INFORMATION Ta USERS

This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, sorne thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer.

The quailly of this reproduction is dependent upon the quallty of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print. colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. ln the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps.

Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher qually 6- x 9- black and white photographie prints are available for any photographs or Ulustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly ta arder.

ProQuest Information and Leaming 300 North Zeeb Raad. Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 USA 800-521.Q600

Personal Identity in the Noveis orMa..~ Frisch and Luigi PirandeUo

Rachel Remington

German Department, McGill University, Montreal

A thesis submitted ta the Faculty ofGraduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment ofthe requirements ofthe degree of Master ofArts

©Rachel Remington 1999 NationaILJbrary BibliothèQue nationale 1+1 ofC8nada du canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bib60graphic seNices services bibliographiques 395 Wellington street 395. rue WeUington OIawa ON K1A 0N4 0tIawa ON K1A 0N4 canada Canada

The author bas granted a non­ L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library ofCanada ta Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, lo~ distnbute or sen reproduire~ prêter, distnèuer ou copies oftbis thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique.

The author retains ownership ofthe L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts nom ft Ni la thèse Di des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de cene-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation.

0-612-64186-4

Canadi l

Table ofContent

Table ofContent

Acknowledgements iü

Abstract in English IV

Abstract in French iv

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Pirandello and Frisch Introduction 4 Influence? 5 Pirandello and the nouveau roman 8 Frisch and the nouveau roman 13 Modemism and Postmodemism 14 Notes 17

Chapter 2: Il fil Mattia Pascal and Stiller Introduction 20 Parallel Stories Starting Point and Crisis 21 New Lire Under New Identity 22 ReturnHome 24 Different Narrative Structures 25 The ''Moral'' ofthe Story ~ Rolfand the Critics 27 Dfil Mattia Pascal: Don Eligio and the eritics 29 The Unconscious 31 Conclusion 33 Notes 34

Chapter 3: Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio Qperatore and Homo faber Introduction and Summary ofthe Plots 36 Science and Art: Two Competing Modes ofCognition Faber 37 Gubbio 40 The Ambivalence in the Protagonists' Relation ta Technology Gubbio 42 Faber 45 The TechnologistlOperator-Persona as Shield • ü

Faber 41 Gubbio 49 The Counter-World: the Idyll Gubbio 50 ~a ~ Conclusion 58 Notes 60

Chapter 4: Uno. nessuno e centomila and Mein NaIne sei Gantenbein Introduction 65 Uno. nessuno e centomila Story 65 Fonn 66 Identity Crisis 68 Interviews with Frisch and Pirandello 70 Mein Name sei Gantenbein Summary 11 Variation and Repetitions: Postmodem Indifference 72 Enderlin, a Parody ofthe Modemist Hero 73 Gantenbein or the Postmodem attitude towards Role-Playing 74 Ontologicai Perspective on Persona! Identity 75 Narrative Self-Erasure 76 Frisch and Postmodemism 77 Pirandello and Postmodemism 78 Conclusion 79 Notes 80

Conclusion and Summary 83

Bibliography 86 li

Acknowledgments

l would like to thank my supervisors, Professors Bauer and Kro~ for their essential contributions. Lucienne Kroha has taught me Italian literature since the beginning ofmy undergraduate studies at McGill and had a major influence on my academic development. Karin Bauer headed the challenging graduate seminar on identity in which l discovered the noveIs ofMax Frisch and first had the idea for the thesis. Both made very helpful comments and suggestions on various drafts ofthis thesis.

l am particuIarly indebted ta my parents for their lifelong moral and financial support. And l would like to thank them and my sister for sending me essential documents and information while l was finishing this thesis in Spain with no library access. l would aIso like to thank my husband for being snch a wonderful father and homemaker.

This project was funded by the Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et l'Aide à la Recherche (FeAR) and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst

(OAAD). IV

Abstraet

This MA thesis is a comparative study ofthe novels of Luigi Pirandello

(Agrigento 1867-Rome 1936) and Max Frisch (Zurich 1911-1991). Six texts are discussed: Pirandello's TI fil Mattia Pascal (1904), Quademi di Serafino Gubbio operatore (1915), andUno. nessuno ecentomila (1925-6); and Frisch's Stilli=r(1954),

Homo faber (1957), and Mein Name sei Gantenbein (1964). The comparison highlights the great similarities between Pirandello's and Frisch's treatment ofthe theme ofidentity as weil as sorne important (and mainly structural) differences in their novelistic works. The analysis of the three pairs of novels shows the developments in narrative structure and the characteristic change ofattitude towards the question of identity construction that took place from early-modernism to postmodemism.

Ce mémoire de maîtrise est une étude comparative des romans de Luigi

Pirandello (Agrigento 1867-Rome 1936) et de Max Frisch (Zurich 1911 ... 19991). Six textes y sont analysés: il fil Mattia Pascal (1904), Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio

0\1eratore (1915) et lino. nessuno e centomila (1925-6) de Pirandello; et ~

(1954), Homo faber (1957) et Mein Name sei Gantenbein (1964) de Frisch. La comparaison révèle de grandes ressemblances dans la façon dont Pirandello et Frisch traitent le thème de l'identité personnelle dans leurs oeuvres romanesques ainsi que d'importantes différences, surtout de type structural. L~analyse des trois paires de romans montre le développement des structures narratives et le changement d'attitude v face à la question de la construction de l'identité qui se sont déroulés du début du modernisme jusqu'au postmodernisme.

'. l

Introduction

The idea for this comparative study ofthe novels ofa Sicilian and a Swiss writer who were not even contemporaries is the result ofa coincidence. As a student of German and Italian literature l was already familiar with Luigi Pirandello

(Agrigento 1867- Rome 1936) when 1was first introduced ta the work ofMax Frisch

(Zurich 1911 - 1991) through the reading, for a seminar on identity, ofMein Narne sei Gantenbein. My first impression was that this novel was very Pirandellian. After reading other novels and plays by Frisc~ l was amazed to see that bis three navels on persona! identity were not ooly generally Pirandelli~ but that each particularly resembled one (and a different one) ofPirandello's three novels on the same theme.

The praject which had, at ~ an impressionistic feel, saon defined itself and became more complex. However, the amazement at the after all not-50-simple simi1arities and significant differences in the work of my two authors bas ooly increased over time.

Max Frisch's work bas been the abject ofmuch critical work. And Pirandello bas almost become a field ofstudyper se with not ooly hnndreds ofpublished books and articles but aIso severa! international conferences, a journal and even a research centre devoted to the study ofhis work, bis life and bis fortunes at home and abroad.

However, aImost nothing has been done in comparative literature ta study bQth authors jointly. This is perhaps because~ as I was often toId in Can~ Italy and

Germany, itis unusual to studybath ItaIian and German Iiterature. As Pirandello and

.Frisch are well known to aIl well-read speakers oftheir respective Ianguages~ l was 2 hoping to find something in Italian scholarship on Frisch or German scholarship on

Pirandello. But l have searched and found little German secondary literature on

Pirandello t and even fewer Italian writings on Frisch. l will mention a few articles linking Pirandello and Frisch in chapter 1. They are by German scholars. The ooly extensive comparative study ofPirandello and Frisch is an American dissertation in

German from 1976. The author, Marlis ZelierCambon, bas chosen the same texts as l as the basis for her study ofthe thematic and stylistic similarities between the two authors.

However, in contrast to Cambon, l will concentrate on the construction of persona! identity in the chosen novels. l will aIso give my thesis a clear direction and purpose by Iooking at how the question ofidentity has evolved from TI fil Mattia

~ (1904) to Mein Narne sei Gantenbein (1964). Persona! identity is such a major theme in thework ofboth Pirandello and Frisch that it is important and often central to Many books and articles about their work and especially those about the noveIs discussed here. It would be interesting to look at the representation of persona! identity in the plays, in Frisch's Andorra.. for example, but this study will be limited, for the sake of comparison, to three noveIs by each author. In the case of both

Pirandello and Frisch, thesenoveIs are generally acknowledged and widely referred to as their three main noveIs on personal identity.

Much has aIso been written. about Pirandeno t s relation to naturaIism~ modemism, and, more recentlYt postmodemism. On the other hand, surprisingly little bas been done ta situate Max Frischts work on the modemism-postmodemism 3 continuum. This is perhaps because scholars in the field ofGerman literature have come late and in relatively few numbers to the debate over postmodernism. l think it is worthwhile 100king into Frisch?s position within postmodernist literature and the tum that the problem ofidentity takes in bis last novel on the subject, Mein Marne sei

Gantenbein. l will descnoe briefly, in chapter 1, the two conceptions ofmodemism and postmodernism which will guide my analysis in the other tbree chapters. They derive from worles of literary theory and deal specifically with how issues of modernism and postmodernism manitèst in literature.

In the first chapter l will aIse address the issue 0 f influence and introduce the theme ofidentity as well as a closely related theme, the perception ofreality. In the last three chapters, l will actually compare the novels. Chapter 2 will be devoted ta a comparison oftwo novels with a simiIar plot, fi fil Mattia Pascal (1904) and Stiller

(1954). In Chapter 3, 1will look at a set ofnovels, Quademi di Serafino Gubbio

Qperatore (1915) and Homo faber (1957), in which the issue ofpersonal identity is addressed within the framework ofa retlection on technology in our century. Chapter

4 will be on the two novels which most radically reject and destroy the concept ofan authentic identity, Uno, nesSUDO e centomila (1925-6) and Mein Name sei

Gantenbein(1964). Myaim will be to show the great similarities as weil as sorne important differences between PirandelIo's and Frisch's treatment of identity construction. The analysis ofthe three pairs ofnoveIs will show the developments in narrative structure as weIl as the characteristic change of attitude towards the construction ofpersonal identity from early-modemism ta postmodemism. 4

CHAPTERI

Pirandello and Frisch

Since this is a comparative study in which l wiU show sorne striking similarities between the novels ofMax Frisch and those ofLuigi Pirandello, l shaH first address the issue ofinfluence. Since Frisch started publishing in 1934, sorne years after the appearance in 1925 of Pirandellats last novel, Uno, nessuno e centomila. this enquiry is limited to Pirandello's possible influence on Frisch.

The second part of this chapter will be devoted to a confrontation of

Pirandello's and Frisch's ideas and narrative techniques with that ofthe nouveau roman. This will serve a double purpose. F~ it will introduce the central themes discussed in this thesis and present both authors' conceptions in general terms, that is without discussing one pair ofnovels in particular. Second, it will put Pirandello and Frisch in a wider European context. Because while both authors display particularly striking similarities with regard to the themes ofidentity construction and perception ofreality, they are hardly the only authors oftheir respective generations to have dealt with these thernes. Indeed, these have engaged many of the most important authors ofthis century. The nouveau roman seems the obvious choice far a comparison because it includes severa! authors who have dealt intensively with tJte construction of identity and reaIity, which they have sought to demystify. This comparison ofbath authors' ideas about and attitudes taward identity and reality to those displayed in the nouveau roman (and to which the later Frisch seems closest) 5

will also be the first step in the discussion regarding the evolution ofthe question of

identity. Indeed, the advantage ofcomparing the work oftwo authors from different

time periods and in whose work the theme ofidentity is so central, is that it will

illustrate the changes that have occurred over severa! decades, from early-modernism

to postmodemism.

In her dissertation, Marlis Zeller Cambon rejects the hypothesis ofinfluence.

She proposes two explanations for the similarities between the two authors. One is

that bath Pirandello and Frisch belonged to "politico-cultural and linguistic

enclaves," Sicily and Switzerland, isolated but with interesting relations ta a larger

context, i.e. ltaly and the Gennan-speaking world respectively. Moreover they wrote

in Italian or German while their mother tangues were, in fact, dialects. 1 I think

Cambon's point can be made dearer by using, instead ofthe words enclave, isolation

and dialect, the wider concept ofperiphery. Sicily is culturally and linguistically

peripheral with respect to mainland Italy, as is the Gennan-speaking part of

Switzerland with respect to Germany. AIthough it cannot, in my opinio~ account for

all similarities between the work ofthe two, the faet that Pirandello and Frisch are

both writers ofthe periphery might well have something to do with their predilection

for such themes as the construction ofidentity and the perception ofreaIity.

The other factor proposed byCambon to accoœt for the similarities between

. 1 Pirandello and Frisch is their common debt (in themes, imagery and poetics) ta ,'"1 ; 6

German Romanticism. According ta her, the Romantic influence on the German

Swiss writer is very likely, and such an influence can aIso be argued in the case of

Pirandello, who studied in Bonn for two years at the end ofthe nineteenth century.2

l do not wish to dispute the influence that the Romantic emphasis on subjectivity and

the motif of the double might have had on Frisch and Pirandello, who shared a

predilection for Chamisso's Peter Schlemihl.J However, ifRomanticism inclined

them to examine the nature ofidentity andreality, to question the realist myths ofthe

unified subject and univocal reality, it cannot account for the profound similarities

in their treatment and development of those thernes. l believe it is hardly a

coincidence that amongst Swiss authors, aU just as likely to be familiar with Gennan

Romanticism, only Frisch would display such a striking resemblance to Pirandello.

Cambon suggests that Frisch, although he was certainly familiar with

Pirandello's plays, showed no particular interest in bis novels..& Assuming this ta be

true, his acquaintance with his draIna aIready means that he was familiar with his

thought Bath Pirandello and Frisch dealt with more or less the same tbemes in prose

and draIna, in fact 50 much so that both authors wrote draInatic versions ofearlier

prose works, such as Ri" Van Winlde ~) and CiasCUDO a suo modo (Quademi

di Serafino Gubbig). Pirandello transposed many short stories into plays. Cambon

notes that Frisch mentions Pirandello severa! times in bis wade, but never refers.to

any particular work.s This fac!, ifitdoes not demonstrate a special interest for the

novels~ is insufficient ta canclude that Frischts knowledge or appreciation of

I~" [ ~ Pirandello's work was limited ta bis drama. Although Pirandello was known outside 7 bis homeland mainly for bis theatre,6 one can certainly hypothesize, in the case ofa writersuch as Frisch, who Iived in Rome from 1960 ta 1965 and was concemed with the theme ofidentity, a more extensive knowledge ofPirandello. In Frisch's novel

~ there is a book by Pirandello on the bookshelfin StilIer's studio. The narrator

Stiller-White does not specify which book, and tells the reacler that there is no way of knowing for sure what Stiller actually read and what he understood or misunderstood. However, it is unIikely that Frisch would have picked Pirandello at random, without being familiar with his work. And while Cambon argues that

Stiller's private library can be understood as a sketch ofthe average German-speaking

European's literary knowledge,7 it seems strange that there should be, for example, only one book by Thomas Mann, Zauberberi. but Many by Albin Zollinger.

Moreover, considering that ~s Davos-episode points to Zauberberg and that

Frisch admired Zolliger very muc~ as Cambon reports,! the inventory ofStiller's books appears to be a 5ummary ofthe important influences, themes and motifs in

~ rather than a representation of the canon. Monika Schmitz-Emans calls

Frisch's Stiller "eine modifizierte Neuauflage Mattia Pascals".9 And Marianne

Kesting writes about "Max Frischs Aufwannung der Mattia-Pascal-Problematik in

Stiller und Gantenbein" .10 l do not agree with Kesting that Frisch merely '\varmed up" Pirandello's Mattia PascaL But l regard it as very likely that he had ~d

Pirandello's nove[s, 50 l do not reject the possibility of influence. However, the purpose ofthis study is not ta praye that Pirandello bas influenced Frisch but rather ta show how the work ofthe Sicilian writer resonates in that ofthe younger Swïss 8 writer. There are striking and deep thematic simiIarities but aIso important differences which seem to be largely attributable to the evolution ofthe novel within this century. The following discussion ofthe nouveau roman will introduce the main common thernes and point out the structural differences.

The nouveau roman rests on a new understanding ofthe human being's place in the world. The novelistic tradition ofthe nineteenth century, which dominated both theory and practice weIl into this century, was based on a very anthropocentric

Weltanschauung. Robbe-Grillet's assertion that "Les choses sont les choses, et l'homme n'est que l'homme," that "il existe quelque chose, dans le monde, qui n'est

pas l'homme, qui ne lui adresse aucun signe, qui n'a rien de commun avec lui, If sparked great and aImast general resistance even in the Fifties. Il Ofcourse, this conception was not completely new in lîterature.. It is at least implicit in severa! modernist writers ofthe first halfofthe centurywho had started ta break away from the realist traditio~ and in whose work the alienation ofman from his environment is an important theme.. In this sense, Pirandello, along with Kafka and Joyce ta name a few, is a precursor ofthe nouveau roman.. In Mattia Pascal, the narrator complains that modem man cannat be happy because he is now aware that he is Iike a toasted warm on a grain ofsand which rotates without ever getting anywhere.. But he th~n adds that man is good at deluding himselfand gives the example ofhis hometown where the street-Iamps are not lit on some days ofthe month as ifthe moon were there just to provide the townspeople with light. 9

The idea that the world, as we conceive it, is literaIly our conception, our

invention, a construction that our culture seeks to keep aIotl, is central to bath

Pirandello's thought and that of the nouveaux romanciers.. In "Une voie pour le

roman futur," Robbe~Grillet wrote that freedom of observation was impossible

because "des franges de culture (psychologie, morale, métaphysique, etc.) viennent

s'ajouter aux choses, leur donnant un aspect moins étranger, plus compréhensible,

plus rassuranttl In the same paragraph, the chief theorist of the nouveau roman

complains that traditionalliterature "fonctionne comme une grille, munie de verres

diversement colorés, qui décompose notre champ de perception en petits carreaux

assimilables. ur2 This recalls how don Anselmo, in nru Mattia Pascal, characterizes

human perception and understanding ofthe world.. In what became famous as his

"1antemosofia," he uses the image ofa lantem that we aIl have inside our heads as an

allegory ofour limited and culturally determined perception:

la direi innanzi tutto che son di tanti colori; che ne dice lei? secondo

il vetre che ci fomisce l'illusione, gran mercantessa, gran mercantessa

di vetri colorati .. A me sembra pero, signor Meis, che in certe età della

storia, come in certe stagioni della vita individuaIe, si potrebbe

determinare il predominio d'un dato colore, eh? In ogni e~ infatti, si

suole stabilire tra gIi uomini un certo accorda di sentimenti che ~à

lume e colore a quei lantemoni che sono i termini astratti: Verità,

Virtù, Bellezza, Onore, e che sa io..... E non le pare che fosse rosso, ad

(--- 1 1 esempio, illantemone della Virtù pagana? Di colore violetto, color 10 deprimente, quello della Virtù cristiana. nlume d'una idea comune

è alimentato dal sentimento collettivo (TR L 485) 13

As Samuel Beckett, a practitioner ofthe nouveau roman, has observed: "the world

being a projection ofthe individual consciousness ... the pact must be continually

renewed." And both Beckett (Muxphy, 1938) and Pirandello (Enrico IV, 1922) show

how an encounter with another's madness can be a confrontation with our own

illusions and constructions, because the mad person completely disregards them and

has a totally different logic. '4

As opposed ta the traditional writers, who thought they could and sought to

be objective, the French avant-gardists and their precursors intended to demonstrate

just how much depended on perception and interpretation. 1S Pirandellots novels

Quademi di Serafino Gubbio operatore and Uno, nessuno e centomila and his plays

Ciascuno a suo modo (dramatic version ofSerafino Gubbio), Cosi è (se yi pare) and

Sei persona~gj in cerça dtautore, to name just a few, are mainly concemed with the

impossibility ofhuman objectivity, the absence ofabsolute truths and the failure of

interpretation. They illustrate the faet that there can be, for instance, no "real" account

ofan event, but only possible accounts ofan event, for it is experienced differently

by everyone. Many ofthe nouveaux romanciers' works deal with the problem of

trials and inquiries, and similarly, manywitnesses are interviewed, but the crime"or

mystery is never solved because it proves impossible ta reconstruct "reality."l6

Nathalie Sarrautets Les fruits d'or, in which PirandelIo's name appears with reference f\. l, ; ta bis play Enrico IV. is all about the interpretation ofa book, and how everyone has Il a different opinion of it which is aIso aIways subject ta change. At the end, it remains impossible for the reader ta tell what kind ofbook it was and ifit was any

"good."

