Modern Language Studies

The Question of the Frame in Pirandello's Metatheatrical TrilogyAuthor(s): Jo Ann CannonSource: Modern Language Studies, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Summer, 1986), pp. 44-56Published by: Modern Language StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3194886Accessed: 05/11/2008 09:03

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The Question of the Frame in Pirandello's Metatheatrical Trilogy

Jo Ann Cannon

The myth of Pirandello as a philosophical writer has a long history which begins with Benedetto Croce. Croce applied his formula poesia/ non poesia in a purely negative way to Pirandello's work, asserting that it represented neither art nor poetry.' Taking issue with the thesis that reflection may be superimposed on poetic emotion, a thesis defended by Pirandello in his essay "L'Umorismo," Croce not only denied the "artistic" value of Pirandello's work but also dismissed his ideas as unsystematic and inconsistent-"sottilizzamenti ermeneutici."2 On the other hand, Adriano Tilgher, Pirandello's famous "interpreter," elevated the author's ideas to the status of a philosophical system deriving its coherence from the Bergsonian polarity of Life and Form.3 The attempt to systematize Piran- dello's philosophy and the attempt to locate its inconsistencies represent two sides of the same coin: an obsession with pirandellismo which renders the text superfluous. Whether perceived as amateurish philosophizing or true philosophy, pirandellismo has often occupied the attention of Piran- dello's critics to the detriment, or even to the exclusion, of his texts. Despite his protests to the contrary, the notion that the author had a ready-made set of ideas that he wanted to dramatize in art subtends much of Pirandello criticism.4 This conviction has led many critics to look for coherence where contradictions suggest that the text is not self- interpreting, to ignore or underestimate the more complex of Pirandello's works because they resist systematization.

The trilogy of the theater within the theater is a case in point. Ciascuno a suo modo and Questa sera si recita a soggetto, the second and third plays in the trilogy, have not met with the same favor as their more famous precursor, Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore. Perhaps this is because the plays become increasingly problematic as they work through the questions only implicitly posed in the earlier play. The second two plays in the trilogy both complement and supplement the first, inasmuch as they center around that "remainder" which a thematic analysis of Sei personaggi leaves untouched. In the introduction to the trilogy Pirandello invites us to consider the three plays jointly and attempts to explain what unites them: "formano come una trilogia del teatro nel teatro, non solo perche hanno espressamente azione sul palcoscenico e nella sala, in un palco o nei corridoi o nel ridotto d'un teatro, ma anche perche di tutto il complesso degli elementi d'un teatro . . . rappresentano ogni possible conflitto"5 ("the three together ... form a sort of trilogy of the theatre in the theatre, not only because there is action both on the stage and in the auditorium, in a box and in the corridors and in the foyer of a theatre, but also because they represent . . . every possible conflict of the entire complex of theatrical elements"). He goes on to specify that in the first play the conflict is between the Characters on the one hand and the Actors and Director on the other; in the second, between the Spectators and the

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Author and the Actors; in the thrd, between the Actors become Characters and their Director. Despite the symmetry of this characterization, Piran- dello's introduction is no more than a blind, concealing more than it reveals. Instead of focusing on the conflicts outlined by the author, con- flicts which, at least in the last two cases, seem purely circumstantial, I would like to examine a question which Pirandello approaches obliquely in the introduction to the trilogy.

When Pirandello mentions en passant that the plays form a trilogy of the theater within the theater because they take place on stage and in the auditorium, lobby and box seats, he would call our attention to the self-presentation of the artistic space as theatrical space. In so doing, however, he also brings into focus the question of the frame in the three plays. By frame I mean not only that which serves as a line of demarcation between the world of the representation and the "real" world. As Derrida has observed in La verite en peinture, the parergon (frames on pictures, drapery on statues, colonnades of palaces), following the peculiar logic of the supplement, is at once adjunct to the representation and has a critical function: it is the frame that constitutes the work of art as such.6 Each of the plays in Pirandello's trilogy to some degree exceeds the traditional theatrical frame, generally expressed, Boris Uspenskij tells us, "through such stage devices as the footlights, curtains and so forth."7 Given the constitutive function of the frame vis-a-vis the work of art, the transgres- sion of the frame invites us to question the status of that which the spectator observes-is it art or life, representation or reality?

The removal of the fourth wall, the imaginary wall framed by the proscenium through which the audience sees the performance, first occurs in Ciascuno a suo modo (1924), a revolution in stage technique, according to Jory Moestrup, "regularly ignored by theater historians."8 The original edition of Sei personaggi in cerca dautore did not call for the use of the auditorium; the performance took place entirely onstage. It was only with the 1925 revision of the play that Pirandello called for the characters to enter through the auditorium rather than the stage door.9 Unlike the second and third plays of the trilogy, Sei personaggi has no scenes taking place off-stage. The brief removal of the fourth wall at the moment of the characters' entrance is perhaps indicative, however, of the direction in which Pirandello was moving at the time the revision was made.

