Gabrielle D'Annunzio was a poet emphatically reveared in his native Italy during the Facsist years under Mussolini. Initially refered to by nationalists as  Il Vate ("the Poet") this ultimately escalated to Il Profeta ("the Prophet") after he lead sections of the Italian army to seemingly miraculous victories in World War I. D'Annunzio is often seen as a precursor of the ideals and techniques of Italian fascism and was considered by many as a serious alternative leader to Mussolini in the early 1920s. His literary work offers breadth of subject to the reader; including much desciption of natural landscape and the life of the peasant, all given in an idiosyncratically suggestive manner.