The Italian author, Luigi Piran-dello, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934 for his “bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and

the stage.” Pirandello’s works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and c. 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian dialect. Typical for Pirandello is to show how art or illusion mixes with reality and how people see things in very different way words are unrealiable and reality is at the same time true and false. Piran-dello’s tragic farces are often seen as forerunners for theatre of the absurd.

“A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die! And to be able to to live for ever you don’t need to have extraordinary gifts or be able to do miracles. Who was Sancho Panza? Who was Pros-pero? But they will live for ever because

- living seeds - they had the luck to find a fruitful soil, an imagination which knew how to grow them and feed them, so that they will live for ever.” (from Six Char-acters in Search of an Author, 1921)

Luigi Pirandello was born in Caos, near Girgenti, on the island of Sicily, which was to be the inspiration of his writings. “I am a child of Chaos and not only allegorically,” he said in his biographical sketch; his family spent va-cations at a house called Chaos. Piran-dello’s father, Stefano Ricci-Gramitto, who had fought with Garibaldi, owned a prosperous sulfur mine.

His childhood Pirandello spent in modest weath in Girgenti (today called Agrigento) and Palermo, surrounded by nurses and servants, and enjoying the adoration of his mother. From his teens Pirandello showed literary talents, but he

first studied law. His father intended his son to become a businessman. In 1887

Pirandello entered the University of Rome, from where he was expelled for offending a Latin professor, and then transferred to the University of Bonn, Germany, receiving his doctoral degree in Roman philology in 1891. Pirandello’s dissertation, written in Germany, dealt with the dialect of his native region.

After having a liaison with his cousin Linuccia, which his father did not approve, Pirandello started his career as a writer. “Blessed is he who can stop halfway and before old age comes on can marry illusion and preserve it lov-ingly,” Pirandello wrote in 1887 in a let-ter of his future plans. In Rome, where he had settled with a montly allowance from his father, Pirandello translated Goethe’s Roman Elegies, wrote EL-

EGIE RENANE (1895), and published two collections of poetry, and a collec-

tion of short stories, AMORI SENZ’ AMORE (1894). In 1898 he

became a professor of Italian

litera-ture at a

teacher’s college for

women, and worked

there for 24 years.

L’ESCLUSA (1901) was

Pirandello’s first full-length

novel. In the ironical story

the protagonist suspects that his

wife is unfaithful and takes her back

after the adultery has actually occurred.

Pirandello had married in 1894

Antonietta Portulano, a fellow Sicilian and the

daughter of his father’s business associate. She suffered mental breakdown in

1904. When her condition steadily wors-ened she became insane with a jealous paranoia the illness deeply influenced Pirandello’s writing. During World War I, both of Pirandello’s sons were captured as prisoners of war. After his wife’s illness got worse, Pirandello was forced to place her in 1919 in a mental institution.

When the collapse of the sulfur mines destroyed the family business, Pirandello had to turn his writing into a financially profitable activity. In 1904 Pirandello gained his first literary suc-cess with the novel IL FU MATTIA PASCAL. Its antihero, Mattia Pascal, is mistakenly declared dead. Offered an opportunity to start life over again, he escapes from his family. In Monte Carlo Mattia wins a fortune, but his newly

Luigi Pirandello The Nobel Prize in Literature 1934

See PIRANDELLO Page 2

I DUE MONDI APRIL PAGE 2

found freedom turns sour and he must return to his hometown, to his past he had hoped to leave behind. “I can’t really say that I’m myself,” he thinks. “I don’t know who I am. . . . I am the late Mattia Pascal.” In the following decades the questions “who am I?” and “what is real?” became central in Piran-dello’s fiction. UNO, NESSUNO E CENTOMILA (1925-26, One, None, and Hundred-Thousand), a story about husband’s descend into madness, owed more to Freud than Gogol. His despair starts when his wife comments a slight defect on his nose it tilts to the right.

