[An educator and critic who specialized in the Romance languages, Starkie is best known for his tales of gypsy life, drawn from his own experiences living among them in Europe. In the following excerpt, he provides an overview of Pirandello's short fiction.]

[In the early stage of his literary career, Pirandello could have been classified] as a regional writer interpreting and expressing the customs and mode of life of the inhabitants of his native Sicily. But Pirandello was not fated to continue treading the path of Verga or even Capuana. He soon turned away from describing the folk and its primitive passions, and began to examine morbid psychological problems such as present themselves in the crowded lives of our soul-tormented twentieth century. The rural communities of Sicily with their simple village life did not give Pirandello the opportunity which he ceaselessly demands, of expressing his own torturing doubts and fears; he was not satisfied, as Verga was, with the objective description of character. Pirandello regards each of his characters as a symbol ready to express the distracting ideas that agitate his mentality. He seems perpetually to ask the question, "What is character? Does it exist?" When he looks at an individual he sees him in duple, triple or quadruple, and so he tells us that character, as writers have considered it up to this, is a pure illusion. In reality every man bears within himself two, three, four men, each of which, at a given time, dominates the others and determines an act. Pirandello in many of his stories shows the multiplicity of the individual and how unjust it is to judge a man only from the point of view of one out of his many personalities. And this idea of the multiplicity of the individual does not appeal to Pirandello as an abstract philosophical problem: it is an agonizing obsession which tortures him so unceasingly that each little story, each play, becomes a piece of self-expression undertaken in order to give relief to himself. No writer has ever been so obsessed by this problem as Pirandello, and it is the sense of inner conflict which causes these works to produce such a vivid impression on readers. It is absurd to see in Pirandello the philosopher whose works must be considered manuals for the student. Nothing could be farther from the truth: he might well say to the public who have listened to his plays what a famous actress once said of her enthusiastic audience: "They do well to applaud me, for I have given them my life." In his descriptions of morbid soul-torture Pirandello has given us his life and exposed every corner of his complex personality. If we look on his work in this light, we shall not disturb ourselves at the manifold contradictions that arise in every manifestation of his genius. So far from ascending to the higher ether of philosophical speculation, the Pirandellian threads his weary way through inextricable maze and chaos. He is driven this way and that by his notions of reality and illusion, and yet in the depths of his mind he believes positively in Life. . . .

How different Pirandello is to the great masters of creative art! We imagine Beethoven in the act of writing the Fifth Symphony or Wagner writing the drama of Tristan and Isolde—both of them entirely absorbed by their subject. It never comes into their mind to doubt the reality of their idea, for it is at the moment the one reality of their life, and their problem is how they may attain complete self-expression. Look, on the other hand, at Pirandello: as soon as his imaginative brain seizes an idea and he begins to revel in its fantasy, then there appears that malicious little imp who follows him like his shadow, breathing the chill breath of doubt, and thus most of the fantasy withers as beneath a shrivelling frost. Francesco Flora in his study [Dal Romanticismo al Futurismo, 1925] states the case: "Pirandello constructs men from one set idea. After having constructed them, he does his best to make them live. He distributes abroad false syllogisms dressed up as men. All the characters of Pirandello theorize on their own life: they are pseudo-philosophers, every man and woman of them.". . .

