Abstract

In his late autobiography Di me a me stesso D’Annunzio quotes allusively some passages of Vātsyāyana’s Kāmasūtra, the Sanscrit Ars amandi of the III Century B.C. A research through the library in the Vittoriale shows that the poet used the French translation by Eugène Lamairesse (published without typographical notes, probably around 1890), also consulting a late rehash of the Indian book (XV Century) made known by the orientalist Sir Richard Burton, a British Colonial Officer (1878). D’Annunzio’s interest both in Sanscrit literature – already shown in the novel Il Piacere (1889) – and books of forbidden eroticism is confirmed. Nevertheless, the poet misses the religious meaning of Hindu eros, which he grasps only in a decadent and libertine way