How 'To Clothe the Naked'?
Gombrowicz and Pirandello revisited
Elwira Grossman
(University of Glasgow)
I
Although the name of Luigi Pirandello is not on the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz's extensive list of the thinkers who inspired and stimulated his thought, the works of both writers nevertheless share many striking similarities and common assumptions. This occurs despite the unquestionably different dramatic styles and theatrical conventions of the two playwrights' works. According to Wladimir Krysinski, the influence of Pirandello's ideas and his dramatic technique on writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet, Eugéne Ionesco, Peter Handke, Peter Weiss, and Gombrowicz, among others, is undeniable. In fact, nearly all major contemporary dramatists reveal some kind of a philosophical kinship with the great Italian master, whose works--in Krysinski's opinion--operate as a "moving paradigm in the field of modern drama, indicating the borders of both modernism and postmodernism" (quoted after Sinko, p.165). Krysinski also attempts to specify Pirandello's influence on contemporary theatre and to mark its borderlines along with the achievements of Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio Barba, Fernando Arrabal, and Tadeusz Kantor, considering "acting techniques" and the "destabilisation of the performance place" as the two major determining factors (Simles, p.166).
These brief observations do not exhaust Krysinski's long list of Pirandello's influence on modern drama, but introduce the question of intellectual stimulation for Gombrowicz. Although Krysinski's comparative essays clearly articulate a philosophical kinship between Pirandello and Gombrowicz, the works of the two writers curiously have not been compared before by either Polish, Western-European or American scholars. One of the reasons for this neglect lies in Gombrowicz's volatile unpopularity in English-speaking countries. The problem itself has been pointed out by many Polish critics, writers and intellectuals who live permanently outside Poland. They all agree that the main cause for ignoring the works of Gombrowicz resides in the eccentricity of his style in general, and the playwright's theatrical conventions in particular.
Following Krysinski's reflections, this analysis explores the nature of literary ties and the philosophical relationships between the two playwrights. It also approaches their works from a different perspective than the one implied by the Canadian scholar. Krysinski convincingly argues that Gombrowicz overcomes a philosophical barrier in Pirandello's thought by developing the Italian writer's ideas into a self-stimulating system. This comparison will focus on how the Pirandellian thought functions in the Gombrowicz's "system." Characters' behaviour in selected works by the two playwrights will constitute a shared platform for the analysis. The places of common meeting between the writers will be elucidated through frequent references to the sociological theory of Erving Goffman.
II
Most of the critical studies devoted to Pirandello's dramatic works concentrate on the following plays Sei Personaggi in cerca d'autore (1921) [Six Characters in Search of an Author] or Questa sera si recita a soggetto (1930) [Tonight We Improvise]. Through incorporating the autothematic theme, these plays established a name for Pirandello in the world of modern drama. Other most commonly discussed dramatic texts include Enrico IV (1922) [Emperor Henry], Cosí č (se vi pare) (1917) [Right You Are], Vestire gli ignudi (1923) [To Clothe the Naked], Come tu mi vuoi (1930) [As You Desire Me], Quando si č qualcuno (1933) [When Someone is Somebody], and finally Sogno (ma forse no) (1936) [I'm Dreaming, But Am I?]. All these works share one major common theme: the search for an individual's identity, the creation of it and the mechanisms behind that process of creating it.
Dramatic and narrative works by Witold Gombrowicz: Iwona, ksiezniczka Burgunda (1938) [Ivona, Princess of Burgundia], Slub (1947) [The Marriage], Operetka (1966) [Operetta], and Ferdydurke (a novel publ. 1937) also revolve around this subject. Yet, the focus in Gombrowicz's works seems to shift from an individual's psychological struggle to find the true self (dominating Pirandello’s works) to the nature of mechanisms that create one's image and emerge from human interactions. In other words, what is explored in Pirandello's works through his characters' complex psychology is penetrated by Gombrowicz through inter-personal communication process. Interestingly enough, Goffman juxtaposes and evaluates these two perspectives in analysing the mechanism of self-deception:
Individualistic modes of thought tend to treat processes such as self-deception and insincerity as characterological weaknesses generated within the deep recesses of the individual personality. It might be better to start from outside the individual and work inward than to start inside the individual and work out. We may say that the starting point for all that is to come later consists of the individual performer maintaining a definition of the situation before an audience. (The Presentation of Self, p.81.)
