Pirandello, Luigi (1867–1936)
Italian dramatist, novelist, and short-story writer. His plays, which often deal with the themes of illusion and reality, and the tragicomic absurdity of life, include Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore/Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), and Enrico IV/Henry IV (1922). Among his novels are L'esclusa/The Outcast (1901), Il fu Mattia Pascal/The Late Mattia Pascal (1904), and I vecchi e i giovani/The Old and the Young (1909). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934.
Themes
Pirandello earned a European reputation as a dramatist, both for the technical brilliance and originality of his method and for his metaphysical choice of subject. The themes and innovative techniques of his plays anticipated the work of Bertolt Brecht, Eugene O'Neill, Jean Anouilh, and Jean Genet. His recurrent preoccupation was the impossibility of any absolute objective reality, and the relative nature of personality.
Life Pirandello was born in Girgenti, Sicily, studied at the universities of Rome and Bonn, Germany, and settled in Rome as a lecturer in literature. His first book, Mal Gioconda (poems), appeared in 1889, and during the next 30 years he was a prolific writer of novels and short stories, some of which are little more than anecdotes. He began writing for the stage in 1910, eventually turning 28 of his short stories into plays. |
Works Among his plays are Così è (se vi pare)/Right You Are, If You Think You Are (1917), Ciascuno a suo modo/Each in His Own Way (1924), Lazzaro/Lazarus (1929), Come tu me vuoi/As You Desire Me (1930), Questa sera si recita a soggetto/Tonight We Improvise (1932), and La nuova colonia/The New Colony (1958). Besides plays and stories, he wrote the aesthetic study L'umorismo/On Humour (1908). |
