Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author: A Comedy in the Making Author(s): Antonio Illiano Reviewed work(s): Source: Italica,

Vol. 44, No. 1 (Mar., 1967), pp. 1-12 Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/477418 . Accessed: 29/12/2011 08:57
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PIRANDELLO'S SIX CHARACTERSIN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR: A COMEDYIN THE MAKING

A little less than half a century ago there appeared on stage in Rome one of the most brilliant pieces of deviltry in modern literature, Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. It created such a stir that in less than three years it was translated in many languages and performed all over Europe and in New York.' The sudden and unexpected appearance of live characters, who claimed to belong on the stage and could actually be seen and heard, was like a bombshell that blew out the last and weary residues of the old realistic drama. It took everybody by surprise-and confused, as it still does today, both audiences and critics. But the novelty of the invention is so stimulating, and its great inherent theatricality so skillfully handled, that the play seldom fails to provide even the most sophisticated audiences with a fresh, though not easily definable, type of cathartic experience. For these reasons, 1921 became a most decisive turning point in modern theatre. Professor Robert Brustein of Columbia University, one of the outstanding drama critics of the last decade, does not overstate Pirandello's position in contemporary literature when he says:
" Pirandello's influence on the drama of the 2oth century is immeasurable. In his agony over the nature of existence, he anticipates Sartre and Camus; in his insights into the disintegration of personality and the isolation of man, he anticipates Samuel Beckett; in his unremitting war on language, theory, concepts, and the collective mind, he anticipates Eughne Ionesco; in his approach to the conflict of truth and illusion, he anticipates Eugene O'Neill (and later, Harold Pinter and Edward Albee); in his experiments with the theatre, he anticipates a host of experimental dramatists, including Thornton Wilder and Jack Gelber; in his use of the interplay between actors and characters, he anticipates Jean Anouilh; in his view of the tension between public mask and private face, he anticipates Jean Giraudoux; and in his concept of man as a role-playing animal, he anticipates Jean Genet. The extent of even this partial list of influences marks Pirandello as the most seminal dramatist of our time..." 2

ANTONIO ILLIANO

Now who are these six characters and where do they come from? They appear on a stage where a company is about to begin rehearsals for a new play, Pirandello's II giuoco delle parti. They interrupt, claiming that they are really six most interesting characters, side-tracked, however, in the sense that their original author first conceived them " alive," and then did not want or was no longer able materially to write them down in a work of art.3 They repeatedly assert that they are more real than the actors themselves, since, having been created, they now have a reality of their own, independent of their author. Consequently, they are now looking for a writer willing to put them into a book, and for a company of actors who will actualize and materialize their drama. This extremely explosive beginning sets off a most complex series of chain reactions, developing in all directions, all intricately woven in a spinning rhapsody of polemics, contrasts, misunderstandings, disquisitions, and heated feelings; a rhapsody ending in true agreement with Hegel's theory of the drama, that is, not ending at all. Here are some of the last words of the play:
LA PRIMA ATTRICE(rientrando da destra, addolorata). [Commenting on

the death of one of the characters]. Povero ragazzo! P_ morto! Oh che cosal
IL PRIMO ATTORE(rientrando

da sinistra,

ridendo).

Ma che morto!

Fin-

zionel finzione! Non ci credal

ALTRI ATTORIDA DESTRA. Finzione? Realthr realtdI] ALTRI ATTORI DA SINISTRA. No! Finzionel Finzionel

mortol

IL PADRE (levandosi e gridando tra loro). Ma che finzionel RealtA, rcaltA,

signoril realt!r IL CAPOCOMICO potendone piti). Finzione! realtP! Andate al diavolo (non
tutti quantil Luce! Luce! Luce! Ahl Non m'era mai capitata una cosa simile! Mi hanno fatto perdere una giornatal

After being exposed to such an elaborate treatment, the listener or spectator cannot help feeling that he has just been taken for a most intriguing ride, and deposited exactly where he started out. The next thing that comes to mind is the and methodological-that unless one is concern--critical

