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novel, tr w/intro by William Weaver ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A soliloquy fun to read
Rarely a soliloquy is so interesting and fun to read. Pirandello has masterfully achieved both. This is the story of man searching through his monologues to find out himself as seen by others and as he assumes he really is wihout what he has assumed all his life. Each brief chapter is a exploration of the different aspects of the man's reality, examined now from a detached position. The reflections are serious and profound, but they keep a good sense of humor through out the whole narrative. It is a recommended reading for anybody.

My 100-thousand faces in the others' perception....,
After 13 years since I read this book for the first time, it still remains one of my favorites. I find it so dense of deep meanings, and so pleasant to read, that every now and then I'm still captured to read a chapter here and there, when I happen to have it in my hands. I will try to describe it in a few lines, despite that a comprehensive review of the book would require much more effort, which such a masterpiece would certainly deserve.

It is an outstanding philosophical and psychological novel, fresh and humoristic, but deep and contemplative at the same time, that deals with the theme of 'identity'. It develops concepts that foresee our contemporary sensibility so well, that after almost a century their validity is perfectly unchanged.

Reality is illusory, relative and subjective, and always becomes the expression of personal interpretations. Communication is made out of subjective distortions, of standardized definitions through `labels' that are attached to persons and situations. And the characters built by these labels end up by having their own lives, in the projection of our ego in the perception of the others, as well as in our occasional will to become what the others want us to be.

But our identity is fluid, in a `continuous becoming'. It cannot be made still, in a definition, if not at the price of losing its dynamic character, or even its transitory reality. Such lack of identification leads each of us to become, in the end, absolutely alone, with our own misperception of ourselves, unknown even to ourselves.

It is a 'cerebral' writing, full of contorted but still delicious meditations that give the reader the chance to recognize himself into the main character of the novel, "Vitangelo Moscarda". The style is however bright and colorful, at times able to admirably convey inner sensations in the description of certain landscapes, at times so immediate and simple in the use of humor and comicity, to effectively entertain the reader throughout the book.

Turmoil in the Mirror.
Admirers of Pirandello's plays will be grateful for the new translation of the author's 1926 novel, "One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand," for it illuminates the background of Pirandello's theatrical works.The novel includes similar legerdemain; the reader observes the author playing with time, people and places. It reflects his cross-eyed way of looking at life and society, later seen in his major plays, "Six Characters in Search of an Author," "As You Desire Me" and "Tonight We Improvise."

The central character in the novel, a small-town squire, looks in the mirror one day, touches a nostril and feels some pain. His wife tells him his nose tilts to the right, something he had not realized before. Catching sight of his reflection in the mirror again, he concludes that he possesses different personalities. So begins a search to discover his various selves. After a series of bizarre incidents, he is deserted by his wife and is declared insane. The court gives his money to a poorhouse; he becomes its first guest. In the poorhouse, he becomes the "no one"of the book's title.

By being no one, the squire becomes everyone. He can be reborn again and again. "I am I and you are you," the squire, speaking as the first-person narrator of the novel, declares. In the end, he says: "I no longer look at myself in the mirror, and it never even occurs to me to want to know what has happened to my face and to my whole appearance. The one I had for the others must have seemed greatly changed and in a very comical way, judging by the wonder and the laughter that greeted me."

Trying to explain a Pirandello plot is like trying to catch a tiger by the tail or walking with Vulcan on the lava of Mount Etna: dangerous. Put it this way: "One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand" is Pirandellian...

Engaging meditation on identity
This short book by Pirandello is a quick read, but if you're like me the ideas will stay with you. Pirandello explores the nature of personal identity and the disconnect between self-image and the views that others have of us. It's not a great book, but it is a very good one and is definitely worth the afternoon spent reading.

Who are you?
This book is something you must read if you feel like people don't understand you. You must read this book when you think your friends know you. This is a book one must read alone, in a room, in front of a mirror - you'll be trying to catch yourself in the mirror as others see you. ... Read more

Product Description
This book constitutes a unique selection from that monumental corpus, will introduce to the English reading public some of Pirandello's most moving novelle. In each of them one can sense the deep compassion the author must have felt for his characters, generally portrayed as disaffected victims of society, destiny, or their own self deceptions. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (6)

Worth the price
These short stories are a strange Surreal landscape of humor and characterization.
There is virtue in this capture of a culture and a time in words.
These are some of the best short stories of this period that I've read.
I'm glad they weren't overworked in to parts of a novel
as is the custom today.

I thoroughly enjoyed this
I had to read these stories for one of my classes, and I really liked it. The stories were impeccable and Pirandello was a brilliant story-teller. A book that I could read again and again.

Oil Jar
Pirandello captivated my interest through his existential and absurdist writing style.This specific book is a collection of short stories that look at the many emotions eperienced in a human life.Each story was amazing; the character development, the setting, and the climax were profound, for an eight page tale.

