The natural extension of Swinburne's attitudes occurs not in England but in Italy, where Gabriele d'Annunzio develops a Medusan ideal of sensuous and aesthetic intoxication. The confessed apostle of Swinburne's position, d'Annunzio inherits the two paradoxical bases of the Englishman's poetic credo: an extreme care for matters of poetic craft, and an emphatic commitment to irrational, or perhaps supra-rational, goals. On these grounds Praz will pronounce him doubly damned--as both a Decadent and a Barbarian. [14]
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