This is not a definitive biography for no work that has life as its root can ever be rigidly set. Nor can one claim to have said the last word while there is a creative mind capable of a new idea or an original interpretation. It has been the author's aim, through exhaustive research and objective handling of newly uncovered facts, to come as close as possible to essential truth, clouded for many years by passion and prejudice, particularly regarding Eleanora Duse, d'Annunzio and Il Fuoco and, later, the Comandante's role in the First World War. The publication of pertinent material, available for the first time in a biography, may help to reveal the characters in their true light, with all their faults, which were great, and with their virtues, which were greater still.