Not the author's best works
I looked into Pirandello because of his fame as a Nobel Prize winning author.I read "The Late Mattia Pascal" which was OK but nothing special.I came across a book of his short stories titled "The Naked Truth" and I became immediately aware of the power of this author.I realized that he is known for his plays but these stories of the rural Sicilian society were outstanding.I immediately sent for this book to pick up where the others left off.Unfortunately, these stories are not in the same class as the others.They are OK but, after reading the other book, I felt let down.Still there is some good writing in here.I did enjoy "It's not to be Taken Seriously" and several others.However, these stories seemed more of mainland Italian urban society and, thus, lacked the unique flavor of the others.I suggest you read this book and pay special attention to the story "The Fly".It was the one story from the other book that was repeated in this one.In it I believe you will see the type of story I previously found so impressive.

Wonderful slice of 19th century Sicilian life
This tiny booklet of short stories offers wonderful vignettes of 19th century life in Sicily. The characters come alive and some of the stories remind me of my late grandparents' tales about villagers in the "old country". Especially nice booklet for people of Sicilian descent. ... Read more

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incl 'Six Characters in Search of an Author' et al ... Read more

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Pirandello (1867-1936) is the founding architect of twentieth-century drama, brilliantly innovatory in his forms and themes, and in the combined energy, imagination and visual colours of his theatre. This volume of plays, translated from the Italian by Mark Musa, opens with Six Characters in Search of an Author, Pirandello's most popular and controversial work in which six characters invade the stage and demand to be included in the play. The tragedy "Henry IV" dramatizes the lucid madness of a man who may be King. In "So It Is (If You Think So)", the townspeople exercise a morbid curiosity attempting to discover 'the truth' about the Ponza family. Each of these plays can lay claim to being Pirandello's masterpiece, and in exploring the nature of human personality each one stretches the resources of drama to their limits. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Pirandello's classic existentialist drama and two more plays
Luigi Pirandello's 1921 play "Six Characters in Search of an Author" ("Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore") has the deserved reputation of being the first existentialist drama and having a profound effect on later playwrights, especially those practitioners of the Theater of the Absurd such as Samuel Beckett ("Waiting for Godot"), Eugene Ionesco ("Rhinoceros"), and Jean Genet ("The Maids"). Pirandello's writing often focuses on elements of madness, illusion and isolation, all of which are inspired by the tragic aspects of his personal life in which his wife went insane and his daugther tried to commit suicide. In 1921 during a five week period Pirandello wrote his two acknowledged masterpieces, "Six Characters in Search of an Author" and "Henry IV." While "Six Characters" was successful when it opened in Rome it was also considered scandalous. However, it soon being performed in Milan, London, New York, and Germany.

The setting for "Six Characters in Search of an Author" is a rehearsal for a play (By Pirandello) that is interrupted by the arrival of six characters. Their leader, the father, tells the manager that they are looking for an author. It seems that the author who created them never finished their story and they are unrealized characters who have not yet been fully brought to life. The father insists that they are not real people but characters, and the manager and his cast can only laugh at the idea. But then they become intrigued by the bits and pieces of the story the six characters have to tell.The manager agrees to produce their story and become the author for whom they have been searching. He tries to stage the scene where the father meets the step-daughter in the dress shop but both characters insist that what the actors are doing is not realistic. The manager allows them to finish out the scene instead. This sets up the basic juxtaposition of "drama" and "reality" for the rest of the play, with the key scenes in the lives of these characters providing more questions than they answer about what happened and what it means. At the point when the manager can no longer tell the difference between acting and reality he becomes fed up with the entire thing and ends the rehearsal, providing an audience that has already been challenged by these changing notions of reality with an abrupt ending to the drama.There may or may not be a real story here, but the ultimate point of this play is that the tradition of reality in the theater no longer holds true.

The radical idea here is that there is an immutability of reality for these six characters. Because they are forms, forced into performing the actions for which they were imagined, there is an inherent conflict with life. This is why the son wants to escape but cannot leave the studio and must play his role, as must the Mother and the rest of the characters. This is just as true of all the other characters besides the six, although the others are less inclined to see the truth, or at least the reality, of their own situation until the end, when the final scene of the drama seeks to dissolve the "stage" reality completely. Where Pirandello succeeds in the end is in having it both ways, for we can interpret what we have seen as being reality or as being acting. Either way, you are left to the same conclusion.

"Henry IV" "("Enrico IV"), is a 1922 tragedy in three acts about a man who goes insane after being knocked off of a horse during a masquerade where he was dressed as the Holy Roman emperor Henry IV of Germany.For twenty years the man believes that he is the 11th century monarch and the play begins with Berthold, a new valet being taught everything he needs to know about the "king."Others arrive who want to cure Henry IV of his madness, but when he "recognizes" one of them, they become more despearate in their attempts to bring him back to sanity.Pirandello's twist is that Henry returned to sanity after a dozen years, at which point he realized he was more comfortable playing Henry than with dealing with a world that has changed.So for eight years he has pretended to be Henry IV and he will do anything to maintain the pretense.Piradnello's point is that madness is not wearing a mask, because everyone does, but rather it would be wearing a mask and not being aware of it.

