by Jamie James
“Debauchery and death mingle”: Marg [Marguerite] Yourcenar, “Caprée,” La Revue Bleue, Dec. 21, 1929, 371.
“one of those men”: Marguerite Yourcenar, Coup de Grâce, trans. Grace Frick (London: Black Swan, 1983).
“Coup de Grâce, the book, is itself an act of revenge”: As this book went to press, a biography of Grace Frick was published (Joan E. Howard, We Met in Paris: Grace Frick and Her Life with Marguerite Yourcenar [Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2018]), which speculates that Yourcenar’s love affair with André Fraigneau may have been a fabrication. My analysis of Coup de Grâce as an autobiographical work is based upon the established narrative of Yourcenar’s life. This issue, among many other enigmas in the author’s life, cannot be resolved until Yourcenar’s private papers are unsealed, in 2037—if ever.
Specifically, Fascism arrived: For the Fascist era in Capri, see Ciro Sandomenico, “Capri al tempo di Mussolini,” L’Isola, Dec. 5, 2005.
“Fascism is like an empty tube”: Davide Spina, “The Good, the Bad, and the Malaparte,” AA Files, no. 72 (2016): 5.
“Too much sea”: Ibid., 7.
The history of the manuscript of Kaputt: Malaparte, “The History of a Manuscript,” in Kaputt.
“There is something strange”: Malaparte, Kaputt, chap. 1.
“Suddenly, with the peculiar vibrating”: Ibid., chap. 3.
“His stupid air”: Ibid., chap. 12.
“As for the filth”: Ibid., chap. 5.
“a very rare example”: Curzio Malaparte, The Skin, trans. David Moore (Pickle Partners, 2015), chap. 6.
“lay prostrate beneath the heel”: Ibid.
“when we returned to the vast hall”: Ibid.
“cannot be understood”: Spina, “The Good, the Bad,” 17.
“A Homeric ship”: Bruce Chatwin, Anatomy of Restlessness: Selected Writings, 1969–1989 (New York: Viking, 1996), 162.
“certainly not in the same class”: Alberto Moravia, Contempt, trans. Angus Davidson (New York: New York Review of Books, 1999), 79–80.
“In the course of these wanderings”: Pablo Neruda, Memoirs, trans. Hardie St. Martin (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), 211–15.
“I have always said”: Matilde Urrutia, My Life with Pablo Neruda, trans. Alexandria Giardino (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004).
“Today I’m going to get a ring”: Adam Feinstein, Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), 276.
“sweetest of consorts”: Neruda, Memoirs, 216.
“remained a secret”: Ibid., 215.
“did not appear on the tapes”: Mike Hill and Jon Wise, The Works of Graham Greene (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 2:235.
“The elegance of Capri life”: Money, Capri, 242.
“problems of congestion”: The mayor of Capri quoted is Gianni De Martini, in a post by Kathy McCabe, on italytravel.com, a website of Perillo Tours, Aug. 8, 2016.
One recent title: Francesco Durante, Il richiamo azzurro (Capri: La Conchiglia, 2000).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Foremost among the colleagues and friends who assisted my research for this book are Cassandra Langer, the author of a fine biography of Romaine Brooks, who gave me good advice and made some essential corrections to my manuscript while I was working on it; and the late Will Ogrinc, who carefully reviewed my biographical sketch of Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen. Ogrinc’s untimely death in 2018 deprived the community of Fersen scholars of their brightest and most learned authority, and me of the opportunity to thank him personally for his invaluable corrections.
I am grateful to Matthew Gurewitsch, who interrupted his tour of Java to translate Rilke’s “Lied vom Meer” when I needed it, in short order, yet with a timeless elegance. For help with my translations, I offer warm thanks to Nigel Barley and Cornelia Biegler-König. For their assistance in picture research and verifying elusive points of information, my thanks go to Tiziana Alvisi, Raimondo Biffi, Geoff Drutchas, Jérôme Merceron, Giulia Napoleone, and Antonia Soriente.