Pirandello started to write plays as early as in the 1880s, but he first considered the stage insensitive medium com-pared to the novel. After 1915, Pirandello concentrated on the theater and wrote until 1921 sixteen dramas. LA RAGIONE DEGLI ALTRI (1915) was Pirandello’s first three-act play. It did not gain much understanding, but through the performanc-es of the actor Angelo Musco (1892-1937) his work started to attract attention. His ideal female lead Pirandello found in Marta Abba, for whom he wrote several plays, among them DIANA E LA TUDA (1926, Diana and Tuda), L’AMICA DELLE MOGLI (1927, The Wives’s Friend), and COME TU MI VUOI (1930, As You Desire Me). Pirandello also engaged her for his own company, the Teatro d’Arte di Roma, and formed a relationship with her, documented in Pirandello’s Love Letters to Martha Abba (1994).

COSI È (SE VI PARE) (Right You Are - If You Think You Are), published in 1918, marked Pirandello’s interest in the examination of the relativity of truth. The story was about a woman whose identity remains hidden and who could be one of the two very different people. SEI PERSONAGGI IN CERCA D’AUTORE (1921, Six Chracters in Search of An Author) asked the question, can fictional characters be more authentic than real persons, and what is the relationship between imaginary characters and the writer, who has created them.

Six Characters in Search of an Author consists of roles-within-roles. In rehearsal preparations of a theatrical company are interrupted by the Father and his family who explain that they are characters from an unfin-ished dramatic works. They want to inter-pret again crucial moments of their lives, claiming that they are “truer” than the “real” characters. “How can we under-stand each other if the words I use have the sense and the value I expect them to have, but whoever is listening to me inevitably thinks that those same words have a different sense and value, because of the private world he has inside himself too. We think we understand each other: but we never do,” says the Father. He tells that he has helped his wife to start a new life with her lover and the three ille-gitimate children born to them. The Wife claims that he forced her into the arms of another man. The Stepdaughter ac-cuses the Father for her shame - they met

before in Mme Pace’s infamous house, and he did not recog-nize her. She was forced to turn to prostitution to support the family. The Son refuses to acknowledge his family and runs into the garden. He shots himself and the actors argue about whether the boy is dead or not. The Father insists that the events are real. The Producer says: “Make-believe?! Reality?! Oh, go to hell the lot of you! Lights! Lights! Lights!” and The

Stepdaughter escapes into the audience laughing maniacally.

Six Chracters in Search of An Au-thor created a scandal when it was first performed in Rome, but it was hailed as a masterpiece in Paris, innovatively produced by Georges Pitoëff. G.B. Shaw praised it as the most original play ever. ENRICO IV (1922, Henry IV, known in the United States as The Living Mask), premiered in Milan, received much bet-ter reception. The play told about a man who has fallen from his horse during a masquerade and starts to believe he is the German emperor Henry IV. To accom-modate his illness his wealthy sister has placed him in a medieval castle sur-rounded by actors dressed as eleventh-century courtiers. The nameless hero regains his sanity after twelve years, but

See PIRANDELLO Page 9

PIRANDELLO From Page 1

Luigi Pirandello: Nobel Prize winner in 1934

I DUE MONDI APRIL PAGE 3

Steven CordettiHe could not fathom why the shoes

he meticulously designed and fabri-cated pleased the eyes yet hurt the feet. The frustration prompted him to pursue anatomical studies at a university and use what he learned to create shoes that supported the body’s weight over the joints of the foot. He concluded and wrote in 1925, “The weight of the body falls on the arch of the foot like a plumb line.”

That curious man was Salvatore Ferragamo (1898-1960), the inter-nationally recognized designer who learned the craft of shoemaking in Italy and the United States. He found his calling quite early at the age of nine when he made his first shoes for his sisters to wear for their confirmation. Salvatore followed through and studied shoemaking in Naples for a year and opened a small store in his parents’

home.Ferragamo immigrated to Boston in

1914 and worked alongside one of his brothers in a cowboy-boot factory. He later moved to California -- first Santa Barbara then Hollywood -- studied anatomy at the University of Southern California and opened a shop for repair and made-to-measure shoes, which soon became popular with celebrities. Ferragamo returned to Italy in 1927, settled in Florence and continued de-signing shoes.