PIRANDELLO'S SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

extremely cautious about it all, the very same excursion is bound to start all over again. Clearly, the play has several meanings, several layers of reality adding up to an unconcluded and unconcluding plurality. In spite of a seemingly philosophical surface, it does not try to preach any moral or philosophy, not excluding skepticism. A definition of the Six Characters, if it were at all possible, must take into account the fact that the play is, first and foremost, a highly sophisticated and artistic re-enactment of relativism-in-the-making. It is, therefore, amusing to see how many critics, lured by Pirandello's deceitful disorder, either plunge into it and drown, or somehow skirt about on a slippery edge-and in both cases, missing the point, that the play, like life itself, is a many colored thing which refuses to be neatly pigeonholed. What is more remarkable still is the fact that Pirandello himself could not resist the temptation of playing his own game. Four years after the appearance of the Six Characters, he set out to give an exegesis of the comedy, in an essay that was almost simultaneously translated into English, French, and German, and then permanently attached to the play as a Preface.4 Although this essay provides us with some useful insights into Pirandello's art, it does not nearly explain the essence of the

play.
" I1 fatto ? che la commedia fu veramente concepita in un'illuminazione spontanea della fantasia, quando, per prodigio, tutti gli elementi dello spirito si rispondono e lavorano in un divino accordo. Nessun cervello umano, lavorandoci a freddo, per quanto ci si fosse travagliato, sarebbe mai riuscito a penetrare e a poter soddisfare tutte le necessith della sua forma. Perci6 le ragioni che io dir6 per chiarirne i valori non siano intese come intenzioni da me preconcette quando mi accinsi alla sua creazione e di cui ora mi assuma la difesa, ma solo come scoperte che io stesso, poi, a mente riposata, ho potuto fare." 5

Coming from an author speaking of this own work, what a candid confession of critical inadequacy! Or is it rather a further and more shrewd experiment in organized confusion and ambiguity? Either way, it's hopeless. To understand the complex machinery of the Six Characters we must adopt a new critical perspective, a perspective that

ANTONIO ILLIANO

may enable us to face directly Pirandello's forma mentis, the inner generator of the energy and life of his art. A few questions concerning the so-called reality and autonomy of the characters may come in very handy at this point, to start us on our new itinerary. First of all, is it true that the characters are more real than the actors, as they claim to be throughout the play? At this point perhaps we should briefly clarify the meaning and function of the actors as Pirandello uses them in this play. Obviously, they represent here the people of flesh and blood, physical life. As such-though fictitious figures themselves, in so far as they were conceived by the playwright for the story line of his comedy -we tend to see them in terms of a non-mythical world, and accept them not merely as plausible symbols but as real and actual human beings. But in the case of Pirandello's characters, who are presented as neither the people conceived by the author for his play, nor as actors representing people, what shall we say about them? How can we describe or classify them? Again, is it true that these characters are more real than the actors? The answer to this question will vary according to the meaning we attribute to the adjective reale. If we take reale to refer to that which is " physical, having a body," the answer is obviously negative. Here only the actors have physical substance, possess bodies, and are, therefore, real. If, on the other hand, we interpret reale in the philosophical sense of " pertinent to the res itself," and therefore substantial and everlasting, then the answer is affirmative; the characters are more real than the actors. Now, this duplicity of reale is definitely no mere concidence. It is, on the contrary, cleverly used with ambivalent purpose, and becomes one of the main sources of ambiguity in the comedy. In fact, if we switch the question around and ask, " are the actors more real than the characters?," we stumble on the same horns of the dilemma, but in reverse. We answer with an affirmative in the sense that the actors refer to people endowed with physical consistency; and we answer in the negative because people are changeable and perishable. It is an insoluble di-

