The Theme in the Work
In One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand identity is not what a person is, it is what others make of him, and the novel carries this idea, across eight Books, to a chain of consequences. Vitangelo Moscarda believes he is one: the idle heir of Richieri, married, with a nose he has never looked at. His wife's remark about the nose shows him that to others he is someone else, and soon that he is one for each person who looks at him, a hundred thousand in all, all with the same ugly name, in a body that belongs to no one. The numbers in the title are a single discovery seen from different sides: the "one" is what he believed, the "one hundred thousand" is what others see, the "no one" is what remains when the versions dissolve. The novel tells how he passes from one to the other, and what he does with it.
In Chapter IV of Book I, after catching himself in a street mirror without recognizing himself, he puts the three words together for the first time:
con la scoperta dei centomila Moscarda ch’io ero non solo per gli altri ma anche per me, tutti con questo solo nome di Moscarda, brutto fino alla crudeltà, tutti dentro questo mio povero corpo ch’era uno anch’esso, uno e nessuno ahimè, with the discovery of the hundred thousand Moscardas that I was not only for others but also for myself, all with this one name of Moscarda, ugly to the point of cruelty, all inside this poor body of mine that was one as well, one and no one, alas.
In Book II the argument is put to the reader, whom he asks to admit having been, a minute earlier, someone else. Identity becomes a fixation, a way of being that holds on by habit:
Caro mio, la verità è questa: che sono tutte fissazioni., my dear sir, the truth is this: they are all fixations.
In Book III the reader repeats what Vitangelo suffered: he receives two visitors and sends himself away, which shows that no one is one, but only imagines being so:
voi non siete due soltanto, ma chi sa quanti, senza saperlo, e credendovi sempre uno., you are not just two, but who knows how many, without knowing it, and always believing yourself one.
In Chapter IV of Book V, alone on an empty lot, Vitangelo turns what he has discovered into a law: the consciousness that takes itself for the most intimate thing is made of others in us. It is the point at which identity stops being a topic of conversation and becomes a condition:
Ove la vista degli altri non ci soccorra a costituire comunque in noi la realtà di ciò che vediamo, i nostri occhi non sanno più quello che vedono; la nostra coscienza si smarrisce, perchè questa che crediamo la cosa più intima nostra, la coscienza, vuol dire gli altri in noi; e non possiamo sentirci soli, when the sight of others does not come to our aid, in some way, to constitute in us the reality of what we see, our eyes no longer know what they see; our consciousness gets lost, because this which we believe the most intimate thing in us, consciousness, means the others in us; and we cannot feel alone.
In Chapter I of Book VI he tries for the first time to feel "one," defined by what he has ceased to be, and in Chapter II of Book VI the question changes shape: no longer who am I, but to whom to say I.
A chi dire “io„? Che valeva dire “io„, se per gli altri aveva un senso e un valore che non potevano mai essere i miei; e per me, così fuori degli altri, l’assumerne uno diventava subito l’orrore di questo vuoto e di questa solitudine?, to whom to say “I”? What was the use of saying “I,” if for others it had a meaning and a value that could never be mine; and for me, so far outside the others, taking one on at once became the horror of this emptiness and this solitude?
In Chapter IV of Book VIII, with no mirror and no memory, he refuses the name as one refuses an epitaph:
Nessun nome. Nessun ricordo oggi del nome di jeri; del nome d’oggi, domani. [...] Non è altro che questo, epigrafe funeraria, un nome., no name. No memory, today, of yesterday's name; of today's name, tomorrow. [...] It is nothing but this, a funerary epigraph, a name.
The novel treats identity in three questions that chain together and are not resolved. The first is epistemological: can I know who I am, if only others see me? The second is moral: if I am a hundred thousand, to whom must I answer? The third is existential: what to do with a self that no one recognizes, not even I? Vitangelo answers the first with the experiment, the second with the rejection of the usurer and of Gengè, and the third with the abandonment of the name. What the text never does is give him a new identity, and the ending is the proof that the question, for Pirandello, is truer than any answer.
