The Theme in the Work
In the novel reality is not what stands before each person, it is the form each person gives to what stands before him, and appearance is not the opposite of reality, it is the only way reality exists. Vitangelo Moscarda argues this to the reader in Book II, with domestic examples: the armchair in which the reader's mother died, the cypresses in the garden that the friend sees as a cemetery, the words that two people use and fill with different meanings, the colors that match without checking what they see. The argument is simple and radical: reality as it is for one is, for another, no more substantial than the smoke of a cigar, and whoever defends it as the only one does so out of an illusion that sustains him. The novel does not deny that there are facts, being born is a fact, losing an eye is a fact; it denies that a fact tells the one who lives it what it means.
In Chapter II of Book II, telling of the house he lives in and of the old neighbor who greeted him politely and thought him an imbecile, Vitangelo gives the formula of what he calls presumption:
La presunzione che la realtà, qual’è per voi, debba essere e sia ugualmente per tutti gli altri., the presumption that reality, as it is for you, must be and is equally so for everyone else.
In Chapter IV of Book II presumption meets language. Two people talk for an hour, agree on everything, and the next day one accuses the other of having said something else:
Ma che colpa abbiamo, io e voi, se le parole, per sè, sono vuote? Vuote, caro mio. E voi le riempite del senso vostro, nel dirmele; e io nell’accoglierle, inevitabilmente, le riempio del senso mio. Abbiamo creduto d’intenderci, non ci siamo intesi affatto., but what fault is it of ours, yours and mine, if words, in themselves, are empty? Empty, my dear sir. And you fill them with your meaning, in saying them to me; and I, in receiving them, inevitably fill them with mine. We thought we understood each other, we did not understand each other at all.
In Chapter VII of Book III, in the long parenthesis on facts, forms, and acts, the position is completed: being must bind itself into a form in order to be, and so no reality is given, all are made, and none will be one for everyone or forever:
perchè una realtà non ci fu data e non c’è, ma dobbiamo farcela noi, se vogliamo essere: e non sarà mai una per tutti, una per sempre, ma di continuo e infinitamente mutabile., because a reality was not given to us and does not exist, but we must make it ourselves, if we want to be: and it will never be one for everyone, one forever, but continuously and infinitely mutable.
In Chapter III of Book IV, in notary Stampa's office, the thesis takes on the tone of a challenge, and the inversion with which the passage closes shows appearance as reciprocity:
E quello no, non lo vede, perchè vede un’altra cosa lui, quando voi credete che debba vedere la vostra, come pare a voi. La vede invece come pare a lui, e per lui dunque il cieco siete voi., and that one does not, he does not see it, because he sees something else, when you think he should see yours, as it seems to you. He sees it instead as it seems to him, and so for him the blind one is you.
In Chapter V of Book V, walking through the city after kicking the dog, Vitangelo sees this game as protection: each person lives inside the other's illusion, and in the city no one runs the risk of being alone with something only he sees.
Ognuno, bello, dentro l’illusione dell’altro; da poter essere sicuri che tutti gli altri sbagliavano se dicevano di no, che cioè ciascuno non era come l’altro lo vedeva, each one, nicely, inside the other's illusion; so as to be able to be sure that all the others were mistaken if they said no, that is, that each one was not as the other saw him.
In Chapter IV of Book VII the game becomes a threat. Dida and Anna Rosa attribute to Vitangelo a fondness for Anna Rosa that he cannot disprove, and what others give someone, if he does not hold on to his own reality, can end up seeming truer than it:
Perchè, se ci pensate bene, questo è il meno che possa seguire dalle tante realtà insospettate che gli altri ci dànno. Superficialmente, noi sogliamo chiamarle false supposizioni, erronei giudizii, gratuite attribuzioni. Ma tutto ciò che di noi si può immaginare è realmente possibile, ancorchè non sia vero per noi. Che per noi non sia vero, gli altri se ne ridono. È vero per loro. Tanto vero, che può anche capitare che gli altri, se non vi tenete forte alla realtà che per vostro conto vi siete data, possono indurvi a riconoscere che più vera della vostra stessa realtà è quella che vi dànno loro. Nessuno più di me ha potuto farne esperienza., because, if you think about it carefully, this is the least that can follow from the many unsuspected realities that others give us. Superficially, we are used to calling them false suppositions, erroneous judgments, gratuitous attributions. But everything that can be imagined of us is really possible, even if it is not true for us. That it is not true for us, the others laugh. It is true for them. So true that it can even happen that the others, if you do not hold firmly to the reality that you have given yourselves on your own account, may induce you to recognize that truer than your own reality is the one they give you. No one more than I has been able to experience this.