The revision is consonant with the original stage directions, which consistently call for the blurring of the boundary between fiction and reality. From the moment the audience enters and sees the curtain already raised, the illusion of a spontaneous "event," "uno spettacolo non prepa- rato," is created in accordance with Pirandello's stage directions. The producer, the actors as actors, the workman, the set director, all figures apparently external to the performance, are required (by the stage direc- tions) to improvise the opening scene in order to create the impression of "naturalezza." (This brief recourse to improvisation as a means of estab- lishing the real(istic) status of the action foreshadows the critical role of improvisation in the last two plays of the trilogy.) The author points out in an introductory note that the play has no acts or scenes, but two interrup-

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tions which are motivated by events. These devices suggest to the specta- tor that what he is viewing is not an artistic construct but rather a "real-life" occurrence. (Of course the occurrence happens to be the preparation for the staging of a play.) Even the fictional characters, who openly declare "siamo su un palcoscenico" ("we are on a stage") play their scenes "come non sarebbe possibile farla avvenire su un palcoscenico" (p. 108) ("as it would be impossible to perform on stage"). Whether on the level of the "commedia da fare" or the apparently external events surrounding it, the presentation of the stage as stage paradoxically disguises the artifice. Like the Director who has just witnessed the tragic finale of the characters' performance, the implied spectator finally cries out in dismay: "Finzione! realta! Andate al diavolo tutti quanti!" ("Fiction! Reality! To hell with it all!") Although the physical frame of the conventional theater, the cur- tains, the footlights, is only briefly transgressed in Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore, the stage directions consistently contrive to break down the boundary between art and life, illusion and reality.

The strategy apparently underlying the stage directions never becomes explicit in this play, however. It is only in Questa sera si recita a soggetto that the merging of art and life is dealt with on a thematic level. This is not to suggest that the art/life polarity is insignificant in Sei personaggi. On the contrary, it is one of the principal themes of the play. Critics of Sei personaggi have frequently been troubled by a certain duplicity in the treatment of this theme. Tilgher, for instance, finds two contradictory aesthetic theses in the play: "Prima. La Vita e una cosa, l'arte ne e un'altra.... L'Arte e armonia, sintesi.... La Vita ... disarmonia, confusione, caos. Secondo. L'Arte e la Vita sono la stessa cosa e tra esse altra differenza non corre che di phi e di meno."'0 ("First. Life is one thing, art is another.... Art is harmony, synthesis.... Life ... is disharmony, confusion, chaos. Second. Art and Life are the same thing and between there is only a quantitative difference.") Brustein also notes an unresolved paradox at the heart of Sei personaggi: although Act II dramatizes the distortion of life in the mirror of the play, Act III suggests that "art is more 'real' than life."" While trying to make sense of the contradictory thematic treatments of the life/art polarity, one tends to ignore the degree to which the stage directions subvert that polarity as they obscure the border between representation and reality. The split between the thematic and rhetorical levels of the text, more radical than the thematic contradictions explicit in the play, cannot be resolved in a univocal "meaning." Rather than attempt to minimize the ambiguity which animates the work, I propose to look at the second two plays of the trilogy, in which the contradictions inherent in Sei personaggi become more and more pronounced.

Ciascuno a suo modo is the first of Pirandello's plays to violate the physical frame of the conventional theater. According to the initial stage directions, the action should begin outside the theater, where extra edi- tions of the daily newspaper will reveal to the audience that the play they are about to witness is based on a real-life tragedy-the recent suicide of a well-known painter upon discovering his actress-fiance, Delia Moreno, in bed with his best friend, Baron Nuti. The "real-life" counterparts of the

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characters in the play to be staged appear in the lobby of the theater as the spectators enter to buy their tickets. The action in the two choral inter- ludes, although framed by the raising of the curtain, occurs off-stage, outside the conventional theatrical space. In a particularly artful maneuver, Pirandello has the curtain, which has fallen at the end of the preceding act, rise again almost immediately in the choral interludes to reveal a section of the theater lobby opening onto the orchestra. The introduction of a "slice" of the external world into the theatrical space subverts the constitutive function of the frame in delimiting the work of art qua art.

As in Sei personaggi, the stage directions in Ciascuno a suo modo play a decisive role in blurring the line between internal and external. To create the illusion that the action outside the theater and in the lobby preceding the performance is part of "real-life," Pirandello calls for the scene to be improvised: "ma proprio come vera .. ." (p. 144) ("just as if it were true"). The spectators, in other words, should not recognize the verisimilar as such-they should not be aware of the "come" of "proprio come vera." If the stage directions are successfully implemented, the audience will mistake the verisimilar for reality. Reinforcing the illusion, the author specifies that the scene should begin before the scheduled commencement of the performance. In the stage directions preceding the first choral interlude, Pirandello is quick to point out that the entire scene in the lobby, particularly the appearance of Nuti and Moreno, appears, by contrast to the action onstage, to be part of life: "la presenza in teatro ... della Moreno e del Nuti stabilira ... un primo piano di realta, piu vicino alla vita" (p. 177) ("the presence in the theater of Moreno and Nuti establishes a first plane of reality closer to real life"). And of course the pretense that it is impossible to predict whether the play will be in two or three acts, "per i probabili incidenti che forse ne impediranno l'intera rappresentazione" (p. 144) ("because of the incidents which may obstruct the entire performance") establishes the action surrounding the comme- dia a chiave as beyond the script.

