Luigi Pirandello

A hilarious exploration of the relativism of identity from Italian novelist and playwright Luigi Pirandello, winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature. When Vitangelo Moscarda's wife tells him his nose leans slightly to the right, his entire world swings off kilter. Loafing about, suddenly estranged from himself, he accosts friends, strangers, and passersby to look closely and confirm: Am I not the self I thought I was? Wandering from mirror to mirror, Moscarda embarks on a dizzying pursuit to see himself as others see him, to root out the stranger within. Searching endlessly for his true self, Moscarda ricochets through insecurity, reclusiveness, self-detachment, and doubt -- resolving, with icy recognition, that "people roll through their lives like stones, complacent, insensate, and closed," locked in an unknown face. Things quickly escalate from pensive reflection to dramatic confrontations as the protagonist disintegrates. With sharp dialogue and comic brilliance, Pirandello dissolves the fixity of perception, challenging us to question the solidity of our own identities and to consider the ways we are each held captive by the gazes of others.

In an autobiographical letter, the author refers to this work as the "...bitterest of all, profoundly humoristic, about the decomposition of life...." Vitangelo, the protagonist, discovers by way of a completely irrelevant question that his wife poses to him that everyone he knows, and everyone he has ever met, has constructed a Vitangelo persona in their own imagination and that none of these personas corresponds to the image of Vitangelo that he himself has constructed and believes himself to be. The reader is immediately immersed in a cruel game of confusing projections, mirroring the reality of social existence itself, which imperiously dictate their rules. As a result, the first, ironic "awareness" of Vitangelo consists in the knowledge of that which he definitely is not; the preliminary operation must therefore consist in the spiteful destruction of all of these fictitious masks.

Nobel prize-winning Luigi Pirandello's classic novel on the nature of identity brims with sly humor, compelling drama, and skillfully depicted, oddly modern characters-all capped with timeless insight into the fragile human psyche. Luigi Pirandello's extraordinary final novel begins when Vitangelo Moscarda's wife remarks that Vitangelo's nose tilts to the right. This commonplace interaction spurs the novel's unemployed, wealthy narrator to examine himself, the way he perceives others, and the ways that others perceive him. At first he only notices small differences in how he sees himself and how others do; but his self-examination quickly becomes relentless, dizzying, leading to often darkly comic results as Vitangelo decides that he must demolish that version of himself that others see.

VI Volume di Novelle per un anno. Include: IN SILENZIO L'ALTRO FIGLIO LA MORTE ADDOSSO IL GIARDINETTO LASS LA MASCHERA DIMENTICATA LA BALIA IL CORVO DI M ZZARO LA VEGLIA LO SPIRITO MALIGNO ALLA ZAPPA UNA VOCE PENA DI VIVERE COS

Luigi Pirandello was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934 in recognition of his literary career. First published in 1910, The Voyage tells the story of Adriana Braggi, a thirty-five-year-old widow who lives secluded in her Sicilian home until a sudden illness forces her to abandon her gloomy routine to visit a doctor in Palermo. She then embarks on a journey of discovery and reconciliation that fills her days with light.

"Pokijnij Mattia Paskal" - najvidomishij z romaniv laureata Nobelivskoji premiji Lujidzhi Pirandello. Grotesknij golovnij antigeroj romanu, Mattia Paskal, zhive nudnim zhittjam u provintsijnomu mistechku. Za zbigom obstavin jogo ogoloshujut mertvim, i vin otrimuje shans pochati vse spochatku. Mattia perejizhdzhaje, bere sobi nove im'ja ta vede nezvichnij sposib zhittja, ale zgodom vijavljaje, scho jomu tak samo nesterpno, jak i ranishe. Vin zanadto pizno povertajetsja u svit, jakij pokinuv, - jogo roboti nemaje, a druzhina vijshla zamizh vdruge. Dolja Mattia Paskalja - prodovzhuvati zhiti jak privid ljudini, jakoju vin kolis buv.