Personal Identity in the Noveîs of Ma.x Frisch and Luigi Pirandello

Rachel Remington

German Department, McGiii University, Montreal

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfiiment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts

QRacheI Remington 1999 AcquisÏns and Acquisitions et Bibliogmptiic Services senrices biitiraphiques

The author lm granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exchive licence aliowhg the exclusive permettant a la National Lihry of Canada to Bbhothèque nationaie du Canada de reproduce, Ioan, dïsûiiute or seU reproduire, prêter, dkîriiuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thése sous paper or ektronic formats. la forme de microfichel& de reprodnction sur papier ou sur format électronique.

The author retaias omership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts hm it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantieis may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent êûe imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son p&ssion. autorisation. Table of Content

Table of Content

Acknowledgements

Abstract in English

Abstract in French introduction

Chapter 1: Pirandello and Frisch htroduc tion infiuence? Pirandello and the nouveau roman Frisch and the nouveau roman Modernism and Postmodemism Notes

Chapter 2: 11 fii Mattia Pascal and StilIer introduction Paralle1 Stories Starting Point and Crisis New Life Under New Ideotity Retun Home Different Narrative Structures The ''Moral'' of the Story Roif and the Critics n fit Don EIigio and the Critics The Unconscious Conclusion Notes . . Chapter 3: QJJ&W di Se&o -mto~ and Homo f&x Introduction and Summary of the Plots Science and Art: Two Competing Modes of Cognition Faber Gubbio The Ambivalence in the Protagoaists' Relation to Technology Gubbio Faber The TechnoIogist/ûperatar-Personaas Shield Faber Gubbio The Counter-Worid: the ldyll Gubbio Faber Conclusion Notes

Chapter 4: Uno. nessuno e centomila and Mein Name sei Gantenbein Introduction Uno. nessuno e centorda Story Form Identity Crisis interviews with Frisch and PirandeIio Mein Narne sei Gar&xkh s-ary Variation and Repetitions: Postmodem IndiEerence Enderiin, a Pamdy of the Modernist Hero Gantenbein or the Postmodern attitude towards Ro le-PIaying Ontological Perspective on Personal Identity Narrative Self-Erasure Frisch and Postrnodernism Pirandello and Postmodemism Conclusion Notes

Conclusion and Summary .. * lu

Acknowledgments

1would like to thank my supervisors, Professors Bauer and Kroha, for their essentiai contributions. Lucienne Kroha has taught me ItaIian literature since the be-g of my undergraduate studies at McGili and had a major influence on my acadernic development. Karin Bauer headed the chaiIenging graduate seminar on identity in which 1discovered the noveIs of Max Frisch and first had the idea for the thesis. Both made very helpful comrnents and suggestions on various cirafts of this thesis.

1am particularly indebted to my parents for their lifelong moral and hancial

support. And 1 would ike to tbank them and my sister for sending me essentid documents and information while 1was &bishingtbis thesis in Spain with no library

access, 1would also like to thank my husband for being such a wonderfil father and

homemaker.

This project was hded by the Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et

l'Aide à la Recherche (FCAR) and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst

@Am- iv

Abstract

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

(Agrigento 1867-Rome 1936) and Max Frisch (Zurich 291 1-1991). Six texts are

. * discussed: Pirandello's Il fu Mattia Pascai (19041, Ouademi di Sedno Gubbio

operatore (191 S), and m. nessuno e centom(1 925-6); and Frisch's Stillq (1954),

Homo faber (1957), and Mein Name sei Gantenbein (1964). The comparison

highiights the great sirniladies between Pirandello's and Frisch's treatment of the

theme of identity as well as some important (and mainly structural) differences in

their noveiistic works. The anaiysis of the three pain of novels shows the

developments in narrative structure and the characteristic change of attitude towards

the question of identity construction that took place hm earIy-modernisrn to

postmodeTnism.

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

PirandeUo (Agrigento 1867-Rome 1936) et de Max Frisch (Ztaich 1911-19991). Six . . textes y sont analysés: fl fu Mattia Pascd (19041, Ouadenudiin

gueratori; (1915) et uno. nessuno e cent- (19256) de PirandeUo; et Stiller

(1954), EJomo fabq (1957) et Mein Name sei Ga3Ztenbei-u (1964) de Frisch. La

comparaison révèle de grandes ressemblances dans la &on dont Pirandello et Frisch

traitent le théme de l'identité persoxme11e dans leurs oeuvres romanesques ainsi que

d'importantes différences, surtout de type structural. L'analyse des trois paires de

/- ( ! romans montre le dévelappernent des structures narratives et le changement d'attitude v face à la question de la consûuction de l'identité qui se sont déroulés du début du modemime jusqu'au postmodernisme. 1 Introduction

The idea for this comparative study of the novels of a Sicilian and a Swiss

writer who were not even contemporaries is the resuit of a coincidence. As a student

of Geman and Itdian iiterature 1 was already familiar with Luigi PirandelIo

(Agrigente 1867- Rome 1936) when 1was first introduced to the work of Max Frisch

(Zurich 19 11 - 1991) through the reading, for a seminar on identity, of Mein Name

~eiGantenbein. My 6rst impression was that this noveI was very Pirandellian. After

redmg other novels and plays by Frisch, 1was amazed to see that his three novels

on personal identity were not oniy generally Pirandeliian, but that each particuIarly

resembled one (and a different one) of Pirandello's three novels on the same theme.

The project which had, at nrst, an impressionistic feei, soon defined itself and

became more cornplex. However, the amazement at the after dl not-so-simple

similarities and si-gificant ciifferences in the work of my two authors has onIy

increased over time.

Max Frisch's work has been the object of much critical work And PirandelIo

has alrnost become a field of study per se with not only htmdreds of pubiished books

and articles but also severai intemational conférences, a journal and even a research

centre devoted to the study of his work, his life and his fortmies at home and abroad.

However, aimost nothing has been done in comparative fiteratrire to study b~th

authors jointly. This ir perhaps because, as 1was oftm told in Canada, Italy and

Gemiany, it it undto study both Itaüan and ûerman iiterature. As Pirandello and r'- r'- ) Frisch are weiI known to aii weii-read speakers of their respective languages, 1was 2 hoping to fmd something in Italian scholarship on Frisch or Gennan scholarship on

Pirandello. But 1 have searched and found iittle German secondary iiterature on

Pirandello, and even fewer Itaiïan writings on Frisch. 1 wiH mention a few artic1e.s

linking Pirandello and Frisch in chapter 1. They are by German scholars. The only

extensive comparative study of Pirandello and Frisch is an American dissertation in

German hm1976. The author, Mariis ZeUer Cambon, bas chosen the same texts as

1 as the basis for her study of the thematic and stylistic similarities between the two

However, in contrast to Cambon, 1 will concentrate on the construction of

personal identity in the chosen novels. 1will aIso give my thesis a clear direction and

purpose by Iooking at how the question of identity has evotved fiom fl fu Mania

Pascal (1904) to Mein Name sei Gantab& (1964). Personai identity is such a major

theme in the work of both Pirandello and Frisch that it is important and often central

to many books and articles about their work and especialiy those about the novels

discussed here. It would be interesthg to look at the representation of personal

identity in the pIays, in Frisch's Andom, for exampie, but this study will be limited,

for the sake of cornparison, to three novels by each author. In the case of both

Pirandello and Frisch, these novels are generally acknowIedged and widely referred

to as their three main noveIs on personal identity.

Much bas aIso been written about Pirandello's relation to naturaiism,

modemism, and, more recentiy, postmodemisn. On the 0thhand, surprisnigiy little

,r-b i 1 has been done to situate Max Frisch's work on the modemism-postmodernism 3 continuum. This is perhaps because scholars in the field of German iiterature have corne Iate and in relativeIy few numbers to the debate over postmodemism. 1think it is worthwhile looking into Frisch's position within postmodernist üerature and the tum that the problem of identity takes in his last novel on the çubject, Mein Name sei mtenbein. 1wilI descnie briefly, in chapter 1, the two conceptions of modemism and postmodernism which will guide my anaiysis in the other three chapters. They denve fiom works of iiterary theory and deai specificaiiy with how issues of modernism and postmodernism manifest in fiterature.

In the 6rst chapter 1wiii also address the issue of influence and introduce the theme of identity as well as a closely related theme, the perception of reaiity. In the last three chapters, 1 will actuaily compare the novels. Chapter 2 wilI be devoted to a cornparison of two noveIs with a simiiar plot, B fu Mattia Pascal (1904) and StiIIg -. (1954). In Chapter 3,1 will look at a set of novels, $&&DI di Sm- Gubbiq oueratore (1915) and Horn0 faber (1957)' in which the issue of personal identity is addresseci within the heworkof a reflection on technobgy in our century. Chapter

4 will be on the two novels which most radically reject and destroy the concept of an authentic identity, Uno. nessuno e centd (1925-6) and Mein Narne sei

Gantenbei~~(I964).My aim dlbe to show the great similarities as weii as some important ciifferences between Pirandeiio's and Frisch's treatment of identity construction. The anaiysis of the three pairs of noveIs will show the deveIopments in narrative structure as weil as the characteristic change of attitude towards the constnrction of personai identity hmearly-modemism to postmodemism. CHAPTER I

Pirandello and Frisch

Since this is a comparative study in which I will show some striking

simiIarities between the novels of Max Frisch and those of Luigi Pirandello, I shall

first address the issue of influence. Since Frisch started publishing in 1934, some

years after the appearance in 1925 of Pirandello's last novel, Uno. nessuno e

centornila 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 of the nouveau

roman. This will sme a double purpose. First, it wi1I introduce the central themes

discussed in this thesis and present both authors' conceptions in general terms, îhat

is without discussing one pair of novels in particdar. Second, it will put Pirandello

and Frisch in a wider European context. Because while both authoa display

particuiarly striking similarities with regard to the themes of identity constmction and

perception of reality, they are hardIy the ody authors of their respective generations

to have dedt with these themes. hdeed, these have engaged many of the most

important authors of this century. The nouveau roman seems the obvious choice for

a comparison because it hcludes several authors who have dedt mtensively with the

construction of identity and dty, which they have sought to demyst*. This

comparison of both authors' ideas about and attitrides toward identity and reality to - 'i 1 those displayed in the nuuveau ruman (and to which the later Frisch seems closest) 5

wiii &O be the fïrst step m the discussion regarding the evolution of the question of

identity. Indeed, the advantage of comparing the work of two authors fiom different

time periods and in whose work the theme of identity is so central, is that it wiiI

ilIustrate the changes that have occurred over several decades, fiom early-modemism

to postmodernism.

In her dissertation, Marlis Zeiier Cambon rejects the hypothesis of influence.

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

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

encIaves," Sicily and Switzerland, isoIated but with hteresting relations to a larger

context, Le. Italy and the German-speaking world respectively. Moreover they wrote

in Itaiian or German whiIe their mother tongues were, in fact, dialects.' 1 think

Cambon's point cm be made clearer by using, instead of the words enclave, isolation

and dialect, the wider concept of periphery. SiciIy is cuituraiiy and LingtusticaiIy

peripheral with respect to mainland My, as is the German-speakuig part of

SwitzerIand with respect to Germany. Aithough it carniof m my opinion, account for

ail similarities between the work of the two, the fact that Pirandello and Frisch are

bath writers of the perïphery might weU have somethhg to do with their predilection

for such themes as the construction of identity and the perception of reality.

The other factor proposed by Cambon to account for the similarities between

' Pirandello and Frisch is their common debt (in themes, imagery and poetics) to 6

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

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

Pirandello, who studied in Bonn for two years at the end of the nineteenth cent~ry.~

1do not wish to dispute the infiuence 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 SchIemihI.) However, if Romanticism inclined them to examine the nature of identity and reality, to question the realist myths of the

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

in their treatment and development of those themes. I beiieve it is hardly a coincidence that amongst Swiss authors, all just as iikely to be farniliar with German

Romanticism, onIy Frisch would dispIay such a striking resembIance to Pirandello.

Cambon suggests that Frisch, although he was certainly familiar with

Pirandello's plays, showed no particulas interest in his n~vels.~Assuming this to be

true, his acquaintance with his drama aiready means that he was familiar with his

thought. Both Pirandello and Frisch dedt with more or Iess the same themes in prose

and drama, in fact so much so that both authors wrote drarnatic versions of earlier

prose works, such as Jtip van Widcie (,,aand Ciascuno a srro modo (Ouaderni

di Serafino Gubbid. Pirandello transposed many short stories into plays. Cambon

notes that Frisch mentions Pirandello sevdtnnes in his work, but never refemto

any particular work5 This fact, ifit does not demonstrate a specid interest for the

noveIs, is msufficient to conchde that Frisch's howledge or appreciation of

Pirandello's work was iimited to his drama. AlthoughPirandeUo was howu outside 7 his homeland mainly for his theatre: one can certainly hypothesize, in the case of a

writer such as Frisch, who lived in Rome hm1960 to I%5 and was concemed with

the theme of identity, a more extensive knowIedge of Pirandello. In Frisch's novel

Stiller, there is a book by Pirandello on the bookshelfin StiIiefs studio. The narrator

Stiller-White does not specify which book, and tells the reader that there is no way

of knowing for sure what Stiller actually read and what he understood or

misunderstood. However, it is rnilikefy that Frisch wouId 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 of the average German-speaking

European's Iiterary knowledge,' it seems strange that there should be, for example,

only one book by Thomas Mann, Zauberberg, but many by Albin ZolIinger,

Moreover, considering that Stillefs Davos-episode points to Zauberberq and that

Frisch admired Zolliger very much, as Cambon reports: the inventory of Stiller's

books appears to be a summary of the important infiuences, thernes and motifs in

Stiller rather than a representation of the canon. Monika Schmitz-Emans caiis

Frisch's Stiller "eine modifkiate Neuauflage Mattia Pascals"? And Marianne

Kesting -mites about "Max Frisch Aufwiimung der Mattia-Pacd-Problematik in

Stiller und Gantenbeig".lo 1do not agret with Kesting rhat Frisch merely "warmed

up" Pirandello's Mattia Pascal. But 1 regard it as very IîkeIy that he had rwd

PirandelIo's novels, so 1 do not reject the pssiiility of duence. However, the

purpose of this study is not to pmve that Pirandello has influencecl Frisch but rather . ..< -~. to show how the work of the Sicilian writer resonates in that of the younger Swiss 8 writer. There are striking and deep thematic similarities but aIso important ciifferences which seem to be largely attniutable to the evolution of the novel within this century. The foiiowing discussion of the nouveau roman wiIl introduce the main common thernes and point out the structural differences.

The nouveau roman rests on a new understanding of the human being's place in the world. The novelistic tradition of the 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 Iui adresse aucun signe, qui n'a rien de commun avec lui," sparked great and almost generai resistance even in the Fifties." Of course, this conception was not completely new in literahue. It is at Ieast implicit in sevenl modemist writers of the first halfof the century who had started to break away fiom the realist tradition, and in whose work the dienation of man fiom his environment is an important theme. in this sense, Pirandello, dong with Kafka and Joyce to name a few, is a precursor of the nouveau roman. in Mama Pasci& the narrator complains that modem man cannot be happy because he is now aware that he is iike a toasted wonn on a grain of sand which rotates without ever getthg anywhere. But he thp~ ad& that man is good at deluding himself and gives the example of his hometown where the street-Iamps are not lit on some days of the month as if the moon were there just to provide the townspeople with Light. 9 The idea that the worid, as we conceive it, is iiterally our conception, our invention, a construction that our culture seeks to keep do& is central to both

Pirandello's thought and that of the noweaur romanciers. In "Une voie pour Ie roman futur," Robbe-Grillet wrote that Eeedom of observation was impossible because "des franges de culture (psychologie, morde, métaphysique, etc.) viennent s'ajouter aux choses, leur donnant un aspect moins étranger, plus compréhensibIe, plus rassurant." In the same paragraph, the chief theorkt of the nouveuu roman cornplains that traditionai litmture "fonctionne comme une grille, munie de verres diversement colorés, qui décompose notre champ de perception en petits carreaux a~sirnilables."'~ïhis recalls how don Anseho, in 0 fu Mattia Pascal characterizes human perception and understanding of the world. In what became famous as his

"lanternosofia," he uses the image of a Iantern that we dl have inside our heads as an aiiegory of our limited and culturally determined perception:

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

iI vetro che ci fonzisce I'iiiusione, p mercanteçsa, gran mercantessa

di vetri coIorati. A me sembra perb, signor Meis, che in certe età della

storia, corne in cme stagioni deIIa vita individuaIe, si potrebbe

determinare il predommio d'un dato colore, eh? In ogni et& infatti, si

mole stabilire tra gli uomini un certo accordo di sentimenti che da

Iume e coIore a quei Ianternoni che sono i termini astratti: Verità,

Virtù, Beiiezza, Onore, e che so io ... E non Ie pare che fosse rosso, ad

esempio, il lanternone deiia Virth pagana? Di coIore violette, color 10

deprimate, queiio deUa ViaU cristiana. fl lume d'ma idea cornune

è alimentato da1 sentimento coiIettivo (TR 1,485) I3

As Samuel Beckett, a practitioner of the nouveau roman, has observed: "the worid

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

renewed." And both Beckett @fu@~v,1938) and Mdello (Enrico IV, 1922) show

how an encounter with anothefs rnadness cm be a confhntation with our own

iIIusions and constructions, because the mad person compIeteIy disregards them and

has a totdiy diEerent logic.''