Pirandello not only uses the stage directions to convince us that the events we are witnessing are external to the representation. The author also patently borrows from life in creating such scenes as the first choral interlude, where the audience gathers to discuss the play. The shouts of "manicomio, manicomio" from Pirandello's detractors and the comment of an irritated spectator, "Ma possibile che a ogni prima di Pirandello debba avvenire il finimondo?" (p. 182), recall the fracas at the Teatro Valle in Rome during and after the premiere of Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore. The scene in the lobby is presented as just such a spontaneous reaction to the play, i.e., as part of the world external to the theater.

By staging a commedia a chiave and juxtaposing the performance to the "real" events which allegedly inspired it, Pirandello seems to suggest that perfect coincidence between represented and real worlds is possible. No where is that coincidence more striking than in the second choral interlude, when Nuti and Moreno replay the scene already "(re)pres- ented" on stage. There is a strong temptation to locate the "meaning" of Pirandello's play in the words of "lo spettatore intelligente," who explains

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to the awed spectators that this merging of art and life is the most natural thing in the world. "Si sono visti come in uno specchio.. ." (p. 219) ("they saw themselves as in a mirror"). But does Pirandello, who in Sei perso- naggi in cerca d'autore dramatizes the distortion of reality in the mirror of the play, really subscribe to the spectator's view of art as a mirror on the world? In the above-mentioned scene and again in the conclusion, when the "real-life" counterparts of the characters on stage begin to imitate the performance, the very idea of art as a reflection of life is in fact turned on its head. The final lines of the character actor, who warns the audience not to believe the intelligent spectator's pronouncements and reminds them that they have not yet seen the (non-existent) third act, unmakes the apparently "authorized" analogy between the play and the mirror.12

The character actor's final comments not only cast doubt on the spectator's interpretation. The reference to the non-existent third act also points to the open-endedness of the play; the inconclusive conclusion leaves the play's "meaning" unfulfilled. In fact, although Pirandello seem- ingly interprets the play for us through the offices of his Intelligent spectator, that gesture is already implicitly undermined in the first choral interlude. The description of the play's ideas as "acrobatismi cerebrali" (cerebral acrobatics), the facile disquisition on Pirandellian relativism, the prevarication of the "professional" critics who do not want to commit themselves before determining how the public (and their fellow critics) will receive the play undoubtedly reflect the author's desire to avenge himself on his critics.'3 More importantly, however, the scene casts doubt on any concise "philosophical" statement which one might pretend to derive from the play. The following exchange between Pirandello's equally inane detractors and supporters is particularly unsettling:

Ma che concezione? Mi sai dire in che consiste quest'atto? -Oh bella! E se non volesse consistere? .. -Gia! E questo, ecco! Forse non vuole consistere! Apposta, apposta; capite? ... -Ma sono pazzie! Ma dove siamo! (p. 180)

(But what conception? Can you tell me what the conception in this first act is?

Yes, but supposing it didn't pretend to have any meaning ... Right! That's it! It isn't supposed to have any meaning! On pur-

pose, on purpose; don't you see? But this is madness! Where are we?)

This exchange makes a mockery of whatever hidden "meaning" the spectator pretends to find in the play. In conjunction with the concluding remarks of the character actor, which literally suspend any attempt at achieving signification, the farcical discussion of the play's significance begins to erode the spectator's interpretation: that art may mirror life so perfectly as to merge with it.

To summarize: on the rhetorical level there seems to be an attempt on Pirandello's part to exceed the theatrical space. Is this transgression motivated by a desire to bring together the represented and real worlds?

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Or is the (representation of) the external world meant to highlight, by contrast, the fictitious nature of the performance on stage? Does art partake of some transcendent reality which ultimately makes it more "real" than life itself? These questions are tantalizingly suspended on the thematic level of Ciascuno a suo modo. If we consider the third play in Pirandello's trilogy as the non-existent third act alluded to in the conclu- sion, then it is not surprising that Questa sera si recita a soggetto takes its departure from the same questions which are posed by Ciascuno a suo modo.

In the second play the relation between art and life is primarily brought into focus by the juxtaposition of the commedia and the chiave. In Questa sera si recita a soggetto, by contrast, this relation becomes an explicit theme of the play. It is Dr. Hinkfuss, the stage manager/director, who first expounds the theory of art and life in his involuntary prologue. While the curtain is still lowered and the audience begins to speculate about what is delaying the performance, Dr. Hinkfuss runs on-stage from the back of the theater and informs the spectators that he is about to present an improvisation of the Pirandello story "Leonora Addio." Hink- fuss proceeds to outline his conception of art-the artist has completed his task when he stops living the work of art, when it becomes crystalized in an immutable form. The work of art can only survive if the stage manager and the actors are able to dissolve its form into vital motion. Dr. Hinkfuss would like to play Pygmalion to.Pirandello's Galatea. "Ogni scultore (io non so, ma suppongo) dopo aver creato una statua, se veramente crede d'averle dato vita per sempre, deve desiderare ch'essa, come una cosa viva, debba potersi sciogliere dal suo atteggiamento, e muoversi, e par- lare" (p. 233) ("Every sculptor [I do not know, but I suppose] after having created a statue, if he really believes that he has given it enduring life, must desire that it as a living thing, be dissolved from its immobility of attitude-that it move and that it speak"). The rest of the play represents an experiment to determine whether Hinkfuss can bring Galatea (Piran- dello's story) to life through improvisation.

