"SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH AS AN AUTHOR" (LUIGI PIRANDELLO).   Term Paper ID:26788 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Analyzes play's political influences & themes (focusing on fascism), technique, non-realism, appearance vs. reality.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Analyzes play's political influences & themes (focusing on fascism), technique, non-realism, appearance vs. reality. Paper Introduction: An overtly non-realistic portrayal of society is offered in a play by Luigi Pirandello, yet this is also a play with a political analysis at its heart. Appearance versus reality is a theme that infuses Pirandello's play Six Characters in Search of an Author. The technique used by the playwright is extremely theatrical and has a long history--the play-within-a-play was used often by Shakespeare and can be found in the works of other major dramatists. The playwright often uses such a device to comment on the process of playwriting itself, showing within a performance of a play the act of creating and presenting some vision of reality in dramatic form. Pirandello's work makes this self-reflective structure the basic substance of the play and uses it to raise questions as to how we can tell when reality ends and illusion begins, or the other way round. The selfhood Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Icould give you the address of an author if you like" (Pirandello 235). WalterStarkie sees the play as following one of Pirandello's particular concerns,as he notes when he writes, Pirandello sees deep down into human character beneath all the manifold constructions which society has raised as a protection of the majority (Starkie 2 5). The play is not a vehicle for a fascist message, though it does havepolitical overtones as would any work concerned with society and even withaesthetic expression in a society. "Six Charactes in Search of an Author." In Naked Masks: Five Plays by Luigi Pirandello, Eric Bentley (ed.), 211-276. Such descriptions can become quitecomplex, but at heart they all mean that no one in this play can be seen aseither all real or all fictional, just as none of the events can be seen asall real or all fictional, even in the "reality" of the play. The play is a failure because the characters cannot find theright identity: The six characters cannot perform together because they are unable to distance themselves from the events; and the actors who are meant to act the scenes after them do not succeed because they lack the immediacy of the emotional experience (Matthaei 77).Pirandello shows that the play always attempts to appear real, while thisappearance is an illusion. He believes that people tend to confuse the two.Yet, he also finds that there are a number of elements which the two seemto share, and some indeed which they seem to share with Communism, anothersocial and political movement with which they were in competition. . The theater was eventually dissolved when its finances fellthrough. The ambiguities anduncertainties that this new knowledge created was expressed in differentways by artists in different fields. He raises this idea by poking fun at it when he theLeading Man calls the play ridiculous and the Manager answers, "Is it myfault if France won't send us any more good comedies, and we are reduced toputting on Pirandello's works, where nobody understands anything, and wherethe author plays the fool with us all?" (Pirandello 213). Before the war, permanent overpopulationhad brought about pressure on the society, and Italy's problems onlyincreased after the war: Fifty years of political unity were insufficient for the attainment of that homogeneity which would have enabled her to take prompt measures and overcome local difficulties and upheavals. In Pirandello's repertory company, it was the play and not the actorsthat was the focus of the theater. "The Remorseless Rush of Time." The Tulane Drama Review 1 (3)(Spring 1966), 3 -45. . Psychology was showing that behaviorwas more complex than previously imagined and that there was an entireworld of relationships and forces that was hidden. Just as the development of National Socialism was influenced inGermany by World War I and opposition to Communism, so fascism in Italy wasshaped by these same forces. The playwright often uses such a device to comment onthe process of playwriting itself, showing within a performance of a playthe act of creating and presenting some vision of reality in dramatic form. Understanding Luigi Pirandello. The following will consider whether the play reflectsPirandello's political ideals as a fascist and how this might be the case.While Pirandello's political ideals may have been inherent in all his work,as might be expected, his real issues in this play are theatrical, creatingan ongoing critique of the relationship between reality and the theater. The work is highly theatrical and highly self-referential in that itis a play that involves a play, it is presented as if it were a rehearsalon a stage, and it therefore constantly calls attention to its technique, atechnique it also critiques even as it is presented. . Even in that context, are these people real or actors? Fascism is a political ideology that was tested in this century inGermany and Italy and that was thoroughly discredited in the eyes of theworld by the conclusion of World War II. Mussolini developed a program thatwas sufficiently radical to appeal to the workers. The very act of creating a theatrical experience can have a politicalmeaning, and this is especially true in modernist works that seek toinvolve the audience more directly in the experience. Socially Italy was still less well fitted to solve in peace these profound disturbances in her national life (Ebenstein 7).Mussolini turned his nation towards Nationalism but also made a claim to bethe champion of the working classes. Yet these people are not real any morethan those rehearsing the play are really rehearsing the old play ratherthan performing in the second play. