What I have in mind about the late Blaise Pascal and his influence on Celine, Musil, and his connection to Kafka and Bockowski, I will write one day.

Pascal was a remarkable philosopher and mathematician. His ideas had a profound impact on various literary figures. Celine, for example, was likely influenced by Pascal's thoughts on the human condition and the absurdity of life. Musil, too, might have found inspiration in Pascal's exploration of the nature of knowledge and the limitations of reason.

The connection between Pascal and Kafka and Bockowski is also an interesting area to explore. Kafka's works are known for their themes of alienation and the struggle against an incomprehensible world, which could be related to Pascal's ideas about the human's place in the universe. Bockowski's writing, with its focus on the individual and the social context, might also have been influenced by Pascal's thinking.

One day, I hope to delve deeper into these connections and write about the fascinating relationship between Pascal and these literary giants.

What are we without identity? And what do we do with our lives if we live as a shadow of ourselves? Mattia Pascalle, the man who died twice and resurrected only to finally die again (metaphorically speaking, of course), is answering these questions with his example. I thought that if he were that secret agent in the service of Her Majesty, the concerns and conclusions recorded would not apply.

This book highlights humor: despite everything and everyone, Mattia tells us his story with a great deal of humor. Without that, and this would be an unbearable story to read.

Mattia's experiences are both unique and relatable. His journey through life, filled with ups and downs, shows us that even in the face of great adversity, one can find a way to smile.

His story makes us question our own identities and what truly matters in life. It makes us think about how we would respond if we were in his shoes.

Overall, this is a book that will make you laugh, cry, and think. It is a must-read for anyone who is looking for a unique and thought-provoking story.

Pirandello is one of the writers I got to know recently. He is a different writer, mainly known for his plays. With his intelligent and dexterous pen, he takes tragedy and comedy hand in hand. He created this original work by starting from a newspaper news he read in 1904 and adding notes from his own life.

His philosophical touches on life, life, and human behavior are presented in a humorous manner. However, every event he tells is of a kind that will make people gloomy, even a chain of black spiders. But even in all these tragic events, he smiles and makes people think.

He intended to tell about death and what comes after it, freedom and its limits, existence, and nothingness in a very elegant language, with what he himself called "true art", and he was very successful. It is hard to call it black humor. The ironic aspect that weighs heavily on the sense of humor is very high in this writer. It is impossible to get bored while reading.

In my opinion, it must be included in the must-reads.

In the initial pages, the author reveals that this is the tale of a man who "died twice." Our protagonist, or perhaps anti-hero, is stagnating in late 1800s Italy. He ekes out a meager living as the librarian in a provincial Italian town. He resides with rowdy kids, a wife who has grown indifferent to him, and a spiteful mother-in-law who loathes him.

While away from town for a few days, he discovers from the newspapers that the decomposed body of a suicide victim by the watermill in his hometown was misidentified as his. He is now free! He embarks on a gambling binge and surprisingly makes money, forging a new life for himself in a distant town.

However, living a second life is far from uncomplicated, and the plot evolves into a comical soap opera (or a genuine opera, given that the work is translated from Italian).

The book was published in 1904, and like other novels of that era, such as Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment or Unamuno's Abel Sanchez, there is extensive exploration of the main character's psychology due to the nascent field of psychology.

The story held my attention, and I found the plot to be fast-paced and带有 a touch of mystery.

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The author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934, mainly for the 40 plays he penned. He is regarded as an early pioneer of the Theater of the Absurd.

Top image: St. Mark’s Square, Venice, around 1890 - 1900 from blogs.loc.gov

The author on an Italian stamp from colnect.com

The story of a man who is unexpectedly considered dead by his acquaintances and uses this death to have a new life with a new name and story, and escape from the bitter events of his past, but...

I really liked the book and its idea. Some of the dialogues were really deep and the writer's style made me laugh a lot in many places. But overall, unfortunately, the translation by Heman was a headache in every sense.

It took away the joy of reading the book in a horrible way.

I always referred to the English translation to better understand a particular paragraph.

The translation was not wrong but it was difficult. The English text was smooth and understandable, but sometimes I read the Persian sentences twenty times and still didn't understand (the relatively philosophical and abstract parts). Only when I read the English translation did I understand the meaning of the Persian translation.

I don't know, maybe this translation is from many years ago.