The dramatic action following Hinkfuss' involuntary prologue oscillates dizzyingly between two levels: the metadiegetic (the impro- vised performance of the Pirandello story) and the diegetic (the discus- sions between the actors and stage manager about how best to achieve a lifelike performance).'4 Each actor performs a dual role as actor and as character in Hinkfuss' improvisation. As Gerard Genette has pointed out, Questa sera si recita a soggetto is nothing but a vast expansion of metalep- sis: in this case, the intrusion of the diegetic characters into a meta-diegetic universe.15 The oscillation between levels has various consequences: because the stage manager begins to introduce the actors by their "real" names rather than their names as characters, the actors experience diffi- culty in identifying with their characters. At one moment a character, immersed in her role as the mother (on the metadiegetic level) strikes the father; the father, not yet immersed in his role (still on the diegetic level) complains to the stage manager that she has given him a "real" slap and an argument ensues. Hinkfuss, clearly out of control of the situation, informs the audience in a malicious aside that the actors' rebellion is feigned but

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the actors protest that it is not part of the script. Gradually the actors begin to immerse themselves in their roles so that, by the end of Act I, the play within the play can finally get under way in earnest.

The play within the play deals with a family which scandalizes its neighbors in a small Sicilian town because of the daughters' flirtation with some officers from the local military base. Rico Verri, a Sicilian, is in love with Mommina but at the same time is repulsed by the permissiveness of the La Croce family. These details are revealed in part in Act I and in part in the intermission. As the stage manager has warned in his involuntary prologue, the intermission is really Act II of the play. The audience is joined in the lobby by the actors as characters and the play within the play continues to unfold. In Act III, the actor/characters (having returned to the stage) attempt to complete the play within the play. At a certain point, however, chaos breaks loose and the actors threaten to quit unless they are freed of the stage manager's tyranny and allowed to live their parts. Dr. Hinkfuss retreats and the play within the play comes to its denouement. The leading Lady's identification with her character, the dying Mom- mina, is so complete that she does, indeed, faint at the end of the perfor- mance. At this point Dr. Hinkfuss reappears, congratulating the actors and claiming that his experiment in improvisation has been a success. The actors, however, call for an author to give them written parts. They want nothing more to do with improvisation.

Many critics read this play as a defense of life over art.16 There is indeed evidence to support this view. The improvisation seems to be a success: the merging of the actors with their characters, although intermit- tent, becomes more and more pronounced. At the father's deathbed, the Leading Lady cries real tears ("E si mette a piangere davvero" ["she begins to weep in reality"]), which provoke true commotion in the other actors ("Quest' impeto di vera commozione nella Prima Attrice provoca la commozione anche nelle altre attrici, che si buttano a piangere sincera- mente anche loro" [pp. 287-88] ["This outburst of real feeling on the part of the Leading Lady creates a commotion among the other actresses, who also begin to weep in all sincerity"]). The fact that the actors call for a script at the end might merely be a sign of their anger at the stage manager whose interference prevents them from truly living their roles. Adriano Tilgher, who views the play as a defense of life, has summarized its "content" in this way: "L'arte adunque non vive come arte che rituffandosi nel moto della Vita, cioe annullandosi come opera d'arte" (p. 389)17 ("Art, then, only lives as art by plunging into the flux of life, that is by annihilating itself as a work of art"). Tilgher implicitly identifies Hinkfuss as Pirandel- lo's mouthpiece, as the title of his review of the play, "L'estetica del pirandelliano Hinkfuss," suggests.'8

Is Pirandello's play, the entire text of Questa sera si recita a sog- getto, the product of a theatrical aesthetics similar to that of Hinkfuss? From the moment that the curtain fails to rise and the spectators express confusion as to whether the commotion backstage is part of the perfor- mance, Pirandello seems to overstep the boundary separating art from life. The dialogue between the spectators, the stage manager's officious meddling, the actor's eventual revolt, these "events" are presented as

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external to the performance, as part of reality. Although the stage man- ager, to save face, attempts to convince the audience of his control ("questa ribellione degli attori ai miei ordini e finta, concertata avanti tra me e loro" [p. 240] ["this revolt of the actors against my orders is all a pretense, arranged beforehand between them and me"]), Pirandello's stage directions clearly undercut this claim ("A questa uscita mancina, gli attori restano di colpo come tanti fantocci atteggiati di sbalordimento" [p. 240] ("at this underhanded remark the actors stand there like so many puppets, in attitudes of astonishment"]). The spectator/reader implicitly inscribed in the stage directions is led to surmise that the proceedings surrounding the improvisation are, indeed, spontaneous events external to the performance. As in Ciascuno a suo modo, the frame of the conven- tional theater is physically transgressed in Questa sera si recita a soggetto: the action again spills over in front of the curtain, into the auditorium and into the lobby. This transgression of the traditional theatrical frame would seem to connote a desire to unite the artistic space with its external referent.

