Recognized as one of the founding figures of modern drama and theatre, Nobel Laureate Luigi Pirandello is not as widely known in the English language as a novelist and short story writer. However, this humorous affair written in 1904 reveals his remarkable talent in both fields. He delves into some of the themes that resonate throughout his work as a dramatist, namely illusion and reality, and the mysteries of identity.

The narrator, Mattia Pascal, is something of a bumbling fool, a comical buffoon, a character straight out of a fizzy comic opera. He is the impoverished son of a once-wealthy family that was ruined by a villainous swindler. Living a dull life as an archivist, trapped in a weary marriage, and plagued by an overbearing mother-in-law and hounded by creditors, he quickly flees to Monte Carlo where he experiences a stroke of luck and fortune. While absent from home, he is mistakenly believed to be deceased (a somewhat far-fetched premise, but mistakes happen), and he seizes the opportunity to start a new life as an enterprising rogue under a new identity and name. However, he eventually realizes that he can only ever be the one and only Mattia Pascal.

To the consternation and confusion of all the other characters, this novel transforms into a hilarious escapade, filled with shadowy, farcical, and slapstick elements, and infused with a sardonic tone. It's like death served on a silver platter without the inconvenience of actually dying! With Mattia's self-created doppelganger, Adriano Meis, Pirandello reminds us of how he began grappling with the conundrum he calls the "clumsy, inadequate metaphor of ourselves." Despite all the laughable moments this novel provides, upon deeper reflection, I also found it quite moving. As Mattia Pascal slowly comes to understand that his freedom is in part illusory and comes at a great cost, losing his identity also means losing his ability to control his own destiny, leaving him even more imprisoned than before.

Once again, translator William Weaver, whom I have encountered in many other Italian novels, does an excellent job here.

The novel expresses the complexity of real life, which is constantly dominated by chance. In this life, the conflict between man and the reality in which he lives generates the desire to flee, first and foremost from himself.

It is the parabola of a continuous search for the self, for identity, for an existence to be lived freely. Mattia Pascal is a man of the middle bourgeoisie, whose values enter into crisis. He decides to attack his existence, in the anguish of not being able to make it, in the certainty that life is dominated by chance. Deceived by existence, he continues to deceive himself, creating and then suppressing new identities.

Pirandello, using humor, tries to express compassion for the human lot. And by ridiculing man, he unmasks his deceptions and lies. Through the story of Mattia Pascal, Pirandello shows us how difficult it is for man to find his true self in a world full of uncertainties and false appearances. The novel makes us reflect on our own lives and on the choices we make, inviting us to be more aware of the consequences of our actions and to search for our own authenticity.

The man who died twice - in fact, three times, but that's no longer part of the story.

He was an ordinary man with an extraordinary experience. The first time he died, it was a shock to everyone who knew him. His family and friends were devastated. But then, miraculously, he came back to life.

No one could explain how it happened. The doctors were baffled. They ran every test they could think of, but they couldn't find a reason for his resurrection.

The second time he died, it was even more of a mystery. He had been doing well since his first return to life, but then suddenly, he passed away again.

Once again, his loved ones were left mourning. And once again, he somehow managed to come back.

But this time, things were different. He seemed changed. He had a new perspective on life, and he was determined to make the most of every moment.

As for the third time he died, that's a story for another day.

It may not be surprising if I say that this novel is one of the novels that I have most enjoyed reading despite the difficulty of the author's style and its sometimes being filled with philosophy. But God knows that I immersed myself in reading it with great immersion and delighted in its crazy ideas.

Pirandello is a difficult-to-read author, a unique writer who seizes the reader's mind. The novel is filled with details and ideas at the same time to the extent that he creates comprehensive and strange ideas from daily details and inner dialogues. It is a pleasure to read his works if you like his ideas, laugh with him and accompany his wonderful characters. His characters seem detached, with strange circumstances and deep thoughts. Every detail seizes them, and he always thinks with the most precise details.

Here, he tells one of his stories in which the protagonist of his novel, Mathias Pascal, dies more than once. This is not related to a fictional matter, but it is an event that occurs in the novel. In fact, it could happen to any of us. Pirandello tells us with a black comedy the story of the dead individual, how he returns to life and how he dies again. Pirandello strikes at the core of human personality, always wondering how many souls are there inside each individual, how many selves each person has, and how we change after any event that occurs in our lives and then we do not return as we were, or people do not see us as the same person after even the slightest event that occurs in a person's life. It is a thought-provoking philosophy and a great love for getting to know this crazy author who writes for us and analyzes human personality within the framework of relationships of love, money, power, and the relationship of the individual with his society and environment and how all that affects the course of life and the situations that one will go through later.

It is a pleasant and magical novel that deserves to be read. It is truly one of the unique novels in world literature.

I have always had - and probably always will have - a particular relationship with Pirandello's works.

I like the themes he deals with, especially the way he develops them. But when it comes to actually reading the real work, I can't help but yawn for a good part of the time. I don't know why I have always found it more interesting to study Pirandello rather than read him. It's quite strange, I know.

