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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 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 send 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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