The New York herald., 1922-11-19
The World Of Foreign Books

utude 10 the world. Lille thus becomes
a complex drama between the human being
as he really is and the human being he
conceives himself to be; and further be-
tween these two and the human being set
up by the (false) judgments of others.
This is the Pirandellian world. a con-
ception which he could elaborate philo-
sophically, because he is trained thinker;
but which, in his plays and novels, he
describes aesthetically, inventing situa-
tions that illustrate (without demonstrat-
ing) some aspect of that world. Twenty
years ago, in his novel III fu Malta
Pascal" Pirandello studied the case of a
man who tried to become another person
and to live life as another person. In
Henry W. he shows a man who has
another personality thrust by accident
upon him and who deliberately reassumes
1t later on to evade the consequences of
crime. In And Ye Clothed Me- (''vestire
glignudi') We have a girl who invents
another personality for herself and is left
naked" when it is stripped from her
These are conflicts of the two interior
egos Right You Are (Cosi e Sc vi pare).
The Pleasure Of Responsibility I'll
"Piaeere deli Onesta'). and Think it over,
Giacomino," Introduce conflicts between
the hidden inobvious ego and the world
at large. the former rising to confound and
humiliate the proud judgment of the world
The six Characters gains much in
clearness when it is viewed against these
other experiments of Pirandello. Here
the three realities (they are all real in
the sense that each produces a set of
happenings peculiar TO itself) come into
action as a problem for the artist Just
as in earlier and later works they figure
as problems for the individual himself
or for society in general Irony springs
Of necessity from the assurance, the cock
sureness with which each of the 'reali-
ties asserts itself against the others
Tragic. weird. ghostly in the background.
lurk these mysterious personalities which
are and yet are not, which remain in
tangible to the sense but which neverthe-
less control. (This ghost or puppet char
acter Pirandello gets from the "grotesques."
Of course: and everybody else in Italy
Is doing it, Bitterness is the product of
the injustice that inevitably arises when
people fail to understand each other: a
bitterness which implies an opposite In
human -kindliness; for tolerance and fore
bearance are taught" OF We can speak
of teaching for such theater) BY this
and all the plays Of Pirandeilo
All this the adjective original" re
most original drama Of the modern stag
which critics agree in applying 20 the "Six
Characters" adequately covers other
writer's. Unauno. for instance. IN his
''Niebla,' have written books and PLAYS
where the characters were thernseises
characters in book. People have hulf
plays within plays and have even thought
OF developing them from the bare boards ~
the stage. Pick the six Characters" 70
pieces and counterparts OF predecessors
could be found for every one Of its con
stituent elements. But the unity OF them
all. which proceeds from the fundamental
thought Of dramatizing the artist process
itself, is indeed quite unique And as for
the poetic mood that pervades it, a mood
that is inclined to be missing in many
OF Pirandello's coldly intellectual construc-
tons. we know OF no place TO seek its
parallel unless I'm the best OF the many
descendants OF the dream" play of
Calderon.