Pirandello’s last novel, first published in 1927, is the work of his that most elucidates his thought. The story revolves around Vitangelo Moscarda, a man from the provinces who is suddenly struck by the realisation that the nature of man is not -essence but -appearance: he doesn’t have one personality but rather the hundred thousand that others discern in him — hence the title. He falls into incessant speculation, attempting to give his life a new meaning. Everyone else takes him for a madman, his wife leaves him and he gets shut up in a mental hospital where he is free to be no-one and everyone at the same time, as every second he dies and is reborn with a new face and without memories. There he lives in tranquillity, no longer a man but earth, air, cloud and wind.


The drama of identity into which Moscarda is plunged is a constant theme in Pirandello’s writing. Here, the impossibility of simply being precipitates his protagonist into a search for self-annihilation, a conscious dissolution of his own personality.

‘The home stands in the country, in a lovely spot. I go out every morning, at dawn, because now I want to keep my spirit like this, fresh with dawn, with all things as they are first discovered, that still smack of the raw night, before the sun dries their moist respiration and dazzles them.’ p160