However, this rereading of Il Fu Mattia Pascal has brought more surprises than I imagined. Let's say that I had vague memories of the plot, but, with the school lesson still fresh in my mind, I thought I knew what to expect. And yet no: the first part of the novel (when he is still Mattia Pascal and the period of wandering) was as I remembered it, rather boring (at least by my standards); the second part, on the contrary, I liked and I even read it willingly, and that's why I decided to give this book three stars. One aspect that I had underestimated was the humor: Mattia/Adriano was really able to make me laugh in several places.

Certainly I will keep a better memory of this book in the years to come. Maybe, if and when I reread it, it might even please me a little more.

**In Praise and Criticism of Pirandello and His Novels**

I first became acquainted with Pirandello at the age of twenty. It was when I was reading the book "The Modern World and Ten Great Writers" by Malcolm Bradbury. Pirandello was one of those giants who stood beside Dostoyevsky, Proust, Kafka, Joyce, and Woolf, and he was the most appealing to me. One day, I saw a novel by him in front of a friend titled "One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand". I said, "Do you also know Pirandello?" and he started to describe the novel to me. I didn't let him continue and grabbed the book. Two days later, we were discussing it. I really liked it. I felt that the mania of the main character in the novel was also infecting me; someone who has the anxiety of how others see and know him, and this temptation leads him to mania.
I also read several other short stories by him.
I am eager to read "Six Characters in Search of an Author", which another friend said is very famous. I haven't read it yet.
Another novel by Pirandello with the translation by Bahman Mohassess? Apparently, it's his most famous novel. Well, reading it wasn't a waste of time. But it disappointed me. It's a novel with a very slow pace that instead of telling the story with events, it constantly exchanges with the philosophical speculations of the main character. The novel starts with an interesting idea: a dead person is taken instead of Mathias Pascal who is alive, and he himself, who is in another city, reads the news of his death in the local newspaper. Mathias, who has had no real life so far, decides never to correct the mistake of the world and start a new life. But for this new life, he has to create a new identity, and this is what makes him trapped. He can neither use his previous identity nor provide evidence for his new identity: suspended between two worlds and alone, without even having his previous freedom. In the end, poor Mathias returns to his first life again.
These two storylines, plus a few more characters and another subplot, more or less make up the whole novel. The story seems a bit disjointed and doesn't have a proper logical structure. Everything is in the service of the fact that in the end, Mathias comes to the conclusion that he cannot escape from his original identity; while there were many ways in front of him. In short, this most famous novel of Pirandello didn't appeal to me much, and I had a hard time reading it all.
P.S: So far, I haven't read a play by Pirandello, which is very famous precisely because of this.

**The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello**

The Late Mattia Pascal, written by Luigi Pirandello in 1904, is one of his most renowned works. It was his first major exploration of the theme of the mask.

The story's protagonist, Mattia Pascal, experiences a series of misfortunes. His once-promising youth has devolved into a dull dead-end job and a wretched marriage. The same man steals his inheritance and the woman he loves. His wife and mother-in-law constantly badger him, and his twin daughters, neglected by their mother, bring him joy only until their untimely deaths. Even his beloved mother is taken from him by death.

One day, while away from home, Mattia reads the news of his own death in the newspaper. At first, he is shocked, but then he decides to start a new life with a new identity by leaving his hometown. However, in his new life, he still fails to find true happiness and eventually returns, only to discover that his job is gone and his wife has remarried. Mattia Pascal's fate is to continue living in a false guise, with his lost identity.

This novel is both engaging and exciting. With its satirical tone and its search for identity and the secrets and mysteries within, it showcases Pirandello's unique talent for storytelling. Although it is one of his fictional works, it also reflects a part of the author's own life. Some say that Pirandello wrote this novel about his own spiritual wife.

In conclusion, The Late Mattia Pascal is a classic that offers a profound exploration of the human condition and the search for meaning and identity.

It is a must-read for anyone interested in literature and the complexities of the human psyche.

Voto: 8+

Nearly 120 years have passed since the publication of this book, yet the story still seems modern and innovative. As always, I remain fascinated by the mind and pen of Pirandello, whom I consider a true genius.

Surely, I don't have to be the one to talk about this classic of literature, which is read with pleasure and reflection. Given that Pirandello wisely mixes the plot, seasoned with irony and rhythm, with thoughts on the human condition that are truly of all times.

I have only now retrieved the full reading of this book because in high school my Italian teacher spoiled it for us from beginning to end. So I preferred to let some time pass to forget some details.

Let's live to remember him! ;)

Mattia Pascal was a remarkable individual whose presence left an indelible mark on the lives of those who knew him. His passing is a great loss, but his memory will live on.

We should strive to keep his spirit alive by sharing our memories of him with others. By doing so, we ensure that he is not forgotten.

The link provided, https://pepperlines.blogspot.com/2018..., offers more details about Mattia Pascal and the impact he had.

Take a moment to visit the link and learn more about this extraordinary person. Let's honor his memory and continue to celebrate his life.

May he rest in peace.

Il fu Mattia Pascal was first published in installments in 1904 in La Nuova Antologia and only later was it published in book form by the same magazine.

