The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello
Author:Luigi Pirandello
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781907650390
Publisher: Dedalus
Published: 2011-04-16T16:00:00+00:00
XII The Eye of Papiano
“The tragedy of Orestes in a puppet theatre!” Anselmo Paleari announced to me one day. “They’re automatic puppets, a new invention. It’s this evening at 8.30 at 54 via dei Prefetti. It’s worth going, Signor Meis.”
“The tragedy of Orestes?”
“Yes, ‘d’ Après Sophocle’, the poster says. It must be Electra. Just listen to what I’ve just thought of! If at the climax, just when the puppet representing Orestes is about to take revenge for his father’s death, on Aegisthus and the mother, what if there were a tear in the sky of the paper theatre, what would happen? You tell me.”
“I don’t know,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders.
“But it’s easy Signor Meis! Orestes would be disconcerted by that hole in the sky.”
“Why?”
“Let me tell you. (Orestes would still feel inclined to revenge and would want to carry it out with maniacal passion, but, just as he was about to do it, his eyes would be drawn to the hole, from which all kinds of adverse influences would penetrate onto the stage, and his avenging arm would fall. Orestes in fact would turn into Hamlet. Believe me, Signor Meis, the whole difference between ancient and modern tragedy consists in just that, a hole in a paper sky!”
And off he shuffled in his slippers. From the cloud-topped peaks of his abstractions, Signor Anselmo often allowed his thoughts to come tumbling down like this, like avalanches. The reasoning behind them, the connecting links, the stimuli for them, remained up there, amid the clouds, so as to make it difficult for his listeners to understand what he was talking about.
The image of Orestes the puppet, disconcerted by the hole in the sky however, stayed in my mind for quite a while. At a certain point I sighed to myself:
“Lucky puppets, above whose wooden heads the false sky is constantly tear-free. No troubling perplexities, no restraints, no obstacles, no shadows, no compassion, nothing. And they can justly look forward to and enjoy their little comedy, love themselves, respect and honour themselves, without ever suffering dizziness or faintness, since the sky is a roof entirely in proportion with their stature and their actions. And my dear Signor Anselmo, you have the prototype of these puppets in your very own home, and that is your unworthy son-in-law, Papiano. Who, more than him, would be satisfied by the papier-mâché sky above him, low as it is, the calm, comfortable abode of the proverbial God with flowing sleeves, prepared to close his eyes and raise his hand in forgiveness; that God who says sleepily to every peccadillo, ‘God helps those who help themselves’? And your Papiano helps himself in all sorts of ways. Life, for him, is almost a game of skill. How he loves to get involved in any intrigue: swift, enterprising, garrulous as he is.”
Papiano was about forty, tall and robust in build. He was balding slightly, with a large bristling moustache just under his nose, which was a good large one, with quivering nostrils.
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