Yet the "breach of illusion" in the final play of Pirandello's trilogy is clearly an illusion.'9 Although Questa sera si recita a soggetto, like Cias- cuno a suo modo, is revolutionary in its destruction of the fourth wall, the conventional theatrical frame, in each case it is a question of expansion, not transcendence, of the artistic border.20 The space beyond the curtain and the footlights-the lobby, the auditorium, the outside of the theater- is internalized to become part of Pirandello's stage. And just as the space beyond the conventional frame is embedded within the theatrical space, so the apparently "real" events surrounding the improvisation of Pirandel- lo's story are internalized to form a frame play.

The frame structure, though more common in narrative than in drama, functions in precisely the same way in both cases: from The Thousand and One Nights and the Decameron to II castello dei destini incrociati and October Light, the frame story necessarily points to the artificiality of the representation by separating the audience from it. Pirandello's contemporary, Italo Svevo, clearly understood the impact of the frame device. The frame story in La coscienza di Zeno regarding how Zeno comes to write his autobiography ultimately undercuts the veracity of his "life story" and shows it to be a creative lie of fiction. The distancing effect of the frame device is laid bare by Pirandello himself in Ciascuno a suo modo. As the curtain opens to reveal the lobby where the audience is gathered to discuss the play, Pirandello notes in the stage directions: "Con questa presentazione del corridoio del teatro ... quella che da principio sara apparsa in primo piano sulla scena quale rappresentazione d'una vicenda della vita, si dara ora a vedere come una finzione d'arte; e sara percio come allontanata e respinta in un secondo piano" (p. 177) ("With this presentation of the lobby of the theatre... what was first presented on the stage as a real life episode will be shown to be a fiction of art and will therefore be pushed back into a secondary plane of reality"). In the same way, the frame structure in Questa sera si recita a soggetto reveals the illusion for what it is.

When we regard the apparently extraneous events in their true

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light as frame play, we see that Questa sera is not a precocious experiment in living theater, contrary to the implication of its title. Does this mean that the play is a failure?21 In other words, to what extent does Pirandello share Hinkfuss' goals? In a sense, Hinkfuss is a caricature of the author himself: the stage manager's experiment in improvisation is in fact parallel to Pirandello's apparent strategy in Ciascuno a suo modo and, to a lesser extent, in Sei personaggi. While in the first play the author only briefly resorts to improvisation, in Ciascuno a suo modo he repeatedly calls for the action to be improvised in order to obtain "la naturalezza piu volubile e la piu fluida vivacita" (p. 177) ("the greatest naturalness, volubility, and vivacity"). In the stage directions Pirandello indicates that the action which takes place outside the theater and in the lobby before the per- formance on stage should be improvised to assure maximum spon- taneity-the mark of "life" according to Hinkfuss. Yet the scene is in fact the product of a good deal of contrivance. The very use of the word improvisation to describe the action outside the theater is misleading: the passage which pretends merely to outline the scene that the actors would improvise in fact provides each character with his lines in the form of free indirect style. Later, in the stage directions preceding the first choral interlude, Pirandello indicates that the scene might be improvised, but then proceeds to furnish the actors with every line, allowing only that he would not exclude other exchanges "che potranno essere improwisate per tener viva la confusa agitazione del corridoio" (p. 178) ("which may be improvised to keep alive the confused agitation in the corridor"). In the second choral interlude, the actors' lines are provided with no further attempt at improvisation.

Just as the pretense of improvisation is gradually abandoned by Pirandello in Ciascuno a suo modo, so in Questa sera si recita a soggetto Hinkfuss trades improvisation for artistic control. The paradoxical rhetor- ical strategy which subtends Ciascuno a suo modo, the increasing recourse to manipulation to achieve the illusion of life, is dramatized on the thematic level of the third play. There are several indications in the play that "spontaneity," "verisimilitude" can only be achieved through artistic contrivance. This is underscored by Hinkfuss himself when he cites the audience's conviction of the actors' spontaneity to prove that the scene is a fiction. Moreover, at the conclusion of the play within the play the actors (and the spectators) learn that the success of the improvisation may well be due to Hinkfuss' manipulations behind the scenes: "Ma e stato sempre qua, con gli elettricisti, a governar di nascosto tutti gli effetti di luce!" (p. 310) ("But he's been here all along with the electricians surreptitiously controlling the lighting effects!").

