One, No One & 100,000:
A fresh, modern translation of Pirandello’s classic novel
Translated by Kevan Houser
Edited by Lewis Ellingham
Original Italian title: Uno, nessuno e centomila
By Luigi Pirandello
Originally published in 1926
By the same translator, also available on Amazon:
Countess Baby: a fresh, modern translation of Gerolamo Rovetta’s classic novella
Copyright © 2018 Kevan Houser
All rights reserved
This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN 978-1-64467-617-2
DEDICATION
This translation is dedicated to the countless Italians and Italophiles who have contributed to my understanding of—and love for—the Italian language and culture over the past many years.
It’s a long list: the Italian professors at the University of Oregon in the early 1980s, the faculty and students of the University for Foreigners Perugia (along with the incredible residents of that charming city) during an unforgettable summer in 1983, the Italian department at San Francisco State University in the early 1990s, the staff, faculty, and students at the excellent Istituto Italiano Scuola in San Francisco, circa 2014-2017 (Diletta in particular).
It doesn’t end there. I owe a debt of gratitude to Gengo for offering me my first paid translation work (and a ton of it!) and for providing useful feedback through testing and translation reviews as I gained confidence and honed my skills.
I’d also like to acknowledge and thank a number of memorable translation clients who’ve provided me (paid!) practice and experience as I branched out to more complex translation challenges over the past few years.
On the business translation side, I’d particularly like to mention Claudia, an incredibly caring and professional woman, who took a chance on me early on, taught me a lot, and gave me a lot of confidence and feedback (and plenty of challenging assignments!), and Bernardo, who, along with providing interesting translation work, masterfully and cheerfully explains puzzling sentences in his native language.
As for literary translation, how could I not thank Taylor Kinney, the Italian author who took a chance on me, giving me my first full-length novel to translate. Communicating with her was a wonderful experience, and I learned so much about the art of translating as well as getting my first glimpse of the rewarding path of self-publishing by observing the process she went through. Equally valuable was my experience with Agnes Moon, another successful, talented, and prolific Italian writer. It was truly a pleasure to work with both these women, as well as several other Italian authors.
Thank you all, and thank you to my family and friends for the moral support along the way.
Finally, thanks to Lew who graciously agreed to turn his eagle eyes to my manuscript in an effort to ferret out those sneaky little errors that drive both writers and readers crazy (any lingering mistakes are entirely my fault, by the way).
In some way, I feel I am indebted to all the Italians who have shared their beautiful, expressive language with me. Perhaps this translation will at least be a baby step in repaying that debt by contributing in some small way to promoting Italian literature.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION TO THIS TRANSLATION
WHY THIS TRANSLATION?
LUIGI PIRANDELLO, BRIEFLY
THE NOVEL: UNO, NESSUNO E CENTOMILA
BOOK ONE
BOOK TWO
BOOK THREE
BOOK FOUR
BOOK FIVE
BOOK SIX
BOOK SEVEN
BOOK EIGHT
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR:
ABOUT THE EDITOR:
INTRODUCTION TO THIS TRANSLATION
If you’re looking for a stuffy, scholarly translation that sounds like it was written a hundred years ago, don’t buy this book.
Mine is a bold, modern, American-English version of Luigi Pirandello’s thought-provoking novel, Uno, nessuno e centomila (One, No One and One Hundred Thousand), first published in 1926.
As such, the language and style of this translation differs significantly from the two prior published English-language versions, particularly because mine doesn’t attempt to be annoyingly literal or tiresomely erudite. There aren’t any “cultural notes.” I don’t point out Pirandello’s recurring themes, cross-referencing them to other works. In fact, you won’t find a single footnote at all. Nor will you find endless elaborate, run-on sentences twisted to within an inch of their grammatical life in a vain attempt to match the often complex, convoluted (and frankly, at times, confusing) prose of the original.
What you will find is a good read. Pirandello’s take on the nature of identity brims with sly humor, compelling drama, and skillfully depicted, oddly modern characters—all capped with timeless insight into the fragile human psyche. The protagonist, Vitangelo Moscarda (aka Gengè), discovers that his wife (and everyone else) sees him quite differently from how he sees himself, sending him down a precipitous path to obsession and madness.
Purists and scholars may be tempted to scoff at my work, and I can almost hear some already lamenting that my somewhat untraditional translation ruins Pirandello’s classic novel.
My reply? Nonsense! My translation doesn’t affect Pirandello’s original classic in the slightest. His novel survives unscathed, totally intact and available to be read by any competent speaker of Italian, as it has been for nearly a century.
Nor does my translation in any way lessen the two prior, more traditional efforts, which also remain available for the curious reader.
No, what I’ve done is added. I’ve expanded the reading public for Pirandello’s final novel by giving it a new voice—a modern, accessible, American voice, available in a modern, accessible format. It’s my hope that this translation might open the door to Pirandello for a whole new group of readers. It’s a door certainly worth opening.
