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Luigi Pirandello

Luigi Pirandello (28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934,for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and c. 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Typical for Pirandello is to show how art or illusion mixes with reality and how people see things in very different way - words are unrealiable and reality is at the same time true and false. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners for theatre of the absurd.

''"A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die! And to be able to live for ever you don't need to have extraordinary gifts or be able to do miracles. Who was Sancho Panza? Who was Prospero? But they will live for ever because - living seeds - they had the luck to find a fruitful soil, an imagination which knew how to grow them and feed them, so that they will live for ever." (from Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1921)''


Early life




Higher education


Because of a conflict with a Latin professor, he was forced to leave the University of Rome and went to Bonn with a letter of presentation from one of his professors. The stay in Bonn, which lasted two years, was fervid with cultural life. He read the German romantics, Jean Paul, Tieck, Chamisso, Heinrich Heine, and Goethe. He began translating the ''Roman Elegies'' of Goethe, composed the ''Elegie Boreali'' in imitation of the style of the ''Roman Elegies'', and began to meditate on the topic of humorism by way of the works of Cecco Angiolieri.

In March 1891, he received his doctorate, under the guidance of Professor Foerster, in Romance philology with a dissertation on the dialect of Agrigento ''Sounds and Developments of Sounds in the Speech of Girgenti''. The stay in Bonn was of great importance for the young writer; it was there that he forged the bonds with German culture that would remain constant and profound for the rest of his life.


After a brief sojourn in Sicily, during which the planned marriage with his cousin was finally called off, he returned to Rome, where he would become friends with a group of writer-journalists including Ugo Fleres, Tomaso Gnoli, Giustino Ferri and Luigi Capuana. It was Capuana who encouraged Pirandello to dedicate himself to narrative writing. In 1893, he wrote his first important work ''Marta Ajala'', which was published in 1901 with the title ''l'Esclusa''. In 1894, he published his first collection of short stories, ''Amori senza Amore''. 1894 was also the year of his marriage. Following his father's suggestion, he married a shy, withdrawn girl of a good family of Agrigentine origin educated by the nuns of San Vincenzo: Antonietta Portulano.

The first years of matrimony brought on in him a new fervour for his studies and writings: his encounters with his friends and the discussions on art continued, more vivacious and stimulating than ever, while his family life, despite the complete incomprehension of his wife with respect to the artistic vocation of her husband, proceeded relatively tranquilly with the birth of two sons (Stefano and Fausto) and a daughter (Lietta). In the meantime, Pirandello intensified his collaborations with newspaper editors and other journalists in magazines such as ''La Critica'' and ''La Tavola Rotonda'' in which he would publish, in 1895, the first part of the ''Dialoghi tra Il Gran Me e Il Piccolo Me''.

In 1897, he accepted an offer to teach the Italian language at the Istituto Superiore di Magistero di Roma, and in the magazine ''Marzocco'', he published several more pages of the Dialoghi. In 1898, with Italo Falbo and Ugo Fleres, he founded the weekly ''Ariel'' in which he published the one-act play ''L'Epilogo'' (later changed to ''La Morsa'') and some novellas (La Scelta, Se...). The end of the 19th century and the beginnings of the 20th were a period of extreme productivity for Pirandello. In 1900, he published in ''Marzocco'' some of the most celebrated of his novellas (''Lumie di Sicilia'', ''La Paura del Sonno''...) and, in 1901, the collection of poems ''Zampogna''. In 1902, the first series of ''Beffe della Morte e della Vita'' came out. The same year saw the publication of his second novel, ''Il Turno''.