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1997.De Grand, Alexander. In 1925, Pirandello did indeed became the artistic director forthe sort of theater he wanted, the Teatro d'Arte di Roma (Bassanese 19). Fascist Italy. There is a suggestion that Pirandello's fascism was morepragmatic than ideological in what Bassanese says about the outcome: Pirandello's dream of a national theater was never realized because of the lack of firm state support for the project, support that diminished as Pirandello's enthusiasm for Fascism waned (Bassanese 2 ).It is not clear if his support waned as he saw that he would not get thetheater he wanted, or if his waning support turned the regime against hisidea. The playwright even recommends the use of masks. The balance of "real" people and "characters" serves to blur thedistinction between the two: The Characters are the core of the drama because they are manifestations of the imaginative process, not because of their sensational story. The political and social transformationsbrought about by the World War were considerable. Mussolini used the myth of theDuce at the level of ideology as he developed a regime based on simplifiedand ritualized thought and behavior, with Mussolini being Il Duce.Mussolini also imitated the Germans: The impact of war and the example of the Nazi propaganda machine under Josef Goebbels led the regime to experiment in new areas of social and political control (De Grand 148).Fascism in Italy became both a mass movement of the middle class and apolitical party through which important political and economic interestgroups could attempt to preserve the socioeconomic status quo. . Some of the impetus for the development of fascism isindicated in the general statement about life made by the Father: "For mannever reasons so much and becomes so introspective as when he suffers;since he is anxious to get at the cause of his sufferings, to learn who hasproduced them, and whether it is just or unjust that he should have to bearthem" (Pirandello 267). Pirandello was an established playwright when he surprised theliterary community in 1924 by supporting Fascism, obtaining partymembership at the height of the Matteoti Affair when the leader of theopposition was found murdered by government assassins. Van Nostrand Company, 1964.Weiss, Aureliu. Italian fascism was shaped byBenito Mussolini and his followers. Modernismrejected traditions that existed in the nineteenth century and sought tostretch the boundaries, striking out in new directions and with newtechniques. Appearance versus reality is a theme that infuses Pirandello's playSix Characters in Search of an Author. Luigi Pirandello. "Introduction." In Umorismo, Luigi Pirandello (translated by Antonio Illiano and Daniel P. Fascism and National Socialism shared the essentially fascist trustin the leader as the core of the ideology and as the symbol holding thesociety together around fascist principles. An overtly non-realistic portrayal of society is offered in a play byLuigi Pirandello, yet this is also a play with a political analysis at itsheart. The selfhood ofhis characters is less an issue given that they are types and are alsoactors assuming selves not their own. Italy was the one of theAllies that suffered the most. Human identity is also something of anillusion. Their examination of their selfhoodis itself a political act because it takes place in a social setting andrelies on determining each individual's relationship to others in thatsocial setting. What they are rehearsing, then,is a real play, and such rehearsals most certainly would have taken placeregarding this play at some time in the past. Theoriginal nucleus of the group consisted of former socialists andsyndicalists, and they were joined by provincial middle-class intermediateelites seeing the movement as a vehicle by which they could acquire highersocial and political status. This makes them real peoplepretending to be actors, while the actors who take their parts will bepretending to be real people. The technique used by theplaywright is extremely theatrical and has a long history--the play-within-a-play was used often by Shakespeare and can be found in the works of othermajor dramatists. Works CitedBaldick, Chris, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Pirandello thusmade a grand public gesture and wrote a letter to Italy's new dictator,Benito Mussolini, asserting his loyalty and availability: It appears that Pirandello had faith in Mussolini's Fascist agenda, seeing it as a politics of actions rather than words that promised social change. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974.Matthaei, Renate. New York: American Book Company, 1939.Illiano, Antonio. As "created realities," they are distinguished from the "human" participants in the play by a series of theatrical devices. For instance,the Manager agrees that the story told by the Father is interesting butinsists that something is missing: "But you see, without an author . Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965.Weber, Eugen. Pirandello was partof the shift to modernism, a term applied retroactively to certain literaryand artistic trends at the beginning of the twentieth century. