Absurdism and Existentialism
HUM 2052: Civilization II
Spring 2013
Dr. Perdigao
April 1-5, 2013
Framing the Absurd: Pirandello
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1867—Born in Girgenti (now Agrigento, Sicily)
1880s—University of Rome, then University of Bonn, doctorate in romance
philology (1891)
1894—Married Antonietta Portulano, her insanity, paranoia—death in 1918
1890s—translated Goethe’s Roman Elegies, wrote Elegie Renae, two books of poetry—
shifted to plays after short stories and novel
1915—sixteen plays produced in six years
Mussolini supported to create National Art Theatre in Rome (but failed); selfproclaimed fascist (joined party in 1923)
1934—Nobel Prize for Literature
1936—published collection of forty-three plays as Naked Masks (“grotesque
theatre”); dies in the same year
Three stages: folk comedies, philosophical works, mythic plays written under
fascist rule
Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) comprised during the second period
A metaplay that turns to itself, to deconstruct its own making
An Absurdist Legacy
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“Pirandellism”—as “many truths as there are points of view” (1736)
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Emphases shared with Existentialism: “difficulty of achieving a sense of identity,
the impossibility of authentic communication between people, and the overlapping
frontiers of appearance and reality”—as “crises in self-knowledge” (1736)
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“real” actors putting on “real” play, stalled by fictional characters who want to act
out their real lives, or have them played by real actors
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Set against tradition of the “well-made play” in the nineteenth century, switches to
the Russian fabulist tradition— “baring the device”
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“‘real’ life changes from moment to moment, exhibiting a fluidity that renders
difficult and perhaps impossible any single formulation of either character or
situation” (1736).
Absurd Postmodernisms
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Like Freud, belief in unconscious personality beneath “everyday awareness”:
“Successive layers of personality, conflicts among the various parts, and the
simultaneous existence of multiple perspectives shape an identity that is never
fixed but always fluid and changing. This identity escapes the grasp of onlookers
and subject alike, and expresses a basic incongruity in human existence that
challenges the most earnest attempts to create a unified self” (1737).
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“somebody” versus “nobody”—masking identities; “naked mask”
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Wearing of semi-masks to distinguish the six characters
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Father: remorse; Stepdaughter: revenge; Son: scorn; Mother: sorrow
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Self-reflexive; play within a play; metaplay; metatheatre
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The Rules of the Game rehearsed
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Sancho Panza, Prospero (1746)
Frame-breaking
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1921, performed in 1923 in Paris, Russian director Pitoëff, stage with stairs
extending, breaking the “fourth wall”; characters dressed in black; Madame Pace in
red silk dress; actors in light-colored clothes (1739)
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Changes with productions; 1988—set in New York, Madame Pace as a pimp
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Molly Hite describes postmodernist fiction in the following terms: “To break
narrative frames by allowing one ontological level of the plot to intrude on another
ontological level is to introduce radical instability into a work of fiction. Inasmuch
as this kind of frame-breaking is one of the most important features of postmodern
writing, it aligns the postmodern novel with a kind of radical undecidability, a
suspicion that the question ‘What’s the real story here?’ cannot be answered in any
satisfying way—satisfying, that is, in terms of the sorts of expectations bred by
realist and modernist fiction” (703).
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Father: “The play is in us: we are the play” (1746).
Leading Actress: “and we’re the audience” (1749).
Son: “Yes . . . literature, literature” (1752).
Father: “The drama begins now: and it’s new and complex” (1752).
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Postmodernist Play
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PRODUCER: “What do you expect me to do if nobody writes good plays any
more and we’re reduced to putting on plays by Pirandello? And if you can
understand them you must be very clever. He writes them on purpose so nobody
enjoys them, neither actors nor critics nor audience.” (1743)
Play with Pirandello’s work, offering critique of its own form, like Cervantes
commenting on his writing of Don Quixote.
STEPDAUGHTER: “Believe me, sir, we really are six of the most fascinating
characters. But we’ve been neglected.” (1746)
Footnote that Pirandello originally conceived these characters as part of a novel he
was writing but then abandoned. This becomes the subtext—their “half-realized
personalities” (1746)
Half-Realizations
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SON: “But haven’t you realised yet that you’ll never be able to do this play?
There’s nothing inside of us inside you and you actors are only looking at us from
the outside. Do you think we could go on living with a mirror held up in front of
us that didn’t only freeze our reflections for ever, but froze us in a reflection that
laughed back at us with an expression that we didn’t even recognise as our own?”
(1778)
Play between interior and exterior world, the function of the play, art as reality.
Mirror held up to world reflected in art=realism. Here surrealist fantasy and play.
OTHER ACTORS FROM THE RIGHT: “Make-believe? It’s real! Real! He’s
dead!”
OTHER ACTORS FROM THE LEFT: “No, he isn’t. He’s pretending! It’s all
make-believe!” (1780)
Schrödinger’s Cat
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/science/6dff/
http://icanhascheezburger.com/?s=schrodinger
http://www.philosophersguild.com