As opposed to the traditiond writers, who thought they couId and sought to

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

just how much depended on perception and interpretation.15 firandello's noveIs . . Ouadernr dr Serafino Gubbro ouerato~and Uno. nessuno e centorni14 and his plays . . Ciascuno a suo modo (dramatic version of Serafino,Cosi e (se vi ?are) and

Sei persona ggg,-. to name just a few, are mainly concerned with the

impossibility of human objectivity, the absence of absolute tniths and the failure of

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

of an event, but only possible accounts of an event, for it is expenenced differently

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

trials and mqiMes, and simiIarIy, many witnesses are inteMewed, but the Cnmepr

mystery is never SOMbecause it proves imposstbIe to reconstnrct "reality.""j

Natfialie Sarraute's 1.a fiuits d'oy, in which Pirandeilo's name qpears with reference r-: to his p1aymco IV, is aU about the interpretation of a book, and how everyoae has I. 11 a different opinion of it which is aiso aiways subject ta change. At the end, it remains impossiile for the reader to tell what kind of book it was and if it was any

"good."

And perception and interpretation do not determine ody our vision and understanding of things and events. The question applies to people as weli, and this is where the theme of identity cornes into play. The scene which probably best illustrates this is one Erom Uno. nessuno e centornila, where the protagonist and narrator, Vitangelo Moscarda, comes into a room to meet his wife, Dida, and a iiiend,

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

1. Dida, com'era per sé;

2. Dida, corn'era per me;

3. Dida, corn'en per Quantorzo;

4. Quantorzo, com'era per sé;

5. Quantorzo, com'era per Dida;

6. Quantorzo, com'era per me;

7. il Caro Gengè [VitangeIo] di Dida;

8. il car0 Vitangelo di Quantono. (TR II, 847-8)''

There is a very simiIar scene in Beckett's M when a man enters +e room in which Mercier and Camier hdthemselves:

Camier le regarda, Iui regarda Mercier et Mercier se mit à regarder

Carnier. Ainsi, sans que les regards se croisassent, fiit-il engendré 12 des images d'me grande complexité, chacun jouissant de soi-même

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

plus obscmémenf des trois versions de soi dont jouissaient les deux

autres, soit au total neuf images difficilement c~nciliables.'~

So personal identity is also perception and interpretation, it is a mask, a de, a construction. And as ernerges hmPirandello's work, either we play dong, or we are out of the game, Le. society. The authentic identity is an iiiusion; identity is fiction. This means that we are Mysplaying roles, wiih the onIy distinction being behiveen 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 of the fragmentation of the self. The protagonist usuaily suffets fiom the awareness of this fragmentation whereas the secondary characters generaiiy perceive themselves as unified subjects. This suffering and longing for a unified self is absent, though, hmthe nouveau roman, as we wiii see shortly in connecfion with Frisch.

So PirandelIo, dong with other modemist writers, ptobabiy had a strong influence on îhe vision of the world found in the nouveau roman. One aspect that distinguishes the nmeuur romanciers quite cIearIy hmtheir Man precursor is narrative technique. Witti his co~ctionism,his emphasis on subjectivity7his use of the unreliable fIrst person nanator, ofdiffetent ~omtsof view, of humour, of ïmny, of the grotesque, of contradictions, Pirandello cdydistanced himseif hmhis mots m Verism (Mian natinalism). A vision of the world such as his inevitabIy Ieads to a rejection of traditiod literature. At the outset of Mattia Pascd the nivrator, 13 who wants to justifL the fact that he is writing his rnemoirs, assures the reader that

bis book dlbe ciSesent, without the ulllleceçsasr details, that no one cares to hear:

"II signor conte si levo per tempo, aire ore otto e mezzo precise... La signora contessa

indosso un abito IilIa con una ncca fioritura di merletti aIla gola." (TR 1, 323).19

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

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

heure^."'^ However, the French anUnoveI goes much merin its subversion of the

traditional novel. With its radical rejection of the traditiond form (plot, hero,

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

personai identity and meaning as weil as the Limits of sensual perception and

laquage. As Werner Schabouk remarks, and this will be discussed in the following

chapters, there is dl,in Pirandello's noveIs, a certain discrepancy between content

and form.fl

Frisch has succeeded in mnslating into form and structure what Pirandello

had expressed discursively and illustrateci with anecdotes, but to a certain extent left

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

in the next thechapters - StilIer (1954), Homo Faber (1957), and Mein Name sei

Gantenbein (1964) - duing the years in which the nouveau roman flourished, and

his technique has much in common with it. Frisch said: "Tch bewundere die Vertw$er

des >Nouveau roman<, die aus Theone daraufverzichten, Romane wie Baizac ni

schreiiea"" In an mterview about Frisch said the novel

way treats ('- '! was no nmemrorncmn However, the he the novel in Mein Nme sei 14

Gantenbein, which also testines to a change of attitude towards the problem of

identity, is very reminiscent of the nouveau roman.

The elements which dowus to connect the nouveau roman to PirandelIo are

dso present and fundamental in Frisch's novels. The recurring confiict between

"BiIdnis" and "SeIbstbi1dnisw,image and self-image, for instance, is Frisch's way of

handling the theme of the impossible quest for the authentic identity. Stiller-White,

for example, writes about an encounter with five long-lost friends of Stiller:

"wahrend sie so reden, überlege ich im Ernst, was fiir ein Mensch ich sein mlisste, um

den Erinnemgen und Erwartungen dieser MBesucher auch nur in grossen Zügen

ni entsprechen, etwas wie eh fÜnf kopfiges Wesen, glaube ich" (GW III-2,679)."

Faced with multiple images of himself, the protagonist realizes that his personal

identity is subject to interpretation and that everyone comes to a more or less

different conclusion regarding who he is. He sees that each person has a different

image of him and that noue of these images actualiy matches his own, and this is

what causes his feelings of alienation. As Andrew White has pointed out in his

article on Frisch and the nouveau roman, Stiller and the experirnental novel's

anti-heroes are not Like the outsider of typicai (Le. modernist) twentieth century

Iiterature who feeIs rejected by a society into which he does not fit, like Mann's Tonio

Kr6ger or Musil's Ulrich. Th& ctlienation is presented as inherent to the present

human condition and proceeds hmthe impossibility of shared e~perience.~~And

actually, whiIe StilIer remains, in rny opinion, a very modemist hero, Gantenbein is cl much doser to the nouveau romwz's postmodern depiction of the decentred subject, 15 because his multiple selves or possiïilities are not causing him any grief aThereas

Pirandello's heroes and Frisch's eariier protagonists are either desperately searçhing

for the authentic self or mourning the long fantasied unifid subject, for Gantenbein,

it is al1 a game.

According to Peter V. Zima, this later attitude is, more than any styiistic

characteristic, what differentiates postmodemism fiom modemism. Whereas

modeniist Iiterature is characterized by ambivaience, postmodemist literature is

marked by indifference. Rejected in postmodemism is the writer's claim to sociai

Miticism. lnstead of questioning, as the modernists did, tradition, truth and identity,

the postmodemist wtiter plays with them. Art becomes a game. The modernist search

for the true self, for example, is either abandoned, parodied or carried on ad

abs~rdum.~~According to another theorist of postmodemist literature, Brian McEde,

modemist fiction raises predorninantIy epistemologicai questions such as "How can

I interpret this world of which I am a part? And what am 1 in it? . . . What is there to

be known?; Who knows it? . . . What are the bits of the knowable?" whereas

postmodemist iiterature gives precedence to ontoIogicai questions like: 'Wch

world is this? What is to be doue m it? Which of my selves is to do it?"" According

to McHak, it is useful to distinguish between nouveau and nouveau nomeau roman

as this distinction coincides with the one between modemist and postmodemist

fictionB He demonstrates this evolution of the French movement hmthe work of

Alain Robbe-Grillet: La ialousie (1963, "a '%lassic"nouveau roman", addresses - (') preduminantiy epistemological questions wbiie La Maison de rendez-vous (1965)' 16

"an exemplary nouveau nouveau roman", favours ontologicai issue^.^ McHaie also sees "the transition fiom modemist to postmodemist poetics" in Samuel Beckett's

~ork.~Oin chapter 4,1 wiiI consider the possi'biiity of seeing such a transition in Max

Frisch's novelistic work. I shdI then rem to McHde's as weii as to Zima's conceptions of postrnodernisrn. Notes

1.Ma& Zeller Cambon, Max Frisch und LuiPi Pirandello: Eine Untersuchune mr thematischen und stilistischen Affinitat ihrer Romane, Diss. Bryn Mawr College, 1976 (Ami Arbor: UM 77-6515 28566) 19-20,175.

9.Mouika Schmitz-Emans, "Erzahlen als Kunst der Seibstfindung - Pirandellos ,,Mama Pascalt1und einige seiner deutschen Verwandten," -delIo und die eurouZZ.. - ,eds. M. Rossner and F.-R. Hausmann (Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1990) 18 1.

l0,Marianne Kesting, "Pirandello und einer seiner hterpreten," Auf der . * Suche nach der Re alitst. Kntische Schriften zur modernen Literatm (München: R Piper & Co. Verlag, t 972) 58.

11 Aiain Robbe-Grillet, Pour un nouveau rom(Pans: 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 sign, and which has nothing to do with him.

12.Robbe-GrilIet, 20. My transIation: "figes of dture (psychoIogy, ethics, metaphysics, etc.) are added to things givmg them an aspect less foreign, more comprehensible, more ceassuring" and traditiond Kterature "functions as a gxid fitted with diversely coioured glas which breaks up our fieid of perception\ into mal1 easily assimilated ffagments"

13.Luigi Pirandello, The T,atemtrans. NicoIetta Simborowski (London: Dedatus, 1987) 160: 'T shouid Say htof all that they must be multicobmed; what's your opinion? They will have the cobur of the giass supplied for us by ilInsion, iIiusion, that great merchant of coloured giass. However, 1do ttiink, Signor Meis, that in certain periods of history, as at certain stages of an individuai's Me, one colour tends to take precedence. in each period in fact, a certain agreement about feelings tends to establish itseifamongst men, which gives iight and colour to those Iantem which are represented by the abstract te=: Tmth, Vie, Beauty, Honour and so on. ... Dont you think, for example, that the Lantern of pagan Virtue must have been red? Christian Virtue must have been violet, a depressing colour. The Iight of a common idea is fed by collective feeling;"

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

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

17.Luigi Pirandello, One. None and a Hundred-Thousand, trans. William Weaver (Boston: Endanos Press, 1990) 108: l)Dida, as she was for herself; 2)Dida, as she was for me; 3)Dida, as she was for Quantorzo; 4)Quantoao, as he was for himself; S)Quantorzo, as he was for Dida; 6)Quantorzo, as he was for me; i)Dida1sdear Gengé; 8)Quantorzo's dear Vitangeio.

18Xesting, "Pirandello und der ,.Nouveau Roman'," 72. But Kesting's quote skips a few words, so the exact citiation cornes directly fiom: Samuel Beckett, Mercier(Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1970) 138. Samuel Beckett, Mercier and m,translateci by the author (London: Calder &Boyan, 1974) 82: Carnier Iooked at him, who looked at Mercier, who begari to look at Carnier. Thus were engendered, though no eyes met, images of extreme complexity enabIing each to enjoy himseif in three distinct Snnuitaneous versions plus, on a more modest scaIe, the three versions of seifenjoyed by each of the others, namely a total of nine images at first sight irrecondable, not to mention the confusion of fhstrated excitations jostling on the hgesof the field. \ 19SirandeiI0, The Late Mattia Pascd 18: "The Count rose at 8.30 precisely. ... the Cotmtess put on a lilac gown, richly decorated with lace at the thro at...."

20Kesting, "Pirandello und der ,Nouveau Roman'," 65. 2I.Werner Schabouk, "Relativismus und Perspektivismus. Zum Standort des Erzahlers bei Pirandello, Kafka und V. Woolft" Pirandello und die eun~aischeErzahIIiteratur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, eds, M. R6ssner and F.-RHausmann (Born: Romanistischer Verlag, 1990) 121.

22.White, 370. My translation: 1admire the practitioners of the nouveau roman, who give up writing novels Iike Balzac.

24.1Max Frisch, I'm not Stiller, trans. Michael Bulluck (New York: Vintage Books, 1958) 292: "while they were talking, I senously wondered what kind of person 1 must be to correspond, even in broad outline only, to the mernories and expectations of these five visitors-something like a five-headed monster, 1 thought"

26.Peter V. Zirna, Moderne 1 Postmodeme (TUbingen: Francke, 1997) 247- 334.

27.Brian McHde. Postmoderni'st Fiction (Methuen, 1987. London: Routledge, 1989) 9-10. CHAPTER2

ii fu Mat!ia Pascal and Stiller

The Search for a New SeIf

Il fu Mattia Pascal is Pirandello's second novel and the first of three written

in the first person and dealing with persona1 identity. It wwas fht published in

instalments in Nuova Antoloia in 1304. Fifty years later Mw Frisch pubiished

Stiller, likewise his second novel and the first of his three main noveh on identi~.

As Marlis ZelIer Cambon remarks in her essay on Pascal and Stiller, while the

episode of Mein Name sei Gantenbein where a man reads his own obituary is very

similar to the first part of a fu Mattia Pascal, overall the most direct connections are

to be found between Mattia Pascal and Stiller.' Frisch's novel, written haif a cenhny

derPirandelio's, is much more complex in its narrative structure. From Pirandello's

stiIi somewhat veristic tuni-of-the-century novel to Frisch's post-war novel, we see

an evolution in the genre. Nevertheless, the two works are very similar modeniist

illustrations of the doomed search for one's authentic seK

The plot is very similar: a man, unhappily married and not successfui

professionaiiy, leaves his hometown, his wife, family and fiiends behind hoping to

hda better life elsewhere under a new identity. However, this leads to unexpected

difficdties, and the man eventually decides to retum home, where he meets with

reactions opposite to those he had expected. Meraperiod of rebeltion (short, in the r ) case of Pascal; in the case of Stiller, longer), he accepts the legal identiw that is 21 assigned to him and resigns himseif to a solitary He on the figeof society.

The situations which Iead the protagonists to £iee their lives are very similar.

Both Pascal and Stiller are dissatisfied with their relationships and with themselves, and, more importantly, they feel as though bey do not have the power to change things. They are haunteci by the hedform of their tives. Mattia Pascal was brought up m a wealthy home but lost his father at a yomg age. Due to his mother's inability to manage the famiIy's finances and the dishonesty of the administrator of their estate, he &O loses his inheritance before he has had the chance, iike his brother, to make an advantageous marriage. Moreover, since he had never bothered with an education. he is also without a profession. Mer many intrigues, during which he impregnates two women - the young wife and the niece of the huduIent adrninistrator- Mattia is forced to marry the niece and, because he has lost everything, to move in with his mother-in-law. To heIp support the family and to avoid the humiliation of being hancially dependent on his Mets mother, he accepts a job as a librarian. In the deconsecrated church, which is home to an oId eclectic collection, he is busier kiiIing rats than caring for books. About the feelings he had at the tirne Pascal says: "Cosi, sempre, hoalla morte, senz'alcun mutamento, mai ... L'imrnobilita di quella mia esistenza mi suggeriva dora pensieri sùbiti, quasi lampi di foiiia" (TR1,368): Mer the death of his mother and twin daughters, Mattia Leaves his hometown, Miragno.

FolIowing a short but extremeIy fi&d trip to the casino m Monte CarIo, he is on his way home when he happens to read a newspaper account of his suicide and burial: the body of a man found in the water of a di near the place where he had last been seen has been identified by relatives and fiends as hiç own, Mattia decides to take advantage of this emr to escape once and for ail to a new and fieer iife.

StilIer's life prior to his departure is sirnilar to Pascal's in many respects.

After having failed as an antifascist soldier in the Spanish Civil War, he has iittle success as a scuIptor, whereas his wife, Juiika, is an accIaimed prima ballerina His relationship with her is dso a complete failure, based, as he later reflects, on both their fears that they couId never satisfj another person. StiIIer has a short &air with a maxried woman, SibylIe, and after this has gone wrong as well, he boards a ship for

America But, as Schmitz-Emans rightiy remarks, it is not so much ail those failures that Stiller is escaping as the "Prinzip der bestimmten IdentiEt", the "Fixierung" of which his profession, sculpture, is a symboL3 Before leaving, he has a discussion with his wife but is unable to change the fixed image that she has ofhirn, even though she cornplains of the same problem, when she says: "Du hast dir nun einmal ein

Biidnis von nrir gemacht, das merke ich schon, ehfertiges und endsurtiges Bildnis, und damit Schiuss. Anders als so, ich spürte es ja, willst du mich jetzt einfach nicht mehr sehen" (GW III-2,499)? They both suffer hmthis situation, but they both blame the other for it. So Stiller ieaves the comtry without tehganyone and stows away to America \

On the trip which wodd haUy take him to Monte CarIo, Mattia Pascal had aiso considered, brkfiy, fleeing to the New World But when he is faced with his obituary and does decide to start a new lifi he stays in Europe. AU that is Iefi of the 23 idea of Amerka is that Adriano Meis, Mattia Pascal's inventai new self, was "borntt there, in Argentina. At the be-g of his two-year adventure Pascai-Meis feels totaiiy ke: no wife, no mother-in-law, no creditors, and a nice sum of rnoney won at the casino. He is rid of what he thought wodd be his lot until his death. Now, thanks to his supposed death, he can start anew and be the architect of his own me.

He changes his name and appearance, and he invents a past of his own for Adriano

Meis, his new alter ego. Then, der some time spent travelling in Germany and Italy, feeling the need for a home, he choses to settIe dom m Rome, literally a self-made man. However, his new persona sIowIy becomes a new prison, very sirnilar to the first one and with the added difficuIty that Adriano Meis does not exist officiaily.