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1973.Pirandello, Luigi. The movement also appealed to urban studentsand professionals who considered the single party and the corporate systemas the means to controlled modernization without social upheaval: These various components united in their desire to break the hold of the Socialist party over the masses and to substitute the Fascist party as the link between the political class and the mass base (De Grand 154). Theauthor is the shaper of the play and, in some ways, of life. for instance, thevery search for an author is similar to the emphasis in fascism on opposingparliamentary democracy and the worship of a strong leader. Luigi Pirandello 1867-1936. Elements of this list can be found in the play. Bassanese says that one of the reasons for Pirandello's continuedpublic support for the regime was his desire to create a national theaterwith state support. As noted, the real subject of Six Characters in Search of an Authoris less the politics of fascism than the politics of the theater.Pirandello mixes reality and illusion from the first as he presents what issupposed to be a producer and cast rehearsing the second act ofPirandello's own play Rules of the Game. In the theater, playwrights such asPirandello and Brecht delved into abstract structures and borrowed from theabstractions of other cultures--notably Oriental forms such as the JapaneseNoh drama--to escape from the realism of the theater of the nineteenthcentury. In this case, the "real" people beingportrayed also serve as an audience to watch the actors pretending to bethem, and they comment that the actors are not as real as they arethemselves. Pirandello's work makes this self-reflective structure the basic substanceof the play and uses it to raise questions as to how we can tell whenreality ends and illusion begins, or the other way round. Antonio Illiano notes how thecharacters just appear on the stage at the beginning, with no explanation,and how the play progresses from there: This extremely explosive beginning sets off a most complex series of chain reactions, developing in all directions, all intricately woven in a spinning rhapsody of polemics, contrasts, misunderstandings, disquisitions, and heated feelings; a rhapsody ending in true agreement with Hegel's theory of the drama, that is, not ending at all (Illiano 2).Pirandello was most interested in challenging the usual assumptions of thetheater, most interested in that than in any wider politics, as noted byAureliu Weiss when he writes, "Characters are the very foundation oftraditional drama, and Pirandello's theatre is a constant denial of theexistence of such a thing as a character" (Weiss 37). Italian Fascism: Its Origins and Development. In part, this was a response to the discovery anddissemination of ideas from psychology showing the complexities of humanexperience in a new light. Everybody will get his part written out afterwards"(Pirandello 242). The general view of critics is that Six Characters in Search of anAuthor is about the acts of creating a play, producing a play, watching aplay, and creating a theatrical experience. In the case of SixCharacters in Search of an Author, the author himself had certain politicalideals which are likely to have colored how he shaped the work. He also eliminated the job of prompterin the belief that it made actors too dependent and encouraged them to beill-prepared. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1982.Ebenstein, William. He denounced the official leadersamong the workers as reactionary and called for the working class to throwoff the bonds of these false prophets. New York: Dutton, 1952.Starkie, Walter. Pirandello heresees Italy as lagging behind because it lacks the national theater heenvisions. Amongthese elements are the following: 1) maintenance of capitalism (clearly not shared by Communism); 2) intensification of capitalist dictatorship (Communist dictatorshipbeing of a different order); 3) limitation and repression of independent working-class movementsand the building up of a system of organized class cooperation; 4) revolt against parliamentary democracy; 5) extending the state monopolist organization of industry andfinance; 6) closer concentration of each imperialist bloc into a singleeconomic-political unit; and 7) increasing imperialist antagonisms leading to war (Weber 7 -71). The atomic world showed that the reality we perceive throughthe sense is not the only reality. Nevertheless it was an improbable move for a celebrity who had remained persistently apolitical for decades (Bassanese 19).Pirandello's adherence to the party did, however, solidify his position asa member of the establishment, and the fascist regime wanted to"institutionalize" Pirandello as an official cultural icon. Testa). The issomething of the dictatorship in the way reality is shaped on stage, as isevident as the Manager says to the actors, "For the moment you just watchand listen. Science was discovering the uncertainties ofexistence. Eugen Weber makes a distinctionbetween fascism, such as was seen in Italy, and National Socialism, theGerman manifestation. He demanded thedissolution of the monarchy and the senate, the confiscation ofecclesiastical property, the control of industries and factories by theworkers, and minimum wages (Ebenstein 12). Pirandello fictionalizesreality and thus creates a "real" moment on the stage that the audience issupposed to be allowed to be privy to, when in comes another group ofpeople who claim to be real people looking for an author to tell theirstory and so dramatize reality. . . More was demanded of the reader of literature or the viewer ofart. The producerlikes their story and wants it retold with actors playing the "real" peoplewho just acted that story out for him. Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth Century. Answers were not presented directly to issues raised, but instead theartist demanded the participation of the audience more directly inelucidating meaning and in seeing the relationship between technique andmeaning (Baldick 14 ). New York: Oxford University Press, 199 .Bassanese, Fiora A. (Bassanese 1 3). Princeton, New Jersey: D. 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