By Fausta Samaritani.Â
In the letters to Marta, Luigi expresses anguish over the distance, deep sadness for the separation: he feels abandoned. He is a prisoner of a curious frenzy, of an uncontrollable life force: he senses that he does not have much time left; he is always traveling. Old disagreements seem to have vanished: his children and grandchildren are by his side.
Luigi Pirandello,
an author’s life
The Beginnings
One June night, I fell like a firefly beneath a great solitary pine in a countryside of Saracen olive trees overlooking the edges of a plateau of blue clays on the African sea.
With these words, Luigi Pirandello recounts his coming into the world, on June 28, 1867. His birthplace, near Girgenti (now Agrigento), is called Caos. “I am therefore a son of Chaos; and not allegorically, but in true reality.” (from Fragment of an Autobiography).
Luigi is the second of six children of Stefano Pirandello, a Garibaldian who had fought at Aspromonte, and Caterina Ricci-Gramitto. While in Palermo, during his high school years, Luigi was already writing theatrical texts. At the Bellini Theatre, he attended a performance by Eleonora Duse. Before leaving for Rome, where he enrolled in Philosophy and Literature, he became engaged to his cousin Rosalia. Due to conflicts with his Latin Language and Literature teacher, in 1889 he transferred to the University of Bonn. He took part in the carefree life of students and fell in love with Jenny Schulz-Lander, the daughter of an officerâa beautiful, bright, and radiant girl. In 1891, he graduated in Romance Philology with a thesis on the dialect of Girgenti.
In letters to his family, he shows nostalgia for Sicily and describes small everyday episodes. He reveals his vocation as a writer and complains about the dryness of philology. He feels tired and suffers from neurovegetative disorders. In 1889, he published Mal giocondo, his first book of poetry. He breaks off his engagement with Rosalia and then distances himself from Jenny as well. He moves to Rome, where he comes into contact with the literary environment. Between a scientific career and an artistic one, he chooses the latter.
Around Luigi Capuana, many writers gather, especially from the South, who, in opposition to DâAnnunzio, follow different paths of Verismo (Realism). Luigi Pirandello befriends art critic and illustrator Ugo Fleres, Giustino Ferri, editor of Capitan Fracassa and Fanfulla, the humanitarian socialist Giovanni Cena, editor-in-chief of Nuova Antologia, Giuseppe MĂ ntica who teaches Literature at the Magistero, Tommaso Gnoli son of the poet Domenico, the Hellenist Ettore Romagnoli, Nino Martoglio, Ugo Ojetti, and Lucio dâAmbra (pseudonym of Renato Eduardo Manganella), a storyteller, playwright, and specialist in French literature. Capuana introduces him to esoteric sciences and attracts him to the world of narrative.
In 1896, Pirandello publishes a translation in distichs of Goetheâs Roman Elegies. At Monte Cavo, he writes his first novel, Lâesclusa, which appears in installments in 1901 in La Tribuna. Tormented lives and extreme passions materialize in his first short stories: La ricca and Creditore galante. Almost every day, he visits Capuana. In the description of the house of the novelist Ludovico Nota, in Vestire gli ignudi, he evokes the atmosphere of Capuanaâs home to such an extent that the widow accuses him of plagiarizing the short story Dal taccuino di Ada.
In 1902, his second novel, Il turno, is published. In Palermo, he meets Antonietta Portolano and marries her a few months later. The couple lives in Rome, on Via Sistina, where their first son, Stefano, is born. Their second daughter, Lietta, is born at Palazzo Odescalchi-Simonetti on Via Vittoria Colonna; then Fausto, who will become a painter. Luigi spares no paternal care and in letters to his family he speaks tenderly of his children. The Pirandello home is a literary salon; but with his literary friends, Pirandello also meets at the âthird little roomâ of CaffĂš Aragno on Via del Corso or at Bussi on Via Veneto. During these meetings, the idea for the literary magazine Ariel is born, with Ugo Fleres commissioned to design its masthead.