Hollywood celebrities and the rich and famous followed Ferragamo, seek-ing his comfortable and stylish foot-wear. This clientele was the main rea-son for him being dubbed “Shoemaker to the Stars.” He designed a platform wedge model featuring horizontal, multi-hued bands of fabric for Judy Garland a year before she sang “Over the Rainbow” in 1939’s The Wizard of

Oz.Ferragamo created the “Ava San-

dal” in 1947 for Ava Gardner. It was a high-heeled, black velvet-and-satin model with ankle straps, exposed heel and instep, and covered toes. The design was also made in suede for Argentine First Lady Eva Peron. Fer-ragamo associates recreated the sandal and other shoes Salvatore designed for Peron for Madonna to wear in the 1996 film, Evita.

Marilyn Monroe wore Ferragamo footwear in the 1959 film Some Like It Hot. Her court shoe featured an upper made of beige suede and a tobacco-colored crocodile ankle, toe and spiked heel. Audrey Hepburn sported a suede ballerina-style Ferragamo creation that same year.

During the World War II years, depressed economic conditions and

Salvatore Ferragamo: Shoemaker to the Stars

See FERRAGAMO Page 8

I DUE MONDI APRIL PAGE 4

Will Dante’s language become obsolete? (Magdi Allam) We are witnessing ‘the suicide of the Ital-ian language,” said Magdi Allam in the Milan Cor-riere della Sera. The Italian government has all but given up trying to get immigrants to learn our native tongue. Instead, it is spending millions to mobilize “an army of cultural mediators” fluent in French, Arabic, or what-have-you to reach out to immigrant communities in their own languages. I’ve seen at least one advertisement aimed at newcomers (a bill-board on a tram in Milan) written only in English and Spanish! Given that immigrant communities have a much higher birth rate than native Italians, we could eventually produce an Italy in which Italian is a minority language. To ward off such a disaster, Italy must make a concerted investment in promoting Ital-ian. Right now, we spend just $2.5 million teaching Italian abroad through the Dante Society. Compare that with the $430 million that Germany gives its Goethe Institute, and you’ll see how woefully behind we are. “This world has already effectively demoted Italian to second-rate status.” If we don’t stand up for “the language of Dante,” who will? in milan, motorists will be charged up to $15 to drive weekdays into the city. Rates are based on the class of car and its polluting potential. The least polluting pay no traffic fee and the most heavily pol-luting pay a stiff fee. Smog-plagued Milan is trying to reduce air pollution by encouraging public trans-portation and greener spaces. Motorists can purchase discount entry passes.

in naples, it’s not a problem of pollution but rather one of heaping garbage that began about Christmas time and continues to mound up. In some places trash has reached up to second floor windows. It’s been one garbage crisis aftern another for the past 10 years as the Campania region has run out of landfills. Organized crime, political and bureaucratic red tapes are blamed for the ‘stinking mess’.

Don’t look for a reforming of the “three tenors”. During an Australian tour, tenor Jose Carreras said it would not be ethical for him and Placido Domingo to replace the late Luciano Pavarotti who died of pancre-atic cancer last fall. Carreras, who won his battle with leukemia, said it would be disrespectful to Luciano to replace him with a new singer. The immensely popu-lar “Three Tenors” of Pavarotti, Domingo and Car-reras drew sell out audiences for a series of concerts than began in 1990 at the redbrick ruins of the Baths of Caracalla (AD 217) at the foot of the Aventine Hill in Rome.

One of the world’s great tenors, giu-seppe Distefano died las month in Milan. Born in Sicily in 1921, DiStefano is re-membered for his celebrated duets with soprano Ma-ria Callas. His last performance was in Rome in 1992. In the 1980s, DiS-

tefano performed at Severance Hall in Cleveland.

Copyright Reuters

I DUE MONDI APRIL PAGE 5

Italian Page(Translation in Italian on Next Page)

By Brunella Reale BarbatiIn Italian, the term Galateo defines a set of rules on

good and proper manners and is a code that sets the ex-pectations of social behavior. In many countries, the term used is similar to etiquette, which is the diminutive of eth-ics (the branch of philosophy that deals with what is good, right or morally correct). This is applied not only to larger settings of moral life, but also to simple everyday life.

