Luigi Pirandello--As You Desire Me (1931)

Luigi Pirandello, winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature, was a native of Sicily, and is I believe the first "modern" (meaning after the Roman Empire) Italian writer we have encountered on the program. He is most famous in this country, to the extent that he is famous at all, for his post-World War I modernist plays, such as this one. The original (to me) plot of this concerns a woman who is a sort of nightclub dancer and live-in companion of a writer in postwar Berlin who has been identified by the visiting agent of a wealthy Italian gentleman as the latter's wife, who has suffered a lapse in memory due to trauma experienced when their villa and the neighborhood was overrun by the invading armies during the war. She accepts the possibility of this, as evidently she has admitted to remembering no past prior to her current situation in her Berlin life either, and goes to live in the villa in Italy, where she reconstructs the persona of the lost wife via letters and diaries and other records that she finds among her possessions, and performs the role so pleasingly and in a sense better than the pre-war person occupying that role ever had, that almost everyone, including her husband, in that milieu, apart from some relatives who stood to inherit the villa if the wife had remained unfound, overcomes their skepticism about her identity and accepts her as the genuine wife. The English title at least is expounded upon in a long speech in the middle act of the play, in which the central female character (who is never named, her part is that of "The Strange Lady" in the text, "The Unknown One" in the list of characters) explains without consuming resentment or bitterness that she retains no personal identity even so far as impressions made upon her senses; these are only projections of what the others would have her experience. "I came here; I gave myself to you utterly, utterly; I said to you: 'Here I am, I am yours; there is nothing left in me of my own. Take me and make me, make me as you desire me!"

Being a play of course, this did not take but a couple of days to read and so I did not have as it were enough time to get immersed in it so that thoughts on it came to me readily. I did find myself saying right away, having been reading a number of modern things during the interval while I was working on the As the Earth Turns essay that there was nothing like the old books. I don't remember what exactly prompted this reaction, but I think it was the overall effect of the calm, deliberate tone of the writing, the emphasis on the means of how language and thought are employed in getting at the problem in the story is the story, and always is in literature-as-art, which this certainly is. Our collective contemporary instinct, us being those who have had some exposure to progressive trends in Western intellectual-artistic circles, is at the very least to wonder if there is not something sinister at hand (on the part of the writer) in the attitude of self-effacement of the main female character and her allowance of projection/direction of her identities by others, the male gaze and so on. I am the product of several layers of conditioning with regard to how I read, and the oldest and most solid one I am guided by is the necessity of accepting literary and artistic works as they are if they have some ring of truth to them, and are interesting. The current fashion for being suspicious of the older male authors in the European tradition having any authority to create female characters that do not adhere to certain guidelines of autonomy, forcefulness and the like has insinuated itself in my thinking as well, though more in the manner of a pest that must be acknowledged than a solid, foundational part of my makeup.



Despite all of the accolades the play supposedly received in the United States, there are not a lot of printed copies of it in circulation. I finally had to settle on a 1957 compilation put out by the Crown publishing house of the Twenty Best European Plays on the American Stage, which seems to be the most recent mainstream publication of As You Desire Me available in this country. It does look like a good collection. It has no other IWE plays in it, but all of the works are by major writers and there are some undisputed classics in it such as No Exit and The Sea Gull that I might read someday. It is one of those books in which the pages consist of two columns of small print and it is also a big book, so it is difficult for me to read presently, when I do not have a large desk to set it open on and a nice green-shaded lamp and quiet calm in which to luxuriate in the words. My reading habit at present is more of the hurried/furtive variety. I only bother to do it to maintain a tenuous contact with that portion of the world I see myself as really belonging to.

Judith Anderson, recognizable from many classic films including Rebecca, Laura and The Ten Commandments, played the role of the Unknown Woman in the original New York production at the Maxine Elliott Theatre on January 28, 1931. Greta Garbo played the role in the 1932 film version, which featured among others Erich von Stroheim as her German writer companion. The star in the original Italian production was a celebrated actress named Marta Abba, who also wrote the English translation that was both performed in New York and printed in my 1957 edition of the play. She lived from 1900-1988, and was notably Pirandello's creative muse from 1925 until his death in 1936. Here she is

Happily, this is not, provided of course that I live long enough, the end of Pirandello on the program, as Six Characters in Search of an Author, considered his masterpiece by many, is also on the list though I won't be getting to the Ss for a long long time.






The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge


This challenge for some reason turned up a great many audio-visual contestants which overwhelmed the few, and mostly obscure, books that entered the contest.


1. West Side Story (movie)...............................................................1,457
2. Footloose (movie)........................................................................1,106
3. Marjane Satrapi--Persepolis...........................................................607
4. Hyde Park on Hudson (movie).......................................................542
5. The Other Sister (movie).................................................................419
6. Toni Braxton--The Heat (record)....................................................335
7. Britney Spears--Circus (record)......................................................330
8. Mordecai Gerstein--The Man Who Walked Between the Towers...156
9. Hazel Gaynor--The Girl From the Savoy........................................145
10. Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Season 7 (TV)).......................109
11. It's Alive (movie).............................................................................65
12. That's Entertainment Part III (movie)............................................50
13. That's Entertainment Part II (movie)..............................................37
14. Moby--South Side (record)..............................................................25
15. Blind Justice (movie).......................................................................21
16. Hercules: Zero to Hero (movie?).....................................................12


The Round of 16


#1 West Side Story over #16 Hercules Zero
#2 Footloose over #15 Blind Justice
#3 Satrapi over #14 Moby








#4 Hyde Park on Hudson over #13 That's Entertainment II
#12 That's Entertainment III over #5 The Other Sister


Based on my personal opinion that The Other Sister looks horrible.


#6 Braxton over #11 It's Alive
#10 Real Housewives over #7 Spears.








#9 Gaynor over #8 Gerstein


As happened the other time only three books qualified the tournament, two of them faced each other in the first round. The Gerstein book was a children's book about Phillippe Petit's tightrope walk between the World Trade Center roofs. It did win a Caldecott medal though.


Round of 8
#1 West Side Story over #12 That's Entertainment III
#10 Real Housewives over #2 Footloose
#3 Satrapi over #9 Gaynor


The only two books left have a death match in the quarterfinals. The Satrapi is I believe something like a comic book, but it has been pretty celebrated, and would be something of a departure from my usual habits.


#4 Hyde Park on Hudson over #6 Braxton






Final Four of this Grim Tournament
#1 West Side Story over #10 Real Housewives
#3 Satrapi over #4 Hyde Park on Hudson
Championship
#3 Satrapi over #1 West Side Story.