Let's talk about literature again and today I'm going to introduce you to another extremely important character of the Italian literature: Luigi Pirandello. Why is Luigi Pirandello so important? As I said because he has made a great contribution in fiction and theatrical production and we will see together in future videos some of his extremely important works.
Luigi Pirandello also marked an important passage from Verismo, typical of Verga, where reality was seen as objective and immutable, to relativism, where in reality reality does not exist or in any case it is changeable, it changes as it is interpreted and modified by people. Furthermore, Pirandello also talks about masks (do you remember the masks of Carlo Goldoni we saw together? ).
Carlo Goldoni had eliminated the masks from the theater, but there we were talking about physical masks, the ones that the actors wore during the show. Pirandello speaks of different masks: they are those invisible masks that we wear in society; they are those roles that we play in society, living, and that change according to the situation, place or people with whom we interact. Luigi Pirandello inserts within his works some very important elements that are present in his plays and fiction: I'm talking about elements such as the trap (especially the social trap ), madness (as in Henry IV, which we will see together ), exclusion and loneliness (as in his first novel "L'esclusa" or in the famous "The late Mattia Pascal" and we will also talk about this) and the paradox.
But let's see together who is this very important character. Luigi Pirandello was born in 1867 in Girgenti, the old name of Agrigento, from a family rich in sulfur traders. It seems that Luigi Pirandello wrote his first tragedy at the age of 12 but, unfortunately, there is no trace of this work.
Luigi Pirandello begins to work with his father in the sulfur trade, but soon realizes that this is not his true path and decides to enroll at university. He studied literature, first at the University of Palermo, then at the University of Rome and finally at the University of Bonn, in Germany, where he moved after some conflict with a Latin professor. Having obtained his degree, he decides to return to Rome and it is here that he meets people who, for better or for worse, will change his life and will also mark his destiny.
In Rome Luigi Pirandello meets two very important people. The first is Luigi Capuana, another very important Sicilian author, who convinces and pushes Pirandello to publish his first work, the first novel, "L'esclusa" of 1893. It is the story of a girl, Marta, who is unjustly accused of treason and is excluded from the family and society.
Already here are the elements of loneliness and exclusion. The production of Pirandello begins with L'esclusa, which will then follow with the publication of another work, Il turno, from 1902. In Rome, Pirandello also meets his future wife, Maria Antonietta Portulano: a character who will have a great influence in life and also in the literary production of Pirandello.
Marie Antoinette did not much support these artistic and literary ambitions of Luigi Pirandello. If on the one hand Capuana encouraged Luigi Pirandello to write and produce, on the other hand Marie Antoinette did not support him and therefore did not encourage him at all. The real problems began for Luigi Pirandello in 1903, because in 1903 a great flood completely destroyed the sulfur mine in which all the dowry of Marie Antoinette had been invested; so a lot of money lost, a financial but also family tragedy that led Luigi Pirandello's wife to a great depression, a deep depression that put Pirandello to the test both humanly and professionally.
It is a very difficult period for Pirandello: on the one hand he has to stay close to his wife, because he doesn't want to abandon her and wants to be close to her, and on the other hand he has to survive and work a lot. He works as a teacher of Italian and German at the university and begins to ask for contributions to newspapers, because before he collaborated with newspapers, where he published his works for free very often; now he is starting to ask for contributions because he has a family to support. Hence the pessimistic and tragic vision of the life of Luigi Pirandello, which will later be present in all his works.
Hence the madness we see in Eric IV, the loneliness and exclusion of Fu Mattia Pascal and also the trap, society and family seen as a trap that prevents the expression of personality and art. The trap is very present in some of his works such as "So it is if you like", which I recommend to read because it is really very very beautiful, and "One, no one and a hundred thousand". But let's go back to the flooding, it happened in 1903 and only the following year, in 1904, Pirandello began to write his most famous novel: Il fu Mattia Pascal, which will then be translated into numerous languages and will make him famous also abroad.
. I will make a video dedicated to Il fu Mattia Pascal, because it is a very popular and also very beautiful work. It is about a character who, during a journey, discovers that he is dead, or rather, people think that he is dead and therefore decides to take the opportunity to rebuild a life by changing his name, identity, physical appearance (and again we find the themes of loneliness, of escape, of the trap, but we will talk about it together).
This is one of the most important and most popular works of Luigi Pirandello. Pirandello also had a great interest in the theater and, in fact, he also made great works for the theater such as "So it is if you think", "Six characters in search of an author" and "Henry IV" which I have already mentioned several times . It is here that another very important element of Italian theatrical production appears : the metateatro, the theater within the theater, which we have already seen a little with Carlo Goldoni but which Pirandello strongly develops.
The metatheatre is the theater within the theater, which finds its maximum expression in his work "Six characters in search of an author" (we will also see this together, perhaps in the podcast episode) which speaks of six characters created by an author who does not however, the story continued; he created the characters, but did not continue the story and these six characters, now alive, are desperately looking for someone to create a story, a reality, in which they can fit. This is an example of a theater within a theater, a play that shows actors putting on another play. There is a reflection on the theater, a huge contrast between fiction and reality and the difficulty of distinguishing the two.
Between 1925 and 1926 he published another great novel, which is "One, no one and one hundred thousand". One, none and a hundred thousand. The title itself communicates the theme of the subjectivity of reality: we are one, we are nobody or perhaps we are a hundred thousand because we are a different person based on the interpretation that people give of us.
Here too there is the theme of exclusion, of a person who no longer understands who he is; looks in the mirror and says, "This is me, but I 'm different for my wife, I'm different for my mom, I'm different for my friend, I'm different for my friend. Each person sees me differently because everyone interprets reality in a different way ". So there is a Francis, there are hundreds of thousands of Francis, according to the people who observe me, or perhaps there is no Francis.
I'm entering the loop of madness too. Here there is the element of subjectivity, of the contrast between reality and fiction and also of solitude, because we will see that this character will conclude his story in complete solitude, but in the company of nature. So what are the fundamental elements of Luigi Pirandello's literary production?
We mentioned the MASKS, but not the physical masks, the masks we wear of society, because we change roles according to the situations in which we find ourselves. There is the role of the TRAP: society and often also the family are represented as a trap. Matia Pascal in the opera The late Mattia Pascal runs away from her family because she is seen as a trap and takes the opportunity to rebuild her life.
We have seen the CONTRAST BETWEEN REALITY AND FICTION together. We have also seen the NEGATIVE (and often tragic) VISION of Pirandello's life which, however, is not represented and communicated through lament, but more than anything else through PARADOX and HUMOR and perhaps the paradox is humor are strategies that Luigi uses to escape from this reality, from this trap. Theater is paradoxical because it shows how human beings can often try to escape from their reality through madness or decidedly unconventional gestures .
After all this great work and this great contribution that Luigi Pirandello gave to Italian literary production, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934, but unfortunately he left us two years later due to severe pneumonia. This was the life and a roundup of the most important works of this author that I love so much, an author who made a great contribution between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. We will return to Luigi Pirandello; I will definitely make a video on Six characters in search of an author and also a video on The late Mattia Pascal.
I would also like to create a podcast episode to talk about Henry IV, maybe, because they are very very interesting to me, but I hope they are interesting to you too. However, it will always be an excellent opportunity to practice the oral comprehension of Italian and learn something new about our culture and, in this case, literature. Obviously you will find the pdf file with the transcription of this video on my Patron page that you find at the link in the description and I hope to see you in the next video.
Soon!