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

StilIefs exile is no more successfhi than Pascal's. He travels to the US,

Mexico, Jamaica, changes his name to JM White and rids himseif of aii the trappings of his former Iife - wife, patrons, etc. - m the hope of discoverhg his real self. But iike Meis, White cannot shed the shadow of his pst experiences, which iike "little grey", the cat, aiways cornes back Kis He as White seems just as miserable as the oId one, if not more so. Based on his stories, it seems that he was living in a shack, in exchange for feeding the orner's cat, and Chat he was in love with his neighbog a marrïed woman more intemted in the cat than in its iceeper. In any case, the new iife and the new identity have not solved SMds problem, and eventually he attempts suicide. Faced with death, an experience White calls the encounter with his angel, 24

he decides that he wants to Eve. He beiieves that he h,at lasr, become a new man,

and he does not feel the need to flee his past anymore. He therefore goes home for

confirmation of his new and "authentic" identity.

So, having found no cornfort in exiIe but feeling that they have learned

something hm this experience, both Pascal and Stiller return home with great

expectations. But they will not be met. On the conm. Pascal who returns home

after two years, happy to regain his former legal identity and his old life as Mattia

Pascal, is not even recognized as he arrives in town. For tiie people in EuIiragno,

Mattia Pascd has been dead for two years, his wife has remanied, and it is as though

he had never existed. Pascal threatens to fight to get his old identity back, even if it

means invalidating his wife's second marriage. However, upon leaming that his

"widow's" second union has produced a baby girl, Pascal renounces his rîght to an

identity and accepts his official status as deceased. He Leads a Ionely existence,

Iiving with his oId aunt and spending his time in the library where he writes his

memoirs as the Iate Mattia Pascal.

Stiller-White's experience upon his remis in some way opposite to that of

Pascal-Meis, but he, too, does not get the reaction he was expecting or hopeful of

receiving. He thinks he is retuming home a new man and hopes for confbation of

this change of identity, and yet he has not even reached his former pIace of residence,

Zurich, when he is confhnted with his old identity. He is travelling hmParis to

Zurich, and, as the train passes the Swiss border, a man who had been sitting near cl him since Paris tek the customs officer that he recognizes him as the misshg Stiller, 25 whose picture he had seen in a magazine. Stiller-White argues with the officer and eventudy slaps him, for which he ends up in poiice custody, where he claims (with a passport to back it up) to be an Arnerican citizen named James Larkin White, his nenr alter ego. During the inquiry into his case, StiIIer-White remains in prison, where he is confionted with severd key-figures hmhis past: his wife, brother, lover, fnends, step-father, etc. Ail agree that he is Stiller, but he keeps denying it because he refuses to assume the identity which is Wed to that name. He argues that the tmth about him cannot be detennined by the way people perceive him or by facts, such as date and place of birth, age, height, and so on. Eventually though, based on al1 the testirnonies and some other "facts," such as the fdsity of White's

Arnerican passport, the court des that White is StilIer and should therefore assume that identity. JuIika, StilIer's wife, is also wilIing to give their relationship another

ûy, so Stilier submits to the generd wiIL and accepts his social role as Swiss citizen and husband. Julika dies two years later of tuberculosis, the disease that had aimost kiiled her many years before in Davos but hmwhich she had been cured and fiee during Stiller's absence. After ber death, Stiller, Iike Pascal, tives isolated, done on his "ferme vaudoise," making pottery for toirrists.

For the purposes of comp&son, these are the events in chronologicd order.

However, whiIe Mattia PascaI's autobiography follows this order, except for the tyo introductory prernises, Stiller's notebooks do not Matîia Wntes the story of bis life der it is in some respects aIready over. As he says at the very end of the second preface, before he amaiiy begins to relate bis mernoin: "io mi trovo ora in una 26 condizione cosi eccezionale, che posso considerami corne gii fuori della vita, e

dunque sema obbiigh e senza srrupoli di soxta" (TR 1,325): The reader thus hows

ttiere will be one singie point of view, that of the protagonist himseif, who believes

he has no remn to bt dishonest in his account. Of course, there are numerous

contradictions in the narrative to show just how unreliabte a nanator he is, but his

point of view is not directly chdenged by any other. This is not the case in Slo,

where the narrator, Stilier-White, is also the protagonist but writes at a tirne, in

prison, when he is .dldenying fis former legal identiry, so that what he writes about

Stiller's past is a comented report of what othm have to say about him. StiUer's

story is therefore told hmdifferent and ofien conflichg perspectives: StiIleis wife,

Julika, his former lover, Sybilie, her husband, Rolf (who is also public prosecutor in

Stilleis case), as weil as other relatives, tiiends and acquaintances of Stiller. They ail

have their own Stiller, and al1 recognize fimin the prisoner to whom they are tallcing

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

forth between the various reports on the iife of Stiller before his disappearance and

the taies of White's past in Amerka, which are totd fbm his perspective oniy (with

the facts being v&ed and most of the time invalidated by his Iawyer, Bohnedust)

but on the premise that "JedesWort ist falsch und wahr, das ist das Wesen des Woas"

(GW III-2, 525).6 Most of those tales are told to Ehobel, Stiller-White's guaràtin

prison, who, iike many of Frisch's secondary characters, likes "tnre" stories. in one

such tde, two iÏiends named Jim descend to expIore a cave, but only one of them, r> Sm White, now famous for his discovery ofthe cave, cornes back up afm a battIe for SuNival during which he kiiIed the other Jim. After hehgthe story Knobet asks bis

prisoner whether he is really Jim White, and Stiller-White answers: "Nein, (...) daç

gerade nicht! Aber was ich selber erlebt habe, sehen Sie, das war genau das gieiche

- genau" (GW III-1, White's adventure-taIes certainly Say something about his

experience in Amenca, but without necessady being "true" with regards to facts.

While those around him are concerneci only with the tangible, StiIIer-White seeks to

express another dimension of his Me (his feeIings, his mward joumey) and therefore

lays no cIairn to objectivity or accuracy. As mentioned in the fifit chapter, compared

to Pirandello's, Frisch's narrative technique is more complex and better suited to the

ideas the novel conveys. The relativity of the perception ofreality, for instance, is

better reflected in the multi-perspective, openly subjective reports of Stiiier-White,

thm in the chronolo~cal,mono-perspectival account of the Iate Mattia Pascal.

NevertheIess, the similar misadventures of Pascai and Stiller, their huitless search for

their identity, propose the same view of personal identity, and they have Ied critics

of both noveis to similar interpretations and criticism.

in the second part of Stiller. "Postscnpt by the Public Prosecutor", Rolf, the

public prosecutor turned fiend, telIs the story of Stiller aerhe has been released

hmprison. He aIso offers his analysis ofhis fiendtscrisis which m his opinion was

due to Stiller's excessive demands on himeIf. According to Rolf, Stiller &w

himselfbut wodd not accept his limitations and thns felt a need to convince others

of who he was. He was dixid of behg taken for someone he was no', of bemg

' misunderstood. Roifattniutes this problem to the fact that Stiller did not beiieve in 28

God, and he interprets his fiend's eventuai resignation and withdrawal into silence and isoIation as a transformation, an acceptance of his self, at last. Rolfs Christian interpretation of Stiller's story is a possible reading of the novel which many critics have endorsed.' However, RoIf is certauity no more objective than Stiller himself.

His is a believefs obviously biased analysis of the plight of a man who had no faith in God. It presents the prejudiced opinion of a public prosecutor, and, more generaiiy,

RoIf fimctions as ~e voice of kaditional sociai values and bourgeois good sense?

'Ine two Kierkegaard mottoes which precede Stiller's notebooks certainiy support

Rolf's opinion, but they are not part of the notebooks and are obviously to be attributed to the lawyer himseE, ccurtor of the manuscript and self-appointed rnoraiist. According to some critics, Rolfs postscript is an ironic comment to

Stiller's story.'" A man grasps the relativity of personal identiîy, and, understanding that he can never be fiee fiom roIes in society, he reconciIes himselfto a Ionely Iife in the country. But his story is hnically used to condemn this subversive attempt at escape and to support the gened view that there is a "real self' which happens to correspond to tradihond sociai roIes, and which should be accepted in order to live peacefdly with others and with oneseK Actudly, it is clear that, on the one hand, identity is indeed dependent upon socid roles which one is either assigneci or denied, but that, on the other han& those roIes are possliilities, not something innate. other words, it is true that one has to piay a role in society in order to be part of if but accepting these rotes without recogïziug them as such is a delusion. Stiller's experience explodes two myths, that of the real self and that of the independent 29

subject. The narratofs social identity is not the "authentic" self, but without his

socialiy constructed identity he has no identity at aii: "Ich weiss, dass ich nicht der

verscholiene SBUer bin. Und ich bin es auch nie gewesen. Ich schw6re es, auch wenn

ich nicht weiss, wer ich sonst bin. VielIeicht bin ich niemand" (GW IIi-2, 68 l)."

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

In Mattia Pascal, there is dso a character who, like Rolf, encourages the

protagonist to write and wilI then become respom'bIe for the manuscript, for keeping

it hidden until& years derPascal's third and haldeath. It is don Eligio, Pascal's

replacement at the library where the now late Mattia Pascal writes his mernoirs

surrounded by mouldy books. AIthough the new librarian does not add mything but

a footnote to the autobiography, he is the one who çuggests a moral to the story at the

end, namely that "hori della Iegge e fuori di quelle particolarit& liete O triste che

sieno, per cui noi siarno noi, Caro signor Pascal, non è possibile vivere" (TR 1,

577-S)." However, as Monika Schmitz-Ernans notes, this idea that we need to accept

the conditions of our We, because it is the only way to be "ourselves", is

anachrouistic. Mattia knows that the ofiicial self is just as false; he does not know

who he is after having retumed to find his wife married to another and himselfwith

no other identity than that of the late Mattia Pascal." However, critics of this book

have aIso Iong looked for the "dMattia" Elio GioanoIa reports that the famed

critic Giacomo Debenedetti fotmd the book disappomting and claimed that Pirandello

had failed because the protagonist escapes the fàisehood of society but is unable to

6nd his red, authentic self. But as Gioanola observes, it was Debenedetti who faiïed (3. 'i 3 O to understand that what Maîtia's story demonstrates is precisely that there can be no rdMattiaI4 When the news of "his" suicide hes Mattia hmhis roie as husband and rat-hunter, he is no one- This is the essence of his kedom: the absence of a role but comtless possibilities. But how long cmone remain without a rote in society?

Soon he has to choose, mate one for hirnseif, and then bis freedorn is gone, and he becornes just another version of Mattia PascaI, because one is never free fiom social influence, even when invenhg. As Meis's acquainrance, Tib LenP, points out, there is no such thing as an independent subject, because what we call our conscience is no t a fortress but a square:

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

O che lei pensa non si nffettono in me u in tei, noi non possiamo

essere né paghi, né. tranquiUi, né iieti; tanto vero che rutti lottiamo

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

nostri gusti si riflettano neiia coscienza degii aitri. E se questo non

awiene, perché... diciamo cosi, Paria del moment0 non si presta a

trasportare c a far fiorire, Caro signore, i gemii.2 germi deila sua idea

nella mente altnri, lei non pu8 dire che la sua coscienza le basta A

che Ie basta? Le basta per viver soIo? pet ist* nell'ombra? (TR 1,

424) IS '\

Like Stiuer, Pascal is kedwith either a hedlife under the dominion of social des or isolation as the onIy idternative. Both protagonists, like those of the next pair of novels (chapter 3), are tom between their wili to be fke and independent and their 3 1 need to be with others, which are mcornpatiIe.

Of the six noveIs 1am discussing in this thesis, B fu Mattia Pascd and Stiller are the pair in which the question of the unconscious seems most relevant with respect to the problem of identity. It is presented as a discrete but powerfui force which Limits the protagonists' capacity for self-constmction. Just Iike society on the outside, the unconscious constrains, determines, forces into certain actions. Its representation is similar in both novels. Et is that something, the "shadow" or the bbdouble,"of which the protagonists cm never reaIIy fiee themselves even after they have broken al1 ties to their old lives. Although he has a différent name and appearance, Adriano Meis is hannted by the phantom of Mattia Pascal. Once he settIes down in Rome, he becomes very much üke Mattia, who seems to foilow him iike his shadow. And he expresses his desperate wil1 to fkee himseIf hmhis "old self' when he pushes his shadow under the footsteps of passes-by and under the wheels of caniages:

Mora mi mossi; e l'ombra, meco, dinami. Afljrettai iI passo per

cacciaria sotto aitri cani, sotto i piedi de' viandanti, voluttuosamente.

Una srnania maIa mi aveva preso, quasi adunghiandomi il ventre; da

he, non potei più vedermi davanti queff a mia ombra; awei voluto

scuotmela dai piedi. Mi voltai; ma ecco; la avevo dietm, ora aE,>se

mi metto a CO-, pensai, ami se-!* (TR 1,524)"

The motif of the double also appears in a very important episode of Stiller.''

As mentioned earlier on, one of White's American tales is that of the two Jims who 32 discover a cave and descend to explore it. One Ji.breaks a foot and is unable to

climb back up aione. In a battle for Sunrivai, the other Jim, Ji.White, kills his

partner and Ieaves him behind. White admits that he is not that Jim White but

maintains that the story tells exactIy what he expenenced. Gunda Lusser-

MerteIsmann remarks that the obscure cave is a symbol of the unconscious and the

broken foot a symbol for impotence.Ia She maintains that this murder of the double

symbolizes White's repression, in the unconscious, of the impotent Stiller.19This

explains why White, keMeis, can never be ke hmhis past. He would have liked

to ''kili" StiiIer, but his old identity rernains a part of himself.

Regarding the authenticity of this unconscious self, which inauences identity

construction but is no identity per se, 1wouid recail what Tito Lenzi says to Mattia

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

The protagonist of IJno. nessuno e centornila, who shares Lenzi7s views on the

conscience, adds that while it seems most private and personal, the conscience is in

fact a reflection of the social on the individual mind: "questa che crediamo la cosa più

intima nostra, la coscienza, vu01 dire gli altri in mi . . . " (TR 2, 844).1° The

unconscious being likewise a product of socialization, it is a carrier of social roles

and taboos as weil as a fossil of past experiences. It is tfierefore no wonder that Pascal

and Stiiier wouid want to kili this shadow which is both "saciety in them7' and qat

which remains of their oId existence. The unwnscious, and not only society directIy,

hinders the reaiization of the protagonists' &es:- to start anew and to be

. mdependent hmothers. 33

in il fit Mattia Pascal and StilIer. Pirandello and Frisch probkmatize the issue of personai identity, they demeand chaiienge preconceptions. While both works are open-ended, they propose a simiIar conception of personai identity, nameIy that there is no viable identity beyond socid roles and tberefore no way of being "oneself' in society and no way of being anyone at ail away hmothers. The independent subject is impossible since the subject constructs itself in its relationship to others.

Personai identity being likewise a social constnict, the "real" or "authentic" identity is a contradiction in temis. ïhis questionhg and ultimate refusal of the possibiiity of finding, dong wvith other "trutniths", one's authentic seifis a characteristic of modemkt literature. And acknowledging the death of the unified subject does not corne without a sense of los. In Jhe Late Mattia Pascal and Stilla the disillusion and nostalgia are palpable in the protagonists' final stoic resignations foiiowing their desperate attempts to escape conformity. In the next chapter, the question of identity wiII be linked to another important theme of modernist literature, technological change and its impact on Me, relationships, perception, and human subjectivity. Notes

LMarlis Zeller Cambon, "Max Frisch's Stiller und Luigi Pirandello's Mattia Pascal: Die Odyssee zu sich selbsî," Frisch. Kritik - These - Andvsea Beitriigem 65. Geburtstag, ed M. Jiirgensen (Bem: Francke Verlag, 1977) 81-2.

LLuigi Pirandello, The Late Mattia Pascai, trans. Nicoletta Simborowski (London: Dedalus, 1987) 57: ""This is how it will bel until 1 die, with no change, ever ..." The kedqudity of my existence began to give rise to strange, sudden ideas, hostflashes of insanity."

3Monika Schmitz-Emans, 'Eziihien ais Kunst der Selbstfindung - Pirandellos ,,Mattia Pascal" und einige seiner deutschen Verwandten," PirandelIo und die euro~aischeErzahlliteratur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, eds M. R6ssner un F.-R. Hausmanu (Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1990) 182.

4Max Frisch, I'm not Stiller, tram MichaeI Bullock (New York: Vmtage Books, 1958) 132: 'You've made an image of me, that's quite clear, a complete and final image, and the& an end of it. You jus won? see me any other way, 1can feel that."

S.Pirandello, The Late Mattia Pascal, 19: "at present 1 hnd myself in such extraordinary circumstances that I feel 1can conrider rnyself beyand normal existence, idtherefore without obligation or scruples of any kind."

6.Frisch, I'm not Stiliet 144: "Every word is faise and true, that is the nature of words"

7.My translation: No, not exactly. But what 1experienced, you see, was exactly the same

8.Jürgen H. Petersen, Max Frisch. Sm(Frankfiirt am Main: Verlag Moritz Diesterweg, 1994) 29-30. Cf. Uhch Weisstein, "Stiller: die Suche nach der idatitat," Üfxr Max Frisch a ed Walter Schmitz (Frankfica am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976) and Hans Jiirg Lüthi, Max Fnsch- nnu sollst dir kein Bilh (Mimchen: WiIhelm Fink Velag, 1979) j, j,

. . LOSetersen refering to Hans Mayer (Pilatenalien ni Max Frisch) 29-30. 1IJrisch, @ not Stiller. 294: "1know 1am not the misshg Stiller. And I never was. 1swear it, even if I do not know who eise 1am. Perhaps I am no one."