Pirandello holds the chair of Linguistics and Stylistics at the Magistero and collaborates with many magazines, contributing literary critiques, short stories, essays, and poems. From 1896, he writes for Il Marzocco (becoming friends with the editor-director Angelo Orvieto), and from 1902 collaborates with Nuova Antologia, where in 1904 he publishes Il fu Mattia Pascal in installments.
Pain and Creativity
The news of the flooding of the sulphur mine in Aragona, where Stefano Pirandello had invested his savings, causes a liquidity crisis in the family. Antonietta suffers from continual nervous disorders and alternates periods of calm with crises. Luigi spends holidays in Girgenti, hoping Antonietta can find some peace in Sicily.
In 1901, Luigi travels to Coazze in Piedmont, hosted by his sister Lina. From that stay remains a delightful notebook with notes on places visited and people met. He sketches in the notebook the bell tower of the Cathedral with an inscription that impresses him: Everyone in their own way. These pages anticipate the short stories GioventĂč (1902), Le Medaglie (1904), Di Guardia (1905), the sketch La Messa di questâanno (1905), the poem Cargiore (1903), and the novel Suo marito.
In 1911, broken by his wifeâs painful illness, he moves away from the family and lives in two furnished rooms: an artistic life, in defense of his children, is all he has left. He befriends Massimo Bontempelli: a partnership that will last the rest of his life.
He writes two books of essays: Arte e scienza and LâUmorismo, in which he explains that âthe comicâ arises as a warning of the opposite, while âthe humorousâ comes from the feeling of the opposite.
In Rome, he moves to Via Alessandria, not far from the Peroni Brewery, then to Via Mario Pagano. He works hard and rarely goes out in the evenings, only to go to the theater. In October 1909, he publishes the short story Il mondo di carta in Corriere della Sera. Meanwhile, his relationship of respect and understanding with his son Stefano, who lives with him in Rome while the rest of the family remains in Sicily and who studies at the National Boarding School, grows stronger.
In 1910, the Sicilian theater director Nino Martoglio stages the one-act plays La morsa and Lumie di Sicilia. Also released is the new novel Suo marito, with references to the life of Grazia Deledda, followed by I vecchi e i giovani, published by the Treves Brothers, a âpoliticalâ novel in which Pirandello expresses the bitter disappointment of Sicily within the new national state. He writes the novel Si gira, centered on the adventures of a film operator. Near his home on Via Antonio Bosio, film studios are built: Pirandello is drawn to the new art. Many films are adapted from his novels, short stories, and dramas, though apocryphal screenplays also circulate. Marco Praga, with the Milanese Stable Company, stages the three-act drama Se non cosĂŹ, performed by Irma Grammatica: it is a failure.
The Great War
In 1915, Italy enters the war. Pirandello loses his beloved mother, while Stefano, who volunteered, is captured and imprisoned at Mauthausen. Part of Colloqui coi personaggi is inspired by the sweet memory of his mother Caterina. His wife Antonietta, increasingly disturbed by mental illness, persecutes Lietta, who attempts suicide with a revolver. Pirandello writes desperately to Stefano: âI keep working. I dig, I dig⊠I have sunk into a well from which I cannot pull myself out. But why should I?â The other son, Fausto, seeks a reason to exist as a painter.
Pirandello lives on Via Alessandro Torlonia, where Rosso di San Secondo, literary critics Giuseppe Antonio Borgese and Attilio Momigliano, and socialist journalist Giovanni Cena visit him, engaging in long literary conversations.
During the summer of 1916, in 15 days, he writes LiolĂ . To his son Stefano, he says: âThe protagonist is a peasant poet, drunk with the sun, and the entire comedy is full of songs and sunshine. It is so joyful, it hardly seems my work.â In 1915, at the insistence of Martoglio and the brilliant, versatile actor Angelo Musco, he translates the one-act play Lumie di Sicilia into Sicilian, which Musco stages in Catania. Within a few months, always for Angelo Musco, he writes absolute masterpieces of Sicilian theater: Pensaci, Giacomino!, âA birritta cuâ i ciancianeddi (The Cap with Bells), LiolĂ and âA giara.