"It Is So! (If You Think So!)" ("Così è, se vi pare!") is a 1917 three act play that also contrasts art and life to demonstrate that "truth" is a subjective and relative concept.Since no one has ever seen Signor Ponza's wife and her mother, Signora Frola, together.This curisoity becomes a pressing concern for Ponza's employer, Councillor Agazzi who wants to discover the truth.Ponza claims that his wife is really his second wife.His first wife died in an earthquake that destroyed all of the records that would prove this to be the case.He also claims that his wife pretends to be Signora Frola's daughter to humor the old lady, whom he claims in insane.Pirandello makes his point in the final scene, which refuses to resolve the matter and make the truth clear to the audience.

Usually "Six Characters" is the extent to which a student of drama and/or existentialism is introduced to Pirandello.But including these other two plays certainly develops his existentialist views in interesting ways, particular with regards to his dramatization of the problem of reality and unreality.Because of his great influence on modern theater, Pirandello was awareded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1934. Two years later, while in negotiations to appear in a film version of "Six Characters," he died.

A nearly flawless work of the theater well ahead of its time
As with Laurence Sterne's TRISTRAM SHANDY, Pirandello's 1921 masterpiece, SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR, was well ahead of its time.It confronts issues in the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, postmodernism (structuralism and deconstruction) as well as prefacing experimental theater, metatheater, and performance art.Pirandello's work is a nearly flawless play which breeches the topics of self-identity (a la Descartes), truth and illusion (before Albee), and aesthetics (questioning the legitimizing factor in Aristotle's theory of catharsis).Furthermore, it forces the audience--as too many works of art fail to do--to think without lapsing into philosophic didacticism.Highly recommended.

Masterpiece
Pirandello had writer's block. Luisa felt sorryfor him. "Just write whatever's in your head", she said, "That's what you're always telling me. Everyone who's ever written a play-- I suppose that leaves out the critics and the university professors--knows that YOU don't write the play, you let the CHARACTERS write the play. Here", she said, "have a glass of wine. It'll help relax you."Two days later, when he was done, Luigi took the manuscript over to Alphonse, the literature teacher. Alphonse declared, after scanning it, "You've written a masterpiece!" "Really?" said Pirandello, "I mean, of course!"Alphonse stood up and gestured grandly with his arms, saying "Ah, the metaphysical ramifications! Reality and the imagination! You've started Postmodernism!"So Luigi did a little dance and headed home to bed.

One review in search of a reviewer
He must be around here somewhere.Let me see, hello?Mr. Reviewer? Ms. Reviewer? How I am I supposed to start this? I guess I am a review for the Luigi Pirandello play, "Six Characters in Search of an Author." What am I supposed to say about it?I guess I could say that it is a wonderful piece about the search for truth.A reflection of the human experience.Dazzled and question ridden, on a journey to nowhere.But I haven't even read the thing!Mr. Reviewer? Ms. Reviewer? Tell me what it's about so I could have some idea to tell the readers out there. What?I can't hear you.Pirndello's best play? A post modern triumph?An easily stageable highway? Substitute for butter?What?I give up, you wicked person.Find someone else to be your slave, I am going to sleep now ... Read more

Product Description
Luigi Pirandello's masterpiece, "Six Characters in Search of an Author", presents the playwright's views about the isolation of the individual from society and from himself. This play within a play chronicles six characters as they seek an author to tell their story, and to present their real lives on stage. But do their realities make better tales than fiction?. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Signet version...
I highly recommend the Signet Classics edition of this play, translated by Eric Bentley.He provides a wonderful opening essay, as well as Pirandello's own forward.

The plot, I'm sure you know, involves six characters who stumble upon a theater rehearsal.They are not so much looking for an author as a play in which to exist.Pirandello breaks the fourth wall as no other author had before him.It is a very daring and original piece. A must for any serious student of drama.

The thin line between performance and reality
"Six Characters in Search of an Author," by Luigi Pirandello, is a really remarkable work of drama. The English version by Eric Bentley is published as a Signet Classic. The translator's introduction notes that the play premiered in Rome in 1921.

In "Six Characters," a dysfunctional family confronts a theater director and his whole company. They challenge the director to turn their story into a play--a "painful drama."

This richly ironic play deals with many issues: the relationship between life and literature; the limitation of words as tools of communication; sexual transgression; authority and art; secrecy and shame; the fractured, shifting nature of personal identity; the relationship between an author and the characters he/she creates; and more.

This is truly a play of ideas; it's a constantly shifting intellectual house of mirrors. But Pirandello never loses sight of the emotional issues of human shame, pain, and interpersonal alienation. The play is full of great lines; my favorite is spoken by the director: "There's no author here at all."

It's amazing to think that (at the time of this review) this play is more than 80 years old. When I look at the contours of popular culture in the decades since this play premiered in Rome, it seems that Pirandello was as much a cultural prophet as he was a literary genius. "Six Characters" seems to prefigure such phenomena as reality TV shows (like "An American Family" or MTV's "The Real World") and films which explore the shadowy line between fiction and reality (like "The Blair Witch Project" or "Scream 3"). After all these decades, "Six Characters" remains a fresh, compelling, and relevant theatrical masterpiece.

