PIRANDELLOV IKO, NIKO I STO HILJADA KAO ZAKLJUČAK POETIKE HUMORIZMA / PIRANDELLO’S ONE, NO ONE AND ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND AS THE CONCLUSION OF THE POETICS OF HUMOR

Abstract

One, No One and One Hundred Thousand is a continuation of The Late Mattia Pascal in the way that it also revolves around the central theme of Pirandello’s vision—crisis of individual identity. The protagonist of the novel, Vitangello Moscarda, accidentally discovers that others have a different vision of him than the one he has created for himself. This strikes him deeply and a true obsession in him is born that uproots his life and makes him commit all kinds of nonsense. He realises that there are numerous ‘Moscardas’, each one being different, that come to life depending on the vision of numerous people around him, especially his wife. In that way, a terror arises in him defying the prison of ‘form’into which others are forcing him but he also discovers that he is a ‘nobody’ to his own self as well, which further creates a disturbing sensation of absolute solitude. By means of his own insanity he is trying to rebel against the rigid system of social conventions but is defeated.Although he strived to destroy all the imposed forms, he is now to accept and suffer through the one cast upon him by the society, i.e. that of an adulterer, although he is innocent. It is in this very defeat that he finds a way to heal from the agitation that irked him. The original state of mind that he is a ‘nobody’tormented him and fed in him a sense of grave solitude. Now, he readily accepts an alienation from his own self and irrevocably rejects any form of personal identity, even his own name, and willingly accepts the changeable flow of life to carry him, alternately dying and being born a blank slate and without reminiscence. He no longer fixates to a single form but identifies himself with all that is outside in a complete alienation from the society and the prison of form that it imposes.