© 2011 Samantha M. Costanzo ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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© 2011 Samantha M. Costanzo ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE REANIMATION OF THE PIRANDELLIAN PROTAGONIST FROM SPIRITUAL SICKNESS TO MYSTICAL CONSCIOUSNESS By SAMANTHA MARY COSTANZO A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Italian Written under the direction of Elizabeth Leake and approved by ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October, 2011 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Reanimation of the Pirandellian Protagonist From Spiritual Sickness to Mystical Consciousness By SAMANTHA MARY COSTANZO Dissertation Director: Elizabeth Leake My analysis demonstrates Luigi Pirandello’s application of spiritual modes of thought ranging from Eastern mysticism to the modern Western movements of Theosophy, Spiritualism and Parapsychology. Using Antonio Illiano’s seminal work, Metapsichica e letteratura in Pirandello (Metapsychics and Literature in Pirandello) as a point of departure, my research incorporates the various philosophical, scientific and spiritual frameworks Pirandello utilized to describe the psychological and spiritual crisis pervading man’s experience in the modern world. One of the most interesting facets of my research is the unequivocal parallel between Pirandello’s spiritual approach and the ancients teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism. Very few Pirandello scholars address the spiritual essence that encompasses Pirandello’s entire collection. This is surprising considering the author’s ingenuous admission of the fundamental role of the spirit in the genesis of his artistic creation as well as the explicit presence of spiritual elements that pervade his aesthetic theories and fictional stories. This dissertation contributes to the limited scholarship of this nature and aims to ii stimulate further discussion regarding the connection between Pirandello’s work and Buddhism. The historical research and close analysis of the selected texts in this dissertation provide ample evidence that beyond being an index of Pirandello’s fluency with current, cultural, scientific, and spiritual trends, these systems of thought provide the very scaffolding on which Pirandello’s works are constructed. This discourse allows the reader a deeper understanding of the spiritual evolution of the Pirandellian protagonist and offers insight to the author’s artistic process as guided by the spirited imagination, substantiating my claim that Pirandello’s oeuvre must be read through a spiritual lens. iii [First numbered page] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is with sincere gratitude that I thank my advisor, Elizabeth Leake, whose guidance, brilliance, encouragement, and support made this project possible. I would like to sincerely thank Andrea Baldi, Paola Gambarotta, Damaris Otero Torres, and Donato Santeramo for their participation on my committee. Thank you to the entire faculty, staff, and my colleagues of the Department of Italian at Rutgers University. I especially thank Alessandro Vettori, David Marsh, Andrea Baldi and Laura S. White for their invaluable instruction. A special thank you as well to Carol Feinberg and Robin Rogers for facilitating absolutely everything. I would like to acknowledge Michele Lettieri for giving me my start as an Italianist at Middlebury College. Thank you also to Pietro Frassica, Daragh O’Connell and John Barnes of the Pirandello Studies Society, the Pirandello Society of America, and the Istituto di Studi Pirandelliani. A special thank you to Joyce McFadden for all the support over the years. I would like to thank my team of experts: Johanna Wagner, Carmelo Galati, Deena Levy, Mary Ann Mastrolia, Franceso Pascuzzi, Lara Santoro and Mattia Marino, FIAT and the IRW. I cannot imagine a dissertation without the help of this group. It seems appropriate to thank my cat, Luigi Purrandello, for keeping me company during the long hours of writing. A gigantic expression of thanks goes to my editor and my love, Richard Burrier. I cannot thank you enough for your help, patience, love and support. Thank you to my friends and my family for all your love and encouragement during this process. I cannot express my gratitude to you enough. Thank you Peter Ryan for everything. iv Finally, I fondly dedicate this dissertation to my father, Peter Costanzo, without whom this culmination of my studies would not be possible. Dad, I sincerely thank you for the unconditional love, support, patience and wisdom that you have given me my entire life. I also dedicate this dissertation to Luigi Pirandello, whose spirited imagination will undoubtedly continue to astound and inspire me. