Gabriele d'Annunzio's political opinions and activities seem the polar opposites of Proust's. Where Proust took the Dreyfusard, anti-nationalist side in the Dreyfus affair and deconstructed the idea of the moral unity of the nation in his novel, d'Annunzio, a hero of the Italian nationalists, proclaimed himself the “vate nazionale,” national poet-prophet. When he first came to play an important part in Italian politics, during the First World War, d'Annunzio had already been a famous poet and novelist since his youth in the 1880s, and had been a member of Italian parliament, where his erratic voting record enacted his political slogan (adapted from Nietzsche), “beyond right and left.” After a stay in Paris, where he managed to avoid his Italian creditors while at the same time learning the art of French nationalist propaganda, he returned to Italy as a hero of the movement in favor of intervening in the First World War. When Italy did intervene, in May, 1915, d'Annunzio, who was fifty-two years old, joined the Italian armed forces as a freelance thrill-seeker, participating in a number of dangerous missions as both soldier and propagandist. His favorite task was accompanying aviators on dangerous fights over Austrian territory. During a crash-landing after a reconnaissance mission over Trieste in 1916, d'Annunzio lost the sight in one eye and badly damaged the other.