And perception and interpretation do not determine only our vision and understanding ofthings and events. The question applies ta people as well~ and this is where the theme of identity cames into play. The scene which probably best illustrates this is one from Uno, nessuno e centomila, where the protagonist and nmator, Vitangelo Moscard~ cornes into a room to meet ms wife, Dida, and a frien~

Quantorzo, and remarks that they are not three but nine in the room or rather eight because he does not count for himself anymore. There are:

1. Dida, com'era per sé;

2. Dida, com'era per me;

3. Dida, com'era per Quantorzo;

4. Quantorzo t com'era per sé;

5. Quantorzo, com'era per Dida;

6. Quantorzo, com'era per me;

7. il caro Gengè [Vitangelol di Dida;

8. il caro Vitangelo di QuantoIZO. (IR II, 847-8)17

There is a very similar scene in Beckett's Mercier et Carnier when a man enters tp.e room in which Mercier and Carnier find them.selves:

Carnier le regarda, lui regarda Mercier et Mercier se mit à regarder

Camïer. Ainsi, sans que les regards se croisassent, fut-il engendré 12

des images d'une grande complexité, chacun jouissant de soi-même

en trois versions distinctes et simultanées et en même temps, quoi que

plus obscurément, des trois versions de soi dont jouissaient les deux

autres, soit au total neufimages difficilement conciliables. ls

Sa persona! identity is also perception and interpretation, it is a mas~ a raie, a construction. And as emerges from Pirandello's work, either we play along, or we are out ofthe game, i.e. society. The authentic identity is an illusion; identity is fiction. This means that we are always playing roles, with the ooly distinction being between those people who do it unconsciously and those who are aware of their condition. The resulting character, in Pirandello, is one that is more or less conscious ofthe fragmentation ofthe self: The protagonist usually suffers from the awareness ofthis fragmentation whereas the secondary cbaracters generally perceive tbemselves as unified subjects. This suffering and longing for a unified selfis absent, thou~ from the nouveau roman, as we will see shortly in connection with Frisch.

Sa Pirandello, aleng with ether modemist writers, probably had a strong influence on the vision ofthe world found in the nouveau roman. One aspect that distinguishes the nouveau", romanciers quite clearly from their ltalian precursor is narrative technique. With ms constructionism, bis emphasis on subjectivity, bis use orthe unreliable first person nmator, ofdifferent points ofview, ofhumour, ofiro~y, ofthe grotesque, ofcontradictions, Pirandello certainly distanced himselffrom bis roots in Verism (Italian naturaIism). Avision orthe world snch as bis inevitably leads to a rejection oftraditionalliterature. At the outset ofMattia Pascal. the narrator, 13

who wants ta justify the fact that he is writing bis memoirs, assures the reader that

bis book will be different, without the unnecessary details, that no one cares ta hear:

"TI signor conte si levè per tempo, aile ore otto e mezzo precise... La signora contessa

indassè un abita HUa con una ricca fioritura di merletti alla gala.." (TR I, 323).19

Likewise Nathalie Sarraute, in her essay "L'ère du soupçon, tf agrees with Paul Valéry

that it is not possible anymore ta write sentences like: "La marquise sortit à cinq

heures. n2D However, the French antinovel goes much further in its subversion ofthe

traditional naveL With its radical rejection of the traditional fonn (plot, hero,

cbronolagy), it better reflects the subjective and illusory nature and the relativity of

personal identity and meaning as well as the limits of sensual perception and

language. As Werner Schabouk remaries, and this will be discussed in the following

chapters, there is still, in Pirandello's novels, a certain discrepancy between content

and rorm.21

Frisch has succeeded in translating into fonn and structure what Pirandello

had expressed discursively and illustrated with anecdotes, but ta a certain extent left

unreflected in the narrative structure. He wrote the navels which will be examined

in the next three chapters - Siilkr (1954), Homo Faber (1957), and Mein NaIne sei

Gantenbein (L964) - during the years in which the nouveau roman flourished, and

bis technique bas much in common with il Frisch said: "Ich bewundere die V~er

des >Nouveau roman<, die aus Theorie darauf verzicht~ Romane wie Balzac zu

schreiben.rtn Inan interview about Mein HarDe sei Gantenbein., Frisch said the novel

(', was no nouveau roman.23 However, the way he treats the novel in Mein Name sei 14

Gantenbein, which aIso testifies ta a change of attitude towards the problem of identity, is very reminiscent ofthe nouveau roman.

The elements which allow us ta connect the nouveau roman ta Pirandello are also present and fundamental in Frisch's novels. The recurring conflict between

"BiIdnis" and "Selbstbildnis", image and self-image, for instance, is Frisch's way of handIing the theme ofthe impossible quest for the authentic identity. Stiller-White, for example, writes about an encounter with five long-Iost friends of Stiller:

"wâhrend sie 50 reden, überlege ich im Ernst, was für ein Mensch ich sein müsste, um den Erinnerungen und EIWartungen dieser fiinfBesucher auch nur in grossen Zügen lU entsprechen, etwas wie ein fiinfkopfiges Wesen, gIaube ich" (GW ill-2, 679).24

Faced with multiple images of himselt: the protagonist rea1izes that his personal identity is subject to interpretation and that everyone cornes to a more or less different conclusion regarding who he is. He sees that each person has a different image ofhim and that none ofthese images actually matches bis a~ and this is what causes bis feelings ofalienation. As Andrew White has pointed out in ms article on Frisch and the nouveau roman, Stiller and the experimental novers anti..heroes are not like the outsider of typical (Le. modemist) twentieth century literature who feels rejected by a society into which he does not fit, like Mann's Tonio

Kroger or Musil's Ulrich. Their alienation is presented as inherent to the pres~nt human condition and proceeds ftom the impossibility ofshared experience.2S And actually, while Stiller remains, in my opinion, a very modernist hero, Gantenbein is much closerto the nouveau roman's postmodem depiction of the decentred subjec~ 15 because bis multiple selves orpossibilities are not causing him any grief. Whereas

PirandelIo's hernes and Frisch's earlierprotagonists are either desperately searching far the authentic selfor mourning the long fantasied unified subject, far Gantenbein, it is all agame.

According to Peter V. Zima, this later attitude is, more than any stylistic characteristic, what differentiates postmodemism from modemism. Whereas modernist literature is characterized by ambivalence, postmodemist literature is marked by indifference. Rejected in postmodemism is the writer's claim to social criticism. Instead ofquestioning, as the modernists diei, tradition, truth and identity, the postmodernist writerplays with them. Art becames a game. The madernist search for the true self: for example, is either abandone~ parodied or carried on ad absurdum.26 Accarding to another tbeorist ofpostmodemist literature, Brian McHale, modernist fiction raises predominantly epistemologicai questions such as "How can l interpret this world ofwhich l am a part? And what am 1in it? ... What is there ta be known?; Who knows it? ... What are the limits of the knowable?" whereas postmodernist Iiterature gives precedence to ontological questions like: "Which world is this? What is to be done in it? Which ofmy selves is ta do it?"n Accarding to McHale, it is useful ta distinguish between nouveau and nouveau nouveau roman as this distinction coincides with the one between modernist and postmodemist fiction.2S He demonstrates this evolution ofthe French movement from the work of

Alain Robbe-Grillet: La jalousie (1967), "a 6Cclassic" nouveau roman", addresses predominantly epistemologicaI questions while La Maison de rendez-vous (1965), 16

'~an exemplary nouveau nouveau roman", favours ontological issues.29 McHale aIso sees "the transition from modemist to postmodemist poetics" in Samuel Beckett's work.30 In chapter 4, l will consider the possibility ofseeing such a transition inMax

Frisch's novelistic work. l shaH then retum ta McHale's as weIl as ta Zima's conceptions ofpostmodernism. 17

Notes

1Marlis Zeller Cambo~ Max Frisch und Lui&i Pirandello: Eine Untersuchung zut thematischen und stilistiscben Affinitât ilrrer Romane, Diss. Bryn MawrCollege, 1976 (AnnArbor: UM 71-651528566) 19-20, 175.

2.Cambon, 15.

3.Cambo~ 21.

4.Cambon, 6.

5.Cambo~ 5.

6.Cambo~ 6.

7.Cambon, 8.

8.Cambon, 8.

9.Monika Schmitz-Emans, "Erzahlen als Kunst der Selbstfindung­ Pirandellos ,,Mattia Pascal" und einige seiner deutschen VetWandten," Pirandello und die europâische Erzahlliteratur des 19. und 20. Jahrbunderts, eds. M. Rossner and F.-R. Hausmann (Bonn: RomanistischerVerlag, 1990) 181.

10.Marianne Kesting, "Pirandello Wld einer seiner Interpreten," Aufder Suche nacb der Realitât. Kritiscbe Scbriften ZUT moderne» Literatur (München: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1912) 58.

11.AIain Robbe-Grillet, Pour un nouveau roman (paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1963) 58. My translation: Things are things and Man is Man, there is something in the world which is not Man, which addresses him no si~ and whieh has nothing to do with him.

12.Robbe-Grillet, 20. My translation: ufringes ofculture (psychology, ethies, metaphysics, etc.) are added to things giving them an aspect less forei~ more comprehenstble, more reassuring" and traditionalliterature nfunctions as a grid fitted with diversely coloured glass which breaks up our field ofperception\ into small easily assimilated fragments"

13Luigi Pirandello, The Lale Mattia Pascal, trans. Nicoletta Simborowski (London: Dedalus, 1987) 160: 1'1 should say first ofail that they must be multicoloured; whatrs yom opinion? They will have the colour ofthe glass supplied for us by illusion, illusion, that 18 great merchant ofcoloured glass. However, l do think, Signor Meis, that in certain periods ofhistory, as at certain stages ofan individual's life, one colour tends to take precedence. In each period in fact, a certain agreement about feelings tends to establish itselfamongst men, which gives light and colour to those Ianterns which are represented by the abstract terms: Truth, Virtue, Beauty, Honour and 50 on.... Don't you think, for example, that the lantem ofpagan Virtue must have been red? Christian Virtue must have been violet, a depressing colour. The light of a common idea is fed by collective feeling;"

14. Kesting, "Pirandello und der ,Nouveau Roman'."

15.Robbe-Grillet, 148,177.

16.Kesting, "Pirandello und der ,Nouveau Roman' ," 59,68-9.

17.Luigi Pirandello, One. None and a Huncired-Ibousand, trans. William Weaver (Boston: Eridanos Press, 1990) 108: 1)Dida, as she was for herself; 2)Dida, as she was for me; 3)Dida, as she was for QuantoIZo; 4)Quantorzo, as he was for himself; 5)Quantorzo, as he was for Dida; 6)Quantorzo, as he was for me; 7)Dida's dear Gengè; 8)Quantorzo's dear Vitangelo.

18.Kesting, "Pirandello und der ,Nouveau Roman'," 72. But Kesting's quote skips a few wards, 50 the exact citiation cornes directly from: Samuel Beckett, Mercier et Carnier (paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1970) 138. Samuel Beckett, Mercier and Carnier, transIated by the author (London: Calder &Bayars, 1974) 82: Carnier Iooked at ~ who looked at Mercier, who began ta look at Carnier. Thus were engendered, though no eyes met, images ofextreme complexity enabling each ta enjoy himselfin tbree distinct simultaneous versions plus, on a more modest scale, the three versions ofselfenjoyed by each ofthe others, namely a total ofnine images at first sight irreconciIablet not ta mention the confusion of frustrated excitations jostling on the fringes ofthe field.

19.Pirandello, The tale Mattia Pascal 18: "The Count rose at 8.30 precisely the Countess put on a lilac gown,. richly decorated with lace at the throat. ft

20.Kesting, "Pirandello und der ,Nouveau Roman' t" 65. 19

21.Wemer Schabouk, ''Relativismus und Perspektivismus. Zum Standort des Erzahlers bei Pirandello, Kafka und v. Woolt:" Pirandello und die europâische ErzihlIiteratur des 19. und 20. Jahrbunderts. eds. M. Ressner and F.-R. Hausmann (Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1990) 121.

22.White, 370. Mytranslation: l admire the practitioners ofthe nouveau roman, who give up writing novels like Balzac.

23.Frisch, Gesammelte Werke V-II, 329.

24.Max Frisch, l'm not Stiller, trans. Michael Bullock (New York: Vintage Books, 1958) 292: "while they were talking, l seriously wondered what kind ofperson l must he ta correspond, even in broad outline only, ta the memories and expectations ofthese five visitors-something like a five-headed monster, l thoughtU

25.White,359-60.

26.Peter v. Zim~ Moderne 1Postmodeme (Tübingen: Francke, 1997) 247- 334.

27.Brian McHale.. PQstmodernÎst Fiction (Methuen, 1987. London: Routledge, 1989) 9·10.

28McHale, 13-4.

29.McHale,I4-5.

30McHale, 12-3.

r~ , 1 20

CHAPTER2

Il fil Mattia Pascal and S!ilkr

The Search for a New Self

Il fil Mattia Pascal is Pirandello's second novel and the first ofthree written in the tirst persan and dealing with personaI identity. 1t was tirst published in instalments in Nuova Anto[o&ia in 1904. Fifty years Iater Max Frisch published

Stiller, likewise bis second novel and the first ofhis three main novels on identity.

As Marlis Zeller Cambon remarks in ber essay on Pascal and Stiller, while the episode ofMein Name sei Gantenbein where a man reads bis own obituary is very similar to the first part oru fil Mattia Pascal, overall the MOst direct connections are to he found between Mattia Pascal and ~.l Frisch's nove4 written halfa century after Pirandello's, is much more complex in its narrative structure. From Pirandello's still somewhat veristic tum-of-the-century novel to Frisch's post-war novel, we see an evolution in the genre. Nevertheless, the (Wo works are very similar modemist illustrations ofthe doomed search for one's authentic self:

The plot is very sunilar: a man, unhappily married and not successful professionally, leaves bis hometown, bis wife, family and friends behind hoping to find a better life eIsewhere onder a new identity. However, this leads to unexpected difficulties, and the man eventually decides to retum home, where he meets with reactions opposite to those he had expected. After a period ofrebellion (sho~ in the case ofPascal; in the case ofStiller, longer), he accepts the legal identity that is 21 assigned to him and resigns himselfto a solitary life on the fringe ofsociety.

The situations which lead the protagonists ta flee their lives are very similar.

Bath Pascal and Stiller are dissatisfied with their relationships and with themselves, and, more importantly, they feel as though they do not have the power to change things. They are haunted by the fixed forro oftheir lives. Mattia Pascal was brought up in a wealthy home but lost bis father at a young age. Due to bis mother's inability ta manage the familys finances and the dishonesty ofthe administrator oftheir estate, he aIso loses his inheritance before he has had the chance, like ms brother, ta make an advantageous marriage. Moreover, since he had never bothered with an education, he is aiso without a profession. After many intrigues, during which he impregnates two women - the young wife and the niece ofthe fraudulent administrator- Mattia is forced ta marry the niece an~ because he has lost everything, to move in with his mother-in-Iaw. To help support the family and ta avoid the humiliation ofbeing financially dependent on bis wifets mother, he accepts a job as a librarian. In the deconsecrated church, which is home to an old eclectic coUectio~ he is busier kiIling rats than caring for books. About the feelings he had at the time Pascal says: "Cosi, sempre, fino alla morte, senZalcun mutamento, mai... L'immobilità di quella mia esistenza mi suggeriva allora pensieri sùbiti~ quasi Iampi di follialt (TRl, 368).2 After the death ofbis mother and twin daughters, Mattia leaves bis hometown, Miragno.

Following a short but extremely fruitful trip ta the casino inMonte Carlo, he is onbis way home when he happens ta read a newspaper account ofhis suicide and burial: 22 the body ofa man found in the water ofa mill near the place where he had last been seen has been identified by relatives and friends as bis own. Mattia decides ta take advantage ofthis errer to escape once and for all to a new and freer life.

Stillers life prior to bis departure is similar to Pascal's in Many respects.

After having failed as an antifascist soldier in the Spanish Civil War, he has little success as a sculptor, whereas bis wife, Julika, is an acclaimed prima ballerina. His relationship with her is aIso a complete failure, based, as he later reflects, on both their fears that they could never satisfy another persan. Stiller has a short affair with a married woman, Sibylle, and after fuis has gone wrong as weIl, he boards a sbip for

America. But, as Schmitz-Emans rightly remarks, it is not so much all those failures that Stiller is escaping as the ''Prinzip der bestimmten Identitiit", the "Fixierung" of which his profession, sculpture, is a symboLJ Before leaving, he has a discussion with bis wife but is unable ta change the fixed image that she has ofbim, even though she complains ofthe same problem, when she says: "Du hast dir nun einmal ein

Bildnis von mir gemacht, das merke ich schon, ein fertiges und endgültiges Bildnis, und damit Schluss. Anders ais sa, ich spürte es ja, wHIst du mich jetzt einfach nicht mehr sehen" (GW III-2,499)..J They both suffer from this situation, but they bath blame the other for it. So Stiller Ieaves the country without telling anyone and stows away ta America.