13.Pirandell0, The Late Mattia Pascal, 240-1: "it is not possible to live outside the law and outside that framework of details, fortunate or imfortunate as they may be, that make us what we are, my dear Signor Pascal."

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

1SPirandello, The Late Mattia Pascd 106-7: "When the emotions, desires, tastes of these otfiers that 1 have formed a view of, or you have formed a view of, do not coincide with our own feelings, we feeI dissatisfied, agitated and miserable; so much so that we are constantiy battling for our own emotions, desires and tastes to be reflected in other people's consciences. And if this does not happen because... well, the climate is not right for the seeds to gerrninate... the seeds of your ideas pIanted in the min& of others, well you cannot Say that your conscience is sufncient for you. Sacient for what? For living alone? For withering away in shadow?"

16.PirandeiI0, The Late Mattia Pascal 193: So 1set off,my shadow before me. 1quickened my step so as to shove it under other carriages, under the feet of passers-by, gratuitously. An evil craving had gripped me, almost physically clawing at the pit of my stomach; 1 did not want to see that shadow in front of me aii the tirne, 1wanted to get rid of it. 1tumed round, but then there it was behind me. '?f 1nul," 1 thought, "it wiU chase derme."

17.The whoIe passage has dorhmately been lefi out of the English translation.

18.Gunda Lusser-Merteismann, "Selbstfiucht-. und Selbstsuche: Das ~Psychoanalytischeain Frisch &ilillera," Matuen zu Max Frisch >Stiller<, vol. 2, ed. Walter Schrnitz (Frankfurt am Main- Suhrkamp Veriag, 1978) 608,613.

2OSirandell0, One. No one. and -d Thousana 105: what we believe to be orn most personal attnbute, our awareness (conscience), means the others in us (mwTER3

Ouaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore and Homo faber:

Stnrggiing with Subjectivity

Pirandello's Ouademi di Serafino Gubbio operatore, btpublished in instalments in Nuova Antologia in 1915-16 with the titlesi Qira,'and Frisch's Homo faberJ pubiished onIy thtee years after Stiller in 1957, are closest on the realism- modemism-postmodernism continuum. The two texts discussed in the previous chapter are modernist novels, but Mattia PascaI is stiLl somewhat veristic and has a more traditional narrative structure than Stiller. And, as 1 wilI show in chapter 4, while Pirandello's last novel is still very modern, Frisch's MeinName sei Gantenbeiq is rather a postmodernist noveI, in contrast, Quaderni and Bomo faber display not oniy thematic but also the stmngest stnichrral similarities. In his second novel written in the first person, which many critics consider a prelude to his avant-garde dramatic work, Pirandello has broken aii bridges to realism which were still apparent in

Mamia Pascal. In themes and poetics, is, like Homo faba a typically modernist novel.

Since the plots are very different though, 1 wiii not compare them as 1did in the previous chapter, but briefiy summarize them, in order to make the followiug discussion of the novels clearer. Seraho Gubbio is a cameraman at the Kosmograph, a production cornpsmy in the fledgiing film indusiry. He starts to write to comter the alienating effects of his work, which demands the impassiveness of a machine. In his 37 notebooks, Serafino reports and comments mainly on what happens at the

Kosmograph and in the home where he rents a room. The stories of the actors and those of Serafino's hosts become intertwined, and the cameraman eventually gets

involved in what he had wanted to observe fiom a distance and analyse objectively.

Waiter Faber also writes a diary, which he caUs a report and which consists of two

parts. Io the htpart, he recails tbe chah of events which has lead to his eacounter

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

accidentai death. Faber emphasizes the many coincidences, justifies bis actions and

rejects his guiit. In the second part of the book, written in a hospital as he is about to

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

should have known and done better and, overalI, wishes he had lived differently.

Science and Art: Two Competing Modes of Cognition

Mat is reaiity? How cm we know it? Can we trust our senses? 1s there

something beyond? How can we understand it, represeat it? 1s there such a thing as

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

in both Quaderni and Emg faber, namely within the context of a discourse on

technoIogy, which Iies at the centre of the protagonists' identity crises. More

precisely, the epistemoIogical quest manifests itselfmainly in the often contradïctary

discourse of the main characters on the SiIprernacy of science over art (Faber) or vice-

versa (Gubbio). Machines are not afTected by feelings. Thecefore, they are thought

to be objective. In contrast, art is Iinked to wfiat Gubbio calIs the "superfIuous," that 3 8 which is mishg in both machines and animals, something beyond the mechanical.

Art is human, whereas machines are perceived to be either better-than-human or

dehurnanizing.

Faber claims to see things as they are. He does not doubt that the world is,

indeed, as he sees it. What he does not see does not exist. When people taIk about an

experience, he sees nothing but the illustration of some law of physics:

Ich habe mich schon ofl gefiagt, was die Leute eigentlich meinen,

wenn sie von Erlebnis reden. Ich bin Techniker und gewohnt, die

Dinge ni sehen, wie sie sind. Ich sehe alles, wovon sie reden, sehr

genau; ich bin ja nicht blind. Ich sehe den Mond über der Wiiste von

Tamauiipas - kiarer ais je, mag sein, aber eine errechenbare Masse,

die um unseren Planeten kreist, eine Sache der Gravitation,

interessant, aber wieso ein Erlebnis?(GW IV-l,24)'

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

Therefore, Walter Faber does not feel the need for any other ways of knowing the

world than his senses and science, and he tnists nothing but himself and machines, robots and cornputers.

Indeed, Faber, who has never visited the Louvre aIthough he traveIs around

the worId, claims to have use neither for novels, museums, folklore nor for any kmd

of art. What interests him is technoIogy, of which art is at best a primitive ancestor.

He deçies statues, for example, as predecessors of the robot. When he Iooks at the pyramids the Mayas built without knowledge of the wheel, he sees nothing but a 39 waste of aergy. He hds them primitive aad uninteresting. Why Marcel, a musician

from Boston, would spend his vacation tracing designs hm the pyramids is a

mystery to him. He certaidy cannot take serioudy Marcel's assertion that the gods represented in the art work would be Wed if photographed. The supematural, the

sou1 and gods have no place in Faber's world view. When he traveis, what catches

his interest are bridges, cars, the macbine mam of the ship, and so on.

But this is befon his daughter's death. In the 'second station', the second part of the book, on his second trip to Palenque, Faber does visit the pyrarnids. A chain of events has shattered his life-long faith in the all-explahhg powers of the natural sciences. Love, loss and disease have made him more receptive to the unpredictable and unexplainable as well as to the ~ymbolic.~Although he ktgoes to the Louvre only in the hope of meeting Sabeth, and visits numerous Itaiian museums just to be near her, he eventualiy tries to look at and succeeds in expenencing a work of art.

With the young woman, who becomes bis lover before he cm accept the tragic fact

that she is the daughter he never knew he tiad, he also experiences the wonders of nature. Faber willingly participates in a game in which he and Sabeth compete at

fïnding similes çuch as the foilowing: the hrst light of dawu is üke porcelain, the whinny of a donkey üke someone Iearning to pIay the celio. He Iearns to see things diffefently. Marlis Zeiier Cambon has rightly observed that there is aiso a noticeable

change m the styIe of writing m the second part. The engineer's jargon and truncated

sentences give way to a more hannoniou LanguageJ This is especially true of the

Cuban episode which Hans Jürg Lütbi even calls a ''R~us.'~ 40 Gubbio's stand regardhg art and technoiogy at the beginning of his notebooks is opposite to that of Faber. He sees hirnself as an artist at heart who has fden vich to the emerging dominion of machines, and he uses writing to avenge himsetf and those who suffer the same fate. He turns to writing, not to kill time as

Faber says in the first part of his report, but rather to preserve his "supe~uo,"that

"extra" which differentiates human beings ftom animais, that which makes them strive for more than mere survivai or daiiy routine. Religion, phiiosophy and art are ail shown to have strong ties to the "superfluous." They deal with what lies beyond appearances. And, for Gubbio, who is a keen observer, "c'è un oltre in tutto" (TR II,

5 19).6

There is a strong opposition m Quademi between the film indusûy, on the one hand, and, on the other, music, painting and partiarticuiariytheatre. The film industry is depicted as an artiess business and filrning itseIf as dehurnanizing. The mute viohst, a character 1will mention again later, is onIy the most tragic victim of the submission of art to machines. The movie-actors are aiso alienated by the reproduction of their Weless images. in contrast, the theatre is idealized As opposed to îhe Kosmograph's staging of silly stories in which the actors often do not know which part they play, theaîre has content It aiso requires the actors' intelligence and talent, and rewards them with communion with the public. Similady, the music of the viohist presents communication and Life, whereas the mechanical piano ody produces sotmds. The paintmgs of Giorgio Mirefi (portraits of the young Varia 41

Nestoron) also give life and nameiy to the vision the artist had of his model. They

express feeiings and a unique way of perceiving the worId.

Photography, on the 0th- han& is thought to be nothing but the reproduction

of images and does not, therefore, qwas art. Gubbio says: "Si dovrebbe capire

che i1 fantastico non pub acquistare redti, se non per mezzo dell'arte . . . Se è

meccanismo, come puo esssere vita, come pub essere arte?" II, 573).7 However,

ifphotography does not Iend itseifto the illusion of fiction, then it must be faiffiI,

in a way, to physical reaIity. Indeed, according to the cameraman, the photopph (or

film) reproduces the image but without the "superfluous." On the one hand, it

annihilates the sou1 of the object On the other hand, it shows what we do not

necessarily see when we are living, experiencing and feeling. So the actress Varia

Nestoroff does not recognize herseifwhen she views some shots of herself. When her

image is projected on the screen, she sees berself Eorn the outside, with distance.

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

camera grants him the necessary impassivmess ("impassi'bilità") to be 'objective' in

his observation, or so he likes to

So what is reaiity and how is it hom?Are feelings, for example, an obstacle

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

because it is blind to whole spheres of reaiity which Lie beyond the physical,

measurabie, and expIainabIe? Both noveis, indeed, suggest that there is an 'oItre'

(beyond, something more), as Gubbio says, that traditionai science does not accomt

(! for, that machines cannot perceive. And it is in both protagonists' aitematmg 42 acceptance of and refusal to expdence and deai with the "superfluous" that thek identity crisis mdests itself. Self-image and world view go hand in hand.

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

As I have started to show, Gubbio paradoxically both condemns and trusts technology. His open aversion to technology, which he bIames for making human Iife increasingiy miserable, clashes with his faith in the objectivity-granting powers he attributes to machines and the obvious p1em.m that he derives as a cameraman hm his roIe of impassive odooker. He seems to ident*, for example, with the violinkt who has not been able to play his instnimeot since the day he was asked to accompany a mechanical piano and who is, for him, "il simbolo delia sorte miserabile, a cui il continuo progressa condanna I'umanita" (TR II, 533)? This poor homeless drunk, encountered one night at a sheIter, is said to be the inspiration behind the notebooks. Consequently, Gubbio continuously points out the dehumanizing impact of a11 machines, hmautomated printers to cars to movie cameras, praising traditiond art, nature and crahanship.

However, Gubbio is a cameraman. He owes this position to the fortuitous encounter with an old füend, the movie-director Coco PoIacco who, shooting a scene at the shelter and seeing Gubbio amongst the bystauderç, invites him to visit the

Kosmograph. Gubbio is then hired and *ckly becomes the house's best cameraman,

He ulinks of this Iucky coincidence as one of two compensaiions for having spent the night at the shelter, the other being kis acqnaintance with the disgraced violinist. This 43 seems contradictory. Obviously, the encounter with a û-a.gïc victim of tectuiology fias spurred some thinking about the consepences of technologicd progress, but it has not kept Gubbio from accepting a job in a movie production 6sm. And if Serafino often larnents his condition as servant to a machine, he also boasts of his greater-than- average objectivity in perceiving and interpreting the world around him, which he amiutes to his expaieme as cameraman, to the practice of impassiveness which his work dernands. He has Iearned not to get UivoIved, to observe Çom the outside and nos to let feetings distract him. This attitude oflen earns him the mistnist of those around him, leaving him lonely at times but feeling that he hows the facts better than any of the passionate parties involved. The feelings of being aIienated and isolated are rnixed with those of being pnvifeged.

SirnilarIy, Gubbio's passionate praises of phdosophy and the am fie writes that he would have preferred to study philosophy and literahue instead of going to a technical schooI) are contradicted by his revision of Sixnone Pau's conception of the "supduous." His fiend Pau, who lives pemianentiy at the homeless sheIter and vends the better part of his days in the Iibrary writing 2trticks on phiIosophical matters, hnds "supe~uous"esddy al1 material gwds and comfoa which are not necessary for survivai and couid eventu* distract hmthe essential, that is the spiritual and intektuai. Gubbio seems to share Pau's views and values whenlbe thinks back with nostalgia to his days as a poor dentliving amongst artists and curses his present situation as a weII-paid %d th& turns the hande." However, he tbinks that Sirnone Pau, whiie Iivmg like a beggar to avoid the material 44

"supduous," is tiimsetfdrowning in the qiritual "superfluous." His own revisited

"superfIuous" correçponds essentially to what Pau deerns essential. This shift of point of view is siguikant bu5 at this point, Serafino has no intention of giving up either

"superfluous."

From the very beginnuig of his notebooks, Gubbio's attitude towards the

"superfiuous," which he also sees as his endangered humanity, is quite ambivalent.

On the one hand, his writing, itseifa superfluous act, is intendeci as a resistance to the dehumanking effects of technology, a revenge: "Soddisfo, scrivendo, a un bisogno di sfogo, prepotente. Scarico Ia mia professionde impassibilid e mi vendico, anche; e con me vendico tanti, condannati come me a non esser aitro, che unn mano che gira una manovelZd'(TR II, 5-2-3)." On the other hand, Serafino seems to see the source of human unhappiness and dissatisfaction not in machines but in human nature, that is precisely in the "superduous:"

Che giova aII'uomo non contentani di ripeter sempre le stesse

operazioni? Gii, quelle che sono fondarnentali e Uidispensabili alla

vita, deve pur compierle e rEpeterIe anch'egii quotidianamente, come

i bnrti, se non vu01 rnorire. Tutte le aItre, mutate e rimutate di

continuo srnaniosamente, è assai difnciie non gh si scoprano, presto

O tardi, iilusioni O vanità, htto come sono di quet ta1 superflue, di cui

non si vede su la terra né il fine né la ragiooe (TR II, 527)."

e Notebooks of S-O Gubbi~could be defhed as the expression of the nanator's uncertain identity, his going back and forth between two poies. Is he a 45 successN cameraman with iittie use for the sentimental stories of the actors, the phiIosophy of his fnend Pau or any similar superfiuity? Or is he an artist at heart who is condemned to working as a cameraman to make a living and who strives to preserve his humanity through writing?12 The end of Quaderni marks the symbolic death of the artist and the victory of the impassive cameraman persona This is the outcome, as 1~31 show Iater, not so much of a recognition on the part of the narrator of the superiority of machines over the human "superfluous," but raher of a rejection of the "superfluous" fo llowing disillusionment.

There is also much tension between the ideal of science and technology and the "superfiuous" (to use Gubbio's term) in Homo faber. On the one hand, Faber's complete identification with his profession of engineer seerns unshakabie. In his

Manichean worid view, he stands on the side of logic, rationaiity, and objectivity.

"Superfluous" is anything that is either illogical, irrationai or subjective or that cannot be accounted for by ernpirical science or by the theories of probabiiity. His

"superfluous" is, Like Gubbio's, iinked to feelings, religion, and the arts, which, hm the outset, have no place in his Me. Contrashg with Faber's apparent certainiy, though, is his obvious urge to justa and to always reaffirm his beliefi and disbeiiefs,

Every time he is confionted with an opposing interpretation of be it a naturai phenornenon or a wodc of art, he starts off aga& what he considers superstition, fantasy, and deIusion. He just caxmot accept thai others fee1 diffefently and seems to need to convince himseif of the superiority of his views. 46

This is the "fht station," the first part of the book. The events are not recordeci as they happen but a fmweeks or months Iater while the nanator lies iiI in a hotel room in Caracas. Faber's identity as a technoIogist threatens to fail him as sickness (as it tums out, a fatal iilness) and the ment events in his life have shaken its foundation, namely Faber's absolute faith in mathematics, Iogic, and objectivity.

By closing an eye to what threatens to prove his theones wrong - for example, the repeated failures of technoIogy such as a phecrash, a razor breakdown, a false medicai diagnosis - and by arguing for the righteousness of his judgment, Faber is desperately holding on to the only image he has of hirnseKf,"As Klaus Haberkamm rightly observes, the main idea of the "first station" is summarized in Mein Narne sei

Gantenbein, in the short episode of the "Pechvogei" (the unlucky man).lJ A man, convinced of being an unlucky person, is shocked the day he wins at the lottery.

Unable to question his old self-image, he starts to doubt the lottery, and, on his way back firom the bank, he actuaiiy loses the money. 'Th anderes Tch, das ist kostspieliger als der Veriust einer vollen Brieffasche, versteht sich, er miii3te die ganze Geschichte seines Lebens aufgebenn(GW V-1, 52)." It is easier to der because of your identity than it is to give it up.

In the "second station" of Homo faber, however, Faber hdly does give up his objective- technologist roIe in order to experience a part of He he had aiways disavowed: nature, feehgs, and art. As hk life is premattrrely coming to an end, his renuuciation of his former role is one with the rejection of technoiogy and progress.

