Il "Sogno d’un tramonto d’autunno": la «decadenza» e il fuoco

The essay connects the one-act play with Il fuoco, born in the same years, pointing out both theme consonances and differences: in the first place, the absence in the play of the superhumanly ideologization of decadence as an urge to the infinite strenghtening of heroic energies and to the artistic creation, which are the core of the novel. At the same time, fire, which in the novel is the symbol of the superhumanly tension of the hero, in the pièce is only the projection of destructive drives of the main character, Gradeniga, against her “double”, the young rival. The cause of these differences can be seen in the fact that the novel, which has a more complex structure, is supposed to carry out the proposal of the superhumanly message, whereas the one-act play is given a minor rensponsibility, and consequently is free from ideological juxtapositions.The essay connects the one-act play with Il fuoco, born in the same years, pointing out both theme consonances and differences: in the first place, the absence in the play of the superhumanly ideologization of decadence as an urge to the infinite strenghtening of heroic energies and to the artistic creation, which are the core of the novel. At the same time, fire, which in the novel is the symbol of the superhumanly tension of the hero, in the pièce is only the projection of destructive drives of the main character, Gradeniga, against her “double”, the young rival. The cause of these differences can be seen in the fact that the novel, which has a more complex structure, is supposed to carry out the proposal of the superhumanly message, whereas the one-act play is given a minor rensponsibility, and consequently is free from ideological juxtapositions