[Let] us examine some examples from his great output of short stories of novelle, as they are traditionally called in Italy. Italy is the country par excellence for the short story, and from Boccaccio to Pirandello, Italian authors have always known how to adapt their inspiration to this most difficult form of literature. English writers have never been able to make a complete success of the short-story form. The neatness of finish, the lightness of touch, the vivid style, seem far truer to the genius of Latin peoples, whose qualities are of the spontaneous kind. Northern nations produce novel writers in abundance, because in the North men brood over their sorrows and there is calculation even in their joy. Just as their lives in sunless climes are governed by will-power, so their literature is above all things an expression of their inner thoughts, an analysis of their passions. In the South, where the sun shines and where men's passions rise high, happiness, as Nietzsche once said, is short, sudden and without reprieve. There is less calculation and analysis, and more spontaneity. There is less sustained effort, but more frequent flashes of inspiration. This is especially true of Pirandello. In his longer novels there are many prolix passages which fatigue even the most hardened Pirandellian. In his short stories, on the other hand, Pirandello is rarely prolix, and he has a variety of methods of treatment worthy of Guy de Maupassant. But it is only the outer technique that resembles the Parisian writer: whereas Maupassant the malicious and sarcastic novelist deserves, according to Croce, the name of ingenuous poet, Pirandello must not be considered thus. The adjective "ingenuous" is the antithesis to his selfconscious art. Maupassant suffers and rejoices with his characters—he is all sensibility. Pirandello rarely shows any pity openly. The pity we feel for his characters is derived from our sense of pain at the heartlessness of the author. Both authors are profoundly pessimistic and a-religious. God is absent from both, and we have a sense of desolation and sadness. Guy de Maupassant watches the sad destiny of humanity with pity and with composed serenity; Pirandello is never serene, because he suffers ceaselessly in himself. He is more egotistical than Maupassant and thinks for ever of his own woes, not of those of his characters. Every short story of Pirandello is, as it were, a myth in the Platonic sense, to explain his subjective philosophy. And this philosophy is the philosophy of the individual, because Pirandello, like most of the moderns, would deny that there is a real world of things and persons, existing by itself outside the spirit which knows it. Like Maupassant, Pirandello would refuse to be called a realist, saying that "the great artists are those who display to other men their illusion," but he would go farther in his statement. For him the world is only a dream, a mirage, a phenomenon, an image created by our spirit. There are no such things as fixed characters, for life is ever changing, ever ebbing and flowing. Thus we find it very difficult to seize hold of these characters: they often resemble those modernist pictures wherein the painter has tried to paint the subjects in motion. It is for this reason that Pirandello is a symbol of all our present age: his fantastic stories are symbols of the struggle that goes on ceaselessly in all the minds of modern men. There is no dolorous serenity in his work, because the mind of to-day cannot rest: there are few men of flesh and bone in his novels, because flesh and bone are of no account. The world of Pirandello resembles that of Lucretius: shimmering myriads of atoms that combine by chance with one another and produce now a tree, now a man, now a beast—all according to the rules of chance.

Pirandello has been unceasing in his production of short stories ever since the first years of the present century. In these stories we can see his evolution as an artist. In the earlier collections, such as Quand'ero matto (1902), Bianche e Nere (1904), Erma Bifronte (1906), La Vita Nuda and Terzetti, many of these stories are . . . Sicilian. They are in many cases simple and unaffected in style and purged of rhetoric, as if he had attempted to cultivate the short rhythmic style of Maupassant. Gradually then we notice a tendency to prolixity and rhetoric—towards dialogue which announced the future dramatist. In many of the later volumes of stories, such as Berecche e la guerra (1919) and Il carnevale dei Morti (1919), the story is the merest excuse for long pieces of tortuous sophistry. The early editions of the Pirandellian novelle are difficult to obtain, and it is very fortunate that Bemporad the Florentine publisher undertook the task of issuing a complete collection under the title of Novelle per un anno, or Stories for Every Day in the Year.

First of all let us consider some stories in the earlier editions which might seem to reappear again and again with slight variations through the author's entire production. One of his favourite plots for his short stories is to show how "the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley." In "La Vita Nuda" ("Life in its Nakedness"), a story which has given its name to a volume, a young girl whose fiancé on the eve of the wedding has died suddenly, visits a sculptor to order a memorial in honour of the dead man. Stricken with grief, her one thought is to symbolize eternally her sorrows by representing Life in the form of a young girl resigning herself to the embraces of Death, represented as a skeleton holding out the bridal ring. At first, under the influence of sorrow, the lady insists, contrary to the wishes of the sculptor, that the figure of Life should be clothed, but later on, when she falls in love with the sculptor's friend and her recollection of the dead finacé has begun to fade, she insists that Life should be shown in its symbolic nakedness resisting the contact of Death.

On other occasions Pirandello takes the opposite course, and makes his characters lament over the past that will never return. In "Prima Notte" (from the first volume of Novelle per un Anno), he describes the marriage between Lisi Chirico and Marastella, village folk of Sicily. Lisi was a widower, and Marastella had been in love with a youth who perished in a shipwreck. The bridal couple spend their first night in the graveyard; she weeps over the tomb of her lost love, he calls on his dead wife by name: "The moon gazed from heaven down on the little graveyard in the uplands. She alone on that fragrant April night saw these two black shadows on the yellow little path near two tombs. Don Lisi, bending over the grave of his first wife, sobbed: 'Nunzia, Nunzia, do you hear me?'"