There was a part called "The Little Lantern" which, in my opinion, was the most beautiful part of the book:

“The light of a common idea is fed by collective feeling; if, however, this feeling stops being general, the lantern of the abstract term stays standing, but the flame of the idea within crackles, flickers and dips, as usually happens in all periods of so-called transition. Then there are periods in history, not altogether rare, when proud gusts of wind suddenly extinguish all the lanterns. Wonderful! In the unexpected darkness there is an indescribable sense of disorientation amongst the smaller lanterns: some go hither some thither, some turn back, some falter; no-one knows the way any longer: they bump into one another, perhaps make groups for a while often or twenty, but they cannot come to any agreement and go back to being scattered about in a state of confusion and anguish and fury, like ants that can’t find the entrance to the anthill when some cruel child has blocked it up just for fun. I think, Signor Meis, that we are at one such time at this very moment. “It is very dark and very confused. All the great lanterns have gone out. Who should we turn to? Should we turn back perhaps? Should we go back to the surviving lanterns which great men now dead have left burning on their tombs? I recall a lovely poem by Niccolò Tommaseo:

“My little lamp

does not shine like it did,

nor smoke like a great fire;

it does not crackle nor consume,

but with its tip stretches

towards the sky that gave it to me.

It will stand above me when I am buried

and it will live on; neither rain, nor the wind,

nor the passing ages will have any power over it;

and passers-by,

wandering, their own flames extinguished,

will light it again, from my spark.

“But Signor Meis, what if our lamp does not contain the holy oil which fed the poet’s lamp? Many people still go to church to get the necessary nourishment for their internal lanterns. On the whole they are poor old men and women let down by life who go forward in the darkness of life with their sentiments lit up like a votive lamp, which they shelter with fearful care from the chill draught of the final disillusionment, so that they stay alight at least thus far, to the fatal brink, towards which they hasten, their eyes intent on the flame and constantly thinking, ‘God sees me!’ so as not to hear the clamour of the world around them, which sounds to them like so much blasphemy: ‘God sees me,’ because they see him, not only in themselves, but in everything, even in their poverty, their suffering, which will be rewarded at the end”

“Above all, I will take good care of this freedom of mine. I will promenade it liberally along broad, ever-changing highways, I will never burden it with trappings to weigh it down. I will shut my eyes and move on if ever any aspect of my life begins to look disagreeable. I will try to enjoy all the things generally accepted as inanimate, and will go in search of lovely views and pleasant, peaceful locations. I will gradually give myself a new education. I will transform myself lovingly, patiently and studiously, so that, eventually, I will be able to say that I have not only lived two lives but been two men”

“Gradually, once the reefs of the first embarrassing questions had been negotiated safely, some of them steered round using the oars of deceit, which served both as anchor and mainstay, and which I grasped tight with both hands the closer they crowded in, gently twisting round carefully, finally the little vessel of my pretence could take to the open sea and hoist the sail of fantasy.”

“I surprised myself by the number of impressions I had acquired on my travels, which silence had virtually entombed within me, and which now, as I spoke, came to life and sprang from my lips. This secret wonderment coloured my narrative in an extraordinary fashion, and the pleasure which the two women clearly gained from listening to it, gradually caused me to feel regret for what I had not really been able to enjoy up till now; and this regret, in its turn, flavoured my narrative.”

Security from bad translation that takes away people's desire to read! If you want to be bored with reading, read these incomprehensible translations... The story of the book was good but the translation was bad and it tired the mind!!

Translation is a crucial aspect of literature. It has the power to either bring a foreign work to life or completely ruin it. When a translation is bad, it can be a major turn-off for readers. It can make even the most interesting story seem dull and unappealing.

Good translations, on the other hand, can open up new worlds and cultures to readers. They can help us to understand and appreciate works that might otherwise be inaccessible. A great translator is like a bridge, connecting the original author with the reader in a different language and culture.

So, the next time you pick up a translated book, take a moment to consider the quality of the translation. It could make all the difference in your reading experience.

“If we recognize,” I thought, “that to err is human, isn't justice an inhuman cruelty?”

Discussing Raymond Radiguet's "The Devil in the Flesh" the other day, someone said that it was a book with a completely banal plot, but written in such a sublime style as to make it a little jewel. Now, I agree in part. But let's leave that aside. I think this definition could also be applied to Pirandello's novel. According to some of my friends, the plot is brilliant. To me, it has only communicated so much, so very much boredom, and the heavy and muddled style does not make the reading pleasant. But, look, if one looks at the style and the psychological depth, eh! What stuff! It seems to me to go back to the period when I read "Zeno's Conscience". There is also an almost identical situation.