1shaii retum to this in the Iast part 47

The Technologist/Operator-Personaas Shield Againsî Life 's Uncertainth and

Unpredictability

Faber and Gubbio experience their identity crises diffaently: the former is desperately hoIding on to a self-image wwhich threatens to (and eventually does) coitapse under the weight of tragedy, and the latter is fostering two clashing identities, going back and forth between feelings of estrangement and (eventuaily hii) assumption of his role as a cameraman Technology, as we have seen, is at the centre of both crises. Zn fact, it has the same fruiction in both qua de^ and Homo faber, that of shield against life's uncertainties and unpredictability, or agaiast Life itself. Giovanna Querci's observation about Ouadecould apply to Frisch's novel as wek "Il mito della macchina, che sia il arago nerom di Serafino Gubbio, o un modern0 caIco[atore elettronico, viene usato corne un'ingannevole ,oaranzia contro il terreno 6iabife del contingente, del possibile, se non adduittura del pr~babile."~~

Faber's case is a particularIy good example. He tives in New York City and works as an engineer; he is as remote as can be hmhis MWenvironnient, and he Iacks reaI (more than supeficiai) connections to his feuow human beings. Hohan maintains that Faber's "attempt to live as if Efe were predictabte and readily controlled has forced him to avoid reiationships with any rddeph to them."17 Faber hdç peopie tcuring ("'anstrengend" GW IV-l,8,91-2) and sex absurd (GW IV-1,

62,66,93-4);he thinks what people cdfeelings to be no more than manifestations of tiredness ('Zrmiîdungserscheinu11gen'' GW W-1, 92); wilderness disgusts him, and he shaves very ohotherwise he feels Iike a plant (GW N-1, 10, 27); 48 everything unusual makes him nervous (GW IV-1,76); he is happy with machines and statistics and admits to not knowing what to do when he is not working (GW IV-

1,90-1). It is clear that the laws of physics and mathematics work reassuringiy on

Faber's insecure mind. Whenever things get stressfui or mystenous, as for example during the plane crash or in the desert, he starts analysing things fiom a scientific point of view, giving belf the impression of being in control. When he has problems with relationships, he escapes to the world of machines, leavhg his pregnant girlfiend Hannah in order to take a job in Iraq, for example, or simply starting to work on a broken shaver to avoid supper with his lover Ivy. Machines seem more predictable and much Iess dernanding than human beings, and, with them,

Faber can put his own feelings aside,

The film carnera also works as a shield between Faber and the world. He makes, in fact, great use of a camera. While others are experiencing something, he films it." This becomes ckar in the Dusseldorf episode where he views his Glms in order to hdimages of Joachim Hencke, found hanged in his Guatemalan hut. He is surpriseci, for exampIe, to see so many shots of sunsets and breakers, very common natural occurrences whîch supposedly do not affect him. Then why film them over and over? The camera serves as a shield; it creates a distance. The lens frames and

focuses on the image, blocking the other senses and even the bigger picturei It therefore iimits the impact of the object as a whole. Through the metal eye of the

camera, Faber sees ''thhgs as they are" without the risk of an emotional surplus, that

is without being affected by the féelings that an ment (be it his fiiend's suicide or the 49 rising of the moon in the desert) might arouse. To Say it with Heima Haster, Faber does not "erlebt"(experience), he "entIebt"(takes the Life away).'" ,as Butler says, filming is a way of "neutralising e~perience."~~Eventuaiiy, 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 technology as a whole. As cameraman, Gubbio is therefore the technician par ~rcellence.But, as 1 have shown, his attitude towards his profession is rather unstable, changing fiom that of rebellion to that of identification and vice-versa interestingly enough, if we look at the circumsbnces in which

Gubbio revels in his profession, we find that he identifies with his work for very much the same reasons Faber does. As Gubbio expIains at the beginning of his notebooks, the moment he takes his camera, he becomes impassive, deprived ofhis

"superfiuous." As alienating as it might be, Gubbio often Iongs for the protection and relief that his work gives him. As Giovanna Querci observes, the camera is a mask to hide fiom feelings?' Having let himseifget involved, against his initial intentions, in the intricate love-hate story involving the actors, Serafino hds himseif in a difficult, emotionaily taxing situation fiom which he wouid Iike to be ked: ''Io vorrei seguitare a fare con la consueta impassibiIiti, I'operatoret'(TR II, 647)." He reacts even more strongly when his Iove for Luisetta is not retumed: 'Ti mio siiemjo vorrebbe chiudersi sempre di piÙ a#omo a me" (TR II, 663)-= And both those &es corne true at the end when Gubbio films, impassive and speechless, the tragic death of the jedous actor who, having shot his Iover instead of the tiger as pIanned, is 5O himselfkilled by the beast. Mer this act of perféct impassiveness, silence does cbse in around him definitively: Gubbio has become dumb. To the accomplished perfection of the cameraman corresponds the symbolic death of the artist who wrote to avenge himself and Save his "superfiuous." Gubbio ends his notebooks exphing that he has rejected the "superfluous." He is now very rich and perfectly impassive, a condition he hds weIl suited to the limes in which he lives: "Vogiio restare cosi.

11 tempo è questo; la vita e questa; e ne1 senso che do damia professione, vogiio seguitare cosi - solo, muto e impassibile - a far I7operatore"(TR II, 735).'4

The Colinfer-World: the Idyll

To the world of machines and progress corresponds, in both novels, another world, a space where the mask of indifference and objectivity falls and emotional needs are recognized: the idealized past. The past (or in Homo fabq the "primitiveT') is felt to be more human, a worId with !es technology, no hurry, with time for love,

Enendship, and art. For Gubbio, the idyIl lies m the past, although, as he finds out, it exists, as such, oniy in his memory. The idyii was a time of poverty but aIso of

Momand great expectations, when Serafino, waiting for the opportunity to go to tmiversity, was teaching himseiflatin and Greek while giving private lessons to a younger boy. It is linked to a villa near Sorrento where this boy, Giorgio MireIli, lived with his sister and their grandparents, and to Capri where Gubbio Iater vent the rest of a smaü inheritance. He was poor but happy, Mgamongst artists, inciuding the young Mirelii. 5 1

Apart from trachg the antecedent of the quarrel between the actress Varia

Nestoroff and the count-actor AIdo Nuti (they had met at the villa many years before when Nestoroff was about to marry Giorgi0 Mirefi and Nuti was engaged to

Giorgio's sister Duccelia) the second notebook is devoted to Serafino's recollection of the villa and its inhabitants. The descriptions of people and place are idyllic, expressing Sera.6noYswarm feelings as weli as his nostalgia For Luciana MadeIli, it is an idyllic suspension of the dramatic tension, a "pausa ~entimentale."~~To talk about the house itself, diminutives are used as tenns of endearment (villetta, casetta) as well as adjectives such as "doke" (dear TR II, 542,546,555), "intima e raccolta"

(intimate and quiet TR iI, 543), "schiva" (reserved TR II, 543,549, "cara" (dear TR iI, 563). In the house reigns "calma iimpida" (Iimpid chTR II, 542), "la Pace e gii affetti" (peace and affection TR II, 545), "tenue, ingenua vita d'idillio" (soR ingenuous idyliic Iife TR II, 547), "il piu hgenuo de@ idiiiii" (the most ingenuous of idylls TR II, 565). Similarly, Duccelia and her grandmotfier are "dolce" and

"cara." Senho, as he is wrihg, can still me11 the partîcuiar "dito" (odour) of the house (TR II, 541), and can still hear nonna Rosa's voice (TR II, 546). The tone is very different in these passages- It is füied with emotions, the nostaigia is palpable:

"Tra le più care rimenbranze della mia vita è ia dolce casa di campagna presso

Sorrento"(Ti2 1I, 555). But these mernories, brought back so clearly by more recent events, are doomed to be demoMed. In ''notebook 6", tender feelings tum into bitter disappointment, nostaIgia mto disillusionment, 52

Indeed, in order to liberate Aldo Nuti hmthe madness that now threatens to lead him to commit an act of desperation (or to £ieeLuisetta hmher infatuation with the count-actor), Serafino decides to go to Sorrento to see Ducceiia He thinkc; a tragedy might be avoided if Ducceiia forgives Nuti for the betrayal which led to her brother's suicide and consequentiy to the breaking off of their engagement. Nuti might forget Varia Nestoroff (and Luisetta would have to give up Nuti) if Duccella were prepared to take him back. So Gubbio makes off for the idyllic villa, eager to see the charrning Ducceiia, for whom he had once felt a special affection. He is soon to be disappointeci. The villa is still the same, but it is not. It still looks the sarne, but it feels different, strange. It does not conjure up the same warm feelings attached to it in Serafino's memory:

Riconoscevo chiera quella, e mi pareva impossibile che fosse;

riconoscevo ch'era rimasta ta1 quale, e perché dunque mi sernbrava

un'aitra?

Che mstezza! If ficordo che caca di Rfarsi vita e non si ritrova piu

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

sentiment0 è cangiato, il sentiment0 è un dûo. Eppure credevo

d'essere acccorso a queiia vilietta col mi0 sent&ento d'dora, col

mio cuore d'un tempo!(TR II, 698)"

The gardener who cornes to the gate to meet Gubbio has neva heard of the Mirellis.

A passer-by takes the visitor to their new place, a misaable apartment beside a churcb There, Serafino is sbocked to see Duccella dressed in a nun's robe, di&gured 53 and overweight- Her grandmother is deaf and toothless. His old memories of gentle people in a pleasant home are shattered at the sight of two poor and ugIy women. On his way back to Rome, Serafino is compIeteIy disoriented, feeling betrayed by his owu senses, his own mind:

Irnmagini avevo dentro di me, non mie, di cose, di persone; immagini,

aspetti, figure, ricordi di persone, di cose che non erano mai state

nella dtà,hori di me, ne1 mondo che quel sipore si vedeva attorno

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

che! non era vero niente! Non le avevo trovate piii, perché non

c'erano state mai: ombre, sogno.,. 1Ma corne avevano potuto venirmi

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

ora non c'era più? Ma no: que1 signore di mezza età mi diceva di no:

che c'erano gli altri, ciascuno a suo modo e col suo mondo e col suo

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

dove fossi veramente e che cosa fossi, cosi sema tempo e sema

mondo(TR II, 703).28

It sounds very much tike Mattia's comment about his identity at the end of Uk

Wattia Pascal: '50 non saprei proprio dire ch'io mi çia"(TR 1, 57QD

In her book D motivo del waeg*. Maria

Argenzîano Maggi concludes that, in Ouaderni, the fimction of the trip is to lead

S&o to recognk "Ia vanità delIe costruzioni che ciascuno ritaglia per ~é.''~'Like aii mernories, those of Sorrento served Serafino's constrnction of his own seif.'' So 54 whm the past, idealized and chenshed, tums out to be a projection, Gubbio's identity

[oses its substance and is exposed as a construct. His finai mutmess, the physical equivalent to his professional impassi~eness:~is caused, as Maria Antonietta

Grignani obsewes, not so much by the tragedy of the actors' death as by the toss of

this idyuic past.f3

Back home, Gubbio also Tids the peopie he had intended to heIp out of a difEcult situation acting as if nothing was wrong. Revolted, he rnakes the defuitive decision to abandon his "superfluous," and to escape to the world of machines:

Posso fare a meno di tutto, io. Ho sprecato per voi un po' di quel10

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

mi seme af3atto; perché a me serve soltanto la mano: nesssun obbligo

dunque di ringrazid! Ami, scusate se vi ho disturbato. il torto è

mio, che ho voluto immIscbiamii (TR II, 704).''

When the past collapses, nothing else seems stable enough, except the heartless and

purely mechanical work of the cameraman in wbch Gubbio fin& refuge.

When Faber starts wrï~ghis report, he has alre;tdy speut the better part of

his life in voIutary ede hmthe world of nature and fehgs. He lives in the gIass

tower of science and technology. In Homo fabet, the cotmter-world is represented by

the "primitive" lands thas Faber visits as part of his work for UNESCO. Faber's

repoa on those regions, theù people, art and culture exemplifies what Marima

Torgovnick presents as a characteristic of F& WorId writings on the "primitive:"

"Those who study or wrïte about the primitnfe usudy begin by defining it as 55 different from (usuaiiy opposite to ) the present. Mer that, ceactions to the present take o~er."~~Faber describes the foreign 'ûnderdevelopeci" cultures he encounters only to represent his own industriai culture, in cornparison, as superior or, later, as decadent.

In the "kt station," the protagonia has already begm, as 1 have shown earlier, to doubt the absolute vdue of his higbIy indirstrialized European (or

Arnecican) culture. He resists his own doubts by justifj4ng his beliefs and acts, by arguhg in favour of al1 that is rational, scientific, and objective. Accordingly, Faber approaches less industrialized cultures with much bias. His low opinion of the natives in Mexico and Guatemala, for example, clearly reveals his need to convince himself of the superiority of technically advanceci cultures and of the meaningfùlness of his own work (ie., life and identity) as an engineer. Looking at a map of Guatemala on which the sites of the various Mayan ntins are rnarked, Faber caiis the region a "no man's Iand" because there are neither nia& nor airports. Faber has a very specific conception of civilisation to defend, that of the modem city, where nature is controlled and made "useful," and where îhis civilisation is not in full bloom, the en,heer mut make sure tbat development takes place. About the Mayas, Faber writes:

Man staunt, wie sie diese Quader herbeigeschafft haben, wenn sie das

Rad nicht kannten, also auch den Flaschenzug nicht, Auch das

Gew6Ibe nicht! Abgesehen von den Venienmgen, die mir sowieso

nicht gemen, weiI ich für Sachlichkeit bin, hdeich ja diese Ruinen 56 sehr priniitiv . . . kh hdes ehkindisches Stamen, betreffend die

Herbeischaffung dieser Quader: - sie haben einfach Rampen ersteut,

dam ihre Quader geschie* mit einem idiotischen VerschleiB an

Menschenknft, das ist ja gerade das Primitive daran, Anderseits ihre

Astronomie! Ihr KaIender errechrrete das Sonnenjahr, laut Ruinen-

Freund, auf 365,2420 Tage, statt 365,2422 Tage; tro tzdem brachten

sie es mit ihrer Mathematik, die man anerkennen md, ni keiner

Technik und waren daher dem Untergang geweiht"(GW IV-1,13-4).36

Faber is not interested in the present day festive dances or clothing of Mexicans and

Guatemalans either. Overall, his attitude is very contemptuous. Since human reproduction is essentially a matter of Iabour demand, as he declares in his apology

for abortion as a population control method, he Iooks very criticdly at the native women, who have many children. He aIso hds the natives lazy although they work

ail day while the heat keeps him in his hammock, drinking beer. In short, Faber has

no respect for either their history or their present way of life. Although his report

consists of a series of events (hmthe plane crash to the death of his daughter) in

which technology faiis, the engîneer measures and evduates everything he sees

according to its degree of technique. He refuses to see beyond that, calling the land

primitive and therefore justimg his own "deveiopment" work.

In the "second mtio~"we hdFaber 6rst more open towards the natives and

then comp1eteIy charmed by th& cuiûrre. This deveiopment corresponds to Faber's

graduai rejection of his own cd@, w5ch he starts to perceive as fàise and artificial 57

While Faber kept repeating, on his fht visit to Palenque, that he had come only for his fnend and that he wanted to Ieave as soon as possi'ble, the second time he is giad to come back and meet the same peopIe again. He even visits the Mayan niins.

Faber's positive attitude towards the Cubans, his conesponding "Anger at

America7'(GWIV- 1, 175) and his "decision to live differently"(GW IV-1, 173) show that his conception of life and death has changed after his daughter Sabeth's fatal accident and his own ilhess in Caracas during which he reflected on the near past in order to wrîte the first part of his report- In Cuba, Faber does not despise the simple and natural life anymore. Rather, he values it highIy as an aitemaiive to the

"American Way of life" that he had long ideaiized. So while Faber had earlier rejected the "primitive" Iife of the Central American natives in order, as 1said, to justify his own profession and lifestyle, his sudden hatred of the "American way of

Life" is then sirniIariy expressed through his praises of Cuban life. What has really changed is Faber's attitude towards his own society and towards himself. Foreign peoples and lands becume but a projection screen for his fears and wishes. He now fin& the natural and iively Cubans beautifhl because he feels happy himseif. It does not bother him that they are so poor that smaii chiken need to work, shùüng the shoes of rich white men, or that many are victims of sex tourism, However, he now agrees with MarceI, the musician and Mayaphile, that the 'cAmericanway of life7ris al1 based on appearance.

As Marianna Torgovnick explab in &ne P&l&g the attraction of a

European towards the 'bprimitivey'is often the consequace of an identity crisis. He 58 or she fels alienated in the over-civiiised society and longs for "something simpler, more comf~rtabie."~~Homo faber can even be read as "a retum to the mots and the source of ide~~tity."'~Michael ButIer observes htboth parts of the novel "staa in the

New Worid, move through a point 'at the end of the world, or at lem at the end of civilisation'(N37,40f) and end in the cradIe of Western humanism, Gree~e."~~So the novel represents the evolution of an identity crisis which projects itseff on the

"foreign," on the Other. It is the story of an alienated man who, shortly before his deaîh, searches for sahation in the "primitive"which he sees as an earlier, more innocent stage of mankind. Walter Faber dies, most probably of stomach cancer, shortly afier his Iate reconciliation with nature and with the irrational, emotional part of himself. In the last pages of what tums out to be not a report but soma1 memoirs, Faber praises simple Me: "Au.der WeIt seh mi Licht sein. Irgendwo (wie der Aite neulich in Korinth) EseI treihen, unser Benif?- aber vor alIem: standhalten dem Licht, der Freude (wie merKiad, als es sang) im Wissen, ddich erksche im

Licht über Ginster, Asphah und Meer, Sbndhdten der Zeit, beziehungsweise

Ewigkeit in AugenbIick. Ewig sein: gewesen sein" (GW-1,199).J0

In conclusion, both novels present the sanie epistemologicai quest: IS it possible to perceive the world as it is, to interpret it objectively? And m both

Ouad& and H- this quest is highlighted by the protagonist's discussion of technology- What is mer ta "reaiity," science or art? What are the limits of 59 reason? What role do or should feelings, intuition or faith pIay in our understanding of the world? Aithough Gubbio and Faber reach (opposite) concIusions, the books leave the question standing.

