Pleasure Reflection

Part One and Two - What are Andrea's characteristics? His  concept of "Italic nobility"? How does time sequence play a part? Who are the different characters in the story?             

           After reading the foreword and introduction I was excited to meet Andrea and after reading part one and two I have very mixed feelings about what I think about Andrea’s character. In the opening chapter Andrea is a man lost in a heartbreaking love. He is fragile and very anxious. As the reader, I feel sorry for him and want Elena to fall back into his arms again. However, his passionate love for Elena turns obsessive very quickly. And the kind of obsessiveness he shows to possess is not attractive. Andrea states, “he needed her in order to live…he was completely penetrated by that love; all his blood was adulterated as if by poison, with no remedy. Why did she want to flee? He would wind himself around her, he would first suffocate her against his chest,” (D’Annunzio 13). He not only feels as if he has to have control of her and has to have her love, but he also throughout the first part of the book associates Elena with objects. Andrea talks about all the objects in his home that have witnessed his and Elena’s passion for each other, but he takes these objects and he gives them feelings. He makes them human and with Elena he takes her from a human and degrades her to an object. Since he views objects as an aspect to his love affair his lover is supposed to feel honored to be his object that he possesses, but it becomes sickening. He also completely lies to obtain her as a lover when he first meets her and tries to save her from going off with her new husband. Andrea is manipulative and controlling to get what he wants because he believes that he deserves the absolute best.

            Andrea’s family taught him “urbanity, elegant writing skills, a love of delicacy, a predilection for unusual studies, a mania for archaeology, refined gallantry,” (33). He grew up traveling and living an elegant life with his father. “He was, in truth, the ideal type of young Italian gentleman of the nineteenth century, the legitimate defender of a lineage of gentlemen and elegant artist, the last descendent of an intellectual race,” (34). Andrea is captivated with beauty and pleasure. He was shaped by high culture and experience. He had a great sense of sensibility, curiosity and moral strength. He is young, but intelligent. He wants to live in the world he grew up in where there are customs followed and beauty is at the center of it all. He makes note of all the objects in a room and how tables are decorated because that is what he loves. That is his Italy. Everything is done with such care and passion. He truly wants everything in the world for himself that is beautiful and he especially wants to find this in women.

            Therefore, throughout the book so far Andrea has possessed multiple lovers but the two great loves are that of Elena and Maria. Looking at his love with Elena he sees her as an object, something he can possess and something he wants to conquer. He falls hard for her beauty and confusing signals. She drives him crazy with self-doubt and that is what makes her desirable to him. He has to chase her, but once he gets her she is all his for a brief period of time. Then with Maria Andrea’s character changes drastically. Right at the beginning of part two when he is ill he has a life changing moments and he becomes a new man. He is reborn. He realizes “he had lied too much, had deceived too much, had debased himself too much. Revulsion of himself and his vice invaded him,” (130). This is when I begin to like Andrea and this where he turns to art as his lover. At this point in the book, he is a lover to his art and to Maria. However, this time Maria entrances him and he is not trying to conquer her at all but rather be a part of her heart in some small way. He agrees to bow out gracefully if she does not wish to accept his love. In fact he anticipates this when he confesses his love to her. What’s interesting to note about Andrea’s love for Maria is that he associates her with nature and not as an object. Andrea puts nature on a pedestal as the reader sees when he talks about the sea’s effect on him. Andrea this time does not have the power in this relationship and he is doing everything he can for Maria, but not doing everything he can to possess her.

            Throughout the entire book Andrea is extremely obsessive, but his obsessiveness does take on different levels with his different lovers. He was looking to possess Elena, but he was looking for Maria’s love because he was obsessively agonizing over whether or not she loved him. I think by starting with Elena and then going to Maria it shows Andrea’s development as a man and as a character. Starting the first chapter with Elena’s reappearance the reader sees how vulnerable Andrea is making the reader want to find out if he is going to get what he wants. Then by going back in time to how he met Elena showed his true colors and made the reader not like him, but by the time he meets Maria he has changed and the reader likes him again. It has been hard to put this book down because all of the characters are so realistic and it seems like a real love story. In the last chapter in part two the reader got to see Maria’s struggle, which made her human and not an object like Elena. The obsessiveness isn’t just in Andrea’s character, but in all of them. The passion, desire and sadness cross over all the characters.