Luigi Pirandello

The year 1893, in which much of the novel unfolds, was fraught with grave events for Italy, and for Sicily in particular. The government was embroiled in the Banca Romana scandal. In Sicily, the revolutionary outburst of the Fasci Siciliani movement, which had rallied a large part of the subproletariat (peasants and sulfur miners), was bloodily repressed by an army corps dispatched from the mainland. The dread of social revolution forged an alliance between the Bourbon loyalists and the patriotic factions of the island’s ruling class, as well as between the latter and the northern bourgeoisie. It was a decisive year for the history of the Mezzogiorno, sounding the death knell for the lingering hopes of a southern renaissance fostered by the Unification of Italy. Against this backdrop, Pirandello, still under the sway of *verismo*, penned an ostensibly historical novel, yet one deeply woven with memories of his native soil and family, steeped in a bitter sense of dejection that only estrangement from the affairs of life can render bearable. The novel is divided into two parts. The first, undeniably the more accomplished, is set in Agrigento, which, > in the wretched remnants of its ancient life gathered up there, rose silent and astonished, a survivor in the void of eventless time, in the neglect of a shelterless squalor . The gulf between past grandeur and present decay is conveyed not merely by the landscape, but also by the clash between the old and the young. The former are emblematically embodied by Prince Ippolito (an unyielding Bourbon loyalist) and Mauro Mortara, an aging Garibaldian soldier who subsists on the glorious memory of Risorgimento exploits. While the old remain entrenched in the roles thrust upon them by history, moving with steadfast conviction, the young are instead adrift, weighed down by a present life ever further removed from Risorgimento ideals, at a loss as to which values might offer them roots. Between the old and the young stir the opportunists—those who, out of self-interest or sheer indolence, capitalize on the moral decay of Italian society. There exists, furthermore, another faction, which has grasped “the vanity of time” and retreated into isolation on the fringes of madness. As the reading progresses, one becomes keenly aware of the narrative’s contemporary resonance. Are we reading of nineteenth-century Sicily, or of contemporary Italy? Is the rift between the old and the young the eternal generational conflict, or rather the consequence of a dispiriting, desolating inheritance bequeathed by past generations to their successors? > What could youth do, if the grasping, fearful, overbearing jealousy of the old crushed it so, with the weight of the basest prudence and of so many humiliations and disgraces? If to youth fell the furious, silent expiation of all the errors and unworthy compromises, the mortification of every pride, and the spectacle of so much ugliness? Yet so long as the social order remains immutable, each can comfortably enact the role assigned to them or assumed by choice: the revolutionaries can shout slogans against the powerful, the latter can hatch illicit schemes and villainies, the old can cling to their values, while the young let themselves be swept along and, ultimately, ruled by the opportunists. It is a comedy whose tragic nature stems not from the characters’ awareness, but from the desolation of the landscape and the blinding poverty of the common people. What a stark contrast between Pirandello’s prose, which betrays an intimate communion with his land, and that of Camilleri, where Sicily is reduced to mere folklore and facile irony! This, too, bears witness to our country's decline. Social revolution and political upheavals forcefully intrude upon the play of fictions. The second part of the novel, largely set in Rome, charts the disintegration of roles and the necessity for each individual to confront the truth. All the characters find themselves in the predicament of Corrado Selmi, a Risorgimento hero turned hollow, corrupt deputy: > the candid, light smile that had accompanied every act of his life had turned into that grim, hard, bitter grimace. Once again, he felt afraid of himself: afraid of gaining a precise awareness of a certain dark, hideous thing that had suddenly lodged itself deep within his being, throwing him into disarray, leaving him with the impression of being torn apart inside, irreparably . And each reacts according to their own strength, stripped of all pretense: Corrado Selmi takes his own life. In a desperate bid to dissociate himself from the deceits of the powerful Flaminio Salvo, the decent yet submissive Aurelio Costa is slaughtered by the sulfur miners alongside