PIRANDELLO, Luigi

Nationality: Italian. Born: Agrigento, Sicily, 28 June 1867. Education: Schools in Agrigento to 1882, and Palermo to 1886; University of Palermo, 1886-87; University of Rome, 1887-89; University of Bonn, 1889-91, received doctorate. Family: Married Antonietta Portulano in 1894 (she was committed to a mental clinic from 1919); two sons and one daughter. Career: Writer in Rome from 1891; teacher, Regio Istituto Superiore di Magistero Femminile, 1897-1922; co-editor, Ariel, 1898; financial disaster in 1903 forced him to increase income by tutoring and working as traveling examination commissioner; became involved in the theater during World War I; director, with Nino Martoglio, Teatro Mediterraneo troupe, Rome, 1919; co-founder, Teatro d'Arte di Roma, 1924-28; joined Fascist party, 1924, but relations with it were strained; lived outside Italy, mainly in Berlin and Paris, 1928-33. Awards: Nobel prize for literature, 1934. Member: Italian Academy; Legion of Honor (France). Died: 10 December 1936.

Publications

Collections

Opere. 6 vols., 1956-60.

Collected Plays. 1985—.

Short Stories

Amori senza amore. 1894.

Beffe della morte e della vita. 2 vols., 1902-03.

Quand'ero matto…. 1902.

Bianche e nere. 1904.

Erma bifronte. 1906.

La vita nuda. 1910; as The Naked Truth, 1934.

Terzetti. 1912.

La trappola. 1913.

Le due maschere. 1914; as Tu Ridi, 1920.

Erba del nostro orto. 1915.

E domani lunedi. 1917.

Un cavallo nella luna. 1918; as The Horse in the Moon, 1932.

Berecche e la guerra. 1919.

Il carnevale dei morti. 1919.

Novelle per un anno. 15 vols., 1922-38; 2 vols., 1944.

Better Think Twice about It. 1933.

Four Tales. 1939; as Limes from Sicily and Other Stories, 1942.

Short Stories, edited by Frederick May. 1965.

Tales of Madness, edited by Giovanni R. Bussino. 1984.

Tales of Suicide, edited by Giovanni R. Bussino. 1988.

Novels

L'esclusa. 1901; as The Outcast, 1925.

Il turno. 1902.

Il fu Mattia Pascal. 1904; revised edition, 192l; as The Late Mattia Pascal, 1923.

Suo marito. 1911; as Giustino Roncella nato Boggiolo, 1953.

I vecchi e i giovani. 2 vols., 1913; as The Old and the Young, 2 vols., 1928.

Si gira…. 1916; as Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio, operatore, 1925; as Shoot!, 1926; as The Notebook of Serafino Gubbio, or Shoot!, 1990.

Uno, nessuno, e centomila. 1926; as One, None and a Hundred Thousand, 1933; as One, No One and One Hundred Thousand, 1990.

A Character in Distress. 1938.

Plays

L'epilogo. 1898; as La morsa (produced 1910), 1926; as The Vise, in One-Act Plays, 1928.

Samandro (produced 1928). 1909.

Lumie di Sicilia (produced 1910). 1911; as Sicilian Limes, in One-Act Plays, 1928.

Il dovere di medico. 1912; as The Doctor's Duty, in One-Act Plays, 1928.

Se non cosi (produced 1915). 1915; revised version, as Le ragione degli altri, 1921.

L'aria del continente, with Nino Martoglio (produced 1916).

Pensaci Giacomino! (produced 1916). 1917.

La giara (produced 1916). 1925; as The Jar, in One-Act Plays, 1928.

Il berretto a sonagli (produced 1916). 1918.

Liolà (produced 1916). 1917; translated as Liola, in Naked Masks, 1952; revised version, music by Giuseppe Mule (produced 1935).

'A vilanza, with Nino Martoglio (produced 1917).

Cosi e (si vi pare) (produced 1917). 1918; as Right You Are (If You Think So), in Three Plays, 1922; as It Is So (If You Think So), in Naked Masks, 1952.

Il piacere dell'onesta (produced 1918). 1918; as The Pleasure of Honesty, in Each in His Own Way and Two Other Plays, 1923.

Il giuoco delle parti (produced 1918). 1919; as The Rules of the Game, in Three Plays, 1959.

Ma non e una cosa seria (produced 1918). 1919.

La patente (produced 1919). 1918; as By Judgment of the Court, inOne-Act Plays, 1928.

L'uomo, la bestia, e la virtu (produced 1919). 1922.

'U ciclopu, from Cyclops by Euripides (produced 1919). 1967.

L'innesto (produced 1919). 1921.

Come prima, meglio di prima (produced 1920). 1921.

Tutto per bene, from his novella (produced 1920). 1920; as All for the Best, 1960.

La signora Morli, una e due (produced 1920). 1922.

Cece (produced 1920). 1926; as Chee-Chee, in One-Act Plays, 1928.

Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore, from his novella (produced1921). 1921; as Six Characters in Search of an Author, in Three Plays, 1922.