An Innovative, Iconoclastic Masterpiece
Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author" premiered in Rome in 1921 to audience shouts of "Maricomio!" ("Madhouse!"). Perhaps few of the theatregoers realized that the "madhouse" they had witnessed was a watershed in the history of drama. While many of the innovations of "Six Characters" may now seem commonplace, Pirandello's innovative, iconoclastic masterpiece marked a break from traditional dramatic structures and stage settings, a break which enabled twentieth century drama to develop along self-reflective imaginative lines much different than its predecessors. As Eric Bentley, the play's translator, notes in his introduction to this edition, "this was the first play ever written in which the boards of the theatre did not symbolize and represent some other place, some other reality."

"Six Characters" is set in a theatre where a director, his stage manager and a group of actors are about to rehearse another of Pirandello's plays, "The Rules of the Game". The curtain is up, the stage is empty of props and background, and the lights illuminate the bare wall at the back of the stage. It is an austere setting, a kind of theatrical analogue to the blank sheet of paper an author faces each day he sits down to write.

Suddenly, this austerity, this mundane theatrical rehearsal, is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of six characters--a father, a mother, a son, a stepdaughter, a boy, and a little girl. They are six characters who have lives, who have stories to tell, but whose dramatic text has not been written. They need an author. As Pirandello says in his 1925 introduction to the play: "Every creature of fantasy and art, in order to exist, must have his drama, that is, a drama in which he may be a character and for which he is a character. This drama is the character's raison d'etre, his vital function, necessary for his existence."

The play proceeds, with the six characters relating fragmentary scenes of incidents in their lives, scenes which are accompanied by commentary, quarrels, dialogue, and interaction among the characters and between the characters and the actors. A kind of theatrical hall of mirrors, the actors who view these characters become, in effect, an audience. The actors are also, however, the actors who will be called upon to play the parts of the six characters in the dramatic text which is being created in their presence. For these actors and these characters, the stage becomes more real than the world.

"Six Characters in Search of an Author" is a remarkable work of imagination, both in its structure and its dialogue. It is comic and absurd, tragic and ponderous. The play is a work of original genius; the text (like its characters) is open to multiple interpretations and meanings. As one character says, in an appropriate Pirandellian bit of dialogue: "[t]herein lies the drama . . . in my awareness that each of us thinks of himself as one but that, well, it's not true, each of us is many, oh so many, according to the possibilities that are in us."

interesting thought experiment, blessedly brief
We're all familiar with the dramatic device of the "play within a play" from Shakespeare (for instance, the device is used in Hamlet).But Nobel Laureate Luigi Pirandello had a specific use for the concept; he wanted to demonstrate the fine line that separates reality and fiction.He did so most famously in the play Six Characters in Search of an Author.

The play opens with a theater company getting ready to begin a rehearsal.As the director tries to bring some order to the proceedings, six people walk in off of the street looking for an author.They want someone to dramatize their sordid true life story.The tale that they unfold is in fact so melodramatic that the director has his troupe start acting out the six characters and repeating their lines.Meanwhile, the six quibble with the actors' interpretations and with the reproduced dialogue and even argue with the director over whether it is possible or appropriate for anyone other than the six to play themselves.

The premise and structure of the play are amusing and thought provoking.One can only imagine how Pirandello would react to the permutations we see spun out today with reality tv and instant tv movies based on real events, even those we've all just witnessed on live tv like the OJ trial.In fact, just recently on the X-Files, Scully and Mulder were working with a police force which was being filmed for the live action show COPS.Fictional characters pretending to be on a "real" show, but the players on the "real" show are fictional for this episode...He would have loved it.But ultimately the actual content of this play seems to be totally superfluous.The ingenious set up is the whole point and so it ends up resembling one of those Saturday Night Live skits that doesn't know when enough is enough.It all makes for an interesting thought experiment but a somewhat tedious, though blessedly brief, drama.

GRADE: C+

An Innovative, Iconoclastic Masterpiece
Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author" premiered in Rome in 1921 to audience shouts of "Maricomio!" ("Madhouse!").Perhaps few of the theatregoers realized that the"madhouse" they had witnessed was a watershed in the history ofdrama.While many of the innovations of "Six Characters" may nowseem commonplace, Pirandello's innovative, iconoclastic masterpiece markeda break from traditional dramatic structures and stage settings, a breakwhich enabled twentieth century drama to develop along self-reflectiveimaginative lines much different than its predecessors.As Eric Bentley,the play's translator, notes in his introduction to this edition,"this was the first play ever written in which the boards of thetheatre did not symbolize and represent some other place, some otherreality."

"Six Characters" is set in a theatre where adirector, his stage manager and a group of actors are about to rehearseanother of Pirandello's plays, "The Rules of the Game".Thecurtain is up, the stage is empty of props and background, and the lightsilluminate the bare wall at the back of the stage.It is an austeresetting, a kind of theatrical analogue to the blank sheet of paper anauthor faces each day he sits down to write.

Suddenly, this austerity,this mundane theatrical rehearsal, is interrupted by the unexpected arrivalof six characters--a father, a mother, a son, a stepdaughter, a boy, and alittle girl.They are six characters who have lives, who have stories totell, but whose dramatic text has not been written.They need an author. As Pirandello says in his 1925 introduction to the play: "Everycreature of fantasy and art, in order to exist, must have his drama, thatis, a drama in which he may be a character and for which he is a character. This drama is the character's raison d'etre, his vital function, necessaryfor his existence."