Although Goffman seems to advocate Gombrowicz's approach, saying “it might be better to start from outside,” the psychological introspection appears to be equally important. Thus, while the reader of Pirandello finds answers in the psychology of depth, the audience of Gombrowicz discovers new solutions in the sociology of group interaction. The two literary worlds intertwine with and complement each other, reaching a similar conclusion: no matter who we are, what we do, or how we do it, we will always arrive at a point of confusion. This confusion is caused partly by the necessity to conceal the truth about ourselves and about our existential situation. This necessity appears to be justified philosophically and is revealed through psychological mechanisms by Pirandello and socio-psychological observations by Gombrowicz.
Gombrowicz's characters feel that they are sentenced by mysterious Fate to an endless search for their true identities while alien and false ones are being imposed on them constantly. People also attribute different roles to themselves and to others. As Gombrowicz remarks, “The process of deformation is a reciprocal one, a constant struggle between two forces--one internal, the other external--each imposing limitations upon each other". Explaining the idea behind his play The Marriage, Gombrowicz continues:
Everything in the play "creates itself:" Henry creates a dream and a dream creates Henry, the action of the play creates itself, people create one another, and the whole pushes forward toward unknown solutions (The Marriage, p.16).
Similarly to Gombrowicz's characters, the protagonists of Pirandello's plays are sincerely engaged with an inner struggle to discover who they really are while they create each other's image all the time. This struggle includes different strategies: (1) to oppose the false image of themselves in the eyes of others, (2) to confuse an already existing image, even if it might be correct, and (3) to manipulate the perception of themselves by concealing those parts of their personalities that they do not want others to know. The third strategy seems to be the most dominant in Pirandello's works and is defined by the playwright himself as "costruirsi" which means “to build oneself up.” This is how Oliver elucidates this concept, analysing Pirandello’s famous treatise 'L'umorismo' ['On Humor']:
The key to the process of costruirsi is the desire to create the persona, an image, that will cover over those very incongruities that the humorist seeks to expose. . . A character tries to hide the inconsistencies of his personality behind an image, a persona that will project the part of himself he wants to be seen, the part that he has built up (p.12).
Pirandellian characters who exemplify this situation most clearly include (1) Henry from Emperor Henry, (2) Ersilia from To Clothe the Naked, and (3) The Young Lady from I'm Dreaming but Am I?. On the other hand, characters such as (1) XXX from When Someone is Somebody, (2) The Strange Lady from As You Desire Me, and (3) Signora Ponza from Right You Are, illustrate psychological mechanisms described above as the first and the second strategy, and seem rather loosely connected with the process of "costruirsi." In fact, the character of Henry reveals the exact psychological process that many critics attempt to impose on all of Pirandello's characters:
In Pirandello's works--Oliver argues--first impressions are almost always contradicted later. The appearance expressed by an accumulation of surface detail must be penetrated, since the reality covered by that detail may be the opposite of what is first seen (p.11).
This frequently repeated opinion has its source in the two collections of essays published in 1921 and 1923 by Adriano Tilgher, an Italian critic who was the first to formulate the dichotomy of life and form as the underlying philosophical principle of all Pirandello's works published to that point. Although numerous critics have pointed out that this duality does not suffice to describe the complexity of Pirandellian drama, they usually justify their observations by referring to other technical devices such as theatrical images and the construction of dialogues or the use of irony. While all these elements are undoubtedly present in Pirandello's plays, the simplicity of the life-form duality, even when applied strictly to characters, still does not exhaust the latter's psychological complexity.