Vestire gl'ignudi (produced 1922). 1923; as Naked, in Each In His Own Way and Two Other Plays, 1923; as To Clothe the Naked, 1962.

Enrico IV (produced 1922). 1922; as Henry IV, in Three Plays, 1922.

L'imbecille (produced 1922). 1926; as The Imbecile, in One-Act Plays, 1928.

All'uscita (produced 1922). 1926; as At the Gate, in One-Act Plays, 1928.

La vita che ti diedi (produced 1923). 1924; as The Life I Gave You, in Three Plays, 1959.

L'altro figlio (produced 1923). 1925; as The House with the Column, in One-Act Plays, 1928.

L'uomo dal fiore in bocca, from his novella (produced 1919). 1926; as The Man with the Flower in His Mouth, in One-Act Plays, 1928.

Ciascuno a suo modo (produced 1924). 1924; as Each in His Own Way, 1923.

La sagra del signore della nave (produced 1925). 1925; as Our Lord of the Ship, in One-Act Plays, 1928.

Diana e la Tuda (produced 1926). 1927; as Diana and Tuda, 1950. L'amica delle mogli (produced 1927). 1927; as The Wives' Friend, 1960.

La nuova colonia (produced 1928). 1928; as The New Colony, inThe Mountain Giants and Other Plays, 1958.

Lazzaro (produced 1928). 1929; as Lazarus, 1952.

La salamandra, music by Massimo Bontempelli (produced 1928).

Bellavita (produced 1928?). 1937. O di uno o di nessuno (produced 1929?). 1929.

Questa sera si recita a soggetto (produced 1930). 1930; as Tonight We Improvise, 1932.

Come tu mi vuoi. 1930; as As You Desire Me, 1931.

Sogno (ma forse no) (produced 1931). 1936.

Trovarsi. 1932; as To Find Oneself, 1960.

Quando si e qualcuno (produced 1933). 1933; as When Someone Is Somebody, in The Mountain Giants and Other Plays, 1958.

La favola del figlio cambiato, music by Malpiero (produced1933). 1938.

Non si sa come (produced 1934). 1935; as No One Knows How, 1963.

I giganti della montagna (unfinished). 1938; as The Mountain Giants, 1958.

Naked Masks: Five Plays, edited by Eric Bentley. 1952.

Screenplays:

Pantera nera, with Arnaldo Frateili, 1920; Acciaio, with Stefano Landi, 1933; Pensaci Giacomino!, with others, 1935.

Poetry

Mal giocondo. 1889.

Pasqua di Gea. 1891.

Pier Gudrò. 1894.

Elegie renane. 1895.

Zampogna. 1901.

Fuori di chiave. 1912.

Other

Laute und Lautentwicklung der Mundart von Girgenti. 1891; asThe Sounds of the Girgenti Dialect, and Their Development, edited by Giovanni R. Bussino, 1992.

Arte e Scienza. 1908.

L'umorismo. 1908; as On Humor, edited by Antonio Illiano and Daniel P. Testa, 1974.

Pirandello in the Theatre: A Documentary Record, edited by Jennifer Lorch and Susan Basnett. 1988.

Pirandello e il cinema; con una raccolta completa degli scritti teorici e creativi, edited by Francesco Callari. 1991.

Pirandello's Love Letters to Marta Abba. 1994.

Translator, La filologia romanza, by Fed. Neumann. 1893.

Translator, Elegie romane, by Goethe. 1896.

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Critical Studies:

The Drama of Pirandello by D. Vittorini, 1935; The Age of Pirandello by Lander McClintock, 1951; Pirandello and the French Theatre by Thomas Bishop, 1960; Pirandello by Oscar Büdel, 1966; Pirandello: A Collection of Critical Essays edited by Glauco Cambon, 1967; Pirandello 1867-1936 by Walter Starkie, 4th edition, 1967; Pirandello's Theatre: The Recovery of the Modern Stage for Dramatic Art by Anne Paolucci, 1974; Pirandello: A Biography by Gaspare Giudici, 1975; The Mirror of Our Anguish: A Study of Pirandello's Narrative Writings by Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, 1978; Pirandello: An Approach to His Theatre by Olga Ragusa, 1980; Pirandello, Director: The Playwright in the Theatre by A. Richard Sogliuzzo, 1982; Pirandello by Susan Basnett-McGuire, 1983; Understanding Luigi Pirandello by Fiora A. Bassanese, 1997; Pirandello and His Muse: The Plays for Marta Abba by Daniela Bini, 1998; Characters and Authors in Luigi Pirandello by Ann Caesar, 1998.