Such a story, in spite of the morbid and rather unnatural thesis it develops, is a good illustration of Pirandello's power. More than most modern authors he is able to convey to his readers a haunting sensation of sadness that does not leave us even when we have laid aside the book. Lisi Chirico and Marastella are not normal human beings: they are too neurotic, too highly strung for country folk; but so subtly does the author paint the background that they stand out in bold relief. And this skill of the author in drawing his background does not appear by direct touches, after the manner of a Thomas Hardy. Except for the last few lines which we have quoted there is no pictorial description. We infer the setting of the story from the dialogue bandied about by the characters. Pirandello's skill in producing the atmosphere he requires for his story or drama recalls the methods adopted by Jacinto Benavente, another master of the indirect description. As in the case of Benavente, too, if we probe deeply the mind of our Pirandello, we reach sentimentality—a modern sentimentality which hides away from the light of day and erects a structure of irony and cynicism as a barrier to protect its sensitiveness. The last story we treated showed traces of the sentimental, but perhaps the most characteristic example occurs in the story, "Il lume dell' altra casa," from the collection Terzetti. Tullio Butti, the hero, like eighty per cent of the Pirandello heroes, is a queer, grotesque fellow. It is a good thing that the world of Pirandello is the stuff of dreams: what a miserable place real life would be if all men were like Mattia Pascal or Tullio Butti! Tullio Butti seemed to have a feeling of rancour against life. Nobody was ever able to make him take any interest in anything or relax his sullen, introspective gaze. Even his talkative landlady and her daughter were unable to humanize him. From the window of his room Tullio could see into the house at the opposite side of the street. In the evening, looking out at the windows of the house, he saw a family sitting round the dinner-table, and at the head sat the father and mother. The children were waiting in eager impatience for their food to be served. All were laughing gaily, and the mother and father laughed too. Every evening Tullio sat in darkness and gazed at the lighted window opposite, and it became his one joy in life. But the inquisitive daughter of his landlady, noticing that he used to remain hours in his room without a light, did a very excusable thing under the circumstances: she looked through the keyhole and saw Tullio standing gazing at the lit-up window. And forthwith she rushed off in hot haste to her mother to relate that he was in love with Margherita Masci, the lady opposite. Soon afterwards Tullio saw with surprise his own landlady enter the room opposite when the husband was not there and talk to the lady. The same evening, as a result of that conversation, the lady came to the window and whispered across to him good night. From that day onwards Tullio did not wait eagerly in his room for the illumination of the window opposite: nay, he waited impatiently until that light should be extinguished. With terrible suddenness the passion of love raged in the heart of that man who had been for so long a stranger to life. He left his lodgings, and on the same day as he left, the tidings came that the lady opposite had abandoned her husband and three children. Tullio's room remained empty for some months, but one evening he returned bringing the lady with him. She begged for leave to stand at the window and look across at the other house, where sat the sad father surrounded by the three downcast children. In this tale there is a warmth of sentiment that is lacking in many of the stories, but even here there is the sting characteristic of Pirandello. The tragedy arises, as usual, from the meddling curiosity and gossip of people who are not concerned. It is the talkative landlady who lights the fatal fuse. The moral is the same as in countless modern plays where evil gossip breaks up the peace of families.