To ask whether Pirandello's aim coincides with that of Hinkfuss is to ask whether the stage directions provide a reliable clue to the author's "intentions." While the stage directions to all three plays in the trilogy seem to reveal a desire to present the verisimilar as reality, improvisation as life, on the other hand the final play exposes the contrivance behind the illusion. Perhaps one should read the stage directions as emanating from a narrative persona; perhaps the ironic distance between Pirandello and that persona, who complains of "le irritanti commedie di Pirandello" in

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the stage directions preceding the first choral interlude of Ciascuno a suo modo, extends to all of the "author's" directions. The complexity of the text not only makes it impossible to locate the "author" in the stage directions; more importantly, the very terms "author," "intentions" are rendered ambiguous. The concept of irony also becomes devoid of firm signifi- cance inasmuch as it presupposes a constant authorial center grounding the discourse. In the same way it is impossible to determine to what extent Hinkfuss is an authorial caricature, preaching improvisation while resort- ing to theatrical artifice.22

In any case, like Hinkfuss' so-called improvisation, the title of Pirandello's Questa sera si recita a soggetto is a patent misnomer. Pirandel- lo's play is as crystallized, as fixed as any work of art. Every entrance and every line of the actors, whether they are called by their "real" names or their names as characters, is predetermined. Nothing is left to chance. Even the audience participation is part of the script. Like Francesca in Dante's Inferno, the actors in Questa sera si recita a soggetto will always repeat the same lines, granted, as Pirandello insists in the preface to Sei personaggi, with "viva e improvvisa passione." In Pirandello's play as in Hinkfuss' improvisation, the breaking down of the barriers between the form of art and the flux of life is mere sleight of hand.

The central conflict around which Questa sera si recita a soggetto revolves is thus not the one outlined by the author in the introduction to the trilogy (the conflict between the actors become characters and their director). The text is constructed around a paradox which is already implicit in the first two plays of the trilogy: it pretends to defend improvi- sation while relying on artistic contrivance, to blur the line between art and life while erecting a barrier between the audience and the representa- tion, a framing play. The frame is multiplied, not destroyed, in Questa sera si recita a soggetto. This is laid bare by a particularly striking visual effect indicated in the stage directions: when Hinkfuss calls for the gong to be struck and Act I to begin, the curtain opens to reveal another curtain. The focus on the theatrical frame underscores the artifice of the play, its status as a fictional construct. The double curtain reminds the spectator that this is indeed "teatro nel teatro" and not living theater.

If we look closely at Questa sera si recita a soggetto, however, we see that it is not simply a play within a play. In fact, the work is constructed much like a Chinese box: the framing play circumscribes the "improvisa- tion" which is in turn a theatrical "translation" of a Pirandello story, "Leonora addio." That which the characters are ultimately attempting to "bring to life" is not presented as a real-life incident, as in Ciascuno a suo modo, but rather as a work of fiction. Thus we have a representation of a representation of a representation. To heighten the Chinese box effect, there is another representation embedded at the heart of the play- Mommina's representation of Il trovatore in the scene from which the Pirandello story takes its title.

The structure en abyme-the embedding of multiple representa- tions one within another-in "Questa sera si recita a soggetto" reminds the reader that what he is observing is not reality but a fabrication.23 The self-presentation of the play as "teatro nel teatro nel teatro ..." not only

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destroys the illusion of art as a mirroring of reality, an illusion already called into question in Ciascuno a suo modo. More importantly, it draws our attention to the fictitious nature of so-called reality. The composition en abyme multiplies and expands the fictional universe until it finally engulfs what we commonly thought of as external to art. Borges' intuition of the disturbing nature of the composition en abyme reads as a gloss on Pirandello's play: "Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of Don Quixote and Hamlet a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers and spectators, can be fictitious."24 In this sense, the final play in Pirandello's trilogy does indeed destroy the barrier between fiction and reality-not to allow life to flow into art but rather to show that life is always a script.

Syracuse University

NOTES

1. "La critica," XXXIII (1935), 20-33; La letteratura della nuova Italia, VI, 353-371, as quoted in Antonio Illiano, Introduzione alla critica pirandelliana (Verona: Fiorini), 1976, p. 43.

2. Ibid. 3. See Adriano Tilgher, "I1 teatro di Pirandello," in Studi sul teatro contempo-

raneo (Roma: Libreria di scienze e lettere, 1923), pp. 186-248. Much has been said of Pirandello's initial adoption of Tilgher's formulation of his philosophy and the subsequent "contamination" of the artist's work by the critic's. Most notable is Tilgher's own assertion that Pirandello had not only adopted the critic's formulae as his own but had, ultimately, misunderstood them. In I problema centrale (Cronache teatrali 1914-1926), (Genoa: Edi- zioni del teatro stabile di Genova, 1973), pp. 385-394, Tilgher attempts to demonstrate the contradictions inherent in Pirandello's post-1922 formula- tion of the antithesis between life and form. Tilgher insists that Pirandello's identification of form with art and flux with life is a misreading of his formulation of Pirandello's philosophy and cites Questa sera si recita a soggetto as the work in which this misreading is most apparent. For a discussion of Pirandello's relationship with Tilgher see Illiano, Introduzione alla critica pirandelliana, pp. 46-55, and Leonardo Sciascia, Pirandello e La Sicilla (Caltanissetta-Roma: Sciascia, 1961), pp. 91-114. As Sciascia observes, the ambivalent relationship between the author and the critic is easily explained, first by Tilgher's fear that Pirandello's art would evolve in a direction counter to his interpretation and, second, by Pirandello's desire to break free from the mold in which critics had cast him, the extreme of which is expressed in the 1933 play "Quando si e qualcuno."