Goffman's theory serves as a useful tool to analyse the intricate psychological structure of Pirandello's dramatic world and its characters. The thorough analysis of the presentation of "self" in everyday life unveils the behavioral strategy impersonated by many of Pirandello's protagonists:
Earlier it was suggested that a performer may be taken in by his own act, convinced at the moment that the impression of reality which he fosters is the one and only reality. In such cases the performer comes to be his own audience; he comes to be performer and observer of the same show. . .
It will have been necessary for the individual in his performing capacity to conceal from himself in his audience capacity the discreditable facts that he has had to learn about the performance; in everyday terms, there will be things he knows, or has known, that he will not be able to tell himself (The Presentation of Self, pp.80-81).
The characters of Henry IV, Ersilia, and Adriano Meis (the protagonist of Il fu Mattia Pascal) exemplify these very mechanisms of behavior in Pirandello’s texts, but a similar psychological pattern can also be found in the works by Gombrowicz.
Gombrowicz’s characters perform before themselves and others, but they never embody the idea of conscious self-delusion. Instead, they are constantly exposed to a state of puzzlement about their own status and the status of their world as well. Since these two factors change continuously, the characters are in doubt about what motivates their own behavior. To use Goffman's terminology, this feeling of uncertainty experienced by Gombrowicz's characters has its source in "an ambiguity of frame." Using the term “frame,” Goffman refers to a particular social situation which becomes a decisive element in defining what the role to be played by the character. For Gombrowicz, all the factors articulated by Goffman constitute the crucial parts of his notion of form.
Although the concept of form is substantial for both writers, its artistic expressions and philosophical definition differ significantly. In Gombrowicz's system, the notion of Form (often with a capital F) stands for all of the possible ways that people communicate, and defines the major part of the process of human interaction. The Polish critic Jerzy Jarzebski distinguishes the following aspects of Form present in Gombrowicz’s oeuvre: (1) the sociological interpretation, (2) "form" as a philosophical category, (3) the role of an ordinary man and an artist in the process of creating "form," (4) language, myth, and art as "forms" constituting literature and human consciousness, and (5) "form" as an element of an intentional act. This is how Gombrowicz himself explains the mechanism of Form:
Briefly: the man who imposes his form is active. He is the subject of form, it is he who creates it. But when his Form, in contact with the form of others, undergoes a deformation, he is, to a certain extent, created by others--he becomes an object. And this is by no means a superficial transformation, because Form penetrates us to the marrow. We only have to change our tone of voice for certain things within ourselves to become inexpressible--we can no longer think them, or even feel them.
An infinity of variations impose themselves on the mind--all individuals are different, the combinations between them are inexhaustible. To this we must add the colossal pressure of pre-established form elaborated by culture (A Kind of Testament, pp.73-4).
Gombrowicz illustrates his ideas in the novel Ferdydurke in which the main character Johnnie [Józio] is exposed to different adventures while at the same time he is being “formed” by the various social groups and classes with whom he interacts. In Ferdydurke, Gombrowicz introduces a number of expressions, which, as Ewa Thompson remarks:
. . . have become part of the Polish language. Some are neologisms, others are metaphorical or specialized uses of already existing words. They include Form (Forma), a child's fanny or backside (pupa), fitting someone with a fanny or a backside (upupienie), mug (geba), and fitting someone with a mug (przyprawienie geby)(p.76).
