Pirandello, Luigi

Eleven Short Stories (Dual-Language) (Dual-Language Book)

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Eleven Short Stories - Dual Language
Neat
A great tool

Eleven Short Stories (Dual-Language) (Dual-Language Book)
Luigi Pirandello
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0486280918

Book Description

Masterly stories include "Little Hut," "With Other Eyes," "A Voice," "Citrons from Sicily," "A Character’s Tragedy," six more. English translations.

Customer Reviews:

Eleven Short Stories - Dual Language.......2006-08-24

Outstanding book for the intermediate Italian student. Put together well.

Neat.......2004-07-29

Yeah, its fun to study this way, and you will not even realize how much italian you have learned until you go back to read the book again or go read another book in italian and you will be like "Holy cow I can understand some of this"...I am reading this book for a second time now...my feelings on the actual stories themselves is really kinda hit or miss...some of them I thought were really cool, like Una Voce, it is a story about a blind man who is engaged to this woman. A doctor thinks he can cure the man's blindness. What happens? You have to read to find out but it was very interesting (Yeah I know it sounds like that movie with Val Kilmer but trust me, it's different). But honestly, for a lot of the other stories I was like please let this end. Maybe something was lost in the translation, and I'm not fluent in Italian, but Pirandello reminds me of a guy who takes 2 hours to set up a joke and then has no punchline. He writes like at the end there is going to be some really big catch like "Woah I can't believe this happened!" but then he just ends it before that catch ever takes place. So I guess what I am trying to say
is that this book is a great tool for learning italian, I just didn't find most of the stories very interesting. Still, I am glad I bought it. I thought "Italian Stories" were a lot more interesting. Yeah, I know Pirandello is real famous and people love his stuff, I'm just saying that I didn't particularly like it.

A great tool.......2003-05-25

This book is a great version of these classic tales. Being a dual-language text makes it an excellent aid to Italian language study. It is a must-read for lovers of Italian literature.

Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays (Twentieth Century Classics)

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Pirandello's classic existentialist drama and two more plays
A nearly flawless work of the theater well ahead of its time
Masterpiece
One review in search of a reviewer

Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays (Twentieth Century Classics)
Luigi Pirandello
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 014018922X

Customer Reviews:

Pirandello's classic existentialist drama and two more plays.......2004-11-18

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.......2002-03-27

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.......1998-01-29

Pirandello had writer's block. Luisa felt sorry for 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.......1997-05-13

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

Shoot!: The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator (Cinema and Modernity Series)

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Shoot!: The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator (Cinema and Modernity Series)
Luigi Pirandello
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0226669823

Book Description

Originally published in Italian in 1915, Shoot! is one of the first novels to take as its subject the heady world of early motion pictures. Based on the absurdist journals of fictional Italian camera operator Serafino Gubbio, Shoot! documents the infancy of film in Europe—complete with proto-divas, laughable production schedules, and cost-cutting measures with priceless effects-—and offers a glimpse of the modern world through the camera's lens. Shoot!, presented here in its 1927 English translation, is a classic example of Nobel Prize-winning Sicilian playwright Luigi Pirandello's (1867-1936) literary talent and genius for blurring the line between art and reality. From the film studio Kosmograph, Pirandello's Gubbio steadily winds the crank of his camera by day and scribbles with his pen by night, revealing the world both mundane and melodramatic that unfolds in front of his camera. Through Gubbio's narrative—saturated with fantasy and folly—Pirandello grapples with the philosophical implications of modernity. Like much of Pirandello's work, Shoot! parodies human weaknesses, drawing attention to the themes of isolation and madness as emerging tendencies in the modern world. Enhanced by new critical commentaries, Shoot! is an entertaining caricature, capturing early twentieth-century Italian filmmaking and revealing its truths as only a parody can.

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Pirandello's Henry IV
Luigi Pirandello , and Tom Stoppard
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0802141943

Book 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?

Six Characters in Search of an Author (Dover Thrift Editions)

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Different from your normal play
What if?
Pirandello's classic play, the first existentialist drama
Signet version...
Captivating!

Six Characters in Search of an Author (Dover Thrift Editions)
Luigi Pirandello
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0486299929

Book Description

This 1921 intellectual comedy contrasts illusion with reality by introducing 6 individuals to a bare stage occupied by actors in rehearsal. Proclaiming themselves the incomplete creations of an author's imagination, the 6 demand dialog for the story of their lives. A classic dramatic exploration of the many faces of reality. Publisher's Note.

Customer Reviews:

Different from your normal play.......2005-06-08

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?.......2004-12-19

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.......2004-09-20

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.

