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Luigi Pirandello
Biography:
Born 1867 in Girgenti, Sicily, Italy. Studied
philology at Rome and Bonn, and became a lecturer in literature at Rome
(1897-1922). Wrote several novels and short stories including the powerful
Il fu Mattia Pascal / The Late Mattia Pascal (1903). Among his
plays are Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore / Six Characters in
Search of an Author (1921), Enrico IV / Henry IV (1922) and Come
tu mi vuoi / As You Desire Me (1930). Established his own theater in
1925, the Teatro d'Arte in Rome. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1934. Died 1936. |
Eleven Short
Stories: Undici Novelle / A Dual-Language Book
Paperback - 187 pages
(June 1994) $7.96
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The Late Mattia Pascal
Paperback - 262 pages (May 1995) $9.60
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Naked
Paperback - 96 pages
(September 1998) $14.95
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Naked Masks:
Five Plays
Paperback (August 1991)
$13.95
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The Oil Jar and Other Stories
Paperback - 93 pages (May 1995) $0.80
BARE BONES PRICE !
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One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand
Paperback - 160 pages (September 1992) $7.96
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Pirandello:
Plays
Paperback - 200 pages (March 1998) $16.95
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Pirandello's Love Letters to Marta Abba
"In 1925, Pirandello - at age 58 entering
the final decade of his life, his wife confined to a mental asylum, his
beloved daughter in Brazil - fell in love with a 25-year-old actress,
Marta Abba. From 164 of the 522 letters Abba donated to Princeton
University Library before her death, Ortalini (Theater/Brooklyn College)
meticulously represents Pirandello's obsessive involvement. As he explains
in an exhaustive and occasionally feverish introduction, in a scrupulously
detailed chronology, repetitive introductions, intrusive footnotes, and an
excessively particularized index, the letters reveal Pirandello's
suffering, anguish, his dream of a national theater, the perfidy of his
"enemies" (other playwrights), and his financial difficulties.
They also reveal his insomnia, his various physical complaints, his
changing attitude toward the art of film that at various times inspired
and revolted him, his business dealings, his restless relocations from
Italy to Berlin to Paris, England, America, and his growing international
reputation that resulted in a Nobel Prize, a private audience with
Mussolini, who resented his travels, and the vast amount of money he seems
to have made in spite of his complaints about poverty. He offered frequent
apologies to Marta, a busy and successful actress, for his obsessive
pursuit in what was to remain an unconsummated and unrequited affair. He
also reveals a manic side that the editor overlooks, an egomaniacal belief
that God is on his side, having put "true eternal youth" in his
blood, heart, brain, and that he will write great words that will "astonish
the world." In these letters, Pirandello is rarely a lover, more
often a case, a pathology, in which love is incidental. He displays the
whole range of symptoms, the misery, euphoria, obsession, self-
involvement, instability, that Freud suggested the creative personality
suffered as the price of his art, the torment and energy behind the
ostensibly antic Six Characters in Search of an Author." (Kirkus
Reviews)
In
February 1925, the 58-year-old world-famous playwright Luigi Pirandello
met Marta Abba, an unknown, beautiful actress less than half his age, and
fell in love with her. She was to become, until his death in December
1936, not only his confidante but also his inspiring muse and artistic
collaborator, helping him in his plans to reform Italian theater under the
Fascist regime. Pirandello's love for the young actress was neither a
literary infatuation nor a form of fatherly affection, but rather an
unfulfilled, desperate passion that secretly consumed him during the last
decade of his life. Bitterly disillusioned by the conditions of the
theatrical world in Italy, Pirandello and Abba shared a dream of going
abroad to earn their fortune and returning to Italy with the means to
establish a national theater dedicated to high artistic standards. In
March 1929, when Marta finally yielded to family pressure and left
Pirandello alone in Berlin to revive her Italian stage career and to end
rumors over their involvement, he endured a devastating heartbreak and
fell into a life-threatening depression-more profound and long- lasting
than any of his biographers have yet imagined. The hundreds of letters
Pirandello wrote to Abba during these years are the only source that
reveals the true story of his relentless torment. Selected, translated,
and introduced here for the first time in any language, these powerful and
moving documents reward the reader with the unique experience of living in
intimacy with a profound poet of human pain. Here Pirandello encourages
his beloved in her difficult career as actor/manager, rejoices in her
triumphs, and desperately implores her to return to him. The letters are
filled with glimpses of this major artistic personality at some of his
most distinctive moments-such as the award of the Nobel Prize, his
meetings with Mussolini, and Marta's long-dreamed-of success on
Broadway-but they remain foremost an authentic confession of a Pirandello,
without the mask of his art, telling the story of his real-life tragedy.
