Editing Luigi Pirandello (section)

==Biography==
===Early life===
[[File:Luigi Pirandello 1884.jpg|thumb|left|150px|Pirandello in 1884.]]

[[File:Luigi Pirandello Baptismal Certificate.jpg|thumb|Luigi Pirandello Baptismal Certificate]]

Pirandello was born into an upper-class family in Girgenti (now [[Agrigento]]), [[Sicily]], near the poor suburb of [[Porto Empedocle]]. His family's surname had originally been the [[Greek language|Greek]] "Pirangelos" ([[Greek language|Greek]]: {{Lang|el|Πυράγγελος}}),<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bates |first=Sylvia Chatfield |url=https://books.google.gr/books?id=IWMqAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA471 |title=Twentieth Century Short Stories |date=1933 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |isbn=978-0-598-68715-9 |pages=471 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Metcalf |first=Lorettus Sutton |url=https://books.google.gr/books?id=i0troD3uTH4C |title=The Forum |last2=Page |first2=Walter Hines |last3=Rice |first3=Joseph Mayer |last4=Cooper |first4=Frederic Taber |last5=Hooley |first5=Arthur |last6=Payne |first6=George Henry |last7=Leach |first7=Henry Goddard |last8=Redmond |first8=D. G. |date=1925 |publisher=Forum Publishing Company |pages=383 |language=en}}</ref> which had been phonetically corrupted.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Hatzantonis |first=Emmanuel |date=1967-12-01 |title=Luigi Pirandello, Kostas Uranis, E La Grecia |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001458586700100411 |journal=Forum Italicum |language=en |volume=1 |issue=4 |pages=336–344 |doi=10.1177/001458586700100411 |issn=0014-5858 |quote=[Pirandello:] Inoltre io stesso sono di origine greca. Sì, sì, non c'è da stupirsi. Il mio nome è Piranghelos. Pirandello ne è la corruzione fonetica...}}</ref> Pirandello was of [[Greeks|Greek]] descent,<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Miller |first=J. William |url=https://books.google.gr/books?id=GfMKAAAAMAAJ |title=Modern Playwrights at Work |date=1968 |publisher=S. French |pages=231 |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Zangrilli |first=Franco |date=1996 |title=Pirandello e il mondo greco |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/20547349?origin=crossref |journal=Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica |language=en |volume=53 |issue=2 |pages=181 |doi=10.2307/20547349}}</ref> as he noted himself in an interview to [[Kostas Ouranis]] in 1934.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" />

The area of his birth was called "Caos", from {{lang|scn|càusi}}, [[Sicilian language|Sicilian]] for "trousers", after the shape of a nearby ravine. His father, Stefano Pirandello, belonged to a wealthy family involved in the [[sulphur]] industry, and his mother, Caterina Ricci Gramitto, was also of a well-to-do background, descending from a family of the bourgeois professional class of Agrigento. Both families, the Pirandellos and the Ricci Gramittos, were ferociously anti-[[House of Bourbon|Bourbon]] and actively participated in the struggle for unification and democracy ({{lang|it|[[Italian unification|Risorgimento]]}}). Stefano participated in the famous [[Expedition of the Thousand]], later following [[Giuseppe Garibaldi|Garibaldi]] all the way to the [[battle of Aspromonte]], and Caterina, who had hardly reached the age of thirteen, was forced to accompany her father to [[Malta]], where he had been sent into exile by the Bourbon [[monarchy]]. But the open participation in the Garibaldian cause and the strong sense of idealism of those early years were quickly transformed, above all in Caterina, into an angry and bitter disappointment with the new reality created by the unification. Pirandello would eventually assimilate this sense of betrayal and resentment and express it in several of his poems and in his novel ''The Old and the Young''. It is also probable that this climate of disillusion inculcated in the young Luigi the sense of disproportion between ideals and reality which is recognizable in his essay on [[humorism]] (''L'Umorismo'').

[[File:Pirandello - L'Umorismo, 1908.djvu|thumb|page=7|''L'Umorismo'', 1908]]

Pirandello received his elementary education at home, but was much more fascinated by the fables and legends, somewhere between popular and magic, that his elderly servant Maria Stella used to recount to him than by anything scholastic or academic. By the age of twelve, he had already written his first tragedy. At the insistence of his father, he was registered at a technical school, but eventually switched to the study of the humanities at the ''[[gymnasium (school)|ginnasio]]'', something which had always attracted him.