Mattia Pascal is dead.

Joy.

Farewell wife.

Farewell mother-in-law.

Farewell creditors.

Farewell debts.

Free!

An improbable coincidence leads to the discovery of a corpse with the same features as the protagonist, who is at that moment in Nice making money playing at the Casino. Everyone takes the unknown dead man for him. So Mattia Pascal finds himself, for two years and a few months, leading an alternative life under the name of Adriano Meis, but being unable to love the woman who loves him, or have friends, or report a theft and so on, because to do these things he would need a real name, something he doesn't have, and thus he understands that the price of his freedom exceeds freedom itself.

Mattia Pascal is dead.

At... no.

Free... no, I would say no.

Then, deep down, perhaps Mattia Pascal is not really dead. He has continued to live in him, and it is Adriano Meis, who had taken possession of his identity, who is killed! What a mess! But since then you say that I use too difficult words, I will say: confusion.

It's all a psychological game. Pirandello plays with death, life and freedom. But, in my opinion, the protagonist flounders, indeed drowns, in mental sawdust. In short, you have the money, really make this new life happen! Register your new name! And but this one here, that one there... in short, it's all an excuse to write page after page of a psychological treatise that, although extremely interesting, does not meet my approval. As if to say: nice, I recognize its value, but I stay well away from judging it as "passionate". Books written ten years later were ten times more so. I'm not looking for an adventure novel, for heaven's sake. Just a little love for variety in the plot. Something that is completely absent here.

Some lines are veiled by an explicit irony that made me smile and even laugh, but this does not compensate for the lack of narrative elements in the various scenes described. One could almost say that "nothing happens".

Mattia Pascal is alive.

Alive?

Even more! Resurrected!

As already said, he realizes that his freedom is all fake, it doesn't exist. He is actually chained to his old life and the laws of the world that would like him to be real, while he is as if suspended between life and death, and the reflections related to this subject are very sharp and introspective. In general, I found Svevo's novel better written, but in the end it's a matter of taste. I don't think I'll become a lover of Pirandello. At least, unlike Calvino, I can read him. Then okay, there's Pavese, but Pavese is love and that's it. The starting point of this novel is excellent, the central ideas are lacking, something that gives more movement to the narrative architecture. I'm not saying this so much to criticize. I think that, reading three novels at the same time (and one being "Journey to the End of the Night" by Celine), I realize what causes boredom and what doesn't. And it has nothing to do with the psychological depth. Simply, in "The Late Mattia Pascal", sometimes sleep prevails.

E se provassimo a dimenticare di avere un ombelico?

Egregio Luigi cav. Pirandello, nonostante la nostra “conterraneità”, non sono riuscita a farmi “calare giù” la sua poetica. For a while, perhaps during that brief period when I left girlhood behind and entered adolescence, I found comfort in the identity tangles of his characters, whether they were one, six, or a hundred thousand, innocent, shabby, or delicately idiotic.

When the highs and lows of hormonal levels finally reached equilibrium, he became tiresome to me overnight. I never looked at any of his works again until, due to a mental whim in my third age, I dusted off this issue 31 of Oscar printed in November '65 and devoured it at less than fifteen years old.

Had I been completely wrong at eighteen and unnecessarily deprived myself of him and his “Nobel” production? Let me say right away that, without loving out-of-place suspense, no, there was no error. Or, if he and his admirers wrinkled their noses, my judgments are exactly those of a twenty-year-old. Some might say it's bad, that I remained infantile without disturbing the childhood memory. But I can long to have been mature then rather than infantile now.

And we have come to the heart of the matter: his Mattia Pascal is suffering from infantilism. And what's more, he has immersed him in an astorically static world: a 1904 technologically crystallized where locomotives, which allowed him rapid movements, would remain the same forever. Far from high speed.

According to his intentions, this should result in a Mattia who is a prototype of the man condemned, like Michelangelo's Prisoners, within the vile physical and social matter, wretchedly aware of the bitter existence, a penalty not even threatened to monkeys.

