Well that was a very interesting first chapter. I’ve never really thought before about the ‘me’ of my interior life versus the ‘me’ out there in the world. But they are indeed different people! I enjoyed the section where Moscardo is trying to ‘catch’ himself in the mirror. I remember doing this myself - though without all the philosophical thought - when I was about five. I’d try to move fast enough to see myself moving in the mirror. Unsurprisingly it never worked! I also thought it was interesting to be reading this in the age of social media when so many people are so invested in filming, documenting and seeing themselves ‘from the outside’. This section spoke to me:
“I could never meet, the one others saw living, but was invisible to me. I wanted to see and know him too, the way others saw and knew him.”
I wondered if this sense of knowing ourselves as others do is the motivation behind the compulsion to tik tok every moment for many people.
Your thought about TikToks is very interesting. It seems to me that in this world of cameras, photos, and endless streams, many people perceive themselves primarily as a body, as something external, as how they look in photos. While who they are inside, what their interests are - these could be strangers. Like «antonyms» to Moscarda.
Oh how much I'd pay to hear Pirandello's thoughts on TikTok and influencer culture! These people offering us slices of life so thoroughly artificial that nothing true will ever translate over, it's the ultimate mask wearing, form over substance ramped up to the extreme.
Thank you so much for the article! It's so interesting to read both the novel and your comments, and reflect on them.
In life, I'm also often accompanied by thoughts similar to those described by the novel's protagonist, but mainly I've pondered: "How can you prove that you are really you in this body, and not someone else?" And I haven't come to any conclusion, and now I have new thoughts because of Moscarda - how to get acquainted with your stranger-body. Is it really a stranger, just appearance, or can that other person have their own thoughts and emotions.
Here I think about the series Severance, where characters are divided into 2 separate personalities - one for work and one for the rest of life, and their thoughts/ideas never intersect. They have nothing in common except their body. I wonder if Moscarda also perceives that stranger as completely separate from himself.
And I have many questions about his wife! It feels like she's the reason for the protagonist's disorder. She's not presented here as a close person, as a "better half," "love" - but rather as someone who pushed him towards psychological problems, towards an existential crisis, and she doesn't let him "be alone." I wouldn't be surprised if his wife becomes his alter-ego, but one that represents the feminine manifestation in a man.
And I have questions: does the name Gengé have some special meaning, why did his wife call him that - will the protagonist explain this to us later?
We'll find much more about Moscarda's wife and Gengè especially, so I won't spoil anything. But I hope I'm not causing too much of an existential crisis Dana 😂 I think I stopped looking in the mirror a long time ago because I didn't recognize myself in there and couldn't be bothered anymore, I've said this before but isn't it interesting how these kind of thoughts are more or less universal? I'll definitely want to know if you relate to Moscarda's future findings.
I’m about to start reading. I have a Kevin Houser translation which I think is fairly new. It’s supposed to be “fresh and modern” which may or may not be a good thing! I’ll find out! Thank you for the great introduction - looking forward to reading this.
Ha, I'm glad someone got the Houser translation! I was eyeing it a bit suspiciously, it seems a bit of a contradiction to use modern American for a book that was supposed to sound archaic even to early 20th century readers. On the other hand, it does make it more relatable and palatable to the TikTok generation (since you mentioned them!), it's an interesting experiment. If you ever have the time, try to compare a page by Houser with the old translation I linked, see if you get a different feeling from the two.
I’ll definitely do that. Will be interesting to see the differences. The language is very modern and - to me - very American. We’ve already had, “wow”, “go figure” and “true that”, which I doubt feature in earlier translations.
Though unrelated, the focus on physical appearances, a stranger within one — all made me think of the movie “The Substance.”
“I still believed, I may repeat here, that the stranger in question was a single individual: one to all, even as I believed that I was a single individual to myself. But my atrocious drama speedily grew more complicated, with the discovery of the hundred-thousand Moscardas …”
And this reminded me of this quote by Anais Nin: “We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.”
Everybody is seeing a different Moscarda.
“Who was I? Was I, I?”
And finally the chapter made me think of Identity in general. Like our appearance, how the various different ways we generally identify ourselves are predetermined for us, even before we are born: nationality, religion, etc. Another common way we identify ourselves is by profession. Aren’t we more than that?
It was serendipitous and also a little weird to be reading these first few chapters at the same time as I was reading Jennifer Finney Boylan’s new memoir, Cleavage. Her work is all about the differences between one’s appearances and one’s identity, and she often discusses looking in the mirror since her appearance now matches her identity and observing what she sees.