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT..............................................................................................ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......................................................................iv TEXTUAL NOTE ……………………………………………………...vii INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................1 1.THROUGH THE REVERSE TELESCOPE: .......................................14 Antipostivism & Pirandello’s Cosmic Vision 2. INTO THE MYSTERIOUS ABYSS ..................................................64 Pirandello’s exploration of non-theistic religions & unconventional science 3. A CURSE ON COPERNICUS! ………………………......................161 Il fu Mattia Pascal: Reincarnation, Karma & the Tantalus Syndrome 4. FROM THE TRAP TO THE EXIT: ………………...........................236 Mystical Consciousness & the Language of Paradox CONCLUSION........................................................................................300 BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................315 vi TEXTUAL NOTE All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. Abbreviations The following abbreviations are used throughout this dissertation: TLN 1 Tutte le novelle I. 1884-1904 TLN 2 Tutte le novelle II.1905-1913 TLN 3 Tutte le novelle III. 1914-1936 Tr 1 Tutti i romanzi I Tr 2 Tutti i romanzi II “Pirandello’s Six Characters” is abbreviated from: Illiano, Antonio. “Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author: A Comedy in the Making.” Metapsichica is abbreviated from: Illiano, Antonio. Metapsichica e Letteratura in Pirandello. vii 1 INTRODUCTION Ve ne sono altri [scrittori] che, oltre questo gusto, sentono un piú profondo bisogno spirituale, per cui non ammettono figure, vicende, paesaggi che non s’imbevano, per cosí dire, d’un particolar senso della vita, e non acquistino con esso un valore universale. Sono scrittori di natura piú propriamente filosofica. Io ho la disgrazia d’appartenere a questi ultimi.1 -Luigi Pirandello Luigi Pirandello’s literary collection reflects his concern for man’s psyche at the turn of the twentieth century. Witness to the rapid advancements in technology and science of the Industrial Revolution, Pirandello observed the negative consequences of society’s shift toward industrialization and away from old world values. He saw the profound impact of modernization not only on socioeconomic and cultural conditions but on man’s consciousness, soul and spirit as well. He argued that the increase in materialism, bolstered by the mechanistic and materialistic philosophies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, greatly contributed to man’s mental suffering by tarnishing the human spirit and repressing the consciousness.2 According to Pirandello’s assessment, the limits imposed on the consciousness generate dis-ease in the human spirit, causing the spirit to create illusions that man mistakes as reality. These fictions of the spirit 1 From the “Prefazione” (“Preface”) (1925) to Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author) (1921). See Maschere nude 1: 36. Translation: “But there are other [writers] who, beyond such pleasure, feel a more profound spiritual need on whose account they admit only figures, affairs, landscapes which have been soaked, so to speak, in a particular sense of life and acquire from it a universal value. These are, more precisely, philosophical writers. I have the misfortune to belong to these last” (Eric Bentley, trans. 364-365). 2 A comprehension of the history of science from the Copernican Revolution to the Industrial Revolution is fundamental for an appreciation Pirandello’s response to empirically based approaches. See Holton, Gerald Science and the Modern Mind (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), Kern, Stephen Culture of Time and Space (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983) and Prosch, Harry The Genesis of the 20th Century Philosophy: the Evolution of Thought from Copernicus to the Present (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964). 2 disconnect the individual from his true Being, and subsequently, force him to live inauthentically.3 Throughout his oeuvre, Pirandello emphasizes the psychological and spiritual ramifications of the materialistic world-view. He asserts his conviction that the human spirit is put in crisis due to the disparate value of knowledge appropriated to the methods of logic, reasoning and rationalizing as endorsed by scientific method and the Age of Enlightenment. Pirandello repeatedly proposes that the influx of technological inventions and the denial of the natural intelligence of the universal spirit, ruin humanity by belittling man’s sense of himself in the universe and destroying his connection to the human spirit. When scientists, such as Copernicus,