The same tender sadness appears in "La Camera in Attesa" (contained in the collection E Domani Lunedi). Three sisters and their widowed mother have been awaiting for some years the return of the brother and son, Cesarino, who went off to Tripoli on a military campaign. For fourteen months they have had no news of him, and as a result of repeated inquiry it has been ascertained that Cesarino has not been found among the dead or the wounded or the prisoners. Ever awaiting his return, the four women have kept his room ready for him. Every morning the water in the bottle is changed, the bed is remade, the nightshirt is unfolded, and once a week the old clock is wound up again. Everything is in order for his coming. Nothing shows the time that has elapsed except perhaps the candle, which in weary waiting has grown yellow, for the sisters do not change it as they do the water in the bottle. At first all the neighbours were greatly moved by this case, but little by little their pity cooled and changed to irritation, even in some a certain sense of indignation for what they called play-acting. But the neighbours forget that life only consists in the reality that we give to it. Thus the life that Cesarino continues to have for his mother and sisters may be sufficient for them, owing to the reality of the acts they perform for him here in the room which awaits him, just as it was when he left. The reality of Cesarino's existence remains unalterable in this room of his and in the heart and mind of his mother and sisters, who outside this reality have no other. Time is fixed immutable were it not for Claretta, the betrothed of Cesarino. The thought of her makes the four women note the passing time. In the first days she used to visit them daily, but gradually, as time dragged on, her visits became rarer. The old mother, who counts the days that elapse between each visit, is surprised that whereas the departure of Cesarino seems only yesterday, so much time passes for Claretta. The culminating point of the tragedy arrives when the news is brought that Claretta is getting married. The mother lies dying; the three daughters look at her with sad envy. She will soon be able to go and see if he is over there; she will be relieved of the anxiety of that long wait: she will reach certainty, but she will not be able to return and tell them. The mother, though she knows for certain that she will find her Cesarino over there, feels a great pity for her daughters, who will remain alone and have such need to believe that he is still alive and will return soon. And thus with her last breath she whispers to them: "You will tell him that I have waited so long." And on that night in the silent house the room is left untouched, the water is not changed, the date on the calendar marks the previous day. "The illusion of life in that room has ceased for one day and it seems for ever." Only the clock continues to speak of time in that endless waiting.

Again and again the same theme recurs in the novelle in different forms. "What makes life is the reality which you give to it." Thus the life that Cesarino Mochi's mother and his three sisters live in that room of his is sufficient for them. If you have not seen your son for some years, he will seem different to you when he returns. Not so Cesarino; his reality remains unchangeable there in his room that is set in expectation of his coming. In the concluding story of the ninth volume of Novelle per un Anno, entitled "I Pensionati della Memoria" ("The Pensioners of Memory"), Pirandello treats the same idea, but takes it up where the former story left off. Supposing even that the mother and sisters had been present at the death of Cesarino and had watched his coffin being lowered into the grave, would they not feel that he had departed for ever, never to return? But no, gentlemen, Pirandello tells us that Cesarino's mother and sisters and many of us would find that the dead man comes back behind us to our homes after the funeral. He pretends to be dead within his coffin, but, as far as all of us are concerned, he is not dead. He is here with me just as much as you are, except that he is disillusioned. "His reality has vanished, but which one? Was it the reality that he gave to himself? What could I know of his reality—what do you know about it? I know what I gave to him from my own point of view. His illusion is mine." And yet those people, though I know that they are dead, come back with me to my house. They have not got a reality of their own, mark you; they cannot go where they please, for reality never exists by itself. Their reality now depends on me, and so they must perforce come with me: they are the poor pensioners of my memory. Most people, when friends or relations die, weep for them and remember this or that trait in their character which makes the feeling of bereavement seem greater. But all this feeling of bereavement, this sorrow, is for a reality which they believe to have vanished with the deceased.

They have never reflected on the meaning of this reality. Everything for them consists in the existence or in the non-existence of a body. It would be quite enough consolation for these people if we made them believe that the deceased is here no more in bodily form, not because his body is buried in the earth, but because he has gone off on a journey and one day he will return from that journey. This will be their consolation. The real reason why we all weep over our dead friend is because he cannot make his presence a reality to us. His eyes are closed, his hands are stiff and cold: he does not hear or perceive us, and it is this insensibility that plunges us in sorrow. Owing to his death our one comfort has departed—the reciprocity of illusion. If he had only gone off on a journey, we could live on in hope like Cesarino's sisters, saying to ourselves: "He thinks of me over there and thus I live for him."

