The article is the paper I prepared for 2019 ASMI conference (Promised Land of Pop-ulism? “Populist” Culture and Politics in Italy 1800-2019, London, 29-30 november 2019). I meant to enlighten the more or less populist character of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s politics and aesthetics through his literary production and main political discourses. Af-ter his aristocratic literary outsets, the famous poet opposed a “Noble People”, forged by the War, to Italian liberal elites. D’Annunzio’s peculiar “populism” was connected to the “long” crisis of liberal State in Italy and it was displayed at most in the Occupation of Fiume-Rijeka, a laboratory where critics of liberal institutions, attacks to post-war democratic balance and foundation of a new national-socialist imperialism converged. The present work means to renew the studies on D’Annunzio ideology, merging cultural approach with political categories usually neglected by historiography.