The most painful years prove fruitful artistically. But the relationship with Musco is stormy and contentious: Pirandello fears the actor may resort to vulgar comedy. With Ruggero Ruggeri, however, he has a calm and serene dialogue.
In April 1917, he finishes writing CosĂŹ Ăš (se vi pare), a comedy staged on June 18 at the Olympia Theatre in Milan by the director Virgilio Talli, considered a pioneer of modern theater direction. Maria Melato plays Mrs. Frola. In November, Il piacere dellâonestĂ premieres, with Ruggeri as lead actor.
Anxieties about his family torment Pirandello: now it is the youngest son Fausto (called LulĂč), who, due to illness, tries to avoid military service. âI have to work, work, work,â Pirandello writes to his sister Lina. But work is also his only consolation. Once again, he changes house and moves to the Ciangottini villa on Via G. B. De Rossi, where he will create Six Characters in Search of an Author. He continues to write plays. He sends Lâinnesto to Talli and insists on staging Marionette, che passione!, a play he considers new, daring, and very original. He publishes Margutte, in which he vents the dark thoughts of his later years, and the short story Quando si comprende, in which he expresses bitterness about the war.
More Theatre
He publishes open letters in Il Messaggero della Domenica about the problems of theatre in Italy. Dina Galliâs company refuses Ma non Ăš una cosa seria (âBut Itâs Not a Serious Thingâ), while Ruggeri stages Il giuoco delle parti (âThe Rules of the Gameâ), a comedy written in 1918 that causes a fight among the audience at the Manzoni Theatre in Milan, which ends in fists being thrown. The novelty expressed in Il giuoco delle parti does not escape Salvator Gotta and Marco Praga, the most famous author of nineteenth-century bourgeois theatre. It is on this occasion that Pirandello coins for his theatre the title Maschere nude (âNaked Masksâ).
The tragedies of the Pirandello family are endless: Lietta runs away from home. Luigi accompanies her to Florence, where Lietta will live with her aunt Lina. The war is over and Stefano is expected home, where his arrival is awaited to admit Antonietta to a clinic for mental illnesses. Lietta also returns home to dedicate herself entirely to her father and her two brothers. From Porto Empedocle, grandfather Stefano has arrived and moves permanently to Rome.
Luigi Pirandello writes the three-act fable Lâuomo, la bestia e la virtĂč (âThe Man, the Beast, and the Virtueâ) and goes to watch the rehearsals. The comedy fails: Milanese bourgeois society is scandalized. At the Quirino Theatre in Rome, Ruggeri instead brings success in 1920 with Tutto per bene (âAll for the Bestâ); in Venice Maria Letizia Celli performs Come prima, meglio di prima (âAs Before, Better Than Beforeâ); Emma Grammatica stars in La signora Morli, una e due (âMrs. Morli, One and Twoâ).
Meanwhile, Pirandello prepares a commemorative speech for Giovanni Vergaâs eightieth birthday. So much work, so much effort, has not yet given him financial security. He makes arrangements with publisher Bemporad for a reprint of all his works. In 1920, he publishes Tutto per bene, and the following year Come prima, meglio di prima and Sei personaggi in cerca dâautore (âSix Characters in Search of an Authorâ), a story he had already conceived in 1917 as material for a novel that was never written. He writes other short stories, which begin to appear under the collective title Novelle per un anno (âShort Stories for a Yearâ).
