WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.839 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are starting 00:00:02.839 --> 00:00:05.759 with the fact that it sounds like it was invented 00:00:05.759 --> 00:00:08.119 by a novelist, but it's actually just a bizarre 00:00:08.119 --> 00:00:10.339 geographic reality. It really does. It's one 00:00:10.339 --> 00:00:11.800 of those things you couldn't make up. Exactly. 00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:16.100 Picture the year 1867. We are in Sicily, just 00:00:16.100 --> 00:00:19.859 outside the ancient city of Agrigento. There 00:00:19.859 --> 00:00:23.539 is a specific suburb, a rough, craggy area, and 00:00:23.539 --> 00:00:25.640 the locals have a name for it. They call it Caus. 00:00:26.140 --> 00:00:28.100 Which, of course, translates directly to chaos. 00:00:28.359 --> 00:00:30.600 Right. And I don't mean chaos in the metaphorical 00:00:30.600 --> 00:00:33.240 sense of, you know, a messy bedroom. I mean the 00:00:33.240 --> 00:00:36.679 primordial void. And it was right there in a 00:00:36.679 --> 00:00:39.899 place explicitly named chaos that Luigi Pirandello 00:00:39.899 --> 00:00:42.570 was born. It feels like the universe was engaging 00:00:42.570 --> 00:00:45.189 in a bit of heavy handed literary foreshadowing, 00:00:45.310 --> 00:00:47.189 doesn't it? It really does. Pirandello himself 00:00:47.189 --> 00:00:49.109 was completely obsessed with this. He saw it 00:00:49.109 --> 00:00:51.409 as his destiny. Oh, absolutely. He spent his 00:00:51.409 --> 00:00:53.250 entire life obsessing over that coincidence. 00:00:53.750 --> 00:00:56.630 He famously wrote, I am a child of chaos, not 00:00:56.630 --> 00:00:59.329 metaphorically, but in reality. For him, it wasn't 00:00:59.329 --> 00:01:01.469 just a funny anecdote about his birth certificate. 00:01:01.549 --> 00:01:03.770 It was the fundamental truth of his existence. 00:01:04.129 --> 00:01:06.790 He believed he was born into a formless, confused 00:01:06.790 --> 00:01:09.930 reality and that everything human beings do. 00:01:10.670 --> 00:01:13.689 Building societies, taking names, wearing clothes, 00:01:13.909 --> 00:01:16.730 adopting roles is just a desperate attempt to 00:01:16.730 --> 00:01:19.609 impose order on that original chaos. And that 00:01:19.609 --> 00:01:22.829 struggle between the raw chaotic flux of life 00:01:22.829 --> 00:01:26.590 and the rigid forms we try to trap it in. That's 00:01:26.590 --> 00:01:28.129 the engine of everything we're discussing today, 00:01:28.250 --> 00:01:30.329 isn't it? It is. It's the core tension in all 00:01:30.329 --> 00:01:33.519 of his work. We're looking at a man who is. well, 00:01:33.599 --> 00:01:35.700 arguably the most important Italian playwright 00:01:35.700 --> 00:01:38.319 of the 20th century, a Nobel Prize winner, and 00:01:38.319 --> 00:01:42.060 the guy who essentially invented the tragic farce. 00:01:42.299 --> 00:01:44.400 He's the bridge. He is the bridge between the 00:01:44.400 --> 00:01:47.120 19th and 20th centuries. He took the solid, reliable 00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:50.379 storytelling of the Victorian era and just smashed 00:01:50.379 --> 00:01:53.140 it into pieces to show us the anxiety and fragmentation 00:01:53.140 --> 00:01:55.120 of the modern world. Yeah, that's a great way 00:01:55.120 --> 00:01:57.000 to put it. I mean, if you've ever felt like you're 00:01:57.000 --> 00:01:59.700 playing a role at work that is totally different 00:01:59.700 --> 00:02:02.120 from who you are at home, or if you've ever questioned 00:02:02.120 --> 00:02:03.700 whether you really know the people around you, 00:02:03.760 --> 00:02:06.790 you are living in a Pirandellian world. You really 00:02:06.790 --> 00:02:09.949 are. His ideas have seeped into the very fabric 00:02:09.949 --> 00:02:12.569 of how we think about ourselves. We have a massive 00:02:12.569 --> 00:02:14.590 stack of sources to get through today. We've 00:02:14.590 --> 00:02:17.469 got his biographies, his letters, the critical 00:02:17.469 --> 00:02:19.870 analysis of his plays, like six characters in 00:02:19.870 --> 00:02:22.909 search of an author, and extensive historical 00:02:22.909 --> 00:02:25.949 context on the unification of Italy and the rise 00:02:25.949 --> 00:02:29.129 of fascism. A lot to unpack. A lot. And our mission 00:02:29.129 --> 00:02:32.330 is pretty clear. We want to understand how a 00:02:32.330 --> 00:02:35.699 wealthy... comfortable Sicilian sun transformed 00:02:35.699 --> 00:02:39.120 into the master of disillusionment. We need to 00:02:39.120 --> 00:02:41.919 unpack his philosophy on identity, this terrifying 00:02:41.919 --> 00:02:44.759 idea that we don't actually exist as solid individuals. 00:02:45.080 --> 00:02:48.159 And we need to navigate the very real, very messy 00:02:48.159 --> 00:02:50.580 political life he led. Including the topic that 00:02:50.580 --> 00:02:52.840 often gets, you know, glossed over in high school 00:02:52.840 --> 00:02:55.219 literature classes, his membership in the fascist 00:02:55.219 --> 00:02:57.620 party and his complicated relationship with Mussolini. 00:02:57.740 --> 00:03:00.120 Which is a paradox wrapped in a reel. Yeah. But 00:03:00.120 --> 00:03:01.879 before we get to the politics and the riots in 00:03:01.879 --> 00:03:03.879 the theaters, let's go back to the map. You mentioned 00:03:03.879 --> 00:03:06.430 the name Cass. I was digging into the etymology 00:03:06.430 --> 00:03:08.069 in the notes, and it's actually quite grounded, 00:03:08.150 --> 00:03:10.629 which I found funny. It comes from the Sicilian 00:03:10.629 --> 00:03:13.729 dialect word causi. Right, which means trousers 00:03:13.729 --> 00:03:17.949 or pants. Trousers. It seems less philosophical 00:03:17.949 --> 00:03:20.110 when you put it that way. It does. It referred 00:03:20.110 --> 00:03:22.569 to the shape of a ravine nearby that's split 00:03:22.569 --> 00:03:25.169 in two, looking like a pair of legs or trousers. 