Re: LUIGI PIRANDELLO
Nga Pirandello kam lexuar vetem "Il Fu Mattia Pascal", liber qe me pelqeu jashte mase. Per kete hapa dhe temen "nga letersia italiane". Siç e kam thene dhe ne ate teme kete liber pata rastin ta lexoj ne anglisht, ne nje kurs universitar mbi letersine moderne italiane. Profesori na beri nje home-exam ku njera nga pyetjet kishte te bente me romanin ne fjale dhe ishte pak a shume "What does Pirandello's novel tell about religion and tradition, does it reject or ultimately reaffirm them?" Me poshte po dergoj dhe pergjigjen time, kuptohet ne anglisht, jo shume te gjate pasi megjithese ka shume gjera per te thene mbi kete isha i detyruar ta kufizoja me nje mije fjale. Shpresoj t'ju pelqeje.
“The Late Mattia Pascal” is a tragic novel. It is not tragic in the sense of misfortunes or other things in life that make it unbearable. It is not even an unhappy story of one’s life. One could even consider it a colourful, unusual life that if not for anything better is, at least, different, something that does not happen to everyone. The tragic lies in the philosophy of the text, the unsolved existential problem arised by it. The novel is essentially all about the argument between the narrator and Don Eligo at the second foreword on Copernicus’ discovery that it is not the sun that turns around the world but otherwise, that is, that man is not anymore the center of the universe. Narrator’s “reincarnation” through Adrian Meis first and then the Late Mattia Pascal is the path to wisdom, the enlightenment of his mind and the grasping of the truth. When he decides to give up Mattia Pascal for his succesor he does not merely change his look and his past but goes through a change inside. He becomes a new personality and feels as such. He rids himself of everything that would bound him to Mattia, eventually his eye too and constantly refers to his previous identity as someone else, forgotten, having nothing to do with the actual person. Thus he dares to make his step out of his warm (though not comfortable), narrow sorrounding, out of the shelter of ignorance and unawareness. He makes it without thinking much and with great hopes and the most important with the illusion of being free, not bound by anything in the world only to be convinced after two years that there is nothing such as freedom at all. Instead he finds himself bound to his former ego which follows him like a shadow and he ultimately understands that he is traped in Mattia Pascal and what identifies him, Miragno, his wife, mother-in-law for whom he feels a weird nostalgy, library and even creditors. By the difficult situations he experiences as Adrian Meis he comes to understand bitterly that getting out of that reality is impossible, that it mercilessly drags towards itself. So with much more eager and impatience does he return to his former life than when he had abandoned it. When he returns he behaves almost histerically in order, though maybe unaware of it, to convince himself that he is really Mattia Pascal. But there is a problem, he can not be who he was. People do not recognize him. Because of the circumstances he can’t enter again within the law. He can’t be the former Mattia Pascal because Mattia Pascal was ignorant, unaware, he was the man who the whole universe turns around, whereas he has looked beyond his little world to be terrified at the enormousness of the universe outside and has quickly run back to seek shelter in it again but with the realization that it is “an invisible spinning-top, whipped by a thread of sunlight, on a grain of crazed sand which turns and turns without ever knowing why”. This is the tragic picture of the existence that the text does present. In this picture religion and tradition belong to the initial world of Mattia Pascal, the world which people create around themselves in order to be the center of the universe. This view which Copernicus proved untrue was a religious doctrine and while the narrator refers to Copernicus he hints that not only the theory but religion itself was shaken by him. Religion and tradition are parts of the identity that man gives to himself. As such they are the unescapable reality that man tries to return to if he ever dares to abandon them because they give shelter and relief against the uncertainty that lies out of them. People belonging to them throw the books at the deconsecrated church which represents the religion denied and the absence of religion goes together with books that represent awareness and wisdom for which the citizens of Miragno don’t show the slightest interest. The narrator says this as a compliment to them. He envies them for their ignorance and wish he could be like them, having not gone through his odissey, but as he is the Late Mattia Pascal who has forever lost his identity and has gained a wisdom he doesn’t know what to do with, he physically also is trapped in that temple which has lost its sanctity and now bears a vast knowledge that serves for nothing to anyone. So the question whether this novel is against religion and tradition or not and if it does reaffirm it is the question of the whole story which the narrator leaves ambiguous. They are false parts of a false identity created by man but which in turn warm him and make his existence easier. To which side does the balance weigh is the tragic ambiguity left unanswered.