Family disaster

The year 1903 was fundamental to the life of Pirandello. The flooding of the sulphur mines of Aragona, in which his father Stefano had invested not only an enormous amount of his own capital but also Antonietta's dowry, provoked the collapse of the family. Antonietta, after opening and reading the letter announcing the catastrophe, entered into a state of semi-paralysis and underwent such a psychological shock that her mental balance remained profoundly and irremediably shaken. Pirandello, who had initially harboured thoughts of suicide, attempted to remedy the situation as best he could by increasing the number of his lessons in both Italian and German and asking for compensation from the magazines to which he had freely given away his writings and collaborations. In the magazine ''New Anthology'' directed by G. Cena, meanwhile, the novel which Pirandello had been writing while in this horrible situation (watching over his mentally ill wife at night after an entire day spent at work) began appearing in episodes. The title was ''Il Fu Mattia Pascal'' (''The Late Mattia Pascal''). This novel contains many elements of the autobiographic situation of the author fantastically reelaborated. It was an immediate and great success. Translated into German in 1905, this novel paved the way to the notoriety and fame which allowed Pirandello to publish for the more important editors such as ''Treves'', with whom he published, in 1906, another collection of novellas ''Erma Bifronte''. In 1908 he published a volume of essays entitled ''Arte e Scienza'' and the important essay ''L'Umorismo'', in which he initiated the legendary debate with Benedetto Croce that would continue, getting increasingly bitter and venomous on both sides, for many years.

In 1909 the first part of ''I Vecchi e I Giovani'' was published in episodes. This novel retraces the history of the failure and repression of the Fasci Siciliani in the period from 1893-94. When the novel came out in volume in 1913, Pirandello sent a copy of it to his parents for the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage along with a dedication which said that "their names, Stefano and Caterina, live heroically." However, while the mother is transfigured in the novel into the otherworldly figure of Caterina Laurentano, the father, represented by the husband of Caterina, Stefano Auriti, appears only in memories and flashbacks, since, as was acutely observed by Leonardo Sciascia, "he died censured in a Freudian sense by his son who, in the bottom of his soul, is his enemy." Also in 1909, Pirandello began his collaboration with the prestigious journal ''Corriere della Sera'' in which he published the novellas ''Mondo di Carta'' (''World of Paper''), ''La Giara'', and, in 1910, ''Non è una cosa seria'' and ''Pensaci, Giacomino!'' (''Think it over, Giacomino!'') At this point, Pirandello's fame as a writer was continually increasing, but his private life was poisoned by the suspicion and obsessive jealousy of Antonietta, who began to turn physically violent.

In 1911, while the publication of novellas and short stories continued, Pirandello finished his fourth novel, ''Suo Marito'', republished posthumously (1941), and completely revised in the first four chapters, with the title ''Giustino Roncella nato Boggiòlo''. During his life, the author never republished this novel for reasons of discretion: in the novel, there are implicit references to the writer Grazia Deledda. But the work which absorbed most of his energies at this time was the stories: ''La Vendetta del Cane'', ''Quando s'è capito il giuoco'', ''Il treno ha fischiato'', ''Filo d'aria'', and ''Berecche e la guerra'' were all published from 1913-1914 and are all, now, considered classics of Italian literature.

World War I

As Italy entered into World War I, Pirandello's son Stefano volunteered for the services and was taken prisoner by the Austrians. In 1916 the actor Angelo Musco successfully recited the three-act comedy that the writer had extracted from the novella ''Pensaci, Giacomino!'' and the ''pastoral'' comedy ''Liolà''.

In 1917, the collection of novellas ''E domani Lunedì'' (''And Tomorrow, Monday...'') was published, but the year was mostly marked by important theatrical representations: ''Così è (se vi pare)'' (''Right you are (if you think so)''), ''A birrita cu' i ciancianeddi'' and ''Il Piacere dell'onestà'' (''The Pleasure Of Honesty''). A year later, ''Non è una cosa seria'' (''But It's Nothing Serious'') and ''Il Gioco delle parti'' (''The Game of Roles'') were all represented on stage. Meanwhile, with the end of the war, Pirandello's son Stefano returns home.


1920 was the year of comedies such as ''Tutto per bene'', ''Come prima meglio di prima'', and ''La Signora Morli''. In 1921, the ''Compagnia di Dario Niccomedi'' staged, at the Valle di Roma, the play, ''Sei Personaggi in Cerca d'Autore'', ''Six Characters in Search of an Author''. It was a clamorous failure. The public split up into supporters and adversaries, the latter of whom shouted: "Asylum, asylum!" The author, who was present at the representation with his daughter Lietta, was forced to almost literally run out of the theatre through a side exit in order to avoid the crowd of enemies. The same drama, however, was a great success when presented at Milan. In 1922 and again at Milan, ''Enrico IV'' was represented for the first time and was acclaimed universally as a success. Pirandello's fame, at this point, had passed the confines of Italy: the ''Sei Personaggi'' was represented in English in London and in New York.