On the trip which would finaIly take him ta Monte Carlo, Mattia Pascal had also considered, briefly, fleeing to the New World. But when he is faced with his obituary and does decide ta start a new life, he stays in Europe. AlI that is Ieft ofthe 23

idea ofAmerica is that Adriano Meis7 Mattia Pascal's invented new selt: was ''barn''

there7 in Argentina. At the beginning ofbis two-year adventure Pascal-Meis feels totally fiee: no wife, no mother-in-Iaw, no creditors, and a Dice SUIn ofmaney won at the casino. He is rid ofwhat he thought wouId be bis lot untii bis death. Now, thanks ta his supposed death, he can start anew and be the architect ofhis own life.

He changes bis name and appearance, and he invents a past ofhis own for Adriano

Meis, bis new alter ego. Then, after sorne time spent travelling in Germany and ltaly, feeling the need for a home, he chooses ta settle down in Rome, literally a self-made man. However, bis new persona slowly becomes a new prison, very similar ta the tirst one and with the added difficulty that Adriano Meis does not exist officially.

When he realizes that, Pascal-Meis decides ta fake a second suicide and ta retum home ta bis old life.

Stiller's exile is no more successful than Pascal's. He travels ta the US,

Mexico, Jamaica, changes ms name to Jim White and rids himselfofalI the trappings ofhis former life - wife, pattons, etc. - in the hope ofdiscovering bis real self. But like Meis, White cannat shed the shadow ofhis past experiences, which like "little grey", the cal, always cornes back. His life as White seems just as miserable as the oId one, ifnot more 50. Based on bis staries, it seems that he was living in a shac~ in exchange for feeeling the owner's cat, and that he was in love with bis neighb0l:1I', a married woman more interested in the cat than in ÎtS keeper. In any case, the new

Iife and the new identity have not solved Stiller's probl~ and eventually he attempts suicide. Faced with death, an experience White calls the encounter with bis ange4 24 he decides that he wants to live. He believes that he has, at las1, become a new m~ and he does not feel the need to flee bis past anymore. He therefore goes home for confirmation ofbis new and "authentic ft identity.

Sa, having found no comfort in exile but feeling that they have leamed something from this experience, both Pascal and Stiller retum home with great expectations. But they will not be met. On the contrary. Pascal who returns home after two years, happy ta regain bis former legal identity and bis old life as Mattia

Pascal, is not even recognized as he arrives in town. For the people in lVfiragno,

Mattia Pascal has been dead for two years, ms wife has remarried, and it is as though he had neveT' existed. Pascal threatens to fight to get bis old identity back'l even ifit means invalidating his wife's second marriage. However, upon leaming that his

"widow's" second union has produced a baby girl, Pascal renounces his right ta an identity and accepts bis official status as deceased. He leads a 10neIy existence, living with bis oId aunt and spending bis time in the library where he writes ms memoirs as the late Mattia Pascal.

Stiller-White's experience opon bis return is in sorne way opposite ta that of

Pascal-Meis, but he, tao, does not get the reaction he was expecting or hopeful of receiving. He thinks he is retuming home a new man and hopes for confirmation of this change ofidentity, and yet he bas not even reached bis former place ofresidençe,

Zurich, when he is confronted with bis oId identity. He is travelling from Paris to

Zurich, and, as the train passes the Swïss border, a man who had been sitting near him sinee Paris tells the customs officer that he recognizes him as the missing Stiller, 25 whose picture he had seen in a magazine. Stiller-White argues with the officer and eventually slaps him, forwhich he emis up in police custody, where he claims (with a passport to back it up) to be an American citizen named James Larlon White, bis new alter ego. During the inquiry into bis case, Stiller-White remains in prison, where he is confronted with severa! key-figures from bis past: bis wife, brother, lover, friends, step-father, etc. Ail agree that he is Stiller, but he keeps denying it because he refuses to assume the identity which is linked to that name. He argues that the tnlth about him cannot be determined by the way people perceive him or by facts, such as date and place ofb~ age, height, and so on. Eventually though, based on all the testimonies and sorne other "facts," such as the falsity ofWhite's

American passport, the court mIes that White is Stiller and should therefore assume that identity. Julika, Stiller's \vife, is also willing to give their relationship another try, sa Stiller submits ta the general will and accepts bis social roIe as Swïss citizen and husband. Julika dies two years later oftuberculosis, the disease that had almost killed her many years before in Davos but from which she had been cured and free during Stiller's absence. After her death, Stiller, like Pascal, lives isolated, alone on bis "ferme vaudoise," making pottery for tourists.

For the purposes ofcomparison, these are the events in chronological order.

However, while Mattia Pascal's autobiography fonows this arder, except for the t\yo introductory premises~ StiIIer's notebooks do not Mattia writes the story ofhis life after it is in sorne respects aIready over. As he says at the very end ofthe second preface, before he actually begins to relate bis memoirs: trio mi trovo ora in una 26

condizione cosi eccezionale, che passa considerarmi come già filori della vita, e

dunque senza obblighi e senza scrupoli di sortaIt (TR l, 325).s The reader thus knows

there will be one single point ofview, that ofthe protagonist himselt: who believes he has no reason ta be dishonest in bis accounl Of course, there are numerous

contradictions in the narrative to show just how unreliable a narrator he is, but ms point ofview is not directly challenged by any other. This is not the case in Stiller, where the narrator, Stiller-White, is also the protagonist but writes at a time, in priso~ when he is still denying bis former legal identity, 50 that what he writes about

Stiller's past is a commented report ofwhat others have ta say about hîm. Stiller's story is therefore told from different and often contlicting perspectives: Stiller's wife,

Julika, ms former lover, Sybille, her husband, Rolf(who is also public prosecutor in

Stiller's case), as weil as other relatives, fiiends and acquaintances ofStiller. They ail

have their own Stiller, and all recognize him in the prisoner ta whom theyare taIking

and who claims to be an American named White. The narrative aIso goes back and

forth between the various reports on the life ofStiller before bis disappearance and

the tales ofWhite's past in America, which are tald from bis perspective only (with

the facts being verified and most orthe time invalidated by bis lawyer, Bohnenlust)

but on the premise that "Jedes Wott ist falsch und wabr, das ist das Wesen des Worts"

(GW ffi-2, 525).6 Most ofthose tales are toId to KnobeI, Stiller-White's guarddn

prison,. who, Iike many ofFrisch's secondary characters, Iikes "true" staries. In one

snch tale~ two friends named Jim descend to explore a cave, but only one ofthem,

fml White, now famous for his discovery ofthe cave, comes back up after a battle for 27 survival during which he kilIed the other Jim. After hearing the story Knobel asks bis prisoner whether he is really Jim White, and StiIler-White answers: ''Nein, C•••) das gerade nicht! Aber was ich selber erlebt habe, sehen Sie, das war genau das gleiche

- genau" (GW ill-2, 521).7 White's adventure·tales certainly say something about ms experience in America, but withaut necessarily being "true" with regards ta facts.

While those around him are concerned ooly with the tangible, Stiller-White seeks ta express anather dimension ofhis life (bis feelings, bis inward joumey) and therefore lays no cIaim to objectivity or accuracy. As mentioned in the first chapter, compared ta Pirandello's, Frisch's narrative technique is more complex and better suited ta the ideas the novel conveys. The relativity ofthe perception ofreality, for instance, is better reflected in the multi-perspective, openly subjective reports ofStiller-White.. than in the cbronological, mono-perspectival account of the late Mattia PascaL

Nevertheless, the similar misadventures ofPascal and Stiller, their fruitless search for their identity, propose the same view ofpersonal identity, and they have led critics ofboth novels ta similar interpretations and criticism.

Inthe second part of~"Postscript by the Public Prosecutor", RoU: the public prosecutor tumed frienci, tells the story ofStiller after he bas been released fram prison. He also offers bis analysis ofhis friendts crisis wbich in bis opinion was due ta Stiller's excessive demands on himself: According to Rait: Stiller kn~w himselfbut wauld not accept bis limitatians and thus felt a need to convince others ofwho he was. He was afraid ofbeing taken far someone he was DOt, ofbeing misunderstood. Rolfattributes this problem to the fact that Stiller did not believe in 28

Gad, and he interprets bis fiiend's eventual resignation and withdrawal into silence and isolation as a transformatio~ an acceptance ofhis self: at last. Rolfs Christian interpretatian ofStiller's story is a possible reacling ofthe novel which many critics have endorsed.8 However, Rolfis certainly no more objective than Stiller himself.

His is a believer's obviously biased analysis ofthe plight ofa man who had no faith in Gad. Itpresents the prejudiced opinion ofapublic prosecutor, ancL more generally,

Rolf functions as the vaice oftraditional social values and bourgeois good sense.9

The two Kierkegaard mottoes which precede Stiller's notebooks certainly support

Rolf's opinion, but they are not part of the notebooks and are obviously ta be attributed ta the Iawyer himself: curator of the manuscript and self-appointed moralist. Aecording to sorne critics, Rolfs postscript is an ironie comment ta

Stiller's story.IO A man grasps the relativity ofpersanal identity, and, understancling that he can never be free from roles in society, he reconciles himselfto a Ionely life in the country. But his story is ironieally used ta condemn this subversive attempt at escape and to support the general view that there is a "real self' which happens to correspond to traditional social roIes, and which should be accepted in arder to live peacefully with athers and with oneself: Actually, it is clear that, on the one hand, identity is indeed dependent upon social mies which one is either assigned or denied, but that, on the other band, those roIes are possibilities, not something ïnnate. "In otherwords, it is !rUe that one bas to piay a mIe in society inorder to be part ofit, but accepting these roles without recognizing them as snch is a delusioD. Stillets experience expIodes two myths, that of the real self and that of the independent 29 subject. The narrator's social identity is not the "authentic" seIt: but without ms socia1ly eonstructed identity he has no identity at all: "Ieh weiss, dass ich nicht der verschollene Stiller bin. Und ich bin es allch nie gewesen. Ich schwore es, auch wenn ich nicht weiss, wer ieh sonst bin. Vielleieht bin ich niemand" (GW III-2, 681)."

And, within the context ofthe novel, he really is no one as long as he refuses a raIe.

In Mattia Pascal, there is aIso a character who, like RoIt: encourages the protagonist ta write and will then become responsible for the manuscrip~ for keeping it hidden until fifty years after Pascal's third and final death. It is don Eligio, Pascal's replacement at the library where the now late Mattia Pascal writes bis memoirs surrounded by mouIdy books. Although the new librarian does not add anything but a foetnote ta the autobiography, he is the one who suggests a moral ta the story at the end, namely that "fuori della legge e fuori di quelle particolarità, Hete a triste che sieno, per cui noi siamo noi, caro signor Pascal, non è possibile vivere" (TR f,

577-8).12 However, as Monika Schmitz-Emans notes, this idea that we need ta accept the conditions of our life, because it is the only way ta be "aurselves", is anachronistic. Mattia knows that the official selfis just as faIse; he does not know who he is after having retumed to find bis wife married ta another and himselfwith no other identity than that ofthe [ate Mattia Pascal. IJ However, critics ofthis book have aIso long looked for the "real Mattia." Elia Gioanola reports that the fam~d critic Giacomo Debenedetti found the book disappointing and claimed that Pirandello had failed because the protagonist escapes the falsehood ofsociety but is unable to find bis real, authentic self: But as Gioanola observes, itwas Debenedetti who failed 30 ta understand that what Mattia's story demonstrates is precisely that there can be no real Mattia. 14 When the news of''bis'' suicide frees Mattia from bis raIe as husband and rat-hunter, he is no one. This is the essence ofhis freedom: the absence ofa raIe but countless possibilities. But how long can one remain without a role in society?

Soon he has to choose, create one for himselt: and then bis freedom is gone, and he becomes just another version ofMattia Pascal, because one is never free from social influence, even when inventing. As Meis's acquaintance, Tito Lenzi, points out, there is no snch thing as an independent subjec~ because what we call our conscience is not a fortress but a square:

Quando i sentimenti, le inclinazioni, i gusti di questi altri che io penso

o che lei pensa non si riflettono in me 0 in lei, noi non possiamo

essere né paghi, né tranquilli, né lieti; tante vero che tutti lottiamo

perché i nostri sentimenti, i nostri pensieri, le nostre inclinazioni, i

nostri gusti si riflettano nella coscienza degli altri. E se questo non

avviene, perché...diciamo cosi, l'aria deI momento non si presta a

trasportare e a far fiorire, caro signore, i germi...i genni della sua idea

nella mente altrui, lei non puo dire che la sua coscienza le basta. A

che le basta? Le basta per viver solo? per isterilire nell'ombra? (TR l,

424)15

Like Stiller, Pascal i5 faced with either a fixed life tmder the dominion ofsocial mIes or isolation as the only alternative. Both protagonists, like those ofthe next pair of novels (chapter 3), are tom between their will to be free and independent and their 31 need to he with others, which are incompatible.

Ofthe six noveis 1am discussing in this thesis, il fil Mattia Pascal and Stilkr are the pair in which the question of the unconscious seems MOst relevant with respect to the problem ofidentity. It is presented as a discrete but powerful force which limits the protagonists' capacity for self-construction. Just like society on the outside, the unconscious constrains, determines, forces into certain actions. 115 representation is similar in bath novels. It is that something, the "shadow" or the

~~double," ofwhich the protagonists can never really free themselves even after they have broken all ties to their old lives. Although he has a different name and appearance, Adriano Meis is haunted by the phantom ofMattia Pascal. Once he settles down in Rome, he becomes very much like Mattia, who seems to follow him like bis shadow. And he expresses bis desperate will to free himself from bis Uold self' when he pushes ms shadow under the footsteps ofpassers-by and under the wheels ofcarriages:

Allara mi mossi; e l'ombra., meca, dinanzi. Affrettai il passo per

cacciarla sotta altri carri, sotto i piedi de' viandanti, voluttuosamente.

Una smania mala mi aveva preso, quasi adunghiandomi il ventre; alla

fine, non potei più vedermi davanti quella mia ombra; avrei voluto

scuotennela dai piedi. Mi voltai; ma ecco; la avevo dietro, ora. ceE~,se

mi metto a correre», pens~ «mi seguirà!- (TR 1, 524)16

The motifofthe double aIso appears in a very important episode ofS1i1kr. 17

As mentioned earIieron, one ofWhite's American tales is that ofthe two Jims who 32 discover a cave and descend to explore it. One Jim breaks a foot and is unable to climb back up alone. In a battle for survivaI, the other J~ Jim White, kills bis partner and Ieaves him behind. White admits that he is not that Jim White but maintains that the story tells exactIy what he experienced. Gunda Lusser-

MerteIsmann remarks that the obscure cave is a symboI ofthe unconscious and the broken foot a symbol for impotence. 18 She maintains that this murder ofthe double symbolizes White's repression, in the unconscious, orthe impotent Stiller. I9 This explains why White, Iike Meis, can never be free from bis pasto He would have liked to "kill" Stiller, but bis oId identity remains a part ofhimself:

Regarding the authenticity ofthis unconscious self: which influences identity construction but is no identity per se, l would recall what Tito Lenzi says ta Mattia

Pascal about the conscience, i.e. that it is not a fortress but a square, open to others.

The protagonist of Uno, nesSUDO e centomila. who sbares Lenzi's views on the conscience, adds that while it seems most private and persona!, the conscience is in fact a reflection ofthe social on the individual mind: '4questa che crediamo la cosa più intima nostra, la coscienza, vuoi dire gli a/tri in noi ... ,.. (TR 2, 844).20 The unconscious being likewise a produet of socializatio~ it is a carrier ofsocial raIes and tabaos as weil as a fossil ofpast experiences. Itis therefore no wonder that Pascal and Stiller would want to kilI this shadow which is bath "'society in them" and ~at which remains oftheir oId existence. The Wlconscious, and not ooly society directly, hinders the realization of the protagonists' wishes:· to start anew and ta be independent from athers. 33

In fi fil Mattia Pascal and ~ Pirandello and Frisch problematize the issue

ofpersonal identity, they demystify and challenge preconceptions. WhiIe both works

are open-ended, they propose a suniIar conception ofpersonal identity, namely that

there is no viable identity beyond social mIes and therefore no way ofbeing "oneself'

in society and no way ofbeing anyone at all away from athers. The independent subject is impossible since the subject constructs itselfin its relationship ta others.

Persona! identity being likewise a social construct, the "real" or r'authentic" identity

is a contradiction in terms. This questioning and ultimate refusai ofthe possibility of

u finding, along \Vith other "truths , one's authentic selfis acharacteristic ofmodemist lîterature. And acknowledging the death ofthe unified subject does not come without a sense ofl05s. In The Late Mattia Pascal and ~the disillusion and nostalgia are palpable in the protagonists' final stoic resignations following their desperate atternpts to escape conformity. In the next chapter, the question ofidentity will be

linked to another important therne ofmodemist literature, technologicaI change and its impact on life, relationships, perception, and human subjectivity. 34

Notes

l.Marlis Zeller Cambon, "Max Frisch's Stiller und Luigi Pirandello's Mattia Pascal: Die Odyssee zu sich selbst," Frisch. Kritik - Ihese - Analysen. Beitrâ~e zum 65. Geburtstag, ed M. Jürgensen (Bem: Francke Verlag, 1977) 81-2.

2.Luigi Pirandello, The tate Mattia Pascal, trans. Nicoletta Simborowski (London: Dedalus, 1987) 57: ""This is how it will be, until l die, with no change, ever..." The fixed quality ofmy existence began ta give cise ta strange, sudden ideas, almost flashes ofinsanity."

3.Monika Schmitz-Emans, "ErzahIen aIs Kunst der Selbstfindung ­ Pirandellos ,,Mattia Pascal" und einige seiner deutschen Verwandten," Pirandello und die eUI'CWaische Erzâhlliteratur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, eds M. Rôssner un F.-R. Hausmann (Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1990) 182.

4.Max Frisch, l'm not Stiller. transe Michael Bullock (New York: Vintage Books, 1958) 132: "You've made an image ofme, that's quite clear, a complete and final image, and there's an end ofil. You just won't see me any other way, l can feel that."

