The nose and the mirror

Summary of the book

In «Uno, nessuno e centomila» (1926), Vitangelo Moscarda, heir to a bank in the provincial town of Richieri, tells in the first person, after the crisis has passed, how his wife's offhand remark about his nose undid the idea he had of himself. If others see in him someone he has never seen, he is not one: he is one for each person who looks at him, a hundred thousand in all, and, seen from within, perhaps no one. The novel has eight Books and sixty-three short chapters, each with a title by the author, and it speaks throughout to the reader, addressed as "gentlemen," whom it asks to examine himself with the same gaze. Book I shows the discovery taking shape and already contains the design of everything: wounded vanity becomes doubt about the body, doubt becomes the wish to see oneself as others see him, the wish becomes an experiment before the mirrors, and the experiment ends in a list of conclusions that the rest of the book sets out to test.

Chapter summary

The narrator, Vitangelo Moscarda, is twenty-eight years old and lingers before the mirror, pinching one nostril. His wife, Dida, asks what he is doing, and he mentions a little ache he feels when he presses the nostril; she replies, smiling, that she thought he was checking which way his nose leans. The list that turns him inside out follows: the nose leans to the right, the eyebrows look like two circumflex accents, one ear sticks out more than the other, and his little finger and right leg are not what he supposed either. He checks and recognizes all of it. When she consoles him by saying that, even so, he is still a handsome man, he takes offense on his own grounds: he receives as a generous concession what had been denied him as a right. His deepest hurt is not the flaw itself but having lived so many years with the same nose without knowing it, and needing a wife to find out.

Before going on, he explains who he was in those days. Rich, with his father dead, he left the business in the hands of two trusted friends, Quantorzo and Firbo; his father never got him to finish anything, except marry young, in the hope of a son who would not resemble him, and he did not even manage that. Moscarda did not refuse any road his father pointed out, but he stopped at every step and circled every little pebble, which for him became a mountain or a world, astonished that others walked past without noticing it. Those who went on ahead ended up each harnessed to a cart; he, with no cart, saw farther and did not know where to go. It is this idle man, who lives inwardly, whom his wife's remark throws into doubt: if he does not know his nose, nor his ears, nor his hands, what does he know of the body that is most his own? He examines himself again and closes the chapter by saying that there his trouble began.

Chapter summary

On the same day, Vitangelo Moscarda imagines that, once his wife has pointed out the flaw, everyone already knows him and sees nothing else in him. Suddenly he asks a friend, who has come to discuss some business, whether he is looking at his nose, and he subjects him to an inspection as if the flaw were a malfunction in the machinery of the universe. The friend thinks Moscarda despises the business he brought and starts to leave; he is held back by the arm and replies with an "oh, really?", his eyes laughing with an incredulity that is also mockery. Moscarda concludes that the friend already knew, and with that he understands two things: that he believed he was a Moscarda with a straight nose to everyone, when to everyone he was a Moscarda with a crooked nose, and that people often laughed at him while he pointed out other people's noses. The consolation that everyone sees the faults of others and not their own does not console him, because the idea has already taken root.

To get even, he asks his friend whether he knows he has a dimple in his chin that divides it into two unequal parts. The friend denies it, is taken to a barber, sees that it is true, and calls it a trifle; but Moscarda follows him from a distance and sees him stop at three shop windows to look at his chin. The contagion spreads: for days, in Richieri, he sees fellow townspeople passing from window to window to examine a cheekbone, the corner of an eye, an earlobe, and a week later a man asks him, anxiously, whether it is true that he blinks his left eyelid when he talks. Moscarda answers in a torrent that he himself knows all of his faults and does not need anyone to tell him. The man calls him back and, calmly, points out a tuft on the back of his neck that in Richieri is called a "codiniccio," and that the women of the common people take as a sign that the mother's next child will be a boy. Moscarda says he will have it cut off, and hears that the mark will remain; this time it is the other man who leaves him standing there.

Chapter summary

Since that day Vitangelo Moscarda has wanted, desperately, to be alone for at least one hour, and it is no longer a wish but a need, which his wife's presence exasperates to the point of rage. Dida calls him "Gengè" every minute, with whatever news the house brings him: that Quantorzo must speak with him urgently, that the pendulum clock has stopped, that the little dog has not gone out since the day before, that Anna Rosa may be ill, that Firbo has been by and will come back later; or else she sings a little ditty around the house. Moscarda anticipates the reader's obvious objection (why not lock himself in the bedroom, with two plugs in his ears?) and answers that the objection shows the reader did not understand how he wanted to be alone.

Locking himself in is in fact possible only in the study, and without a bolt, so as not to arouse suspicion in his wife, who is extremely distrustful. It would be useless in any case: there is no mirror in the study, and he needs one; besides, merely knowing that his wife is at home is enough to keep him present to himself, and that is what he wants to avoid. He then asks the reader what it means to be alone, and gives the answer the reader would give: staying in the company of oneself, with no strangers around. To show what that is worth, he leads the reader through a sequence of memories that open like little windows in the mind, one inside the other (a young woman doing crochet, a tiresome old man, a billiard room, a drunk singing a Neapolitan song, a former love), and concludes, ironically, that it really is a fine way to be alone.

Chapter summary

Moscarda wanted to be alone in an unusual way: without himself and with a stranger around him, the reverse of what the reader imagines, and he warns that this may already have been a sign of madness. True solitude, he argues, lies in a place or with a person who ignores him entirely and whom he ignores, so that his will and his feeling are suspended and the intimacy of consciousness ceases. What he wanted was to be rid of the "I" he knew, and to be alone with a stranger inseparable from himself, which he felt obscurely he could not get out of his way: himself. This single stranger, and the need to place himself before it, already disturbed him with a mixture of revulsion and dread, and the question that haunts him is only one: if for others he was not what he believed himself to be, who was he?