One more comment. Not on the book, but on the Magritte painting that you've used for an illustration, La Reproduction Interdite. Nice choice. The book next to the figure is Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. I suspect that will turn out to be a very appropriate reference.
Another great parallel! Poe definitely planted the seeds for what Pirandello and other experimenting modernists would later achieve. It’s interesting, both are known for their career-defining short stories but I've never thought to link Pirandello with Poe's attempt at a longer novel.
There's so much to talk about in this section! One type of humor I really like is that which takes an interesting idea and follows it to an absurd but totally logical conclusion. I see that at play here. Moscardo notices his nose, really notices it, for the first time in his life, and finds it imperfect. Some people would shrug and move on. But Moscardo feels a deep rift between his subjective notion of himself and how others must view him. For the rest of Book First at least he follows this thought relentlessly, and tells us it will eventually lead to madness. Every step down this path is both unpredictable and totally plausible, and thus provokes a laugh.
I suspect that Moscardo will engage in some intense self-examination, and exemplify how it is done. Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." He tried to get people to look deeply into their assumptions, their claims to knowledge, their values. For that, we was condemned to death. At his trial, when he addressed the jury for the last time, he referred to himself as an irritating gadfly, stinging the noble steed of Athens. I suspect that Moscardo, too, will play the stinging fly and goad us into examining our lives.
The parallel with Socrates is striking—both figures use uncomfortable truths to provoke deeper self-examination.
What makes this especially compelling is how Moscarda's fixation on his nose opens up deeper questions about identity and perception. His descent into "madness," simultaneously unexpected and logical, demonstrates Pirandello's gift for making philosophical ideas both accessible and darkly comic.
Excellent detail with Socrates’ fly, I hadn't thought of it! Pirandello like Nietzsche aimed to take the Greeks down a peg, but I do think there are parallels with Socrates especially, look at how both used humor as a weapon.
And re: Moscarda's woes being both absurd and relatable, that is the aim of the book in a nutshell, and you figured it out right away. As extreme as his reaction seems to be, the truth is we all recognize his train of thought. Even judging only by the comments here, we all had similar feelings of depersonalization looking at our pictures or staring in a mirror. Madness is inherently human and worth empathizing with.
Well that was a very interesting first chapter. I’ve never really thought before about the ‘me’ of my interior life versus the ‘me’ out there in the world. But they are indeed different people! I enjoyed the section where Moscardo is trying to ‘catch’ himself in the mirror. I remember doing this myself - though without all the philosophical thought - when I was about five. I’d try to move fast enough to see myself moving in the mirror. Unsurprisingly it never worked! I also thought it was interesting to be reading this in the age of social media when so many people are so invested in filming, documenting and seeing themselves ‘from the outside’. This section spoke to me:
“I could never meet, the one others saw living, but was invisible to me. I wanted to see and know him too, the way others saw and knew him.”
I wondered if this sense of knowing ourselves as others do is the motivation behind the compulsion to tik tok every moment for many people.
Your thought about TikToks is very interesting. It seems to me that in this world of cameras, photos, and endless streams, many people perceive themselves primarily as a body, as something external, as how they look in photos. While who they are inside, what their interests are - these could be strangers. Like «antonyms» to Moscarda.
Yes, perhaps as a culture we’re losing touch with our inner selves. That feels like it can’t be good.
Oh how much I'd pay to hear Pirandello's thoughts on TikTok and influencer culture! These people offering us slices of life so thoroughly artificial that nothing true will ever translate over, it's the ultimate mask wearing, form over substance ramped up to the extreme.
Thank you so much for the article! It's so interesting to read both the novel and your comments, and reflect on them.
In life, I'm also often accompanied by thoughts similar to those described by the novel's protagonist, but mainly I've pondered: "How can you prove that you are really you in this body, and not someone else?" And I haven't come to any conclusion, and now I have new thoughts because of Moscarda - how to get acquainted with your stranger-body. Is it really a stranger, just appearance, or can that other person have their own thoughts and emotions.
Here I think about the series Severance, where characters are divided into 2 separate personalities - one for work and one for the rest of life, and their thoughts/ideas never intersect. They have nothing in common except their body. I wonder if Moscarda also perceives that stranger as completely separate from himself.
And I have many questions about his wife! It feels like she's the reason for the protagonist's disorder. She's not presented here as a close person, as a "better half," "love" - but rather as someone who pushed him towards psychological problems, towards an existential crisis, and she doesn't let him "be alone." I wouldn't be surprised if his wife becomes his alter-ego, but one that represents the feminine manifestation in a man.