WHY THIS TRANSLATION?
The fact that two prior English translations exist (Samuel Putnam, 1933 and William Weaver, 1990) begs the question: Why another one?
I hinted at the answer in the introduction. Reviewing earlier translations, I felt Pirandello’s thoughts and insights were somewhat obscured by the style, register, and word choice of the English versions. To my ear, many of the sentences were unnecessarily convoluted, unnatural, and unclear. I wondered if the novel’s comparative anonymity here might be due in part to the style of its English-language translations.
So I decided to produce a new version—one using modern, more natural-sounding vocabulary, expressions, and sentence structure. I wanted to reduce what I perceived as linguistic barriers in the translation by producing a more inviting version using clearer, easier-to-read prose that would allow the contemporary American reader to more comfortably approach and more easily understand Pirandello’s original intent.
Having two prior English-language translations of Uno, nessuno e centomila in print actually took a lot of pressure off me, allowing me the freedom to read between Pirandello’s admittedly confusing lines, extract his deeper meaning, and at times employ some creativity with my English re-creation.
Had this been the first translation, I definitely would’ve felt a greater necessity to be more literal, to perhaps mimic his at-times antiquated language, his convoluted phrasing, his style of meandering, inverted, paragraph-long complex sentences that often require several passes by the reader to fully untangle.
Instead, I felt free to think outside the box. My ulti
mate goal was to produce something similar to what Pirandello would have written had he been born an American in my lifetime. Of course, that’s total fantasy, because Pirandello was obviously a product of his time and culture.
However, upon reading and rereading the original book (some passages dozens and dozens of times), I feel (perhaps falsely) that I can “get” what Pirandello was trying to express. Then comes the matter of struggling to convey those ideas in a clear, modern English which still matches the original as closely as is practical.
Did I succeed? I’ll leave that to others to judge. However, I’m confident this translation provides a much-needed contrast to prior translations, and represents an interesting, thought-provoking read that anyone can appreciate.
If you’ve never heard of Pirandello, you can still readily enjoy this offbeat little book. For those quite familiar with Pirandello, this translation might offer a fresh perspective to a familiar work.
I look forward to hearing from readers!
LUIGI PIRANDELLO, BRIEFLY
Here’s the headline:
Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), world-renowned writer, is arguably best known in the US as a dramatist, particularly for the innovative “theatre within the theatre” aspect of his 1926 Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore), which has been called a “technical tour de force” and is still considered an avant‐garde masterpiece. Rather prolific, Pirandello produced hundreds of short stories, several novels, and much poetry in addition to about 50 plays. He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for “his almost magical power to turn psychological analysis into good theater.” (He was also quite capable of turning psychological analysis into good prose, I might add.)
For those curious to delve a little deeper into Pirandello’s life, here’s a brief bio that also provides a bit of context for the book:
In the midst of a cholera epidemic, Pirandello was born near Girgenti (now called Agrigento), on the beautiful southern coast of Sicily, on June 28, 1867, to well-to-do sulfur merchant Stefano Pirandello and his wife Caterina Ricci Gramitto. He was a weak, fragile child, plagued by insomnia, and grew up surrounded by servants and nurses. (Strangely, most biographies don’t even mention Pirandello’s several siblings, and the few that do offer conflicting numbers and birth orders.)
At the time, Sicily was a markedly conservative, rigid, almost feudal society. Pirandello’s strict, distant father was the boss of the family, and wanted his son to follow him into the world of business, which was an early source of stress and conflict for young Luigi, who demonstrated a literary bent from a young age. Stefano’s numerous extramarital affairs caused his wife much suffering and heartache and further strained the father-son relationship.
In 1880 his family moved to Palermo where he completed a liberal arts curriculum in high school (despite his father wanting him to follow a technical path). He returned to Girgenti for a short time to apprentice with his father in the sulfur mines, but young Pirandello prevailed in his desire to follow a literary path. He returned to Palermo to attend university, soon transferring to Rome, but was expelled after some sort of argument with a Latin professor. He subsequently transferred to the University of Bonn, where he spent two years delving into German romantic literature, translating some Goethe into Italian. He even wrote his dissertation in German, finally receiving his doctorate in Romance Philology in 1891.
He had already settled in Rome to dedicate himself to writing (he began publishing his works in the 1890s, and his first novel, The Outcast, was finished in 1893) prior to marrying the beautiful, intelligent Antonietta Portulano in 1894 (apparently he hadn’t met her; she was chosen by his father in something of an arranged marriage). They would have two sons (Stefano, 1895, and Fausto, 1899) and a daughter (Rosalia, aka Lietta, 1897). Living in Rome, he frequented a group of writer-journalists and taught Italian literature and composition in a teacher’s college for women, spending every free moment at his desk, compulsively churning out page after page in his neat little handwriting, while incessantly smoking cheap cigarettes.