PIRANDELLO'S SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

chotomy, and one that can turn into a most perplexing predicament; so that many observers and readers become easy prey to Pirandello's mix-up, and instinctively pose the question, " but then what is more real than what? " In utter seriousness, they consequently start looking for an answer that does not exist, without realizing that the author is asking the very same moot question, but for artistic purposes. They then take for granted that the characters are the symbols of art, and conclude that, when Pirandello says that they are more real than the actors, he actually means that art is superior to life. Seen in the varied spectrum of meanings which the Six Characters in Search of an Author implies, this last interpretation is not an impossible one, provided it does not become too rigid and exclusive. As many writers have been fond of quoting, " life is brief and art is long." Life has one kind of reality, a transient one-since man is mortal, but art has another kind, since it can outlast its creation, and achieve a permanence we call perennial. The main reason why it is difficult to wrap up the Six Characters in one sweeping generalization is that the characters themselves were not meant to be symbols. The actors, yes, may be taken to represent human nature with all its predicaments. But the characters were conceived, to use Pirandello's own definition of them, as realtd create," that is, as concepts stripped of all symbolizing vestment, as bare concepts and not personages symbolizing concepts. One may here indulge in a bit of sophistry and go so far as to say that they are indeed symbols, but symbols symbolizing lack of symbolism, nakedness. But we should rather stick with Ortega y Gasset's clear and articulate formulation, that " the traditional playwright expects us to take his personages for persons and their gestures for indications of a 'human' drama. Whereas here [in the Six Characters] our interest is aroused by some personages as such-that is, as ideas or pure
patterns." 7

A very important question now arises as to what happens to these concepts, once they have been created; how does the playwright handle them? Pirandello says that the creatures of his inspiration, once

ANTONIO ILLIANO

conceived, achieve a complete autonomy. We could agree with his pretense if we equate this alleged independence with its aesthetic value, that is, if we take the autonomy of the characters to mean their artistic liveliness and effectiveness. To be sure, clean-cut detachment between creator and creature is a Utopian mirage, one that has always attracted the naive idealist. Giving characters an independent kind of realism is an extremely refined device in literature, one we may say began with Cervantes, with whom Pirandello was quite familiar, and a device easily recognized in the work of many writers since.8 Here is, for instance, what some of them have said about it: " My notion always is that, when I have made people play out the play, it is, as it were, their business to do it and not mine." (Dickens) " Often my characters astonish me by doing or saying things I had not expected-yes, they can sometimes turn my original scheme upside down, the devils! " (Ibsen) " There is always a regular army of people in my brain begging to be summoned forth, and only waiting for the word to be given " (Chekhov). Or take Turgenev, who once said that an author must cut the navel-string between himself and the offspring of his imagination.9 But it is one thing to talk about creative theories and another to actualize them on the artistic plane. And no other writer has brought this technique into the open and made it serve so successfully, as both Unamuno in the novel and Pirandello in the theatre. To be sure, in both these two authors there is an epistemological and ontological preoccupation, in so far as the question " Who and what are the characters? " is another way of asking " Who and what am I?," "Who and what are you? " etc. And, in both of them, the personages involved in their stories are involved in nothing more nor less than a stubborn and hopeless attempt to escape being dominated by their authors. Unamuno does not hesitate to confess in Niebla: "Y Yo soy el Dios de estos dos pobres diablos nivolescos." 10 As for the desperate lot of the Six Characters, one needs only to survey their existence briefly. It all started one day when Fantasy, the " maidservant " of Pirandello's art, inexplicably gave birth to six characters. It is

PIRANDELLO'S SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

not hard to accept this basic fact. These figures, however, have a very peculiar birth defect--one not readily seen. They are deprived of the consciousness of their true paternity: they know they are characters, they know they are rejected characters, they believe they were created and then deserted by some author, but they are completely unaware of the most crucial truth of all, namely, that their blood is truly Pirandellian. Once deprived of their identity, it is easy for the author to have them do whatever he likes. So he has them knock at his door and persistently beg him to write them down, in a play or novel. Not a chance. For a while, he argues he has to find a meaning for them, a meaning that would justify their artistic existence. Till finally, he has another spark of genius: Why not represent them just as they are, as rejected and unfinished: This may well be their meaning! So he grants them a fake passport, so to speak, and makes them believe that they are free to go and search for their promised land. So the six fools walk onto a stage, eager and desperate to achieve what they don't realize is unattainable, that is, what has a priori been decreed as such by their creator. On that stage, which the author has purposely chosen for them, because it is totally unprepared to receive them, they come to face with a most exasperating failure. But this is not all. Not by any means. Where is the author, while both actors and characters engage in a dialogue or cross purposes? Hiding and unseen, the author is watching all of them perform, and writing down his own play: The Six Characters in Search of an Author. It turns out that the poor stooges, while trying to enact their own suffering drama, have been used for a completely different purpose, one they do not and cannot suspect. Are we still to speak of " autonomy " of the characters? Indeed, if we insisted in doing so, we would not only yield to easy and idle labelling, but, what is more relevant, we would dangerously hinder our penetration and understanding of the tragic substratum of the play. To a large extent, the Pirandello touch here is romantic irony straight from the books of Heine, Tieck, Jean Paul Richter and F. Schlegel, to mention but a few of the German Romantics with whom Pirandello was well acquainted. To get

