“We heard that D’Annunzio was coming, and Italy and freedom were coming with him.” Anonymous Italian citizen of Fiume

“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” William Blake

“Legionaries adore him. The men from the palace fear him. Little kids think he’s the devil.” Leon Kochnitzky about Guido Keller

This is the tale of one of the weirdest cultural-political experiments in modern history. The brutal end of WWI left many Italian soldiers dissatisfied, since the Allies refuse to grant them lands they had conquered at the price of rivers of blood. Feeling cheated by their own government and the Allies, some of these soldiers turned to the most popular man in the entire country: Gabriele D’Annunzio. Saying that he was a famous writer and a veteran of WWI doesn’t capture the magnetic power the man possessed. He was a true rock star before rock stars were a thing. He stopped traffic wherever he went. He made army units desert without using any weapon but his voice. Countless women risked their marriages, families and careers for a chance to have a fling with him. Casanova was an amateur compared to D’Annunzio. In 1919, D’Annunzio agreed to lead renegade units of the Italian Army to taking over the border city of Fiume. Despite the fact that this infuriated the Italian, French, British and American governments, D’Annunzio would go on to rule for fifteen months over an outlaw state where things that were not looked kindly upon in the world of 1919 (from drug use to free love, from the right to vote for women to nudism, from homosexuality to piracy) were widely practiced.

Part One of this two-part series tackles the Italian experience in WWI, D’Annunzio’s literary and military career, the raid to occupy Fiume, the Futurist movement, the wild culture that sweeps through town, a pre-1960s sexual revolution, Guido Keller (the craziest man in town), and much more.

This series is dedicated to Franco Bolelli

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This episode is supported by Arizona State University. Learn more about how ASU supports all learners through all stages of life.

“What are servants of God good for, if not for moving the hearts of men and elevating them to spiritual joy?” St. Francis

“I’ve come to help you all. Where can I find the best beer and the most beautiful women?” Drukpa Kunley

“I tried going to hell, but the path there was so packed with hypocritical priests that I had to turn back.” Drukpa Kunley

For once, here’s an episode about individuals who didn’t build their reputation by killing. Considering much of recorded history is the history of warfare and politics, of glorified violent gangsters hiding behind lofty titles of nobility, this doesn’t happen too often, so I hope you enjoy the change. Today, I’ll tell you the tales of two men, St. Francis of Assisi and the ‘divine madman’ Drukpa Kunley: one lived in the 1200s in Italy, and the other in the 1400s in the area between modern-day Tibet and Bhutan. Even though they were very different from one another, both had an uneasy relationship with the established religious authorities of the day. Both ended up being considered saints in their respective traditions (respectively, Christian and Buddhist). Both were regarded as highly eccentric.

St. Francis was the son of a wealthy merchant, but he turned his back on his birth family, gave away all earthly possessions and embraced a life of voluntary poverty serving lepers and the rejects of society (something for which he would later be heavily criticized by Martin Luther). Besides starting a new religious order, being named patron saint of ecology and becoming the author of the first piece of literature written in modern Italian, St. Francis had the guts to go preach among Muslims smack in the middle of the Crusades.

Drukpa Kunley was a wild, wild man. It’s more or less impossible to separate history and folklore when it comes to his life. What emerges from the sources is a sort of trickster whose brand of enlightenment came with a heavy dose of laughter, strong sex positivity, and a general hostility to the religious establishment. A master of freestyle battle rap before rap even existed, Kunley was a wandering teacher known for his escapades with the ladies and for defeating demons by swinging his ‘flaming thunderbolt of wisdom’.

As different as these two men were, both remind me of the heyokas of Lakota tradition, heroes of a kind of crazy wisdom at war with dogmatic thinking.

If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon to access plenty of bonus content.

All the links to History on Fire social media can be found at our LinkTree, including the HOF YouTube Channel, Substack, Instagram, and TikTok.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/hof

Bison is some of the healthiest meat you could possibly eat. Get yours at Dakota Pure Bison. History on Fire listeners get a discount by using the code HOF10 at checkout.

This episode is supported by Arizona State University. Learn more about how ASU supports all learners through all stages of life at https://www.asu.edu/

Daniele Bolelli