“Setting aside”, said Totò, that Leopardi had said this before and better than him – forgive me – the remarkable thing is the inexorable aging of his character. Far from the atemporality of art compared to reality. I gently point out to him that Hector, Antigone, Paolo and Francesca, Julien Sorel, Mastro don Gesualdo or Ciccio Ingravallo, to name the first that come to my mind, are eternally young. Was he overrated?

Meanwhile, if Mattia had lived in another country rather than in Italy in 1904, his misadventures would not have had a reason to be: divorce would have put an end to his claims for freedom.

The vice is not in the form but in the thesis that he strictly links to the things of the world, which are destined to become obsolete, as the history of humanity should have suggested to him. If the malaise of the “former” depends on the circumstances, we can only be at least skeptical about the diagnosis of his ills: leaving the marital bed would not have placated his restlessness and the pain of living, innate in our nature – he admits it too – and that no bureaucratization of social relations will be able to ease.

At most, it would have freed him from the weight of a responsibility lived as foreign, having to pretend a love not felt. A sigh of relief, more or less deep, and that's it.

Nor, much less, would his apparent departure from the world of the living have been able, in other times, but also in his, to provoke that little bit of reflection on the ties and little ties that kept Mattia bound even if he had been Prometheus.

Bureaucracy can make us angry but it doesn't make us unhappy. Just like the ban on swimming in a beautiful private cove or the speed limit: all things that depend on mores and laws, all things that change.

Happiness and unhappiness are something else for which we don't find the handle, but surely they don't depend on what he has “thrown at us”. Mattia Pascal hates the world that has sewn artificial forms on him, separating him from himself and from authentic life, but to survive he must invent another similar one, on pain of civil death. Life as a kind of play? No. Life is a psychic necessity, dear sir: adapting to things and adapting things to us, forging ties or, as Leopardi said, “stringing ourselves in a social chain is indispensable. Or are you for collective suicide?

We don't wear the masks that the role in a cruel world imposes on us. We are the masks that we become, little by little, in the web of relationships with humans within the world.

I am no longer the one I was yesterday. If I met myself, I wouldn't recognize myself. I don't wear a mask over a magnificent “me” that has prevented me from unfolding and that only by removing it will I be able to rise to a new life: I am that mask that I have built, unconsciously but “really”, day by day among others and thanks to others.

If he had suspected it, dear sir, he would not have condemned that mischief of Mattia to live prisoner of a prison without bars that are the 260 pages of this novel.

Without ill will.

Have you ever wished that you could go somewhere without the people who know you and start everything anew? Yourself, your life, and even your past? Have you ever had such a desire or imagined such freedom in your mind?

Pirandello addressed this subject in his work. Mathias doesn't have a very happy family life. Over time, he has fallen into poverty, had a failed and disastrous marriage, and finally, the deaths of several of his loved ones cause him to reach the end of his rope and abandon everything and disappear. After a series of losses in the casinos of Monte Carlo, he intends to return, only to be confronted with his own suicide news in the newspaper. And without a moment's hesitation, he thinks to himself, "Freedom" has come to him on its own feet. Why should he reject it?

He pursues spiritual freedom and begins to uproot all his roots, erase all his memories and experiences, and create a new fictional past and a new identity, perhaps the one he has always desired to be.

But gradually, the question arises: Has Mathias found the life he desires? Has he found the freedom he was seeking? Can he even claim to exist when he is deprived of the tiniest pleasures of life? Mathias is trapped in his own fictional and incomplete past and is forced to lie. He has been uprooted from all his roots. He can neither find a friend to talk to nor can he accept love with joy when it comes to him with all its might.

Here, only an illusion of freedom has trapped the shadow of a dead man and has brought him loneliness and aimlessness, and nothing more.

Pirandello has written an engaging story for the average reader and has also raised many philosophical questions for the more demanding reader throughout this story. The hidden satire label of the lines also doubles this attractiveness. Before Mathias' escape, the description of his family misfortunes strongly reminded me of "The Pascual Duarte Family" by Camilo José Cela, and after the escape, Mathias, his loneliness, thoughts, and inner questions reminded me of the fears and doubts of the protagonist of "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

It was one of the best I've read. Although it doesn't seem that such a story could be without a melancholy atmosphere, Pirandello's witty and sharp prose has turned the book into a fascinating work.