ANTONIO ILLIANO

closer to the truth, we should say that it is romantic irony highly tinged with Kleist's Marionettentheater. In Pirandello, however, the romantic view disintegrates through multiplicity, contradiction and ambiguity, as has happened with other writers in the same tradition. One of the first to attain a lucid perception of Pirandello's modernity was Yeats, who, grouping him together with Pound, Eliot and Joyce, once said that they "... break up the logical processes of thought, by flooding them with associated ideas or words that seem to drift into the mind by chance," and even more brilliantly remarked that in them " there is hatred of the abstract... The intellect turns upon itself." 11 Pirandello's work, however, is not only the product of a literary tradition aware of the spiritual crisis faced in a modern culture, but indeed reflects what must be regarded as the peculiarly original structure of his mind, namely, the motivations which make him acutely conscious and perceptive of the absurdities and paradoxes of human tragicomedy. We said at the beginning that the reader or spectator experiences an uneasy sense of repetition and uncertainty. Now this feeling cannot be explained away in terms of romantic irony alone. Romantic irony may be illustrated by the author who first creates and then deflates or destroys his creation. Whereas in Pirandello, once the process has started, it remains open to further dialectical developments. So that we have not only inversion or reversion, but also inversion of inversion, reversion of reversion. Yeats sharply intuited the extent and importance of this phenomenon, when he spoke of the intellect that turns upon itself, and it is regrettable that he did not elaborate on this statement. An essay attempting to show in what way the intellect turns upon itself in Joyce, Eliot, Pound and Pirandello, could prove to be a most challenging study in comparative literature. Here one can only outline how the creative intellect, conscious of its powers, becomes a witness to itself in Pirandello's mind. There, in Pirandello's mind, the inversion in the creative process takes place as a work of reflection, an active and vigilant

PIRANDELLO'S SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

force which is at the basis of Pirandello's art and of his theory of humor. In 19o8, long before he became famous as a playwright, he had written a very important essay called L'umorismo, an exposition of his poetica and of his Weltanschauung, on which he was to build most of his future work. Any serious attempt to penetrate Pirandello's world should necessarily begin with an attentive and thorough study of this essay. It is surprising to note how large a majority of Pirandellian critics have neglected to do so, either because they are unaware of its existence or because they have been misled by its title, which would seem to suggest little more than other essays on a familiar enough subject. As a matter of fact, with the exception of only two translations,12 the essay is yet to be translated into all the other languages in which Pirandello is supposed to be well known and understood. " Humor " has a particular meaning and value for Pirandello. With him, the comic view may have the most serious of undertones. What seems humorous on the surface is revealed as a matter of sorrow and pain, and far from comic, underneath. To support this view, Pirandello gives us a striking example in an old lady with dyed hair, dressed like a young girl and wearing heavy make-up. At first sight she makes people laugh because she does not look as an old lady is supposed to: comedy consists of this awareness of the contrary. At this point, however, Pirandello's reflection interferes to tell us that the old lady is aware of being ridiculous, but is willing to deceive herself, by believing that the artifice of appearance will help her keep the affections of a younger husband. Well, if reflection comes to suggest all this, then there is nothing left to laugh about; on the contrary, the picture becomes quite sad. " From that awareness of the contrary, [reflection] has made me shift to the sentimento del contrario." 13 Here we finally hit the mark of Pirandello's forma mentis: the sentiment of the contrary. This is the essence of true humor. Human beings do not accept reality as animals do; they question it, but cannot find a clear purpose and explanation. So, " per non brancolar nel vuoto," they invent fictions that may give life some meaning, vain and