At the Valle Theatre, on May 9, 1921, on a stormy evening, amid many shouts and few applauses, Dario Niccodemi, Vera Vergani, and Luigi Almirante perform Sei personaggi in cerca dâautore. Luigi and Lietta, hidden in a box, flee from the stage to avoid encountering the enraged audience. Around that time, Lietta marries a Chilean and after a few months moves to Santiago, Chile. Stefano marries a musician. Fausto continues to paint.
In the ups and downs of success and failure that characterize Pirandelloâs artistic life, 1922 marks the triumph of Enrico IV, with Ruggeri in the role of the protagonist.
In 1922, after 24 years of teaching, Luigi Pirandello requests a leave of absence or retirement. The new Minister of Education, Giovanni Gentile, sends him into pension.
Success Abroad
In London, the play Sei personaggi in cerca dâautore is staged. G. B. Shaw, who attends a performance, acts as intermediary with an American impresario: Pirandelloâs theatre crosses the ocean and lands in New York. In Paris, Il piacere dellâonestĂ (âThe Pleasure of Honestyâ) and I sei personaggi are performed. Having overcome his shy and sedentary habits, Pirandello begins to travel with his theatre. He is welcomed triumphantly in major capitals. Influenced by the directing techniques of Max Reinhardt, he reshapes Sei personaggi into the definitive version staged in 1925. In December 1923, he boards the Duilio to attend the premiere of Sei personaggi in New York.
At the Quirino Theatre in Rome, in 1923, La vita che ti diedi (âThe Life I Gave Youâ) is performed (a tragedy interpreted by Alda Borelli but written for Eleonora Duse, who refused it), and at the Filodrammatici Theatre in Milan the following year, the Dario Niccodemi Company stages Ciascuno a suo modo (âEach in His Own Wayâ). This sparks a fierce press controversy between Pirandello and critic Domenico Lanza. That same year, Pirandello is awarded the Legion of Honor.
During the summer of 1924, while Luigi is on vacation with his children in Monteluco, composer Alfredo Casella and Jan Borlin, artistic director of the Ballets SuĂ©dois, join him. From this meeting comes the ballet La giara (âThe Jarâ), which will be performed in Paris in November.
Between 1925 and 1926, Uno, nessuno e centomila (âOne, No One and One Hundred Thousandâ), the novel that dramatically expresses the fragmentation of reality, the dualism within a personality, the tragic play between âbeingâ and âseeming,â is published in installments in Fiera Letteraria. It is a novel born as a sketch and long abandoned unfinished. On this draft, Pirandello had the habit of jotting down lines and ideas to later transfer into short stories and plays. A constantly plundered and interminable novel, begun in 1910, suspended, then resumed, which like Sei personaggi ultimately affirms its right to exist.
The Theatre of Art
They wanted to call it the “Theatre of the Eleven” or the “Theatre of the Twelve,” after the number of founding members: Stefano Pirandello, Orio Vergani, Claudio Argentieri, Antonio Beltramelli, Giovani Cavicchioli, Massimo Bontempelli, Maria Letizia Celli (actress), Pasquale Cantarella, Lamberto Picasso (actor), Giuseppe Prezzolini, Renzo Rendi. Artistic director: Luigi Pirandello.
The group was officially formed by notarial deed on October 6, 1924. Thanks to a subsidy, they immediately began renovating the Odescalchi Theatre, which had previously hosted Podreccaâs marionettes. On April 2, 1925, the Theatre of Art was inaugurated with Sagra del Signore della Nave by Luigi Pirandello and The Gods of the Mountain by Lord Dunsany. The audience was enthusiastic about the novelties, but the financial results of four months of activity turned out disastrous. Luigi had joined Fascism, perhaps hoping for substantial economic support from the government, but Mussolini distrusted him: Pirandello would never succeed in creating a State Theatre, detached from commercial interests and with a true permanent venue.
The Theatre of Art also staged works by Savinio, De Stefani, Vergani, Marinetti, Rosso di San Secondo and, among foreign authors, by Ibsen and Unamuno.
