NOBEL PRIZE

Southland Times, Issue 22475, 10 November 1934, Page 5

NOBEL PRIZE

AWARD FOR LITERATURE. (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright.) Stockholm, November 8. The well-known playwright Luigi Pirandello has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Luigi Pirandello, the Italian dramatist and novelist, is, like the famous writer Giovanni Versa, who became his model, a native of Girgenti in Sicily. Of Greek origin on his father’s side, he was born in June, 1867, and studied literature and philosophy in Rome and Germany. He then became a schoolmaster, but also devoted himself to literature—at first without much success. He was. however, regarded as a clever writer of gruesome stories. In some of his early books there are little masterpieces which at the time passed unnoticed. In 1904 he became widely known in Italy his romance “Il fu Mattia Pascal (the late Matthias Pascal), but even this success was not decisive and he had a long struggle before he came to the front. It was not tiu 1922 that his plays secured great appreciation abroad and his international reputation was established. He was then able to establish a theatre of his own in Rome. His most famous play “Six Characters in Search of an Author" has been pronounced by Bernard Shaw, whom Pirandello resembled both physically and mentally, to be the strongest and most original work for the stage, ancient or modern. Many of the author’s pieces are now being played all over the world. In 1925 he took the cast of his theatre on a tour through Europe. Pirandello himself has made the following statement regarding his plays: The basis of my artistic work is the tragedy arising out of the strife between life and the struggle for a form of expression. Life for me is something which is continually changing and developing. It must therefore continually break with its earlier standards and find a new one which again speedily becomes obsolete. I am the exponent of this tragedy of life. I depict the pain m which the soul is cramped as if beneath a niask. I portray the pain of the struggle to fma expression. I depict the wild chaos behind whose mask we all move. We, however, see only the mask; the actual being we never see, but always misunderstand each other. I suffered much until I forced my way to this conception of existence. My youth was poisoned by materialism. Now that I nave found myself, I learn from friends that other men in other occupations have arrived at the same conception.” . In 1930 Pirandello sold his villa in Rome, divided all he had among his three children and set out for the United States where he hoped to find a spirit of youthfulness. He said he could no longer tolerate Europe, as youth had disappeared there and even babies were born old. In England he had found only one young man like himself— Bernard Shaw. He had decided to work for the talking pictures because he wanted to keep young. His only idea of happiness was writing and when he stopped writing he would die. He worked five hours a day during which he smoked 120 cigarettes. When he had finished all the films and plays for which he was under contract in America, he would retire to write his masterpiece, a novel of vast proportions called Adam and Eve.” They would be the last two people on earth and would have a son and daughter. These two must marry, if the world was to be repeopled. Adam and Eve with their load of conventions were a check on the primitive instincts of their children who ultimately killed their parents. Among Pirandello’s plays are "Clothing the Naked. “Lazarus” (produced at Huddersfield by A. Wareing), “O di uno. o di nessuno (ro one or to no one) which concerns a dispute over the paternity of a child, “Questa sera si recita a soggetto” (To-night we -will practise character acting), Gli del della montagna” (The gods of the mountain), “L’amica delle moglie (The Wives lady friend), “Diana la Tuda” and “Come tu mi vuoi” (Whatever you wish me to be), based on the famous Bruneri-Cannella case of undecided identity which puzzled the Italian legal world for so long. This was made into a talking film in which Greta Garbo appeared. Among the plays given in English versions are “And that’s the truth, e Vice,” “The Mock Emperor,’ The Man With the Flower in his Mouth” and ‘The Life I Gave You.” His novels include The Old and the Young,” “Shoot,” a tragedy told by a cinema operator, and “Uno. nessuno e contomilia” (One, none or 100,000), a study of a man obsessed by the discovery that he has many divergent personalities.