Novel
The Maidens of the Rocks
Le vergini delle rocce
Gabriele d'Annunzio · 1895
Opening lines
Domati i necessarii tumulti della prima giovinezza, battute le bramosie troppo veementi e discordi, posto un argine all'irrompere confuso e innumerevole delle sensazioni, nel momentaneo silenzio della mia coscienza io aveva investigato se per avventura la vita potesse divenire un esercizio diverso da quello consueto delle facoltà accomodative nel variar continuo dei casi […]
Having subdued the necessary tumults of early youth, beaten down cravings too vehement and discordant, set a bank against the confused and countless onrush of sensations, in the momentary silence of my consciousness I had enquired whether by chance life might become an exercise other than the customary exercise of the adaptive faculties amid the continual shifting of circumstances […]
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Claudio Cantelmo, a young Roman nobleman who despises the bourgeois mediocrity of the Italy born of unification, dreams of fathering an exceptional son, a superior being who would restore Rome's greatness. He withdraws to Trigento, in the South, to the home of a declining princely family that has remained loyal to the Bourbons, the Capece-Montaga, and spends time with the prince's three daughters, Massimilla, Anatolia and Violante: he must choose from among them the mother of this son.
Context
The novel first appeared as a serial in the review “Il Convito”, in 1895. It was to open a cycle, the “Romances of the Lily”, of which the other two volumes were never written. The hero embodies the ideal of the superman, borrowed from Nietzsche. Georges Hérelle gave the French translation as early as 1897, under the title “Les Vierges aux rochers”; in English, Agatha Hughes translated it in 1899 under the title “The Virgins of the Rocks”, but it is also known as “The Maidens of the Rocks”.
Who it is for
A novel in ornate, learned prose, where action counts for less than the narrator's meditation.
Prizes and reception
Critics see in it the political manifesto of the superman according to its author.
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