00:03:25.490 --> 00:03:28.569 But language is fluid, you know? Yeah. Cousy 00:03:28.569 --> 00:03:31.189 sounded enough like the Greek cows. and given 00:03:31.189 --> 00:03:34.169 the history of the area exactly given the intense 00:03:34.169 --> 00:03:37.449 creek history of sicily i mean remember agrigento 00:03:37.449 --> 00:03:41.050 was acragas a massive greek colony the association 00:03:41.050 --> 00:03:43.669 just stuck it became chaos a much better story 00:03:43.669 --> 00:03:45.930 it's a much better story and speaking of greek 00:03:45.930 --> 00:03:49.169 roots pirandello's own name has a history there 00:03:49.599 --> 00:03:51.939 His surname wasn't originally Pirandello. No. 00:03:52.020 --> 00:03:54.199 The family traced its lineage back to the name 00:03:54.199 --> 00:03:56.919 Parangelos. He was of Greek descent, and this 00:03:56.919 --> 00:03:59.639 wasn't just trivia to him. In a 1934 interview, 00:03:59.819 --> 00:04:03.020 specifically regarding his Nobel Prize, he highlighted 00:04:03.020 --> 00:04:05.780 this. He felt a deep connection to classical 00:04:05.780 --> 00:04:08.560 tragedy, to the ancient world that was literally 00:04:08.560 --> 00:04:11.180 buried in the soil under his feet. He saw himself 00:04:11.180 --> 00:04:14.219 as a Sicilian, yes, but specifically a Sicilian 00:04:14.219 --> 00:04:17.439 with that tragic ancient Greek DNA. So we have 00:04:17.439 --> 00:04:20.649 this boy. Born in chaos, with the weight of Greek 00:04:20.649 --> 00:04:23.970 tragedy in his name, but his immediate reality 00:04:23.970 --> 00:04:27.790 was very 19th century industrial. His father, 00:04:27.850 --> 00:04:30.370 Stefano, wasn't a philosopher. Not at all. He 00:04:30.370 --> 00:04:32.839 was a businessman in the sulfur trade. And from 00:04:32.839 --> 00:04:34.540 what I read about the Sicilian sulfur industry 00:04:34.540 --> 00:04:37.779 in the 1800s, this was not a gentle line of work. 00:04:37.959 --> 00:04:40.519 It was brutal. Sulfur was known as the gold of 00:04:40.519 --> 00:04:42.459 Sicily, but extracting it was hellish. We're 00:04:42.459 --> 00:04:45.160 talking about deep, hot, dangerous mines often 00:04:45.160 --> 00:04:47.480 worked by children, the Carusi, who were essentially 00:04:47.480 --> 00:04:50.480 enslaved. Wow. And Stefano Pirandello was a leaseholder 00:04:50.480 --> 00:04:53.220 of these mines. He was a big, robust, physically 00:04:53.220 --> 00:04:56.139 imposing man who made a fortune in this rough 00:04:56.139 --> 00:04:58.639 industry. And his mother, Caterina Ricci Grimito, 00:04:58.740 --> 00:05:01.069 came from a very different background. Very different. 00:05:01.129 --> 00:05:03.470 She was from the bourgeois professional class, 00:05:03.709 --> 00:05:06.310 but there's a political thread that ties both 00:05:06.310 --> 00:05:08.170 families together, and I think this is absolutely 00:05:08.170 --> 00:05:10.310 crucial for the listener to understand. Okay. 00:05:10.370 --> 00:05:12.529 Both the Pirandellos and the Ricci Grimittos 00:05:12.529 --> 00:05:15.750 were fierce patriots. They were anti -bourbon. 00:05:15.750 --> 00:05:19.480 They were pro -unification. So to understand 00:05:19.480 --> 00:05:22.259 Pirandello's cynicism later in life, you have 00:05:22.259 --> 00:05:25.220 to understand the idealism of his parents. This 00:05:25.220 --> 00:05:27.759 was the era of the Risorgimento, the resurgence. 00:05:27.779 --> 00:05:30.399 Exactly. For decades, Italy had been a collection 00:05:30.399 --> 00:05:32.459 of fragmented states and foreign -controlled 00:05:32.459 --> 00:05:35.139 territories. The Bourbons controlled the South. 00:05:35.399 --> 00:05:39.319 The dream was a unified, democratic Italy. A 00:05:39.319 --> 00:05:42.360 noble dream. A very noble dream. Stefano Pirandello 00:05:42.360 --> 00:05:45.040 fought with Garibaldi. Caterina's family suffered 00:05:45.040 --> 00:05:47.439 for the cause. Her father was a target of the 00:05:47.439 --> 00:05:50.040 monarchy, and she was forced into exile in Malta 00:05:50.040 --> 00:05:53.519 when she was just 13. 13. So they were true believers. 00:05:53.620 --> 00:05:55.639 They thought that once the Red Shirts won and 00:05:55.639 --> 00:05:58.139 Italy was one nation, it would be a utopia of 00:05:58.139 --> 00:06:00.839 justice and liberty. Precisely. And then 1861 00:06:00.839 --> 00:06:03.800 happened. Unification was achieved, and almost 00:06:03.800 --> 00:06:06.060 immediately the Great Disappointment set in. 00:06:06.259 --> 00:06:08.740 Let's drill down into that Great Disappointment, 00:06:08.740 --> 00:06:11.480 because it feels like this is the moment the 00:06:11.480 --> 00:06:15.040 seed of Pirandello's worldview was planted. What 00:06:15.040 --> 00:06:17.480 exactly went wrong? Well, the reality of the 00:06:17.480 --> 00:06:19.839 new Italy was starkly different from the romantic 00:06:19.839 --> 00:06:22.699 dream. Instead of a brotherhood of free Italians, 00:06:23.180 --> 00:06:25.040 the South felt like it had simply been conquered 00:06:25.040 --> 00:06:27.819 by the North, by Piedmont. Right, it wasn't a 00:06:27.819 --> 00:06:30.120 union, it was an acquisition. That's how it felt. 00:06:30.439 --> 00:06:33.620 The new government was viewed as incredibly bureaucratic, 00:06:33.620 --> 00:06:37.509 corrupt, and distant. Taxes went up. Conscription 00:06:37.509 --> 00:06:40.129 was enforced. The poverty in Sicily didn't go 00:06:40.129 --> 00:06:43.750 away. In some ways, it got worse. So Pirandello 00:06:43.750 --> 00:06:45.709 grows up in a house full of people who sacrificed 00:06:45.709 --> 00:06:49.269 everything for a great ideal only to watch that 00:06:49.269 --> 00:06:51.990 ideal turn into a corrupt, paper -pushing nightmare. 00:06:52.310 --> 00:06:54.649 That is the generational trauma. He watched his 00:06:54.649 --> 00:06:56.930 parents, particularly his mother, become bitter. 00:06:57.500 --> 00:06:59.600 The lesson he learned at the dinner table was 00:06:59.600 --> 00:07:03.160 that big ideals are often illusions. He calls 00:07:03.160 --> 00:07:05.540 this the sense of disproportion between ideals 00:07:05.540 --> 00:07:07.540 and reality. And that's a phrase that comes up 00:07:07.540 --> 00:07:10.620 again and again. It's key. If the greatest, most 00:07:10.620 --> 00:07:13.459 noble cause of your parents' generation turned 00:07:13.459 --> 00:07:16.220 out to be a lie, or at least a hollow disappointment, 00:07:17.040 --> 00:07:19.839 How can you trust any truth with a capital T? 00:07:20.120 --> 00:07:23.959 It creates a fundamental skepticism. And it wasn't 00:07:23.959 --> 00:07:26.060 just the politics that were failing to live up 00:07:26.060 --> 00:07:28.879 to the hype. The domestic situation in the Pirandello 00:07:28.879 --> 00:07:32.300 household was also, let's call it complicated 00:07:32.300 --> 00:07:35.759 and understating. The relationship between his 00:07:35.759 --> 00:07:38.019 mother and father was a major source of tension. 00:07:38.240 --> 00:07:41.560 It was incredibly fraught. Stefano, the father, 00:07:41.699 --> 00:07:44.819 was a man of the minds, rough. authoritative, 00:07:44.980 --> 00:07:47.720 and prone to what we might call extracurricular 00:07:47.720 --> 00:07:50.100 activity. Right. Luigi discovered early on that 00:07:50.100 --> 00:07:52.259 his father was having affairs. He did, and that 00:07:52.259 --> 00:07:54.459 has to be devastating for a sensitive child. 