«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 doing everything she could to save the play, resisting her growing terror at the stubborn, ferocious persecution of that filthy, damned creature.»
In Italiano – Il pipistrello
With “The Bat,” Pirandello opens a window onto the life of fiction, onto the theatrical world, revealing an unpredictable outcome regarding the success of a work. Faustino Perres might have been pleased with his play on the eve of its premiere at the National Arena: everything seemed to be going well, with “a clever array of effects,” if it weren’t for that slimy beast in the theater…
The bat – 1920
All is well. The play, nothing new, that could irritate or disturb the spectators. It’s cleverly constructed with a fine array of effects. A great prelate among the characters, a red Eminence who hosts a widowed and poor sister-in-law in his house, of whom, in his youth, before embarking on his ecclesiastical career, he had been in love. A daughter of the widow, already of marriageable age, whom His Eminence would like to marry off to a young protégé of his, who has been raised in his home since childhood, apparently the son of an old secretary of his, but in reality…—well, let’s say, a certain ancient past from his youth, which could not now be reproached to a great prelate with that rawness that would necessarily derive from the brevity of a summary, especially since it is, so to speak, the crux of the entire second act, in a scene of great effect with the sister-in-law, in the dark, or rather, in the moonlight that floods the veranda, since His Eminence, before beginning the confession, orders his trusted servant Giuseppe: “Giuseppe, dim the lights.” All is well, all is well, in short. The actors, all in place; and each in love with their role. Even little Gàstina, yes. Very happy, very happy with the part of the orphaned and poor niece, who, of course, refuses to marry His Eminence’s protégé and makes certain fierce scenes of rebellion, which little Gàstina enjoyed immensely, as she anticipated a flood of applause.
To make a long story short, no one could be more pleased than the friend Faustino Perres in the anxious expectation of an excellent success for his new play on the eve of the performance.
But there was a bat.
A damned bat, which every night, during that season of plays at our National Arena, either entered through the openings of the tented roof or awoke at a certain hour from the nest it must have made up there, amid the iron framework, the dirt, and the bolts, and began to flit around like a madman—not above the heads of the spectators, since the lights in the hall were off during the performance, but there, where the light from the stage, the proscenium, and the wings, the stage lights, attracted it: on the stage, right in front of the actors.
Little Gàstina was in a frenzy of terror. She had nearly fainted three times in the previous evenings, seeing it pass so close to her face, over her hair, in front of her eyes, and the last time—Oh, what horror!—almost grazing her mouth with that gliding, slimy flight. Miraculously, she had not screamed. The tension in her nerves to force herself to stay still, acting her part while irresistibly wanting to follow with her frightened eyes the fluttering of that disgusting creature, to keep an eye on it, or, unable to take it any longer, to flee from the stage to hide in her dressing room, drove her to declare that now, with that bat there, if no remedy was found to prevent it from flitting about the stage during the performance, she could no longer be sure of herself, of what she would do one of those nights.
It was proven that the bat did not enter from outside but had actually taken up residence in the rafters of the Arena’s roof, as on the evening before the first performance of Faustino Perres’s new play, all the roof openings were kept closed, and at the usual hour, the bat was seen to dive onto the stage as it had on all the other evenings with its frantic fluttering. Then Faustino Perres, terrified for the fate of his new play, pleaded and implored the producer and the leading actor to send two, three, four workers up to the roof, perhaps at his own expense, to locate the nest and hunt that brazen beast; but he was thought to be mad. The leading actor was particularly enraged at such a proposal because he was fed up—fed up to the brim with Gàstina’s ridiculous fear of her magnificent hair. —Hair?
—Of course! Of course! Hair! Doesn’t she understand yet? They’ve led her to believe that if the bat happens to bump her in the head, it has some stickiness in its wings that makes it impossible to disentangle it from her hair except by cutting it. Understand? She has no other fear! Instead of worrying about her part, of identifying with the character, at least to the point of not thinking about such nonsense!
Nonsense, a woman’s hair? The magnificent hair of little Gàstina? Faustino Perres’s terror at the leading actor’s outburst multiplied a hundredfold. Oh God! Oh God! If little Gàstina truly feared for this, his play was doomed!
To spite the leading actor, before the dress rehearsal began, little Gàstina, with her elbow resting on her knee of one leg crossed over the other and her fist under her chin, seriously asked Faustino Perres if His Eminence’s line in the second act: “Giuseppe, dim the lights” could not be repeated, if necessary, a few more times during the performance, considering there’s no other way to make a bat leave a room it entered at night than to extinguish the light.
Faustino Perres felt a chill.
—No, no, I am speaking quite seriously! Because, excuse me, Perres: do you really want to give, with your play, a perfect illusion of reality?
—Illusion? No. Why do you say illusion, miss? Art truly creates a reality.
—Ah, well then. And then I tell you that art creates it, and the bat destroys it.
—What! Why?