The play proceeds, with the six charactersrelating fragmentary scenes of incidents in their lives, scenes which areaccompanied by commentary, quarrels, dialogue, and interaction among thecharacters and between the characters and the actors.A kind of theatricalhall of mirrors, the actors who view these characters become, in effect, anaudience.The actors are also, however, the actors who will be called uponto play the parts of the six characters in the dramatic text which is beingcreated in their presence.For these actors and these characters, thestage becomes more real than the world.

"Six Characters in Search ofan Author" is a remarkable work of imagination, both in its structureand its dialogue.It is comic and absurd, tragic and ponderous.The playis a work of original genius; the text (like its characters) is open tomultiple interpretations and meanings.As one character says, in anappropriate Pirandellian bit of dialogue: "[t]herein lies the drama .. . in my awareness that each of us thinks of himself as one but that,well, it's not true, each of us is many, oh so many, according to thepossibilities that are in us." ... Read more

Product Description
First performed in 1921 with Romans calling out 'Madhouse!' from the audience, "Six Characters in Search of an Author" has remained the most famous and innovative of Pirandello's plays. Often labeled a satirical tragicomedy, this play initiated the anti-illusionism movement of the early twentieth century, rejecting realism in favor of a more symbolic, dreamlike quality. When an acting company's rehearsal is interrupted by six family members who wish their life story to be enacted, the result is a masterpiece in the exploration of the nature of human personality. Both popular and controversial, this play blurred the lines of reality and illusion in unpredictable ways, ultimately influencing later playwrights like Beckett and Sartre with its bizarre blending of theatrical qualities. Such is the eloquence and depth of Pirandello's body of work that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1934, just two years before his death, an honor worthy of a playwright whose plays had a subtle if profound impact on much of the theatre that would follow. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Indispensable Reading
This isn't a play but an experience. Seeing how well many of the other reviewers summed it up, I won't add too much. This simply is one of those books that you just have to read. No, you don't need to know a great deal about Italian literature, as the questions raised here are universal in nature. The translation is great, so you don't have to worry about anything not coming across well.If you know about that 3% project, that says that less than 3% of all books published in the USA are translated from another language, and you want to get into great masterpieces from abroad, start with this play.

Different from your normal play
A play containing a play within a play. Just as the title states, 6 characters go in search of someone to tell their story and portray their life. It is cleverly well-written with the characters getting in fights with the actors who are to portray them as well as getting into arguments with the director who is to write their story. The story they tell is insignificant in relation to the set-up they provide. After hearing their story, you are left with a feeling of "is that all?" If I were approached by these 6 characters, I would turn down writing their story. Then again, the play isn't about their story, it is about them finding someone to tell their story. Pirandello stepped outside the normal barriers for playwriting and came up with an incredible play that I can only hope to see performed in my lifetime.

What if?
Luigi Pirandello kicked theatre convention out the door with "Six Characters in Search of an Author." Illusion and reality get a bit bent out of shape, as fictional characters stroll about and converse with managers and actors. It's a brilliant piece of existentialist work, and one that had a distinct effect on theatre after that.

It opens with several unnamed theatre people -- the Manager, the Leading Man, the Prompter -- rehearsing a play in an empty theatre. "During this manoeuvre, the Six CHARACTERS enter, and stop by the door at back of stage," Pirandello tells us: a florid Father, timid Mother, equally timid Boy, arrogant Son, sexy Step-Daughter and too-young-to-have-much-personality Child.

"As a matter of fact . . . we have come here in search of an author . . ." the Father tells the manager. The characters have been abandoned by their author, who "no longer wished, or was no longer able" to put them into a story. And now they want the theatre company to provide them with a vehicle that will make them immortal -- and they have to convince the Manager that they are worthy.

Pirandello dispels the unreality of the play with "Oh sir, you know well that life is full of infinite absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true." While the events of this play seems to be sort of gimmicky, Pirandello uses them with unusual grace (and not a few moments of bizarre comedy).

The characterizations are among the weirdest I've ever seen -- we have an entire family drama going on without a play/novel/film for it. Lovers, illegitimate kids, sibling rivalry and marital fights. Ironically, the Character family overshadows the "real" people on the stage. The Manager is a fun character, though, perpetually impatient and overstressed. "Pretence? Reality? To hell with it all!" the Manager cries near the end of the play.

But Pirandello's odd play "Six Characters in Search of an Author" is both pretense and reality, and it's a fun and enlightening ride while it lasts.

Pirandello's classic play, the first existentialist drama
Luigi Pirandello's 1921 play "Six Characters in Search of an Author" ("Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore") has the deserved reputation of being the first existentialist drama and having a profound effect on later playwrights, especially those practitioners of the Theater of the Absurd such as Samuel Beckett ("Waiting for Godot"), Eugene Ionesco ("Rhinoceros"), and Jean Genet ("The Maids").Pirandello's writing often focuses on elements of madness, illusion and isolation, all of which are inspired by the tragic aspects of his personal life in which his wife went insane and his daugther tried to commit suicide.In 1921 during a five week period Pirandello wrote his two acknowledged masterpieces, "Six Characters in Search of an Author" and "Henry IV." While "Six Characters" was successful when it opened in Rome it was also considered scandalous.However, it soon being performed in Milan, London, New York, and Germany.Because of his great influence on modern theater, Pirandello was awareded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1934.Two years later, while in negotiations to appear in a film version of "Six Characters," he died.