For the leading role in Nostra dea by Massimo Bontempelli, a young Milanese actress was hired. Her name was Marta Abba. She was a red-haired woman, like many female characters in Pirandelloâs theatre. From this moment on, Pirandelloâs theatrical production was for her: Diana e la Tuda, Lâamica delle mogli, La nuova colonia, Questa sera si recita a soggetto, Come tu mi vuoi, Quando si Ăš qualcuno, Trovarsi, Non si sa come, the last play staged by Ruggero Ruggeri. At Pirandelloâs death, the copyright of the plays written for her to perform was transferred to Marta Abba.
A new Pirandello Company was formed that toured Paris, London, Berlin; then moved to Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay. Luigi attended rehearsals and shared the hardships of traveling, the anxieties of the premieres, the bitterness of actors and technicians. But he felt tired of the Companyâs financial crises, tired of the quarrels with theatre critics (especially the one opposing him to Adriano Tilgher), the disputes with theatre agencies and theatre owners who favored commercial plays, effectively creating monopolies.
From Buenos Aires in 1927, he wrote to his children: âI no longer want to return to Italy.â He wrote to Marta Abba: âPolitics is everywhere. Out! Out! Far away! Far away!â
After the performance of Ibsenâs The Lady from the Sea, after three years of activity, the Pirandello Company dissolved.
Between Cinema and Theatre
Luigi Pirandello wrote to his son Stefano: âThe idea of locking myself into a sedentary life horrifies me. And the company of myself terrifies me.â And later, to his daughter Lietta: âI do not know if I am fleeing life or life is fleeing me.â
Pirandello decided to go, with Marta, as âexilesâ to Berlin, hoping to settle banking debts with income from German cinema. He socialized with Corrado Alvaro and Pietro Solari, who were correspondents for Italian newspapers in Berlin. After five months, Marta Abba returned to Italy because no cinema opportunity had materialized. Luigi finished Questa sera si recita a soggetto, which premiered in Königsberg. In Berlin it was a failure because critics saw it as a satire of Max Reinhardt.
He wrote to Marta, offering her the leading role for the Italian edition. The premiere was scheduled in Turin, directed by Guido Salvini.
Pirandello spent brief periods in Italy, where he felt opposed. Even with his children, he experienced joys and sorrows: Lietta lived with her husband in Chile but occasionally returned to Italy. The relationship with this beloved daughter remained difficult.
Luigi worked on I giganti della montagna. He was desperate, depressed because he was denied the right to live next to Marta Abba, the only reason for his life. He published Lazzaro, which he called a myth in three acts, with Mondadori.
Next residence, Paris: but from this base, his travels became increasingly frequent.
In Portugal, he attended the premiere of Sogno, or perhaps he did not. In Rome, he commemorated Giovanni Verga at the Accademia dâItalia. He kept writing. The new play Quando si Ăš qualcuno was interpreted by Ruggero Ruggeri. Pirandello finished a novella he had long had in mind: La favola del figlio cambiato (The Tale of the Changed Son), a story based on the popular belief that at night evil witches have fun swapping babies in cradles. Maestro Gian Franco Malipiero set this archaic-tinged legend to music: it was a success in Germany but failed in Rome on a stormy night, overwhelmed by alleged unpatriotic sentiments that the audience read into the libretto. Mussolini banned further performances.
Finally, American cinema rewarded Pirandello with the production of Come tu mi vuoi, a film starring Greta Garbo.
Luigi longed for home; he had grown tired of his isolated life, far from family affections. He spent a peaceful summer in Positano with his children and grandchildren. After four years of âvoluntary exile,â in 1932 he settled in Italy.
Still Lights at Sunset
During the summer of 1932, at Castiglioncello, guest of his son Stefano, he wrote the play Quando si Ăš qualcuno, which premiered worldwide in Buenos Aires. Pirandello left on the ship Duilio, together with Massimo Bontempelli: Marta Abba and Paola Masino, Bontempelliâs writer friend, accompanied them to embark in Genoa. Marta stayed in Italy for theatre commitments, while Masino joined Pirandello and Bontempelli later in Argentina. The warmth of the Italian colonyâs welcome moved Pirandello.
