Pirandello at the time of the Great War
By Pietro Frassica
The lecture is based on the close correspondence between Luigi and Stefano Pirandello, the eldest son of the great Sicilian author. Stefano fought during the First World War at the battlefield’s frontline and then was taken as a prisoner in Mauthausen. Since his childhood he was very close to his father. This relationship, of extraordinary intimacy, lasted for decades.
Letters written between the author and his son, from October 1915 through December 1918, reveal an extraordinary intellectual bond and provide information on the short stories and plays that Luigi was working during this period. Through this correspondence we are witnessing the birth of live drama by Pirandello in the crucial years of the Great War. In addition, they cast light upon many aspects of his family life, the manifestations of Pirandello’s wife’s mental illness as well as the limits imposed due to the war’s censorship.
PIETRO FRASSICA. Professor of Italian at Princeton University and Associate Chair of the Department of French and Italian, has done principal work in the early Renaissance, the Eighteenth Century, contemporary literature (Marinetti, Vittorini, Sciascia, Primo Levi, Lagorio) and theater (Pirandello). He is the author of more than one hundred published articles and of the following books: A Marta Abba per non morire, 1991; Romanzo europeo tra Otto e Novecento, 1992; Caro Maestro (letters by Marta Abba to Luigi Pirandello), 1994; Varianti e invarianti dell’evocazione, 2004, (Val di Comino Prize); Her Maestro’s Echo, 2010. His critical edition of Gian Mario Filelfo’s Chroniche de la città de Anchona, 1979, received the “Premio Internazionale di letteratura” in 1980. He is also editor of the volumes Primo Levi as Witness, 1991; Studi di filologia e letteratura italiana, 1992; and Salvatore Quasimodo. Nel vento del Mediterraneo, 2001; Magia di un romanzo. Il Fu Mattia Pascal prima e dopo, 2005; and La Cucina Futurista, (by Marinetti and Fillìa), 2007.