00:07:54.720 --> 00:07:56.839 You have this mother who is already politically 00:07:56.839 --> 00:07:59.220 disillusioned, and now she's being betrayed in 00:07:59.220 --> 00:08:01.899 her own home. It created a deep, permanent rift 00:08:01.899 --> 00:08:04.199 between Luigi and his father, didn't it? It did. 00:08:04.319 --> 00:08:06.800 He viewed his father as a source of brute force 00:08:06.800 --> 00:08:09.579 and hypocrisy. But inevitably, this pushed him 00:08:09.579 --> 00:08:11.879 closer to his mother. He developed a veneration 00:08:11.879 --> 00:08:14.319 for her that bordered on the obsessive. She became 00:08:14.319 --> 00:08:17.339 his saint. The long -suffering saint. Yes. And 00:08:17.339 --> 00:08:19.420 I read about the novella he wrote, After She 00:08:19.420 --> 00:08:22.720 Died, colloquy con i personaggi, conversations 00:08:22.720 --> 00:08:25.879 with characters. It sounds almost ghost -like. 00:08:26.060 --> 00:08:28.540 It is. He writes about trying to keep her spirit 00:08:28.540 --> 00:08:31.689 alive, conversing with her. This dynamic. The 00:08:31.689 --> 00:08:33.750 suffering saintly woman and the domineering, 00:08:33.889 --> 00:08:36.669 unfaithful or simply incomprehensible husband 00:08:36.669 --> 00:08:39.750 became a blueprint for his fiction. You see it 00:08:39.750 --> 00:08:42.429 over and over again. So the family unit in Pirandello's 00:08:42.429 --> 00:08:45.110 work is rarely a place of comfort. Never. It's 00:08:45.110 --> 00:08:46.750 a trap. It's a place where people are forced 00:08:46.750 --> 00:08:49.809 to wear masks to survive each other. OK, so we 00:08:49.809 --> 00:08:53.309 have. The chaos of his birth, the great disappointment 00:08:53.309 --> 00:08:55.629 of politics, and the betrayal of the father. 00:08:55.850 --> 00:08:58.529 Young Luigi is a smart kid, obviously. He starts 00:08:58.529 --> 00:09:00.769 writing early. He writes his first tragedy at 00:09:00.769 --> 00:09:04.049 age 12. But his dad, being the practical sulfur 00:09:04.049 --> 00:09:06.450 businessman, wants him to go to technical school. 00:09:06.649 --> 00:09:08.929 Right. Stefano wanted a successor for the mines. 00:09:09.009 --> 00:09:11.990 He don't want a poet. But Luigi managed to maneuver 00:09:11.990 --> 00:09:14.350 his way into a classical education, finishing 00:09:14.350 --> 00:09:17.169 high school in Palermo. And it's there that he 00:09:17.169 --> 00:09:19.330 fell in love with his cousin, Lina. And this 00:09:19.330 --> 00:09:21.350 wasn't just a puppy love situation, right? This 00:09:21.350 --> 00:09:24.090 was serious. Oh, very serious. It was intense 00:09:24.090 --> 00:09:26.230 enough that Lina's family demanded he stop his 00:09:26.230 --> 00:09:28.529 studies and go work in the sulfur mines so he 00:09:28.529 --> 00:09:31.029 could afford to marry her immediately. Wow. And 00:09:31.029 --> 00:09:33.929 he did it. He did. And surprisingly, given his 00:09:33.929 --> 00:09:36.129 hatred for his father's business, he actually 00:09:36.129 --> 00:09:39.309 did it. In 1886, he spent time working in the 00:09:39.309 --> 00:09:42.450 mines of... I think that period in the minds 00:09:42.450 --> 00:09:45.470 is crucial context. Yeah. We think of Pirandello 00:09:45.470 --> 00:09:48.659 as this high -minded philosopher. But he saw 00:09:48.659 --> 00:09:52.120 the sweaty, dangerous reality of labor. He did. 00:09:52.200 --> 00:09:54.820 He saw the carusi, the child laborers. He saw 00:09:54.820 --> 00:09:57.779 the brutality. This experience informed works 00:09:57.779 --> 00:10:01.019 like Ciala Scopri la Luna, Ciala Discovers the 00:10:01.019 --> 00:10:04.019 Moon. It grounded his existentialism in dirt 00:10:04.019 --> 00:10:06.340 and rock. Yeah. He knew that for many people, 00:10:06.379 --> 00:10:09.039 life wasn't an abstract concept. It was a struggle 00:10:09.039 --> 00:10:11.120 to breathe. But eventually, the marriage plans 00:10:11.120 --> 00:10:13.379 with Lena were postponed and he returned to academia. 00:10:13.759 --> 00:10:16.669 He went to the University of Rome in 1887. And 00:10:16.669 --> 00:10:18.149 here we go with the great disappointment, part 00:10:18.149 --> 00:10:21.830 two. He arrives in Rome, the eternal city. He's 00:10:21.830 --> 00:10:24.529 probably expecting marble statues, heroes, the 00:10:24.529 --> 00:10:26.649 glory of the Caesars, and the Risorgimento. And 00:10:26.649 --> 00:10:36.389 he finds rain. Mud. A total letdown. There's 00:10:36.389 --> 00:10:39.129 a specific quote about his arrival in Rome that 00:10:39.129 --> 00:10:41.149 I think perfectly encapsulates his developing 00:10:41.149 --> 00:10:43.330 personality. The desperate laugh. That's the 00:10:43.330 --> 00:10:53.970 one. He said, That is the desperate laugh. Bookmark 00:10:53.970 --> 00:10:56.049 that because it is the key to his entire artistic 00:10:56.049 --> 00:10:58.980 philosophy. He realized in that moment, that 00:10:58.980 --> 00:11:00.879 when reality is overwhelmingly disappointing, 00:11:01.139 --> 00:11:03.960 when the tragedy is so absurd that tears aren't 00:11:03.960 --> 00:11:07.179 enough, the only authentic reaction is to laugh. 00:11:07.419 --> 00:11:09.500 But it's not a funny laugh. It's not ha -ha. 00:11:09.500 --> 00:11:11.899 I know. It's a defensive reflex. It's a spasm. 00:11:11.919 --> 00:11:14.139 It's the laugh of someone seeing the cosmic joke. 00:11:14.519 --> 00:11:17.139 Rome wasn't grand. It was petty. He stayed with 00:11:17.139 --> 00:11:20.360 an uncle who was a graying and exhausted functionary. 00:11:20.399 --> 00:11:22.799 And this uncle had been a patriot, a fighter. 00:11:22.879 --> 00:11:25.320 Exactly. And now he was just... pushing paper 00:11:25.320 --> 00:11:29.080 in a dim office. Rome was a monument to decadence 00:11:29.080 --> 00:11:31.519 and mediocrity for him. His time at the University 00:11:31.519 --> 00:11:33.840 of Rome didn't end well either. He got into a 00:11:33.840 --> 00:11:36.720 fight with a Latin professor. A very serious 00:11:36.720 --> 00:11:38.779 dispute. It was significant enough that he was 00:11:38.779 --> 00:11:41.539 effectively expelled or forced to leave. But 00:11:41.539 --> 00:11:43.279 this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. 00:11:43.740 --> 00:11:46.240 He transferred to the University of Bonn in Germany 00:11:46.240 --> 00:11:49.299 to finish his doctorate. And this German period 00:11:49.299 --> 00:11:51.080 seems like the missing link in understanding 00:11:51.080 --> 00:11:53.649 his brain. He wasn't just soaking up Italian 00:11:53.649 --> 00:11:56.389 culture. He was getting a heavy dose of German 00:11:56.389 --> 00:11:59.509 philosophy. Absolutely. In Bonn, he was reading 00:11:59.509 --> 00:12:04.090 the German romantics, Götze, Heine, Teek. He 00:12:04.090 --> 00:12:05.929 was absorbing a different kind of thinking, one 00:12:05.929 --> 00:12:07.830 that was deeply concerned with the nature of 00:12:07.830 --> 00:12:11.169 the self, irony, and the grotesque. So it was 00:12:11.169 --> 00:12:13.389 in Germany that he began to formulate his theories 00:12:13.389 --> 00:12:15.759 on humorism. That's right. He was translating 00:12:15.759 --> 00:12:18.279 Dutta. He was stepping outside the Sicilian mental 00:12:18.279 --> 00:12:20.419 box and looking at his own culture from a distance. 