5.Pirandello, The tate Mattia Pascal. 19: "at present l find myseIfin such extraordinary circumstances that l feel l can consider myselfbeyond normal existence, and therefore without obligation or semples afany kind. 1t

6.Frisch, l'm not Stiller, 144: "Every ward is false and true, that is the nature ofwords"

7.My translation: No, not exactly. But what l experienced, you sec, was exactly the same

8.Jürgen H. Petersen, Max Frisch. Stiller (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Moritz Diestaweg, 1994) 29-30. Ct: Ulrich Weisstein, "Stiller: die Suche nach der Identitàt,rt Über Max Frisch II, ed Walter Schmitz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976) and Hans Jürg Lüthï, Max Friscb "Du SOnst dit kein BiIdnis macheolf (München: Wilhelm Fink Velag, 1979)

9.Scbmitz-Emans, 185.

ID.Petersen refering ta Hans Mayer (Materialien zu Max Frisch) 29-30. 35

Il.Frisch, l'ln not Stiller, 294: "1 know l am not the missing Stiller. And l never was. l swear i~ even if!do not know who eIse l am. Perhaps l am no one. n

12.Pirandello, The Late Mattia Pascal, 240-1: "it is not possible to live outside the law and outside that framework ofdetaiIs, fortunate or unfortunate as they May be, that make us what we are, my dear Signor PascaL"

13.Schmitz-Emans,179.

14.Elio Gioanola, Pirandello e la follia (Genova: il melanolo, 1983) 93-5.

15.Pirandello, The Lare Mattia Pascal, 106-7: "When the emotions, desires, tastes ofthese others that l have formed a view ot: or you have formed a view of, do not coincide with our own feelings, we feel dissatisfied, agitated and miserable; 50 much 50 that we are constantly battling for our own emotions, desires and tastes ta he retlected in other people's consciences. And ifthis does not happen because... well, the climate is not right for the seeds ta germinate... the seeds ofyour ideas planted in the mincIs ofothers, weIl you cannat say that your conscience is sufficient for you. Sufficient for what? For living alone? For withering away in shadow?"

16.Pirandeno, The Late Mattia Pascal, 193: Sa l set off: my shadow before me. l quickened my step 50 as ta shove it under other carriages, under the feet ofpassers-by, gratuitously. An evil craving had gripped me, almost physically clawing at the pit ofmy stomach; l did not want ta see that shadow in front ofme all the time, l wanted to get rid ofit. l turned roun~ but then there it was behind me. "IfI run," l thought, "it will chase after me."

17.The whole passage has unfortunately been Ieft out ofthe English translation.

18.Gunda Lusser-Mertelsmann, "Selbstflucht und Selbstsuche: Das DPsychoanalytischeu in Frischs »Stilleru," Materialien zu Max Frisch >StiIIer<, vol. 2, ed. Walter Schmitz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978) 608,613.

19.Lusser-Mertelsma.nn, 600.

20.Pirandello, One. No one, and One Hundred Ihousand. 105: what we believe ta be our most persona! attribute, our awareness (conscience), means the others in us 36

CHAPTER3

Quademi di Serafino Gubbio operatore and Homo faber:

Struggling with Subjectivity

Pirandello's Quademi di Serafino Gubbio operatore, tirst published in

instalments in Nuova Antologia in 1915-16 with the tit1e Si mal and Frisch's Homo

~ published only three years after ~ in 1957, are closest on the realism­ modemism-postrnodemism continuum. The two texts discussed in the previous chapter are modemist novels, but Mattia Pascal is still somewhat veristic and has a more traditional narrative structure than ~. And, as l will show in chapter 4, while Pirandella's last navel is still very modem, Frisch's Mein Name sei Gantenbein

is rather a postmodernist noveL In contrast, Quaderni and Homo faber display not only thernatic but aIso the strongest structural simiJarities. In his second novel written in the tirst persan, which many critics consider a prelude to bis avant-garde dramatic worle, Pirandello has broken all bridges to realism which were still apparent in

Matttia Pascal. In themes and poetics, Quaderni is, like Homo faber, a typically

modemist noveL

Sïnce the plots are very different thaugh, l will not compare them as l did in

the previous chapter, but brietly summarize th~ in arder to malee the follawing

discussion ofthe novels clearer. Serafino Gubbio is a cameraman at the Kosmograph,

a production company in the tledgling film industry. He starts to write to counter the

aIienating effects afhis work, which demands the impassiveness ofa machine. Inbis 37

notebooks, Serafino reports and comments mainly on what happens at the

Kosmograph and in the home where he rents a room. The staries ofthe actoIS and

those ofSerafino's hosts become intertwined, and the cameraman eventually gets

involved in what he had wanted ta observe from a distance and analyse objectively.

Waiter Faber aIso writes a diary, which he calls a report and which consists oftwo

parts. In the first part, he recalls the chain ofevents which has lead to his encounter

with his daughter (while he did not know he had one), their love-affair and her

accidentai death. Faber emphasizes the Many coincidences,justifies his actions and

rejects his guilt. In the second part ofthe book, written in a haspital as he is about ta

undergo surgery for what he thinks is an incurable stomach cancer, Faber admits he

should bave known and done better and t overall, wishes he had lived differently.

Science and An: Two Competing Modes ofCognition

What is reality? How can we know it? Can we tmst our senses? 1s there

something beyond? How can we understand il, represent it? Is there such a thing as

objectivity? How is it achieved? These questions are addressed in a similar fashion

in bath Quaciemj and Homo faber, namely within the context of a discourse on

technology, which lies at the centre of the protagonists' identity crises. More

precisely, the epistemolagical quest manifests itselfmainly in the often contradictary

discourse orthe main characters on the supremacy ofscience over art (Faber) or vice-

versa (Gubbio). Machines are not affected by feelings. Therefore, they are thought

,\ art \ : ta be objective. Incontrast, is Iinked te what Gubbio calls the "superfluous," that 38 whieh is missing in both machines and animaIs, something beyond the mechanicai.

Art is human, whereas machines are perceived to he either better-than-human or dehumanizing.

Faber claims to see things as theyare. He does oot doubt that the world is, indeecL as he sees it What he does not see does oot exist. When people talk about an experience, he sees oothing but the illustration ofsome law ofphysics:

Ich habe mich sehon 0 ft gefra~ was die Leute eigentlieh meine~

wenn sie von Erlebnis reden. Ich bin Techniker und gewohn~ die

Dinge zn sehe~ wie sie sind. Ich sehe alles, wovon sie rede~ sehr

genau; ich binja nicht blincL Ich sehe den Mond über der Wüste von

Tamaulipas - klarer ais je, mag se~ aber eine errechenbare Masse,

die um unseren Planeten kreist, eine Sache der Gravitatia~

interessant, aber wieso ein Erlebnis?(GW IV-1, 24)2

He daes not believe in fate either, or in chance, but in the laws of probabilities.

Therefore, Walter Faber does oot feel the need for any ather ways afknowing the world than bis senses and science, and he trusts nothing but himselfand machines, robots and computers.

Indeed, Faber, who has never viSÎted the Louvre aIthough he travels around the world, claims ta have use neither for novels, MUSeums, folklore nor for any kind ofart. What interests him is technology, ofwhich art is at best a primitive ancestor.

He defines statues, for example, as predecessors ofthe robot. When he looks at the pyramids the Mayas built without knowledge ofthe wheel, he sees nothing but a 39 waste ofenergy. He finds them primitive and uninteresting. Why Marcel, a musician from Boston, would spend his vacation tracing designs from the pyramids is a mystery ta him. He certainly cannot take seriously Marcel's assertion that the gods represented in the art work would be killed ifphotographed. The supernatural, the soul and gods have no place in Faber's worid view. When he traveIs, what catches bis interest are bridges, cars, the machine room ofthe ship, and so on.

But this is before bis daughter's death. In the ~second station', the second part ofthe book, on ms second trip te Palenque, Faber does visit the pyramids. A chain ofevents bas shattered ms life-long faith in the all-explaining powers ofthe natura! sciences. Love, 10ss and disease have made him more receptive ta the unpredictable and unexplainable as weIl as ta the symbolic.J Although he first goes ta the Louvre only in the hope ofmeeting Sabeth, and visits numerous Italian museums just to be near her, he eventually tries to look at and succeeds in experiencing a work ofart.

With the young woman, who becomes bis lover before he can accept the tragic fact that she is the daughter he never knew he had, he aise experiences the wonders of nature. Faber willingly participates in a game in which he and Sabeth cempete at finding similes such as the following: the first Iight ofdawn is like porcelain, the whinny ofa donkey like someone leaming ta play the cella. He leams ta see things differently. Marlis Zeller Cambon bas rightly observed that there is aise a noticeable change in the style ofwriting in the second part. The engineer's jargon and truncated sentences give way to a more harmonious language.4 This is especially true ofthe

Cuban episode which Hans JÜIg Lüthi even calls a "Hymnus.''S 40

Gubbio's stand regarding art and technology at the beginning of bis notebooks is opposite to that ofFaber. He sees himselfas an artist at heart who has fallen victim to the emerging dominion ofmachines, and he uses writing ta avenge himselfand those who suffer the same fate. He turns to writing, not to kill time as

Faber says in the first part ofhis report, but rather to preserve ms ~4superfluo,·' that

Uextra" which differentiates human beings from animaIs, that which makes them strive for more than mere survivai or daily routine. Religion, philosophy and art are ail shown to have strong ties ta the ~4supert1uous." They deal with what lies beyond appearances. And, for Gubbio, who is a keen observer, uc'è un oltre in tutto" (TR II,

519).6

There is a strong opposition in Quademi between the film industry, on the one hand, and, on the other, music, painting and particularly theatre.. The film industry is depicted as an artless business and filming itse[f as dehumanizing. The mute violiniS4 a character l will mention again rater, is only the most tragic victim ofthe submission of art to machines. The movïe-actors are aIso alienated by the reproduction oftheir Iifeless images.. In contrast, the theatre is idealized. As opposed to the Kosmograph's staging ofsilly stories in which the actOIS often do not know which part they play, theatre bas content. ft aIso requires the actors' intelligence and talent, and rewards them with communion with the public .. SimiIarly, the music ofehe violinist presents communication and Iife, whereas the mechanical piano ooly produces sounds. The paintings of Giorgio Mirelli (portraits ofthe young Varia 41

Nestoroff) aIso give life and namely to the vision the artist had ofhis model. They express feelings and a unique way ofperceiving the worId.

Photography, on the other band, is thought to be nothing but the reproduction ofimages and does not, therefore, qualify as art. Gubbio says: "Si dovrebbe capire che il fantastico non pua acquistare realtà, se non per mezzo dell'arte ... Se è meccanismo, come pua esssere vita, come pua essere arte?"(TR II, 573).7 However, ifphotography does not lend itselfto the illusion offiction, then it must be faithfuI, in a way, to physicai reality. Indeed, according ta the cameram~ the photograph (or film) reproduces the image but without the n supert1uous." On the one hand, it annihilates the soul of the abject On the other hand, it shows what we do not necessarily see when we are living, experiencing and feeling. So the actress Varia

Nestoroffdoes not recognize herselfwhen she views sorne shots ofherself: When her

image is projected on the screen, she sees herself from the outside, with distance.

Gubbio does not need ta view the films he shoots to achieve that distance as the

camera grants him the necessary impassiveness (uimpassibilità") to be 'objective' in

8 ms observation, or 50 he likes to think.

Sa what is reality and how is it known? Are feelings, for example, an obstacle

to the understanding of reality, or is the ~objective' observation ofreality partial

because it is blind to whole spheres of reality which lie beyond the physical,

measurable, and explainable? Both noveIs, indeed, suggest that there is an ~oltre'

(beyond, something more), as Gubbio says, that traditional science does not account

for, that machines cannot perceive. And it is in both protagonists' altemating 42 acceptance ofand refusai to experience and deal with the usuperf1uous" that their identity crisis manifests itself: Self-image and world view go hand in hand.

The Ambivalence in the Protagonist ·Relation to Technology: the Identity Crisis

As l have started ta show, Gubbio paradoxically both condemns and trusts technology. His open aversion ta technology, which he blames formaking human life increasingly miserable, clashes with bis faith in the objectivity-granting powers he attributes to machines and the obvious pleasure that he derives as a cameraman from bis raie ofimpassive onlooker. He seems ta identify, for example, with the violinist who has not been able ta play his instrument since the day he was asked ta accompany a mechanical piano and who is, for him, "il simbolo della sorte miserabile, a cui il continuo progresso condanna l'umanità'' (TR II, 533).9 This poor homeless ~ encountered one night at a shelter, is said ta be the inspiration behind the notebooks. Consequently, Gubbio continuously points out the dehumanizing impact ofall machines, from automated printers ta cars ta movie cameras, praising traditional art, nature and craftsmanship.

However, Gubbio is a cameraman. He owes this position to the fortuitous enconnter with an oid friend, the movie-director Coco Polacco who, shooting a scene at the shelter and seeing Gubbio amongst the bystanders, invites him to visit !he

Kosmograph. Gubbio is then hired and quickly becomes the house's best cameraman.

He thinks ofthis Iucky coïncidence as one oftwo compensations for having spent the night at the shelter, the other being bis acquaintance withthe disgraced violinist. This 43 seems contradictory. Obviously, the encounterwith a tragic victim oftechno1ogy has spurred sorne thinking about the consequences oftechno10gical progress, but it has not kept Gubbio from accepting ajob in a movie production firm. And ifSerafino often laments bis condition as servant ta a machine, he aIso boasts ofhis greater-than- average objectivity in perceiving and interpreting the world around hîm, which he attributes to his experience as cameraman, to the practice ofimpassiveness which bis work demands. He has Iearned not to get involved, to observe from the outside and not ta let feelings distract him. This attitude often earos him the mistrust ofthose around hîm, leaving him lonely at times but feeling that he knows the facts better than any of the passionate parties involved. The feelings of being aIienated and isolated are mixed with those ofbeing privileged.

Similarly, Gubbio's passionate praises ofphilosophy and the arts (he writes that he wouId have preferred to study philosophy and literature instead ofgoing to a technical school) are contradicted by bis revision ofSimone Pau's conception of the 6'superfluOUS." His friend Pau, who lives permanently at the homeless shelter and spends the better part of bis days in the hbrary writing articles on philosopbical matters, finds usuperfluous" essentially aIl material goods and comfort which are not necessary for survival and could eventually distraet from the essential, that is the spiritual and intellectual. Gubbio seems to share Pau's views and values when,he thinks back with nostalgia to bis days as a poor student living amongst artists and

CUISes bis present situation as a well-paid "band that toms the handIe." However, he thinks that Simone Pau, while living Iike a beggar to avoid the materia! 44

"superfluous," is himselfdrowning in the spiritual "superfluous.n His own revisited

"superf1uous" corresponds essentially to what Pau deems essentiaL This shift ofpoint ofview is significant but, at this point, Serafino bas no intention ofgiving up either

"superfluaus."

From the very beginning ofhis notebaoks, Gubbio's attitude towards the

"superfluous," which he aIso sees as his endangered humanity, is quite ambivalent

On the one han~ bis writing, itselfa superf1uous act, is intended as a resistance ta the dehumanizing effects oftechnology, a revenge: "Soddisfo, scrivendo, a un bisogno di sfogo, prepatente. Scarico la mia professionale impassibilità e mi vendico, anche; e con me vendico tanti, condannati come me a non esser altro, che una mana che gira una manovella"(TR II, 522-3).10 On the other han~ Serafino seems to see the source ofhuman unhappiness and dissatisfaction not in machines but in human nature, that is precisely in the "superfluous:"

Che giova ail'uomo non contentarsÎ di ripeter sempre le stesse

operazioni? Già, quelle che sono fondamentali e indispensabili alla

vita, deve pur compierle e ripeterle 3Och'egli quotidi3Oamente, come

i bruti, se non vuol morire. Tutte le altre, mutate e rimutate di

continuo smaniosamente, è assai difficile non gli si scoprano, presto

o tardi, illusioni 0 vanità, ftutto come sono di quel tal superfluo, di cui

non si vede su la terra né ilfine né la ragione (TR II, 527).[1

The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio could he defined as the expression of the narrator's uncertain identity, bis going back and forth between two pales. Is he a 45 successful cameraman with little use for the sentimental staries ofthe actors, the philosophy ofhis fiiend Pau or any similar superfluity? Or is he an artist at hem who is condemned to working as a cameraman ta malee a living and who strives ta preserve bis humanity through writing?12 The end ofQuaderni marks the symbolic death ofthe artist and the victory ofthe impassive cameraman persona. This is the outcome, as l \11111 show later, not 50 much ofa recognition on the part ofthe narrator ofthe superiority ofmachines overthe human "superfluous," but ratherofa rejection ofthe 6~superfluous" following disillusiomnent.

There is aIso much tension between the ideal ofscience and technology and the 6~superfluous'" (to use Gubbio's term) in Homo faber. On the one hand, Faber's complete identification with bis profession of engineer seems unshakable. In his

Manichean world view, he stands on the side oflogic, rationality, and objectivity.

6~Superfluous'" is anything that is either illogical, irrational or subjective or that cannot be accounted for by empirical science or by the theories ofprobability. His

"superfluous" is, like Gubbio's, linked to feelings, religion, and the arts, which, from the outsel, have no place in bis life. Contrasting with Faber's apparent certainty, though, is bis obvious urge to justify and to always reaffirm bis beliefs and disheliefs.

Every time he is confronted with an opposing interpretation of be it a natura! phenomenon or a work ofart, he starts offagainst what he cansiders superstition, fantasy, and deIusion. He just cannat accept that others feeI differently and seems ta need ta convince bimselfofthe superiority ofhis views .. 46

This is the '~first station," the first part of the book. The events are not recorded as they happen but a few weeks ormonths later while the narrator lies iU in a hotel raom in Caracas. Faber's identity as a technologist threatens to fail him as siekness (as it tums ou~ a fatal illness) and the recent events in bis life have shaken its foundation, namely Faber's absolute faith in mathematics, logie, and objeetivity.

By elosing an eye to what threatens to praye his theories wrong - for example, the repeated failures of teehnology such as a plane crash, a razor breakdown, a faIse medical diagnosis - and by arguing for the righteousness ofhis judgment, Faber is desperately holding on to the only image he bas ofhimself: 13 As Klaus Haberkamm rightly observes, the main idea orthe "first station" is surnmarized in Mein Name sei

Gantenbein, in the short episode ofthe "Pechvogel" (the unlucky man).l~ A man, canvinced ofbeing an unIucky person, is shocked the day he wins at the lottery.

Unable ta question bis old self-image, he starts ta doubt the lottery, and, on his way back from the b~ he actually loses the money. ''Ein anderes Ich, das ist kostspieliger ais der Verlust einer vollen Brieftasche, versteht sieh, er müBte die ganze Geschichte seines Lebens aufgeben"(GW V-l, 52).15 It is easier to sufIer because ofyouridentity than it is ta give it up.