Who Embodies It
Vitangelo Moscarda is the whole case: the narrator who discovers himself to be a hundred thousand and is lost for having discovered it. Dida is the identity that someone else gives, in Chapter XII of Book II: the Gengè she built and truly loves, and whom Vitangelo sees in her arms as another.
Ma sfido ch’ella conosceva quel suo Gengè più che non lo conoscessi io! Se l’era costruito lei! E non era mica un fantoccio. Se mai, il fantoccio ero io., but of course she knew that Gengè of hers better than I knew him! She had built him! And he was by no means a puppet. If anyone, the puppet was I.
Quantorzo is the professional identity, the "dear Vitangelo" who serves the bank, and the drawing room of Chapter VI of Book V puts the two figures in the same room:
E poichè erano due a vedermi entrare, mi venne la tentazione di voltarmi a cercare l’altro che entrava con me, pur sapendo bene che il “caro Vitangelo„ del mio paterno Quantorzo non solo era anch’esso in me come il “Gengè„ di mia moglie Dida, and since there were two to see me enter, I was tempted to turn around and look for the other who was entering with me, though knowing very well that the “dear Vitangelo” of my paternal Quantorzo was not only also in me, like the “Gengè” of my wife Dida.
Moscarda's father is the inherited identity: the body, the name, and the banker's title that the town translates as usurer (Chapter V of Book III). Marco di Dio is the identity fixed by an act: the gesture of a moment condemned him forever, and the good boy the master knew is never visible again.
Where It Appears
- Book I, Chapter I: Moscarda's wife, Dida, says his nose leans to the right, and he discovers that he is not to others what he supposed himself to be.
- Book I, Chapter IV: In the street mirror, Moscarda meets the stranger he is, and counts up the hundred thousand Moscardas.
- Book I, Chapter VII: In front of the wardrobe mirror, Moscarda sees the body with no name and no owner that anyone can take as they please.
- Book II, Chapter V: For Moscarda, the reader, a minute ago, was someone else, and a hundred others, and a hundred thousand.
- Book II, Chapter XII: Dida loves the Gengè she herself built, and Vitangelo is jealous of a man who is not he.
- Book III, Chapter II: The surname buzzes like a fly for Moscarda, and even the idleness he thought himself the owner of was his father's money.
- Book III, Chapter VIII: Five people in front of the house where Moscarda was born see five versions of him, and five different imbeciles.
- Book V, Chapter IV: Vitangelo concludes that consciousness is the others in us, and that without their sight one's own eyes do not know what they see.
- Book V, Chapter VIII: Dida's laughter wounds a vital point that none of the images reaches.
- Book VI, Chapter II: With Dida out of the house, Vitangelo touches his own hands, says "I," and finds no one to say it to.
- Book VIII, Chapter III: Vitangelo gives everything away out of horror at going on being someone in possession of something.
- Book VIII, Chapter IV: Without name, memory, or mirror, Vitangelo is tree, cloud, book, wind.
Where the Readings Diverge
The novel's thesis can be read in two ways, and the ending decides which one weighs more. It can be the discovery that identity is a free multiplicity, which each person remakes at every instant and which no construction holds, as Vitangelo maintains in Book III. It can be the discovery that there is nothing to lean on, and that the freedom to remake oneself endlessly is the same as not being.
In Chapter VII of Book III Vitangelo says that the act imprisons us like a jail, but that the jail is unjust because the act is only one of the many that we are.
In The Late Mattia Pascal, another Pirandello novel, the prison is real, because the other possibilities do in fact close and he cannot go back. In Vitangelo the act holds only the image that others make of him, and the rest remains open. This is what gives the novel an ending that Mattia did not have, and it is also the price of the ending: a self that, because it does not close, does not recognize itself. The divergence is between a past that cannot be remade and a present that cannot be fixed.