“I think that life is a very sad joke, because we have within us, without knowing how or why or from whom, the need to constantly deceive ourselves with the spontaneous creation of a reality (one for each of us and never the same for everyone) which from time to time is discovered to be vain and illusory.
Whoever has understood the game can no longer deceive himself; but whoever can no longer deceive himself can no longer take any taste or pleasure in life. That’s how it is.”
(From the autobiographical letter sent to Filippo Sùrico, director of the Roman periodical Le Lettere, and published in the issue of October 15, 1924)”
Articles
The Creative ‘Chaos’: Pirandello’s Theatrical RevolutionBy Ferdinando Morabito. The fame of the Sicilian author quickly becomes overwhelming, leading him to the highest recognition in the literary field, namely the awarding of the Nobel Prize in 1934. The reason stated reads: “For his courage and ingenious re-presentation of dramatic and theatrical…
Pirandello. A genius of the twentieth centuryBy Giovanni Fighera. Great playwright, novelist, and short story writer, the Agrigentino Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) is one of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century, a man of letters and, at the same time, a philosopher. He seems to embody Leopardi’s words in the Zibaldone:…
Infinite Pirandello: The Relevance of the Sicilian WriterBy Mattia Cavadini. Pirandello is infinite. In both good and bad ways. Infinite, in the literal sense: that is, it never ends. Not only because of the plots of his novels, which are consistently auroral, incessantly digressive, built on continuous fantastic leaps, narrative flashes, humorous…
1929 – The Drama and the Spoken Cinematograph – ArticleAs absurd as the noises that claim to be associated with spoken cinema may be, I must admit, nonetheless, that I have the idea of setting to work on the task of seeking a work of art for the cinema, a work of art that…
An Introduction to Luigi PirandelloBy Ciro Sorrentino. Pirandello’s style is, therefore, a very personal one that, in the ability to break down and deform, in the propensity for irony and expressionism, brings him closer to the European avant-garde and to the widespread intention to reveal in the forms of…
Pirandello in English“I think that life is a very sad joke, because we have within us, without knowing how or why or from whom, the need to constantly deceive ourselves with the spontaneous creation of a reality (one for each of us and never the same for…
Pirandello in English – A Brief BiographyBy Sara Maria Collura. Courtesy of the Author. Pirandello’s works cannot be categorized within any contemporary literary movement. His political ideas were influenced by Bergson and his essay on laughter, in which the philosopher argues that irony is a form of detachment from the reality…
Novels
1904 – The Late Mattia Pascal«An extreme affair, deeply Pirandellian, developed with paranoid rigor, which strips the character, tearing away all his masks. Overall, it is not an episodic experience, but the fire of an initiation. Mattia Pascal returns victorious and defeated, but Pirandello can no longer go back. The…
1915/1925 – Shoot! (The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator)«Published in 1915 the novel show the writer’s sensitivity to new languages, not only theatre, but now also and above all cinema. Sensitivity and also resistance. According to this increasingly intellectual and theory-fascinated Pirandello, actors in front of the camera find themselves separated from the…
Theatre
1910 – Sicilian limes (Lumíe di Sicilia) – Drama in one act«Time and circumstances can change the loved one to the point of making him or her become something other than what he or she was: the object of love reveals itself to be painfully unstable and changeable for those who have remained tied to their…
1917 – Right you are! (If you think so) – Drama in three acts«It is a comedy with a clear thesis; Pirandello defined it as: «Parable in three acts». The topic is the truth, searched for in vain by all the characters from beginning to end, affirmed and contradicted in vain in a web of hypotheses with no…
1921 – Six characters in search of an author – A comedy in the making in three acts«One of the most prestigious texts of the Italian theatrical tradition. A drama that contains within itself all the future evolutions and transformations of contemporary dramaturgy and research. A show that depicts an unsurpassed metaphor of the condition of modern man, balanced between reality and…
1922 – Henry IV – Drama in three actsHenry IV is a man who went mad after being knocked off his horse during a masquerade. At the time he was playing the part of Henry IV, and his delusion for over twelve years after the fall was that he was King Henry IV…
Short stories
1909 – The jar (La giara) – Short story«He was an old, crooked man, with twisted, knotty joints, like an ancient Saracen olive stump. It took a hook to get a word out of him. A sullenness, or sadness rooted in that deformed body; or perhaps a distrust that no one could truly…
1909 – The light of the house opposite (Il lume dell’altra casa) – Short story«What he was doing in life was unknown. Perhaps he didn’t even know himself. He was simply there… He probably didn’t even suspect that one could live differently or that, by living differently, one could feel less the weight of boredom and sadness.» In Italiano –…
1911 – The License (La patente) – Short story«Yes, sir. Because you do not believe in my power! But luckily others do, don’t you know? Everyone, everyone believes in it! And there are lots of gambling houses in town! All I will have to do is show up – no need to say…
1912 – Ciàula Discovers the Moon (Ciàula scopre la luna)«In ecstasy, he fell back so that he sat on his load, in front of the hole. There she was, there she was, the Moon… The Moon was there! The Moon! And without realizing it, without wanting to, Ciàula began to weep, from the great…
1914 – The Train Has Whistled (Il treno ha fischiato) – Short story«It seemed that his blinders had suddenly fallen off, and in a moment the spectacle of life opened wide all around him.. It was as if his ears had suddenly become unblocked, allowing him to perceive for the first time voices and sounds he had…
1918 – War (Quando si comprende)«”Why then,” continued the fat man, “should we consider the feelings of our children when they are twenty? Isn’t it natural that at their age they should consider the love for their Country (I am speaking of decent boys, of course) even greater than the…
1920 – The bat (Il pipistrello) – Short story«Ah, if that bat hadn’t been there! But there it was! There it was! The audience wasn’t aware of it, all focused on the performance; but there it was, as if, deliberately, it had taken aim at Gàstina, now, precisely her, who, poor thing, was…
Pirandello was one of the most prolific writers, producing not only novels but also numerous plays and even some poetry collections early in his career. His literary work is not divided into distinct creative periods; instead, he wrote poetry, short stories, novels, critical essays, and plays simultaneously. Pirandello sought to introduce new forms and structures into literature, not only in theater but also in narrative.
Living in a historical-cultural period marked by the crisis of 19th-century values and the end of scientific-rational certainties, Pirandello developed a personal critical-humorous reflection on human reality, manifesting the urgent need to represent the existential unease and the consequent painful disillusionment, which, definitively, have upset the customs of post-Risorgimento bourgeois society.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for 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 dialect. 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.
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