* * *

Luigi Pirandello entitled his collected short stories Novelle per un anno (Stories for a Year), as it was his original intention to write 365 of them. He had written 233 when he died in 1936, having contributed steadily to the genre throughout his lifetime. While he is better known for his plays, which were nearly all written in his last 20 years, the short story remained for him an irreplaceable vehicle because of the quality of concentration necessitated by its brevity and discipline. His relativism—the passionate commitment to uncertainty that rendered authorial omniscience an impossibility—led him increasingly to cast his stories in the form of monologues, in which the protagonist tells the tale in first person either directly to the reader or within some dramatic framing device to a fictive listener; alternatively it may be told in the third person by means of free indirect speech or, still from a single standpoint, by an observer who is in some way connected with the protagonist. All writing, for Pirandello, was a subjective exercise, and his short stories in particular derive their note of urgency and intensity from the personal involvement of the fictional narrator.

The inexhaustible diversity of narrative voices does not hide the common factor: the dark nihilistic vision that permeates Pirandello's short fiction, which is darker perhaps than the best-known and most-often translated stories might lead the general reader to suspect. At the bottom of the pit are stories like "The Trap," "Nothing," "Destruction of the Man," "The Little Red Notebook," "The Fly," and "In Silence," in which life is held cheap, humanity is brutish, and death sets in at birth, coming quickly for those who are lucky. Every form of suffering is portrayed, from the physical and factual (disease, deformity, idiocy, bereavement, poverty, bankruptcy, and starvation) to the metaphysical (despair, awareness of mortality, and the all-pervasive sense of the meaninglessness of life). There are countless stories of suicide. For two reasons misery is universal: the world is the plaything of chance and human consciousness is in itself a source of pain.

Paradox and the unexpected play a large part in these stories. Not the least paradoxical feature is their humor, or that blend of irony and compassion that Pirandello called umorismo. He has a rare eye for life's contradictions, for its incongruous characters (the visionary lawyer, the pagan priest, the euphoric prisoner, the murderous child, the peace-loving soldier, and the often-recurring lucid madman), and for its incongruous ceremonies (marriages are frequently despairing while funerals can be hilarious). Animals are often introduced to demonstrate the perverse irrationality of life. In "The Black Kid," a farcical threnody on the passingness of human attachments, the English girl abroad is enchanted by the graceful young creature of the title, and on her return to England sends for it. The literal-minded vice-consul in Agrigento carries out her wishes and despatches the adult, stinking, and dung-encrusted billy-goat as requested. In "Cinci" a child murders another, provoked to indignation on behalf of a threatened lizard. A good many stories are set in Sicily, and in these particularly animals are the agents of chance; dogs, cats, flies, horses, and crows are all unwitting destroyers.

A corollary of this is that in a world without purpose or pattern, in which all experience is subjective, random objects can suddenly assume a disproportionate significance: a blade of grass ("Chants the Epistle") or a torn sleeve ("The Tight Frock-Coat") can change the course of a life, while sanity can be lost or calm restored by the observation of a pair of shoes ("Somebody's Died in the Hotel") or a sheet of wrapping-paper ("The Man with the Flower in His Mouth"). Recurring inanimate symbols stress life's littleness and limitations (traps, cages, ill-fitting garments, dim claustrophobic interiors, the fly struggling in the glass of water), and its transience: from layettes and trousseaus preserved but never worn, to all the paraphernalia of ageing. Often a chance encounter between strangers in a café or a railway train prompts the confessional urge, and the story's setting appears in itself as an image of impermanence. In contrast a large number of Pirandello's characters in their insignificance and ugliness are moved to raise their sights and draw some consolation, with or without a telescope, from the contemplation of the stars.

The compelling quality in Pirandello's stories that keeps his reader turning the pages is a sense of vision, the suggestion that in spite of all disclaimers to omniscience, the author, in whatever person he is writing, has access to some secret knowledge, some key to an understanding of the universe. And from time to time a character experiences something very close to a mystical revelation. In "The Wheelbarrow" the sober lawyer-protagonist is traveling by train, staring with unseeing eyes at the passing countryside. He becomes aware that his spirit is somehow floating free in some distant dimension, where it is able to apprehend a new and alien mode of being that promises spiritual wholeness and fulfilment. The moment of vision permanently alters the lawyer's perspective. He sees his physical existence and family circumstances as irrelevant and constricting, and thereafter he feels the need to devote five minutes of every day to an act of complete irrationality. To reassure himself of his existential freedom, he locks his study door and plays at wheelbarrows with his dog.

The caricatural element is strong. Grotesque faces and contorted bodies abound to reinforce the sense of the irrelevance of physical appearance and the discrepancy that exists for Pirandello in every sphere between the inner world and the outer. The fat bore at the watering-spa maintains that his mountainous flesh conceals "a cherubic infant soul" ("Bitter Waters"), and the brutalized one-eyed sulphur miner shed tears of consolation at his first sight of the moon ("Ciaula Discovers the Moon"). Inwardly triumphant, a short-sighted theologian vindicates the scholarship of a lifetime in "Professor Lamis' Vengeance," unaware that he is addressing only a bunch of steaming macintoshes, while a lovelorn bridegroom on his wedding night expires in the moonlight beside the carcass of a dead horse.

In his 15 volumes of short stories Pirandello demonstrates through a multitude of disparate narratives voices that there is no limit to the number of ways in which the world may be perceived.

—Felicity Firth

See the essay on "War."