—Because it does. Suppose that, in the reality of life, in a room where a family conflict is unfolding in the evening, between a husband and wife, between a mother and daughter, I don’t know! Or a conflict of interests or something else, a bat happens to enter. Well, what happens? I assure you that for a moment the conflict is interrupted because of that bat that has entered; either the light is turned off, or someone goes to another room, or someone even goes to grab a stick, climbs on a chair, and tries to hit it down; and the others then, believe me, forget about the conflict and all rush to watch, smiling and disgusted, how that odious creature is.
—Already! But this, in ordinary life!—objected the poor Faustino Perres, with a faint smile on his lips. —In my work of art, miss, I did not include the bat.
—You didn’t include it; but if it sticks its nose in?
—You just have to ignore it!
—And you think that’s natural? I assure you, I who have to live the part of Livia in your play, that this isn’t natural; because Livia, I know, I know better than you, is afraid of bats! Your Livia—mind you—no longer I. You didn’t think about it because you couldn’t imagine the scenario of a bat entering the room while she fiercely rebelled against her mother’s imposition and His Eminence’s. But this evening, you can be sure that the bat will enter the room during that scene. And then I ask you, for the very reality that you want to create, if it seems natural to you that she, with the fear she has of bats, with the disgust that makes her recoil and scream at the mere thought of a possible contact, should remain there as if nothing were happening, with a bat flitting around her face, and show no sign of concern. You’re joking! Livia runs away, I tell you; she breaks character and runs away or hides under the table, screaming like a madwoman. I therefore advise you to consider whether it wouldn’t be better to have Giuseppe called by His Eminence and have him repeat the line: “Giuseppe, dim the lights.” – Or… wait! Or… yes! Better! It would be the liberation! – to order him to grab a stick, climb onto a chair, and…
—Yes! Yes! Interrupting the scene halfway, right? amid the uproarious laughter of the entire audience.
—But that would be the height of naturalness, my dear! Believe me. Even for your own play, given that the bat is there and that in that scene – it’s useless – whether you want it or not – it’ll stick its nose in there: an actual bat! If you don’t take it into account, it will seem fake, for sure, Livia who doesn’t care, the other two who don’t mind and continue to act as if it weren’t there. Don’t you get this?
Faustino Perres let his arms fall in despair.
—Oh my God, miss—he said. —If you want to joke, that’s one thing…
—No, no! I repeat that I’m discussing this with you seriously, seriously, really seriously!—retorted Gàstina.
—And then I respond that you are mad—Perres said, rising. —That bat should be part of the reality I created, so I could take it into account and have the characters in my play take it into account; it should be a fake bat, not a real one, in short! Because an incidental, random element of reality cannot introduce itself into the created, essential reality of a work of art.
—And if it does introduce itself?
—But that’s not true! It can’t! It doesn’t introduce itself into my play, but on the stage where you are acting.
—Exactly! Where I act in your play. And then it’s between two choices: either your play is alive up there; or the bat is alive. The bat, I assure you, is alive, very much alive, in any case. I have demonstrated that with such a lively presence up there, Livia and the other two characters cannot appear natural, who should continue their scene as if it weren’t there, while it is. Conclusion: either your play goes, or the bat goes. If you think it impossible to remove the bat, put your trust in God, dear Perres, regarding the fate of your play. Now I will show you that I know my part and perform it with all my commitment because I enjoy it. But I don’t answer for my nerves tonight.
Every writer, when they are a true writer, even if mediocre, has this melancholic, or even, if you will, ridiculous quality for anyone watching them in a moment like the one Faustino Perres found himself on the evening of the first performance: they let themselves be caught, first of all by themselves, sometimes alone among everyone, by what they have written, and they cry and laugh and change their face, unknowingly, in response to the various grimaces of the actors on stage, with hurried breath and a heart suspended and precarious, which makes them raise either this or that hand in an act of defense or support.
I can assure you, I who saw him and kept him company while he hid behind the scenes among the stagehands and the servants, that Faustino Perres for the entire first act and part of the second did not think at all about the bat, so absorbed he was in his work and so identified with it. And it’s not to say he didn’t think about it because the bat hadn’t yet made its customary appearance on stage. No. He didn’t think about it because he couldn’t think about it. So true was it that when, halfway through the second act, the bat finally appeared, he didn’t even notice; he didn’t even understand why I nudged him with my elbow and turned to look at me as if he were dazed:
—What?
He began to think about it only when the fate of the play, not due to the bat, not because of the actors’ apprehension because of it, but due to evident flaws in the play itself, seemed to take a turn for the worse. Already the first act, to tell the truth, had garnered but a few lukewarm and scattered applause.
—Oh my God, there it is, look…—began to say the poor man, sweating cold; and he raised a shoulder, pulled back or bent his head this way or that as if the bat were flitting around him and wanted to avoid him; he twisted his hands; he covered his face. —God, God, God, he seems to have gone mad… Ah, look, moments in front of Rossi!… What do we do? What do we do? He thinks Gàstina is entering just now!