4. In "L'umorismo" Pirandello himself refutes the idea that art functions in this manner; he insists on the ingenuousness of the work of art: "non puo essere il risultato della riflessione cosciente." See Pirandello, Saggi, poesie, scritti varii (Milan: Mondadori, 1960), p. 134. In the last decades critics have begun to re-examine the notion that Pirandello's works constitute an organic philo- sophical system. Mario Baratto, for instance, rejects Tilgher's interpretation of the Pirandellian theater as a consistent theater of ideas and insists instead upon the "residuo di perplessita" which emerges from a systematic reading

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of Pirandello's plays. See "Per una storia del teatro pirandelliano," Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Studi Pirandelliani (Florence: Le Monnier, 1967), pp. 287-302.

5. Pirandello, Maschere nude, v. 1 (Milan: Mondadori, 1958), p. 51. Subse- quent references to this volume will be indicated in parentheses in the text. Translations are my own. The English reader will find the first two plays of the trilogy in Pirandello, Naked Masks, ed. Eric Bentley (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1952). The third play has been translated in Pirandello, Tonight We Improvise, trans. Putnam (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1932).

6. Jacques Derrida, La verite en peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978), pp. 44-94. 7. Boris Uspenskij, A Poetics of Composition, trans. V. Zavarin and S. Wittig

(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), p. 138. 8. Jorn Moestrup, The Structural Patterns of Pirandello's Works (Odense:

Odense University Press, 1972), p. 187. 9. For a brief discussion of the revisions from the first to the third and fourth

editions of the play see Moestrup, pp. 182-87. 10. Tilgher, II problema centrale, p. 385. 11. Robert Brustein, "Pirandello's Drama of Revolt," in Pirandello: A Collection

of Critical Essays, ed. Glauco Cambon (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967), p. 130. As Brustein notes, Pirandello leaves this paradox unre- solved in Sei personaggi.

12. In "Three by Pirandello," MLN, 93 (January 1978), 74, Irma Brandeis also reads the character actor's comments as critical in unmaking the intelligent spectator's interpretation.

13. Although one detractor characterizes the ideas dramatized in the play as "problemucci filosofici da quattro al soldo," Pirandello cleverly undercuts this attack by characterizing the speaker as "un vecchio autore fallito."

14. In his Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), pp. 227-37, Gerard Genette defines these two levels of narra- tive. As Genette points out the prefix meta- connotes "the transition to the second degree."

15. Ibid., p. 235. 16. Tilgher, Brustein, and Bishop see the play as a defense of life. See Thomas

Bishop, Pirandello and the French Theater (New York: New York Univer- sity Press, 1960), pp. 39-41; Tilgher, Il problema centrale, pp. 389-90, Brus- tein, "Pirandello's Drama of Revolt."

17. Tilgher, II problema centrale, p. 389. 18. In "La Stampa," 22 luglio 1929, as quoted in Tilgher, Il problema centrale, p.

389. 19. Moestrup, p. 236, speaks of the "breach of illusion" as the central theme of

Questa sera. 20. In his discussion of the artistic frame in "Structural Isomorphism of Verbal

and Visual Art," Poetics, No. 5 (1972), p. 15, Boris Uspenskij observes that cases of expansion of art into life such as the entrance of actors through the auditorium "only change the borders of the artistic space without destroy- ing them."

21. Those critics who view the trilogy as an unsuccessful attempt to cross the boundary between art and life have, like Tilgher, identified Hinkfuss as Pirandello's mouthpiece. Brustein, for instance, who describes Hinkfuss as "a Pirandellian raisonneur... outlining the author's theories," argues that "in his experimental drama, theory and practice fail to merge; idea and action fail to cohere." See "Pirandello's Drama of Revolt," pp. 124-26.

22. There is no question that Pirandello to some extent uses Hinkfuss as a straw man. Although Hinkfuss' prologue is a patchwork of excerpts from Piran-