In 1880, the Pirandello family moved to [[Palermo]]. It was here, in the capital of Sicily, that Luigi completed his high school education. He also began reading omnivorously, focusing, above all, on 19th-century Italian poets such as [[Giosuè Carducci]] and [[Arturo Graf]]. He then started writing his first poems and fell in love with his cousin Lina.

During this period, the first signs of serious differences arose between Luigi and his father; Luigi had discovered some notes revealing the existence of Stefano's extramarital relations. As a reaction to the ever-increasing distrust and disharmony that Luigi was developing toward his father, a man of a robust physique and crude manners, his attachment to his mother would continue growing to the point of profound veneration. This later expressed itself, after her death, in the moving pages of the novella ''Colloqui con i personaggi'' in 1915.

His romantic feelings for his cousin, [[Cousin marriage|initially looked upon with disfavour]], were suddenly taken very seriously by Lina's family. They demanded that Luigi abandon his studies and dedicate himself to the sulphur business so that he could immediately marry her. In 1886, during a vacation from school, Luigi went to visit the sulphur mines of [[Porto Empedocle]] and started working with his father. This experience was essential to him and would provide the basis for such stories as ''Il Fumo'', ''Ciàula scopre la Luna'' as well as some of the descriptions and background in the novel ''The Old and the Young''. The marriage, which had seemed imminent, was postponed.

Pirandello then registered at the [[University of Palermo]] in the departments of Law and of Letters. The campus at Palermo, and above all the Department of Law, was the centre in those years of the vast movement which would eventually evolve into the [[Fasci Siciliani]]. Although Pirandello was not an active member of this movement, he had close ties of friendship with its leading ideologists: [[Rosario Garibaldi Bosco]], [[Enrico La Loggia]], [[Giuseppe De Felice Giuffrida]] and [[Francesco De Luca]].<ref name=bonghi>{{in lang|it}} [http://www.classicitaliani.it/bonghiG/bonghi_bio_Pirandello.htm Biografia di Luigi Pirandello] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100620131313/http://www.classicitaliani.it/bonghiG/bonghi_bio_Pirandello.htm |date=20 June 2010 }}, Biblioteca dei Classici italiani di Giuseppe Bonghi (Accessed 2 November 2010)</ref>

===Higher education===
In 1887, having definitively chosen the Department of Letters, he moved to [[Rome]] in order to continue his studies. But the encounter with the city, centre of the struggle for unification to which the families of his parents had participated with generous enthusiasm, was disappointing and nothing close to what he had expected. "When I arrived in Rome it was raining hard, it was night time and I felt like my heart was being crushed, but then I laughed like a man in the throes of desperation."<ref name="tititudorancea">{{Cite web|url=https://www.tititudorancea.com/z/luigi_pirandello_41.htm|title=Luigi Pirandello|website=www.tititudorancea.com|access-date=2019-02-04}}</ref>

Pirandello, who was an extremely sensitive moralist, finally had a chance to see for himself the irreducible decadence of the so-called heroes of the [[Risorgimento]] in the person of his uncle Rocco, now a greying and exhausted functionary of the prefecture who provided him with temporary lodgings in Rome. The "desperate laugh", the only manifestation of revenge for the disappointment undergone, inspired the bitter verses of his first collection of poems, ''Mal Giocondo'' (1889). But not all was negative; this first visit to Rome provided him with the opportunity to assiduously visit the many theatres of the capital: Il Nazionale, Il Valle, il Manzoni. "Oh the dramatic theatre! I will conquer it. I cannot enter into one without experiencing a strange sensation, an excitement of the blood through all my veins..." {{citation missing|date=July 2024}}

Because of a conflict with a Latin professor, he was forced to leave the [[Sapienza University of Rome|University of Rome]] and went to [[University of Bonn|Bonn]] with a letter of presentation from one of his other professors. The stay in Bonn, which lasted two years, was fervid with cultural life. He read the German romantics, [[Jean Paul]], [[Ludwig Tieck|Tieck]], [[Chamisso]], [[Heinrich Heine]] and [[Goethe]]. He began translating the ''[[Roman Elegies]]'' of Goethe, composed the ''Elegie Boreali'' in imitation of the style of the ''Roman Elegies'', and he began to meditate on the topic of humorism by way of the works of [[Cecco Angiolieri]].

