "Wings! Wings! Wings!" they cried from all sides...