\\n  \\n   

\\"And we often gladly forget that we are infinitesimal atoms; instead, we respect and admire one another and are even capable of fighting for a scrap of land or of grieving over certain things which, if we were really aware of what we are, would seem incalculably trivial.\\"

\\n  \\n

Perhaps there is a time in each of our lives when we had thought about what would have happened if we just disappeared from our current life?
Shred our name, face, and identity and start anew somewhere else, in another town or a small village far from where we lived before.

Mattia Pascal does just that.

\\n  

\\"There was little or nothing to boast of in that miserable life they had insisted on ending there in the millrace. After all the mistakes he had made, Mattia Pascal perhaps deserved no better fate.
Now I wanted to remove every trace of him, not only externally, but also within myself.
I was alone now, and no one on earth could be more alone than I, with every tie dissolved, every obligation removed, free, new, completely my own master, without the burden of my past, and with the future before me, which I could shape as I pleased.\\"

\\n

Told as a fictional autobiography, Pirandello crafts a story about an unhappy man striving to flee the tragic events that have befallen him with an almost absurd and comical nihilism.
\\n  What initially felt like ecstatic liberation ultimately proved to be another form of imprisonment,\\n which in turn, plunged Pascal into an even deeper state of nihilism.

\\n  \\"Oh why... I asked myself desperately,... does mankind toil so to make the apparatus of its living more and more complicated? Why this clatter of machines? And what will man do when machines do everything for him? Will he then realize that what is called progress has nothing to do with happiness? Even if we admire all the inventions that science sincerely believes will enrich our lives (instead they make it poorer because their price is so high), what joy do they bring us, after all?\\"\\n

Given that this book also delves into progress (both industrial and social), it offers us a two-sided perspective on it - yes, it does simplify certain things, but if one attempts to escape, the options are limited. Would Mattia Pascal have been happier if he were born in an earlier century, where there were no banks or complex social laws? Would he have been able to find new happiness? Could he have moved on with Adrianna and left his old life behind? As Don Eligio remarks, Pascal's experience demonstrates that we cannot live outside the law without sacrificing our individuality.

Mattia Pascal undergoes a transformation through an almost identity-cleansing pilgrimage, to the extent that he has grown apart not only from the people in his past life but also from himself.


Although the themes were captivating, and there were beautiful passages where Mattia's reflections on life linger in the reader's mind, such as this one:

\\n  \\"To be sure, an object may please us for itself alone, for the pleasant feelings that a harmonious sight inspires in us; but far more often the pleasure that an object affords us does not derive from the object in itself. Our fantasy embellishes it, surrounding it, making it resplendent with images dear to us. Then we no longer see it for what it is but are animated by the images it arouses in us or by the things we associate with it. In short, what we love about the object is what we put in it of ourselves, the harmony established between it and us, the soul that it acquires only through us, a soul composed of our memories.\\"\\n

The book as a whole, however, left me feeling rather underwhelmed. The writing oscillated between brilliant and average, leading me to question whether Pirandello is a writer whose work I would enjoy in another format. I am reluctant to try anything else from him in the future, yet I remain open to giving him a second chance. As for this book, as the saying goes: to each their own.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Good idea but an awfully underwhelming execution. Review to come.

Vivere fuori dalla vita

"Il fu Mattia Pascal" is centered around the theme of the mask and identity, elements that are recurrent in Pirandello's works. Just as in the story "la carriola", where a respected lawyer has the only outlet of making the dog pull the carriage, here too we have a protagonist trapped within social conventions and with the obsessive desire to move away from them. If the mask is considered an unbearable weight for us - almost decisive in our alienation from reality - at the same time it turns out to be the only way to conform to a system impossible to control: our gray and tiresome existence, at least, is validated. Throwing off the mask - to go beyond into the true reality - exalts identity, but at the price of no longer being recognized by that mechanism: existence ceases.

This exploration of the mask and identity in Pirandello's works is both profound and thought-provoking. It makes us question our own relationship with the masks we wear in society and the consequences of revealing our true selves. The idea that the mask is both a burden and a necessary means of survival in a complex world is a powerful one. It forces us to consider the trade-offs we make between conforming and being true to ourselves.

Moreover, the concept of existence ceasing when the mask is removed adds an element of tragedy to the story. It suggests that in our attempts to find true identity, we may lose something fundamental about ourselves. This may lead us to wonder if it is possible to find a balance between the two, or if we are doomed to forever wear the masks that society demands.

