Pirandello’s Theater and the Rules of the Delusional Mind Scott Nelson A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the department of Romance Languages Chapel Hill 2011 Approved by: Dr. Federico Luisetti Dr. Dino Cervigni Dr. Ennio Rao Dr. Oswaldo Estrada Dr. Juan Carlos González Espitia ©2011 Scott Nelson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT SCOTT NELSON: Pirandello’s Theater and The Rules of the Delusional Mind (Under the direction of Dr. Federico Luisetti) The dissertation analyzes how the concept of delusion is used in some of Pirandello’s most influential plays. It explores how each character, or group of characters, uses a version of logic in an attempt to create a personal reality in the following plays: Enrico IV, Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore, Così è (se vi pare), Questa sera si recita (a soggetto), and La patente . The dissertation looks at what it means to have an identity and how people form an identity through a process of logical and delusional thought. In Pirandello’s plays, each character’s effort to create a personal reality is an attempt to establish a place in society and to be accepted by those around him. Many of the Pirandellian characters are not successful because what they see as logic is considered to be delusion by others. The work applies the concepts of Remo Bodei who sees delusional people as still having the ability to use logic and reason, but from a point of view that has been determined to be delusional. Instead of merely labeling his subjects as delusional, Bodei is interested in how they maintain their use of logic. Reality and delusion are not concepts that are limited to the characters in Piradello’s plays. When witnessing a play, the spectator must also decide if what he is seeing is fact or fiction. With that in mind, the dissertation also explores the theatrical norms that Pirandello challenges and the active role that the audience plays in a Pirandellian theatrical work. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapters I. Introduction……………………………..……………………………………..1 II. Between Reason and Madness: The Impossibility of Establishing a Personal Reality in Enrico IV ……………………………..….13 III. Delusional Thought in Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore ……………………39 IV. Social Norms and Group Psychology: The Power of Logic to Create Delusion in Così è (se vi pare) ……………………………...81 V. Questioning Reality: Exploring The Fictional Mode of Presence in Questa sera si recita (a soggetto) ………………………...……105 VI. The Reality of Good and Evil and the Delusion of Mutual Understanding in La patente ………………………………...……..135 VII. Conclusion………………………………………………………………….156 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………..161 iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Luigi Pirandello is arguably one of the greatest writers in the history of Italian literature. While he is certainly one of the most studied 20 th -century Italian writers, Pirandello somehow remains an enigmatic figure whose work continues to captivate readers and encourage study and investigation. As Pietro Frassica states in his book, Her Maestro’s Echo , Pirandello’s varied texts continue to provide a seemingly inexhaustible source of broadly different readings by successive generations of readers (xi). During his lifetime Pirandello practiced several different genres such as prose, poetry and theater. His first published piece was a collection of poems and his second was a novel, L’Esclusa (The Excluded Woman ), in 1893. After the collapse of the family sulphur mine, Pirandello was forced to make his writing a moneymaking endeavor. Coincidentally, the novel Il fu Mattia Pascal (The Late Mattia Pascal ) was published that same year, 1904, and it brought with it not only financial gain but also international fame. It was not until 1916, feeling that he had well established himself as a poet and novelist, that Pirandello decided to dedicate himself in earnest to theater. In that same year of 1916 Pirandello saw the production of two of his Sicilian dialect plays: Pensaci, Giacomino! (Think about it, Giacomino! ) and Liolà. This was just the beginning of his theatrical success and, over the next decade, Pirandello would devote himself almost entirely to the theater, writing more than forty plays, including Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author ) in 1921 and Enrico IV (Henry IV ) in 1922. Two years before his death on December 10 th , 1936, Pirandello was recognized for his body of work with the Nobel Prize for literature. Pirandello grew up in a Sicily that witnessed both extreme poverty and wealth. Both because of, and despite, the successful sulphur mine that Pirandello’s father owned, Pirandello was well aware of the striking contrasts of daily Sicilian life. These contrasts would