The protagonists' ambivalent and unstable relationships with technology is, in both novels, at the centre of their identity crises as weII. As events force them to see the world differentiy, to reevaiuate their vaIues and beliefs, their reIations with technolog change. One moment machines and 'progress" are thought of as inevitable and reassuring, used to create a distance between the technician and the unpredictable natural world, the next they are demonized and cursed as the source of al1 evils. Similady, the charactersTStates of mind and seff-images are reflected in their changing evaluations of idyllic and 'primitive' scenes which, for them, represent an authentic innocent stage in their Iife or in the "'wolution of rnankind." So we have two very private crises projected onto the rapidly changing society of this century. Notes

1.Giovanna Querci, PirandelIo: I'inconsistenza dell'owettività (Roma- Bari: Editori Laterza, 1992) 77. The novel was pubiished as a book with the same titie in 1916, in 1925, it was reprinted with today's title.

2.Max Frisch. Homo Faber: A Repos tram. Michael Buiiock (1959. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovitch, 1987) 21-2: I've often wondered what people mean when they talk about an experience. I'rn a technologist and accustomed to seeing things as they are. 1 see everything they are talking about very cleady; derdl, I'm not blind. 1 see the moon over the Tamadipas desert-it is more distinct than at other times, perhaps, but still a calculable mass circling round our planet, an example of gravitation, interesting, but in what way an experience?

3 .Klaus Haberkarnrn, "Einfaii-Vorfall-Zufail:Max Frischs Homo faber aIs Geschichte von auBen," WN97(1982): 738.

4.Marlis Zeller Cambon, Max Frisch und Tai& Pirandello: eine ** . Untersuc hum ~r thematischen und stilistsschen Affinitatihrer Romane Dis. Bryn Mawr College, 1976 (An. Ahor: üMI, 19%) 172.

5.Hans Jiirg Lüthi, Max Frisch: =Du soIIst dir kein Bildnis machen. (München: Francke Verlag, 298 2) 35. See also Norbert Honsza, "Auf der Suche nach neuer Ich-Erfassung: zur Kommunikativitiit und Applikation der Prosa von . . Max Frisch," Frisch: Kntik-Thesen-Analysen, ed. Ma&d Jurgensen (Bem: Francke Verlag, 1977) 75.

6.Luigi PirandeUo, Notebooks of SdoGubbig tram. C.K. Scott Moncrieff (Sawtry: Deddus, 1990) 4: Tbere is a something more in everythiug.

7.Pkdel10, ne Notebooks of Se&o GubhiP, 87-8: It ought to be imderstood that the fantastic cannot acquire reaIity except by means of art . .. Lf it is mechanical, how cm it be Iife, how can it be art?

8.This opposition between theaüe and cmema, art and technology, coincides with the polemic between decadentism and futurism which raged in ; Itaiy at the time the novel was written, Decadent artists such as D'Annunzio and Fogazzaro vaiued art as the best mode of cognition, a way of seeing through the deep mystery of life. Their art accordingiy dedt wiîh the unconscious, tended toward the subIime, and was sometÏmes voIuntdy inaccessible. In contrast, the Futurists thought their art better refTected the times m which they lived, the concrete reality of cars and wars, of growhg industrialisation. Consequently, they advocated themes as weU as a style that evoked speed, energy, and even violence.

9.PirandeIl0, The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, 23: the symbol of the wretched fate to which continuous progreçs condemns the human race.

10.PirandelI0, The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, 8: 1satisfy, by writing, a need to let off steam which is overpowering. 1 get rid of my professionai impassivity, and avenge myseif as well; and with myself avenge ever so many others, condemned like myseIf to be nothing more than a hand that turns a hande.

11.Pirandello, The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, 14-5: Of what benefit is it to a man not to be content with aiways repeating the sarne action? Why, those actions that are fundamental and indispensable to life, he too is obliged to perform and to repeat, day &er day, like the animais, if he does not wish to die. All the rest, arranged and rearranged continually and franticaily, can hardly fail to reveai themselves sooner or later as illusions or vanities, being as they are the fiuit of that superfluity, of which we do not see on this earth either the end or the reason.

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

13.Haberkamm,736. For Haberkamm the fiuiction of the "first station" is "die Bestatigung der vorerst nicht durchschauten Rolle9*. See also Cegienas de Groot, "BiIdnis, SebstbiInis und Identitat in Max Frischs Romanw mlerf Homo fabei: und -enbein. Eh Vergleich," neueren Germanistik 9 (1980 ): 187.

ISMax Frisch, A Wilderness of Mirrors, tram. Micheai BulIock (London: Methuen, 1965) 49: Another ego is more expensive than the Ioss of a fidl wallet, of course; he would have had to abandon the whole story of his life, Iive through aii its events again and differently, since they would no Ionger have gone with his ego.

ld.Querci, 87. My translation: The myth of the machine, be it Sexafbo's Wack spider" or a modern electronic calcuiator, is used as a deceptive guarantee against the shaky ground of contingency, possibility if not even probability. 17.Charies W. Hofiam, 'The Search for Self, berFreedom, and Relatedness in the Novels of Max Frisch," The Conte- Novel in German. A Sym~osium,ed. Robert R Heitner (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969) 101.

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

20.1MichaeI Butler, The Novels of Max Frisch, (London: Oswald WolEf, 1976) 91.

22.Pirandell0, The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbig 203: Ai1 1açk is to continue, with my usual impassivity, my work as an operator.

23Pirandell0, The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbig 226: My silence would like to draw ever more cIoseIy round about me.

24Pirandell0, The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, 334: 1 prefer to remain like this. The times are what they are; life is what it is; and in &e sense that 1give to my profe~sÏon,1 intend to go on as 1am-aione, mute and irnpassive-being the operator.

' 25.Luciana Martinelli, Lo q ecchi'O mapico: immapini del femminile iq -delI~.*. (Bari: Edizioni Dedaio, 1992) C 12.

269irandeII0, The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbig 58: among the most cherished mernories of my life is that of the dear house in the cotmay by Sorrento

279irandeIl0, The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbig 277-8: 1saw that it was the same house, and it seemed to me impossible that it could be; 1saw that it had remained mnch the same; why then did it appear a different house? What a tragedy! The mernory that se& to Iive again, and cmot fhd its way among pIaces that seem changed, that seem different, because our sentiments have changed, our sentiments are different. And yet 1miagined that I had corne hunying to the villa with the sentiments of those days, the heart of long ago!

28Jirandeli0,~284-5: Images 1 carried in me, not my own, of things and people; images, aspects, faces, maories of people and thhgs which had never existed m reality, outside me, in the world which that gentleman saw round him and could touch. 1had though that 1 saw them, and could touch them also, but no, they were ail imagination! 1 had never found them again, because they Mnever existed: phantoms, a dream ... But how could they have entered my mind? From where? Why? Was 1 there too, perhaps, then? Was there an 1there then that now no Ionger existed? No; the middle-aged gentleman opposite to me toid me, no: that other people existed, each in his own way and with his own space and tirne: 1, no, 1was not there; albeit, not being there, 1 should have found it hard to Say where 1 reaiiy was and what 1was, being thus without time or space.

29.PimdeU0, The Late Mattia Pascal, 241: 1could not reaily Say who 1am now. . . 30.Maria Argenziano Maggi, B motivo del viaego nella narrativa prrandeiliang (Napoli: Liguori Editore, 1977) 47. My trandation: the vanity of the constructions that everybody make up for themselves.

3 1. Querci, 9 1.

32.Corrado Donati, JI sogo e la ra~one(Roma: Edizioni Scientifiche Itaiiane, 1993) 112.

33.Marîa Antonietta Grignani, "11 farsi e il disfarsi de1 linguaggio: retorica dei discorso e del siIenzio in Pirandello," La ~erson~~li'oueradi Lui@ Pirandello. Atti del XXlI Convegno Inte- to. 6-10 dicembre ed. Enzo Lauretta (Milano: Ugo Mursia Editore, 1990) 188.

34.PirandeU0, J'he Notebooks of SmGubbig286-7: 1cm do without everything, 1can. 1have wasted upon you a little of what is of no use to me; you how it; a little of that heart which is of no use to me; because to me only my hand is of use: there is no need, therefore, to thank me! Indeed, you must excuse me if 1have disturbed you. The fault is mine, for trying to interfere.

. -* 35~iariannaTorgovnick, Gone Pnmlhve: Savage IntelIects. Modem Lives (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990) 8.

36Srisch, mm0Faber, 43-4: '> It's amazing how they got these blocks of stone here, when they weren't acpahted with the wheel and therefore had no pdeys. They didn't know the arch either. Apart hmthe decorations, which didn't appeaI to me anyhow, because 1iike functionalism, 1 found these ruim extremely primitive .. . (My translation: I formd it cbildish to be amazed) at the way in which they had shifted these blocks of stone: they simply buiIt ramps and then dragged the blocks up them with an idiotic expenditure of manpower, that was what made it so primitive. ûn the other hand their astronomy. According to the ruin-lover, their calendar reckoned the solar year at 365.2420 &YS, instead of 3656422 days; nevertheless, for aü theu mathematicai howledge, they never evolved a technology and were therefore condemned to decline and disappear.

40.Frisch, Homo Faber, 210: To be alive: to be in the light. Driving donkeys around somewhere (We that old man in Corinth)-that's al1 our job amounts to! The main thing is to stand up to the light, to joy (like our chiid) in the knowledge that 1 shdbe extinguished in the light over gorse, asphalt, and sea, to stand up to tirne, or rather to eternity in the instant To be eternal means to have existed. CHAPTER 4

1Jno. nessuno e centomila and Mein Name sei Gantenbein

PIuraiïty and Relativity

Uno. nessuno e centomiIa is Lu@ Pirandello's last published novel.

Pirandello started writing it in 1909,' and announced its imminent pubkation in

1912.2 However, for years after, the book, which is considemi the sum of

Pirandello's thought? underwent numemus transformations, additions and tut$ until it finaIly made its appearance, in instalments hmDecember 1925 to June 1926 in

Fiera letteraria (TR 3, 1057). In 1964, that is during his five-year stay in Rome, Max

Frisch pubtished his last major nove1 on the theme of identity: Mein Name sei

Gantenbei~.~

In Uno. nessuno e centou identity is seen as sometbing constmcted and entireIy relative. The narrator and protagonist, VitangeIo Moscarda, tells the story of his own sûuggie to destroy tint the ma& and then the whole iilusion of a ded subject It al1 starts when VitangeIo's wife, Dida, pomts out to him something he has never noticed: bis nose tilts to the right. Moscarda's identity crisis cornes with his recognition thaî each person he knows has a different image of him, and that none.,of these matches his self-image. Mer trying in vain to see the "others" in him, that is to hnd out how others perceive him, he decides to destroy these "fakenimages by acting in the most unexpecîed mamer. He opposes his wife's image of him, her dear 66 Gengé, good-natured and a little stupid, wi't mother Vitangelo, brutal and stubborn.

And to destroy the general belief tbat he is a usurer, Moscarda gives a house to a poor crazy couple he had previously evicted fiom their miserable dwelling because they had not been paying the rent. He then decides to liquidate the assets of the batik of which he is the main shareholder. As his associates and in-laws try to have him declared insane in order to avoid bdmptcy, he makes an agreement with the town7s bishop makmg the liquidation wear an act of conûition. He pretends to feel remorse for an deged love &air and donates dl bis money to found a shelter where he ends up as a resident. At the end, people reaiIy beIieve him to be insane, but he has broken al1 connections with society. He claims to die and be bom again every instant without memones and in fui1 communion with nature.

The plot is simpIe and its narration hgmented but linear. It essentiaily documents the stages of the protagonist's shedding of his identity. However, there is more reflection than action in this novel. As "Considerazioni di Vitangelo Moscarda, generali davita degli uomini e particohri sdla propna, in otto Iibri", the subtitIe of the novel in its ürst publication, suggcits, an important part of Vitangelo7s mernoirs is devoted to his reflections on life. As Renato Badli remarks, U pessuno e centod is Pirandello's most hetoricai novel. The discourse is not integrated ("incastonato") the plot On the contraxy, the noveI is one long fragrnented and sometimes miundant speech on personal identity, where the stories are secondary and serve as examples to corroborate the arguments. What Werner

Schabouk criticises is that the most hteresting hdmgs remain exterior to the plot.7 67 For example, the fact that Moscarda has an interiocutor, first Dida's fiiend Anna

Rosa and then the 'toi" &ou) of the novel is, in my opinion, inconsistent with his often claimed disbelief in communication. Indeed, Moscarda maintains that words are intrinsicaliy "empty" of sençe and that every speaker gives them a meaning which, since it is based on subjective perception of things and events, is inevitably different fiom the meaning the listener will give them, making understanding impossible:

Abbiamo usaîi, io e voi la stessa Iingua, le stase parole. Ma che coIpa

abbiamo, io e voi, se le parde, persé, sono vuote? Vuote, Caro mio.

E voi le riempite del senso vostro, ne1 dûmele; e io neIl'accoglîerle,

inevitabilmente, le riempio del senso mio. Abbiamo creduto

d'intenderci; non ci siamo intesi afTatto.

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

di nuovo. Soi0 tomo a domandarvi:

-Ma perché dora, Santo Dio, seguitate a fare come se non si

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

This question that the fïrst-person nanator asks his fictive reader highlights the contradiction of his autobiographical story. If he has no faith in communication, why even try to &are his experience, which, Iike his idaitity, is doomed to be interpreed in a way he did not intend? The ht-personnanation is also inconsistent with the end of Moscarda's story, which hds him discomectecl fimm society and supposedly not 68

thinking in order to stay away fiom constructions: 'Xinascere attimo per attimo.

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

vuoto deiie vane costruzioni" (TR 2,902)? The form of this novei does not suit the

themes; it is as if Pirandello had been unable to transform this radicai expression of

his thought into a novelistic structure. As Schabouk remarks, Pirandello has found

in role-play, in drama, a fonn that better suits his themes of confiicting perspectives

and perception."'

The questions raised in Uno. nessuno e centornila are predominantly

epistemological and very modem. The novel is concerneci mainly with the truth. The protagonist's identity crisis is triggered by a "ûuth" about his nose and essentially consists of his desperate search for the 'khole truth" when faced with an infinite

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

mutuaily exdusive? Does exposing the "fdse" Iead to the 'bue?" VitangeIo finaily succumbs to the equal value of aii opinions. These are neither true nor false, they are possibilities. This conception of reality and particularty of personai identity as purely

relative is the climax of VitangeIo's Ioss of self. It cornes as a result of his aborted search for an authentic identity and of his discovery that, in society, aii is a construction. Moscarda compares sociai Iife to the town itself: Just like they buiid houes and streets, people ais0 create common places, conventions, prejudices, etc.

And as everybody constructs the Self and the Other, each m their own way, it resuits

in an infinite number of confIicthg images. A müfied identity is an illusion: 'Ta 69 realtà che ho io per voi è nella forma che voi mi date; ma è reaità per voi e non per me; la redià che voi avete per me è nelIa forma che io vi do; ma è reaità per me e non per voi; e perme stesso io non ho dtra realtà se non nelia forma che riesco a darmi.

E corne ? Ma costruendomi, appmto" (TR 2, 779).ILVitangeIo's discovery of relativity, far fiom liberating him hmthe ked fonns of his life, is the essence of his crisis, and his so-called salvation in nature is a flight fiom society.

For Moscarda, the nile of relativity is applicable to the city and to society but is not a universai principle, Away hmthe human sphere, there is authenticity or, at least, the absence of the construction, artifice, fiction and vanity that VitangeIo associates with society:

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

naturaie che illusioni e disinganni, dolori e gioje, speranze e desiderii

ci appajano vani e transitorii, di Fonte ai sentiment0 che spin delle

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

la quelle alte montagne oItre valle, Iontane Iontane, sfumanti

all'orizzonte, lievi ne1 tramonto, entro rosei vapori.. ..

Qua, cari miei, avete veduto l'ucceliino vero, che voIa dawero, e

avete smanito il senso e il valore delle ali htee del voIo meccanico.