All of these expressions are incorporated into the situations clearly and humorously presented in the narrative. For example, thirty year-old John [Józef] is forced to attend high school again and his name is immediately changed by all those who address him as Johnnie [Józio]. Regardless of his age and mature look, he is examined, scolded, shouted at, and treated exactly like the other pupils. Since no one pays any attention to his explanations, objections and questions, Johnnie has no other choice but to behave in a childish and immature way. To describe Johnnie's situation in Gombrowicz's terms, "he is fit with a funny" which stresses his involuntary return to the age of adolescence. When Józio is compelled to behave as a butler, he assumes a certain code of behavior alien to his own social status, and as a result "he is fit with a mug." Analysing other examples from Ferdydurke in A Kind of Testament, Gombrowicz finally exclaims:
What a powerful and unfathomable dynamism! Man submitted to the interhuman is like a twig on a rough sea: he bobs up and down, plunges into the raging waters, slides gently along the surface of the luminous waves, he is engulfed by rhymes and vertiginous rhythms, and loses himself in unforeseen perspectives (p.75).
All of the elements in Gombrowicz's definition of Form that represent its vital qualities such as flexibility, fluidity, and constant movement in all possible directions, are almost totally absent in Pirandello's sense of the word. As many critics agree, the artistic expression of the "form"--often identified in Pirandello's system with a "mask"--was fully developed for the first time in his novel Il fu Mattia Pascal [The Late Mattia Pascal]. In his confrontation with the outer world, the protagonist acts out a role, assumes a persona, and wears the mask of someone else. He becomes Adriano Meis, and slowly his real life is totally consumed by the image he imposes on himself: he becomes the mask. This slow but persistent process costs Mattia his real life. Not only does he lose his identity but he becomes emotionally dead as well. Mattia’s true self and his mask create a “life versus form” duality which in Emperor Henry transcends into a complicated and sophisticated process.
The process fully illustrates Pirandello’s technique defined as costruirsi and the protagonist of Emperor Henry displays its various stages. Henry expands much effort in his own creation. For example, he designs his own highly specified environment: a king's court including his own throne room and regal clothing for himself and for others. As an emperor, Henry requires a specific code of behavior on the part of those who assist him (the Privy Councillors) and those who visit him (the Marquis, Countess, Baron) and becomes greatly irritated when any element of this theatricality is questioned or considered unreal. The place remains unspecified, depending on the scene Henry's valets act out, which might be in Saxony, in Lombardy, on the Rhine or elsewhere. Pirandello describes the time as "the present." The characters' identities remain in doubt:
LANDOLF: Comfort yourself with the thought that even we don't really know who we are. He's Harold, he's Ordulf, I'm Landolf. . . . that's what we're called, and by now we've got used to it, but who are we? (p.125).
Henry's own appearance reflects his portrait image, which, although it exists as an artefact, is treated by Henry as a mirror reflection. A partial explanation for Henry's behavior can be found in his madness. He becomes afflicted after an accident during a masquerade ball on his villa estate. During a cavalcade, he falls off his horse and hits the back of his head. Two hours later, while everyone still plays his role in the masquerade, the crowd notices that Henry is playing "la recitava sul serio" ("his part--in earnest", p.137). From this crucial moment onward, all of the characters subordinate themselves to the will and imagination of Henry, whom they treat as their Emperor. Thus, Henry creates the court and the members of court create Henry, the king of Germany. Since an historical prototype for Henry's creation is never clearly defined, Henry identifies with the German king and/or the Emperor depending on circumstances. To interpret the dignitaries' behavior towards the Emperor in Gombrowicz's terms, one would have to say that Henry "is fit with a mug" and this time it is the mug of a king. Obviously the objects from Henry's surroundings would not suffice to create him as a king and a large part of his creation depends on "his court," the people--who, more or less wilfully--allow him to maintain the illusion throughout:
BARON. Is all this dressing up really necessary?
LANDOLF. Oh, yes, Baron it's essential! Unhappily, he just sees us. . . [He shows his costume.] He mustn't see you gentlemen in modern dress!
HARALD. He'd think it was some devilish travesty, dear Baron!
MARQUIS. Just as these men seem a travesty to you, to him we--in our modern clothes--would seem a travesty (p.140).