In March 1891 he received his doctorate in Romance Philology<ref name="collier">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Bergin |first=Thomas G |editor=William D. Halsey |encyclopedia=Collier's Encyclopedia |title=Pirandello, Luigi |year=1976 |publisher=Macmillan Educational Corporation |volume=19 |location=New York |pages=76–78 }}</ref> with a dissertation on the dialect of Agrigento: ''Sounds and Developments of Sounds in the Speech of Craperallis''.

===Marriage===
After a brief sojourn in Sicily, during which the planned marriage with his cousin was finally called off, he returned to Rome, where he became friends with a group of writer-journalists including [[Ugo Fleres]], [[Tomaso Gnoli]], [[Giustino Ferri]] and [[Luigi Capuana]]. Capuana encouraged Pirandello to dedicate himself to [[narrative|narrative writing]]. In 1893 he wrote his first important work, ''Marta Ajala'', which was published in 1901 as ''l'Esclusa''. In 1894 he published his first collection of short stories, ''Amori senza Amore''. He also married in 1894, choosing (on his father's suggestion) a shy, withdrawn girl of a good family of Agrigentine origin educated by the nuns of San Vincenzo: Maria Antonietta Portulano.

The first years of matrimony brought on in him a new fervour for his studies and writings: his encounters with his friends and the discussions on art continued, more vivacious and stimulating than ever, while his family life, despite the complete incomprehension of his wife with respect to the artistic vocation of her husband,<ref name="tititudorancea" /> proceeded relatively tranquilly with the birth of two sons ([[Stefano Pirandello|Stefano]] and Fausto) and a daughter (Rosalia "Lietta"). In the meantime, Pirandello intensified his collaborations with newspaper editors and other journalists in magazines such as ''La Critica'' and ''[[La Tavola Rotonda]]'' in which he published, in 1895, the first part of the ''Dialoghi tra Il Gran Me e Il Piccolo Me''.

In 1897 he accepted an offer to teach Italian at the Istituto Superiore di Magistero di Roma, and in the magazine ''[[Il Marzocco]]'' he published several more pages of the ''Dialogi''. In 1898, with Italo Falbo and Ugo Fleres, he founded the weekly ''Ariel'', in which he published the one-act play ''L'Epilogo'' (later changed to ''La Morsa'') and some novellas (La Scelta, Se...). The end of the 19th century and the beginnings of the 20th were a period of extreme productivity for Pirandello. In 1900, he published in ''Il Marzocco'' some of the most celebrated of his novellas (''Lumie di Sicilia'', ''La Paura del Sonno''...) and, in 1901, the collection of poems ''Zampogna''. In 1902 he published the first series of ''Beffe della Morte e della Vita'' and his second novel, ''Il Turno''.

===Family disaster===
The year 1903 was fundamental to the life of Pirandello. The flooding of the sulphur mines of [[Aragona]], in which his father Stefano had invested not only an enormous amount of his own capital but also Antonietta's [[dowry]], precipitated the financial collapse of the family. Antonietta, after opening and reading the letter announcing the catastrophe, entered into a state of semi-[[catatonia]] and underwent such a psychological shock that her mental balance remained profoundly and irremediably shaken.

Pirandello, who had initially harboured thoughts of suicide, attempted to remedy the situation as best he could by increasing the number of his lessons in both Italian and German and asking for compensation from the magazines to which he had freely given away his writings and collaborations. In the magazine ''New Anthology'', directed by G. Cena, meanwhile, the novel which Pirandello had been writing while in this horrible situation (watching over his mentally ill wife at night after an entire day spent at work) began appearing in episodes. The title was ''Il Fu Mattia Pascal'' (''The Late Mattia Pascal''). This novel contains many autobiographical elements that have been fantastically re-elaborated. It was an immediate and resounding success. Translated into German in 1905, this novel paved the way to the notoriety and fame which allowed Pirandello to publish with the more important firms such as Treves, with whom he published, in 1906, another collection of novellas ''Erma Bifronte''. In 1908 he published a volume of essays entitled ''Arte e Scienza'' and the important essay ''L'Umorismo'', in which he initiated the legendary debate with [[Benedetto Croce]] that would continue with increasing bitterness and venom on both sides for many years.