Italy under the Fascists


But it is right to remember also his public words about his apolitical belief ("I'm apolitical, I'm only a man on the world..."), or his continuous conflicts with famous fascist leaders. It is very interesting when in 1927 he tore his fascist membership card in pieces, in front of the dazed secretary-general of the Fascist Party; in the remainder of his life, Pirandello was always under close surveillance of the secret fascist police OVRA.

Pirandello's conception of the theatre underwent a significant change at this point. The conception of the actor as an inevitable betrayer of the text, as in the ''Sei Personaggi,'' gave way to the identification of the actor with the character that she plays. The company took their act throughout the major cities of Europe and the Pirandellian repertoire became increasingly known. Between 1925 and 1926, Pirandello's last, and perhaps greatest, novel ''Uno, Nessuno e Centomila'' (''One, No one and One Hundred Thousand'') was published in episodes in the magazine ''Fiera Letteraria''.


The novels

Pirandello's art arises out of a climate of profound historical and cultural disappointment. The wound caused by the betrayal of ''Il Risorgimento'' was never definitively healed in the soul of the writer. He added to a sense of diffuse disillusionment in Italy at the end of the 19th century a southern disdain for the politics of the newly united Italy with regard to the problems of the south. Pirandello adapted the title of a discourse by F. Brunetière ''La Banqueroute de science'' to describe this attitude which he felt toward the Risorgimento: ''la bancarotta del patriottismo'' (The Bankruptcy of Patriotism). This is the phrase he used in his novel ''I Vecchi e i Giovani'' (''The Old and the Young'') (1909-1913), a "populous and extremely bitter" novel which seems to signal a brusque halt in the authors search into the individual conscience which he had begun in ''Il Fu Mattia Pascal'' (''The Late Mattia Pascal''). In ''I Vecchi e I Giovani'', Pirandello traces a vast historical fresco, which fits into an entire southern Italian tradition of writing, beginning with the ''Vicerè'' of De Roberto. The novel, set in Sicily during the period of the Fasci Siciliani, delineates the "failure... of three myths" (of the Risorgimento, of unity, of socialism), replacing them with a "hopeless emptiness... with no possibility of redemption." But despite the well documented and obvious connections to a precise panorama of crisis, there is a clear impression that Pirandello's discordance with reality was pre-existent. The profound discontent and malaise, the reasons for unhappiness lay within him, as is always the case "in every person of an introspective nature, that is in every person of a poetic nature", according to Eugenio Montale, who was referring to himself. On the other hand, it is probably precisely the disagreement with reality that constitutes the true wealth of the artist who, because of his inability to adapt, must abandon the beaten paths in order to travel new and different or forgotten roads.





Compelled only by an interior sense of necessity, furnished with different instruments and aiming at other prospects, Pirandello ventures on his own initiative into territory which will later on end up in Freudian psychoanalysis and the analytic psychology of Carl Jung. Jung published his work ''The Self and the Unconscious'' in 1928. In that work, he attempts to scientifically investigate the relationship between the individual and the collective psyche, between the being that appears and the profound being. Jung called the self that appears a ''persona'' saying that "...the term is truly appropriate because originally ''persona'' was the ''mask'' that actors wore and also indicated the part that he played." The ''persona'' is "that which one appears" behind which is hidden the true individual being. It's difficult not to be stunned and impressed by the wisdom of Pirandello who had been employing these concepts in his art from his very first novel. But within the genre of novels, it was with ''Mattia Pascal'' that Pirandello inaugurated the series of personages to whom he would assign the arduous task of searching for their own authenticity in this Heideggerian sense. But upon the emptiness left by his presumed death, in fact, Mattia quickly reconstructs another ''persona'' which, only apparently different from the first, in reality represents its grotesque double. Mattia's voyages, without any precise destination or practical utility, can seem like the modern transcription of the great romantic theme of vagabondage. But Mattia has nothing in common with the joyous ne'er-do-well of Joseph von Eichendorff, who with the sole companionship of his violin abandons the paternal home and opens his ingenuous eyes on the transient spectacle of the world. And he has also has nothing of Knulp, the more modern vagabond of Hermann Hesse and other characters of this genre. He is not an innocent and ingenuous man freed from all the constrictions of society. His voyages are not joyous but filled with the acrid odours of train tracks and stations and they are an obsessive and inconclusive set of movements which in the end will bring him back fatally to the point of departure. The dissociation of Mattia from the bourgeousie universe based on money and profit is manifested only in the vindictive exercise of his virility with the beautiful Oliva, the wife of the avid administrator Batta Malagna who had previously subtracted from him all of Mattia's ownings. Oliva becomes pregnant and through a subtle game of subtractions and grotesque additions everyone is finally paid off. This is not the eros of Klein, the protagonist of the short novel of Hesse, ''Klein and Wagner'', published in 1920, which offers surprising analogies with ''Mattia Pascal''. Klein, small and squallid bureaucrat, exactly like Mattia, runs away horrified from his own extrerior ''persona'' in search of his more profound being. On the way, he encounters the ballerina Teresina and experiences the frankly sexual fascination of the blond hair, of the confident and sharp gestuality, of the tight stockings on her smooth, long legs. A shy reserve, on the other hand, keeps Mattia (and his author) far away from the powerful, disruptive force of Eros which is transformed into a sickly sweet attraction, smelling of talcum powder, for the bloodless Adriana, surprised in her nightgown in the home of Paleari.








