Pirandello: An Approach to his Theatre by Olga Ragusa (review)

568 Book Reviews Asbj0m Aarseth is always UAsbjom Aarseth," as BjlZim Hemmer is "Bjorn Hemmer.to "JlZirgen Haugen," referred to on p. 285. shows that the University of Minnesota Press does indeed have the letter "!Zi." The trouble here is that the man's name is JlZirgen Haugan. The place of Peer's bride-rape is spelled in four ways: "Hekstad" (lOB), "Hegstand" (176 & IBS), "Hegsted" (IBo), and, correctly, "Hegstad" (IBI). Don Carlos becomes "Don Cardos" (43). "Gunnar" (rightly spelled on p. 9B) becomes "Gunner" (116). "Unit" (132) should read "unite." "Richard U" (296) should be "Richard ill." We get "whome" (197), "suddently" (194), and The Family Re-union (173 & 320). "Idlike" (252) ... well? Dare one hope for a second edition of this important book soon? CHARLES LELAND, ST. MICHAEL'S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO OLGA RAGUSA. Pirandello: An Approach to his Theatre. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1980. pp. x, 19B. Pirandello is one ofthose authors who risk being more read aboUl than being read. Each year more and more critical studies see publication. In America, none of his novels, volumes of short stories or poems is in print. Of his essays, only On Humor is even known. As for his plays, Marta Abba's translations or William Murray's can scarcely be found at any bookseller's. The available Naked Masks, edited by Eric Bentley, reprints the exceedingly faultily translated major plays. New translations are needed of the two great Pirandello novels: The Late Mattia Pascal and One, No One and One Hundred Thousand, capital for understanding man's anguish in the twentieth century; of the philosophical essays; and certainly of the plays. As Olga Ragusa writes, "a knowledge of Pirandello's work ...• in spite of a vast bibliography, remains fragmentary, incomplete and slanted." Despite this vast bibliography on his work, Pirandello the man himself is elusive. Documentation on his life is incomplete; he was the most secretive of public figures. In his lifetime there was only one biography. Federico Nardelli's appropriately titled L'Uolno Segreto. Typically Sicilian, Pirandello's character was a closed one. No one was ever really successful in forcing him out of his shell. He destroyed almost all his manuscript or typescript copies; he kept no complete diaries; his letters, always a great source of biographical and creative material, have been published only in fragments. Pirandello often said that he did not live his life; he wrote it. His strange reticence has been attributed to his family tragedy, his existence for many years beside a mad wife. But we know little about his life prior to this tragedy. What about his love affair with Jenny Schulz·Lander, the Genoan girl he knew when, in his twenties, he was at the University ofBonn? Or his relationship to his mad cousin, Lina, to whom he was briefly engaged? Much has been made of his wife's madness, but little has been written about the insanity in his own family, about his sister's and his own sadist-masochist nature. In his essay delivered to the Pirandellian Congress at Venice in October 1961 , Max. Nordau writes, "It is my considered opinion however that the influence of insanity on the personality and work of Luigi Pirandello was not immaterial but considerable, and that he was susceptible to that influence long before his marriage." Madness is a major factor in the make-up of many of his characters. Since he did not live his life, but Book Reviews wrote it, his total workremains the greatest sourceofbiography. Some day someone will make a comprehensive study of the correlation between the "fact" and the "created reality" in this work. Professor Olga Ragusa, of Columbia University, is the latest Pirandellian scholar to devote herself to this fascinating author. Her excellent study. published by the University of Edinburgh in its "Writers of Italy Series," rightfully devotes most of its consideration to Pirandello's theatre, on which his international reputation rests. She does not neglect, by any means, considerations ofcertain ofthe essays, short stories and novels, on which she makes penetrating. subtle and intelligent observations, especially on "Arte e Coscienza d'Oggi." Her quotations from them are intelligible enough for the reader to follow them through...