The setting for "Six Characters in Search of an Author" is a rehearsal for a play (By Pirandello) that is interrupted by the arrival of six characters.Their leader, the father, tells the manager that they are looking for an author.It seems that the author who created them never finished their story and they are unrealized characters who have not yet been fully brought to life.The father insists that they are not real people but characters, and the manager and his cast can only laugh at the idea. But then they become intrigued by the bits and pieces of the story the six characters have to tell.

The father is an intellectual who married the mother, a peasant woman.However, she fell in love with his male secretary and the father, bored with his wife, encouraged her to leave.She does, leaving behind the eldest son who is embittered by the abandonment.The mother has three children with this other man but then the father starts to miss her and watches the other children grow up.This new family moves away, but after the other man dies the mother and her children return to the city.The mother gets a job at Madame Pace's dress shop, but it turns out to be a brothel where the step-daughter ends up being employed.One day the father shows up and is set up with the step-daughter.However, the mother stops them from reaching the obvious conclusion and the entire family moves in with the father and the resentful son.

The manager agrees to produce their story and become the author for whom they have been searching.He tries to stage the scene where the father meets the step-daughter in the dress shop but both characters insist that what the actors are doing is not realistic.The manager allows them to finish out the scene instead.This sets up the basic juxtaposition of "drama" and "reality" for the rest of the play, with the key scenes in the lives of these characters providing more questions than they answer about what happened and what it means.At the point when the manager can no longer tell the difference between acting and reality he becomes fed up with the entire thing and ends the rehearsal, providing an audience that has already been challenged by these changing notions of reality with an abrupt ending to the drama.

Almost all of the characters in the play are known by their roles rather than their names, such as the Leading Man and the Second Female Lead. One of the few characters in the drama who has a name is Madame Pace, who is in charge of the dress shop that also serves as a brothel where the step-daughter works. It is perhaps this formality that serves to distance us from the production more than the strangeness of the action or the aged of the words, even though they are adapted to the modern ear. There may or may not be a real story here, but the ultimate point of this play is that the tradition of reality in the theater no longer holds true.

The radical idea here is that there is an immutability of reality for these six characters. Because they are forms, forced into performing the actions for which they were imagined, there is an inherent conflict with life. This is why the son wants to escape but cannot leave the studio and must play his role, as must the Mother and the rest of the characters. This is just as true of all the other characters besides the six, although the others are less inclined to see the truth, or at least the reality, of their own situation until the end, when the final scene of the drama seeks to dissolve the "stage" reality completely. Where Pirandello succeeds in the end is in having it both ways, for we can interpret what we have seen as being reality or as being acting. Either way, you are left to the same conclusion.

Captivating!
"Six Characters in Search of an Author" is truly a unique play.For some readers, characters on paper are actual human beings, but once we see them portrayed by genuine living people on the stage and big/small screen, we abandon our imagination about the person the character began as.Luigi Pirandello took this idea and wrote an ingenious play.Is reality in fact reality, or is it only what we perceive it to be?This play opens up a world of uncertainty.The concept of the play challenges the mind.I recommend. ... Read more

Product Description
In this meeting of two of the twentieth century's greatest playwrights, Tom Stoppard has reinvigorated Luigi Pirandello's masterpiece of madness and sanity. After a fall from his horse, an Italian aristocrat believes he is the obscure medieval German emperor Henry IV. After twenty years of living this royal illusion, his beloved appears with a noted psychiatrist to shock the madman back to sanity. Their efforts expose that for the past twelve years the nobleman has in fact been sane. With his mask of madness removed, the aristocrat launches an offensive to deflect their unwanted attention. While Pirandello's characters race linguistically about in Stoppardian dervishes, battling for the upper hand-and the greatest laughs-one question emerges: What constitutes sanity? ... Read more

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Suicide, the act of killing oneself voluntarily and intentionally, is clearly one of the most important themes developed by Pirandello during his long literary career. Although he never focused on self-destruction as an end in itself, he made ample use of it to dramatise his tragic view of the human condition. Indeed, this theme recurs with astonishing frequency in his short stories, play and novels. It even appears sporadically in his poetry. ... Read more

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Mattia Pascal endures a life of drudgery in a provincial town. Then, providentially, he discovers that he has been declared dead. He realizes he has a chance to start over, and he moves to a new city and adopts a new name, only to find this second life as insufferable as the old one. But when he returns to the world he knew, it's too late: his job is gone, and his wife has a new husband. Mattia Pascal's fate is to live on as the ghost of the man he was. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

The Ultimate Identity Crisis
A brilliant, tragi-comic existentialist examination! An enjoyable and thought-provoking commentary on the human condition, identity, art, and life, death and what lies in between.