In general, today’s etiquette is an unwritten code, although some may speak of written codifications and go back to its origins from the work done in the sixteenth century by the prelate Archbishop Giovanni Della Casa who picked up the rules of good education in a Florentine treaty written in prose with the name of “Galateo” (from galateus, Latin name of Galeazzo Florimonte from Sessa, the noble who had commissioned the work). Today, despite changes of time and habits, such work continues to dictate the rules of education, refinement, finesse for manners and expressions.

At any given restaurant, for example, the waiter serves the customer from his left and removes the dish from his right; specific rules govern how the table must be served. In every respectable table one must never lack: tablecloth and dinner plates, knife and spoon to the right of the dish, two forks and the napkin to the left, high above the dish dessert cutlery must be placed. Above the cutlery on the right are the glasses for water (large), red wine (medium), white wine, and dessert wine. Above the cutlery on the left

is a small dish for bread. The person at the head of the ta-ble must wait until all the guests are served, and vice versa the participants must wait that he begins with his meal. It isn’t appropriate to place elbows on the table but, if needed, lay only the wrists is acceptable, with the elbows close to the bust while eating or drinking. When you finish eating, it’s necessary to set the silverware on the right side of the dish, in a position between 3 and 6 o’ clock, so that it’s understood that the dish may be taken. Never cross sil-verware, a sign that the meal was not appreciated. Never fill the glass more than three quarters; if you finish the wine, the householder has to fill it again. Water is served before the guests sit and the glass must never be filled more than halfway. In a well-prepared table, toothpicks or ashtrays must never be present. The host is always served first, or the oldest, while the host is last.

In introductions, the most important person is always introduced first, preceded by his/her title (for study or profession). Never shake hands while sitting but always standing up and giving the right hand. Addressing those you do not know is necessary to show politeness and is still the oldest person to decide whether to use a formal or more casual form of addressing.

These are just some of the rules of Galateo, it remains in the intelligence and education of everybody to want to respect these rules or not.

Article courtesy of La Gazzetta Italiana

THE HISTORY AND RULES OF GALATEO

By Marcello SicariAccording to a 2007 report by

Isfol, women are better than men in school. University levels in 2006 reported that from 161,445 students who have received a degree, 57.3% were women. Women still find greater difficulties in their careers than men.

Over 10 million women quit their job during their prime working age. In Italy, only one woman over 10 men is a manager and within of a Board of

Directors only one member over three is a woman. In Europe, Italy is at the penultimate place, just before Luxem-burg.

Female presence is also poor in politics, among the lowest in Europe and in the world. Although women in Italy represent 51% of the whole population, they are represented inside Parliament by a minor percentage, 11.49% at the House of Deputies and 7.9% at the Senate. Over 945 repre-sentatives at the legislative assembly

(630 at the House of Deputies, 315 at the Senate) women are 96, 71 at the House and 25 at the Senate.

In this context, the ex-Minister of the equal opportunities, Barbara Pol-lastrini, brought a proposal forward: to guarantee the alternation of men and women in electoral lists for the next election to ensure the election of more women in Parliament and to reach a balanced presence of 50/50.

Article courtesy of La Gazzetta Italiana

Italian Women in Politics

I DUE MONDI APRIL PAGE 6

By Brunella Reale BarbatiIn italiano il termine Galateo definisce l’insieme di norme

comportamentali con cui si identifica la buona educazione: è un codice che stabilisce le aspettative del comportamento sociale. In molti paesi il termine impiegato è simile ad etichetta, il quale a sua volta è un diminutivo di etica (quel ramo della filosofia che si occupa di ciò che è buono, giusto o moralmente corretto): si tratta infatti di un’etica “minore” applicata non ai grandi problemi della vita morale ma ai semplici problemi della vita di ogni giorno.