00:12:20.679 --> 00:12:23.720 So he gets his doctorate on the dialect of Agrigento, 00:12:23.940 --> 00:12:26.559 ironically returning to his roots, and comes 00:12:26.559 --> 00:12:29.419 back to Rome in the 1890s. He's in his 20s. He's 00:12:29.419 --> 00:12:31.279 writing. He's mingling with the literary crowd 00:12:31.279 --> 00:12:34.019 like Luigi Capuano. And the topic of marriage 00:12:34.019 --> 00:12:37.200 comes up again. Yes. The affair with his cousin 00:12:37.200 --> 00:12:42.009 Lina had fizzled out. In 1894, his father, Stefano, 00:12:42.149 --> 00:12:45.029 stepped in to arrange a marriage. The bride was 00:12:45.029 --> 00:12:47.889 Maria Antonietta Portilano. An arranged marriage. 00:12:48.169 --> 00:12:50.110 This was essentially a business merger, wasn't 00:12:50.110 --> 00:12:53.129 it? In many ways, yes. Antonietta was the daughter 00:12:53.129 --> 00:12:56.129 of a business associate. She was a shy, withdrawn 00:12:56.129 --> 00:12:59.070 girl raised in a very sheltered environment by 00:12:59.070 --> 00:13:01.590 nuns. And she had a substantial dowry. A very 00:13:01.590 --> 00:13:03.870 substantial dowry, which Stefano Pirandello invested 00:13:03.870 --> 00:13:06.850 into his business. So Luigi marries her. They 00:13:06.850 --> 00:13:09.230 settle in Rome. And for a while, on the surface, 00:13:09.370 --> 00:13:11.450 it looks like the standard bourgeois life. They 00:13:11.450 --> 00:13:14.490 have three kids, Stefano, Rosalia, and Fausto. 00:13:15.230 --> 00:13:18.370 Luigi is teaching, writing essays, getting published. 00:13:18.610 --> 00:13:20.669 It was a deceptive stability. There were cracks. 00:13:20.889 --> 00:13:22.429 Antonietta didn't really understand his heart. 00:13:22.490 --> 00:13:24.610 She wasn't an intellectual partner. But they 00:13:24.610 --> 00:13:27.250 were comfortable, and then came 1903. The year 00:13:27.250 --> 00:13:29.570 the floor fell out. A catastrophe. It sounds 00:13:29.570 --> 00:13:31.210 like a plot twist that a writer would reject 00:13:31.210 --> 00:13:34.289 for being too dramatic. A literal flood. A flood 00:13:34.289 --> 00:13:36.980 in the sulfur mines of Aragona. And we have to 00:13:36.980 --> 00:13:38.840 understand the financial mechanics here to see 00:13:38.840 --> 00:13:41.799 why this was total ruin. Stefano Pirandello hadn't 00:13:41.799 --> 00:13:44.539 just invested his own money. He had invested 00:13:44.539 --> 00:13:47.200 Antonietta's entire dowry, her financial security, 00:13:47.500 --> 00:13:50.379 her identity as a woman of status into those 00:13:50.379 --> 00:13:52.940 mines. So the water rushes in, destroys the mines, 00:13:52.980 --> 00:13:55.460 and the money vanishes. Instantly. The Pirandello 00:13:55.460 --> 00:13:58.679 family went from wealthy to effectively bankrupt 00:13:58.679 --> 00:14:01.899 overnight. But the loss of money was just the 00:14:01.899 --> 00:14:04.700 trigger. The real explosion was psychological. 00:14:05.559 --> 00:14:07.139 This is where we need to talk about Antoniana. 00:14:07.299 --> 00:14:09.519 How does she take the news? She was the one who 00:14:09.519 --> 00:14:12.019 opened the letter announcing the disaster. The 00:14:12.019 --> 00:14:14.759 shock was so profound that it induced a physical 00:14:14.759 --> 00:14:18.059 collapse. She was paralyzed for a time. And when 00:14:18.059 --> 00:14:20.580 she emerged from that paralysis, her mental landscape 00:14:20.580 --> 00:14:22.980 had completely shattered. And it wasn't just 00:14:22.980 --> 00:14:25.639 depression or sadness. It manifested as a very 00:14:25.639 --> 00:14:29.100 specific, aggressive paranoia. It was a monomania. 00:14:29.679 --> 00:14:33.029 Pathological jealousy. She became convinced with 00:14:33.029 --> 00:14:35.529 absolutely no evidence that Luigi was cheating 00:14:35.529 --> 00:14:37.789 on her. She believed he was hiding wealth from 00:14:37.789 --> 00:14:40.389 her, that he was conspiring against her. She 00:14:40.389 --> 00:14:43.269 would scream. She would become physically violent. 00:14:43.450 --> 00:14:46.509 Think about the irony here. Yeah. Luigi grew 00:14:46.509 --> 00:14:49.330 up hating his father for being a cheater. He 00:14:49.330 --> 00:14:51.750 prided himself on being a dedicated family man. 00:14:52.029 --> 00:14:55.450 And now he is trapped in a house where he's being 00:14:55.450 --> 00:14:59.149 accused day and night of the very sin he despises 00:14:59.149 --> 00:15:01.950 most. It was a pressure cooker. A complete nightmare. 00:15:02.129 --> 00:15:04.129 He was teaching extra classes to make ends meet, 00:15:04.230 --> 00:15:06.789 writing furiously to sell stories, and then coming 00:15:06.789 --> 00:15:08.850 home to a wife who might attack him or scream 00:15:08.850 --> 00:15:11.429 at him for hours. He later admitted he contemplated 00:15:11.429 --> 00:15:13.730 suicide during this period. He did. He looked 00:15:13.730 --> 00:15:15.370 out the window and thought about ending it. But 00:15:15.370 --> 00:15:17.929 he didn't. And this is the pivot point of his 00:15:17.929 --> 00:15:20.909 life. Instead of killing himself, he wrote the 00:15:20.909 --> 00:15:24.210 late Mattia Pascal. Which is famously a book 00:15:24.210 --> 00:15:26.309 about a man who fakes his death. You can see 00:15:26.309 --> 00:15:28.460 the wish fulfillment dripping off the page. It 00:15:28.460 --> 00:15:31.299 is raw autobiography in the form of fantasy. 00:15:31.580 --> 00:15:33.980 He sat by his wife's bedside, writing while she 00:15:33.980 --> 00:15:36.460 slept or raved, and he imagined a character, 00:15:36.600 --> 00:15:39.840 Matia Pascal, who is trapped in a miserable marriage 00:15:39.840 --> 00:15:42.460 and a dead -end job. Right. Matia wins some money 00:15:42.460 --> 00:15:45.860 at a casino, and on his way home, he finds out 00:15:45.860 --> 00:15:48.059 that the authorities have found a body in a mill 00:15:48.059 --> 00:15:51.279 race and identified it as him. Matia is officially 00:15:51.279 --> 00:15:55.440 dead. And his reaction is joy. Pure joy. He thinks, 00:15:55.460 --> 00:15:58.159 I'm free. I can go anywhere. I can be anyone. 00:15:58.480 --> 00:16:00.919 He changes his name to Adriano Mice. He travels. 00:16:00.960 --> 00:16:03.080 He tries to start over. But this is where Pirandello 00:16:03.080 --> 00:16:05.960 pulls the rug out. Yeah. Because Matia or Adriano 00:16:05.960 --> 00:16:09.379 realizes that being free is actually... A nightmare. 00:16:09.580 --> 00:16:11.399 Exactly. He tries to fall in love, but he can't 00:16:11.399 --> 00:16:13.399 marry because he has no papers. He is robbed, 00:16:13.460 --> 00:16:14.940 but he can't go to the police because Adriano 00:16:14.940 --> 00:16:17.460 Maez doesn't exist. He realizes that outside 00:16:17.460 --> 00:16:20.360 of the mask of society, the name, the tax ID, 00:16:20.480 --> 00:16:23.659 the marital status, a human being is a non -entity. 