In 1903, Pirandello’s father suffered financial ruin, leaving the family bankrupt. Some say this may have provoked or worsened his wife’s mental illness. At any rate, she suffered what has been described as a “nervous breakdown” shortly thereafter. Her paranoia provoked threatening and sometimes violent behavior (she reportedly tried to stab him on at least one occasion), but Pirandello kept her at home (divorce was against the law at the time) and provided for her care there until 1919, when, after years of torment, he finally had her committed to an asylum (she died there in 1959). During those years when she was at home, he increased his teaching schedule and continued to write and publish as much as he could to earn enough to provide for her care. Years of dealing with his unstable wife undoubtedly had an impact on his writing—madness, illusion, and isolation are frequent themes Pirandello addresses in his work, including the novel you’re about to read.
In 1920 Pirandello described his own art this way:
“I think that life is a very sad piece of buffoonery; because we have in ourselves, without being able to know why, wherefore or whence, the need to deceive ourselves constantly by creating a reality (one for each and never the same for all), which from time to time is discovered to be vain and illusory . . . My art is full of bitter compassion for all those who deceive themselves; but this compassion cannot fail to be followed by the ferocious derision of destiny which condemns man to deception.”
His most famous works were written in 1921: the plays Six Characters in Search of an Author and Henry IV. Reportedly, he wrote the first in three weeks, and the second in only two.
The neatly dressed man with piercing gray eyes and a white, pointed goatee looked more like the classic absent-minded professor than an international literary figure, but starting in 1922, Pirandello’s star truly took off, propelling him to worldwide fame and recognition. He would soon receive the Cross of the Legion of Honor from the French government, and his reputation would be capped by winning the 1934 Nobel prize in literature.
At home in Italy, Pirandello opened his own Art Theatre in Rome in 1925 (some sources say it was 1924), with the help of Mussolini, who had publicly announced his admiration for the playwright.
There has been a lot of debate about Pirandello’s relationship with Mussolini and his enthusiastic adoption of fascism (he joined the Fascist party in 1924). At one point, he stated: “I am a Fascist because I am an Italian.” But another time, he stated: “I’m apolitical, I’m only a man in the world.” In 1927, he ripped his fascist membership card up in front of the party secretary-general.
Was his support of Mussolini simply a matter of practicality, a strategic ploy to advance his career? Opposing the fascist regime would have put his artistic career in peril, while embracing it brought subsidies and publicity.
His final, unfinished play, The Giants of the Mountain, has been cited as demonstrating Pirandello’s increasing realization that fascists (“giants”) were the enemy of culture. However, during his final New York appearance, Pirandello voluntarily released a statement supporting Italy’s annexation of Abyssinia (he even handed his Nobel medal over to the Italian government to be melted down for the Abyssinian campaign).
Pirandello was obviously a complex individual, and there doesn’t seem to be universal consensus about his true feelings regarding Mussolini and fascism. What is undisputed is that Mussolini’s support worked to Pirandello’s great advantage as he rapidly rose to international fame, touring all over the world with his intellectual theatre.
Pirandello died of pneumonia alone in his home in Rome on December 10, 1936.
His will included various instructions for his funeral: “No announcements or invitations to the funeral. When I am dead, do not clothe me. Wrap me naked in a sheet. No flowers on the bed and no lighted candle. A pauper’s hearse. And no one to accompany me, neither relatives nor friends. The hearse, the horse, the coachmen, e basta. Burn
me. And when my body has been burnt, the ashes must be thrown into the wind because I want nothing, not even my ashes, to remain.”
But the Catholic Church didn’t believe in cremation, and apparently the Fascist party didn’t want “their” world-famous playwright to leave this world without due pomp and ceremony, so, against his wishes, Pirandello was given a state funeral.
His remains were returned to Sicily, where they are buried beneath a pine tree, near his birthplace.
His works live on, and his influence can be seen in many other writers, such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean-Paul Satre, Jean Anouilh, Eugene O’Neill, Jorge Luis Borges, and others.
THE NOVEL: UNO, NESSUNO E CENTOMILA
Uno, nessuno e centomila, has been described as both the most unusual and the most typical of Pirandello’s novels. However, Pirandello is mainly known in the US as a Nobel-winning playwright, and as such, his novels remain comparatively unknown to us, obscured in the shadows of his famous plays such as Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV, etc.
(It’s interesting to note that Pirandello is so identified as a playwright here, that most of his poetry was only first translated to English in 2016.)
Uno, nessuno e centomila was written over the course of several years, beginning in 1909, and published in a serial format in an Italian literary magazine over several months beginning in December 1925, then later assembled into a single volume published in 1926. It asks “What is reality?” and generally seems surprisingly modern, ahead of its time.
Some consider the novel an early work of existentialism (or proto-existentialism, as existentialism wouldn’t become widespread in literature for a good decade after its publication, and the term “existentialism” itself wasn’t even coined until the mid-1940s). Pirandello’s work is also described by some as “absurdist,” although many critics also say his novels are examples of “realism.”
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