He goes on to argue that others, who see him from outside, connect his ideas and feelings to the nose he never looked at, and that if his ideas were serious and his nose comic, they would laugh. He realizes he cannot picture himself living, and that before a mirror his spontaneity ends. The proof comes days later, when, walking and talking with Firbo, he is suddenly startled by a mirror in the street, does not recognize himself, and sees a stranger walking by and chatting; he stops, goes pale, and tells Firbo it is nothing. He then decides to pursue the stranger he carries within, who, once he stands before a mirror, immediately becomes the "I" he knows. He had still supposed that this "I" was one, the same for everyone, but the drama grows more complicated: he discovers that he is, for others and for himself as well, one hundred thousand Moscardas, all with that ugly name inside a body that is one and no one. When the drama becomes complicated, the incredible madnesses begin.

Chapter summary

Vitangelo Moscarda recounts the small madnesses of the beginning, performed as pantomime before all the mirrors in the house, looking forward and backward so that Dida will not catch him, waiting for her to go out on a visit or an errand and leave him alone. He did not want to study his gestures like a comedian, but to catch himself in naturalness: raising his eyebrows up to the roots of his hair in an astonished look, frowning as he imagined his wife's death, grinding his teeth as he thought of a slap. He discovers three flaws. The astonishment, the pain, and the anger were feigned, because if they were real he could not see them, since they would cease the moment he saw them; the possible expressions of astonishment are many, and the features unpredictable; and even if one single, definite expression had been felt, it would be as he saw it, not as others would see it, which changes depending on who fears the anger, who forgives it, who laughs at it.

Moscarda still had the sense to understand all this, and he did not draw the natural conclusion, which would have been to give up the company and live for himself, without seeing himself and without caring about others. The idea that others saw in him someone he did not know, someone only they could know, looking at him from outside with eyes that were not his, and that this gave him an appearance destined to remain strange to him even while it was within him, and even though it was his appearance to them (a "his" that, therefore, was not his!), no longer gave him any rest.

Chapter summary

Dida says that, after four more days without news, Anna Rosa can only be ill, and that she will go and see her. Vitangelo Moscarda, who for days has wanted nothing but one hour alone, reacts as if against it: he tells her to send the servants Diego and Nina, invokes the bad weather, and says he does not want it at all. He knows what his wife does when someone does not want something, and the ploy works: Dida puts on her little hat and hands him the fur to hold. She sees his smile in the mirror and asks whether he is laughing; he apologizes, saying that he finds himself so obeyed, asks her not to stay longer than a quarter of an hour, and by doing so ensures she will not be back until evening. When she leaves, she spins with joy on her heel, rubbing her hands: "At last!"

Chapter summary

Alone, Vitangelo Moscarda waits for his face to lose every trace of anxiety and joy, and for every movement of feeling and thought inside him to cease, so that he can bring his own body to the mirror as if it belonged to a stranger. He goes with eyes closed, hands out in front, until he touches the glass of the wardrobe, and there he reasons: the stranger is on the other side, also with eyes closed, and cannot see him, only be seen; if he opened his eyes, would he see him as someone else? He recalls that no one can see himself and at the same time see the one who looks at him in the same mirror. He then decides that the supreme effort is to be seen by himself as if he were another. He opens his eyes and sees only himself, scowling, his face full of his own thought. It fills him with anger, and he feels like spitting in his own face, but he holds back; he softens his gaze, the image fades, and he almost drops off to sleep. He then realizes that he feels those eyes from within: he can see them before him, but he also feels them in himself, as his own, and when he manages not to feel them, he stops seeing them.

The face in the mirror attempts a wretched smile, and he shouts at the reflection to stay serious, calling it an imbecile. The expression changes at once, and the apathy that follows lets him see the body apart from his domineering spirit. He asks who that is and answers: nobody. He calls the surname softly, Moscarda, and nothing moves; it could be called anything else, like a stray dog that one person calls Flik and another Flok. He examines the reddish hair, the hard forehead, the eyebrows, the greenish eyes, the nose that leans but has a fine aquiline cut, and concludes that the body was made this way without depending on him. That could belong to anyone, and he himself, who makes no image of himself while he lives, might never have recognized himself like this. For everyone, however, he is that hair and that nose, and each person can take that body and make of it whichever Moscarda they like. Suddenly the body twitches, rolls its eyes back, nearly weeps, and lets out two sneezes from a draft of air that got in heaven knows where. Moscarda wishes it good health and sees in the mirror his first madman's laugh.

Chapter summary

The chapter is an accounting. Vitangelo Moscarda sets out the first list of the "ruinous reflections" and "terrible conclusions" drawn from the innocent momentary pleasure that Dida wanted to give herself when she pointed out that his nose leaned to the right. The seven reflections follow one another: that he was not for others what he believed himself to be for himself; that he could not see himself live; that, being unable to, he became a stranger to himself, someone others could see and know, each in his own way, while he could not; that it was impossible to set this stranger before himself, because he could see himself but not see him; that the body, seen from outside, was a dreamlike apparition, a thing that did not know it lived and waited for someone to take it; that, just as he took it to be what he wanted and felt, anyone else could take it and give it a reality in their own way; and that the body was so much nothing and so much nobody that a breath of air could make it sneeze today and carry it off tomorrow. For now, the two conclusions are these: he has begun to understand why his wife calls him Gengè (the explanation comes in Book II), and he has resolved to discover who he is for those closest to him, the so-called acquaintances, and to amuse himself by spitefully dismantling the "I" they have of him.