If This Seems a Suiting Title, It Is (Although I Neglect Mention of Death and its Human Guises) Alex DeRue 10/25/2011

Utterance of the name Luigi Pirandello carries echoes of praises and curses through the halls of Italian literature and drama. His defining works challenged both theater and philosophy alike, exploring the realms of identity and personal truth, recognizing in each man a reality, all his own. One such work was his Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore, 1920, which upon its first performance in 1921 had his audience vainly attempting to draw one ideal, definite reality from it all. To the confused and the critics cries for asylum this marked his rise to notoriety and defined his position as a writer weaving madness and reality as one, quietly shouting the maxim, To each their own. However that work was far from his only exploring such concepts; another of the most notable among those being Pirandellos Cos (se vi pare), 1917. This work at first glance, would appear to be little different from the other plays, a sea of farcical twists, birthing as many realities as there are roles to be played. However the billing of said play ironically refers to it as A Parable in Three Acts, implying there within exists some universal truth, when Pirandello, through Laudisi seeks to establish there is no definite truth, rather a truth for each of us, of ourselves and of each other. Now some simply suggest recognition of these equal truths rather that giving in to the inherent seeking of a definite one, is that lost moral, but the same Laudisi who conveys that, suggests another more cosmic moral: a warning against mans implacable curiosity of the end of such truths, death. This suggestion is solidified by the Ponza Family, who assume the human face of death, birthed from an earthquake, and completely beyond the understanding, but nonetheless ever possessing of gossiping townsfolk. Mans resolute curiosity

for his own demise is played out through the acts and Pirandello works to show that this truth like all the others, is unique to all, recognizable, but not to be understood before its time. The theme of death emerges in the play, not simply from the tragic story of Ponza family, but is incarnated and embodied with their presence in the town. The thought of this is more or less actually suggested within the play itself by Laudisis recognition there must be a phantom in the house, (Act III, 122). Laudisis phantom however, exists more as a paradox born of the two truths, remaining to be seen if what is a phantom for him and her [Sr. Ponza and Sra. Frola] is actually a person for herself, (Act III, 122) however the ethereal connotation of the phrase is not lost to Laudisis audience. Further analysis of the play extends this deathly personification to the whole family, particularly through Pirandellos pointed and purposeful stage direction. The descriptions given during the entrances of each character, particular that of Ponza, the dark complexioned man of a distinctly unprepossessing appearance, black hair black mustache dressed entirely in black black bordered handkerchief his eyes invariably hard, fixed, (Act I, 84) draw a sharp parallel between the family and the rest of the gaily clad cast. While many might argue these are simply the marks of mourning, Pirandellos sheer repetition of the ideas of black and dark suggest otherwise when one notes he rarely focuses on the appearances of other characters much beyond natural features of age and beauty or noting theyre overdressed. The color black has long held a connotation of death in Western Culture, and were a director wise enough to follow Pirandellos stage direction, the macabre aura of the Ponza Family would be difficult to miss. Further utilizing stage direction, Pirandello imbues the mother, son-in-law and daughter with mans most common emotions before death, the human faces of death. For Signora Frolas world of sadness in her eyes, tempered however, by a gentle smile, (Act I, 76) suggests the face of the old and well-aged, tempered by and time and wisdom, recognizing the

truth that is death, pitying the loss of so many memories. Ponzas mask however is that of the young, a distinctly unprepossessing appearance a certain ferocity of expression invariably hard, fixed, sinister, (Act I, 84) raging before a truth recognized too soon, cursing at it and its inability to be understood. And finally in Signora Ponza, that of the broken, those lost to the despair of death, dressed in deep mourning concealed with a thick, black, impenetrable vale, (Act III, 136) consumed by it. Each character arrived on stage, as though they were at a funeral, each with their own deathly truth. They however are not at a funeral but in the sitting room of a town, a place of life and infinite truths changing with every day. And so one must examine the mechanism with which Pirandello brought them to this place, an earthquake Now such a disaster is a perfectly normal albeit tragic event, for as always Pirandello has a talent for the plausible; there was just such an earthquake in 1915 which left the town of Avezzano in utter ruin. However when placed beside a funeral as the source of Ponza Familys presence it takes on a new, increasing macabre attribute. For at a funeral, death is interred in the earth, left to a world all its own separate from the air we breathe and lives we live. However in an earthquake, death is released from the earth. It might seem contemptible, then to call death as I have, both an act and an entity, but is that not what consists the truths for which Pirandello argues? Allowing for this ambiguity and continuing with such connotations, a question of Amalias which ultimately goes unanswered, suggests this same return, You went through the earthquake, didnt you? (Act I, 77). Did they come through the earthquake, a reverse burial, which brought such deathly people into the world of the living, only to not be understood by them? As Sirelli suggested, they, might as well be in another world, (Act III, 122) beyond the comprehension of the living, whose zealous crusade for a definite truth, is ultimately vain before them, just as every mans effort to grasp death before he has met with it. Those in search of a