Lo reac~uisteretesubito Ià, dove tutto è fhto e meccanico, nd-e

e costruzione: un alîm mondo ne1 mondo: mondo mdatturato,

cornbinato, congeguato: mondo d'artiiïcio, di stortura, d'adattarnento, 70

di finzione, di vanit& mondo che ha senso e valore soltanto per

I'uomo che ne è I'artefice (TR2, 775-6).12

Like Gubbio, Moscarda has an aversion for the "superflous," that human creation- mania, and longs for impassiveness, which he associates with the uncansciuusness and impassiveness of nature: "Ah, non aver più coscienza d'essere, come una pietra, come una pianta! Non ricordarsi più neanche del proprio nome!" (TR 2, 774)13 The

last words of the novel are: " . . . muojo ogni attimo, io, e rinasco nuovo e sema ricordi: vivo e intero, non più in me, ma in ogni cosa hori" (TR 2, 902).'-' The protagonist of Uno. nessuno e centornila gives up on society, gives up his

"superfiuous" and fin& refuge in a sort of vegetative state.

in an interview about Mein Name sei Gantenbein, Frisch spoke of the writer

as a (I wodd say Moscarda-like) b'Forscherin einer manchmal fast erbitterten Suche

nach der Wirklichkeit" (GW V-2, 15).'S The narrator of the novel seerns anything but

exasperated though and revels in his game which consists of doing precisely what

Pirandello had in mind when writing Uno. nessuno e centomilg: varying the illusion.

Indeed, in an inte~ewgiven in 1922 to L- Pirandello said of this novel that

it was going to show the positive side of his thought, Le., that we create our own

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

reaIt& io dico, siamo noi che ce la creiamo: ed è mdispensable che sia cosi. Ma guai

a fe& in una sola realta: essa si finisce per soffocare, per atrofizzarsi, per morire.

Bisogna invece varjarla, mutarla continuamente, continuamente mutare e variare la 71 nostra ill~sione."'~But as though Pirandello's intentions were refl ected in Frisch's text and Frisch's views in PirandelIo's novel, Vitangelo Moscarda engages in an exasperated search for reality, and his discovery of the constnicted nature of reality and identity shocks and destabikes him. Exposing the mechanisrus of identity construction and exploding the myth of autaenticity can be iiberating or it can create an anxiety-provoking vacuum. Pirandello does show the individuai as an active participant in the social const~~ctionof identity, but rather than Vary the illusion, as

PirandelIo suggests, Vitangelo Moscarda finaiIy refuses aIi variants.

in contrast, variation is the keyword to describe Mein Narne sei Gantenbein.

The noveI consists of many diffemt versions of what couid be the daiIy life of three main male characters: Gantenbein, Enderiin and Svoboda, al1 products of the nanator's imagination. These share one lover, Lila, but she also comes in many different versions (professions, civiI stanises, mtionaIities, sociai classes, etc.). The first-person narrator (or Book4 puch-Ich] as he is often caIIed by critics of the novel) identifies aitemately with one, another, or none of the three male characters.

The four (the narrator and his three characters) can appear together in one episode either as fiiends, enemies, strangers who meet by chance, competing Iovers, etc. Each of the three main characters Îs therefore refdto sometimes as '7," sometimes as

"yoq" sometimes as %e." The narrator experiments with many "lives," varying one or more aspects of the story of each chter. He is very much Iike an author, creating stories and characters while remaining IargeIy anonymous. 72

Hcwever, the narrator's creative possibilities are endless but not without limitations, that is he codd invent an infinite number of stories, but they display some meanin@ redmdancy. There is variation but aIso repetition, which is in a way reminiscent of Pascal's and Stiller's attempts at reinventing themselves. As the narrator says, al1 stones are inventions, but they are also attempts at expressing an experience. The Book-1, who says that he tries on stories iike clothes, knows that, regardless of the suit he wears, the same creases aiways appear at the same places:

" . . . irnmer entstehen die gIeichen Faiten am gleichen Ort, ich weiB es" (GW V-1,

2 l)." So the repetition withh the variation says sornething about what might have been the experiences at the source of ail those stories. One is surnmarized at the end of the book: "Ein Mann tiebt eine Frau . . .diese Frm iiebt einen andem Mann . . . der erste Mann tiebt eine andere Frau, die wiederum von einern andeni Mann geliebt wird . . . " (GW V-1, 313).18 Many of the stories are variations on that therne. And what the variation shows is the interchangeability of al1 possrbilities. If the narrator

is Mgon stories like cfothes, nowhere does the reada feel that he is looking for the

perfect suit. He is trying for the sake of trying. hdeed, right from the beginning the

narrator expresses his disbeiief in an authentic identiw "jedes MI, das sich

ausspricht, ist eine Rolle" (GW, V-1,48).19 Identity is a game in which everything

goes, and there is no right choice. This diffemtiates the narrator of Mein Name sei

t- t- hmVitangeIo Moscarda. Frisch's narrator is indifferent, an attitude

Peter V. Zima defines as the mais characteristic of postmodemist Iiterature. Whiie 73

Moscarda experiences bis loss of identity as a tragedy, we cannot speak of identity crisis in Mein Narne sei Gantenbeln, in which the narrator is perfectly at ease with the loss of certainty that is immanent to piuraiity.

However, it is possilble to view one c~fthe noveI's main characters as a parody of the modemist hem. He is the incaniation, in the novei, of the pre-Gantenbein type,

Like Stiller, Enderlin is tormented and unwilhg to play a roIe, or to redize that he is playhg one however not deiiierately. The narrator criticizes this attitude by

"dropping" this character for being too predictable. He aiso teus the anecdote of a diplomat who discovers one day that he is not worthy of his rank and reptation. ïhe man considers denouncing himself but, in the end, does not do so. And instead of feeIing guiIty and insecure (like Enderlin with his academic research and miety- provoking invitation to Harvard), he fully assumes his role of great man and ends up doing great things:

indem er eigentiich bIoB spielt, Ieistet er nicht nu.Ordentliches wie

bisher, sondem Ad3erordentliches . .. Dank seiner Personlichkeit, die

er spielt, wird eine Stadt vor der ZerstOrung durch Bomber gerettet,

und sein Nam wird emgehen m die Geschichte, er weiB es, ohne ni

Iiicheln, sein Name wird in Marmor geschrieben, wenn er stirbt, aIs

Name einer StraDe der emes PIatzes . . , (GW V-1,119-20)"

Living in society implies pIaying a de, but this is not necessarily negative. What is important is to be aware of the game. 74 Gantenbein, the real protagonist, Le., the one with whom the narrator most ofien identifies, is quite the opposite. His base role is that of the fake-blind husband of an actress. His whole world is role-playing. But he does not worry that he might be dishonest. Of course, he is a little nervous about cheatmg the bureaucracy in order to be officially recognized as blind and to get the yellow armband. However, pretending to be blind is no worse than pretending to be a good hostess (Lila), pretendiug to be a manicurist rather than a prostitute (Camilla Huber), or pretending not to be a rich materialist (Iong-Iost Eend). As the narrator sees it, everyone is always pretending or Ming something. The bIind-man role alIows him to observe other people's roles without their awareness and to "innocently" highiight their contradictions. When a former high-ranking Nazi leader speaks of cultural freedorn, for example, Gantenbein asks whether a man, who played an important roIe under

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

Gantenbein-episodes deal with the traditional Pirandeliian and Frischian theme of de-play in society. But the attitude here is matter-of-fact, the tone rather humoristic.

Gantenbein claims, for instance, to have Iemed hmactors that it is not necessary to iimp at every step in order to be a crediiIe cripple. So he ody needs to drop the ashes beside the ashtray once in a while to convince everyone that he is bhd. LiIa, bis partner, does not even doubt his biindness when he teils her that he has re+d something in the paper. Gantenbem is just as mare as VitangeIo Moscarda of his wife's 'hmdistic" image ofhmn, But there is no rebeiiion, no passionate Ionging for 75 tmth and authenticity. Such concepts as tmth and authenticity are not questioned, but they are taken to be just concepts and provoke no amiety or sense of loss. There is no ambivalence as in PirandeUoTsnovels and Frisch's previous two, where the protagonists both seek a tmified subjectity and flee the fixed form of any given identity. Gantenbein is indiffierent. For him, roles are interchangeable.

in contrast to Pirandello's work and Frisch's earlier production, which are concemed maidy with epistemological issues, Mein Name sei Gantenbein deais with predominantly ontological questions, a characteristic of postmodemist literature? ln this novel, there is no search for the truth and consequently no search for a true personal identity. The issue appears irreievant. The reader rnight wonder who the narrator really is, but what the narrator is concemed with is to project worlds and to exptore his many possible seIves. Bringing forward ontoIogical rather than epistemological issues has required a ndically different narrative structure. hdeed, we could almost speak of a poetic revoIution with regards to the previous novels.

There is no plot and no chronoIogy. Aithough the sequence of the passages is often determined by associations, there appears to be no order. There is no development.

As Frisch said, the novel is "station&" Regarding where the action takes place, there is much variation and sometimes even juxtaposition of more than one place, as m the episode where the narrator is foUowing strangers on the street: At the begiming, he is near the Sorbonne and foilows a man who is waIkmg towards the river Seine, but as he staas to foilow a second stranger, an Amerïcan, he says that he had been 76 thinking about spending the aftemoon in Central Park. The use of pronouns also defies the des of traditionai narrative (and grammar), as in the episode where

Enderlin (''der hdeHerr," ''the strange gentleman") meets Svoboda's wife in a bar, for the first tirne:

Ich bin jetzt, wie durch einen Alm, plôtziich sehr nüchtern; nur der

hdeHm, den sie nicht aufhaitm wili, ist nach wie vor betden,

nicht schiimm, immerhin so, daO ich mich von ihm unterscheide, ..

.Und ais der Itemde Herr endlich seine Hand wegnimmt, da ich sie

brauche, um meinen Whisky ni ergreifen, bevor er wmkt . . .(GW

V- 1,62-3)."

When Frau Svoboda arrives, there is a split between narrator (I) and '?he strange gentleman" (he), later called Enderlin. This shows not oniy the different perspectives,

"the strange gentleman" being the character as seen by Frau Svoboda, but also the narrator's shifiing identities. intereshg is also the constant shifting back and forth between two narrative levels, that of the nanator, creation of the author, and that of the characters expiicitly created by the narrator. The latter predominates, whiie the former is Iirnited to comments as weil as somc recurring brief sentences, such as ''1 imagine," which have the effect of stage directions.

Frisch's novel deais not only with the ontology of the projected worlds of the text but also with the ontology of the text ilself, as is ofien the case with postmodemist work~.~The denceof the text as such is highlighted. The reader 77 always remains aware that the text is a fiction, as its structure is laid bare and rhe creative process is rendered obvious. There can be no suspension of disbelief. In this novei, this is achieved rnainly through the explicit creation of characters: "My Name wouId be Gantenbein" ("Mein Name sei Gantenbein", GW VI, 25) and their self- erasure: "1 gave up Enderlin" ("Ich habe Enderlin aufgegeben", GW V 1,160). Not only does this give the examination of personal identity a.ontological perspective, it highlights the fictionality of the characters or, as McHaIe says, their "ineluctable w~ittenness."'~Narrative self-erasure (revoking not only characters but also places and events) is central to Mein Name sei Gantenbeiq. Although narrative self-erasure is not exclusive to postmodernist literature, it is typicd of this "illusion-breaking art."?5 Modernist literature aIso rnakes use of self-erasure as when a character is day- dreaming, for example. But if Gantenbein does not exist and Lila is just a fantasy, if the narrator is imagining al1 that, then wftat is redly happening in this novel? What is particular to postmodernist fiction is that seIf-erasure occurs, as in Mein Name sei

Gantenbein, without a stabiiizing hme.26

I hope to have shown clearly that the question of identity takes a ciiffereut turn in Max Frisch's novel. I do not mean to cIaim that Frisch is a posmodernist writer hm 1964 on. This is beyond the scope of this essay and, fiom what 1know,

* - it wouid be a faIse assumption. A later novel or ''story" iike Der Mensch en&mUn

Holozu (1979) cannot be considerd posûnodq not to speak of his plays.

However, Iooking at as postmodern can be useM to 78 explain the evolution of Frisch's treatment of personal identity. Gant-s nanator is not just a radical Stiller. He Iooks at identity hma different perspective and without the ambivdence and anxiety that characterizes Stiller's (or Faber's) crisis.

In Mein Name sei Gantenbeia identity and reality are viewed fiom a postmodern ontological perspective and with podmodem "inciifference."

Unlike Frisch's work, Pirandello's has spuned a debate regarding its possible belonging to naturaiism (verismo), modernism, the avant-garde, futurisrn, and postmodemism. Although Pirandello is generally considered one of the great writers of modernkt literature for both his drama and his prose, much bas been witten on the naturalism of his early production, the hturistic aspects of his theatre, his connection to the avant-garde, and so on. More recentiy, his narne has been linked to postmodemism. The Pirandello-postmodemism connection, though, is one that even a book like Pirandello zwischen Avantgarde und Postmoderne cannot estabiish ciearly. Indeed, the book reaf&m PirandelIo's modemism. What stands out in various essays is that aIthough it would be fashionable to hnd Pirandello postmodern

"avant Ia lettre," he is more precisely a precursor of deconsûuction. 1think Wiadimir

Krysinski sums up ai.i that cm be said on Pirandello's alieged postmodemism when he writes: 'l'oeuvre de PirandelIo se révèle à Ia fois giobaIement moderne et ouverte sur le post-modernisme.'* PPirandeIIo certainly shares some ideas with the philosophers of poçtmodernisrn but his work camot be caiied postmodem, His prose, as I have shown, starts in verismo (Iooking at an earlier noveI such as mcIusa 79 would make it a11 the more ch)and, with the three noveIs i have Oiscussed, deserves its place in the canon of modernist Iiterature.

Both 1Jno. nessuno e centomila and Mein Narne sei Gantenbein offer a similar view of identity as a constnict, plural and relative. However, the narrators differ in their perspectives on and attitudes towards identity construction. While Vitangelo ililoscarda, who has engaged in an epistemoIogica1 search for the "authentic" self, experiences his discovery of the "falsity" of identity as a tragedy, for the narrator of

Gantenbeib constnicting, de-constnicting and reconstnicting his identity is a game

a way to explore possibie seIves. This translates, in Frisch's last novel on identity, into a radicaily different narrative structure. To the end of the illusion of an authentic and unihed identity corresponds the "iUusion breaking" prose which rejects the traditionai suspension of disbelief and dernystifies, dong with identiw consûuction, the mechanisms of arbstic creation. Notes

1Maria Argenziano, introduction, Uno. nessuno e centomila, by Luigi Pirandello (Roma: Newton Compton, 1994) 26.

2Marziano Guglielminetti, ''Le vicende e i significati di 4Jn0, nessuno e centomila~,"Ii "Romanzo" di Pirandello, ed. Enzo Lauretta (N.p.: Paiumbo Editore, 1976) 187.

3.Wemer Schabouk, "Relativismus und Perspektivismus. Zum Standort des Erzablers bei Pirandello, Katka und V. Woolf," Pirandello und die wsche.* * EaIiteratur des 19-und 20. JaMunderts, eds. M. Rossner and F. - R. Hausmann (Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1990) 119. See aiso Elio Gioanola, Pirandello e la follb (Genova: il melangolo, 1983) 106; and Maria Argenziano Maggi, Il motivo del viaggio nella narrativa pirandelIian4 (Napoli: Liguri Editore, 1977) 59.

S.The titIe of the ody English transiation is "A Wilderness of Minon," but the original titie iiterally means "my name would be Gantenbein," a rechg sentence in the novel.

6.Renato Barilli, "1 rornanzi di Pirandeiio e il discorso retorico," II wn.ed. Enzo Lauretta (PaIumbo, 1976) 21 8.

8Luigi Pirandello, One. No One. and One Hundred Thousand, trans. Wîam Weaver (Boston: Eridanos Press, 1990) 31-2: We used, you and 1, the same language, the same words. But what fault is it of ours, yours or mine, if words, in themselves, are empty? Empty, my fiend. And you fil1 them with your meaning, as you say them to me; and 1, as 1hear them, inevitably fiU them with my meaninp. We thought we understood each other; we didn't understand each other at all.

99irandelI0, One. No One. and One Hundred Thousand, 160: To be rebom moment by moment To prevent thought hmworking again msidè me, causing inside a reappearance of the void with its Meconstructions. 11 Pirandello, One. No One. and One bdredThousan4,41: For you my reaiity is in the form you give me; but it is reality for you, not for me; your reality, which for me is the form 1 give you; but it is reaiity for me and not for you; and for myself I have no other reaiity except in the form 1 can give myself. How? By consîructiug myself, in fact.

12.PirandelI0, One. No One. and One Hundred Thousand, 38-9: We are in the country here; the languor has relaxed our Iimbs; it's natural that illusions and disenchantments, sorrows and joys, hopes and desires should appear to us vain and transitory, compared to the feeIing that wak hmthe things that remai.and survive them, inpassive. You have only to iook there at those high mountains across the valley, far far off, hazy on the horizon, iight in the sunset, amid pink mists. . . . Here, my dear fnends, you've seen the real bird, who redIy flies, and you have lost the meaning and the value of fake wings and rnechanical flight. You will recover it immediately back there, where aii is fake and mechanical, reduction and construction: another worid in the world, a manufactured, combined, devised world, a world or artifice of bending, adapting, of fiction, vanity, a world that has meaning and value only for the man who is its deviser.

13.Pirandell0, QneJo One. and One Hundred Thousand, 37: Ah, to be unconçcious, like a stone, like a tree! Not to remember even your own name any more!

14.Pirandell0, 160: . ..I die at every instant, and 1am rebom, new and without memories: iive and whoIe, no longer inside myself, but in every thing outside.

