Luigi Pirandello was an influential 20th century Italian playwright, novelist, and short story writer. He is best known for challenging conventional notions of reality, identity, and social norms through his plays. Pirandello's most famous play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, depicts six characters who intrude on a theatrical rehearsal seeking to tell their story. The characters represent Pirandello's view that people constantly adapt different personas and search for their identity, as reality is unpredictable and subjective.
3. Luigi Pirandello
•1867 – 1936 Italian playwright,
novelist , short story writer, critic
•Was awarded the Nobel in 1934
•Professor of aesthetics and stylistics
at the Real Istituto di Magistere
Femminile at Rome
•Wrote a huge number of novellas
•Wrote six novels
•Best known however for his plays
•Plays written between 1918 – 1935
•Name of collection Maschere
nude [Naked Masks]
4. •Maschere nude [Naked Masks] – the
problem of identity
•Each play has characters who are in search
identity
•Either their own or somebody else’s
•Constant contrast between appearance and
reality
“When I am dead, do not clothe me. Wrap
me naked in a sheet. No flowers on the bed
and no lighted candle. A pauper's cart. Naked.
And let no one accompany me, neither
relatives nor friends. The cart, the horse, the
coachmen, e basta. Burn me.”
5. Pirandello made people think about their notions of
life, literature especially drama and turned this
notion around.
He made them rethink all these concepts.
6. Major themes in Pirandello
1.Disappointment and disillusionment
2.Innefficacy of social norms, patterns
of society and literature
3.Pervasive sense of hopeless emptiness
4.Reality is irrational, contradictory, the
great unknown
5.Objectivity and predictability do not
exist
7. Notions of the Self
1.No clear identity about the self
2.The conscious mind is a mask
covering a mysterious multiplicity
3.The self as adapting to
circumstances
4.Mobile perspectives
8. I think that life is a very sad piece of buffoonery;
because we have in ourselves, without being
able to know why, wherefore or whence, the
need to deceive ourselves constantly by creating
a reality (one for each and never the same for
all), which from time to time is discovered to be
vain and illusory…. My art is full of bitter
compassion for all those who deceive
themselves; but this compassion cannot fail to
be followed by the ferocious derision of destiny
which condemns man to deception.
9. Theory of life and the self
1.The conscious mind is a set of masks that
we construct. Appearances that hide an
intolerable subconscious reality
2.No fixed meaning – we are the authors of
our realities
3.In rare circumstances the mask slips-
confrontation with the truth
4.We can confront reality only upto a point
10. At this point, the DOOR-KEEPER has entered from the stage door and advances towards
the manager's table, taking off his braided cap. During this manoeuvre, the Six
CHARACTERS enter, and stop by the door at back of stage, so that when the DOOR-KEEPER
is about to announce their coming to the MANAGER, they are already on the stage. A
tenuous light surrounds them, almost as if irradiated by them -- the faint breath of their
fantastic reality.
This light will disappear when they come forward towards the actors. They preserve,
however, something of the dream lightness in which they seem almost suspended; but this
does not detract from the essential reality of their forms and expressions.
He who is known as THE FATHER is a man of about 50: hair, reddish in colour, thin at the
temples; he is not bald, however; thick moustaches, falling over his still fresh mouth, which
often opens in an empty and uncertain smile. He is fattish, pale; with an especially wide
forehead. He has blue, oval-shaped eyes, very clear and piercing. Wears light trousers and
a dark jacket. He is alternatively mellifluous and violent in his manner.
THE MOTHER seems crushed and terrified as if by an intolerable weight of shame and
abasement. She is dressed in modest black and wears a thick widow's veil of crêpe. When
she lifts this, she reveals a wax-like face. She always keeps her eyes downcast.
THE STEP-DAUGHTER, is dashing, almost impudent, beautiful. She wears mourning too, but
with great elegance. She shows contempt for the timid half-frightened manner of the
wretched BOY (14 years old, and also dressed in black); on the other hand, she displays a
lively tenderness for her little sister, THE CHILD (about four), who is dressed in white, with a
black silk sash at the waist.
THE SON (22) tall, severe in his attitude of contempt for THE FATHER, supercilious and
indifferent to THE MOTHER. He looks as if he had come on the stage against his will.
11. Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore (1921)
[Six Characters in Search of An Author]
CHARACTERS of the
Comedy in the Making
THE FATHER
THE MOTHER
THE STEP-DAUGHTER
THE BOY
THE CHILD
(The last two do not speak)
THE SON
MADAME PACE
ACTORS of the Company
THE MANAGER
LEADING LADY
LEADING MAN
SECOND LADY
L'INGÉNUE
JUVENILE LEAD
OTHER ACTORS AND ACTRESSES
PROPERTY MAN
PROMPTER
MACHINIST
MANAGER'S SECRETARY
DOOR-KEEPER
SCENE-SHIFTERS
12. We believe this conscience to be
a single thing, but it is many-
sided. There is one for this
person, and another for that.
Diverse consciences.