In Rome, the Accademia dâItalia organized a conference on Dramatic Theatre and invited Pirandello to preside. Luigi directed La figlia di Iorio by Gabriele dâAnnunzio at the Teatro Argentina: a happy choice that marked the âofficialâ reconciliation between the two greatest contemporary theatre figures, who had been estranged by an old anti-DâAnnunzio polemic from Pirandello.
When the stage lights went out, news arrived that Luigi Pirandello was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize for Literature: the prize was given for his daring and ingenious renewal â the official mention â of dramatic art and the stage.
In November 1934, the magazine Quadrante published the second act of I giganti della montagna, which Pirandello considered the supreme peak of his poetic art. Unfinished, this work was staged posthumously in Florence, at the Boboli Gardens.
He lived in Rome, in a small villa at 15 via Antonio Bosio, where he had lived during the war years. His study, with severe walnut furniture in the Tuscan Renaissance style, overlooked a terrace facing south. The light was reflected by the green curtain of the garden; the air made the light blue silk curtains flutter. An ancient Greek vase stood there, a memory of his Sicily. The house, where Pirandello lived alone, was open to his children and friends.
He traveled constantly: to New York, where he stayed three months waiting for the American cinema to call him, wrote the stories for the collection Una giornata, and began a novel left unfinished, Informazioni su un involontario soggiorno sulla terra (Information on an Involuntary Stay on Earth). He dreamed of another novel, to be called Adam and Eve, the story of two children who find themselves alone on Earth after a cataclysm.
Returning from America, before landing in Naples, Pirandello suffered a heart attack.
Marta Abba distanced herself from Pirandello: she was in London to learn English and thus be able to act outside Italy. She debuted on Broadway. In letters to Marta, Luigi expressed anguish at the distance, deep sadness at the separation: he felt abandoned. He was prisoner to a curious frenzy, an uncontrollable vital force: he sensed he had little time left. Milan, Venice, Castiglioncello, Viareggio for the Literary Prize Commission: he was always traveling. Old disagreements seemed to have vanished: his children and grandchildren were by his side; he frequented old friends: Corrado Alvaro, Massimo Bontempelli and Paola Masino, Mario Labroca, Silvio dâAmico. On his last stay in New York, in 1935, he visited Einstein. With the young and promising Eduardo de Filippo, he adapted a play from the novella Lâabito nuovo (The New Suit). The only theatrical text not by him that Eduardo always kept in his repertoire was Il berretto a sonagli (The Man with the Flower in His Mouth).
While at CinecittĂ following the filming of the movie based on Il fu Mattia Pascal, Pirandello suffered a violent fever. In 1934 Corriere della Sera published the short story Di sera, un geranio (In the Evening, a Geranium), which foreshadows death, and on October 8, 1936, the novella Effetti dâun sogno interrotto (Effects of an Interrupted Dream).
Pirandello died at 8:55 AM on December 10, 1936.
According to his testamentary wishes, written more than twenty years earlier, his death was kept in absolute silence. His funeral was very unpopular among the fascist hierarchs, who felt deprived of a state funeral. The funeral eulogy, delivered at the Accademia dâItalia by Massimo Bontempelli dressed in a traditional black cloak, was also poorly received and caused Bontempelliâs âexileâ to Venice.
Wrapped (naked like his masks) in a white shroud, without lights or flowers, Luigi Pirandelloâs body was carried away by the poor manâs hearse â a carriage, a coachman, and a horse â without any escort, in the fog of a winter morning. His ashes were not scattered, as he had wished, but sealed in an urn, walled up in Sicily, on a stone in the countryside of Caos, at the roots of a solitary pine tree, facing the African sea.
Fausta Samaritani
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