1S.My translation: Researcher in a sometimes aimost exasperated search for reaiity.

l6.Quoted in Marziano Gugiielminetti, 'levicende e i significati di ~Uno, nessuno e centomiIan," Ji Romwo di- PirandellQ,* ed. Enzo Lauretta (N-p.: Palumbo Editore, 1976) 197. My translation: I say we are the ones creating reaiity: and it has to be that way. But beware of sticking to one reaiity only: it eventuaiiy suffocates, degenerates, and dies. It is necessary to Vary it, change it continualiy, continualiy change and vary ou.iiiusioa

17Max Frisch, A Wildwof Mirro~tram. Michael Bullock (London: Methuen, 1965): . .. the same creases aiways devdop m the same places, I know that. 18.Frisch, A WiIderness ofMhw, 297: A man loves a woman . . .This woman loves another man. . .The ktman loves another woman, who in hini is loved by another man. . .

19.Frisch, A 46: every ego that expresses itseifin words is a rôIe-

201risch, A Wildeqggi of Mirrom f 14: whiIe he is redy only acting a part he not dyachieves good solid results as heretofore, but exceptional results. . . .Thanks to his personality, which he is acting, a city is saved hmdestruction hmbombers, and his narne wiil go dom in hiçtory, he knows bat without çmiling, his name wiU be written in marbie when he dies, as the name of a Street or a square

2 1Brian McHaIe, Postmodernist Fiction (London: Routledge, 1989).

22.F1isci1,j4 Wilderness of Muiirrols, 59-60: Now, as though in response to an dmsignal, 1 am suddeniy very soba, only the strange gentleman, whom she doesn't want to keep, is still dnuik, not badly, but enough for me to differenîiate myseIf from him. . . .And when the sûange gentiman finaiiy takes his hand away, because 1need it to take hold of my whisky before it gets wm. . .

. . 27.Wladimir Krysinski, Le -dieme mauiet: Piraoe tl e ch- de Ia modernité, cou. L'Univers des discours (Montréal, Le Préambule, 1989) 455. My translation: Pirandello's work is boîh giobally modern and open onto postmodernism. 83 Conclusion

1 stated in chapter 1 that the aim of this study was to show how Lui@

Pirandello's novelistic work resonates in Max Frisch's novels. Restricting my thematic analysis mainly to the question of identity has meant that 1have left many similarities undiscussed. 1 have not mentioned, for instance, aU the episodes of

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

However; concentrating on the theme of identity, which is centrai to al1 six novels, has allowed me to demonstrate the great affinity between both authors and to show the major similarities between their noveIs. There are also important (and mainly stmcturaI) ciifferences between PirandeUo's and Frisch's texts, and pointing ttiem out has highlighted the developments in the novelistic genre over the six fllrst decades of this century as well as the evolution of the theme of identity during that penod.

Chapter 2, the cornparison of Pirandello's Ji Fir Mattia Pascal (1904) with

Frisch's (1954)' has shown to what extent their stories are similar. Although its narration does aot respect the chronology of the plot, S~&K follows, it its broad outline, the pIot of the more tmditionai Ii fu Mattia Pascal. In both noveIs, the protagonist flees his famiIy, his work, and his native city in order to make a new and better Me for himseifelsewhere mder a new (self-made) identity. Both projects fail, expIoding the myth of the independent and dedsubject Persona1 identity proIr,= to be a constnict, excluding the possiiility of ever finding one's "authentic" self, and is ais0 shown to be dependent on the individuaI's pst and present relationships with 84 in the novels compared in chapter 3, Quademi di Serafino Gubbio oueratore

(191 5) and faber (1957), PirandeUo and Frisch deal with the problem of identiv in the age of machines and (in the case of Frisch) cornputers. Both Gubbio's and Faber's identity crises manifest themeIves in the protagonists' ambivalent and unstable relationships with technology. Machines have their counterpart in art, which represents a different way of understanding the world and the human being.

Sidarly, there is a counter-world to Gubbio's and Faber's hanlives: the country idyll of Gubbio's youth and the "primitive" lands where Faber works. Both protagonists' inclinations shifi hmtechnology and the city to art and the idyII (or

"primitive") or vice-versa The novels show that, whether it is based on an idytIic or scientific vision of the world, identity is dways a construct, and therefore neither authentic nor eternal.

Uno. nessuno e centornila (1926) and Mein Name sei Gantenba (1964), the two texts examined in chapter 4, offer essentidy the same view of personai identity as plural and relative. However, while Pirandello's last novel is, in content and form, a typically modemist novei representing the search for tmth and the rebeiiion against the constructed nature of identity, in Mein Name sei Gantenbein, identity is viewed hma postmodem ontological perspective and with postmodem "indifference."

Frisch's narrator is not semhnig for authenticity or for a true identity. He playsat projectmg worids and at inventhg and re-inventmg his identity. He experiments with poss%Ieselves. The form ofthe novel is &O experimentd and very weII dedto its 85 content The novel ignores the conventions of piot, hero, place, and chronology and demystifies, dong with identity construction, the mechanisms of artistic creation.

Overali, the sirniladies between Pirandeff O and Frisch are, as 1had thought they would be, very important. However, the ciifFerences are no less interesting, especially with regards to the change in attitude towards the problem of identity. Angefi, Franca 'Tirandedo e la modemit&" PirandelIo zwischen Avantgarde igl& Poçtmoderne. Studia litteraria 7. Ed. Michael R6ssner. Wilhelmsfeld: Egerf 1997.3- 12.

-. "43 @.m...: I'ideologia della maccba in Pirandello." Ji "Romanzo" di Pirandello. Ed. Enzo Lauretta. N.p.: Palumbo Editore, 1976. 143-60.

Argenziano, Maria Introduction. Uno. nessuno e centomih By Luigi Pirandello. 1 classici Superten 37. Roma: Newton Compton, 1994,

Argenziauo Maggi, Maria il motivo de1 viamio nella nanativa uirandelIiana Napoli: Liguri Editore, 1977.

BariIli, Renato. "1 romanzi di Pirandello e il discorso retorico." 11 "Romanzo" di Pirandello. Ed. Enzo Lauretta N.p.: Palumbo Editore, 1976.209-22.

Bicknese, Günther. "Zur Rolle Amencas in Max Frischs Homofaber." The Gman Ouarterly 42 (1 969): 52-64.

B locker, Gunter. Literatur ais TeiIhabe. Berlin: Argon Verlag, 1966.

Butler, Wchael. The Novels of Max Frisch. London: Oswald Woiff, 1976.

Cambon, Mariis Zeller. "Max Fnschs Stiller und Luigi Pirandellos Mattia PascaI: . .. Die Odyssee ni sich seibst." m- 65. Geburtstag. Ed. M. Jiirgensen. Bern: Francke Veriag, 2977.81-96.

- d LuiPi PielIo: Eine Untersuchune zur thematischen ud istrschen Affinitiit ihrer Romm. Diss. Bryn Mawr ColIege, 1976. Am Arbor. UM 77-6515 28566.

Cauvin, Marius. 'Max Frisch, das Absolute und der #Nouveau roman.." Über Max m.Ed. Walter Schmitz. Frankfiut am Main: SuMEamp, 1976.335-44.

Debenedetti, Giacomo. a romiuizo del Novecm. Gaxzanti, Milano, 1971. de Groot, Cegienas. "Bildnis, Seib~tbiI~sund Identitiit in Max Frischs Romanen Still~e&-0 Fabw und Mein Narne sei Gantenbeiq. Ein Vergleich." - .. Ametdamer Be~trageigg neueren Gm* 9 (1980): 179-203.

Dombroski, Robert S. Le totaixta-. del1 a'- amfino: IdeoIo-O di Pirandello. Padova: Liviana Editrice, 1978.

Donati, Conado. "L'identità e Ia parola: Pascd, Gubbio e Moscarda interpreti della . crisi deU'Io." JI sogo e 1a ramone. Sa-delliarii.. Roma: Edizioni Scientifiche Itaiiane, 1993.93-135.

-. "La ricerca dell'identità da PascaI a Moscarda" La solitudine al10 specchio. Luigi PirandelIo. Romx Luciano Lucarini Editore, 1980.47-79.

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

-. ,4 Wilderness of Mvlirrors. Trans. Michael Bullock. London: Methuen, 1965.

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

- ot Stiller. Trans. Mchael Builock New York: Vintage Books, 1958.

Genco, Giuseppe. "Mattia Pascal e Vitangelo Moscarda, owero Ia morte della persona. e. la nascita del personaggio." PirandeIlo. La morte della Dersona e Iê nasclta del Dersonaggu* . NapoIi: Piero Lacaita Editore, 1993.43- 60.

Gioanola, Elio. Pirandello e Ia fouGenova: il melangolo, 1983,

Grignani, Maria Antonietta 'Tl fici e il disM del iinguaggio: retonca del discorso e del silenzio in Pirandello." La erso on P nell'o~erad i Luimdello. AtQ del XMlI Convegno Intemazion&Q&gnto. 6-1 0 dicembre 1989, A cura di Enzo Lauretta. Milano: Ugo Munia Editore, 1990.175-89.

Guglielminetti, Marziano. 'Te vicende e i signiscati di 4310,nessuno e centornila-." 3, - J1 dlPwwMi~- .Ed Enzo Lauretta Nq.: Pdumbo Editore, 1976, 183-207.

Haberkamm, Klaus. "bEinfall-Vo~d.i-ZufalI:Max Frischs Homo faber ais Geschichte von auBen." MIN 97 (1982): 713-44.

Haster, Heima "Das Kamera-Auge des Homo Faber: Ein Seitrag auch nn Medienpadagogik-" MonDeutsch 9 (1978): 375-87.

Hiiien, Ger& "Autor und offentlichkeit m existentieller Sicht: Em Kommentar ni Max Frischs Mein Name sei Gantenbein." CoIIoqpia 20 (1987): 338-56. HofZna~,Charles W. 'The Search for SeIf, Inner Freedom, and Relatedness in the Novels of Max Frisch." The Contemporary Novel in German. A Synuosium. Ed. Robert R Heitner. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969.93-1 13,

Honsza, Norbert. "Auf der Suche nach neuer Ich-Erfassung: Zur Kommunikativitat und Applikation der Prosa von Max Frisch." Frisch: Kritik-Thesen-Analysm. Ed. M&d Jurgensen. Bern: Francke Veriag, 1977.67-80.

Jurgensen, Manfred. Max Frisch. Die Rom%- Bern: Francke Verlag, 1976.

Kesting, Marianne- "PirandeLlo und der ,Nouveau Roman'." Pirandello und die eurouaische Erzahlliteratur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Akten des 4. Pirandello- Kolloquiums in Aachen vom 7. bis 9. Oktober 1988. Eds. Michael Roççner u. Frank-Rutger Hausmana Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1990.58-76.

-. "Pirandello und einer seiner Tnterpreten," Auf der Suche nach der Realitat. mtische rn't . MUnchen: R Piper & Co. VerIag, 1972. 58-65.

Klinkert, Thomas. "Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore. Riflessioni sull'opera d'arte nell'epoca derla sua riproducibilità tecnica" Pirandello mischen Avantgarde und Postmodw. Studia litteraria 7. Ed. Michael Rossner. Wilhelmsfeld: Egert, 1997.18 1-200.

Knapp, Mona "Der 'Techniker" WaIter Faber: Zu einem kritischen Missverst&ldnis." (;iermanrc 8 (1977): 20-3.

. . . # Krysinski, Wlarlimfr. Leet:Phde110 et le de la rnodm.uk CoII. L'Univers des discours. Montréal: Le Préambule, 1989.

-. 'cPirandello e la condizione postmodenia" PirandelIo e I'oltre. Atti del XXV Convemo Internazionde. -5-9 1990. Ed. Enzo Lauretta. Coilana di saggi e documentazioni del Centro nazionaie di studi pirandelliani 32. Milano: Mursia, 1991.227-32.

-. cTirandeilo, la modernité et te postmodeme." Pirandello. Atti del Conghesso Intenime. Ottawa. 24-26 ottobre 1986. Eds. A. Alessio, C. Persî Haines, L. G. Sbroccbi. Bibiioteca di Quaderni d'itaiianistica Ottawa: Canadian Society for ltalian Studies, 1988.272-89.

Leone de Castris, A. 'Ti rumanzo di firandelIo, fia tradizione e avanguardia" 11 -. -. 6 '9 - - Ed+Enzo Lauretta Np.: Paltnnbo Editore, 1976. Lista, Giovanni. "La drammaturgia fiturista e il "cerebralismo fiinambolico" di Pirandello." Pirandello e la drammatureia tra Ie due mem. Ed. Enzo Scrïvano. Coll. di saggi e documentazioni 14. Agrigente: Centro nazionaie di Studi pirandelfiani, 1985.143-62.

Lubich, Frederik A. Max Frisch .Stiller*. .Homo faber. und Mein Name sei Gantenbein*. München: Francke VerIag, 1990.

Lusser-Mertelsmann, Gunda. "Selbstflucht und Selbstsuche.. . Das fiPsychoanalytische~in Frischs .Stiller.," Matenalien ni Max Frisch >Stiller<. Zweiter Band, Ed, Walter Schmitz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978.594-6 15. . . Lllthi, Hans Jmg. Max_Ensch- IlDu sollst dit udnis machen". München: Francke Verlag, 198 1...... Martinelli, Luciana. Lo.sDecchio_maeico: i- del feminrle in Tmq PirandeIl~.Bari: Edizioni DedaIo, 1992.

Mazzacuati, Giancarlo. Pirandello ne1 romanzo eurobeo. Bologna: il Mulino, 1987.

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

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

Petersen, Jiirgen H. Max Frisch. Sm. Frankfirrt am Main: Verlag Moritz Diesterweg, 1994.

Pirandeilo, Luigi. The 1,ate MaPascd. Trans. NicoIetta Simborowski. London: Dedaius, 1987.

- e Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio. Trans. CK Scott Moncrieff. Sawtry: Dedalus, 1990.

- d Thonsand. Trans. WiIliam Weaver. Boston: Eridanos Press, 1990.

- -. . . Eci Giovanni Macchia with Mano Costanzo. 2 VOIS. 1Meridiani. N.P.: Amoldo Mondadori Editore, 1973. Probst, Gerhard F. %Du soilst dir kein Bildnis machm: Überiegungen ni Max Frisch Roman Mein Name sei Gnntenbein." Colloauia GermmD3/4 (1978): 317-29.

--. "Three levels of Image Making in Frisch's Mein Name sei Gantenb*" &nuecaves on Max Frisch. Eds. G. F. Robst and J. F. Bodine. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1982.155-62.

Probst, Gerhard F. and Jay F. Bodine, eds. Perspectives on Max Frisch Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1982. hrllini, Giorgio. "Dalla crisi della persona alla dissoluzione (vitale) de! personaggio." W.Veilecchi Editore, 1984.

Querci, Giovanna "Lo sfaccettamento deUa verità: l'uomo htumato." Pirandello: J'inconsistenza deli'oe~ettività.Roma-Bari: Editori Laterza, 1992.27- 57.

Reich-Ranicki, Marcel. Max Frisch. Aufsatzc Zünch: Ammann Verlag, 1991.

Robbe-GrilIet, Alain. Pour un nouveau roman. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1963.

Rossner, Michael. 'TirandelIo davanti all'abisso de1 postmodernismo." Pirandeilo schen Avantgarde- und Postmoderne. Studia litteraria 7. Ed. MichaeI R6ssner. Wilhelmsfeld: Egert, 1997.217-27.

Sarraute, Nathalie. L'ère du soupcon. Essais sur Ie rm.N.p.: Gallimard, 1956.

Schabouk, Werner. "Relativismus und Perspektivismus. Zum Standort des Erzahlers bei Pirandello, Kafka und V. Woolf." -de110 und die ewo- .. - des 19.sd 20. Jahrm.Eds. M. R6ssner und F-R Hausmann. Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1990. 119-40.

Schmitz-Emans, Monika "Erzahlen aIs Kunst der Selbstfmdung - Pirandellos ,,Mattia Pascai" und einige seiner deutschen Verwandten." -delIo un4 _. .. Eds. M. die euro~aische EnaNliteram. des 19. und 20. J~~~hunderts. R6ssner und F-RHausmana Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1990.173-90. '\ Sicari, Carmeha "La. fine.. dell'identità . ne1 pensim di Pirandello." J.a Tersonan i Jmm- Pirandello. Attr del XXIIT Convemo uitaw&x~& cembre 1989. A cura di Enzo Lauretta. Milano: Ugo Mursia Editore, 1990.175-89.

SogLiuzzo, Richard, "=Si gira...., un'amara parabola deiia tecnologia modenia" Q Ed. Enzo LaUretta Palumbo Editore, 1976.169-8 1.

Strong Cincotîa, Madeleine. 'Z'io, Io specchio e 10 sguardo altrui." bersou del Xxrn Coevm Int- 989. Ed. Enzo htta. Coliana di saggi e documentazioni del Centro nazionale di studi pirandelliani 29. MiIano: Mwsh, 1990.267-80.

* - TorgoMick, Mari- Brie gnmitive: Sav Intellects. Modem Lives. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 199û.

Weisstein, Ulrich. "Stiller: die Suche nach der Identitikm ~%erhiIZIZLEtlSEhl;l. Ed. Walter Schmitz, Frankfurt am Main: SuMrarnp, 1976.245-65.

Prosadichtung. Max Wùite, Andrew. "Die Labyrinthe damodernen Fnschs. mStillern . als Roman der ~Enükndung.und der *Nouveau romana." Wiena Max Frischs >Stil&. Erster Band. Ed. WaIter Schmitz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp VerIag 1978,356-76.

-. 'Reality and Imagination in Mein Nàme sei Gantenbein." Oxford Gm Se16-21 (1977): 150-64.

Zeltner, Gerda. 'Qas Ich ohne Gewahr." Wh.Pro Helvetia m.Ban: Zytglogge Vdag, 198 1.99-1 16.

Zirna, Peter V. me1 Po-. TUbhgen: Francke, 1997.