Editing Luigi Pirandello (section)

===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>