Clavis Libri

Theme

Identity

Who one is: name, origin, lineage, mask, double, the discovery or loss of oneself, the metamorphosis of someone who stops being who they were.

The Odyssey

Homer

the name he gives the Cyclops and then shouts in Book IX, and the signs, the scar in Book XIX and the bed in Book XXIII, by which each one recognizes him.

One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

Luigi Pirandello

the remark about the nose that undoes the image Vitangelo had of himself (chapter I of Book I), the stranger he meets in a mirror in the street (chapter IV of Book I), the nameless body in the wardrobe mirror (chapter VII of Book I), the rule that man builds himself like a house (chapter XI of Book II), the Gengè that Dida built (chapter XII of Book II), the surname that buzzes like a fly (chapter II of Book III), the reader who sends himself away (chapter X of Book III), the eight people in a room of three (chapter VI of Book V), the "I" with no one to address it to (chapter II of Book VI), and the name as epitaph (chapter IV of Book VIII).