Luigi Pirandello

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), Italian writer, who is considered the most important Italian dramatist of the period between World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945). He won the 1934 Nobel Prize in literature.

Pirandello was born in Agrigento, Sicily, and educated at the Universities of Rome and Bonn. He taught Italian literature at the Normal College for Women in Rome from 1897 to 1921, when his growing reputation as a writer enabled him to devote himself entirely to a literary career. Pirandello became internationally known in 1921 through his play Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore (1921; Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1922), about six fictional characters who appear on stage, unfinished by their creator yet desiring to be real.

Pirandello's writings deal mainly with people of the lower middle class and are concerned with philosophical ideas such as the human conflict between instinct and reason, which often leads to an existence full of inconsistencies. Pirandello also asserts that specific actions are not right or wrong in themselves, but only in the way that humans regard them, and that an individual has not one definite personality but many, depending on how that person appears to the people with whom he or she comes in contact. Without faith in any fixed standards of ethics, morality, politics, or religion, characters in Pirandello's tales and plays find reality only in themselves, and then discover that they themselves are unstable and inexplicable beings.

Pirandello expressed in humorous terms his deep pessimism and his pity for the confusion and suffering of the human condition. The humor is, however, grim and disturbing, and it explores the embarrassing and sometimes painful recognition of the absurdities of human existence. Pirandello was also an important innovator in stage technique, avoiding the limitations of realism by using elements of fantasy to create the effect he wanted.

Pirandello's other plays include Il piacere dell’onestà (1917; The Pleasures of Honesty, 1923), Così è (se vi pare) (1917; Right You Are If You Think So, 1922), Enrico IV (1922; Henry IV, 1922), and Come tu mi vuoi (1930, As You Desire Me, 1931). He also wrote the novel L’esclusa (1901, The Outcast, 1925) and the short-story collection Pensaci, Giacomino (1933; Better Think Twice About It, 1935).