I am grateful to many new friends in Capri for their generous hospitality and advice, particularly Don Vincenzo Simeoli, Anita de Pascale, Tonino Gargiulo, and my friends at Edizioni la Conchiglia, Riccardo Esposito, Ausilia Veneruso, and Vincenzo Sorrentino. Thanks to Dott.ssa Anna Maria Palombi Cataldi, director of the library of the Centro Caprense Ignazio Cerio, for granting me full access to the archive there. Nicolino and Carmen Morgano were very kind to receive me at Villa Cercola, an experience that enriched my understanding of life on Capri in its glamorous heyday.
For their hospitality and good company when I was carrying out my research, I offer thanks to Agnès Montenay, in Paris; to Richard Fairman, in London; to Fabrizio Ottaviani, in Rome; and to Nina Schwalbe and Sally Girvin, in New York. I am grateful to these old friends who offered valuable corrections and comments: John Finlay, Mark Livingston, and Adam Lüders.
As ever, I am grateful to my agent, Katinka Matson, for her loyal and astute guidance.
At Farrar, Straus and Giroux, I am indebted to Ileene Smith for her sensitive and perceptive edit of my manuscript, and to Jonathan Galassi for his enthusiastic support of this project from the beginning. Jackson Howard was a steady and reliable guide in the journey from manuscript to book. I give thanks to Ingrid Sterner, once again, for vital corrections and improvements to the text, and to Katie Hurley, the production editor, for gathering all the errant editorial strands into a coherent text. I offer grateful admiration to Na Kim for the brilliant cover.
Finally, I wish to express my warmest deep affection to my dedicatee, my best friend and partner, Rendy, and his family, who have taken me to their hearts as one of their own, despite my outlandish ways. Without their love and support, I could not do what I do.
INDEX
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Académie des Femmes
Acton, Harold
Adelswärd, Axel d’
Adelswärd, Baron Göran
Adelswärd, Renauld d’
Adelswärd, Viveka
Adonis
Aesthetic style
agriculture
Agrippa
Akademos
Alcibiades
Alexander the Great
Algeria
Allers, Christian Wilhelm
Altenberg, Peter
Amalfi
Ambler, Eric
America; Civil War
American Academy in Rome
American Journal of Insanity, The
amphora
Anacapri
anal intercourse and n
Anderson, Walter
Andreas, Friedrich
Andreyeva, Maria Fyodorovna
Angkor
animal sacrifice
Annicelli, Corrado
Antinous
anti-Semitism
Antokolski, Mark
Antokolski, Sacha
Antony and Cleopatra
Apollo; and Hyacinth
Apragopolis
archaeology
architecture; neoclassical
Archives de France
Art Nouveau
astrology
Athens
Augustus
Auschwitz
Australia
Austria
Babylon
Bach, Johann Sebastian
Baker, George
Bakst, Léon
Balbo, Italo
Balla, Giacomo
ballet
Ballets Russes
Balzac, Honoré de
Bardot, Brigitte
Barney, Alice Pike
Barney, Natalie; Éparpillements; The Weeping Venus
Barra
Barse, George Randolph
Baths of Tiberius
Baud
elaire, Charles
Bay of Naples
Beerbohm, Max
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Behring, Emil von
Beinecke Library, Yale University
Belvedere Cannone
Benson, E. F.; Final Edition: Informal Autobiography
Berlin
Bernhardt, Sarah
birds
Bismarck, Otto von
Black Masses scandal
Blaesus
Bloomsbury
Blue Grotto
Blue Grotto Hotel
Boccioni, Umberto
Böcklin, Arnold
Bogan, Louise
Boldoni, Giovanni
Bolshevism
