Ricorrenze olfattive nel Trionfo della morte di Gabriele d'Annunzio

Abstract

In literature, one finds that, like the gustatory trace of Proustian memory, even the olfactory trace can assume
– especially in the late-Romantic, symbolist and post-symbolist area – a significant weight both in the
construction of atmospheres and portraits and in the remembrance of past situations, to the point of constituting
a leitmotif of the mnestic activity and path. The construction of an odorous score in the Trionfo della morte
(1894) participates in the "symphonic" writing explicitly attempted by the author of this novel, so that the
repetition of certain aromatic 'notes', through the cadences of a kind of refrain, emphasizes in the narrative
flow salient moments for the psychological construction of the characters and for the direction of the reader's
reception. From the leitmotif of the perfumes of violet and incense as "memorable signs" ("signes mémoratifs",
Corbin 1982) – capable of triggering backward narratives and mimicking the recursiveness of thought in the
vibrating, inflamed psychology of the male character narrated in the third person – to the floral and bodily
perfumes as seductive signals of the beloved woman, to which the "umano lezzo" is aristocratically opposed,
an olfactory map is outlined that finds references within d'Annunzio's work, as well as, inter-textually, with
authors of a similar aesthetic range (Baudelaire, Wilde, Proust).