And I have questions: does the name Gengé have some special meaning, why did his wife call him that - will the protagonist explain this to us later?
We'll find much more about Moscarda's wife and Gengè especially, so I won't spoil anything. But I hope I'm not causing too much of an existential crisis Dana 😂 I think I stopped looking in the mirror a long time ago because I didn't recognize myself in there and couldn't be bothered anymore, I've said this before but isn't it interesting how these kind of thoughts are more or less universal? I'll definitely want to know if you relate to Moscarda's future findings.
I’m about to start reading. I have a Kevin Houser translation which I think is fairly new. It’s supposed to be “fresh and modern” which may or may not be a good thing! I’ll find out! Thank you for the great introduction - looking forward to reading this.
Ha, I'm glad someone got the Houser translation! I was eyeing it a bit suspiciously, it seems a bit of a contradiction to use modern American for a book that was supposed to sound archaic even to early 20th century readers. On the other hand, it does make it more relatable and palatable to the TikTok generation (since you mentioned them!), it's an interesting experiment. If you ever have the time, try to compare a page by Houser with the old translation I linked, see if you get a different feeling from the two.
I’ll definitely do that. Will be interesting to see the differences. The language is very modern and - to me - very American. We’ve already had, “wow”, “go figure” and “true that”, which I doubt feature in earlier translations.
Though unrelated, the focus on physical appearances, a stranger within one — all made me think of the movie “The Substance.”
“I still believed, I may repeat here, that the stranger in question was a single individual: one to all, even as I believed that I was a single individual to myself. But my atrocious drama speedily grew more complicated, with the discovery of the hundred-thousand Moscardas …”
And this reminded me of this quote by Anais Nin: “We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.”
Everybody is seeing a different Moscarda.
“Who was I? Was I, I?”
And finally the chapter made me think of Identity in general. Like our appearance, how the various different ways we generally identify ourselves are predetermined for us, even before we are born: nationality, religion, etc. Another common way we identify ourselves is by profession. Aren’t we more than that?
It was serendipitous and also a little weird to be reading these first few chapters at the same time as I was reading Jennifer Finney Boylan’s new memoir, Cleavage. Her work is all about the differences between one’s appearances and one’s identity, and she often discusses looking in the mirror since her appearance now matches her identity and observing what she sees.
One more comment. Not on the book, but on the Magritte painting that you've used for an illustration, La Reproduction Interdite. Nice choice. The book next to the figure is Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. I suspect that will turn out to be a very appropriate reference.
Another great parallel! Poe definitely planted the seeds for what Pirandello and other experimenting modernists would later achieve. It’s interesting, both are known for their career-defining short stories but I've never thought to link Pirandello with Poe's attempt at a longer novel.
There's so much to talk about in this section! One type of humor I really like is that which takes an interesting idea and follows it to an absurd but totally logical conclusion. I see that at play here. Moscardo notices his nose, really notices it, for the first time in his life, and finds it imperfect. Some people would shrug and move on. But Moscardo feels a deep rift between his subjective notion of himself and how others must view him. For the rest of Book First at least he follows this thought relentlessly, and tells us it will eventually lead to madness. Every step down this path is both unpredictable and totally plausible, and thus provokes a laugh.
I suspect that Moscardo will engage in some intense self-examination, and exemplify how it is done. Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." He tried to get people to look deeply into their assumptions, their claims to knowledge, their values. For that, we was condemned to death. At his trial, when he addressed the jury for the last time, he referred to himself as an irritating gadfly, stinging the noble steed of Athens. I suspect that Moscardo, too, will play the stinging fly and goad us into examining our lives.
How interesting to hear that Socrates referred to himself as a gadfly. Thanks for that insight. Flies can be both bumbling and provoking!
The parallel with Socrates is striking—both figures use uncomfortable truths to provoke deeper self-examination.
What makes this especially compelling is how Moscarda's fixation on his nose opens up deeper questions about identity and perception. His descent into "madness," simultaneously unexpected and logical, demonstrates Pirandello's gift for making philosophical ideas both accessible and darkly comic.
Excellent detail with Socrates’ fly, I hadn't thought of it! Pirandello like Nietzsche aimed to take the Greeks down a peg, but I do think there are parallels with Socrates especially, look at how both used humor as a weapon.
And re: Moscarda's woes being both absurd and relatable, that is the aim of the book in a nutshell, and you figured it out right away. As extreme as his reaction seems to be, the truth is we all recognize his train of thought. Even judging only by the comments here, we all had similar feelings of depersonalization looking at our pictures or staring in a mirror. Madness is inherently human and worth empathizing with.