In the useeond station" afHarna faber, however, Faber finally does give up bis objective- technologist raIe in arder ta experience a part oflife he had always disavowed: nature, feelings, and art. As bis Iife is prematurely coming to an end, bis renunciation ofhis former mIe is one with the rejection oftechnology and progress.

1shall retum to this in the last part. 47

The Technologist/Operator-Persona as Shield Against Life's Uncertainties and

Unpredictability

Faber and Gubbio experience their identity crises differently: the former is desperately holding on to a self-image which threatens ta (and eventually does) collapse under the weight of tragedy, and the latter is fostering two clashing identities, going back and forth between feelings ofestrangement and (eventually full) assumption ofhis raIe as a cameraman. Technology, as we have seen, is at the centre ofboth crises. In fac~ it has the same function in bath Quademi and Hmn2.

(aber, that ofshield against life's uncertainties and unpredictability, or against life itselt: Giovanna QuefCÏ's observation about Ouaderni could apply to Frisch's novel as weil: un mito della macchina, che sia il "ragIlo nera- di Serafino Gubbio, 0 un moderne calcolatore elettronico, viene usato come un'ingannevole garanzia contro il terreno friabile deI contingente, dei possibile, se non addirittura dei probabile. "16

Faber's case is a particularly good example. He lives in New York City and works as an engineer; he is as remote as can be from bis natura! environment, and he lacks real (more than superficial) connections to bis fellow human beings. Hoffinan maintains that Faber's "attempt ta live as if life were predictable and readily controlled bas forced him ta avoid relationships with any real depth to them."17 Faber finds people taxing ("anstrengend" GW IV-l, 8, 91-2) and sex absurd (GW IV~l,

62,66, 93-4); he thinks what people call feelings to be no more than manifestations oftiredness ("Erm.üdungserscheinungen" GW IV-1, 92); wiIdemess disgusts him, and he shaves very often otherwise he feels like a plant (GW IV-l,10, 27); 48 everything unusual makes him nervous (GW IV-l, 76); he is happy with machines and statistics and admits ta not knowing what ta do when he is not working (GW N- l, 90-1). It is clear that the laws ofphysics and mathematics work reassuringly on

Faber's insecure mind. Whenever things get stressful or mysterious, as for example during the plane crash or in the deser4 he starts analysing things from a scientific point of view, giving himself the impression of being in control. When he has problems with relationships, he escapes ta the world of machines, Ieaving bis pregnant girlfriend Hannah in order ta take a job in Iraq7 for example, or simply starting ta work on a broken shaver to avoid supper with his lover lvy. Machines seem more predictable and much less demanding than human beings, an~ with them,

Faber can put bis own feelings aside.

The film camera aIso works as a sbield between Faber and the world. He makes, in fact, great use ofa camera. While others are experiencing something, he films it. 18 This becomes clear in the Dusseldorfepisode where he views bis films in order to find images ofJoachim Hencke, found hanged in bis Guatemalan hut. He is surprised, for example, ta see 50 many shots ofsunsets and breakers, very common natura! occurrences which supposedly do not affect hîm. Then why film them over and over? The camera serves as a shield; it creates a distance. The lens frames and

foeuses on the image, blocking the other senses and even the bigger picture-\ It therefore limits the impact ofthe abject as a whole. Through the Metal eye ofthe

camera, Faber sees ''things as they are'~ without the risk ofan emotional surplus, that

is without being affected by the feelings tbat an event (he it bis friend~ s suicide or the 49

rising ofthe moon in the desert) might amuse. To say it with Heima Haster, Faber

does not "erlebt"(experience), he "entlebt"(takes the Iife away).19 Or , as Butler says,

filming is a way of"neutralising experience."20 Eventually, however, the ailing Faber

stops filming and starts experiencing.

In Quademi, the camera is more than one machine, one product of

technology. It stands for techno10gy as a whole. As cameraman, Gubbio is therefore

the technician par e.r:cellence. But, as l have shawn, bis attitude towards ms

profession is rather unstable, changing from that ofrebellion ta that ofidentification

and vice-versa. Interestingly enough, if we look at the circumstances in which

Gubbio revels in ms profession, we find that he identifies with ms work for very

much the same reasons Faber does. As Gubbio explains at the beginning of his

notebooks, the moment he takes ms camera, he becomes impassive, deprived ofhis

"superfluous." As alienating as it might he, Gubbio often longs for the protection and

reliefthat bis work gives him. As Giovanna Querci observes, the camera is a mask

to hide from feelings.21 Having let himselfget involved, against bis initial intentions,

in the intricate love-hate story involving the actors, Serafino finds himself in a

difficult, emotionally taxing situation from wbich he would like to he freed: "la

vorrei seguitare a fare con la consueta impassibilità, l'operatore"(TR II, 647).22 He

reacts even more strongly when bis love for Luisetta is not retumed: "Il mio sil~o

vorrebbe chiudersi sempre di pm attomo ame" (TRII, 663).23 And bath those wishes

come true at the end when Gubbio fiIms~ impassive and speechless, the tragic death

,r·"J ofthe jealous actor who, having shot bis lover instead ofthe tiger as planned, is 50

himselfkilled by the beast. After this act ofperfect impassiveness, silence does close

in around him definitively: Gubbio bas become dumb. To the accomplished

perfection ofthe cameraman corresponds the symbolic death ofthe artist who wrote

to avenge himselfand save bis "superfluous." Gubbio ends his notebaoks explaining

that he has rejected the "superfluous." He is now very rich and perfectly impassive,

a condition he finds weIl suited to the times in which he lives: "Voglio restare casio

il tempo è questo; la vita è questa; e nel senso che dè alla mia professione, voglio

seguitare cosi - solo, muto e impassibile - a far l'operatore"(TR II, 735).24

The Counter-World: the Idyll

Ta the world ofmachines and progress corresponds, in bath novels, another

world, a space where the mask ofindifference and objectivity faIls and emotional

needs are recognized: the idealized past The past (or in Homo faber the "primitive'')

is relt to be more human, aworld with less technology, no hurry, with time for love,

friendship, and art. For Gubbio, the idylllies in the past, although, as he finds out, it

exists, as sncb, ooly in ms memory. The idyll was a time ofpoverty but aIso of

freedom and great expectations, when Serafino, waiting for the opportunity ta go to

university, was teaching himselfLatin and Greek while giving private lessons to a

younger boy. It is linked to a villa near Sorrento where this boy, Giorgio Mirelli,

lived with bis sister and their grandparents, and to Capri where Gubbio Iater spent the

rest ofa smaIl inheritance. He was poor but happy, living amongst artists, including

.-­ .' i 1 : the young Mirelli. -. t 51

Apart from tracing the antecedent ofthe quarrel between the actress Varia

Nestoroffand the count-actor Aldo Nuti (they had met at the villa many years before when Nestoroff was about ta marry Giorgio Mirelli and Nuti was engaged to

Giorgio's sister Duccella) the second notebook is devoted to Serafino's recollection of the villa and its inhabitants. The descriptions of people and place are idyllic, expressing Serafino's warm feelings as weIl as bis nostalgia. For Luciana Martinelli, it is an idyllic suspension ofthe dramatic tension, a "pausa sentimentale."25 To talk about the house itselt: diminutives are used as terms ofendeannent (villetta, casetta) as weIl as adjectives such as lldolce" (dear TR II, 541, 546, 555), "intima e raccolta"

(intimate and quiet TR II, 543), ~6schiva" (reserved TR II, 543, 545), l6cara" (dear TR

II, 563). In the house reigns l'calma limpida" (limpid calm TR II, 542), ~41a pace e gli affetti" (peace and affection IR II,, 545), "tenue, ingenua vita d'idillio" (so~ ingenuous idyllic life TR Il, 547), uil più ingenuo degli idillii" (the most ingenuous of idylls TR II, 565). Similarly, Duccella and her grandmother are "dolce" and

"cara." Serafino, as he is writing, can still smell the particular "alito" (odour) ofthe house (TR II, 541), and can still hearnonna Rosa's voice (TR II, 546). The tone is very different in these passages. It is filled with emotions, the nostaIgia is palpable:

''Tra le più care rimenbranze della mia vita è la dolce casa di campagna pressa

Sarrenta"(TR II, 555).26 But these memories, brought back so clearly by more rec~t events, are doomed ta be demolished. In "notebook 6", tender feelings tum into bitter disappointment, nostalgia into disiIlusionment. 52

Indeed, in order ta hoerate Aldo Nuti from the madness that now threatens ta

lead him to commit an act ofdesperation (or to free Luisetta from her infatuation with

the count-actor), Serafino decides to go ta Sorrento to see Duccella. He thinks a

tragedy might he avoided ifDuccella forgives Nuti for the betrayal which led to her brother's suicide and consequently to the breaking offoftheir engagement. Nuti

might forget Varia Nestoroff(and Luisetta would have to give up Nuti) ifDuccella were prepared to take him back. 50 Gubbio makes offfor the idyllic vill~ eager to see the channing Duccell~ for whom he had once felt a special affection. He is saon

ta be disappointed. The villa is still the same, but it is nol Itstill looks the same, but

it feels different, strange. It does not conjure up the same warm feelings attached ta

it in Serafino's memory:

Riconoscevo ch'era quelIa, e mi pareva impossibile che fosse;

riconoscevo ch'era rimasta taI quaIe, e perché dunque mi sembrava

un'altra?

Che tristezza! il ricordo che cerca di rifarsi vita e non si ritrova più

nei Iuoghi che sembrano cangiati, che sembrano altri, perché il

sentimento è cangiato, il sentimento è un altro. Eppure credevo

d'essere acccorso a quella villena col mio sentimento d'allora, col

mio cuore d'un tempo!(TR il, 698)27

The gardener who comes to the gate to meet Gubbio bas never heard ofthe Mirellis.

A passer-by takes the visitor ta their new place, a miserable apartment beside a

church. There, Serafino is shocked to see DucceUa dressed ina nun's robe, distigured 53 and overweight Her grandmother is deafand toothless. His oid memories ofgentle people in a pleasant home are sbattered at the sight oftwo poor and ugly women. On bis way back to Rome, Serafino is completely disoriented, feeling betrayed by his

O\VU senses, bis own mind:

Immagini avevo dentro di me, non mie, di case, di persane; immagini,

aspetti, figure, ricordi di persane, di cose che non erana mai state

nella realtà, fuori di me, nel mondo che quel signore si vedeva attomo

e toccava. Avevo creduto di vederle anch'io, di toccarle anch'io, ma

che! non era vero mente! Non le avevo trovate pi~ perché non

c'erano state mai: ombre, sogno... Ma come avevano potuto venirmi

in mente? donde? perché? C'ero anch'io, forse, allora? c'em un io che

ara non c'era più? Ma no: quel signore di mezza età mi diceva di no:

che c'erano gli altri, ciascuno a sua modo e col sua monda e col sua

tempo: io no, non c'ero; sebbene, non essendaci, non avrei saputo dire

dove fassi veramente e che casa fossi, cosi senza tempo e senza

mondo(TR II, 703).28

It sounds very much like Mattia's comment about his identity at the end ofIl..fi!

Mattia Pascal: nia non saprei proprio dire ch'io mi sia"(TR 1,578).29

In her book TI motiva deI yja&wo nella nauativa pirandeliana, Maria

Argenziano Maggi concludes that, in Quaderni, the function ofthe trip is to lead

Serafino ta recagnize "la vanità delle costruzioni che ciascuno ritaglia per sé."30 Like aIl memories, those ofSorrento served Serafino's construction ofhis own self:31 So 54 when the past, idealized and cherish~ tums out ta be a projection, Gubbio's identity loses its substance and is exposed as a construct His final muteness, the physical equivalent to ms professional impassiveness,32 is caused, as Maria Antonietta

Grignani observes, not 50 much by the tragedy ofthe actors' death as by the loss of this idyllic past.33

Back home, Gubbio aIso finds the people he had intended to help out ofa difficult situation acting as ifnothing was wrong. Revolted, he makes the definitive decision ta abandon bis "superfluous,u and to escape to the world ofmachines:

Possa rare a mena di tutto, io. Ho sprecata per voi un po' di quello

che non mi serve affatto; voi la sapete; un po' di quel cuore che non

mi serve affatto; perché a me serve soltanto la mana: nesssun obbligo

dunque di ringraziarmH Anzi, scusate se vi ho disturbato. il torto è

mio, che ho voluto immischiarmi (TR II, 704).JJ

When the past collapses, nothing else seems stable enou~ except the heartless and purely mechanicaI work ofthe cameraman in which Gubbio finds refuge.

When Faber starts writing ms repo~ he has already spent the better part of bis life in voluntary exile from the world ofnature and feelings. He lives in the glass tower ofscience and technology. In Homo faber. the counter-world is represented by the "primitiven lands that Faber visits as part of bis work for UNESCO. Faber's report on those regions, their people, art and culture exemplifies what Marianna

Torgovnick presents as a characteristic ofFirst World writings on the "primitive:"

"Those who study or write about the primitive usually begin by defining it as 55 different from (usually opposite to ) the present. After that, reactions to the present take over."3S Faber describes the foreign "underdevelopedu cultures he encounters only ta represent his own industrial culture, in comparison, as superior or, later, as decadent.

In the ~~first station," the protagonist has aIready begun, as l have shown earlier, ta doubt the absolute vaIue of ms highly industrialized European (or

American) culture. He resists ms own doubts by justifying his beliefs and acts, by arguing in favour ofaIl that is rational, scientifie, and objective. Accordingly, Faber approaches less industrialized cultures with much bias. His low opinion orthe natives in Mexico and Guatemala, for example, clearly reveals bis need ta convince himself ofthe superiority oftechnically advanced cultures and ofthe meaningfulness ofhis own work (ie., life and identity) as an engineer. Looking at a map ofGuatemala on which the sites ofthe various Mayan ruins are marked, Faber caUs the region a "no man's land" because there are neither roads nor airports. Faber has a very specifie conception of civilisation ta defend, that of the modem city, where nature is controlled and made '~efuI," and where this civilisation is not in full bloom, the engineer must make sure that development takes place. About the Mayas, Faber writes:

Man staunt, wie sie diese Quader herbeigeschaffi haben, werm sie Qas

Rad nicht kannten, aIso auch den FIaschenzug nicht. Auch das

Gewolbe nicht! Abgesehen von den Verzienmgen, die tn!r sowieso

nicht gefallen, weil ich fiir Sachlichkeit bin, finde ichjadiese Ruinen 56

sehr primitiv ... Ich fand es ein kindisches Staunen, betreffend die

HerbeischafIung dieser Quader: - sie haben einfach Rampen erstellt,

dann ihre Quader geschleift mit einem idiotischen VerschleiB an

Menschenkratl, das ist jagerade das Primitive daran. Anderseits ihre

Astronomie! Ihr Kalender errechnete das Sonnenjahr, Iaut Ruinen­

Freun

sie es mit ihrer Mathema~ die man anerkennen muB, zu keiner

Technik und waren daher dem Untergang geweiht"(GW IV-1, 43-4).36

Faber is not interested in the present day festive dances orclothing ofMexicans and

Guatemalans either. Overall, his attitude is very contemptuous. Since human reproduction is essentially a matter oflabour demand, as he declares in his apology for abortion as a population control method, he looks very critically at the native wamen, who have Many children. He aIse finds the natives lazy although they work ail day wbile the heat keeps him in his hammock, drinking beer. In short, Faber has no respect for either their history or their present way oflife. Although his report consists ofa series ofevents (tram the plane crash to the death ofhis daughter) in which technology fails, the engineer measures and evaluates everything he sees according to its degree oftechnique. He refuses to see beyond that, calling the land primitive and therefore justifying bis own ~r.development" wark.

In the usecond station," we find Faber first more open towards the natives and then completely charmed by theïr culture. This development corresponds to Faber's graduai rejection ofhis own culture, w!ùch he starts ta perceive as faIse and artificial. 57

While Faber kept repeating, on bis first visit to Palenque, that he had come only for his friend and that he wanted ta leave as saon as pOSSIble, the second time he is glad to come back and meet the same people again. He even visits the Mayan rWns.

Faber's positive attitude towards the Cubans, bis corresponding "Anger at

America"(GW IV-l, 175) and bis "decision ta live differentlyJ7(GW IV-l, 173) show that ms conception oflife and death bas changed after bis daughter Sabeth's fatal accident and his own illness in Caracas during wbich he reflected on the near past in order to write the first part ofhis report. In Cuba, Faber does not despise the simple and natural life anymore. Rather, he values it highly as an alternative to the

"American Way of life" that he had long idealized. Sa while Faber had earlier rejected the "primitive" life ofthe Central American natives in order, as l said, to justify bis own profession and lifestyle, bis sudden hatred ofthe "American way of life" is then similarly expressed through bis praises ofCuban life. What has really changed is Faber's attitude towards bis own society and towards himself: Foreign peoples and lands become but a projection screen for his fears and wishes. He now finds the natura! and lively Cubans beautiful because he reeIs happy himself: It does not bother him that they are 50 poor that smalI children need to work, shining the shoes ofrich white men, or that Many are victims ofsex tourisme However, he now agrees with Marcel, the musician and Mayaphile, that the "American way oflife'\ is all based on appearance.

As Marianna Torgovnick expIains in Gone Primitive. the attraction of a

European towards the "primitive" is often the consequence ofan identity crisis. He 58 or she feels aIienated in the over-civilised society and longs for "something simpler, more comfortahle."37 Homo fabercan even be read as "aretum ta the roots and the source ofidentity."38 Michael Butler observes that both parts ofthe novel "start in the

New World., move through a point tat the end ofthe world, or at least at the end of civilisation'(IV37, 40f) and end in the cradle ofWestem humanism, Greece."39 Sa the oovel represents the evolution ofan identity crisis which projects itselfon the

"foreign.," on the Other. ft is the story ofan aIienated man who, shortly before bis death., searches for salvation in the "primitive"which he sees as an earlier, more innocent stage of mankind. Walter Faber dies, most probably of stomach cancer, shortly after bis Iate reconciliation with nature and with the irrational, emotional part of himself. In the last pages of what toms out ta be not a report but infonnal memoirs, Faber praises simple life: "Aufder WeIt sein: im Licht sein. Irgendwo (wie der Alte neulich in Korinth) Esel treiben, unser Beruf!- aber var aIlem: standhalten dem Licht, der Freude (wie unser Kind., ais es sang) im Wissen, dal3 ich erlôsche im

Licht über Ginster, Asphalt und Meer, Standhaiten der Zeit, beziehungsweise

Ewigkeit im Augenblick. Ewig sein: gewesen sein" (GWN-l,199).010

In conclusio~ bath novels present the same epistemological quest: Is. it possible ta perceive the world as it is, ta interpret it objectively? And in both

QJ1Udemi and Homo faber this quest is highfighted by the protagonist's discussion of tecbnology. What is truer to "reality," science or art? What are the limits of 59 reason? What role do or should feelings, intuition or faith play in our understancling ofthe world? Although Gubbio and Faber reach (opposite) conclusions, the books leave the question standing.

