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Luigi
Pirandello
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Luigi
Pirandello was born in 1867 in
Girgenti (now Agrigento) on the
island of Sicily. Luigi's father
was a fairly prosperous sulphur
dealer and intended that his son
should follow in his footsteps,
but the boy demonstrated a
studious bent early on, and as a
result, he was provided with a
literary schooling. He entered
the University of Rome in 1887,
but later transferred to Bonn
University where he completed his
doctoral thesis, a study of his
native Sicilian
dialect.
Pirandello's
first creative efforts were in
the realm of verse--he translated
Goethe's Roman elegies--but after
falling under
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the influence of Sicilian novelist
Capuana who became his friend and advisor,
Pirandello turned his attention to
naturalistic fiction. His first novel, The
Outcast (1893), contains the seeds that
would blossom in his later
writing.
Pirandello's
sense of disillusionment was burned into
his psyche early on by a very personal
tragedy. In 1894, at the age of 27, he
married a young woman whom he had never
met. The marriage had been arranged by his
parents according to custom. His young
bride, Antonietta Portulano, was the
daughter of his father's business partner.
The girl's mother had died in childbirth
because her father was so insanely jealous
that he would not allow a doctor to be
present during the birth. For a time, the
young couple found happiness, but after
the birth of their third child and the
loss of the family fortune in a flood,
Antonietta suffered a mental breakdown.
She became so violent that she should have
been institutionalized, but Pirandello
chose instead to keep her at home for
seventeen years while she spat her venom
at the young writer and his three
children. Their daughter was so disturbed
by her mother's illness that she tried to
take her own life. Fortunately, her
instrument of choice, a revolver, was so
old as to be of no use. The illness had a
profound effect on Pirandello's writing as
well, leading him to explorations of
madness, illusion, and isolation. It was
not until his plays finally began to prove
profitable around 1919 that he was able to
sent Antonietta to a private
sanitarium.
Pirandello
wrote his first widely acclaimed novel,
The Late Mattia Pascal, in 1904. By the
time the First World War broke out ten
years later, he had published two other
novels and numerous short stories. It was
not until 1916, however, that he turned
his attention to the theatre. He quickly
became enthralled by this new medium, and
became quite prolific, turning out as many
as nine plays in one year. His first three
plays, Better Think Twice About It!,
Liolà, and It is So!, If You Think
So, were each written in less than a week.
His first notable critical success came in
1920 with As Before, Better than Before.
Then, within a five week period in 1921,
he wrote two masterpieces: Six Characters
in Search of an Author, and Henry IV. Six
Characters had a successful but scandalous
opening in Rome and, soon after, another
successful--but less scandalous--opening
in Milan. Almost overnight, the play was
being directed by Komisarjevsky in London,
Brock Pemberton in New York, and Max
Reinhardt in Germany. 1922 saw the
successful opening of two more plays,
Henry IV and Naked.
Between
1922 and 1924, Pirandello became a major
public figure. In Paris, he received the
Legion of Honor, and in 1925, with the
help of Mussolini who had publicly
announced his admiration for the
playwright, Pirandello opened his own Art
Theatre in Rome. Pirandello's relationship
with Mussolini has been the subject of
much debate. Some scholars have suggested
that the playwright's enthusiastic
adoption of fascism was simply a matter of
practicality, a strategic ploy to advance
his career. Had he opposed the fascist
regime, it would have meant serious
difficulties for him and for his art.
Acceptance, on the other hand, meant
subsidies and publicity. His statement
that "I am a Fascist because I am an
Italian." has often been called on to
support this theory, and one of his later
plays, The Giants of the Mountain, has
often been interpreted as showing the
author's growing realization that the
fascist giants were hostile to culture.
And yet, during his last appearance in New
York, Pirandello voluntarily distributed a
statement announcing his support of
Italy's annexation of Abyssinia. He even
gave his Nobel medal over to the Italian
government to be melted down for the
Abyssinian campaign. However, Pirandello
was a complex creature, and all that can
be certain is that nothing is certain. At
any rate, Mussolini's support quickly
brought the Italian playwright
international fame, and a worldwide tour
ensued, introducing London, Paris, Vienna,
Prague, Budapest, and several cities in
Germany, Argentina, and Brazil to the
intriguing intellectual contortions of
"Pirandellian" theatre.
Influenced
by his wife's long illness, much of what
Pirandello wrote dealt with themes of
madness, illusion and isolation. In Henry
IV, Pirandello's protagonist loses his
mind after falling from a horse at the end
of a masquerade. His illusion that he is
the medieval German emperor Henry IV is
coddled by a wealthy relative who
surrounds the delirious man with a
grotesque retinue of servants and
courtiers. Finally, after twelve years,
the injured man recovers his sanity, but
continues to feign insanity because he
prefers this world of illusions to the
real world in which he lost the woman he
loved. When this woman and her new lover
come to visit, "Henry IV" is overcome with
rage and mortally wounds his rival. Now it
is more imperative than ever that the
pretence of madness continue. If he is to
escape the legal consequences of his
actions, he must remain Henry IV for the
rest of his life. The brilliance of Henry
IV lies in its hero's deliberate rejection
of reality as something to painful to
bear.
The
most popular of Pirandello's comedies,
however, his masterpiece, is Six
Characters in Search of an Author. The
premise of the play is that these six
characters have taken on a life of their
own because their author has failed to
complete the story. They invade a
rehearsal of another Pirandellian play and
insist on playing out the life that is
rightfully theirs. Suggesting that life
defies all simple interpretations,
Pirandello's characters rebel against
their creator. They attack the foundation
of the play, refusing to follow stage
directions and interfering with the
structure of the play until it breaks down
into a series of alternately comic and
tragic fragments.
Although
he reached his peak of dramatic
originality with Six Characters in Search
of an Author, Pirandello continued to
write until the time of his death and
continued to experience a great deal of
critical success. It was also in the
theatre that Pirandello finally found a
more understanding relationship with a
woman, the actress Marta Abba for whom he
wrote most of his later plays. In 1931,
Judith Anderson appeared on Broadway in
Pirandello's As You Desire me. In the film
version, Anderson was replaced by an even
bigger star--Greta Garbo. Pirandello was
awarded the Nobel Prize in 1934, and at
the time of his death in 1936, he was in
negotiations to appear in a film version
of Six Characters.
Luigi
Pirandello left instructions for his
funeral, saying, "When I am dead, do not
clothe me. Wrap me naked in a sheet. No
flowers on the bed and no lighted candle.
A pauper's cart. Naked. And let no one
accompany me, neither relatives nor
friends. The cart, the horse, the
coachmen, e basta. Burn me." But the
church did not believe in cremation and
the Fascist party did not want a
world-famous fascist to slip away naked,
without his black shirt. Thus, against his
wishes, Pirandello was given a state
funeral.
Pirandello
was clearly the greatest Italian
playwright of his time, and he has left a
lasting mark on all the playwrights that
have followed him. In his agony over the
illusory nature of existence and the
isolation of man, he anticipates such
writers as Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter
and Eugene Ionesco. Perhaps Pirandello
best summed up his art himself when he
said, "I have tried to tell something to
other men, without any ambition, except
perhaps that of avenging myself for having
been born."
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