Strange and eerie, as is everything written by Luigi Pirandello, fabricator of that compelling drama Six Characters in Search of an Author, and of As You Desire Me, which also was put upon the screen, this new culling [The Medals, and Other Stories] from his two hundred short stories is as provocative as all that has gone before. For this winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature is not kin to any other writer of fiction, either in the past or in the present. He belongs to no school; his works, whether short or long, whether plays or stories, cannot be pigeon-holed. Pirandello is neither realist nor romanticist. He defies all labels. He does, however, belong very definitely in a certain category of philosophy, although he writes so disarmingly that the reader is conscious at first only of having been immensely entertained.

Put briefly, Pirandello is an idealist in the strictest academic sense. He outdoes Kant himself. He does not pretend to know, and does not care, whether there is a Dingan-sich, a "Thing-in-itself," as Kant averred. But he does insist, as did the Sage of Koenigsberg, that appearance may be called reality, the test being, is this or that true for the beholder? All that Pirandello would like to discover; all that he wishes to put forth is essential truth. But not in the entire range of literature has any one else, save, perhaps, Cervantes, conveyed essential truth so engagingly, with such unfailing humor.

Including the title-piece, there are nineteen stories, or novella, in this volume. This brings the total in English translation up to something over threescore out of the 200 left behind by the author. One is forced to use the term "short story" for this type of piece; yet the connotation is inaccurate, for the English words suggest much more a "set piece," more of plot, fuller characterization, than is require here.

Take, for example, the title-piece. "The Medals" shows us a fine old gentleman in reduced circumstances who has been masquerading as a Garibaldi veteran when all that he actually did was to follow after a brother who was but 15 years old at the time in order to care for the lad should he be wounded. The boy was killed; and the brother took his medals. After all, we hear the author say, why not? He was offering his life to the cause as truly as was the other. And the upshot of the story is that at the end the Garibaldian Veterans Association, which had discovered that it had been tricked, realizes this—Pirandello's essential truth—and gives the old chap a magnificent burial.

The humor of Pirandello has few counterparts today. In a story called "Sicilian Honor" a peasant is on trial on the charge of having murdered his wife, whom he had found consorting with a lover. He makes a lengthy speech at the termination of which the judge asks him if it is his defense. "No, Your Honor," comes the reply. "It is not my defense. It is the truth. Merely the truth." A Daniel come to judgment, one might say; and not be far wrong. Pirandello is an ironist; yet if his irony is keen, it is seldom, if ever, barbed.

It could not be expected that in so great a list as two hundred titles all pieces could be of equal merit or of equal interest, and the reviewer has an uneasy feeling that the two preceding collections of translations from the novella stack up a trifle better than this one. But the difference is not great, and he, for one, would welcome each and every piece down to the very least.

There is one bit in "The Medals," written only shortly before the author's death. It is a sort of allegory about death; brave, whimsical, not shouting defiance to the universe, yet defiant. This is one of the most beautiful prosepoems on death it has been my lot to encounter.