Purple Travel
[October 27 2016]
A view of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s “Trabocco del Turchino”, Abruzzi
“La macchina che pareva vivere d’armonia propria, avere un’aria ed un’effige di corpo e d’anima — The machine that seemed to live of his own harmony, an effigy of his own body and soul”.
In his autobiographical novel “The Triumph of Death”, the Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio used those words to describe his fascination for the “Trabocchi”, old fishing machines typical of the coast of the Abruzzi region in Italy. In 1889, D’Annunzio and his mistress decided to escape the city to live their love, and return to D’Annunzio‘s birth places. Those mystic landscapes on the Mediterranean coast inspired his most decadent novel, in which the Trabocchi and the sea are the allegory of Giorgio Aurispa‘s and Ippolita Sanzio’s dying love.
Text and photo Valeria Della Valle
