But the idea is materialised into a form of grotesque horror,
and all the charm of the atmosphere and the grace of the words cannot
redeem a conclusion so inartistic in its painfulness. But, all the same,
the play is the work of a poet, it brings imagination upon the stage,
and it gives Duse an opportunity of being her finest self. All the words
she speaks are sensitive words, she moves in the midst of beautiful
things, her whole life seems to flow into a more harmonious rhythm, for
all the violence of its sorrow and suffering. Her acting at the end, all
through the inexcusable brutality of the scene in which she appears
before us with her mutilated hands covered under long hanging sleeves,
is, in the dignity, intensity, and humanity of its pathos, a thing of
beauty, of a profound kind of beauty, made up of pain, endurance, and
the irony of pitiable things done in vain. Here she is no longer
transforming a foreign conception of character into her own conception
of what character should be; she is embodying the creation of an
Italian, of an artist, and a creation made in her honour. D'Annunzio's
tragedy is, in the final result, bad tragedy, but it is a failure of a
far higher order than such successes as Mr.
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