00:16:23.799 --> 00:16:26.200 A ghost. He is a ghost floating through the world. 00:16:26.240 --> 00:16:28.240 The freedom was an illusion. So what happens? 00:16:28.440 --> 00:16:31.659 The freedom was a form of death. Mattia eventually 00:16:31.659 --> 00:16:34.159 has to fake his own suicide as Adriana Mice, 00:16:34.240 --> 00:16:36.600 and then he goes back to his old village. But 00:16:36.600 --> 00:16:38.720 his wife has remarried, so he ends up living 00:16:38.720 --> 00:16:42.340 in a library, visiting his own grave. He is the 00:16:42.340 --> 00:16:45.259 late Mattia Pascal. He is neither alive nor dead. 00:16:45.940 --> 00:16:49.840 This book, published in 1904. changed everything 00:16:49.840 --> 00:16:52.000 for Pirandello. It was a massive hit. It was 00:16:52.000 --> 00:16:54.100 an international success. It was translated into 00:16:54.100 --> 00:16:56.759 German. It was acclaimed. It gave him the financial 00:16:56.759 --> 00:16:59.480 footing to keep going. But philosophically, it 00:16:59.480 --> 00:17:03.019 established his core theme, the mask. We complain 00:17:03.019 --> 00:17:06.180 about the masks we wear, father, employee, citizen, 00:17:06.359 --> 00:17:09.250 but without them, we dissolve. This brings us 00:17:09.250 --> 00:17:12.509 to his theoretical masterpiece. In 1908, he publishes 00:17:12.509 --> 00:17:15.150 the essay Lumerismo Humorism. And we need to 00:17:15.150 --> 00:17:16.950 be really careful with this word because in English, 00:17:17.109 --> 00:17:19.470 humor means jokes. Right. It means stand -up 00:17:19.470 --> 00:17:21.430 comedy. That is not what Pirandello means. Not 00:17:21.430 --> 00:17:23.250 at all. He makes a crucial distinction between 00:17:23.250 --> 00:17:25.529 the comical and the humorous. Right. And it's 00:17:25.529 --> 00:17:27.049 a brilliant distinction. Walk us through that. 00:17:27.369 --> 00:17:30.329 Okay, the comical is the warning of the contrary. 00:17:30.630 --> 00:17:33.329 The example he gives is an elderly lady who has 00:17:33.329 --> 00:17:36.309 dyed her hair neon blonde, is wearing heavy makeup, 00:17:36.450 --> 00:17:38.890 and is dressed in clothes meant for a teenager. 00:17:39.230 --> 00:17:42.970 Okay. When you see her, you laugh. Why? Because 00:17:42.970 --> 00:17:45.789 she is the opposite of what an old lady should 00:17:45.789 --> 00:17:48.730 be. That immediate perception of the opposite 00:17:48.730 --> 00:17:50.910 is the comic. It's the surface -level reaction. 00:17:51.089 --> 00:17:54.009 She looks ridiculous. All right, but now Pirandello 00:17:54.009 --> 00:17:57.329 says apply reflection. Think about why she is 00:17:57.329 --> 00:17:59.630 doing that. Maybe she has a younger husband who 00:17:59.630 --> 00:18:02.130 is losing interest in her. Maybe she spends her 00:18:02.130 --> 00:18:04.269 nights weeping, terrified of being abandoned, 00:18:04.390 --> 00:18:07.049 and she wears those clothes as a desperate, pathetic 00:18:07.049 --> 00:18:09.789 attempt to hold on to love. And suddenly you 00:18:09.789 --> 00:18:11.789 can't laugh anymore. Or if you do, the laugh 00:18:11.789 --> 00:18:14.079 is bitter. That shift from the warning of the 00:18:14.079 --> 00:18:17.000 contrary to the feeling of the contrary is humorism. 00:18:17.119 --> 00:18:19.380 It's when you see the tragedy inside the comedy. 00:18:19.480 --> 00:18:22.200 It's a mix of pity and amusement. It destroys 00:18:22.200 --> 00:18:24.400 the ability to judge the character as a villain 00:18:24.400 --> 00:18:26.900 or a hero. You just see a suffering human being 00:18:26.900 --> 00:18:29.779 dealing with the absurdity of life. Exactly. 00:18:29.880 --> 00:18:31.940 And this wasn't just an academic theory for him. 00:18:31.980 --> 00:18:34.740 This was his daily life with Antonietta. Of course. 00:18:34.859 --> 00:18:37.380 A neighbor hearing Antonietta scream might think 00:18:37.380 --> 00:18:39.759 she was a monster. That's the comic or superficial 00:18:39.759 --> 00:18:43.420 view. But Pirandello, living with her, saw the 00:18:43.420 --> 00:18:46.319 humorous truth. She was a terrified woman whose 00:18:46.319 --> 00:18:49.339 mind had broken under the weight of trauma. He 00:18:49.339 --> 00:18:51.519 couldn't just hate her. He had to understand 00:18:51.519 --> 00:18:54.470 the tragedy within her madness. This ability 00:18:54.470 --> 00:18:57.390 to hold two opposing truths in his head at the 00:18:57.390 --> 00:19:00.210 same time, she is my tormentor and she is a victim, 00:19:00.349 --> 00:19:02.390 leads us to the concept that I think is most 00:19:02.390 --> 00:19:05.029 relevant to us today. The concept of one, no 00:19:05.029 --> 00:19:07.990 one, and 100 ,000. Uno, Nessuno, e 100 ,000. 00:19:08.170 --> 00:19:10.289 It is the title of his last novel, and it's the 00:19:10.289 --> 00:19:13.349 summary of his entire existence. The premise 00:19:13.349 --> 00:19:15.910 of this book is so simple, it's maddening. The 00:19:15.910 --> 00:19:18.049 protagonist, the Tangelo Mascarda, is standing 00:19:18.049 --> 00:19:20.170 in front of a mirror, and his wife casually says, 00:19:20.269 --> 00:19:21.990 you know, your nose tilts a little to the right. 00:19:23.069 --> 00:19:25.769 Mascarda is stunned. He has looked at his face 00:19:25.769 --> 00:19:28.369 every day for his entire life and he never noticed 00:19:28.369 --> 00:19:31.609 his nose tilted. He realizes in that split second 00:19:31.609 --> 00:19:34.269 that the Mascarda he knows, the one in his head, 00:19:34.410 --> 00:19:36.609 is completely different from the Mascarda his 00:19:36.609 --> 00:19:39.190 wife sees. And if his wife sees a different version 00:19:39.190 --> 00:19:41.549 than his friends see another version and the 00:19:41.549 --> 00:19:44.029 bank teller sees another, the list goes on. We 00:19:44.029 --> 00:19:47.559 are one to ourselves. But we are 100 ,000 to 00:19:47.559 --> 00:19:50.839 the people around us. Every person you meet constructs 00:19:50.839 --> 00:19:52.900 a version of you in their mind. You are the nice 00:19:52.900 --> 00:19:55.119 guy to one, the jerk to another, the competent 00:19:55.119 --> 00:19:57.579 employee to a third. And because there are 100 00:19:57.579 --> 00:19:59.980 ,000 versions of you floating around, you are 00:19:59.980 --> 00:20:04.440 ultimately no one. There is no solid, immutable 00:20:04.440 --> 00:20:06.440 core. If you stripped away all the reflections, 00:20:06.619 --> 00:20:08.759 all the relationships, all the perceptions, there 00:20:08.759 --> 00:20:11.619 is nothing left but flux. Let's apply this to 00:20:11.619 --> 00:20:13.539 the modern listener. I mean, think about social 00:20:13.539 --> 00:20:15.460 media. You have your LinkedIn profile. That's 00:20:15.460 --> 00:20:17.559 a mask. You have your Instagram, another mask. 00:20:17.779 --> 00:20:19.700 You have the way you talk in a group chat with 00:20:19.700 --> 00:20:22.299 your college friends versus the family WhatsApp 00:20:22.299 --> 00:20:25.519 group. Pirandello is asking, if you deleted all 00:20:25.519 --> 00:20:28.400 those accounts and you sat alone in a dark room, 00:20:28.680 --> 00:20:31.400 who was there? And his answer is terrifying. 