Boothe, Clare, The Women
Borgatti, Giuseppe
Borgatti, Renata
Boucher, François
Bourbons
Bournonville, August; Napoli
Bragaglia, Anton Giulio and n
Breton, André
Brooks, John Ellingham; “Festival of San Costanzo—an Island Carnival” and n
Brooks, Romaine; affair with D’Annunzio; L’Amazone; Natalie Barney and; in Capri; Casati portrait by; childhood of; Gabriele D’Annunzio, the Poet in Exile; later years; in London; marriage to John Brooks; The Masked Archer; memoir of; in New York; in Paris; sexuality of; The Weeping Venus
Browning, Elizabeth, Sonnets from the Portuguese
Bunin, Ivan; in Capri; The Gentleman from San Francisco, and Other Stories
Burr, Thomas
Burton, Richard
Byron, Lord
Byzantium
Cabanel, Alexandre
Caesar, Julius
Caffè Morgano
Caligula
Calvé, Emma
camp
Campania
Camus, Albert
Capote, Truman
Cappa, Benedetta
Cappiello, Leonetto
Capri; Blue Grotto; Romaine Brooks in; Ivan Bunin in; Joseph Conrad in; expatriate society; Fascists in; Jacques Fersen in; first appearance in history; Futurists in; Germans in; Maxim Gorky in; Isle of; Krupp scandal; D. H. Lawrence in; Curzio Malaparte in; Pablo Neruda in; of 1950s–70s; painters in; pants; August von Platen in; Rainer Maria Rilke in; Russians in; Marquis de Sade in; scandal control; as Siren Island; as symbol; Tiberius in; village; Oscar Wilde in; Marguerite Yourcenar in
Capri È Anche Mia
Carlyle, Thomas
Carolus-Duran
Carrà, Carlo
Carril, Delia del
Casa Malaparte
Casa Rossa
Casati, Marchesa Luisa
Casetta Arturo
Castel dell’Ovo
Catholicism
Cerio, Edwin
Cesarini, Nino
Ceylon
Cézanne, Paul
Chadwick, Whitney
Chaliapin, Feodor
Channel Islands
Charteris, Evan Edward
Chatwin, Bruce
Cheiro
Chekhov, Anton
chess
Chicago
Chile
Chimot, Édouard
China; art
cholera
churches
Ciano, Galeazzo
Claudel, Paul
Claudius
Clavel, Gilbert; School for Suicide
Clermont-Tonnerre, duc de
cocaine
Cocteau, Jean
Coleman, Charles Caryl
Colette
colonialism
Communism
Conrad, Joseph; in Capri; “Il Conde”; Lord Jim; Nostromo; The Secret Agent; Under Western Eyes
Contempt (film)
Corbusier, Le
Corot, Camille
Corra, Bruno; The Island of Kisses
Corriere della Sera
Coutard, Raoul
Croatia
crossdressing
Cukor, George
Custance, Olive
Cyclades
Dachau
Damecuta
dance
dandyism
D’Annunzio, Gabriele; Francesca da Rimini; La Giaconda; The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian
Dante; Paradiso
death masks
Debussy, Claude; “The Hills of Anacapri”
Decadents
de Chirico, Giorgio
Delerue, Georges
Demange, Charles Edgar
Denmark
Depero, Fortunato
Desnitsky, Vasily Alexeyevich
Diaghilev, Sergei
Diderot, Denis
Dodekanus
Dohrn, Anton
donkeys
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor; Demons (The Possessed)
Douglas, Lord Alfred “Bosie”; The City of the Soul
Douglas, Norman; Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology; death of; Fountains in the Sand; Maxim Gorky and; homosexuality of; Looking Back; Old Calabria; On the Herpetology of the Grand Duchy of Baden; “A Plea for Better Manners”; Siren Land; South Wind
Dreyfus, Alfred
Drusus
Duncan, Isadora
Dunster, Charles
du Plessix Gray, Francine
Durand-Ruel, Paul
Durante, Francesco
Dusmet de Smours, Marchese Marino
Duval, Jeanne
Eastern Empire
École des Beaux-Arts
Éditions Grasset
Edizioni La Conchiglia
Edwardian society
Eggers, Dave
Egypt
Eiffel Tower
Eisenhower Dwight
El Greco
Eliot, T. S.