In the stories we have considered there are traces of a kindlier Pirandello. Sometimes he produces a deep emotional effect on his reader when he ceases to try to solve a problem or work out a knotted intrigue. In "Il Ventaglino" ("The Little Fan" in Novelle per un Anno, Vol. I) we see a little scene in a public park in Rome on a hot and dusty afternoon in August. So subtle is the author's method of description in this story that we visualize the scene. The park is dusty and the yellow houses nearby are forlorn and desolate; men are slumbering in the sultry atmosphere. On one seat a thin little old man with a yellow handkerchief on his head is reading a paper; nearby a workman out of work sleeps with his head leaning on his arms. On the other side an old woman listens to the sad tale of a woman nearby, and then departs after giving her a piece of bread. Then there is a red-haired girl who walks up and down impatiently: she is evidently waiting for somebody. All these people Pirandello describes for us impressionistically. Amongst them appears poor Tuta with her baby in her arms. Tuta is alone in the world with her baby. She has but a penny in her pocket and the child is famished. "Not a single person would believe that she was in such hopeless want. She could hardly believe it herself. But it had come to that. She had entered that park to find a shady spot and had loitered there for the past two hours: she could remain on until evening, but then . . . where was she to spend the night with that child in arms? And next day? And the day after that? . . . Ah, Nino, there is nothing for it but the river for both of us." Then Tuta watches mechanically the people crowding into the park in the cool of the evening: children skipping, nurses carrying babies, governesses, soldiers in uniform. Something seemed to change her line of thought. She looked up at the people and smiled. She unbuttoned the neck of her coat and uncovered a little of her white neck. Just then an old man passed by selling paper fans. With her last penny she bought one. Then "opening still more of her blouse and starting to fan slowly her uncovered breast she laughed and began to look invitingly and provokingly at the soldiers who were passing by."

Such a story shows us Pirandello at his best, because in it he avoids any criticism of his characters. He limits himself to exposing objectively the results of his observations. In the majority of the stories the author tries to justify himself, and he insists on criticizing and interpreting his characters to us. In such exquisite stories as "Il Lume dell' Altra Casa," "La Camera in Attesa" or "Il Ventaglino," the characters and the atmosphere they create round themselves tell us all the inferences to be drawn. Pirandello tells us more about his characters than any preceding novelist: he allows them to blurt out all the thoughts that are passing through their minds. One of the reasons why nearly all his characters are abnormal is because he will not content himself with exposing their exterior, obvious personality, but tries to reach even their subconscious thoughts and actions. Pirandello never stops short at the objective observation of character: irresistibly he is driven on to interpret and comment critically upon the children of his imagination. And this critical and interpretative attitude of mind often chills the inspiration and kills the character. When Pirandello the critic and dilettante metaphysician appears on the scene, Poetry in fright takes to her heels and flees away. . . . [The] whole basis of Futurism consists in pitiless criticism of the past. The Futurists believe that "Passéisme" (one of Marinetti's coined words) is synonymous with all that is evil, because its devotees in their thought and art are incapable of understanding the essence of modern life. It is therefore not surprising that Pirandello's works should be full of the close reasoning and criticism of the modern mind, especially as he himself is a vacillating Futurist—one who belongs to the older generation and yet has found a place at the table of the present-day youths.