In generale oggi il galateo è un codice non scritto, anche se può in alcuni casi dar luogo a codificazioni scritte e prende origine dal lavoro fatto nel XVI secolo dall’altissimo prelato Monsignor Giovanni Della Casa che raccolse le norme della buona educazione in un trattato scritto in prosa fiorentina con il nome di “Galateo”(da Galateus, nome latino di Galeazzo Florimonte da Sessa, il nobile che gli aveva commissionato l’opera). Ancora oggi, nonostante siano cambiati i tempi e le abitudini, tale opera continua in maniera indicativa a dettare l’insieme delle regole di educazione, di raffinatezza, di finezza nei modi e nelle espressioni.

Al ristorante, per esempio, il cameriere serve il cliente dalla sua sinistra e toglie il piatto dalla sua destra; apposite norme regolano come deve essere apparecchiata la tavola. In ogni tavola che si rispetti non deve mai mancare: il sottopiatto e il piatto piano, a destra dei piatti il coltello e il cucchiaio, a sinistra del piatto una o due forchette e il tovagliolo, in alto sopra il piatto le posate da dessert. Sopra le posate di destra vanno i bicchieri: per l’acqua (grande), per il vino rosso(medio), per il

vino bianco, per il dessert, sopra le posate di sinistra, il piattino del pane. Il capotavola aspetta che i piatti di tutti i commensali siano serviti, e viceversa i commensali aspettano che il capo-tavola inizi per primo il suo pranzo. Non è opportuno tenere i gomiti appoggiati sulla tavola ma è meglio appoggiare eventu-almente solo i polsi, rimanendo con i gomiti accostati al busto sia quando si mangia che quando si beve. Quando si finisce di mangiare, si devono disporre le posate sul piatto appaiate sul lato destro, in una posizione tra le 3 e le 6 nella lancetta dell’orologio, così si fa capire che il piatto può essere sosti-tuito. Mai incrociare le posate, segno che il pasto non è stato gradito. Mai riempire il bicchiere più di tre quarti; se si finisce il vino, spetta al padrone di casa provvedere a riempirlo di nuovo. L’acqua va servita prima che i commensali si siedano e il bicchiere non va mai riempito oltre la metà. In una tavola ben apparecchiata non devono mai essere presenti né stuzzicadenti né posacenere. Si inizia con il servire l’ospite più importante o il più anziano, per ultimi i padroni di casa.

Nelle presentazioni si presenta sempre la persona più im-portante per prima preceduta dal titolo di maggiore rilievo (di studio o incarico professionale), la stretta di mano non avviene mai da seduti ma alzandosi in piedi e porgendo la mano destra.

Rivolgendosi a chi non si conosce è d’obbligo dare del “Lei” ed è sempre la persona più anziana a decidere se le si deve dare del “Lei” oppure se dare del “Tu” all’interlocutore.

Queste sono solo alcune delle regole del Galateo, sta al buon senso e all’educazione di ognuno di noi volerle rispettare.

Article courtesy of La Gazzetta Italiana

Pagina Italiana(Translation in English on Previous Page)

STORIA E REGOLE DEL GALATEO

By Marcello SicariDai dati emersi dal rapporto Isfol

2007 si conferma la maggiore propen-sione femminile allo studio, le donne sarebbero piu’ brave a scuola. A tal proposito e` utile guardare al livello univeritario, dove dei complessivi 161,445 studenti, che nel 2006, hanno conseguito una laurea di primo livello, il 57,3% e` costituito da donne. Tut-tavia sul lavoro fanno molta piu’ fatica dei loro colleghi maschi ad afffermar-si, in termini di stabilita`, retribuzione e carriera.

Fa riflettere, il numero di donne che si ritira dal mercato del lavoro: quasi

10 millioni di donne in eta` lavorativa non hanno cercato un impiego. Nel nostro paese sono donne solo un man-ager su dieci e un membro di consiglio d’amministrazione su tre. Dati che collocano l’Italia al penultimo posto, poco prima del Lussemburgo nelle classifiche europee.