Pirandello is literature.
Okay, so that may sound awfully obvious, but my goodness!Of course it's not funny!It's not supposed to be funny!When is Pirandello ever funny?If anything, he may be ironic, but he is never slapstick and certainly wrote nothing to be considered "a lark."The author of the article in Publisher's Weekly ought to be taken out and shot in the most General Dreedle sense of the term.Il Fu Mattia Pascal is anything but a beach read and if you were disappointed in it because it was not cheap entertainment, your disappointment is probably due to the misinformation you received from a review as miscomprehending as that of Publisher's Weekly.Il Fu is an examination of the modern treatment of identity.It is an existential examination of society's abandonment of those who seek to live an "authentic" life.It is a piece of LITERATURE, not a DaVinci Code or a Mary Higgins Clark mystery.These may be enjoyable books, but for a different reason.Read Pirandello with expectation that you will be made to think, to question, and you will not be disappointed.

You can't escape from yourself
This book is very sad...it tells the story of a man who can't cope whit life's responsibilities and whit himself. A strange accident causes him to be believed dead, and he thinks he can assume a new identitiy and take on a new life. But he can't escape himself, and his new life shall be as unsatisfying and full of disillusions as the first. The clou of the book is the tragic melancholy of the seance...when he himself is evoked as his own spirit.Existentially spooky!

Great Book!!!
I would definetely recommend this novel.I enjoyed it very much.It helped me to come in contact with my innerself, and it made me think of things that i had never given any thought to before.

The brain is the piano and the player the soul
Italian author, winner of the Novel Prize in 1934, Luigi Pirandello is better known for his plays, forerunners of the theatre of the absurd.In this novel, the main character Mattia Pascal faces an economic downfall and a marriage without love.He decides to escape from this situation and in a stroke of luck wins a fortune in Monte Carlo.He takes a new identity, gains total freedom, shams death but the ghosts of his past existence, and the discovery of true love will spoil his new life.
The plot is neatly constructed and the dialogues between Mattia Pascal and some of the characters are enlightening, expressing Pirandello's philosophical outlook on life as well as reflecting biographical elements. The author is concerned with the ambiguity of truth and reality, the problem of identity and illusion.For him self-identity only exists in relation to others, as much as man is a social creature, unfortunately bound to social conventions.Man creates his own reality and lives in a world of illusions, always bound one way or the other to the past.The resulting paradox is that illusion may often become more real than reality!
Mattia Pascal is unable to cope with his total freedom which strucks him as being shapeless and aimless.Only the love he feels for Adriana will help him brake away from his suffocating mask.Upon returning to his former town he finds his wife has remarried and he is destined to become the shadow of a dead man.
Pirandello held a pessimistic outlook on life, believeing that his time was one of distress and darkeness (early 20th century), democracy was nothing more than tyranny disguised as freedom, and philosophical speculations nothing more than a product of our imagination.
"When death comes perpetual night will great us after the misty daylight of our illusion, or rather, we will be left to the mercy of Being, which will only have shattered the vain forms of our reasoning." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Naked Masks five plays by Luigi Pirandello
This volume is written in an easy-to-read belles lettres style. The major
works are:
o Liola
o It Is So (If You Think So)
o Henry IV
o Six Characters in Search of an Author
o Each In His Own Way

The play entitled "It Is So" begins in the parlor in the house of
Commendatore Agazzi. There is much small talk leading up to a crescendo
" No. I am she whom you believe me to be." by Signora Ponza
" And there my friends, you have the truth!" by Laudisi

A famous line portrays the human empathy which is a condition precedent
for getting along in this world.

" Signora Frola [rising] .Oh, yes, yes! But, remember I told you he is
such a good man! Believe me, he couldn't be better, really! We all have
our weaknesses in this world, haven't we? And, we get along best by having
a little indulgence for one another."

A beauty of this work is seen in the careful emulation of the colloquial
Italian spoken among the working middle class families. In addition,
the work is replete with familiar neighborhood scenes, stories and plots.
Luigi Pirandello was born in Sicily in 1867 (just after the Civil War) and died in 1936 just under 7 decades. He won the Nobel Prize just two years
before he died.

highly recommended
Whenever I see anything either written by Pirandello or edited by Bentley my interest is immediately piqued.This volume, however, goes above expectations.The Nobel Prize winning Pirandello delves into the nature both of theatre and of human beings.My favorite of the plays here is "Six Characters in Search of an Author," which somehow straddles the border between realism and absurdism in exploring psyche and dramatic construct.For fans of modern theatre and renaissance drama alike this book makes an excellent addition to the home library.

fantastic
After reading these plays, I can understand why Pirandello won the Nobel Prize.All of the plays deal with illusion and reality in ways that contemporary writers still struggle with. Both Six Characters in Search of an Author, and Each in His Own Way play with the idea that the audience willfuly suspends reality in order to watch a play (or a movie for that matter).He plays with the idea that what something appears to be is as important, if not more important, that what it really is.Again, illusion versus reality. Although all of the plays were interesting,and entertaining, the two standouts were "Six Characters...," and "It is So! (If You Think So)."The former deals with an acting troupe that is approached by six characters who have been conceived by a writer, but not fully realized.The Characters attempt to get the manager of the troupe to write their script, and thus give them artistic life."It is So..." deals with the nature of how we know what we know, and how we decide what to believe in terms of what is real and what is not.