The novel gives two answers to the problem of appearance and leaves them without arbitration. The first is that of Book II, that of the one who teaches: reality is constructed, and whoever knows this lives better, because he does not get irritated when his friend sees a cemetery where he sees a garden. The second is that of Book VII, that of the one who suffers: the reality that others give can be stronger than ours, and Vitangelo ends up in the bed of a woman who takes him for an extraordinary man. Between the one and the other, what the text does is show that the argument does not protect the one who formulates it, and that appearance is truth for whoever receives it.
Who Embodies It
The old neighbor of Chapter II of Book II is appearance with good manners: the man who says good morning and thinks imbecile, without malice, only because he sees what he sees. Dida is beloved appearance: the Gengè she sees is, for her, the whole husband, and Vitangelo has no way to disprove him except by violence. Moscarda's father is the appearance of a title, banker at home and usurer in the street, in Chapter V of Book III. Anna Rosa is appearance as pose, in Chapter VIII of Book VII, where Vitangelo teaches her that life stopped in front of a mirror turns into a statue:
Perchè bisogna che lei fermi un attimo in sè la vita, per vedersi. Come davanti a una macchina fotografica. Lei s’atteggia. E atteggiarsi è come diventare statua per un momento. La vita si muove di continuo, e non può mai veramente vedere se stessa. - E allora io, viva, non mi sono mai veduta? - Mai, come posso vederla io. Ma io vedo un’immagine di lei che è mia soltanto; non è certo la sua. Lei la sua, viva, avrà forse potuto intravederla appena in qualche fotografia istantanea che le avranno fatta. Ma ne avrà certo provato un’ingrata sorpresa. Avrà fors’anche stentato a riconoscersi, lì scomposta, in movimento., because you have to halt life in yourself for an instant, in order to see yourself. As in front of a camera. You pose. And posing is like becoming a statue for a moment. Life moves continuously, and can never truly see itself. And so I, alive, have never seen myself? Never, as I can see you. But I see an image of you that is only mine; it is certainly not yours. Yours, alive, you may perhaps have been able to glimpse only in some snapshot that was taken of you. But you will surely have felt an ungrateful surprise. You may even have had trouble recognizing yourself there, disheveled, in motion.
Where It Appears
- Book II, Chapter II: Moscarda discovers that the old neighbor, who always says good morning to him politely, inwardly has him living as a perfect imbecile.
- Book II, Chapter III: The same cypresses in the garden are a garden to the reader and a cemetery to his friend, depending on who sees them.
- Book II, Chapter IV: Words are empty between people, and each one fills them with his own meaning.
- Book II, Chapter VIII: Moscarda and the reader say "blue" of the distant hills, and the agreement is of name, not of thing seen.
- Book II, Chapter XI: Moscarda concludes that, outside the momentary form we give to ourselves, to others, and to things, there is no reality.
- Book III, Chapter VII: Moscarda teaches that facts, forms, and acts are prisons, and that all reality is deception, because being must bind itself into a form.
- Book III, Chapter VIII: The house where Moscarda was born is a palace, a vulgar house, and a place of affection, depending on who looks at it.
- Book IV, Chapter III: In notary Stampa's office, Vitangelo concludes that whoever accuses another of blindness is blind to him.
- Book V, Chapter V: Vitangelo says that, in the city, each one lives inside the other's illusion, and that no one is as the other sees him.
- Book VII, Chapter IV: Vitangelo feels that the fondness Dida and Anna Rosa attribute to him is also true: the realities that others give can be truer than our own.
- Book VII, Chapter VIII: Vitangelo tells Anna Rosa that posing is becoming a statue, and that life, which moves, can never manage to see itself.
- Book VIII, Chapter II: Vitangelo shows the judge the green blanket, with neither name nor theory, when the judge asks him for his reflections on life.
Where the Readings Diverge
The novel allows two readings of how much appearance is worth. In one, it is in favor of appearance: if all reality is form, life consists in giving form, and constructing oneself well is an art, like that of someone who makes a house or a chair. In the other, it is against it: form is a prison, and the only honest exit is the one the ending presents, without form and without name. In Otto Maria Carpeaux's reading, in History of Western Literature - 10.1 - The Modernist Revolts, Pirandello's little-known and decisive sentence is that art continues nature:
Pirandello, in a little-known sentence of the greatest importance for understanding his art, declared: “L’arte prosegue la natura.”
The sentence of Pirandello's that Carpeaux cites favors the first reading: if art continues nature, the form given to life is a continuation of what exists, not a falsification. The text of the novel sustains, against this, the horror of any form whatsoever (Chapter VI of Book VI) and Vitangelo's regime of looking at the end: averting his eyes so that nothing comes to rest in its appearance and die. He knows that form is necessary, and that it is the death of what lives.