Infine, anche nella politica la pre-senza femminile e` assai scarsa, tra le piu` basse in Europa e nel mondo. Le italiane, pur essendo il 51% della popolazione, sono rapresentate in Par-lamento con percentuali da minoranza, 11.49% all Camera dei deputati e 7.9% al Senato. Come dire che su un totale

di 945 rappresentanti all’assemblea legislativa (630 all Camera, 315 al Senato) le donne sono 96, di cui 71 alla Camera e 25 al Senato.

In questo contesto si e` inserita la proposta dell’ormai ex Ministro delle Pari opportunita`, Barbara Pollastrini, di garantire l’alternanza uomo-donna nelle liste elettorali della prossima consultazione, a partire dale posizioni di vertice, in modo da assicurare l’elezione di piu’ donne in Parlamento ed arrivare ad una presenza piena-mente equilibrata del 50%.

Article courtesy of La Gazzetta Italiana

Donne Italiane in Politica

I DUE MONDI APRIL PAGE 7

San Pietro is a 1,000-year-old church in the village of Montalcino, in Italy’s region

of Tuscany, which features a paint-ing by famous Renaissance artist Ventura Salimbeni. The church has a collapsing roof, sagging vaults, and rainwater damage. The Save San Pietro Committee has produced a limited-edition poster of the Salimbeni painting and proceeds will help save the church. The com-mittee is also accepting donations; all donors will have their name inscribed on a plaque mounted per-manently in the church. For more information, contact Isabella@save-san-pietro-montalcino.com.

Efforts to preserve Italian his-tory are also being undertaken

closer to home. The Italian Cul-tural Garden in Rockefeller Park in Cleveland, Ohio, is a large Renais-sance fountains and two winding staircases and spans two levels. Six medallions of carved stone adorn a 30-foot-high decorated retain-ing wall and represent six Italian cultural figures: Giotto, Michelan-gelo, Petrarch, Verdi, Da Vinci, and Marconi.

Like the church of San Pietro, the garden is in the midst of a major restoration. For more information, visit www.culturalgardens.org or contact Joyce Mariani, executive di-rector of the Italian Cultural Garden Association at (440) 461-2806.

Article courtesy of NIAF News

Historic Italian sites in danger of crumbling

San Pietro church in Montalcino

Un Espresso O Un Cappuccino?

Article Courtesy of La Gazzetta Italiana

material shortages forced Ferragamo to employ humble materials like raffia and cork to fabricate shoes. He won the 1947 Neiman Marcus Award, fashion’s “Oscar,” for designing the “invisible sandal” that featured thin strips of material wrapping the ankle and toes. Ferragamo’s wife and six children eventually joined the firm. His eldest daughter, Fiamma, designed the Vara pump in 1978, arguably Ferragamo’s most famous shoe, a simple, low-heeled style adorned with a bow in front.

So what draws consumers to the Salvatore Ferragamo brand? Details, superior materials and old-fashioned workmanship are the foundation of the Ferragamo house. It takes ten days to manufacture each pair of shoes, and the production cycle is composed of 134 phases. Many functions are still done by hand such as model making, leather cutting, pattern cutting, assembling, finishing and decora-tions. The company has always made

shoes with strong arches supported by quality steel shanks.

Ferragamo deals exclusively in hides that provide resilience and flexibility throughout the life of shoes. Aniline-based colors are used for dyeing, which help maintain the leather and color over time. Linings and soles are made of kidskin or nappa, which allow feet to breathe. Ferragamo said in 1957 that these meth-

ods and mate-rials make it possible “to walk hap-pily and be well-shod, with elegance and refinement.”

Salvatore Ferragamo Italia S.p.A. has more than

450 stores in 55 countries and creates and mar-kets footwear, handbags and small leather goods, scarves and ties, men’s and women’s ready-to-wear clothing, watches, fragrances and eyewear. The

Salvatore Ferragamo Museum opened in Florence in 1995 and houses a collection of over ten thousand models of shoes created by Ferragamo, from the Twenties to his death.

The company is now in its third generation and high-end shoes for

both sexes remain its core business.