Signet version..........2004-03-17

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.

Captivating!.......2004-02-20

"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.

One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand (Eridanos Library, No 18)

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A soliloquy fun to read
My 100-thousand faces in the others' perception....,
Turmoil in the Mirror.
Engaging meditation on identity
Who are you?

One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand (Eridanos Library, No 18)
Luigi Pirandello
Manufacturer: Marsilio Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0941419746

Book Description

novel, tr w/intro by William Weaver

Customer Reviews:

A soliloquy fun to read.......2003-08-25

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....,.......2003-03-26

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........2001-01-25

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.......2000-10-24

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?.......1998-07-14

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.

Average customer rating:

Pirandello is literature.
You can't escape from yourself
Great Book!!!
The brain is the piano and the player the soul
A funny, deep and astonishing story

The Late Mattia Pascal
Luigi Pirandello
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1590171152
Release Date: 2004-11-30

Book Description

Mattia Pascal endures a life of drudgery in a provincial town. Then, providentially, he discovers that he has been declared dead. Realizing he has a chance to start over, to do it right this time, he moves to a new city, adopts a new name, and a new course of life—only to find that this new existence is as insufferable as the old one. But when he returns to the world he left behind, it's too late: his job is gone, his wife has remarried. Mattia Pascal's fate is to live on as the ghost of the man he was.

An explorer of identity and its mysteries, a connoisseur of black humor, Nobel Prize winner Luigi Pirandello is among the most teasing and profound of modern masters. The Late Mattia Pascal, here rendered into English by the outstanding translator William Weaver, offers an irresistible introduction to this great writer's work

Customer Reviews:

Pirandello is literature. .......2006-04-03

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.......2003-04-10

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!!!.......2002-10-17

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.......2002-09-07

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."

A funny, deep and astonishing story.......2000-11-16

This novel is about the identity of the individual, and the possibilities and limits of self-reinvention. By failing to transform himself into someone else, Mattia Pascal remains the same person, but radically changed from his experience. Oh, but it's not so complicated. Mattia Pascal is a good-for nothing- junior who, along with his also-spoiled brother, lose the fortune inherited from their father. Besides losing his fortune, Mattia is forced to make a disastrous marriage. And then, along comes a big and most unexpected chance to run away and become someone else. I won't spoil anything. Just read it and you will find an amazing story. Pirandello's writing is easy. The introduction to the real knot of the story is a little long, but it is absolutely necessary to situate the plot, and moreover, it is very funny. Pirandello's style fluctuates between irreverent and outrageous irony, and melancholic reflections on fate, identity and man's place in the world. Far from being boring, it has extremely funny moments of dark humor (check his confrontations with his mother-in-law). So, it is an extremely recommendable book, because it is intelligent humor with a reflection on life. If you really get to love the story, as I did, you'll end up asking to yourself: "Who the hell am I?".

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Loveless Love (Hesperus Classics)
Luigi Pirandello
Manufacturer: Hesperus Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1843910225

Book Description

In this, the first English translation of Pirandello’s first published work, three short stories explore the sorrow of unfulfilled, unspoken love. Originally published in Italy in 1894.

A landlord falls in love with a tenant who is tied to another and cannot return his love; the perfect woman organizes her friends’ weddings yet cannot find love herself; the eternal love triangle separates two lifelong friends—in each of these tales, Pirandello captures all the pain and tragedy of loveless love. A poignant work of frozen beauty. Nobel Prize–winner Luigi Pirandello is one of Italy’s most distinguished and influential literary figures.

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Luigi Pirandello
Manufacturer: Dutton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000LZTTL0

Three Plays: Six Characters in Search of an Author; Henry IV - Right You Are! (If You Think So)
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Three Plays: Six Characters in Search of an Author; Henry IV - Right You Are! (If You Think So)
Luigi Pirandello
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 141791825X

Book Description

1922. Contains Six Characters in Search of an Author; Henry IV.; and Right You Are! (If You Think So). Pirandello, Italian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934. Pirandello's plays are often seen as forerunners for theater of the absurd. Right You Are (If You Think So) marked Pirandello's interest in the examination of the relativity of truth. The story was about a woman whose identity remains hidden and who could be one of the two very different people. Six Characters in Search of An Author created a scandal when it was first performed in Rome, but was hailed as a masterpiece in Paris. Henry IV received much better reception in Italy. It told about a man who believes he is the German emperor Henry IV. To accommodate his illness his wealthy sister has placed him in a medieval castle surrounded by actors dressed as eleventh-century courtiers.

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