The work of Pirandello, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934, refers to the humorous vein of the 1700s-1800s and by publishing it in installments, the author surely managed to make it an accessible work to a wider public, probably also arousing the reader's curiosity by including autobiographical references within it.

Mattia Pascal, the protagonist, is indifferent to his life. After being declared dead by his wife and mother-in-law, he decides not to return to his hometown and to enjoy his new life under another name: Adriano Meis. However, Mattia realizes that this life does not lead him to be happy nor even to be free as he thought. He therefore decides to return to his place of origin and take back what he had left, including his identity, but finding himself in a worse situation with tragicomic contours.

The novel surely has great social value. In fact, Il fu Mattia Pascal talks about existential change, loss of certainties, not sharing the roles and rules imposed by society, the search for one's own identity, one's own happiness and above all freedom.

Pirandello's reflection is based on a series of interconnected events that often seem not very credible, yet we overlook this aspect because, at least in my opinion, we remain focused on the author's ultimate goal: the message he wants to convey. And what is this message? The author makes us understand that from a certain point of view it is impossible to escape the rules of society because there is a risk of losing that freedom that does not seem to belong to us but that in reality we have, and there is a risk of becoming nobody, a physical presence in this world, but nothing else.

If at the beginning everything may seem funny and comic, the more we go on, the more we realize the drama of the situation, of Mattia's life (or Adriano's?). From a carefree young man who squandered money never seriously earned, Mattia has had to face two tragic losses, one after the other, his own death (however false and always disconcerting, no?), flight and return. And it is precisely when the tones change that Il fu Mattia Pascal began to win me over.

Mattia's superficiality bored me, made me think: "But what on earth did I find interesting ten years ago, when I read it for the first time?". I even thought of abandoning the reading, also guilty of a not immediate and simple writing style.

But when the tones became heavy, when a conscious Mattia emerged, conscious of himself and the world around him, well at that point Pirandello managed to transport me, to involve me in the story of a man who wanted to change his life, but in the wrong way, in a way that would lead to nothing but more suffering and a further nullification of himself. This is what made me continue with the reading and what makes me recommend this book to you.

– Eh, – I sighed, smiling, – since we have to live…

– But we also have to die! – replied Paleari.

– I understand; but why think about it so much?

– Why? But because we cannot understand life if we do not somehow explain death to ourselves!

Since I assume that most of you have already read this book long before me, I'm not afraid of spoiling it for anyone. In any case, I'll try to maintain a rather "superficial" analysis of the text, briefly mentioning only some technical aspects.

"Il Fu Mattia Pascal" is the second book of our beloved Pirandello, a book that allowed the writer to achieve great success with the public and with the critics, especially thanks to the sudden translations into various languages already after the first publication.

But what makes this novel really so captivating as to be included in the BBC's list?

Certainly, it must be said that the theme is not the novelty of the book. The novelty rather lies in the organization of the structure. We place the story in an apparently traditional structure but which is emptied from the inside, also through the tripartite division of the book. This tripartite structure corresponds to three different moments of the character, marking his fake death, the change of identity, and the attempt to go back to his former life. These are three moments that also correspond to three different types of novels, with the consequent experimentation of three different novels.

First of all, it must be said that the story starts from the end. The Mattia who opens the novel is actually almost at the end of his journey and undertakes to write his story backwards. A character already outside of time and history, who moves between the cemetery and the library, also a place of death. To these last two final chapters are attached the two premises that anticipate the narration. These four chapters constitute a novel within the novel, which lives in a state of non-life, of estrangement from time, and moves in a dead space. It is precisely in this space that Mattia is a truly humorous character. After such an incipit, we enter the first novel, in which he experiments with a very successful genre of novel: idyllic-family, in which a pre-modern Edenic world is celebrated, in which there is a harmony between the self, nature, and the family, which lasts until the seventh chapter. From the eighth to the sixteenth chapter, we move on to the third novel. This time the model is constituted by the Bildungsroman because the character, having changed his name, proceeds to build a new personality, undergoes a personal formation with Anselmo Paleari by his side, the room renter who acts as his educator. The space and the theme change completely. The new incarnation of Pascal who tries to build a new self and live in freedom without the obligations of the past.

I really loved this book, and I have no doubt as to why it was included in the list of the hundred books to read before dying. In any case, I invite all of you to take a look, not only at this book but at all those that are included there. I'm sure you'll find books that will leave you breathless!

I must confess that at the beginning, it wasn't entirely one of the books that most captivated me. However, as the story progressed, the book began to grip me. And in the last dozens of pages, I ended up reading without realizing the passage of time and without wanting to leave the end of the book for the next day!

In short, it is worth reading and I recommend it!

This book has a certain charm that gradually reveals itself as you turn the pages. At first, it may seem a bit ordinary, but as you get deeper into the story, you discover its hidden treasures.

The characters are well-developed and the plot is engaging, keeping you on the edge of your seat until the very end. It's one of those books that you can't put down once you start.

So, if you're looking for a good read, I highly recommend giving this book a try. You won't be disappointed!