10

ANTONIO ILLIANO

illusory as it may be.'4 Humor is like a restless little devil who comes to break them to pieces, so that we can see how, behind the Vanity Fair, panta rei, everything flows, in a steady uninterrupted stream. This sentiment of the contrary was inborn in Pirandello. We can trace it as far back as his childhood, but in order to realize what a deep and moving force it was, we need only glance at a few of his titles. The very first Pirandellian published work is a collection of poems in his early youth called Mal giocondo, which reminds one of Heine's tortured wit. Years later other works came out with titles like Fuori di chiave, II fu Mattia Pascal, Erma bifronte, Maschere nude, etc. And what about the play here discussed, the Six Characters in Search of an Author, in which, beginning with the title, there is nothing that cannot be inverted or reversed? It should perhaps be clearer now what it is that Pirandello means when, in the Preface, he defines this drama as " a mixture of tragic and comic, fantastic and realistic, in a humoristic situation quite new and infinitely complex." Many critics are attracted by the plentiful philosophical disquisitions scattered throughout his work and to the idea that the true nature of Pirandello is that of a philosopher. On this assumption they then proceed to reconstruct and reorganize his Weltanschauung into a well wrought and neatly chiselled system. Nothing could be more erroneous and impractical. Like all great artists, Pirandello has the qualities of a thinker, though not a completely original one. Actually, his thought is asystematic a priori, based on analysis and not synthesis, on fracture and multiplicity and not on unity; and his thinking is not separable from the process of artistic creation. Finally, Pirandello's constant reflection and analytic drive should not be mistaken as motivated by sheer cerebrality. They are, instead, the product of deep suffering and overwhelming compassion for mankind's uneviable lot in a world of flux and misery. Speaking of himself and of his art, Pirandello once said: " To live before a looking glass is not possible. Try to look at yourself in a mirror while you are crying for your deepest sorrow, or while you are laughing for your merriest joy and your tears

PIRANDELLO'S SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

II

and your laughter will stop suddenly." And then he added polemically: "... only a few-not entirely dazzled by the shining of that mirror-have so far succeeded in seeing the amount of real sorrow and of human suffering which this 'overbrained humorist' has succeeded in putting into his dramas and
comedies." '~

ANTONIO ILLIANO
University of Texas

The comedy was first presented on the night of May io, 1921, at the Teatro Valle in Rome. The first English performance was staged on February 27, 1922 by the London Stage Society. Later the play was banned by the Lord Chamberlain, who judged it " unsuitable " to the British people. Cf. " The Six Characters Banned by London Lord Chamberlain," The New York Times, August 9, 1925, 2:6. The work, however, continued to be performed in small or private theatres. The comedy was first shown in New York on October 3go, 1922, at the Princess Theatre. 2 Robert Brustein, The Theatre of Revolt: Studies in Modern Drama from Ibsen to Genet (Boston-Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1964), p. 316. 3 L. Pirandello, Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore, in Opere, Vol. 4: Maschere nude (Milano: Mondadori, 1958), p. 8o. " Come e perch6 ho scritto i Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore," 4 Comoedia, VII, No. i, Jan. 1, 1925. For the translations, see Die Rampe, 1924-25. PP. 225 ff.; Revue de Paris, IV (1925), 332-347; Virginia Quarterly Review, No. i (April 1925), 36-52; and " Preface to Six Characters in Search of an Author," Translated by E[ric] B[entley], Appendix I in Naked Masks, Five Plays by L. Pirandello, Edited by Eric Bentley (New York: Dutton & Co., [19571), PP. 363-375. 5 Maschere nude, p. 61. 6 Ibid., p. 76. ' Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art and Other Writings on Art and Culture (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1956), p. 36. 1 The extent of Pirandello's involvement with Cervantes' great book is evident from a most interesting interpretation of Don Quijote which occurs in the first part of L'umorismo, now in Saggi, Poesie, Scritti varii (Milano: Mondadori, 1960), pp. 96-104. These pages also contain some of the playwright's first observations on the problem of the birth and growth of characters. However, as will be noted further down, L'umorismo, Pirandello's most important essay, has long been neglected. The first study of Cervantes' influence on Pirandello is Ambrico Castro's " Cervantes y Pirandello: Estudio comparativo," La naci6n (Buenos Aires), November 16, 1924; reprinted in Cultura venezolana (Caracas), 1925, 148-155, and in the following books by the same author: Santa Teresa y otros ensayos (Madrid: Central de Edici6n y Publicidad, 1930), pp. 219-231, and Hacia Cervantes (Madrid: Taurus, 1960), pp. 377-385. " No creo," says Ambrico Castro, " que de modo vo-