Nicoletta Capolino, who had hitherto been a social climber, eager to trade her feminine charms for success. Dianella, the sole daughter of the wealthy Flaminio Salvo, descends into madness at the sight of her father’s depravities. Lando, Prince Ippolito’s son, concedes in the face of the violent uprisings that his socialist ideals were nothing more than intellectual yearnings. Even Flaminio Salvo confesses that his greed has culminated in nothingness, in vanity. Who, then, holds the truth? Perhaps Don Cosmo, Lando’s uncle, was right when he remarked: > It will pass, the corners of his mouth drawn down, his brow rippled as if by waves of thoughts pushed back by the ebb of his disconsolate wisdom, and with those eyes that seemed to banish and scatter into the vanity of time all the bitter and vexing contingencies of life. It will pass, my dear friends... it will pass . Pirandello the novelist is entirely subordinate to Pirandello the playwright. This trait is particularly pronounced in the second half of the book, where the narrative erupts into rigorous, tight, impassioned dialogues between characters who seem to perform upon a stage. In the first part, while one cannot speak of Pirandello as a *verista* or a social writer in the vein of Zola, the prose succeeds admirably in conveying the tragic essence of Sicily—a profound, infinite sorrow for a desolate land once resonant with life and culture. Why read it? It remains an acutely relevant book, for it portrays the Italy of today as well.

Mattia Pascal lives in a provincial town and has found himself, almost by chance, married, poor, and working as a librarian. He suffers from the stagnation of his existence and is terrified by the idea of living “thus, always, until death, without any change, ever…”. Seeking a momentary escape, he flees to Monte Carlo, where he gambles at the casino and wins a substantial sum. He then discovers that in his hometown the unrecognizable body of a suicide victim has been found, presumed to be him, Mattia. This is the most felicitous part of the novel: briskly paced, ironic, rich in well-crafted portraits and an effective depiction of provincial life and the milieu of casino gamblers. Upon the news of his presumed death, Mattia decides to disappear, to become another man, freed from all ties to the past, > with my conscience made virgin and transparent once more, and the vigilant spirit of my new self . This is, however, an illusion, for within deceit he cannot live authentically. He becomes fully aware of this when he falls in love with a woman to whom he cannot declare himself. In truth, Pirandello is not so much interested in the drama of Mattia Pascal the man as in the paradox of a character who has managed to deceive even death. Is life not perhaps an immense mystery, Pirandello asks himself, and “all this mystery does not exist outside of us, but only within us,” and > what if death did not exist, but were merely the extinction of the wretched feeling we have of it ? In the second part of the novel, the author loses interest in the study of characters and situations, which become increasingly predictable and mundane, focusing instead on his cherished theme: life as an illusion, as a hall of mirrors reflecting consciousness—a consciousness that is, moreover, false and deceitful—of the self. The narrative pace becomes slow and repetitive, the dialogues are in many instances redundant, and the book loses the freshness and originality of its opening pages. The conclusion of the novel comes as no surprise. Trapped within a web of lies, Mattia Pascal decides to stage a second suicide—that is, to die once again—and return to being Mattia Pascal. Yet his wife has remarried, rightly believing herself a widow; thus Mattia Pascal, even having returned to “real” life, must continue to live in deceit and falsehood. He is now, irrevocably, the Late Mattia Pascal. The desire to “evaporate,” as the Japanese say, is one of the never truly voiced aspirations of every human being. Can one retrace one's steps? Can one live another life? Pirandello seems to answer in the negative, not because he believes that what matters are the authentic relationships we maintain with people and with the environment in which we live, but because he is convinced that everything is an illusion and a deception. This is the theme of Pirandello’s major plays, which, from a stylistic standpoint, hinge on the dialectic between characters—an extraordinarily effective device for unveiling the lie in which we live. Transferred to the novel, this approach renders it ponderous, diminishing the pleasure of the reading experience. Why read it? The momentum and irony of the novel’s first part compensate for the sluggishness of the second.