* ''L'Esclusa'' (''The Excluded Woman'')
* ''Il Turno'' (''The Turn'')
* ''Suo Marito'' (''Her Husband'')
* ''I Vecchi e I Giovani'' (''The Old and the Young'')
* ''Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio'' (''Serafino Gubbio's Journals'')
* ''Sei Personaggi in Cerca d'Autore'' (''Six Characters in Search of an Author'')
* ''Ciascuno a Suo Modo'' (''Each In His Own Way'')
* ''Questa Sera si Recita a Soggetto'' (''Tonight We Improvise'')
* ''Enrico IV'' (''Henry IV'')
* ''L'Uomo dal Fiore in Bocca'' (''The Man With The Flower In His Mouth'')
* ''La Vita che ti Diedi'' (''The Life I Gave You'')
* ''Il Gioco delle Parti'' (''The Rules of the Game'')
* ''Diana e La Tuda'' (''Diana and Tuda'')
* ''Il Piacere dell'Onestà'' (''The Pleasure Of Honesty'')
* ''L'Imbecille'' (''The Imbecile'')
* ''L'Uomo, La Bestia e La Virtù'' (''The Man, The Beast and The Virtue'')
* ''Vestire gli Ignudi'' (''Clothing The Naked'')
* ''Così è (Se Vi Pare)'' ''(So It Is (If You Think So))''


* ''Mal Giocondo'' (''Playful Evil'')
* ''Pasqua di Gea'' (''Easter of Gea'')
* ''Elegie Renane'' (''Renanian Elegies'')
* ''La Zampogna'' (''The Bagpipe'')
* ''Fiore di Chiave'' (''Flower of Key'')


* Baccolo, L. ''Pirandello''. Milan:Bocca. 1949 (second edition).
* Di Pietro, ''L. Pirandello''. Milano:Vita e Pensiero. 1950. (second edition)
* Ferrante, R. ''Luigi Pirandello''. Firenze: Parenti. 1958.
* Gardair, ''Pirandello e il Suo Doppio''. Rome: Abete. 1977.
* Janner, A. ''Luigi Pirandello''. Firenze, La Nuova Italia. 1948.
* Monti, M. ''Pirandello'', Palermo:Palumbo. 1974.
* Moravia. A. "Pirandello" in ''Fiera Leteraria''.Rome. December 12, 1946.
* Pancrazi, P. "L'altro Pirandello" In ''Scrittori Italiani del Novecento''. Bari:Laterza. 1939.
* Pasini. F. ''Pirandello nell'arte e nella vita''. Padova. 1937.
* Virdia. F. ''Pirandello''. Milan:Mursia. 1975.
* Fabrizio Tinaglia.''Leonardo Da Vinci, Luigi Pirandello e i filosofi della storia. Ricerche inedite e storia della filosofia''. Milano.Lampi di Stampa.2008.

Source: Wikipedia