—Shut up, for God’s sake!—I urged him, shaking him by the arms and trying to drag him away.
But I couldn’t succeed. Gàstina was making her entrance from the wings right opposite, and Perres, watching her, as if spellbound, was trembling all over.
The bat was flying high around the chandelier that hung from the ceiling with eight globes of light, and Gàstina did not seem to notice it, certainly flattered by the great silence of anticipation with which the audience had received her appearance on stage. And the scene continued in that silence and evidently was pleasing.
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 doing everything she could to save the play, resisting her growing terror at the stubborn, ferocious persecution of that filthy, damned creature.
Suddenly Faustino Perres saw the abyss yawning before his eyes on stage and brought his hands to his face at an unexpected, piercing scream from Gàstina, who fell into the arms of His Eminence.
I was ready to drag him away while the actors were dragging Gàstina’s fainted body off the stage.
No one, in the turmoil of the first moment on the disarrayed stage, could think about what was happening in the theater hall. A loud uproar echoed as if it were far away, which no one paid attention to. Uproar? But no, what uproar! – They were applauses. – What? – But yes! Applause! Applause! It was a delirium of applause! The entire audience, risen to its feet, was applauding frantically for four minutes and demanded the author, the actors at the proscenium, to decree a triumph for that scene of fainting, which they had taken seriously as if it were part of the play, and had seen performed with such prodigious truth.
What to do? The leading actor, in a state of fury, ran to grab Faustino Perres by the shoulders, who was looking at everyone, trembling with anguished perplexity, and shoved him with a push onto the stage. He was met with a thunderous ovation that lasted more than two minutes. And six or seven more times, he had to reappear to thank the audience that would not tire of applauding because they also wanted Gàstina at the forefront.
—Bring out Gàstina! Bring out Gàstina!
But how to bring out Gàstina, who in her dressing room was still struggling in a fierce convulsion of nerves, amid the dismay of those around her who were trying to assist her?
The leading actor had to go to the proscenium to announce, in a very sorrowful manner, that the acclaimed actress could not appear to thank the honored audience because that scene, lived with such intensity, had caused her a sudden illness, for which the performance of the play that evening had, unfortunately, to be interrupted.
At this point, one wonders if that damned bat could have done Faustino Perres a worse service.
It would have been in a way comforting for him to attribute the failure of the play to it; but to now owe the triumph to him, a triumph that had no other support than the mad flight of those disgusting wings!
Barely having recovered from the initial shock, feeling even more dead than alive, he rushed to meet the leading actor who had pushed him with such bad grace onto the stage to thank the audience, and with his hands in his hair, shouted at him:
—And tomorrow night?
—But what was I supposed to say? What was I supposed to do?—the leading actor shouted back furiously, in response. —Was I supposed to tell the audience that those applause were for the bat and not for her? You better remedy this, remedy it now; make sure the applause go to her tomorrow night!
—Right! But how?—the poor Faustino Perres asked, in agony, losing himself again.
—How! How! You ask me how?
—But if that fainting doesn’t exist in my play and has nothing to do with it, commendatore!
—You have to make it enter, dear sir, at all costs! Didn’t you see the kind of success it had? All the newspapers will talk about it tomorrow morning. There will be no way around it! You can be sure my actors will manage to pretend with the same truth as they did tonight involuntarily.
—Yes… but, you understand, — Perres tried to point out, — it went so well because the performance was interrupted there, after that fainting! If tomorrow night, instead, it must continue…
—But that is exactly it, in the name of God, the remedy you need to find!—the commendatore shouted back at him.
But at that moment:
—And how? How?—came a voice, pulling down her fur hat with both hands glittering with rings over her magnificent hair, little Gàstina, who had recovered. —But don’t you really understand that it must be the bat to say it, not you, my sirs?
—You stop with the bat!—the leading actor growled, approaching her with a threatening chest.
—I stop? You must stop it, commendatore!—Gàstina replied calmly and smilingly, perfectly sure of irritating him the most this way now. —Because, you see, commendatore, let’s reason: I could have a fake fainting scene under control in the second act if Mr. Perres, following his advice, includes it. But you would also have to have under control the real bat then, so it doesn’t cause me another fainting, not fake but real in the first act, or the third, or maybe in the second itself, right after that first fake! Because I beg you to believe me, my sirs, that I truly fainted, feeling it coming at me, here, here, on my cheek! And tomorrow night I’m not performing, no, no, I am not performing, commendatore, because neither you nor anyone can force me to perform with a bat flitting in front of my face!
—Oh no, you’ll see! You’ll see!—the leading actor replied, shaking his head vigorously.
But Faustino Perres, fully convinced that the sole reason for that evening’s applause had been the sudden and violent intrusion of an extraneous, random element that instead of demolishing, as it should have, the fiction of art had miraculously inserted itself into it, thereby granting it, in the audience’s illusion, the evidence of a prodigious truth, withdrew his play, and that was that.
In Italiano – Il pipistrello
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