No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Pirandello and Possibility
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2021
Extract
For it is ultimately the function of art, in imposing a credible order on ordinary reality, and thereby eliciting some perception of an order in reality, to bring us to a condition of serenity, stillness, and reconciliation; and then leave us, as Vergil left Dante, to proceed toward a region where that guide can avail us no further.
—T. S. EliotIII. The lowest class of funeral carriage, the one for the poor. Naked. And let no one accompany me, neither relatives, nor friends. The carriage, the horse, the driver, and that's all.
IV. Burn me. And let my body, as soon as it has been consumed, be dispersed, because I want nothing, not even my ashes, to be left of me …
—Luigi Pirandello (from his Will)- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Tulane Drama Review 1966
References
1 For these particular details of biography as well as for the translations from the Will, I am indebted to William Murray's introduction to his translation, Pirandello's One-Act Plays (Garden City: Doubleday and Co., 1964), pp. xiii ff. Regrettably, my Italian was not adequate for the task of going to the primary sources where the major materials are to be found. Consequently, for other biographical and bibliographical data it was necessary to consult a number of English works, all of which suffered from some degree of incompleteness. Citations follow, it being understood of course that the plays are by Pirandello: To Clothe the Naked and Two Otlier Plays, trans. William Murray; (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1962); Domenico Vittorini, The Drama of Luigi Pirandello (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1935); The Mountain Giants and Other Plays, trans., with intr. by Marta Abba, foreword by George Freedley (New York: Crown Publishers, 1958); Lander MacClintock, The Age of Pirandello (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1951); Thomas Bishop, Pirandello and the French Theatre (New York: NYU Press, 1960), intr. by Germaine Brée; finally, what seemed most authoritative and reliable to me, to which I am indebted for a good many notions expressed here: Naked Masks, ed. Eric Bentley (1st ed. rev. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1957). Finally, that my Italian is inadequate should not be taken to mean that it is entirely absent. So with this qualification made, and on the ground that the results might be of some interest, I shall here warn the reader that I intend to examine certain linguistic aspects of the plays.
2 Charles Dullin had actually staged the first Parisian performance of Pirandello on December 20, 1922 at the Théâtre de l'Atelier. It was known in French as La Volupté de I'honneur (Il piacere dell’ onestà). Some months earlier, Dullin had asked the translator, Camille Mallarmé, if she would recommend and acquire in his behalf an Italian play for that season—possibly something of Verga's. Instead she had contacted Pirandello, whose suggestion of Così é she overruled. Sei personaggi was translated for the Pitoëff's by Benjamin Crémieux, who remained Pirandello's French translator till he was killed in the war. It opened a few months later, on April 10, 1923, underthe title Six Personagges en quête d'auleur, at the Théâtre des Champs Elysees.
3 Unless otherwise indicated, translations throughout are my own, for reasons which will be made clear below. The texts used in all such cases are from the series, Biblioteca Moderna Mondadori, Arnoldo Mondadori, ed. (Milan: various dates); Sei personaggi together with Enrico IV make up Vol. 27 (XIth edition, 1965).
4 The dates given are for the years of first Italian production.
5 My admiration for Enrico IV is unqualified. But my agreement with Mr. Bentley's opinion—that it represents a “version of illusion and reality crystallized,” implying as it does that a system has come to rest—together with the enormous difficulties of the breathless first act, diminishes my attachment to this play.
6 F. L. Cross, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (London: Oxford, 1958), p. 345. See in the same work the entries “Indulgence,” “Plenary Indulgence,” and “Spiritual Works of Mercy.” The first two provide the basis of theological notions expressed; the last is of some interest in that these may be seen as a silent “plan of action” in doing the trilogy—indeed of his whole canon; but the subject is too large to include here.
7 Pirandello was a student of philology and received his Ph.D. at Bonn. This note is not to buttress my contention that he had in mind the German word, but to suggest in general that among his skills was a certain linguistic bravura.
8 See especially MacClintock, op cit., pp. 220 ff.
9 A great many monographs on Pirandello in Italian, especially biographies, have this idea expressed in their titles; here are two: L'uomo segreto (The Secret Man) [F. V. Nardelli, 2nd ed., Milano, 1937], and Il segreto di Luigi Pirandello (The Secret of …) [Pietro Mignosi, Milano, 1937].
10 Murray, op. cit., pp. 2-3; Arthur Livingston's translation, Naked, appears in William Smith Clark, II, ed., Chief Patterns of World Drama (New York: Houghton Mifllin Company), 1946, pp. 946-1005. Note Mr. Livingston's demotion of Laspiga to “ensign,” his addition of “20th century” to Pirandello's “today” and his premature disclosure of Grotti's station. Because of these and even more crucial items of omission and “creativity” I have preferred my own inadequate (but I trust literal) translations.
11 Irving Howe, “Some Words for a Master,” The New Republic, Vol. 141, No. 13 (September 28, 1959), p. 23
12 Illustration facing p. 169, Pirandello, Volume quinto della collezione, La Vita sociale della nuova Italia (Torina: UTET, 1963). It is surprising to see even his most astute critics attack the woman with such unanimity. Pirandello might have avoided her paranoid accusations—but all things being equal he chose not to. Mrs. Pirandello died in an asylum in 1918.
13 For a view of the stiflingly narrow focus of this theatre see Domenico Vittorini, The Drama of Luigi Pirandello (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935), Lander MacClintock, The Age of Pirandello (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1951), and Thomas Bishop, Pirandello and the French Theatre (New York: NYU Press, 1960). See also J. H. Whitfield, A Short History of Italian Literature (London: Cassell, 1960) and Ernest Hatch Wilkins, A History of Italian Literature (Cambridge: Harvard, 1954). Summaries provided in these of works by Pirandello's predecessors such as Verga, Manzoni, Praga, Antona-Traversi, and Giacosa will make this evident at once. As will the play that students of literary influences agree was a touchstone for his work, Luigi Chiarelli's La Maschera e il volto (The Mask and the Face). A man too cowardly to carry out the threat that he would kill his wife were she to be unfaithful sends her abroad instead, since he cannot bear to have that cowardice revealed. Whereupon his prestige grows enormously and he finds himself surrounded by admiring women! Out of a nearby river, you see, a body has been fished, badly decomposed, obviously a woman. And it had been assumed that it was the wife. But she returns from abroad with predictable results. The play is more Ibsenite than Pirandellian, but is couched in terms that would doubtless have stirred his imagination enormously.
14 The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Modern Library Edition) p. 327. But Burckhardt attributed greatness to its character as well, understanding wellsprings to be indifferently provident.
15 Pirandello displays himself beautifully in the business of Madame Pace's late appearance. Boldly he lists the lady in Personaggi along with the other Six (and apparently nobody has counted them!); then expects the implicit reason for her exclusion at their first entrance to hold up, i.e., the Six have dropped on stage because of their passionate needs—and obviously Madame has no such need. But this logic will not work, since a volitional motive for the Child—who comes with the Six—would be hard to find. She is four years old. And to make matters worse, the Father, in shrewdly creating Madame's physical habitat to evoke her physical presence, has forgotten that others should have appeared as well as Madame. Another customer, another girl? It is a striking mark of Pirandello's skill that it hardly matters.
16 Dr. Piscator and Max Reinhardt, who modelled for the Doctor, are the donors of his bristly authority and temper. The odd name, or a variation of it, belonged to Pirandello's landlord during his residence in Berlin during the winter of 1928-29.