00:20:32.420 --> 00:20:35.200 Nobody is there. Or rather, a constantly changing 00:20:35.200 --> 00:20:37.859 stream of consciousness is there, but not a fixed 00:20:37.859 --> 00:20:41.819 self. We are built by the gaze of others. This 00:20:41.819 --> 00:20:44.480 philosophy was forged in the fire of his home 00:20:44.480 --> 00:20:47.119 life. We have to talk about the progression of 00:20:47.119 --> 00:20:49.470 Antonietta's illness. He kept her at home for 00:20:49.470 --> 00:20:53.210 a long time. He did. For over 15 years. He refused 00:20:53.210 --> 00:20:55.130 to institutionalize her. He believed it was his 00:20:55.130 --> 00:20:58.089 duty. But the violence escalated. The paranoia 00:20:58.089 --> 00:21:00.009 became dangerous for the children, especially 00:21:00.009 --> 00:21:02.250 their daughter Lieta, who Antonieta targeted 00:21:02.250 --> 00:21:05.170 aggressively. That's just awful. It was untenable. 00:21:05.269 --> 00:21:08.309 Finally, in 1919, he makes the call. He places 00:21:08.309 --> 00:21:10.549 her in a private clinic. Yes. It was supposed 00:21:10.549 --> 00:21:12.950 to be temporary. He wrote letters saying he hoped 00:21:12.950 --> 00:21:15.670 to bring her back, but she never left. She remained 00:21:15.670 --> 00:21:18.910 there until her death in 1959. long after Pirandello 00:21:18.910 --> 00:21:21.650 himself had died. But this proximity to madness, 00:21:21.829 --> 00:21:23.809 living with it for decades, gave him a unique 00:21:23.809 --> 00:21:26.269 perspective for the stage. In most plays before 00:21:26.269 --> 00:21:29.069 this, a mad character was a plot device. They 00:21:29.069 --> 00:21:31.569 were just crazy. Right, a caricature. But Pirandello 00:21:31.569 --> 00:21:33.809 treats madness differently. How so? He treats 00:21:33.809 --> 00:21:37.089 madness as a valid epistemological stance. Look 00:21:37.089 --> 00:21:40.599 at his play, Henry IV. A man falls off a horse 00:21:40.599 --> 00:21:43.079 during a costume party and hits his head. He 00:21:43.079 --> 00:21:45.220 wakes up believing he is the Holy Roman Emperor, 00:21:45.380 --> 00:21:48.059 Henry IV. He lives in a castle. He makes his 00:21:48.059 --> 00:21:50.920 servants dress up in period clothing. 20 years. 00:21:51.140 --> 00:21:53.400 Right. But the twist is that at a certain point, 00:21:53.420 --> 00:21:56.119 he regains his sanity. He realizes he isn't the 00:21:56.119 --> 00:21:59.400 emperor, but he looks at the sane world, a world 00:21:59.400 --> 00:22:02.420 of treachery, aging and pain. And he decides, 00:22:02.619 --> 00:22:05.599 no, thanks. He chooses to pretend to stay mad. 00:22:05.839 --> 00:22:08.039 Yes. He chooses the mask of the emperor because 00:22:08.039 --> 00:22:10.559 it is stable. It is safe in that role. Time has 00:22:10.559 --> 00:22:13.480 stopped. Nothing can hurt him. So the madman 00:22:13.480 --> 00:22:15.859 is actually the only one making a rational choice 00:22:15.859 --> 00:22:18.079 to control his reality. Precisely. Pirandelle 00:22:18.079 --> 00:22:20.980 is asking who is really crazy. The man who plays 00:22:20.980 --> 00:22:23.700 one role perfectly forever or the same people 00:22:23.700 --> 00:22:26.359 who lie, cheat, wear makeup to hide their age 00:22:26.359 --> 00:22:28.039 and change their opinions every five minutes. 00:22:28.240 --> 00:22:30.640 It's a profound question. And it brings us to 00:22:30.640 --> 00:22:34.029 1921. The year Pirandello decided to break the 00:22:34.029 --> 00:22:35.970 theater. Six characters in search of an author. 00:22:36.170 --> 00:22:39.450 This is the big one. If Mattia Pascal was his 00:22:39.450 --> 00:22:42.529 novelistic breakthrough, six characters was the 00:22:42.529 --> 00:22:45.150 earthquake that shut Western drama. Let's set 00:22:45.150 --> 00:22:47.529 the scene. It's the premiere at the Val Theater 00:22:47.529 --> 00:22:50.210 in Rome. The audience is seated. They're expecting 00:22:50.210 --> 00:22:53.789 a play. And what do they see? Nothing. The curtain 00:22:53.789 --> 00:22:57.309 is up. The stage is bare. There is no set. A 00:22:57.309 --> 00:22:59.690 group of actors walks out in their street rehearsal 00:22:59.690 --> 00:23:02.309 clothes and they start chatting, warming up. 00:23:02.410 --> 00:23:04.470 They're acting like they're about to rehearse 00:23:04.470 --> 00:23:06.829 a Pirandello play. So the audience is already 00:23:06.829 --> 00:23:09.170 confused. Did the show start? Is this a mistake? 00:23:09.509 --> 00:23:11.829 Utter confusion. And then from the back of the 00:23:11.829 --> 00:23:14.369 theater or a side entrance, six figures appear. 00:23:14.609 --> 00:23:17.269 They are dressed in black, looking pale and intense. 00:23:17.710 --> 00:23:20.150 These are the characters. A father, a mother, 00:23:20.230 --> 00:23:22.230 a stepdaughter, a son, and two younger children. 00:23:22.450 --> 00:23:24.869 And their claim is mind -bending. It really is. 00:23:25.069 --> 00:23:27.410 They say, we are characters created by an author 00:23:27.410 --> 00:23:29.630 who imagined us but then decided not to write 00:23:29.630 --> 00:23:32.170 our story. We are unfinished. We need you to 00:23:32.170 --> 00:23:35.490 act out our drama so we can exist. the theater 00:23:35.490 --> 00:23:38.490 thinks they're lunatics. Of course. But the father 00:23:38.490 --> 00:23:41.029 argues brilliantly that characters are more real 00:23:41.029 --> 00:23:44.609 than living people. He says, a character has 00:23:44.609 --> 00:23:47.829 truly a life of his own. He is always somebody. 00:23:48.269 --> 00:23:52.240 But a man. A man may be nobody. Because Hamlet 00:23:52.240 --> 00:23:54.220 is always Hamlet. He never changes. He never 00:23:54.220 --> 00:23:56.259 disappoints you. A human being changes every 00:23:56.259 --> 00:23:58.980 second. Exactly. So the play becomes a battle 00:23:58.980 --> 00:24:00.900 between the characters who want their tragic 00:24:00.900 --> 00:24:03.740 story told with absolute truth and the actors 00:24:03.740 --> 00:24:06.359 who try to perform it but inevitably fake it. 00:24:06.420 --> 00:24:08.660 The stepdaughter screams at the leading lady, 00:24:08.779 --> 00:24:10.700 that's not how I laughed, you're doing it wrong. 00:24:10.900 --> 00:24:13.299 It's metatheater. It's a play about the failure 00:24:13.299 --> 00:24:16.059 of plays to capture reality. But the audience 00:24:16.059 --> 00:24:18.420 at the premiere... They didn't appreciate the 00:24:18.420 --> 00:24:20.660 philosophy. It was pandemonium. It wasn't just 00:24:20.660 --> 00:24:23.059 booze. It was a riot. People were shouting, Manicomio! 