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Essay on Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello (June 28, 1867 – December 10, 1936) was an Italian dramatist and novelist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934.
He was born into a middle-class family in a village with the curious name of Chaos (Xaos), a poor suburb of Girgenti (Agrigento, a town in southern Sicily). While he was young, the sulfur mine belonging to his family was ruined by a flood, leading to serious financial difficulties.
He is known mainly for his writing for the theatre, but his short stories and novels took up most of his career. He also wrote several short novels (novelle), some of which he based on Italian and Sicilian legends. Pirandello composed over 350 short stories, generally on Sicilian themes and showing the influence of realist writers such as Giovanni Verga. His poetry is rather less well-known.
Shortly after his marriage his wife Antonietta was found to be suffering from a serious mental illness; this gave Pirandello a profound awareness of the workings of the mind, as can be seen in several of his works (notably in Enrico IV (Henry IV)). In Il berretto a sonagli (Cap and Bells), he described in detail how to "go mad": telling everyone the truth, the unadorned and cruel truth, regardless of manners or social conventions, would soon lead to isolation and, in the eyes of others, madness.
Pirandello's best-known work is probably Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author). Equally notable, if not as often performed, are the plays Così è (se vi pare) (Right You Are (If You Think You Are)) and Ciascuno a suo modo (Each in His Own Way). Another play, Come tu mi vuoi (As You Desire Me), was adapted for a 1932 Hollywood film starring Greta Garbo.
In later years he became a close friend, and perhaps the lover, of Italy's most famous actress....