In 1986, two years before she died, Marta Abba authorized the publication
of the present correspondence so that the world might understand how
deeply Pirandello had suffered. This English-language volume contains a
selection of 164 letters from the complete edition of 552, which Princeton
University Press will publish in cooperation with Mondadori, in the
original Italian, in 1995.
Hardcover - 371 pages (May
1994) $42.50
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Six Characters in Search of an Author
"Play in three acts by Luigi Pirandello,
produced and published in Italian in 1921 as Sei personaggi in cerca
d'autore. Introducing Pirandello's device of the "theater within
the theater," the play explores various levels of illusion and
reality. It had a great impact on later playwrights, particularly such
practitioners of the Theater of the Absurd as Samuel Beckett, Eugene
Ionesco, and Jean Genet, as well as Jean Anouilh and Jean-Paul
Sartre." (The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature)
Luigi Pirandello's masterpiece, Six Characters
in Search of an Author, presents the playwright's views about the
isolation of the individual from society and from himself. This play
within a play chronicles six characters as they seek an author to tell
their story, and to present their real lives on stage. But do their
realities make better tales than fiction?
Paperback - 64 pages (January 1998) $1.20
BARE BONES PRICE !
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Three Plays:
Enrico Iv, Sei Personaggi in Cerca D'Autore, LA Giara
Hardcover - 308 pages
(January 1988) $19.95
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Collected Plays
Includes Henry IV, The Man With the Flower in His Mouth and Right You Are (If You Think You
Are) and Lazarus
Paperback Vol 1 (July 1987) $17.95
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Collected Plays
Includes Six Characters in Search of an Author, All for the
Best, Clothe the Naked and Limes from Sicily
Paperback Vol 2 (January 1989)
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Collected Plays
Includes The Rules of the
Game, Each in His Own Way, Grafted and The Other Son
Paperback Vol 3 (September 1992) $14.95
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Luigi Pirandello in the Theatre:
A Documentary Record
Paperback (February 1993) $26.00
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Henry IV
Hardcover (October 1999)
$7.00
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Luigi
Pirandello, 1867-1936, His Plays in Sicilian
Hardcover (June 1998)
$89.95
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Man Beast and Virtue
Paperback (August 1991)
$11.95
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The Mountain Giants
Paperback (June 1994)
$12.95
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Right You Are If You Think You Are
"Play in three acts by Luigi Pirandello,
produced in Italian in 1917 as Cosi e (se vi pare) and published
the following year. The title is sometimes translated as Right You Are
(If You Think So), among other variations. This work, like most of
Pirandello's plays, contrasts art and life, demonstrating that truth is
subjective and relative. No one has ever seen Signor Ponza's wife and her
mother, Signora Frola, together. Councillor Agazzi, Ponza's curious
employer, pries into Ponza's private life. Ponza claims that his wife is
really his second wife, the first having died in an earthquake that
destroyed all verifying documents. Too, his wife only pretends to be
Signora Frola's daughter to humor Signora Frola, who, he claims, is
insane. Thoroughly bewildered, Agazzi demands to meet Ponza's wife, who
arrives, heavily veiled, proclaiming herself as both the daughter of
Signora Frola and the second wife of Ponza. The "truth" of the
matter remains a mystery." (The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature)
Paperback - 64 pages (April 1997) $1.20
BARE BONES PRICE !
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The Rules of the Game
Paperback (June 1994) $17.95
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Tales of Suicide:
A Selection from Luigi Pirandello's Short Stories for a Year
Paperback (October 1987) $11.96
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