The only problem with this collection of plays (and the only reason that I didn't give it five stars) is that in the introduction to "Six Characters..." the editor discusses "Six Characters in Search of an Author," "Each in His own Way," and "tonight We Improvise," as a trilogy.He takes the time to discuss the relationship between these plays, and yet "Tonight We Improvise" is omitted from the collection.Thus, we are left with only the first two plays of the trilogy.What makes it worse is that they are both excellent plays (making me wish I didn't have to scrounge up another book to get the third). Other than that, this is an outstanding collection.Eric Bentley (the editor) writes an informative introduction to Pirandello, and adds Pirandello's own thoughts on "Six Characters...," as well as biographical information on the playwrite, in the appendix. I would recomend this for people who are, or aren't familiar with the work of Luigi Pirandello.It's definitely worth the read.

Modern Drama Must-Read
I would recommend this collection to anyone interested in modern drama.Focus particularly on Henry IV.The play in itself is incredibly bizarre upon the first reading.Upon later readings, however, deeper meaningsarise.A worthy read. ... Read more

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Pubblicato nel 1904, è il più celebre dei romanzi di Pirandello. La storia è quella di un modesto bibliotecario di provincia, Mattia Pascal, che conduce una vita meschina e inappagata. Dopo un litigio con la moglie, si allontana da casa e si reca a Montecarlo, dove gioca al casinò e vince una grossa somma di danaro. Sulla via del ritorno, legge su un giornale la notizia del suo suicidio; decide allora di scomparire veramente. Non torna più a casa e assume una nuova identità (il nuovo nome scelto è quello di Adriano Meis), stabilendosi a Roma. Ma di fatto è per lui impossibile costruirsi una vera vita, a causa dei limiti obbiettivi che gli pone il timore che la sua falsa identità venga scoperta; decide perciò di inscenare un altro suicidio, che faccia scomparire Adriano Meis, e di tornare in famiglia. Ma, rientrato al suo paese, trova che la moglie intanto si è risposata: è costretto a ritirarsi a vivere da solo, riprendendo il vecchio impiego di bibliotecario. In quest'opera Pirandello scardina gli schemi della narrativa naturalistica, da cui aveva preso le mosse, e crea nella figura del protagonista uno dei personaggi più emblematici della narrativa italiana novecentesca. ... Read more

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Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934. It was Capuana who encouraged Pirandello to dedicate himself to narrative writing. In 1893, he wrote his first important work Marta Ajala, which was published in 1901 with the title L'Esclusa. In 1894, he published his first collection of short stories, Amori Senza Amore. Pirandello intensified his collaborations with newspaper editors and other journalists in magazines such as La Critica and La Tavola Rotonda in which he would publish, in 1895, the first part of the Dialogi Tra Il Gran Me e Il Piccolo Me. In 1898, with Italo Falbo and Ugo Fleres, he founded the weekly Ariel in which he published the one-act play L'Epilogo and some novellas. In 1900, he published in Marzocco some of the most celebrated of his novellas such as Lumie di Sicilia and La Paura del Sonno. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (9)

For Advanced Students
In my opinion, if you can read this book in Italian, you are an advanced student.If you can read the English side, you are probably reading at a college level.

Here is a sentence from the first page: "La bimba andava sbadatamente, ed ecco ... diradandosi a poco a poco una piccola collina che a destra s'innalzava le si sciorina davanti allo sguardo l'immensità delle acque del mare."

If you can't read that, don't buy the book.

This book has a lot of long sentences, 20 word sentences are common.It also has a large vocabulary.Words repeat infrequently so reading didn't get easier as the story continued.Also, some of the words weren't in my 15,000-word dictionary.

If you're already comfortable reading Italian, you might find this book useful, otherwise look somewhere else.

11 short stories in Italian/English
Bought this book of short stories in Italian/English to help me learn Italian; And what a great investment it was. I'm speaking it some and spelling every word I've learned. Thank you, thank you. Grazie, mile grazie. Cecilia, VA

Good book
I rated it thee stars because I didn't like the stories much.Unsatisfactory endings for me, some dumb stories.But it is ok, especially as a review or if you want to improve your Italian further after reading better dual language books. I'm usually please (and I am with this one) with almost any dual language book, even if I don't like the stories or translations, because for me the books are to improve my knowledge of the foreign language.But some books are boring, dumb, and otherwise less desireable than those better written and interesting.

Good modern Italian literature
If you are taking Italian in school and need some literature, you can't go wrong with this little book.

Learning Italian
I like dual language books as I Learn the language.This one is a good one.the stories are interesting and the trandlation allows for quick help on difficult passages. ... Read more

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The texts of Luigi Pirandello, one of the literary giants of this century, have been subject to widely different readings by successive generations of critics. These essays present an up-to-date re-evaluation of Pirandello's works, which include poetry, novels, short stories, plays, essays, letters, and memoirs.

Arranged in four sections - Introduction, Structures, Meanings, and Innovations - the volume presents a variety of provocative viewpoints and offers an accurate picture of the network of issues inhabiting the author's oeuvre. In the introductory section the editors provide an informative overview of the status of Pirandellian studies today. The book examines the recent upsurge of interest in Pirandello and offers outstanding material for courses in Italian studies, comparative studies, theatre, and the humanities. ... Read more