The protagonists' ambivalent and unstable relationships with technology is, in bath novels, at the centre oftheir identity crises as weIl. As events force them to see the world differently, te reevaluate their values and beliefs, their relations with technolegy change. One moment machines and "progress" are thought of as inevitable and reassuring, used to create a distance between the technician and the unpredictable natura! worId, the next they are demonized and cursed as the source of aIl evils. Similarly, the characters' states ofmind and self-images are reflected in their changing evaluations ofidyllic and 'primitive' scenes which, for them, represent an authentic innocent stage in their life orin the Uevolution ofmankind." So we have twa very private crises projected onto the rapidly changing society ofthis century. 60

Notes

1.Giovanna Querci, Pirandello: l'inconsistenza dell'oiiettività (Roma­ Bari: Editori Late~ 1992) 77. The novel was published as a book with the same title in 1916. In 1925, it was reprinted with today's title.

2.Max Frisch~ Homo Faber; A Re.port. trans. Michael Bullock (1959. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovitch, 1987) 21-2: l've often wondered what people mean when they taIk. about an experience. l'm a technologist and accustomed to seeing things as they are. l see everything they are talking about very clearly; after all, l'm not blind. l see the moon over the Tamaulipas desert-it is more distinct than at other times, perhaps, but still a calculable mass circling round our planet, an example ofgravitation, interesting, but in what way an experience?

3.Klaus Haberkamm, '~infall- Vorfall-Zufall: Max Frischs Homo faber ais Geschichte von auBen," MLH 91(1982): 738.

4.Marlis Zeller Cambon, Max Frisch und Lui&i Pirandello: eine Untersuchuni ZUT thematischen und stilistischen Affinitat ihrer Romane, Diss. Bryn Mawr College, 1976 (Ano Arbor: UMI, 1976) 172..

5.Hans Jürg Lüthi, Max Frisch: «Du soUS dir kein Bildnis machen» (München: Francke Verlag, 1981) 35. See aIso Norbert Honsza, '~Auf der Suche nach neuer Ich-Erfassung: zur KommunÎkativitat und Applikation der Prosa von Max Frisch," Frisch: Kritik-Thesen-Analysen, ed. Manfred Jurgensen (Hem: Francke Verlag, 1977) 75.

6.Luigi Pirandello, The Notebooks ofSerafino Gubbio, trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff(Sawtry: DedaIus, 1990) 4: There is a something more in everything.

7.Pirandello, The Notebooks ofSerafino Gubbio, 87-8: It ought ta be understood that the fantastic cannot acquire reality except by means ofart ...Ifit is mechanical, how can it be life, how can it be art?

8.This opposition between theatre and cinema, art and technology, coincides with the polemic between decadentism and futurism which raged in ; ltaly at the time the novel was written.. Decadent artists sncb as D'Annunzio and' Fogazzaro valued art as the best mode ofcognition, a way ofseeing through the deep mystery oflife. Their art accordingly dealt with the unconscious, tended toward the sublime, and was sometimes voluntarily inaccCSSlble.. Incontrast, the Futurists thought their art better reflected the times in wmch they lived, the concrete reality ofcars and wars, ofgrowing industrialisation. Consequently, they 61 advocated themes as well as a style that evoked speed, energy, and even violence.

9.Pirandello, The NotebOOks ofSerafjno Gubbio, 23: the symbol ofthe wretched rate to which continuous progress condemns the humanrace.

IO.Pirandello, The NotebQoks ofSerafino Gubbio, 8: l satisfy, by writing, a need to let offsteam which is overpowering. l get cid ofrny professionaI impassivity, and avenge myselfas well; and with myselfavenge ever 50 many athers, condemned like myselfto be nothing more than a hand that tums a handle.

Il.Pirandello, The Notebooks ofSerafino Gubbio, 14-5: Ofwhat benefit is it to a man not to be content with always repeating the same action? Why, those actions that are fimdamental and indispensable ta Life, he too is obliged to perform and to repeat, day afterday, like the animais, ifhe does not wish to die. AlI the rest, arranged and rearranged continually and frantically, can hardly fail to reveaI themselves saoner or later as illusions or vanities, being as they are the fruit ofthat superfluity, ofwhich we do not see on this earth either the end or the reason.

12.Querci, 79. The author talks about Serafino's double identity ("sdoppiamento dell'identità") as cameraman and writer.

13.Haberkamm, 736. For Haberkamm the function ofthe '4first station" is Udie Bestatigung der vorerst nicht durchschauten Rolle". See aIso Cegienas de Groot, 44BiIdnis, SebstbiInis und Identitat in Max Frischs Romanen ~ Homo faberund Mein Name sei Gantenbein. Ein Vergleich," Amsterdamer Beitriie ZUT neueren Gennanistik 9 (1980 ): 187.

14. Haberkamm, 735.

15.Max Frisch, A Wilderness ofMjrrors, trans. MicheaI Bullock (London: Methuen, 1965) 49: Another ego is more expensive than the loss ofa full walle~ ofcourse; he would have had ta abandon the whole story ofhis life, live through all its events again and differentlYt since they would no longer have gone with bis ego.

16.Querci, 87. My translation: The myth ofthe machine, be it Serafino's "black spider' ora modem electronic calculator, is used as a deceptive guarantee against the shak.y ground of contingency, possibility ifnot even probability.. 62

17.Charles W. Hoffinann, ''The Search for SeIt: Inner Freedom, and Relatedness in the Novels ofMax Frisch," The Contemporary Novel in German. A Symposium. ed. Robert R. Heitner (Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1969) 101.

18.Heima Haster, ''Das Kamera-Auge des Homo Faber: Ein Beitrag auch ZUT Medienpâdago~" Diskussion Deutsch 9 (1978): 378.

19.Haster, 376.

2ü.Michael Butler, The Novels oeMU Frisch (London: Oswald Wolff: 1976) 91.

21.Querci, 84.

22.Pirandello, The Notebooks ofSerafino Gubbio, 203: AU 1ask is ta continue, with my usual impassivity, my work as an operator.

23.Pirandello, The Notebooks ofSerafino Gubbio, 226: My silence would like to draw ever more closely round about me.

24.Pirandello, The NotebQoks ofSerafino Gubbio, 334: l prefer ta remain like this. The times are what they are; life is what it is; and in the sense that 1give to my profession, I intend to go on as 1am·alone, mute and impassive·being the operator.

25.Luciana Martinelli, Lo s»eccbio mawcQ: jmma~ni dei femminile in LuiiÏ Pirandello (Bari: Edizioni Dedalo, 1992) 112.

26.PirandeIIo, The Notebooks ofSerafino Gubbio, 58: among the most cherished memories ofmy lire is that ofthe dear house in the country by Sorrento

27.Pirandello, The Notebooks ofSerafino Gubbio, 277-8: 1saw that it was the same house, and it seemed ta me impossible that it could be; 1saw that it had remained much the same; why then did it appear a different house? What a tragedy! The memary that seeks ta live again, and cannat find its way among places that seem changed, that seem different, because our sentiments have changed, our sentiments are different. And yet l imagined that l had come hurrying to the villa with the sentiments ofthose days, the heart oflong ago~

28.Pirandello, The Notebooks ofSerafino GubbiQ, 284-5: Images l carried in me, not my own, ofthings and people; images, aspects, faces, memories ofpeople and things which had never existed inreality, outside me, in 63 the world which that gentleman saw round him and could touch. I had though that I saw them, and could tonch them aIso, but no, they were all imagination! 1had never found them again, because they had never existed: phantoms, a dream... But how could they have entered my mind? From where? Why? Was 1there tao, perhaps, then? Was there an 1there then that now no longer existed? No; the middle-aged gentleman opposite to me told me, no: that other people existed, each in bis own way and with bis own space and time: 1, no, l was not there; albeit, not being there, 1should have found it hard ta say where l really was and what l was, being thus without rime or space.

29.Pirandello, The Late Mattia Pascal, 241: l could not really say who 1am now.

30.Maria Argenziano Maggi, TI motiva deI vÎagiÏo nella narrativa pirandelliana (Napoli: Liguori Editore, 1977) 47. My translation: the vanity ofthe constructions that everybody malee up for themselves.

31.Querci,91.

32.Corrado Donati, il soiDO e la ragione (Roma: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1993) 112.

33.Maria Antonietta Grignani, l'TI farsi e il disfarsi dellinguaggio: retonca deI discorso e deI silenzio in Pirandello," La "persona» nelJ'opera di Luigi PirandellQ. Ani deI XXII ConveiDo Intemazionale Aw&ento, 6-10 dicembre .l2K2, ed. Enzo Lauretta (Milano: Ugo Mursia Editore, 1990) 188.

34.Pirandello, The Notebooks ofSerafiuo Gubbio, 286-7: 1can do without everything, 1can. 1have wasted upon you a little ofwhat is ofno use ta me; YOll know it; a little ofthat heart which is ofno use to me; because to me only my band is ofuse: there is no nee~ therefore, ta thank me! Indeed, you must excuse me if1have disturbed you. The fault is mine, for trying to interfere.

35.1\1arianna Torgovnic~ GODe Primitive: Savaie Intellects. Modern Lives (Chicago: The University ofChicago Press, 1990) g.

36.Frisch, Homo Faber, 43-4: It's amazing how they got these blocks ofstone hm, when they weren't acquainted with the wheel and therefore had no pulleys. They didn't know the arch either. Apart from the decorations, which didn't appeal ta me anyhow, because l like functionalism, 1round these nrins extremely primitive. .. (My translation: l found it childish to be amazed) at the way inwhich they had shifted these blacks ofstone: they simply built ramps and then dragged the blacks up 64

them with an idiotie expenditure ofmanpower, that was what made it so primitive. On the other hand their astronomy. Aeeording to the min-lover, their ealendar reckoned the solar year at 365.2420 days, instead of365.2422 days; nevertheless, for all their mathematieal knowledge, they never evolved a technolagy and were therefore eondemned to deeline and disappear.

37.Torgovniek, 192.

38.Butler, 99.

39.Butler, 98.

40.Frisch, HomQ Faber, 210: Ta be alive: ta be in the light. Driving donkeys around somewhere (like that old man in Corinth)-that's all our job amounts to~ The main thing is tQ stand up ta the ligh~ ta joy (like our child) in the knowledge that 1shall be extinguished in the Light aver garse, asphalt, and sea, ta stand up to time, or rather ta eternity in the instant. To be etemal means ta have existed. 65

CHAPTER4

Uno. nessuno e centomila and Mein NaIne sei Gantenbein

Plurality and Relativity

Uno. pessuno e centomiIa is Luigi Pirandello's last published novel.

Pirandello started writing it in 1909,1 and announced its imminent publication in

1912.2 However, for years after, the book, wmch is considered the sum of

Pirandello's thought,3 underwent numerous transformations, additions and cuts,4 until it finally made its appearance, in instalments from December 1925 to June 1926 in

Fiera letteraria (TR 2, 1057). In 1964, that is during bis five-year stay in Rome, Max

Frisch published his last major novel on the therne of identity: Mein Name sei

Gantenbein.S

In Uno. nesSUDO e centomila, identity is seen as something constructed and entirely relative. The narrator and protagonist, Vitangelo Moscarda, tells the story ofhis own struggle ta destroy first the masks and then the whole illusion ofa unified subject. It aIl starts when Vitangelo's wife, Did~ points out ta him. something he has never noticed: bis nase tilts ta the right. Moscarda's identity crisis cornes with bis recognition that each persan he knows has a different image ofbiIn, and that none,of these matches bis self-image. After trying in vain to sec the uothers" in~ that is ta find out how others perceive biIn, he decides to destroy these "faIse" images by acting in the most unexpected manner. He opposes bis wife's image ofbiIn, her dear 66

Gengé, good-natured and a little stupid, with another Vitangelo, brutal and stubbom.

And to destroy the general beliefthat he is a usurer, Moscarda gives a house to a poor crazy couple he had previously evicted from their miserable dwelling because they had not been paying the rent. He then decides ta liquidate the assets ofthe bank of which he is the main shareholder. As bis associates and in-Iaws try to bave him declared insane in arder to avoid bankruptcy, he makes an agreement with the town's bishop making the liquidation appear an act ofcontrition. He pretends ta feel remorse for an aIleged love affair and donates all bis money to found a shelter where he ends up as a resident. At the end, people reaIly believe him ta he insane, but he has broken aIl connections with society. He claims to die and he barn again every instan~ without memories and in full communion with nature.

The plot is simple and its narration fragmented but linear. It essentially documents the stages ofthe protagonist's shedding ofhis identity. However, there is more reflection than action in this noveL As "Considerazioni di Vitangelo Moscarda, generali sulla vita degli uomini e particolari sulla propria, in otto libri", the subtitle of the novel in its first publicatio~ suggests, an important part of Vitangela's memoirs is devoted ta bis refiectioDS on life. As Renato BarilIi remarks, ~ nessuuo e centomila is Pirandello's MOst rhetorical novel. The discourse is not integrated ("incastonato'') in the plot. 6 On the conttary, the novel is one long fragmented and sometimes redundant speech on persona! identity, where the stories are secondary and serve as examples ta corroborate the arguments. What Wemer

Schabouk: criticises is that the most interesting findings remain exterior to the plot.7 67

For example, the fact that Moscarda has an interlocutor, first Dida's friend Anna

Rosa and then the ''voi'' (you) ofthe novel, is, in myopinion, inconsistent with bis often claimed disbeliefin communication. Indeed, Moscarda maintains that words are intrinsically Uempty" of sense and that every speaker gives them a meaning which, since it is based on subjective perception ofthings and events, is inevitably different from the meaning the listener will give them, making understanding impossible:

Abbiamo usati, io e voi la stessa Iingua, le stesse parole. Ma che colpa

abbiamo, io e voi, se le parole, persé, sono vuote? Vuote, caro mio.

E voi le riempite dei senso vostro, nel dirmele; e io nell'accoglierle,

inevitabilmente, le riempio deI sensa mio. Abbiamo creduto

d'intenderci; non ci siarna intesi affatto.

Eh, storia vecchia anche questa, si sa. E io non pretendo dir niente

di nuovo. Solo toma a domandarvi:

-Ma perché allora, santo Dio, seguitate a fare come se non si

sapesse? A parlarmi di voi . .. (TR 2, 769).8

This question that the fust-persan narrator asks bis fictive reader highlights the contradiction ofhis autobiographical stary. Ifhe bas no faith in communication, why even try ta share bis experienc~ whic~ Iike bis identity, is doomed to be interpre~d in a way he did not intend? The fust-person narration is also inconsistent with the end ofMoscarda's story, which finds him disconnected from society and supposedly not 68

thinking in order to stayaway from constructions: "Rinascere attimo per attima.

Impedire che il pensiero si metta in me di nuovo a lavorare, e dentra mi rifaccia il

vuato delle vane costruzioni" (TR 2,902).9 The form ofthis novel does not suit the

themes; it is as ifPirandelia had been unable to transform this radical expression of

ms thought into a novelistic structure. As Schabouk remarIes, Pirandello has found

in role-play, in draIna, a form that better suits his themes ofconflicting perspectives

and perception. 10

The questions raised in Uno, nessuno e centomila are predominantly

epistemological and very modem. The novel is concemed mainly with the truth. The

protagonist's identity crisis is triggered by a "truth" about his nose and essentially consists ofbis desperate search for the ~'whole truth" when faced with an infinite

amount of possibilities. Who is right? Who is wrong? Are diverging opinions

mutually exclusive? Does exposing the ufaIse" lead to the ~'true?" Vitangelo finaIly succumbs to the equal value ofall opinions. These are neither true nor faIse, they are

posSlbilities. This conception ofreality and particularly ofpersonal identity as purely relative is the climax ofVitangelo's loss ofself. Itcomes as a result ofms aborted search far an authentic identity and of his discovery tha~ in society, ail is a construction. Moscarda compares sociallife ta the tawn itself: Just like they build houses and streets, people aIso create common places, conventions, prejudices, e~c.

And as everybody constructs the Selfand the Other, each in their own way, it results

in an infinite number ofconflicting images. A unified identity is an illusion: "La 69 realtà che ho io per voi è nella forma che voi mi date; ma è realtà per voi e non per me; la reaItà che voi avete per me è nella forma che io vi do; ma è realtà per me e non per voi; e per me stesso io non ho altra realtà se non nella forma che riesco a darmi.

Ecorne? Ma costroendomi, appunto" (TR 2~ 779).11 Vitangelo's discovery of relativity, far from liberating him from the fixed forms ofhis life, is the essence of bis crisis, and bis so-called salvation in nature is a flight from society.

For Moscarda, the mIe ofreIativity is applicable to the city and to society but is not a universal principle. Away from the human sphere, there is authenticity or, at least, the absence of the constructio~ artifice, fiction and vanity that Vitangelo associates with society:

Siamo in campagna qua; il languore ci ha sciolto le membra; è

naturale che illusioni e disinganni, doIori e gioje, speranze e desiderii

ci appajano vani e transitorii, di tronte al sentimento che spira delle

cose che restano e sopravanzano ad essi, impassibili. Basta guardare

là quelle aIte montagne oltre valle, lontane lontane, sfumanti

aIl'orizzonte, lievi nel tramonto, entra rosei vaporL...

Qua, cari miei, avete veduto ['uccellino vero, che vola davvero, e

avete smarrito il sense e il valore delle ali finte e dei vola meccanico.

