On Stringiti a me, Rimani and other “Poems” by D’Annunzio

Abstract

This article examines six short texts widely circulated online – the two most popular, titled Stringiti a me (Hold on to me) and Rimani (Remain) –, all presented as poems by Gabriele D’Annunzio. In reality, these are clippings (in a couple of cases the result of combinatorial manipulation) from D’Annunzio’s prose works (novels, short stories, memoirs, letters), which, poorly divided into pseudoverses and pseudo-strophes, are passed off as poems and, as such, repeatedly subjected to aberrant analyses that completely misinterpret their meaning. The indiscriminate online dissemination of these false poems, whose authenticity is often neglected for purely commercial reasons, involves the most active and popular literary websites as well as platforms in a wide variety of fields, infecting recitative and musical performances, university essays and bestselling novels, teaching materials, and school curricula. It is thus a widespread misrepresentation of alarming proportions, seriously damaging the writer’s intelligence and culture in general. The contribution concludes with a reflection on the difficulty of distinguishing fake poems even with advanced technological tools, highlighting the need for a critical ap-proach to the use of online content, using philologically reliable sources.