So they all perform in front of and only for him. Focusing on the fabrication of self-deception, Goffman sees Henry as the hero who:
. . . disappointed in the loyalty of his loved ones, feigns madness, feigns he is a medival king, then gets his erstwhile loved ones to perform corresponding parts to him in his private asylum. They think they are entering his delusion in order to pacify him; he is containing them in order to enjoy his disgust. (Frame Analysis, p.163)
Playing different roles for Henry’s sake, the Countess becomes his mother-in-law, Adelaide; the Baron identifies with a monk of Cluny; the Doctor is told to disguise himself as the Bishop of Cluny. When he objects, claiming that another actor has played the Bishop previously, Landolf insists: "No, no, he won't remember. It's the clothes he looks at--not the man inside them" (p.141). Yet when they finally approach the Emperor, he himself analyses the situation they all find themselves in with an astonishing insight that questions his own madness:
HENRY. . . . Heaven keep me from amazement and disgust! O vanity of human wishes: we try to ignore the obscure and fatal power that sets limits to our will! . . . A woman wishes to be a man, an old man wishes to be young. . . . None of us is lying, there is no conscious deception in it, it's simply this: the entire good faith we are fixed in some fine conception of ourselves, as in a shell or a suit of armor. However, my lord, while you keep this firm grip of yourself, holding onto your holy cassock with both hands, something is slipping away from you unnoticed, slithering down your sleeves, gliding off like a serpent. That something is LIFE, my lord. And when you see your life suddenly taking shape, coagulating outside you in this way, you are surprised. You despise yourself, you're furious with yourself. And the remorse, the remorse! . . . (p.145)
Henry's monologue reveals an existential trap: A man thinks he can become immortal by freezing himself in a mask (form). Yet, he then becomes imprisoned by this persona (which takes full possession of him) and loses his own real life.
This clear opposition between form-mask and a living individual serves as the explanation of Henry's inner conflict for Robert Brustein :
The true moral of the tragedy of Henry IV is the antagonism between Life and Form. It is the tragedy of Life that is choked by the form only meant to be ephemeral, but which swallowed Life all together. .
. . Life with its forces is in antithesis to the form which individual adopts or else the form which society imposes on the individual. (p.192)
Paradoxically in the Pirandellian universe, the "form" that appears fixed and rigid actually has life and is designed to be immortal. It is the individual who assumes this mask that becomes dead.
Most of the images that Pirandellian characters identify themselves with are associated with art and/or history. Henry and the Countess resemble the portraits from their earlier years; the Strange Lady from As You Desire Me attempts to look like a picture of young Lena; XXX of When Someone is Somebody identifies himself with both a picture and a statue of the same constructed image of the non-existing writer Delago. All of these examples emphasize that the main function of the imposed image-mask-form is to beautify a character, to enlarge a person, to make one feel more important. The created mask is always positive, better than reality, and often presents a morally improved version of the original (as the examples of Ersilia and the Young Lady demonstrate).
These positive qualities of a persona that a character embodies are often missing in the dramatic world created by Gombrowicz. In the majority of the plays by Pirandello, one character is ascribed a single role; in the microcosm presented by Gombrowicz various roles can be rendered by each individual and this constitutes another important difference between the two created worlds. However, there is an important similarity revealed through the existential situation as illustrated by both playwrights: an image-form being imposed on an individual never matches the "self" that a particular character identifies with or feels that one is. Gombrowicz's characters always feel misshaped and disfigured by form-masks that they become part of. Pirandello's protagonists long for different art forms and usually ignore the fact of their obvious mismatch even if it requires additional effort.
In The Marriage as well as in Operetta, characters represent forms and wear masks of a different nature and social status. When Henry comes to his senses and meets his old friend Johnny in the opening scene of The Marriage, his family manor is transformed into a dive, his aristocratic parents into innkeepers and his fiancee, Molly, looks and acts like a whore. All of them play their roles in front of Henry just as the characters performed their parts for the Emperor. Henry becomes more and more confused. He doubts continuously whether the world around him is real or not, whether he is awake or asleep, whether his parents are mad or normal:
HENRY: This room is disguised and something is abnormal.
