They never get into the same room with her.
They peep like schoolboys through the crack of the door. D'Annunzio can
deal with an Italian woman. He does so in the first part of "Forse che si
forse che no." She is only one sort of woman, but she _is_ one sort--and
that's something! He has not done many things better than the long scene
in the Mantuan palace. There is nothing to modern British taste positively
immoral in this first part, but it is tremendously sexual. It contains a
description of a kiss--just a kiss and nothing more--that is magnificent
and overwhelming. You may say that you don't want a magnificent and
overwhelming description of a kiss in your fiction. To that I reply that I
do want it. Unfortunately d'Annunzio leaves the old palace and goes out on
to the aviation ground, and, for me, gradually becomes unreadable. The
agonies that I suffered night after night fighting against the wild tedium
of d'Annunzio's airmanship, and determined that I would find out what he
was after or perish, and in the end perishing--in sleep! To this hour I
don't know for sure what he was driving at--what is the theme of the book!
But if his theme is what I dimly guess it to be, then the less said about
it the better in Britain.
* * * * *
The other book which has engaged me in a stand-up fight and floored me is
A.
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