In 1905 he took his wife to stay in [[Chianciano Terme]] together with their children where they stayed for two months in what the writer described as "the village nestled on the windy hill just opposite the [[Collegiata di San Giovanni Battista (Chianciano Terme)|Collegiata]]".<ref>{{cite book| title = Pirandello tells Chianciano | author = Luigi Pagnotta | publisher = Edizioni il pavone | year = 2009}}</ref> Two short stories contained in the book ''[[Short Stories for a Year]]'' are set in this town: "[[Bitter Water]]" and "[[Pallino and Mimì]]".

In 1909 the first part of ''I Vecchi e I Giovani'' was published in episodes. This novel retraces the history of the failure and repression of the [[Fasci Siciliani]] in the period from 1893 to 1894. When the novel came out in 1913 Pirandello sent a copy of it to his parents for their fiftieth wedding anniversary along with a dedication which said that "their names, Stefano and Caterina, live heroically." However, while the mother is transfigured in the novel into the otherworldly figure of Caterina Laurentano, the father, represented by the husband of Caterina, Stefano Auriti, appears only in memories and flashbacks, since, as was observed by [[Leonardo Sciascia]], "he died censured in a Freudian sense by his son who, in the bottom of his soul, is his enemy." Also in 1909, Pirandello began his collaboration with the prestigious journal ''Corriere della Sera'' in which he published the novellas ''Mondo di Carta'' (''World of Paper''), ''La Giara'', and, in 1910, ''Non è una cosa seria'' and ''Pensaci, Giacomino!'' (''Think it over, Giacomino!''). At this point Pirandello's fame as a writer was continually increasing. His private life, however, was poisoned by the suspicion and obsessive jealousy of Antonietta who began turning physically violent.

In 1911, while the publication of novellas and short stories continued, Pirandello finished his fourth novel, ''Suo Marito'', republished posthumously (1941), and completely revised in the first four chapters, with the title ''Giustino Roncella nato Boggiòlo''. During his life the author never republished this novel for reasons of discretion (within are implicit references to the writer [[Grazia Deledda]]). But the work which absorbed most of his energies at this time was the collection of stories ''La vendetta del cane'', ''Quando s'è capito il giuoco'', ''Il treno ha fischiato'', ''Filo d'aria'' and ''Berecche e la guerra''. They were all published from 1913 to 1914 and are all now considered classics of Italian literature.

===First World War===
As Italy entered the [[World War I|First World War]], Pirandello's son [[Stefano Pirandello|Stefano]] volunteered for service and was taken prisoner by the [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarians]]. In 1916 the actor [[Angelo Musco (actor)|Angelo Musco]] successfully recited the three-act comedy that the writer had extracted from the novella ''Pensaci, Giacomino!'' and the ''pastoral'' comedy ''[[Liolà]]''.

In 1917 the collection of novellas ''E domani Lunedì'' (''And Tomorrow, Monday...'') was published, but the year was mostly marked by important theatrical representations: ''Così è (se vi pare)'' (''Right you are (if you think so)''), ''A birrita cu' i ciancianeddi'' and ''Il Piacere dell'onestà'' (''The Pleasure Of Honesty''). A year later, ''Ma non è una cosa seria'' (''But It's Nothing Serious'') and ''[[Il Gioco delle Parti]]'' (''The Game of Roles'') were all produced on stage. Pirandello's son Stefano returned home when the war ended.

[[File:Giardino Inglese, Palermo, Sicily, Italy (9456337857).jpg|thumb|Bust of Pirandello in the [[Giardino Inglese (Palermo)|Giardino Inglese]] park in Palermo]]

In 1919 Pirandello had his wife placed in an asylum.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Rcpl2lEU9gYC&q=In+1919+Pirandello+had+his+wife+placed+in+an+asylum.&pg=PA21|title=Pirandello and Film|last=Nichols|first=Nina daVinci|date=1995-01-01|publisher=U of Nebraska Press|isbn=0803233361|language=en}}</ref> The separation from his wife, despite her morbid jealousies and hallucinations, caused great suffering for Pirandello who, even as late as 1924, believed he could still properly care for her at home. She never left the asylum.