00:24:23.220 --> 00:24:26.920 Manicomio! Madhouse! Asylum! They felt insulted. 00:24:27.019 --> 00:24:28.859 They thought Pirandello was mocking them. There 00:24:28.859 --> 00:24:30.960 were fistfights in the stalls. Actual fistfights. 00:24:31.019 --> 00:24:34.160 And I read that Pirandello and his daughter Lieta 00:24:34.160 --> 00:24:37.319 had to escape through a side door to avoid being 00:24:37.319 --> 00:24:39.220 physically attacked. People were throwing coins 00:24:39.220 --> 00:24:42.619 at them. Wow. What a disaster. It was a disaster. 00:24:42.640 --> 00:24:45.500 He went home devastated. But here's the vindication. 00:24:46.240 --> 00:24:48.980 Mere months later, the play opened in Milan. 00:24:49.960 --> 00:24:52.259 And it was a triumph. A total reversal. Then 00:24:52.259 --> 00:24:56.380 London. Then New York. Then Paris. It swept the 00:24:56.380 --> 00:24:59.440 world. Why the turnaround? Why did the rest of 00:24:59.440 --> 00:25:01.500 the world get it when Rome didn't? I think the 00:25:01.500 --> 00:25:04.630 timing was perfect. This is the 1920s, post -World 00:25:04.630 --> 00:25:08.289 War I. The old world had collapsed. The old certainties 00:25:08.289 --> 00:25:10.769 of religion, empire, and logic had been blown 00:25:10.769 --> 00:25:13.069 apart by trench warfare. People were ready for 00:25:13.069 --> 00:25:14.750 it. They were ready for a type of art that said, 00:25:14.849 --> 00:25:17.890 reality is broken, truth is subjective. Pirandello 00:25:17.890 --> 00:25:20.369 gave form to the anxiety of the modern age. Okay, 00:25:20.410 --> 00:25:23.269 so by the mid -1920s, Pirandello is a global 00:25:23.269 --> 00:25:26.450 superstar. He is touring the world. But now we 00:25:26.450 --> 00:25:29.220 have to navigate the minefield. The fascist paradox. 00:25:29.519 --> 00:25:31.480 This is the elephant in the room. And we have 00:25:31.480 --> 00:25:34.180 to be precise here. In 1924, shortly after the 00:25:34.180 --> 00:25:36.400 Mattiotti crisis, which was a political murder 00:25:36.400 --> 00:25:38.460 that nearly brought down Mussolini's government. 00:25:38.700 --> 00:25:41.279 A huge scandal. A huge scandal. Pirandello sends 00:25:41.279 --> 00:25:43.640 a public telegram to Mussolini asking to join 00:25:43.640 --> 00:25:46.359 the National Fascist Party. The timing is baffling. 00:25:46.579 --> 00:25:49.039 Most intellectuals were fleeing the party or 00:25:49.039 --> 00:25:51.940 keeping their heads down. Pirandello, the man 00:25:51.940 --> 00:25:54.740 who questions everything, signs up right when 00:25:54.740 --> 00:25:58.200 the regime is showing its most brutal face. Why? 00:25:58.259 --> 00:26:00.359 I mean, what's the thing? Was it just opportunism? 00:26:00.380 --> 00:26:02.359 He needed money for his theater company, the 00:26:02.359 --> 00:26:04.460 Tetrodarts, right? That is the cynical interpretation. 00:26:04.759 --> 00:26:07.559 And it's partially true. He needed state funding 00:26:07.559 --> 00:26:11.089 to realize his dream of a national theater. Mussolini 00:26:11.089 --> 00:26:13.809 gave him that funding. But I don't think we can 00:26:13.809 --> 00:26:16.369 write it off purely as greed. There is a philosophical 00:26:16.369 --> 00:26:19.589 angle. Remember the chaos and the great disappointment. 00:26:20.289 --> 00:26:23.349 Pirandello despised the weak, corrupt democracy 00:26:23.349 --> 00:26:26.630 of liberal Italy, the system that had failed 00:26:26.630 --> 00:26:29.349 his parents. He might have seen fascism as a 00:26:29.349 --> 00:26:32.109 force of will, a way to impose form on the chaos. 00:26:32.509 --> 00:26:35.910 A strong hand to create order. Perhaps. He once 00:26:35.910 --> 00:26:38.349 said, I am a fascist because I am Italian, as 00:26:38.349 --> 00:26:40.640 if it were the only authentic choice. But at 00:26:40.640 --> 00:26:43.240 the same time, he described himself as apolitical 00:26:43.240 --> 00:26:46.119 and only a man in the world. That's the contradiction. 00:26:46.440 --> 00:26:48.380 He joined the party, but he refused to behave 00:26:48.380 --> 00:26:51.099 like a good party member. Not at all. The fascists 00:26:51.099 --> 00:26:53.700 didn't trust him. The secret police, the OVRA, 00:26:53.859 --> 00:26:56.920 kept a file on him. They spied on his mail. They 00:26:56.920 --> 00:26:59.539 tracked his movements. There's the story about 00:26:59.539 --> 00:27:03.319 the party card. Yes. In 1927, he apparently got 00:27:03.319 --> 00:27:05.440 into an argument with a fascist official about 00:27:05.440 --> 00:27:07.440 the censorship of art or theater management. 00:27:08.059 --> 00:27:10.579 In a rage, he tore his party membership card 00:27:10.579 --> 00:27:13.920 to pieces in front of the official. In 1927, 00:27:14.079 --> 00:27:16.779 Italy, that could get you sent to internal exile 00:27:16.779 --> 00:27:19.380 or worse. He was protected by his international 00:27:19.380 --> 00:27:22.420 fame. Mussolini couldn't just disappear a Nobel 00:27:22.420 --> 00:27:24.799 caliber author. But the relationship was cold. 00:27:25.559 --> 00:27:27.700 Pirandello realized that the fascist order he 00:27:27.700 --> 00:27:30.200 might have hoped for was just another mask, a 00:27:30.200 --> 00:27:32.720 particularly ugly hollow mask. And then we have 00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:34.500 the incident with the Nobel Prize medal. This 00:27:34.500 --> 00:27:37.519 one really confuses people. In 1935, Italy invades 00:27:37.519 --> 00:27:40.240 Ethiopia. The League of Nations imposes sanctions. 00:27:41.000 --> 00:27:43.240 Mussolini asks Italians to donate their gold 00:27:43.240 --> 00:27:45.359 to the state, the gold to the fatherland campaign. 00:27:45.640 --> 00:27:48.160 And Pirandello donates his Nobel medal to be 00:27:48.160 --> 00:27:50.279 melted down. That feels like a full endorsement 00:27:50.279 --> 00:27:52.500 of the war. How do you square that circle? You 00:27:52.500 --> 00:27:54.500 almost can't. It looks like a full endorsement. 00:27:55.339 --> 00:27:57.240 But look at what he was writing at the same time. 00:27:57.339 --> 00:27:58.960 He was working on The Giants of the Mountain. 00:27:59.099 --> 00:28:01.980 In that play, a group of poetic actors is destroyed 00:28:01.980 --> 00:28:04.720 by the servants of the giants. Industrial, powerful 00:28:04.720 --> 00:28:07.140 brutes who care nothing for art. The Giants of 00:28:07.140 --> 00:28:09.519 the Fascists. That is the standard reading. So 00:28:09.519 --> 00:28:12.039 physically, he hands his gold to the regime. 00:28:12.819 --> 00:28:14.700 Artistically, he writes a play about how the 00:28:14.700 --> 00:28:17.660 regime murders art. It is the ultimate dissociation. 