JOHNNY: Don't be silly, stop trying to complicate matters.
What do you care if something's abnormal!
And these chairs are real, they're made of wood, and one is sure to find something in the cupboard (p.28).
The dream convention used here exposes a similar function as Henry's madness in Pirandello's play. With things constantly being questioned, it is impossible to establish a clear borderline between illusion and reality, madness and normality, false and true appearance. Henry's parents appear real and false at the same time, the Emperor's room looks natural at first, but its fictional character becomes clear later, and in the final scene, when the Emperor stabs the Baron, the same throne room is transformed into a terrifying reality. Henry IV confuses fiction with reality and questions his parents' ontological status which after his final deed no longer seems to be definable. Thus, Henry creates madness and madness creates Henry. The process of creation is mutual and very much resembles the process of deformation between Henry and his dream from The Marriage.
The ambiguity of the presented world is maintained in the two plays. However, the Pirandellian character of Henry more consistently creates his own form-persona than Gombrowicz's protagonist. While the Emperor attempts to immortalise himself with all his fabrication requiring much energy, Henry from The Marriage is exposed to constant changes of his own identity and the identities of people around him regardless of their will and their efforts. The characters in Gombrowicz's play undergo several transformations, being modified by the circumstances of a particular moment. For example, Henry himself is an immediate cause of an unexpected change of his father's image (form) which occurs right after Henry kneels down before him, following a sort of inner impulse that he suddenly experiences. Thus, the world around Henry is not so much the product of his imagination as it is a result of his and other characters' actions and behavior. As Gombrowicz himself explains:
There are times when the characters in the play change their tone abruptly and utter something unexpected--because that is precisely what Henry expects them to do. Sometimes, however, it is Henry who behaves in a manner which is unpredictable and which even he is at a loss to comprehend, because he must adapt himself to his partners; it is they who dictate his style (The Marriage, p.16).
Hence, the creative forces do not always emerge from the character's imagination or perception, but result from inter-human contacts, and more specifically, the pressures and privileges which these contacts create. Henry's act of kneeling elevates his father's status to the figure of king, and this act empowers the father to restore Molly's dignity and to pronounce her as "Untouchable Virgin." To use Gombrowicz's own terminology: "Each person deforms other persons, while being at the same time deformed by them" (p.15).
The mechanism behind the masquerade of Henry IV is quite similar. At the beginning, Henry exercises his power over other characters and remains in charge of the world he creates, but soon his creation assumes its own life and takes full possession of him. The clarity of his mind and his admirable insight mislead not only the members of his court but also the Doctor himself:
HENRY. . . .I am cured, gentlemen, for I know I'm playing the madman, I do it quite calmly.--Woe betide you if you live your madness unquietly, without knowing it, without seeing it!
BARON. So the obvious conclusion is--that we are the madmen! (p.174)
Henry appears as if he were in full control of his senses, and nothing predicts a sudden and abrupt change in his behavior. After the final scene, in which Henry stabs the Baron, Pirandello's description of the Emperor's behavior in the stage directions is quite meaningful: "he is thunderstruck at the life of the fiction he himself created. In a single moment it has driven him to crime" (p. 175). The closing scene of Emperor Henry proves that the creative power of the form established by the Emperor himself becomes an important external force that can deform the hero's own internal world as happens to Henry in The Marriage. The point of arrival in Pirandello's play becomes the point of departure and the focus of philosophical exploration in all of Gombrowicz's drama.