influence Pirandello’s work as well as his life. In his famous 1908 essay, L’umorismo (On Humor ), Pirandello presents a sense of disproportion between ideals and reality. He distinguishes the humorous from the comic explaining that while the comic seeks only to make one laugh, the humorous seeks to show the contradiction of opposing ideas and consists in “the feeling of the opposite” that is produced by the activity of reflection. This idea is most famously expressed by the appearance of what Pirandello considers to be a ridiculous old lady. 1 Out of this essay came many of the concepts that would dominate Pirandello’s work such as the dualism of life and form and its intricate relation within the psychology of the characters. 2 1 “Vedo una vecchia signora, coi capelli ritinti, tutti unti non si sa di quale orribile manteca, e poi tutta goffamente imbellettata e parata d’abiti giovanili. Mi metto a ridere. Avverto che quella vecchia signora è il contrario di ciò che una vecchia rispettabile signora dovrebbe essere. Posso così, a prima giunta e superficialmente, arrestarmi a questa impressione comica. Il comico è appunto un avvertimento del contrario . Ma se ora interviene in me la riflessione, e mi suggerisce che quella vecchia signora non prova forse nessun piacere a pararsi così come un pappagallo … ecco che io non posso più riderne come prima, perché appunto la riflessione, lavorando in me, mi ha fatto andar oltre a quel primo avvertimento, o piuttosto, più addentro: da quel primo avvertimento del contrario mi ha fatto passare a questo sentimento del contrario ” (116). “I see an old lady whose hair is dyed and completely smeared with some kind of horrible ointment; she is all made-up in a clumsy and awkward fashion and is all dolled-up like a young girl. I begin to laugh. I perceive that she is the opposite of what a respectable old lady should be. Now I could stop here at this initial and superficial comic reaction: the comic consists precisely of this perception of the opposite . But if, at this point, reflection interferes in me to suggest that perhaps this old lady finds no pleasure in dressing up like an exotic parrot … then I can no longer laugh at her as I did at first, exactly because the inner working of reflection has made me go beyond, or rather enter deeper into, the initial stage of awareness,” Luigi Pirandello, On Humor 113. 2 As Susan Bassnett-McGuire points out in her book Luigi Pirandello , form is a term that is meant to include art, social position, idealism and dreams (25-6). 2 Despite Pirandello’s long-term commitment to the literary genres of the novel and the short story, what made him stand out in the literary scene was his innovative approach to theater. Frassica describes how theater was the perfect medium for Pirandello’s artistic expression because of the nature of theater to deal with ideas such as illusion, pretense, and role-playing. He clarifies his point by stating that the actors assume a role for an audience that, as he puts it, “accepts them as those characters and yet is also aware of their existence as actors” (xv). When discussing his own work in Barcelona in 1924, Pirandello responded to a question about his theater with this remark: “People say that my drama is obscure and they call it cerebral drama. The new drama possesses a distinct character from the old: whereas the latter had as its basis passion, the former is the expression of the intellect. One of the novelties that I have given to modern drama consists in converting the intellect into passion” (Bentely 3). At times, in some of Pirandello’s plays, it may seem that passion has trumped intellect, but what is actually present is a passion for intellect. The Pirandellian character is incredibly passionate, even to a fault, about his logic and intellect. This is a fact that sometimes leads him to create what might be considered a delusional reality. As with any multi-faceted character, the Pirandellian character is more than just passion and intellect. The Pirandellian hero is often a self-analyzing and self-aware character who suffers from loss yet protests dramatically against it. As Umberto Mariani writes in his book Living Masks: The Achievement of Pirandello , Pirandello’s characters know that their loss is final yet they resent it. They refuse to resign themselves to the chaos of formlessness and of insignificance. This chaos is what Mariani refers to as their conflict and their drama 3 (5). 3 According to Massimo Castri, director of Pirandello’s Vestire gli ignudi (To Dress the Naked ), the Pirandellian character is defined by the impossibility of living in the present. He states: “Gli altri ti vivono sempre per quello che sei stato, per quello che loro t’immaginano essere, per quello che sarai; mai per quello che sei, o meglio che pensi di essere ( Pirandello ottanta 24).