Lo reacquisterete subito I~ dove tutto è finta e meccanico, riduziape

e costruzione: un altro mando nel monda: mondo manifatturato,

combinato, congegnato: monda d'artificio, di stortura, d'adattamento, 70

di finzione, di vanità; mondo che ha sense e valore soltanto per

l'uomo che ne èl'artefice (TR 2, 775-6).12

Like Gubbio, Moscarda has an aversion far the "supert1aus," that human creation-

mania, and longs for impassiveness, which he associates with the unconsciousness

and impassiveness ofnature: l4~ non averpiù coscienzad'essere, come una pietra,

come una pianta! Non ricardarsi più neanche deI proprio nome!" (TR 2, 774)13 The

last words ofthe novel are: " ... muojo ogni animo, ia, e rinasco nuovo e senza

ricordi: vivo e intero, non più in me, ma in agni cosa filon" (TR 2, 902). I~ The

protagonist of lino, nesSUDO e centomila gives up on society, gives up bis

"superfluous" and finds refuge in a sort ofvegetative state.

In an interview about Mein Name sej Gantenbein, Frisch spoke ofthe writer

as a (I would say Moscarda-like) "Forscherin einermanchmal fast erbitterten Suche

nach der Wirklichkeit" (GW V-2, 15).15 The narratar ofthe novel seems anything but

exasperated thaugh and revels in his game which consists ofdoing precisely what

Pirandello had in mind when writing Uno, nessuuo e centomila: varying the illusion.

Indeed, in an interview given in 1922 to L'Epoca, Pirandello said ofthis novel that

it was going to show the positive side ofbis thought, i.e., that we create our own

reality and that we therefore have the ability to change it and ta experiment: "La

realtà, io dico, siama noi che ce la creiamo: ed è indispensable che sia cosL Ma ~ai

a fermarsi in una sola realtà: essa si finisce per soffocare, per atrofizzarsi, per morire.

Bisogna invece variarla, mutarla continuamente, continuamente mutare e variare la

(.~

'. ' 71 nostra illusione."'6 But as though Pirandello's intentions were reflected in Frisch's text and Frisch's views in Pirandello's novel, Vitangelo Moscarda engages in an exasperated search for reality, and bis discovery ofthe constructed nature ofreality and identity shocks and destabilizes him. Exposing the mechanisms of identity construction and exploding the myth ofauthenticity can be liberating or it can create an anxiety-provoking vacuum. Pirandello does show the individual as an active participant in the social construction ofidentity, but rather than vary the illusion, as

Pirandello suggests. Vitangelo Moscarda finally refuses all variants.

In contrast, variation is the keyword to describe Mein Name sei Gantenbein.

The novel consists ofMany ditIerent versions ofwhat could be the daily life ofthree main male characters: Gantenbein, Enderlin and Svoboda, aIl products of the narrator's imagination. These share one lover, Lila, but she also cornes in many different versions (professions, civil statuses, nationalities, social classes, etc.). The first-person narrator (or Book-I [Buch-Ich] as he is often called by critics of the novel) identifies alternately with one, another, or none ofthe three male characters.

The four (the narrator and bis three characters) can appear together in one episode either as mends, enemies, strangers who meet by chance, competing lovers, etc. Each ofthe three main characters is therefore referred ta sometimes as "l," sometimes as

"you," sometimes as "he." The narratorexperimentswithmany "lives," varying one or more aspects ofthe story ofeach character. He is very much like an author, creating stories and characters while remaining largely anonymous. 72

Hcwever, the narrator's creative possibilities are endIess but not without limitations, that is he could invent an infinite number ofstaries, but they display sorne meaningful redundancy. There is variation but aIso repetitio~ which is in a way reminiscent of Pascal's and Stiller's attempts at reinventing themselves. As the narrator says, aIl staries are inventions, but they are also attempts at expressing an experience. The Book-l, who says that he tries on staries like clothes, knows that, regardless ofthe suit he wears, the same creases always appear at the same places:

u ••• immer entstehen die gleichen Falten am gleichen Ort, ich weiB es" (GW V-l,

21 ).17 Sa the repetition within the variation says sometbing about what might have been the experiences at the source ofaIl those staries. One is summarized at the end orthe book: "Ein Mann liebt eine Frau ... diese Fran liebt einen andem Mann ... der erste Mann liebt eine andere Fran, die wiederum von einem andem Mann geliebt wird ... "(GW V-l, 313).18 Many ofthe stories are variations on that theme. And what the variation shows is the interchangeability ofall posSlbilities. Ifthe narrator is trying on staries like clothes, nowhere does the reader feel that he is looking for the perfect suit. He is trying for the sake oftrying. Indeed, right from the beginning the narrator expresses bis disbelief in an authentic identity: "jedes Ic~ das sich ausspricht, ist eine Rolle" (GW, V-l, 48).19 Identity is a game in which everything goes, and there is no right choice. This differentiates the narratorofMein Name sei

Gantenbein from Vitangelo Moscarda. Frisch's narrator is indifferent, an attitude

Peter V. limadefines as the main characteristic afpastmodemist üterature. While 73

Moscarda experiences bis [055 ofidentity as a tragedy, we cannat speak ofidentity crisis in Mein NaIne sei Gantenbein, in which the narrator is perfectiy at ease with the loss ofcertainty that is immanent to plurality.

However, it is pOSSlb[e ta view one ofthe nove['s main characters as a parody ofthe modemist hem. He is the incarnation, in the novel, ofthe pre-Gantenbein type.

Like Stiller, Enderlin is tormented and unwilling to play a role, or ta realize that he is playing one however not deliberately. The narrator criticizes this attitude by

"dropping" this character for being tao predictable. He aIso tells the anecdote ofa diplomat who discovers one day that he is not worthy ofhis rank and replltation. The man considers denouncing himself b1l4 in the end, does not do 50. And instead of feeling guilty and insecure (1ike Enderlin with bis academic research and an.xiety- provoking invitation ta Harvard), he fully assumes bis raIe ofgreat man and ends up doing great things:

indem er eigentlich bloB spiel4 leistet er nicht nur Ordentliches wie

bisher, sondem AuBerordentIiches ...Dank seiner Personlicbkeit, die

er spielt, wird eine Stadt var der Zerstërung durch Bomber gerettet,

und sein Name wird eingehen in die Geschichte, er weill es, ohne zu

HicheIn, sein Name wird in Mannor geschrieben, wenn er stirbt, ais

Name einer StraBe oder eines Platzes ... (GW V-l, 119-20)20 ...

Living insociety implies playing a mIe, but this is not necessarily negative. What is important is ta be aware ofthe game. 74

Gantenbein, the real pratagonist, i.e. y the one with whom the narrator most

often identifiesy is quite the opposite. His base raIe is that ofthe fake-blind husband

ofan actress. His whale world is role-playing. But he does not warry that he might

be dishonest. Ofcoursey he is a littie nervous about cheating the bureaucracy in order

ta be officially recognized as blind and ta get the yellow armband. However,

pretending to he blind is no worse than pretending to be a good hostess (LiIa),

pretending to be a manicurist rather than a prostitute (Camilla Huber), or pretending

not ta be a rich materialist (long-Iost friend). As the narrator sees it, everyone is

always pretending or hiding something. The blind-man role allows him ta observe

other people's raIes wiiliout their awareness and ta "innocently" highlight their

contradictions. When a former high-ranking Nazi leader speaks ofcultural freedom,

for example, Gantenbein asIes whether a m~ who played an important raIe under

Hitler, is aIso in the room, pretending not to see that it is that same man. The

Gantenbein-episodes deaI with the traditional Pirandellian and Frischian therne of

role-play in society. But the attitude here is matter-of-fact, the tone rather humoristic.

Gantenbein claims, for instance, ta have leamed from actaIS that it is not necessary

to limp at every step in arder ta be a credible cripple. Sa he only needs ta drop the

ashes beside the ashtray once in a while to convince everyone that he is blinde LiIa,

his partner, does not even doubt bis blindness when he tells her that he has r~d

something in the paper. Gantenbein is just as aware as Vitangelo Moscarda ofbis

wife's ~1mrealistic" image ofbim. But there is no rebeIIion, no passionate Ionging for

( .~. 1 ; 75 truth and authenticity. Such concepts as truth and authenticity are not questioned, but they are taken to be just concepts and provoke no anxiety or sense of10ss. There is no ambivalence as in PirandelIo's novels and Frisch's previous two, where the protagonists both seek a unified subjectity and flee the fixed form of any given identity. Gantenbein is indifferent. For him, raIes are interchangeable.

In contrast ta Pirandello's work and Frisch's earller production, which are concemed mainly with epistemological issues, Mein Narne sei Gantenbein deals with predominantly ontological questions, a characteristic ofpostmodernist literature.21 In this novel, there is no search for the truth and consequently no search for a true persona! identity. The issue appears irrelevant. The reader might wonder who the narrator really is, but what the narrator is concemed with is ta project worlds and ta explore bis many possible selves. Bringing forward ontological rather than epistemological issues has required a radically different narrative structure. Indeed, we could aImost speak ofa poetic revolution with regards ta the previous novels.

There is no plot and no chronology. Although the sequence ofthe passages is often determined by associations, there appears ta be no arder. There is no development.

As Frisch sai~ the novel is "stationar." Regarding where the action takes place, there is much variation and sometimes even juxtaposition ofmore than one place, as in the episode where the narrator is following strangers on the street: At the beginning, he is near the Sorbonne and follows a man who is walking towards the river Seine~ but as he starts to follow a second stranger, an American, he says that he had been 76

thinking about spending the aftemoon in Central Park. The use ofpronouns aIso

defies the rules of traditional narrative (and grammar), as in the episode where

Enderlin e'der fremde Herr," "the strange gentleman") meets Svoboda's wife in a bar,

for the first time:

Ich binjetzt, wie durch einen Alann, plëtzlich sebr nüchtem; nur der

fremde Herr, den sie nicht aufhalten will, ist nach wie vor betrunken,

nicht schlimm, immerhin 50, daB ich mich von ibm unterscheide...

.Und aIs der fremde Herr endlich seine Hand wegnimm4 da ich sie

brauche, um meinen Whisky zu ergreif~ bevor er warm ist ... (GW

V-l, 62-3).22

When Frau Svoboda arrives, there is a split between narrator (I) and "the strange

gentleman" (he), later called Enderlin. This shows not only the different perspectives,

"the strange gentleman'" being the character as seen by Frau Svoboda, but aIso the

narrator's shifting identities. Interesting is aIso the constant shifting back and forth

between two narrative levels, that ofthe narrator, creation ofthe author, and that of

the characters explicitly created by the oarrator. The latter predominates, while the

fonner is limited to comments as weIl as sorne recurring briefsentences, such as "1

imagine," which have the effeet ofstage directions.

Frisch's novel deaIs oot only with the ontology ofthe projected worlds ofthe

text but aIse with the ontology of the text itseIt: as is often the case with

postmodemist worles.23 The existence ofthe text as such is highlighted. The reader Ct 77 always remains aware that the text is a fiction, as its structure is laid bare and the creative process is rendered obvious. There can be no suspension ofdisbeliet: In this novel, this is achieved mainly through the explicit creation ofcharacters: "My Name would be Gantenbein" (''Mein Name sei Gantenbein", GW VI, 25) and their self- erasure: ~~I gave up Enderlin" ("Ich habe Enderlin aufgegeben", GW Vl,160). Not only does this give the examination ofpersona! identity an ontological perspective, it highlights the fictionality ofthe characters or, as McHale says, their "ineluctable writtenness."24 Narrative self-erasure (revoking not only characters but aIso places and events) is central ta Mein Name sei Gantenbein. AIthough narrative self-erasure is not exclusive ta postmodemist literature, it is typical ofthis ~~illusion-breaking art."25 Modemist literature aIso makes use ofself-erasure as when a character is day- dreaming, for example. But ifGantenhein does not exist and Lila is just a fantasy, if the narrator is imagining all that, then what is reaIly happening in this novel? What is particuIar to postmodernist fiction is that self-erasure OCCUIS, as in Mein Name sei

Gantenbein, without a stabilizing frame. 26

l hope ta have shawn clearIy that the question of identity takes a different tum in Max Frisch's novel. l do not Mean ta claim that Frisch is a postmodernist writer from 1964 on. This is beyond the scope ofthis essay and, from what l know, itwould be a faIse assumption. A later novel or "story'·like Der Mensch erschejnt jm

Ho)ozân (1979) cannot he cansidered postmadem, not ta speak of bis plays.

Howevert looking at Mein NaIne sej Gantenbejn as postmodem can he useful to 78 explain the evolution ofFrisch's treatment ofpersonal identity. Gantenbein's narrator is oot just a radical Stiller. He looks at identity from a different perspective and without the ambivalence and anxiety that characterizes Stiller's (or Faber's) crisis.

In Mein NaIne sei Gantenbein, identity and reality are viewed from a postmodem ontological perspective and with postmodem "indifference.n

Unlike Frisch's work, Pirandello's bas spurred a debate regarding its possible belonging to naturalism (verismo), modemism, the avant-garde, futurism, and postmodernism. Although Pirandello is generaIIy considered one ofthe great writers ofmodernist literature for both bis drama and bis prose, much has been written on the naturalism ofhis early production, the futuristic aspects ofhis theatre, bis connection to the avant-garde, and sa on. More recently, bis name has been linked to postrnodemism. The Pirandello-postmodemism connectio~ though, is one that even a book like Pirandello zwjschen Avantiarde und PostIDodeme cannat establish clearly. Indeed, the book reaffirms PirandeIlo's modernism. What stands out in various essays is that although it would be fashionable to find Pirandello postmodem

"avant la lettre," he is more precisely a precursor ofdeconstruction. l think. Wladimir

Krysinski sums up alI that can be said on Pirandello's al1eged postmodernism when he writes: "l'oeuvre de Pirandello se révèle à la fois globalement moderne et ouverte sur le post-modemisme.'717 Pirandello certainly shares sorne ideas with the philosophers ofpostmodemism but bis werk cannet be called postmodem. His prose, as l have shown, starts in verismo (looking at an earüer novel such as L'Esc1usa 79

would make it aIl the more clear) an~ with the three novels l have discussed,

deserves its place in the canon ofmodemist literature.

Both Uno, oessuuo e centomila and Mein Marne sei Gantenbein offer a similar

view ofidentity as a constnlct, plural and relative. However, the narrators differ in

their perspectives on and attitudes towards identity construction. While Vitangelo

Moscarda, who bas engaged in an epistemological search for the "authentic" self,

experiences bis discovery ofthe "falsity" ofidentity as a tragedy, for the narrator of

Gantenbein, constructing, de-constructing and reconstructing bis identity is agame

, a way ta explore possible selves. This translates, in Frisch's last novel on identity,

into a radically different narrative structure. Ta the end orthe illusion ofan authentic

and unified identity corresponds the "illusion breaking" prose which rejects the

traditional suspension ofdisbelief and demystifies, along with identity construction,

the mechanisms ofartistic creation.

.~ .( .~ ""- 80

Notes

l.Maria Argenziano, introductio~ Uno. OessunO e centomiléb by Luigi Pirandello (Roma: Newton Compton, 1994) 26.

2.Marziano Guglielminetti, "Le vicende e i significati di etUno, nessuno e centomila»," TI "Romanzo" di PirandeIIo, ed. Enzo Lauretta (N.p.: Palumbo Editore, 1976) 187.

3.Werner Schabouk, "Relativismus und Perspektivismus. Zum Standort des ErzihIers bei Pirandello, Kafka und V. Woou:n Pirandello und die europaische Erzlhlliteratur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, eds. M. Rossner and F. ­ R. Hausmann (Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1990) 119. See also Elio Giaanola, Pirandello e la rallia (Genova: il melangala, 1983) 106; and Maria Argenziano Maggi, il motiva deI viagmo nella narrativa pirandeltiana (Napoli: Liguri Editore, 1977) 59.

4.Giancarlo Mazzacurati, Pirandello nel romaozo eUIOpeo (Bologna: il Mulino, 1987) 293.

S.The ritle orthe only English translation is UA Wildemess afMirrors," but the original title Iiterally means ~'my name would be Gantenbein," a recurring sentence in the navel.

6.Renato Barilli, uI romanzi di Pirandello e il discorso retanca," Il ~'RQmanzo"di Pirandello, ed. Enzo Lauretta (Paiumbo, 1976) 218.

7.Schabouk, 122.

8.Luigi Pirandello, One. No One. and One Hundred Thousand, trans. William Weaver (Boston: Eridanos Press, 1990) 31-2: We used, you and I, the same language, the same words. But what fault is it of OUIS, yours or mine., ifwords, in themselves, are empty? Empty, my mend. And you fiIl them with your meaning, as you say them ta me; and I, as l hear them., inevitably fiIl them with my meaning. We thought we understood each ather; we didn't understand each ather at ail.

9.Pirandello, One, No One. and One Hundred TbousancL 160: , To be rebom moment by moment. Ta prevent thought from working again insidè me~ causing inside a reappearance ofthe void with its futile constructions.

10.Schabouk, 127. 81

Il.Pirandello, One. No One, and One Hundred ThousancL 41: For you my reality is in the form you give me; but it is reality for you, not for me; your reality, which for me is the form 1give yoU; but it is reality for me and not for you; and for myself1have no other reality except in the form 1can give myself: How? By constructing myseU: in fact

12.Pirandello, One. No One. and One Hundred Ihousand. 38-9: We are in the country here; the languor bas relaxed our limbs; it's natura! that illusions and disenchantments, sorrows and joys, hopes and desires should appear to us vain and transitory, compared to the feeling that wafts from the things that remain and survive them, impassive. You have ooly ta look there at those high MOuntains across the valley, far far oft hazy on the horizon, light in the sunset, amid pink mists.... Here, my dear friends, you've seen the real bird, who really flies, and you have lost the meaning and the value offake wings and mechanical flight. You will recover it immediately back there, where all is fake and mechanicaI, reduction and construction: another world in the world, a manufactured, combined, devised world, a world or artifice ofbending, adapting, offiction, vanity, a world that has meaning and value only for the man who is its deviser.

13.Pirandello, One. No One, and One Hundred Tbousand, 37: Ah, ta be unconscious, like a stone, like a tree! Not to remember even your own name any more~

14.Pirandello, One. No One, and One Hundred Ibousand. 160: .. .I die at every instan~ and 1am rebom, new and without memories: live and whole, no longer inside myseIt: but in every thing outside.

IS.My translation: Researcher in a sometimes almost exasperated search for reality.

16.Quoted in Marziano Guglielm.inetti, '~e vicende e i significati di ccUno, nessuno e centomila»," TI Romanzg di Pirandello, 00. Enzo Lauretta (N.p.: Palumbo Editore, 1976) 197. My translation: l say we are the ones creating reality: and it has to be that way. But beware ofsticking ta one reality ooly: it eventually suffocates, degenerates, and dies. It is necessary to vary it, change it continually, continually change and vary our illusion.