1920 was the year of comedies such as ''Tutto per bene'', ''Come prima meglio di prima'', and ''La Signora Morli''. In 1921, the ''Compagnia di [[Dario Niccodemi]]'' staged, at the Valle di Roma, the play, ''Sei Personaggi in Cerca d'Autore'', ''[[Six Characters in Search of an Author]]''. It was a clamorous failure. The public divided into supporters and adversaries, the latter of whom shouted, "Asylum, Asylum!" The author, who was present at the performance with his daughter Lietta, left through a side exit to avoid the crowd of enemies. The same drama, however, was a great success when presented in [[Milan]]. In 1922 in Milan, ''Enrico IV'' was performed for the first time and was acclaimed universally as a success. Pirandello's international reputation was developing as well. The ''Sei personaggi'' was performed in London and New York.

===Italy under the Fascists===

Pirandello was an [[Italian nationalist]] and supported [[Italian fascism]] in a moderate way. In 1924, he wrote a letter to [[Benito Mussolini]] asking him to be accepted as a member of the [[National Fascist Party]]. In 1925 Pirandello, with the help of Mussolini, assumed the artistic direction and ownership of the [[Teatro d'Arte di Roma]], founded by the Gruppo degli Undici. He described himself as "a Fascist because I am Italian." For his devotion to Mussolini, the satirical magazine ''[[Il Becco Giallo]]'' used to call him ''P. Randello'' (''randello'' in Italian means [[Club (weapon)|cudgel]]).<ref name="Chiesa1990p38">Chiesa, Adolfo (1990) [https://books.google.com/books?id=lnjqAAAAMAAJ ''La satira politica in Italia: con un'intervista a Tullio Pericoli''], p.38</ref>

He expressed publicly apolitical belief, saying "I'm apolitical, I'm only a man in the world."<ref>Giudice, p. 422.</ref> During these years, he had continuous conflicts with fascist leaders. In 1927 he tore his fascist membership card to pieces in front of the startled secretary-general of the Fascist Party.<ref>Giudice, p. 413.</ref> For the remainder of his life, Pirandello was always under close surveillance by the secret fascist police [[OVRA]].<ref>[http://www.storiain.net/arret/num108/artic1.asp ''L'Ovra a Cinecittà'' di Natalia ed Emanuele V. Marino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2005] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090210010507/http://www.storiain.net/arret/num108/artic1.asp |date=10 February 2009}}</ref>

His play, ''I Giganti della Montagna'' (''The Giants of the Mountain''), has been interpreted as evidence of his realization that the fascists were hostile to culture; yet, during a later appearance in New York, Pirandello distributed a statement announcing his support of Italy's annexation of [[Ethiopia|Abyssinia]]. He then gave his Nobel Prize medal to the Fascist government to be melted down as part of the 1935 [[Oro alla Patria]] (''Gold to the Fatherland'') campaign during the [[Second Italo-Ethiopian War]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=WINEGARTEN|first=RENEE|date=1994|title=The Nobel Prize for Literature|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41212206|journal=The American Scholar|volume=63|issue=1|pages=63–75|jstor=41212206 |issn=0003-0937}}</ref>

Pirandello's conception of the theatre underwent a significant change at this point. The idea of the actor as an inevitable betrayer of the text, as in the ''Sei Personaggi'', gave way to the identification of the actor with the character that they play. The company took their act throughout the major cities of Europe, and the Pirandellian repertoire became increasingly well known. Between 1925 and 1926 Pirandello's last and perhaps greatest novel, ''[[One, No One and One Hundred Thousand|Uno, Nessuno e Centomila]]'' (''One, No one and One Hundred Thousand''), was published serially in the magazine ''[[La Fiera Letteraria]]''. He was one of the contributors of the nationalist women's magazine, ''[[Lidel (magazine)|Lidel]]'',<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Paulicelli |first1=Eugenia |title=Fashion, the Politics of Style and National Identity in Pre–Fascist and Fascist Italy |journal=Gender & History |date=November 2002 |volume=14 |issue=3 |pages=537–559 |doi=10.1111/1468-0424.00281 |s2cid=144286579 }}</ref> and the Fascist daily ''[[Il Tevere]]''.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Michaelis |first1=Meir |title=Mussolini's unofficial mouthpiece: Telesio Interlandi - Il Tevere and the evolution of Mussolini's anti-Semitism |journal=Journal of Modern Italian Studies |date=September 1998 |volume=3 |issue=3 |pages=217–240 |doi=10.1080/13545719808454979 }}</ref>