One, No One and One Hundred Thousand is a psychological novel written by Luigi Pirandello. This story was published in instalments in 1925 in the magazine “La Fiera Letteraria” and, as an integral volume, in 1926.
Vitangelo
Moscarda, nicknamed Gengè by his wife, is the protagonist of the book, which is
set in a town called Richieri.
One day,
while Moscarda is looking at himself in the mirror, his wife, Dida, reveals to
him that his nose leans right. His tilted nose is the first germ of his
madness. Indeed, he starts to wonder how many things he ignores about himself, which others know.
“The idea that others saw in me one that was not the I whom I knew, one
whom they alone could know, as they looked at me from without, with eyes that
were not my own, eyes that conferred upon me an aspect destined to remain
always foreign to me, although it was one that was in me, one that was my own
to them (a "mine," that is to say, that was not for me!)—a life into
which, although it was my own, I had no power to penetrate—this idea gave me no
rest.”
The
protagonist goes through an identity crisis. He understands that he sees
himself differently from the others. For
this reason, Moscarda discovers one, no one and a hundred thousand versions of
himself, one for everyone who believes to know him. For example, his wife is in
love with Gengè, whom the protagonist does not know, but who lives inside him. Consequently,
Moscarda suffers, because the man he knows loves his version of Dida, but she does
not love his idea of himself.
“Do you get it? It was as certain as certain could be that her Gengè
liked her hair better combed that other way, and so, she combed it that way,
which was pleasing neither to her nor to me. But it pleased her Gengè, and she
sacrificed herself. You say, that does not mean much? Are not such as these
true and real sacrifices for a woman? She loved him so! And I—now that all at
last was cleared up for me—began to be terribly jealous—not of myself, believe
me, please; I know you feel like laughing—not of myself, good people, but of
one that was not I, of an imbecile who had intruded himself between me and my
wife, not like an empty shadow, no—believe me, please— because he rather made
an empty shadow of me—yes, me—by appropriating my body to win her love.”
Moreover, he
desires to know himself. Therefore, he tries to look at himself as if he were
looking at a stranger. He views is body through the mirror, but he cannot
identify himself with what he sees. Indeed, Moscarda thinks that his thoughts have
no relation to his body because if he had had another body and name, nothing
would have changed in his thinking. However, he is aware that other people link
his name and his crooked nose to his ideas.
“And
others? Others are not in me at all. For others, who look from without, my
ideas, my feelings have a nose. My nose. And they have a pair of eyes, my eyes,
which I do not see but which they see. What relation is there between my ideas
and my nose? For me, none whatever. I do not think with my nose, nor am I
conscious of my nose when I think. But others? Others, who cannot see my ideas
within me, but who see my nose without?”
“No name. No memory today of yesterday’s name; of today’s name,
tomorrow. If the name is the thing; if a name in us is the concept of every
thing placed outside of us; and without a name you don’t have the concept, and
the thing remains in us as if blind, indistinct and undefined: well then, let
each carve this name that I bore among men, a funeral epigraph, on the brow of
that image in which I appeared to him, and then leave it in peace, and let
there be no more talk about it. It is fitting for the dead. For those who have
concluded. I am alive and I do not conclude. Life does not conclude. And life
knows nothing of names.”
Furthermore,
he figures out that he can see others live, but never himself. Because, when he
looks in the mirror, he temporarily stops living. For this reason, nobody can
know themselves. Actually, when we pose for a photo or when we look at
ourselves in the mirror, we organize our facial expressions in the way we like
best. Whereas, when we really live, we cannot do it because while we are
living, we are spontaneous. We cannot know our facial expressions or our tics,
while others can know them and, rather, identify us through those.
"For you can only know yourself when you strike an attitude: a
statue: not alive. When one is alive, one lives and does not see himself. To
know one's self is to die. The reason you spend so much time looking at
yourself in that mirror, in all mirrors, is that you are not alive; you do not
know how to live, you cannot or you do not want to live. You want too much to
know yourself; and meanwhile, you are not living."
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
was born on 28th June 1867 in Girgenti (currently Agrigento). He was
born in a zone called Caos, and for this
reason, he used to define himself as “the son of Caos”. His parents were
liberal and Garibaldian. His father, Stefano Pirandello, took part in Garibaldi’s
Expedition of the “Mille” (On thousand).
In 1887, he
studied Literature in Palermo and, then, he went to the University of Rome,
where he wrote a few plays. However, in 1889, he moved to Bonn, where he
graduated with a thesis about the dialect of Agrigento.
In 1894, he married
Antonietta Portulano and they had three children.
In 1903, his
finances took a turn for the worse. His parents’ sulphur mine was flooded. In
the same year, his wife started to suffer from mental problems, which would
force her to live in a psychiatric hospital. Here, she would stay until her
death.
These events
influenced Pirandello’s works. In 1904,
he published The Late Mattia Pascal,
his most famous novel where he spoke about the masks, which everyone wears, and about the attempt to escape from
the world and the defeat.
In this
period, he started his career in the theatre writing plays both in Italian and
in the Sicilian dialect. His novels inspired some of his plays.
In 1921, he
proposed again, after the previous failure of the first performance in Rome, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
In this occasion, he succeeded and he reinforced his fame.
The next
year, he decided to write one novella for each day of the year. Therefore, he
published Stories for a Year.
Actually, this book is composed by only 256 novellas.
In 1926, he
published One, No One and One Hundred
Thousand, his last novel. Through this book, he said that nobody can be
himself, because that person does not exist. For this reason, he explained
through his theory of “umorismo” ( humour ) that we have to wear masks. Moreover,
he distinguished between humourous and comical. In the two of them, we see something
different and we can react in two ways: we laugh and it is comical or we
reflect on the reasons of this dissimilarity, smiling bitterly, and this is
humourous.
In 1934,
Pirandello received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Two years letter, on 10th December
1936, Pirandello died because of pneumonia.
Angelica, 4scB
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