17.Max Frisch, A Wilderness ofMirrors, trans. Michael Bullock (London: Methuen, 1965): ... the same creases always develop inthe same places, l know that. 82

18.Frisch, A Wildemess ofMirrors. 297: A man loves a woman ... This woman loves another man ... The first man loves another woman, who in tom is loved by another man ...

19.Frisch, A Wildemess ofMirrors. 46: every ego that expresses itselfin words is a rôle-

20.Frisch, A Wildemess ofMirrors. 114: while he is really ooly acting a part he not only achieves good solid results as heretofore, but exceptional results.... Thanks to ms personaIity, which he is acting, a city is saved from destruction from bombers, and bis name will go down in history, he knows that without smiling, bis name will be written in marble when he dies, as the name ofa street or a square

21.Brian McHaIe, Postmodemist Fiction (London: Routledge, 1989).

22.Frisch, A Wildemess ofMirrors. 59-60: Now, as though in response ta an alarm signal, 1am suddenly very sobe~ ooly the strange gentleman, whom she doesn't want ta keep, is still dnmk, not badly, but enough for me ta differentiate myself from him.... And when the strange gentleman finally takes his hand away, because l need it ta take hold ofmy whisky before it gets WarIn •••

23.McHale, 211-21.

24.McHale, 105.

25 McHale, 221.

26McHaIe,100.

27.W1adimir Krysinski, Le paradigme inquiet: PirandeIIo et le champ de la modernité. coll. L'Univers des discours (Montréal, Le Préambule, 1989) 455. My translation: Pirandello's work is both globally modern and open onto postmodernism. 83

Conclusion

l stated in chapter l that the aim of this study was ta show how Luigi

Pirandello's novelistic work resonates in Max Frisch's novels. Restricting my thematic analysis mainly ta the question ofidentity has meant that l have left many similarities undiscussed. l have not mentioned, for instance, aIl the episodes of

Frisch's novels which are reminiscent of passages found in Pirandello's work.

However, concentrating on the theme ofidentity, which is central to all six novels, has allowed me to demonstrate the great affinity between both authors and to show the major similarities between their novels. There are aIso important (and mainly structural) differences between Pirandello's and Frisch's texts, and pointing them out has highlighted the developments in the novelistic genre over the six first decades of this century as \vell as the evolution ofthe theme ofidentity during that period.

Chapter 2, the comparison ofPirandello's TI fil Mattia Pascal (1904) with

Frisch's s.tilkr (1954), has shown ta what extent their stories are similar. Although its narration does not respect the chronology ofthe plot, &ilkr follows, it its broad outline, the plot of the more traditional il fil Mattia Pascal. In both novels, the protagonist tlees bis family, bis work, and bis native city in arder to make a new and better life for himselfelsewhere under a new (selfmade) identity. Both projects fail, exploding the myth ofthe independent and unified subjeet. Persona! identity prov~ ta be a construct, excluding the possibility ofever finding one's uauthentic" self: and is aIso shawn ta be dependent on the inclividual's past and present relatianships with athers. 84

In the novels compared in chapter 3, Quademi di Serafino Gubbio operatore

(1915) and Homo faber (1957), Pirandello and Frisch deal with the problem of identity in the age ofmachines and (in the case ofFrisch) computers. Both Gubbio's and Faber's identity crises rnanifest themselves in the protagomsts' ambivalent and unstable relationships with technology. Machines have their counterpart in aItr which represents a different way of understanding the world and the human being.

Similarly, there is a counter-world to Gubbio's and Faber's urban lives: the country idyll of Gubbio's youth and the uprimitive" lands where Faber works. Both protagonists' inclinations shift from technology and the city ta art and the idyll (or

"primitive'') or vice-versa. The novels show that, whether it is based on an idyllic or scientific vision of the world, identity is always a COnstruC4 and therefore neither authentic nor etemaL

Uno, nesSUDO e centomiJa (1926) and Mein Name sei Gantenbein (1964), the two texts examined in chapter 4, offer essentially the same view ofpersona! identity as plural and relative. However, while Pirandello's last novel is, in content and fonn, a typically modemist novel representing the search for truth and the rebellion against the constructed nature ofidentity, in Mein Name sei Gantenbein. identity is viewed from a postmodem ontological perspective and with postmodem "indifference."

Frisch's narrator is not searching for authenticity or for a true identity. He playS\at projecting worlds and at inventing and re-inventing bis identity. He experiments with possible selves. The form ofthe novel is aIso experimental and very weIl SUÎted to its 85 content. The novel ignores the conventions ofplot, hero, place, and chronology and demystifies, along with identity construction, the mechanisms ofartistic creation.

Overal4 the similarities between Pirandello and Frisch are, as l had thought they would be, very important. However, the differences are no less interesting, especially with regards to the change in attitude towards the problem ofidentity. 86

Bibliography

Angelini, Franca ''Pirandello e la modemità." Pirandello zwischen Avantgarde und Postmodeme. Studia litteraria 7. Ed. Michael Rëssner. Wilhelmsfeld: Ege~ 1997.3-12.

-. "ccSi gira...n: l'ideologia della macchina in Pirandello." fi ''ROIDaozo'' di Pirandello. Ed. Enzo Lauretta. N.p.: Palumbo Editore, 1976. 143-60.

Argenziano, Maria Introduction. Uno. nessuno e centomila By Luigi Pirandello. l classici Superten 37. Roma: Newton Compton, 1994.

Argenziano l\tIaggi, Maria il motiva deI viagwo Della narrativa pirandelliana Napoli: Liguri Editore, 1977.

Barilli, Renato. l'I romanzi di Pirandello e il discorso retonca." Il uRomanzo" di Pirandello. Ed. Enzo Lauretta. N.p.: Palumbo Editore, 1976. 209-22.

Bicknese, Günther. uZur Rolle Americas in Max Frischs Homo faber." The Gennan Quarterly 42 (1969): 52-64.

Blocker, Gunter. Literatur aIs TeiIbabe. Berlin: Argon Verlag, 1966.

Butler, MichaeL The Novels ofMax Frisch. London: Oswald Wolff: 1976.

Cambon, Marlis Zeller. "Max Frischs Stiller und Luigi Pirandellos Mattia Pascal: Die Odyssee zu sich selbst" Frisch. Kritik - These - Analysen. BeitIil:e zum 65. Geburtsta~. Ed. M. Jürgensen. Sem: Francke Verlag, 1977.81-96.

-. Max Frisch und Luiii Pirandello; Eine Untersuchuni ZUT tbematiscben und stilistischen Affinitat furet Romane. Diss. BrYn Mawr College, 1976. Ann Arbor: UM 77-6515 28566.

Ca~ Marius. ''Max Frisch, das Absolute und der -Nouveau romance." Über Max Frisch U. Ed. Walter Schmitz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976.335-44.

Debenedetti, Giacomo. Dromapzo deI Novecento. Garzanti, Milano, 1971.

de Groot, Cegienas. "Bildnis, SelbstbiIdnis und Identitit in Max Frischs Romanen Stiller, Homo Faber und Mein Name sei Gantenbejn. En VergIeich." AmsterdamerBeitri~e zurneueren Gennanistik 9 (1980): 179-203.

(r Dombroski, Robert S. Le tota!itàdell'artificio; ldeoloiÏae fOrma nel romanzo di .. ~ 87

Pirandello. Padova: Liviana Editrice, 1978.

Donati, Corrado. "L'identità e la paroIa: Pascal, Gubbio e Moscarda interpreti della crisi dell'Io." Il sogna e la ra~one. Saim pirandelliani. Roma: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1993.93-135.

-. "La ricerca dell'identità da Pascal a Moscarda." La solirndine alla s.pecchio. Luigi Pirandello. Roma: Luciano Lucarini Editore, 1980.47-79.

Frisch, Max. Gesammelte Werke in zeitlicher Folie. Ed. Hans Mayer with Walter Schmitz. 12 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Subrkamp Verlag, 1976.

-. A Wildemess ofMirrors. Trans. Michael Bullock. London: Methuen, 1965.

--. Homo EabeT: A Report. Trans. Michael Bullock. 1959. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace,Iovanovitch, 1987.

-. l'm Dot Stiller. Trans. Michael Bullock. New York: Vintage Books, 1958.

Genco, Giuseppe. "Mattia Pascal e Vitangelo Moscarda, ovvero la morte della persona e la nascita deI personaggio." Pirandello. La morte della persona e la Dascità deI persoDaiiÏo. Napoli: Piero Lacaita Editore, 1993.43- 60.

Gioanola, Elia. Pirandello e la follia. Genova: il melangolo, 1983.

Grignani, Maria Antonietta. "TI farsi e il disfarsi dellinguaggio: retorica deI discorso e deI silenzio in Pirandello." La ceLlersonID' DeU'oLlera di Lujgi PirandellQ. Ani deI XXIII Convegno IntemazioDale Airlgento. 6-10 dicembre 1989. A cura di Enzo Lauretta. Milano: Ugo Mursia Editore, 1990. 175-89.

GuglieIminetti, Marziano. "Le vicende e i significati di "Uno, nessuno e centomiIa»." TI ~:RQmanzo" di Pirandello. Ed. Enzo Lauretta. N.p.: Palumbo Editore, 1976. 183-207.

Haberkamm, Klaus. uEinfall-Vorfall-ZufalI: Max Frischs Homo[aber ais Geschichte von auBen." MLN 97 (1982): 713-44.

Haster, Heima. "Das Kamera-Auge des Homo Faber: En Bei~g auch zur Medienpàdagogik." DiskussioD Deutsch 9 (1978): 375-87.

Hillen, Gerd. "Autor und Offentlichkeit in existentieller Sicht: Ein Kommentar zu Max Frischs Mein Name sei Gantenbein." CoUoqyia Gennanica 20 (1987): (l 338-56. 88

Hoffinann, Charles W. "The Search for SeIt: Inner Freedom, and Relatedness in the Novels ofMax Friseh." The Cootemponuy Novel in German. ASymposium. Ed. Robert R. Heitner. Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1969.93-113.

Honsza, Norbert "Anfder Suche nach neuer Ich-Erfassung: Zur Kommunikativitat und Applikation der Prosa von Max Friseh." Frisch: Kritik-Thesen-Analysen. Ed. Manfred Jurgensen. Bem: Francke Verlag, 1977.67-80.

Jurgense~ Manfred. Max Frisch. Die Romane. Bem: Francke VerIag, 1976.

Kesting, Marianne. "Pirandello und der ,Nouveau Roman'." Pirandello und die europijsche Erzâblliteratur des 19. und 20. Jabrhunderts. Akten des 4. Pirandello- KoIIogujums in Aachen vom 7. bis 9. Oktober 1988. Eds. Michael Rôssner u. Frank-Rutger Hausmann. Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1990. 58-76.

-. "Pirandello und einer seiner Interpreten." Aufder Sucbe nach der Realitit. KrÎtische Schriften ZUT modernen Literatur. München: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1972.58-65.

Klinkert, Thomas. "QlIaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore. Riflessioni sull'opera d'arte nell'epoca della sua riproducibilità tecnica.n PirandellQ zwjschen Avantgarcie und PostInodeme. Studia litteraria 7. Ed. Michael Rëssner. Wilhelmsfeld: Egert, 1997. 181-200.

Knapp, Mona 4'Der 'vrechniker" Walter Faber: Zu einem kritischen Missverstandnis." Geonaniç Notes and Reyjews 8 (1977): 20-3.

Krysinski, Wladimir. Le paradiame inqyiet: Pirandello et le champ de la modernité. Coll. L'Univers des discours. Montréal: Le Préambule, 1989.

-. uPirandello e la condizione postmodema.n Pjrandello e l'oltre. Ani deI XXV Convegno TntemaziooaIe. A&ri~ 5-9 dicembre 1990. Ed. Enzo Lauretta. Collana di saggi e documentazioni deI Centro nazionale di studi pirandelliani 32. Milano: Mursia, 1991. 227-32.

-. "Pirandello, la modernité et le postInodeme." L'enigma Pjrandello. Alti deI ConiI§so IntemazionaJe. Ottawa. 24-26 ottobre 1986. Eds. A. Alessio, C. Persi Haines, L. G. Sbrocchi. Biblioteca di Quademi d'italianistica. Ottawa: Canadian Society for ltaIian Studies, 1988.272-89.

Leone de Castrîs, A. "Il romanzo di Pirandello, rra tradizione e avanguardia." li ''RQlDauzo'' di PjrandeUo. Ed. Enzo Lauretta. N.p.: Palumbo Editore, 1976. 89

7-21.

Lista, Giovanni. "La drammaturgia futurista e il "cerebralismo funambolico n di Pirandello.u Pirandello e la drammann:gia tra le due iUerre. Ed. Enzo Scrivano. Coll. di saggi e documentazioni 14. Agrigento: Centra nazionale di Studi pirandelliani, 1985. 143-62.

Lubich, Frederik A. Max Frisch »StiIlercc. »Homo faber" und »Mein NaIne sei Gantenbeinct. München: Francke Verlag, 1990.

Lusser-Mertelsm~ Gunda. "SelbstfIucht und Selbstsuche. Das »Psychoanalytischecc in Frischs »Stillercc." Materialien zu Max Frisch >Stiller<. Zweiter Band. Ed. Walter Schmitt. Franlcfurt am Main: Suhrkamp VerIag, 1978.594-615.

Lüthï, Hans Jürg. Max Frisch "Du soUst dir kein Bildnis machen". München: Francke VerIag, 1981.

Martinelli, Luciana. Lo s.pecehio maiÏco: immagtDt deI femminile in Luim Pirandello. Bari: Edizioni Dedalo, 1992.

Mazzacurati, Giancarlo. Pirandello nel romanzo eurogea. Balogna: il Mulino, 1987.

MeHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. Methuen, 1987. London: Routledge, 1989.

Musgrave, Marian E. "The Evolution ofthe Black Character in the works orMax Frisch." Monatshefte 66 (1974): 117-32.

Peters~ Jürgen H. Max Frisch. Stiller. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Moritz Diesterweg, 1994.

Pirandello, Luigi. The Lale Mattia Pascal. Trans. Nicoletta Simborowski. London: Dedalus, 1987.

-. The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio. Trans. Cx. Scott Moncrieff: Sawtry: DedaIus,1990.

-. One, No One and a Hundred Ihousand. Trans. William Weaver. Boston: Eridanos Press, 1990.

-.Tutti i romanzi, Ed. Giovanni Macchia with Mario Costanzo. 2 vols. l Meridiani. N.p,: Arnaldo Mondadori Editore, 1973. 90

Probst, Gerhard F. "«cOu solI51 dir kein Bildnis machen»: Überlegungen zu Max Frischs Roman Mein Name sei Gantenbein." CQlloqyia Germanica II-3/4 (1978): 317-29.

-. ''Three levels Qf Image Making in Frisch's Mein NaIne sei Gantenbein.t' PeŒ1ectives on Max Frisch. Eds. G. F. Probst and J. F. Badine. LexingtQn: The University Press ofKentucky, 1982. 155-62.

Probst, Gerhard F. and Jay F. Badine, eds. Pers.pectives on Max Frisch. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1982.

Pullini, Giorgio. "Dalla crisi della persona alla dissoluzione (vitale) deI personaggio." Il romanzo di Pirandello e Svevo. Vellecchi Editore, 1984.

Querci, Giovanna. "Lo sfaccettamento della verità: l'uoma frantumato." Pirandello: l'incousistenza dell'oiiettività. Roma-Bari: Editori Laterza, 1992. 27- 57.

Reich-Ranicki, Marcel. Max Frisch. Aufsatze. Zürich: Ammann Verlag,1991.

Robbe-Grillet, Alain. Pour un nOUVeaU roman. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1963.

Rëssner, Michael. "Pirandello davanti all'abisso deI postmodernismo." Pirandello zwjseben Avantiarde und PostIDodeme. Studia Iitteraria 7. Ed. Michael Rôssner. Wilhelmsfeld: Egert, 1997.217-27.

Sarraute, Nathalie. L'ère du soupçon. Essais sur le [oman. N.p.: Gallimard, 1956.

Schabouk, Werner. ''Relativismus und Perspektivismus. Zum. Standort des Erzâhlers bei Pirandello, Kafka und V. Woolf." Pirandello und die euro.paiscbe Erzahlliteratur des 19. und 20. Jabrhunderts. Eds. M. Rëssner und F-R. Hausmann. Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1990. 119-40.

Schmitz-Emans, Monika. "Erzihlen ais Kunst der Selbstfindung - Pirandellos ,,Mattia Pascal" und einige seiner deutschen Verwandten. 11 Pirandello und die europâjsche ErzahUiteratur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Eds. M. Rëssner und F-R. Hausmann. Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1990. 173-90. \ Sican, Carmelina. "La fine dell'identità nel pensiero di Pirandello." La «persona» nell'opera di Luiii PirandellQ. Ani deI xxm Convemo IntemaziooaIe AWiento. 6-10 dieembre 1989. A cura di Enzo Lauretta. Milano: Ugo MursiaEditore, 1990. 175-89.

Sogliuzzo, Richard. "uSi giIa...», un'amara parabola della tecnologia modema." n 91

"Romaozo" di PjrandeUo. Ed. Enzo Lauretta Palumbo Editore, 1976. 169-81.

Strong Cincotta, Madeleine. "L'io, 10 specchio e 10 sguardo altrui." La persona nell'Qpera di Luim PirandellQ. Ani dei xxm ConveiQo Intemazionaie. AWiento. 6-10 dicerubre 1989. Ed. Enzo Lauretta Callana di saggi e documentazioni deI Centra nazionaIe di studi pirandelliani 29. Milano: Mursia, 1990. 267-80.

Torgovnick, Marianna GoDe Primitive: Savaa,e fntellects, Modem Lives. Chicago: The University afChicago Press, 1990.

Weisstein, Ulrich. "Stiller: die Suche nach der Identitat." Über Max Frisch U. Ed. Walter Schmitz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976. 245-65.

White, Andrew. "Die Labyrinthe der modemen Prosadichtung. Max Frischs .Stiller« als Roman der DEntfremdungc und der -Nouveau roman•." MateriaJieo zu Max Friscbs >Stiller<. Erster Band. Ed. Walter Schmitz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp VerIag,1978. 356-76.

-. "Reality and Imagination in Mein Name sei Gantenbein." Oxford Gennan Studies 16-21 (1977): 150-64.

Zeltner, Gerda. "Das Ich ahne Gewâhr." Max Frisch. Pro Helvetia Dossier. Bem: ZytgIagge Verla8t 1981. 99-116.

Zima, Peter V. Moderne (PostJDodeme. Tübingen: Francke, 1997.

\