Sometimes Pirandello's stories are feasts of dialectic and there is no attempt at weaving a story. They are, as it were, dialogues between the author and himself about metaphysical problems, and no abnormality is too exaggerated to illustrate his point. We find a woman of forty years of age who allowed herself to be seduced by a peasant youth of nineteen and became enceinte. Then after marrying him to calm the scandal, she commits suicide rather than allow him to possess her again ["Scialle Nero" in Novelle per un Anno, Vol. I]. In another story ["Canta L'Epistola" in Novelle per un Anno, Vol. III] a youth who is in Holy Orders loses his faith and goes back to his country village, to become the butt for the ridicule of all. But he sees the folly of everything and minds not their jeering insults. His sensitive mind becomes pantheistic and turns to all the manifestations of Nature, especially those plants and flowers that bloom for but one short day. The more fragile and humble those plants or insects, the more they excited his compassion and moved him to tears. Sometimes it was an ant or a fly or even a blade of grass. All these tiny things set off the enormous vacuity of the universe, the unknown. For a month he had been watching intently a blade of new grass growing between two stones in a ruined chapel. Every day he went to see it and protect it from marauding goats and sheep. One day he saw a young lady in the chapel, and distractedly she picked the blade of grass and put it in her mouth. Then the youth felt irresistibly impelled to hurl the epithet "stupid" at her. After hearing about this insult, her fiancé challenged the youth to a duel and wounded him fatally. When the priest was hearing the poor boy's confession at the point of death, he asked him why he had acted thus. He replied gently, "Father, for a blade of grass." And all thought that he was continuing still to rave. In other stories Pirandello draws on all his fund of grotesqueness in order to produce his "creepy" effect: peasants filled with insane hatred against rich neighbours who have lately arrived, or else a man who feels such loathing for his wife because of her infidelity that he locks her in the upper part of the house while below he brings in drunken prostitutes to sleep with him. In those stories life seems to be a hideous nightmare and everything is out of focus. Every character suffers from some fixation to the point of madness. The irony of Pirandello disappears, and all that we see is one of those grinning masks which frighten children. Such stories often produce a terrifying effect on readers, because these abnormal beings have a complete logic of their own—the logic of the madman. More than any writer of to-day Pirandello is able to convey to us the emotion of horror. Let us quote one story called "E Due" from the first volume of Novelle per un Anno. A young man one evening, while walking on the outskirts of the city near the bridge over the river, sees a man climb on to the parapet, lay down his hat there, and then cast himself into the river. Diego hears the terrible splash in the water beneath—then not a sound—absolute silence on all sides. And yet the man was drowning there beneath him. Why did he not move or shout for help? It was too late. Pirandello in masterly manner suggests the surroundings as they appeared to the horror-struck youth. The houses opposite in darkness, in contrast to the lights of the city: in the silence not a sound except far off the chirrup of crickets, and beneath him he heard the gurgling of the dark waters of the river. And that hat—the hat which the unfortunate man had left on the parapet—it fascinates us as it fascinated Diego: he cannot drive it from his thoughts. Later on we find him on the parapet again. He took off his hat and placed it in the same place as the other had been:

He went to the far side of the lamp to see what his hat looked like on the parapet, under the light of the lamp like the other. He stood for a few moments, leaning over the parapet and looking at it, as if he himself was not there any more. Then suddenly he gave a grim laugh; he saw himself stuck up there like a cat behind the lamp, and his hat was the mouse. . . . Away, away with all this tomfoolery! He climbed over the parapet: he felt his hair stand on end—his hands quivered as they clung tightly on to the ledge. Then he loosened his grip and threw himself into the void.

In such a story Pirandello shows qualities of subtle analysis and description which rival Maupassant; it is only at the end, when the character watches itself act, that we see the cloven hoof of the Pirandellian. At other times our author touches the chord of Anatole France and leads us into a garden of Epicurus. The last novella, "All Uscita" ("At the Gate"), of the collection E Domani, Lunedi will be a fitting conclusion to our examination of Pirandello's short stories. We are at the gate leading from a cemetery, and we meet the phantoms of the Fat Man and the Philosopher who have recently died. The Philosopher, true to his vocation, starts immediately to weave his sophistries for the benefit of his grosser friend. He will continue for ever in the next world to reason and reason, just as the Fat Man will continue to wear his vesture of adipose tissue. The latter, however, will not be satisfied to be fat: he sees still the little garden of his house in the sunlight, the little pond in the shade with the goldfish swimming about; he smells the fresh perfume of the new leaves and then the red and yellow roses, the geraniums and the carnations. All the philosophy in the world will not prevent the nightingale from singing or these roses from blooming. All these joys made this Fat Man accept the sorrows and the worries in his past life. They enabled him to accept with resignation the caprices of his wife, her infidelities that were legion. Life for him was possible because he had no illusions. He had even been relieved to hear that his wife had a lover, because he knew that all her hatred of him would be transferred to her lover. But that lover is not a fat man: he is jealous, and in one of his fits he will kill his mistress. And lo, she appears, a bloodstained phantom, running along as though pursued by her mad lover. All these phantoms relate their experiences, their desires which have never been satisfied. And death does not solve the riddle, because it is nothing but total disillusion. Thus the end is the same as in Anatole France's story "In the Elysian Fields" when the shades, gathered together in a field of asphodel, converse about death as if they knew nothing of it and were as ignorant of human destinies as when they were still on earth. "It is no doubt," as the smiling cynic Menippus said, "because they still remain human and mortal in some degree. When they shall have entered into immortality, they will not speak or think any more. They will be like the gods." But the philosopher Pirandello will not become a god: he will be left behind at the gate to continue his reasoning for all eternity.