55

dello's critical essays, a careful comparison reveals that Hinkfuss takes Pirandello's ideas out of context and turns them upside down. See Lucio Lugnani, "Teatro dello straniamento ed estraniazione dal teatro in Questa sera si recita a soggetto" in La trilogia di Pirandello (Agrigento: Centro Nazionale di Studi Pirandelliani, 1976), No. 19, p. 110, for a detailed list of excerpts from Pirandello's essays and Hinkfuss' corresponding misprision. For instance, in his 1934 "Discorso al Convegno 'Volta' sul teatro dramma- tico," delivered only four years after the premiere of Questa sera si recita a soggetto, Pirandello poses the hypothetical questions: "se ... l'opera d'arte ... entri come uno dei tanti elementi in mano e al comando d'un regista... o se invece tutti questi elementi e l'opera unificatrice dello stesso regista, creatore responsabile soltanto dello spettacolo, non debbano essere adope- rati a dar vita all'opera d'arte che tutti li comprende e senza la quale ciascuno ... non avrebbe ragion d'essere... " "whether ... the work of art... enters as one of many elements in the hands and at the command of the director... or whether all these elements and the unifying work of the director, the creator responsible only for the performance, must not be utilized in such a way as to give life to the work of art which encompasses them and without which none ... would have a raison d'etre." In Pirandello, Saggi, poesie e scritti varii (Milan: Mondadori, 1960), p. 1007. He concludes that the work of art is superior to all other elements which contribute to the performance and argues that "non dovrebbe essere ad arbitrio del regista alterare ne tanto meno manomettere [l'opera d'arte]." Hinkfuss' thesis represents a complete reversal of this position.

23. In Le r6cit speculaire (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1977), Lucien Dallenbach provides a typology of the mise en abyme. Pirandello's play in fact contains at least two types of mise en abyme. First there is a mise en abyme de renonciation whereby the production and reception of the text is laid bare. This is however encompassed by a mise en abyme repetee which suggests an infinite regression.

24. Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinthes (New York: New Directions Publishing Co., 1962), p. 190.

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Article Contentsp.44p.45p.46p.47p.48p.49p.50p.51p.52p.53p.54p.55p.56

Issue Table of ContentsModern Language Studies, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Summer, 1986), pp. 1-384Front Matter [pp.1-3]Self-Reflective Fiction by Poe: Three Tales [pp.4-14]"How-to" Satire: Cervantes, Marryat, Poe [pp.15-26]The Flights of a Good Man's Mind: Gothic Fantasy in Poe's "The Assignation" [pp.27-34]Diagnosing Fantastic Autism: Kafka, Borges, Robbe-Grillet [pp.35-43]The Question of the Frame in Pirandello's Metatheatrical Trilogy [pp.44-56]The Phantasm of Omnipotence in Calvino's Trilogy [pp.57-68]L'Afrique de Demain: Femmes en marche dans l'oeuvre de Sembne Ousmane [pp.69-76]"Corps" and "corpus": Montaigne's "Sur des vers de Virgile" [pp.77-87]Joachim de Fiore, the Holy Spirit, and Michel Tournier's "Les Mtores" [pp.88-100]"Le Miroir de l'me pcheresse" Revisited: Ordered Reflections in a Biblical Mirror [pp.101-108]Credible Praise: Marvell's Dilemma in His Elegy on Oliver Cromwell [pp.109-121]France in the Poetry of Castro Alves [pp.122-133]The Ideology of Deception in "La Farce de Maistre Pathelin" [pp.134-148]Albee on Death and Dying: "Seascape" and "The Lady from Dubuque" [pp.149-160]S/Z: Barthes' Castration Camp and the Discourse of Polarity [pp.161-171]Holocaust as Symbol in "Riddley Walker" and "The White Hotel" [pp.172-182]The Gentle Law in Adalbert Stifter's "Der Hagestolz" [pp.183-188]The Gogolian Echoes in Sologub's "The Petty Demon": Are They Imitative of or Organic to Gogol's "Dead Souls"? [pp.189-205]Let's Hope There Is a Text in the Class: Stanley Fish and the Profession of English [pp.206-212]The Kindness of Consanguinity: Family History in "Henry Esmond" [pp.213-226]Caves, Houses, and Temples in James Fenimore Cooper's "The Pioneers" [pp.227-236]Language and World in "The Pathfinder" [pp.237-246]"Little Corks That Mark a Sunken Net": Virginia Woolf's "Sketch of the past" as a Fictional Memoir [pp.247-254]Clarn's "Cuesta abajo": Anticipating Proust [pp.255-263]Cortzar's 3 R's: Reading, Rhetoric and Revolution in "Libro de Manuel" [pp.264-270]Ginsberg on Burroughs: An Interview [pp.271-278]Meditation and Memory in Chaucer's "House of Fame" [pp.279-287]Peter Handke's "Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter" [pp.288-301]History and Fiction: The Kaiser in Joseph Roth's "Radetzkymarsch" [pp.302-310]Book Reviewsuntitled [pp.311-314]untitled [pp.314-315]untitled [pp.316-318]untitled [pp.318-320]untitled [p.321]untitled [pp.321-324]untitled [pp.325-327]untitled [pp.327-329]untitled [pp.329-336]A Review Essay: Modern Scholarship on the Trollopes [pp.336-341]untitled [pp.341-342]untitled [pp.342-344]A Review Essay: Point of View in Narrative [pp.345-350]A Review Essay: Text and Self [pp.351-355]untitled [pp.356-358]A Review Essay: Getting to Know William Morris a Little Better [pp.358-363]untitled [pp.363-367]A Review Essay: Walter Benjamin in Recent Critical Perspective [pp.367-373]untitled [pp.373-375]untitled [pp.375-377]

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