The firm con-tinues to pur-sue the legacy of anatomi-cal studies made by its founder. Each new collec-tion introduces

shoes that make the wearer

feel comfortable and confident. The

fundamental prin-ciple behind Salvatore

Ferragamo shoes is respect for the foot’s

anatomy and all its func-tions, in agreement with the

trends of fashion.

Article courtesy of La Gazzetta Italiana

I DUE MONDI APRIL PAGE 8

FERRAGAMO From Page 4

Salvatore Ferragamo: Shoemaker to the Stars

Please help by supportingour many sponsors!

I DUE MONDI APRIL PAGE 9

decides to pretend he is mad. With the trilogy Six Characters in

Search of An Author, in which the char-acters of the title are called into existence by a writer, CIASCUNO A SUO MODO (1924) and QUESTA SERA SI RECITA A SOGGETO (1930), Pirandello revolu-tionized the modern theatrical techniques. A second trilogy, LA NUOVA COLO-NIA (1928), LAZZARRO (1929), and I GIGANTI DELLA MONTAGNA (1934, The Mountain Giants) moved from the limits of truth-telling to the reality outside of art. The Mountain Giants was left unfinished. It portrayed a magician, who lives in an abandoned villa. A theatrical company decides to perform at a celebra-tion given by the ‘Giants of the Moun-tain’. The barbaric audience tears two of the actors to pieces and kills one of the directors of the company.

Pirandello once said: “I hate sym-bolic art in which the presentation loses all spontaneous movement in order to become a machine, an allegory a vain and misconceived effort because the very fact of giving an allegorical sense to a presentation clearly shows that we have to do with a fable which by itself has no truth either fantastic or direct; it was made for the demonstration of some moral

truth.” (from Playwrights on Playwrit-ing, ed. by Toby Cole, 1961) Pirandello’s central themes, the problem of identity, the ambiguity of truth and reality, has been compared to explorations of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, but he also anticipated Beckett and Ionesco. One of the earliest formulations of his relativist position Pirandello presented in the essay ‘Art and Consciousness Today’ (1893), in which he argued that the old norms have crumbled and the idea of relativity de-prives “almost altogether of the faculty for judgment.” A central concepts in his work is “naked mask”, referring our social roles and on the stage the dialectic relation-ship between the actor and the character portrayed. In Six Characters the father points out, that a fictional figure has a per-manence that comes from an unchanging text, but a real-life person may well be “a nobody”. Pirandello did not only restrict his ideas to theatre acting, but noted in his novel SI GIRA (1915), that the film actor “feels as if in exile exiled not only from the stage, but also from himself.”

In 1923 Pirandello requested mem-bership in the Fascist party and obtained Mussolini’s support in founding the Na-tional Art Theatre of Rome (Teatro d’Arte di Roma). However, the company was closed in 1928 on grounds of financial

problems. In 1934 Pirandello’s libretto for Gian Francesco Malipiero’s opera The Fable of the Changeling was criticized by the Fascist authorities. Pirandello had first seen in Mussolini a man committed to the facts rather than theory, but later he described Mussolini as “as top hat, and empty top hat that by itself cannot stand upright”. Remaining critical towards the regime, he did not support the Ethiopian invasion by Italy. Pirandello died in Rome on December 10, 1936.

Pirandello’s influence can be seen on such European and American writers as Jean Anouilh, Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, Eu-gene O’Neill, and Edward Albee. In Latin America, Jorge Luis Borges’s question-ing of the nature of identity have much in common with Pirandellian themes. Several of Pirandello’s works have been adapted to screen, including As You Desire Me (1932), starring Greta Garbo, L’homme de nulle part (1937), based on the novel The Late Mathias Pascal and directed by and Pierre Chenal. Kaos, directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (1984), was based on the author’s four Sicilian stories.

Article & pictures coutesy of http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pirandel.htm

PIRANDELLO From Page 2

Luigi Pirandello: Nobel Prize winner in 1934

I DUE MONDI APRIL PAGE 10

A look back... ... Some pictures of the Dante’s memorable events in 2007-2008.

SpringBocceBash

Installationof 2008Officers

Dante Merit Awards