Si GIRA! ON THE ILLUSION OF ART AND PIRANDELLO'S PHILOSOPHY OF VITA E FORMA (original) (raw)
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Literary Herald: An International Refereed/Peer-reviewed English e-Journal, 2024
This paper aims to investigate the notion of 'existential conundrum' which arises due to the dichotomy of illusion and reality and stands as an overanxious attitude in the metatheatrical play ―Six Characters in Search of an Author‖ by Luigi Pirandello. The study analysed various texts, biographies and articles and reached to the understanding that the human psyche faced the dilemma and therefore it becomes difficult to interpret the innate detail of the psyche which the characters on the stage were trying to locate for themselves in order to look back at them in terms of identity as only being present on the stage does not make them characters, but actors playing characters. And therefore, they do not have their proper settled identity in reality or in illusion and so this marks the uneasy feeling of the characters who are constantly in search of author as Pirandello pokes fun on the genre and on author who are the two very important sections of a play. The paper employs exploratory, participatory and qualitative research method. The study has been taken forward from a varied perspective. The research done in this paper is an authentic contribution, as the paper intends to unfold by posing questions about traditional ideas of identity, reality, and truth in pieces and invites viewers and readers to go on an existential and self-exploration trip of the human psyche. The findings provide a promising future for this study that bring out appropriate solution and tend to complete the research gap. The research findings in the play mention about the deep understanding of the intricacies of human life which never ceases to captivate and uplift readers everywhere. Thus, this frames question on the theatrical tradition and provides significant new perspectives on human nature enlightening the new prism of study.
In Pirandello’s theoretical writings music is the language of modernity , because it stimulates man’s creativity to the maximum, producing “unimagined images that can be as terrible as those of nightmare, as mysterious and changeable as those of dreams” (Saggi, poesie, scritti vari). On the other hand, in his works of fiction Pirandello depicts the contemporary reality where the importance of music has been questioned, mirroring the general crisis of the arts in the Twentieth Century commercialized society: the Italian Opera, that established national identity, seems superannuated to wagnerian musicians who, in the pirandellian short story titled Musica vecchia , mocks the operistic intense expressiveness, and ridicule Icilio Saporini, old music teacher , yet linked to a romantic, departed world . In another tale , Leonora addio, the opera theatre means mundanity and moral licence for the main character, Mommina, who identifies with the fictional universe of librettos to such an extent that she can’t recognize the reality: forced to reclusion by a madly suspicious husband, she acts again, as by a distorting mirror , the same dramas of jealousy and violence she had seen on the stage. The story of Mommina is then converted in piece (Questa sera si recita a soggetto) by Dr. Hinkfuss; his critic’s glance further disassembles the inner workings of this theatre’s fascination, in a series of Chinese boxes that show the hidden untruth of the operatic world . The real music survives in confined spaces, in an underground dreary cafe where Zuccarello distinto melodista performs, or in the workhouse of Serafino Gubbio operatore novel; in this liminar place a brilliant mute violinist is self exiled to avoid a repetitive and alienating job, or a dishonourable performance in monstruos duet with a player piano. Main character’s double , the man with a violin refuses to nullify himself in a machinery , that is the Serafino’s tragic destiny, reduced to man/ crank handle; so the violinist’s art is saved for few but precious moments in the plot, as Zuccarello’s singing, nailed to a modest “distinzione” . The survival of true art firstly descends by the dissolution of traditional genres and means of communication, secondly is subjected to a replacing and redrafting in its social context, according to avantgardes’ poetic, while in open controversy with Dannunzian superomismo and Wagnerism
Pirandello in chiave esistenzialista
Quaderni d'italianistica, 2019
Roberto Salsano's latest study, Pirandello in chiave esistenzialista, is in keeping with the scholarly acumen of his fruitful critical production spanning eight centuries of Italian literary studies, from the Duecento to contemporary Italian authors. This volume consists of six chapters, preceded by a Nota al testo and followed by a useful Indice dei nomi. As the author explicitly points out (7), three of these six chapters are painstakingly revised, expanded, and updated versions of his previous Pirandello studies included in Pirandello. Scrittura e alterità (Cesati, 2005), Michelstaedter tra D'Annunzio, Pirandello e il mondo della vita (Bulzoni, 2012), and in the specialized journal Pirandelliana (2011). In this study, Salsano examines all of Pirandello's creative and critical production from his early poetry collections to the theatrical works, from his voluminous novelle to the novels. Salsano clearly demonstrates an insightful familiarity with all of the Agrigentino's primary writings, but he also exhibits an up-to-date and well-informed command of the extensive and varied Pirandello scholarship. Furthermore, the critic is able to contextualize Pirandello's works within the Italian and European philosophical, historical, and literary milieu of the fin-de-siècle and the Novecento. In all his writings, whether poetry or plays, short stories or novels, Pirandello probes into the profound consequences that modernity has inflicted on our daily lives; he does so by determining and shaping the inner and psychological temperament of his characters, who are constantly dealing with the negative effects resulting from the mechanical processes imposed upon the individual. Salsano examines Pirandello's writings within the referential context of significant European philosophers and authors such as
Introduction (Pirandello's Visual Philosophy: Imagination and Thought across Media)
Pirandello's visual conception of the creative artistic process gives rise to a strong impulse across his work toward multimedia experimentation. Thus, while our volume takes the explicitly visual rhetoric of his aesthetic theory and poetics as a key point of departure, it would be impossible to ignore how that picture of artistic creation involves Pirandello in many other media. In fact, his concept of how visuality pervades media can even be surprising - in his concept of "cinemelografia," for example, he idealizes the pure art of a cinema that would be the visual manifestation of music. The pieces in this volume argue that this intermedial aspect of Pirandellian creation is integral to his way of approaching key themes, from conceptions of gender and sexuality to the problematic status of identity. His works' multisensorial connections with other media like music and painting, or his turn toward cinematic and theatrical models, can thus be interpreted as part of Pirandello's invitation to dematerialize the literary medium in favor of a combination of the arts - a combination where the visual impulse of his aesthetics can be traced forward in numerous and sometimes surprising manifestations. Perhaps we can even go so far as to say that this is another way in which Pirandello presses the public to reconsider the state and nature of art. Drawing on a pluralistic notion of "imagination" and "visual thought," our volume thus invites the reader to join its writers in a series of interdisciplinary voyages bridging the fields of literature, theater, music, and painting with those of media technology, philosophy, and cognitive theory.