PIACERE is D'Annunzio's first novel, and was first published in 1889, when he was 26 years old. A more fitting title than the one which the author gave it is that of the English translation by Georgina Harding,
wound received. Both incidents are familiar to novel readers. There is no plot. The book is a painstaking exposition of an artificial state of mind and of sensual emotions which it engenders. The attitude toward women therein displayed is not wholesome: they merely present possibilities for material pleasure. The very completeness of its psychological detail renders it at least monotonous, and the normal, healthly mind conceives no sympathy, to put it mildly, with D'Annunzio's hypocritical and obnoxiously aristocratic hero. In workmanship the story does not present a high degree of skill and a number of the links are plainly conventional. However, it must be remembered that it is a work of youth. Consult Sedgwick, H. D., 'Essays on Great Writers' (Boston 1903).