00:28:17.799 --> 00:28:21.160 He was living one, no one, and 100 ,000 in his 00:28:21.160 --> 00:28:23.539 own political life. Completely. He was wearing 00:28:23.539 --> 00:28:25.720 the fascist badge, but the man underneath was 00:28:25.720 --> 00:28:28.119 screaming in the opposite direction. It's a tragedy 00:28:28.119 --> 00:28:30.880 in itself. He died before he could resolve it. 00:28:30.960 --> 00:28:34.220 He did. He won the Nobel Prize in 1934. Guglielmo 00:28:34.220 --> 00:28:36.940 Marconi nominated him. The committee cited his 00:28:36.940 --> 00:28:40.259 bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic 00:28:40.259 --> 00:28:44.500 art. But by 1936, he is dying. And his death. 00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:47.900 Even his funeral arrangements were a final act 00:28:47.900 --> 00:28:50.039 of rebellion against the fascists. This is my 00:28:50.039 --> 00:28:51.740 favorite part of his story. It's so perfectly 00:28:51.740 --> 00:28:55.720 him. Mussolini wanted a state funeral. He wanted 00:28:55.720 --> 00:28:59.000 the pomp, the black shirts, the speeches, the 00:28:59.000 --> 00:29:02.460 glory of a fascist hero passing away. And Pirandello 00:29:02.460 --> 00:29:05.680 left a will that said essentially, over my dead 00:29:05.680 --> 00:29:09.099 body. He wrote, and I quote, dead let me not 00:29:09.099 --> 00:29:12.440 be clothed let me be naked as soon as possible 00:29:12.440 --> 00:29:14.839 let a hearse of the lowest class that of the 00:29:14.839 --> 00:29:17.960 poor transport me and let no one accompany me 00:29:17.960 --> 00:29:20.700 neither relatives nor friends the hearse the 00:29:20.700 --> 00:29:23.480 horse the driver and nothing more let me be naked 00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:26.380 After a lifetime of analyzing masks, he wanted 00:29:26.380 --> 00:29:28.859 to leave the world without one. Exactly. No uniform, 00:29:29.059 --> 00:29:32.000 no medal, no suit, just the man. And he requested 00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:34.180 cremation, which was shocking for Catholic Italy. 00:29:34.339 --> 00:29:36.859 He wanted his ashes taken back to Sicily to Kaus. 00:29:37.099 --> 00:29:39.059 But the journey of the ashes is a story in itself. 00:29:39.160 --> 00:29:40.980 It didn't happen right away. No, it was a whole 00:29:40.980 --> 00:29:43.839 saga. Because of the war, the ashes stayed in 00:29:43.839 --> 00:29:47.579 a vase in Rome for years. Finally, in 1947, after 00:29:47.579 --> 00:29:50.160 the war, they were transported to Sicily. But, 00:29:50.279 --> 00:29:52.740 and this is very Pirandellian, the vase was too 00:29:52.740 --> 00:29:54.400 big for... the crate they had you're kidding 00:29:54.400 --> 00:29:57.200 i'm not the american pilot refused to take it 00:29:57.200 --> 00:29:59.559 they had to pour his ashes into a simple cardboard 00:29:59.559 --> 00:30:02.940 box to fly him home a cardboard box after all 00:30:02.940 --> 00:30:05.599 that and then when they got to sicily they transferred 00:30:05.599 --> 00:30:08.700 them into a greek vase but the local bishop refused 00:30:08.700 --> 00:30:12.049 to bless a cremation urn It was a whole bureaucratic 00:30:12.049 --> 00:30:15.250 farce. Finally, they buried the ashes under a 00:30:15.250 --> 00:30:18.009 pine tree near his childhood home. Back to chaos. 00:30:18.150 --> 00:30:20.269 Morphic circle. When we look at his legacy today, 00:30:20.349 --> 00:30:22.529 it's everywhere. You mentioned the theater, the 00:30:22.529 --> 00:30:25.529 absurd earlier. You literally cannot have Samuel 00:30:25.529 --> 00:30:28.490 Beckett without Pirandello. Waiting for Godotu 00:30:28.490 --> 00:30:30.430 guys, waiting for something that never comes, 00:30:30.490 --> 00:30:33.190 debating their existence. That is Pirandello's 00:30:33.190 --> 00:30:36.130 DNA. Harold Pinter, Edward Albee. They all stand 00:30:36.130 --> 00:30:38.470 on his shoulders. The idea of language as a tool 00:30:38.470 --> 00:30:41.559 to hide, not to reveal. The uncertainty of identity. 00:30:41.859 --> 00:30:45.109 That's all him. And Jean -Paul Sartre. The French 00:30:45.109 --> 00:30:47.950 existentialists. Oh, absolutely. Sartre's entire 00:30:47.950 --> 00:30:51.349 concept of bad faith, the idea that we lie to 00:30:51.349 --> 00:30:53.529 ourselves to avoid the terrifying responsibility 00:30:53.529 --> 00:30:57.369 of freedom, is pure Pirandello. When Sartre says, 00:30:57.630 --> 00:31:00.329 hell is other people, he is echoing Pirandello's 00:31:00.329 --> 00:31:02.710 idea that other people are the ones who trap 00:31:02.710 --> 00:31:04.730 us in false identities with their perceptions 00:31:04.730 --> 00:31:07.569 of us. He really was the turning point. He took 00:31:07.569 --> 00:31:10.690 the heavy, dusty furniture of 19th century realism 00:31:10.690 --> 00:31:13.599 and he blew it up. He showed us that the truth 00:31:13.599 --> 00:31:16.500 isn't an object you find. It's a story you tell. 00:31:16.640 --> 00:31:18.500 And usually it's a story you tell to protect 00:31:18.500 --> 00:31:20.920 yourself. So we've covered the chaos of his birth, 00:31:21.039 --> 00:31:23.200 the betrayal of his ideals, the madness of his 00:31:23.200 --> 00:31:25.960 wife, the invention of metatheater, and the paradox 00:31:25.960 --> 00:31:29.119 of his politics. It is a life defined by the 00:31:29.119 --> 00:31:32.079 refusal to accept easy answers. It is the triumph 00:31:32.079 --> 00:31:34.700 of the desperate laugh. He looked into the void, 00:31:34.799 --> 00:31:36.759 saw nothing, and decided to build art out of 00:31:36.759 --> 00:31:38.359 it. I want to leave the listener with a thought 00:31:38.359 --> 00:31:40.380 today. A little homework for the commute or the 00:31:40.380 --> 00:31:45.160 gym. Think about one. No one and 100 ,000. Think 00:31:45.160 --> 00:31:47.440 about the you that exists in your boss's mind. 00:31:47.680 --> 00:31:50.319 The you in your partner's mind. The you in your 00:31:50.319 --> 00:31:52.279 parent's mind. They are all different. They might 00:31:52.279 --> 00:31:54.740 even be contradictory. And the you in your own 00:31:54.740 --> 00:31:57.539 mind changes every time you learn something new 00:31:57.539 --> 00:32:00.180 or forget something old. So the question is, 00:32:00.279 --> 00:32:02.880 if you are a different person to everyone you 00:32:02.880 --> 00:32:04.779 meet and a different person to yourself every 00:32:04.779 --> 00:32:11.009 day, do you actually exist? Or... Are you just 00:32:11.009 --> 00:32:13.009 a collection of reflections in other people's 00:32:13.009 --> 00:32:15.230 eyes? And if you were alone on a desert island 00:32:15.230 --> 00:32:18.150 with no mirrors, would you be anyone at all? 00:32:18.369 --> 00:32:20.990 Deep stuff to chew on. Thanks for diving into 00:32:20.990 --> 00:32:23.210 the chaos with us. A pleasure as always. We'll 00:32:23.210 --> 00:32:24.329 catch you on the next deep dive.