12

ANTONIO ILLIANO

luntario Pirandello haya imitado a Cervantes. Pero ello es indiferente; luego que una forma de arte es lanzada genialmente por su inventor, el embiente se impregna de su virtud, y donde menos se esperaria surge el reflejo eficaz del tema o procedimientos." Other critics claim a more direct influence. Cf. Jose Maria Monner Sans, Pirandello y su teatro (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1947, 1959), pp. 131-136; Luis Rosales, "La Comedia de la personalidad," Cuadernos hispanoamericanos (Madrid), 118 (October 1959), 249-284. However, as Leo Spitzer has suitably pointed out in Lingiiistica y historia literaria (Biblioteca Romanica Hispanica, Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1955), p. 222, in Cervantes it is the author who looks for his characters, and not vice versa as in Pirandello. Cf. also M. Voghera, L'arte di Cervantes e quella del Pirandello, Milano, 1932; J. Chaix-Ruy, " Cervantes, Flaubert, Pirandello," Humanitas (Brescia), XII (1957), 611618; Jacqueline Ch. de van Praag, " Espafia tierra de elecci6n del pirandellismo," Quaderni ibero-americani, XXVIII (1962), 218-222. On " Pirandello

y Calder6n," see A. Farinelli's article in La Naci6n (Buenos Aires), December 21, 1937, reprinted in Poesia y critica: Temas hispadnicos (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1954), pp. 109-115. 9 For these references, cf. F. L. Lucas, The Drama of Chekhov, Synge, Yeats, and Pirandello (London: Cassell, 1963), pp. 410-411. See also A. Lebois, " La r'volte des personnages: de Cervantes et Calderon a Raymond Schwab," Revue de litterature comparde, XXIII (1949), 482-5o6, which mentions, among others, Hawthorne, Nerval, Michelet, Flaubert, and Mark Twain; and J. E. Gillet, " The Autonomous Character in Spanish and European Literature," Hispanic Review, XXIV (1956), 179-190. 10 Miguel de Unamuno, Obras Completas, Vol. 2 (Madrid, 1958), p. 950. Cf. also Rudolf Brummer, " Autor und Geschbpf bei Unamuno und Pirandello," Wissenchaftliche Zeitschrift der Friedrich-Schiller- Universitiit Jena, J. 5, H. 2-3 (1955-56), 241-248, where the author tries to show that " Bei Pirandello . . . reicht die Selbstdindigkeit der von der Phantasie Geschaffenen gestalten sehr viel weiter " than in Unamuno. For other comparative essays on these two authors, see Unamuno, " Pirandcllo y yo," La Nacidn (Buenos Aires), July 15, 1923, reprinted also in the sixth volume of the continental edition of the Obras completas; Luis Leal, " Unamuno y Pirandello," Italica, XXIX (1952), 193-198; and Frank Sedwick, " Unamuno and Pirandello Revisited," Italica, XXXIII (1956), 40-51. 11William B. Yeats, A Vision (London: T. Werner Laurie, 1925 [1926]), pp. 211-212. 12L. Pirandello, El humorismo, Tr. Enzo Aloisi, Buenos Aires: Editorlai Bonfanti, 1947. Humorizam, Tr. Branimir Gabricevi', Zagreb: Mladost, 1952. 13 L. Pirandello, L'umorismo, in Saggi, Poesie, Scritti varii, p. 127. I4lbid., p. 138. ti i5 Pirandello on Writing Plays," The Living Age, August 29, 1925, p. 473.