Elisabeth, Empress of Austria
Elizabethan era
Ellis, Havelock
England; Edwardian society; homosexuality in
English Review, The
ephebes and n
Epstein, Jacob
Erber, Nancy
Esposito, Riccardo
Essebac, Achille; Dédé; Luc
expatriates
Faehndrich, Alice
Fall Krupp
Faraglioni
Fascism; Curzio Malaparte and
Federico, Michele
Ferdinand, King of Naples
Ferrara, Rosina
Ferretti, Daniela
ferries
Fersen, Count Hans Axel von
Fersen, Jacques d’Adelswärd-; ancestry of; “Arcadian Kisses”; Black Masses: Lord Lyllian; Black Masses scandal; childhood of; death of; “Distantly”; Ébauches et débauches; “Ecstasy”; Et le feu; expulsion from Capri; Hei Hsiang: The Black Perfume; homosexuality of; The Hymnal of Adonis; The Kiss of Narcissus; “The Last Kiss”; later years; life in Capri; Light Songs; literary career of; Love Story; name of and n; Ode to the Promised Land; opium use; Our Lady of Dead Seas; in Paris; physical appearance of; Processions That Have Passed; “She Who Crushes the Marrow”; tableaux staged by; Thus Sang Marsyas; trial of; Oscar Wilde and
festivals
Fidenae
Figaro, Le
fin de siècle
Finland
Firbank, Ronald
First World War
Fischer, Ludwig
fishermen
FitzGerald, Edward, Rubáiyát translation by
Flaubert, Gustave; Madame Bovary
Florence
Fokine, Michael
Ford, Ford Madox
Forster, E. M.
Forte dei Marmi
Fortnightly Review, The
Fortuny, Mariano
fossils
Fraigneau, André
France; colonialism; Fersen scandal; Revolution
France, Anatole
Franco, Francisco
Free Association for the Development and Spread of Positive Science
Freer, Charles Lang
Frick, Grace
Fussell, Paul
Futurism
Galerie
Durand-Ruel
Gallo Lungo
Gamboni, Ferdinando
Garavani, Valentino
Gardens of Augustus
Gargiulo, Tonino
Gaskell, Elizabeth
Geneva
Genoa
geography
Germany; Germans in Capri; homosexuality in; Krupp scandal; Nazism; Romanticism
ghazal
Gide, André, The Immoralist
Gilded Age
Gilles de Rais
Giron, Aimé
Gloeden, Wilhelm von
Godard, Jean-Luc
Goddard, Ella
Goddard, Henry
Goddard, St. Mar
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von; Italian Journey
Goloubeff, Nathalie de
Göring, Hermann
Gorky, Maxim; in Capri; The Confession; Days with Lenin; The Lower Depths; Reminiscences of Tolstoy; Rainer Maria Rilke and; The Spy
Gourmont, Remy de
Gramont, Élisabeth de
Grant, Cary
grapes
Graves, Robert, I, Claudius
Greece and Greeks; pederasty
Greene, Graham; An Impossible Woman: The Memories of Dottoressa Moor of Capri
Grotto of Fra’ Felice
Grotto of Matermania
Guggenheim, Peggy
Gulf of Naples
Gurewitsch, Matthew
Hapsburg empire
Hadrian
Hahn, Reynaldo
Hall, Radclyffe; The Forge; The Well of Loneliness
Hamilton, Alexander
Hamilton, Allan McLane; Recollections of an Alienist
Harvard University
Hawaii
Hazzard, Shirley, Greene on Capri
Heine, Heinrich
Heiskell, Morgan
Heliogabalus
heliograph
Hellas
Hepburn, Audrey
Hepburn, Katharine
Herculaneum
Heredia, José-Maria de
Herm
Herodotus
Heydt, Karl von der
Hinduism
Hirohito, Emperor
Hirschfeld, Magnus
Hitler, Adolf
Hogarth Press
Hogg, James, Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Holland, Vyvyan
Holocaust
Homer; The Odyssey
homosexuality; of Jacques Fersen; “gay lifestyle”; Krupp scandal; of Douglas Norman; terminology; Tiberian orgies; of Oscar Wilde
Hong Kong
Housman, A. E.
Hugo, Victor
Huysmans, Joris-Karl; Là-bas; À rebours;
Hyde, Frank
I, Claudius
Ierace, Francesco
Illustrazione
industrialization
infanticide
Ischia
islomania