definite truth in the play will likely be troubled by such a thought that the family Ponza is dead, but Pirandello as Laudisi warns against this and so it is a truth that the sorrows of this family and what is has done to them, is as true a death as any. Pirandello proclaims this play a parable in the billing, stating in the straight forward modus operandi of parables, for Cos (se vi pare) to be a moral story, an expectation which does not disappoint. A first hasty read however, would seem to deem it a farce. It does acquire many such characteristics, with the twist and turns of the plot and the vain, unreasonable, automatic behavior of the gossiping townsfolk. The frantic race to an absolute lack of a farcical climax and conclusion however is what redefines it in the parable nature. Using this pseudofarce, Pirandello invites the audience to experience the parable just as his characters do; to eagerly pursue a definite truth, the ideal reality only to discover there is none. This method makes it not simply a teaching story, but a learning one, the moral to which is that just as Laudisi preaches there is no definite reality to be understood in life this holds true in death as well. What can we really know about other people- who they are- what they are- what they are doing, and why they are doing it? (Act I, 68) Laudisi asks, beginning his argument for a truth for each man, and in each man a truth of every other. Why then would death carry with it some definite understanding or reality, rather than to each man his own truth? And this is where a sharp divide iw drawn between this parable, and the religious semblances that often accompanies the word. This work of Pirandellos has a noticeable lack of religion given the circumstances, and this is purposeful on his part, as religion, in this case Catholicism, believes wholly in definite truths for all, that there are in fact right and wrong ways of life, and consequent defined realities of death, Heaven and Hell. This faulted sense of definite right and wrong is suggested through gossipers battle for reality and madness in light of the Ponzas story. It is this search for the explicit which

shatters their perfected reality, their heaven, turning it to a hell in which the remedy which our compassion has found cannot avail. (Act III, 137). In essence Pirandello attempts to construct a creed all his own, and Laudisi plays the role of messiah. Pirandellos view of death is a simple one: It will affect us all differently, for just as we have all lived our own truths and held truths about others. We will carry those to the grave, whether it is our funeral or anothers, and because we all had our own truths, we all can wear different masks in the face of death, just as the family Ponza does. This is Pirandellos parable. Death is not to be understood as one definite truth. Men however are cursed beasts, recognizing deaths claim upon them in due time, only to meet said rider time and time again, before their own passing. Reasonably they fear and judge, and as they attempt to establish an exact reality for something they cannot hope to understand, it becomes a false ideal for that which they can understand: life. Pirandello knows this and sought to show that there is no exact reality for all, no divine truth to being, but rather within each man, his own divinity has allowed him the truths he seeks. He need only recognize them in himself and in others. Pirandello goes on suggest in his later work, Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore that, in order to know if you, as you really are now, see yourself as you once were with all the illusions that were yours then, with all the things both inside and outside of you as they seemed to you -- as they were then indeed for you all those illusions that mean nothing to you now, of all those things which don't even seem to you to exist any more, while once they were for you, you reflect that in the same way this you as you feel it today -- all this present reality of yours -- is fated to seem a mere illusion to you tomorrow. (Act III). And so how could one hope to understand a definite death, the truth of tomorrow, today, if we are still caught with our own truths of the now, our own illusions of life? Simply put, one shouldnt.

Works Cited "Luigi Pirandello." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2nd ed. Vol. 12. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 319321. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 25 Oct. 2011. Pirandello, Luigi. It Is So!(If You Think So). Naked Masks pp. 61-138. United States: Penguin USA, 1957. Reprinted with permission via the Copyright Clearance Center. Pirandello, Luigi. Six Characters in Search of and Author. 1921. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2011: Ibiblio. Web. 25 Oct. 2011 http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/lp/six.htm