12 h 40 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the beauty you love most only deepens your fear of losing it?
In Rome, Giorgio Aurispa lives for Ippolita Sanzio, a woman full of warmth and life. Yet passion brings him no peace. Wealthy and restless, he watches his own feelings until love becomes tangled with doubt. In The Triumph of Death, Gabriele D'Annunzio draws you into a mind that cannot rest.
A family crisis calls Giorgio home to Abruzzo, where old grief and a ruined household press upon him. His uncle Demetrio's suicide haunts his thoughts. Later, a quiet retreat with Ippolita on the Adriatic coast seems to promise relief. But Giorgio cannot look at beauty without imagining its end.
What you’ll discover
- Love without peace Meet Ippolita through Giorgio's shifting gaze, where delight and fear remain painfully close.
- A family in ruins Enter a troubled household where Giorgio feels tenderness, shame, and the weight of memory.
- The pilgrimage at Casalbordino Follow the lovers among poor country people who gather to pray for help.
- An uneasy coastal refuge Visit a quiet place near San Vito, where the lovers seek a fresh start.
- Beauty shadowed by decay Explore lush descriptions and a restless inner life shaped by desire, guilt, and dread.
Who will love it
Readers who love Italian prose full of sea, music and ritual, and who enjoy a mind turning over its own feelings, from tender memory to dark obsession.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A suicide on the Pincio starts the quarrel
- Doubt grows with a visit and an anniversary
- At Albano the past weighs on the lovers
- The family home brings pity and dread
- A signature and a sealed room
- A hermitage by the sea promises a new life
- A search for faith ends in a place of horror
- Sea, music and midsummer bring dark thoughts
- What the book is really about, and how it is told
Who’s who
- George AurispaA young, wealthy, over-thoughtful man from Guardiagrele who loves Hippolyte, doubts her and himself, and is drawn toward his dead uncle's fate.
- Hippolyte SanzioGeorge's lover, separated from her husband, pale, passionate and ill, who wants only to keep his love and be happy with him.
- Demetrius AurispaGeorge's uncle, a violinist and mystic without faith, whose death five years before still rules his nephew's thoughts.
- Donna SilveriaGeorge's mother, worn down by her husband's neglect and waste, who looks to her eldest son for help.
- ChristineGeorge's gentle sister, unhappily married, who watches over a frail and frightened little son and is expecting another child.
- Aunt JocondaGeorge's elderly aunt, devout and greedy for sweets, living alone among holy images at the top of the house.
- Colas di SciampagneThe one-eyed old farmer who rents George the hermitage and guides the lovers through the folk beliefs of the coast.
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 12 h 40 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 7 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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El triunfo de la muerte
by Gabriele D'Annunzio · 1894
A suicide on a Roman pavement shadows two lovers, and George cannot stop doubting the woman he adores.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
A suicide on a Roman pavement, a blond hair on the end of a stick, and two lovers who walk away shaken. Gabriele D'Annunzio opens The Triumph of Death with a couple who love each other and cannot enjoy it.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A suicide on the Pincio starts the quarrel
The novel opens on a gray March afternoon in Rome. George Aurispa and his lover Hippolyte Sanzio stop at a parapet where workmen stare down at blood and blond hair left on the street below a suicide. Shaken, George says the dead are happy because they have no more doubts.
The remark opens a quarrel. George tells Hippolyte that love is already cooling, that he sees symptoms in her every day. He claims every soul holds only so much passion, and that two people can never truly reach each other. Hippolyte answers with unexpected gentleness, and for a moment he softens.
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What is The Triumph of Death about?
Through family troubles, a seaside retreat and a pilgrimage, his love and his thoughts of death grow together.
Who is Demetrius in The Triumph of Death?
Demetrius Aurispa is George's uncle, a violinist and mystic who left George his fortune. George thinks of him as his true father, and the memory of his death shapes the whole book.
What is the Trabocco in the novel?
The Trabocco is a large wooden fishing machine built on the rocks near the hermitage. George visits it often for rest and for music, and the fishermen there seem to live under a spell.
The author
Gabriele D'Annunzio
1863–1938 · Italian poet and novelist
Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938) was an Italian novelist, poet and playwright. He was born in Pescara and died in Gardone Riviera. His novels include The Child of Pleasure (1889), The Triumph of Death (1894) and The Flame (1900). He also served as a soldier during the First World War.
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