«Io?... Scomparso... riconosciuto... Mattia Pascal...» I read those few lines with a fierce attitude and a tumultuous heart countless times. In the first impulse, all my vital energies rose violently to protest: as if that news, so irritating in its impassive laconism, could also be true for me. But if not for me, it was indeed true for others; and the certainty that these others had since yesterday of my death was like an unbearable oppression on me, permanent, crushing...

Like every proper maturing person («An individual belonging to the species homo sapiens between the ages of eighteen and nineteen, subject to the arbitrary whims of a dominant race called "teaching body"; its peculiarity lies in the fact that, in accordance with Bergsonian theories and the darkest aspects of Einsteinian relativity, probably hybridized with the most recondite and sadistic corollaries of Murphy's law, for the humble maturing person time passes differently: in short, he doesn't even have time to breathe» - as it is written in the Student's Glossary); like every maturing person, I said, I dedicated the nights of May to the writing of my thesis. The method I adopted to choose the topics was simple: I chose the subjects I liked the most and followed the same criterion for the specific modules, then I set out to find the link that united them and, once found, I had my map. Here, one of the first entries that appeared on my list was precisely the term Pirandello, with the addition, in parentheses, of a timid possibly the good soul of the librarian.

And yes, finally my project was realized and I had the fortune to unite pleasure and duty and reread this Fu Mattia Pascal with great ease without having to reproach myself for taking time away from study. So in the thesis I was able to expound at will (under the ironic title of "Who doesn't die meets again": I had to introduce the motif of humor) on the stage that this novel represents in Pirandello's poetics, how it is expressed, what the next step will be and countless other things that are always very interesting to me but more markedly academic. In this review, instead, I want to do what I always do in my reviews: I want to say what this book was for me and only for me, leaving aside vitalism, the trap, the lantern philosophy, or rather reinterpreting them according to a reading that proposed, in addition to didactic ends, also those proper of an individual, solitary, independent and deliciously subjective tasting of the work.

The Girgenti playwright with the little white dot has always been one of my literary pillars, and by "always" I mean precisely from the beginning, when I was still a beardless little girl and the number of books I had read did not exceed fifty, including Geronimo Stilton. If now I had to try to put in black and white what I understood at my first reading the result would be a five-letter word that starts with n and ends with a, but it doesn't matter, because, even if I was only eleven years old and it seemed to me that I was reading another language, even so this book left me something. Now, after all these years, what strikes me the most is the strong humanity of Pascal, a humanity that is above all weakness; a humanity that is not deduced from moral or spiritual characteristics, but that is rather a common condition for any living person, an earthly attribute, that does not presume nor bestow merits, that is indeed a weight, a ballast. Mattia Pascal is convinced that he can free himself from it, and with it also free himself from those misfortunes that weigh it down, the wife, the mother-in-law, the mourning for the deaths of his mother and daughter, when chance kills him by drowning him in the millstream of his own land, the Stìa, but leaves him alive and vegetative and throws in his place, in that channel, the corpse of an unknown person. Pascal enjoys his freedom, wanders, becomes a vagabond, sees so many cities that he loses count; but here it is, here it is humanity, that wild beast that Mattia is not "foreign" enough to castrate, not "philosophical" enough to stun with thoughts or words, that makes him settle down, makes him become Adriano Meis, makes him fall in love painfully, tenderly, with the sweetest creature that exists. She, however, is alive, alive while Mattia Pascal is dead and Adriano worse than dead, because alive but such as to have to live as dead. All the disadvantages of having been found a corpse and none of the privileges, having freed his wife from his presence but not being able in turn to turn the page, not having to pay taxes and being robbed without the possibility of reporting the fact: to escape from one trap and throw oneself willingly, almost voluptuously, into the mesh of the other. What worse nightmare than this?

I believe that each of us has dreamed at least once of being Mattia Pascal, of suddenly finding ourselves with a nice sum of money in our pocket and relieved of any obligation, free to make of our life what we believe best. Perhaps the problem is not social constraints but the way we live them, or perhaps Pirandello is right and no serenity, at least apparent, can be achieved as long as the world and its snares continue to hypnotize man with their siren song always leading him back to square one; frankly I don't know, and I'm afraid that the answer is too cruel to be bearable. Only that, hand in hand with Pirandello, his search, although frightening, is also incredibly, paradoxically pleasant.