Si GIRA! ON THE ILLUSION OF ART AND PIRANDELLO'S PHILOSOPHY OF VITA E FORMA (original) (raw)

According to Pirandello, man is a self-deluding entity: every major event in his life-from love to freedom to death itself-and every work of art he produces turn out to be other than self, and therefore something indefinite. As the world is nullified individuals lose their own identities. In cinema productions this process is more radical than in any other form of art, since actors are unable to recognize themselves in the lifeless images shot by the camera. In this essay I shall argue that from Pirandello's viewpoint a new possibility stems from the seeming failure of art in the modern age: that of art staging its very inability to represent life. Meta-fiction is therefore the only possible kind of fiction. In consonance with Gavriel Moses's analysis, 1 whereby cinema and theatre are closely-related experiences, I see Gubbio's silence that ends the novel Si gira as the first step toward the Twenties' meta-theatre. This also entails adopting a Bergsonian perspective, as Luca Barattoni also does, 2 to interpret the crucial art-versus-life opposition that Tilgher uses as a key to reading Pirandello's production. From this perspective, I will carry out a detailed analysis of the plot and the main passages in Si gira.