In both plays, the duality of the presented world becomes multi-dimensional and the distinction between reality and dream, madness and sanity, humanity and inhumanity loses its sharpness. The masquerade during which Henry's father becomes a king and all the drunkards from the inn turn out to be his courtiers is going on, and Henry's effort to get to the real nature of things is never-ending. The major difference between his wondering and the questioning of Pirandello's protagonist comprises the fact that Henry never receives a satisfactory answer that would clarify the confusing reality surrounding him. Whereas the Emperor becomes aware of the game that has been going on for years and explains its rules to the rest of the characters who act in the masquerade with him:
HENRY. . . . For me, these clothes (indicating his own costume) are a caricature, a voluntary and overt caricature, of that other masquerade, the one that's going on all the time. You take part in it whether you know it or not. If without knowing it you wear the mask of what you think you are, you are still a puppet in this masquerade, though an involuntary one. That's why we must forgive these four young men if they don't yet see these clothes of theirs as in character (p.173).
Analysing his own madness, the Emperor reveals his understanding of life, which is identified with another ongoing masquerade--not always realised by those who create it but nonetheless present--in everyone's life all the time. Both protagonists are acutely aware of the theatricality of their lives, they both are conscious of the form they become part of, and, as a result, they follow this form either voluntarily (Henry IV) or involuntarily (Henry). Whether the form they embody springs from a deep psychological conviction or from a chain of human interactions, it is always present there, proving itself indispensable, necessary and independent from an individual's will.
While Henry, the Emperor, wants to outsmart the world, creating his own universe, Henry from The Marriage submits to the already existing rules and obeys the social codes imposed on him in different situations. His self-awareness and the awareness of the circumstances he finds himself in change neither his perception nor the other characters' perception of him. His constant wonder deepens his sociological and psychological observations but does not give him satisfactory answers to his philosophical questions. In one of his monologues, Henry attempts to understand the nature of his own deeds:
HENRY: . . .This raises a simple question: If in the course of several years a person fulfils the function of a madman, is he not then really a madman? And what does it matter that I am healthy if my actions are sick--eh, Johnny? But those who forced me to commit these insanities were also healthy
And sensible
And balanced . . . friends, companions, brothers--so much
Health
And such sick behaviour? So much sanity
And yet so much madness? So much humanity
And yet so much inhumanity? And what does it matter if taken separately each of us is lucid, sensible, balanced, when all together we are nothing but a gigantic madman who furiously
Writhes about screams, bellows and blindly
Rushes forward, overstepping his own bound
Ripping himself out of himself. . . Our madness
is outside ourselves, out there . . . There, there, out there.
Where I myself end, there begins
My wantonness . . . And even though I live in Peace within myself, still do I wonder outside myself
And in dark, wild spaces and nocturnal places
Surrender myself to some unbounded chaos! (pp.78-9)
Since Henry's actions are often provoked by the circumstances and are initiated by interaction with others, Henry himself becomes vulnerable and cannot control the course of events, he cannot be responsible for his own deeds which--according to his understanding--are not quite his own. When Johnny stabs himself after Henry's persuasive speech advocating Johnny's suicide, Henry concludes:
HENRY: No! I'm not responsible for anything here!
I don't understand my own words!
I have no control over my own deeds!
I know nothing, nothing, nothing, I understand
nothing, nothing, nothing!
. . .Being mutually united, we are forever arranging ourselves into new forms and these new forms well up from below (pp.156-157)
Henry's awareness of the Form being constantly created by people is shared by the Emperor, Henry IV, yet what is frozen in the Form for ever and designed to maintain its eternal life in Pirandello's play, appears fluid and changeable in the drama by Gombrowicz. Form in The Marriage is "becoming" and has nothing to do with the mental death of an individual who personifies it. The Emperor desires to be twenty-six forever, and although Henry does not think of eternal youth at all, he wants to fulfill different wishes depending on his immediate needs. One of them is to have a pure and holy marriage with Molly, which can be fulfilled only through his participation in a certain Form. This goal, however, becomes less important when a new aim emerges from different circumstances: Henry betrays his father and wishes to become a king himself. In both plays, form becomes a philosophical necessity in the characters' lives which involves a lot of role playing, pretending, and often magnifying what is beneath this form.
III
To illustrate selected aspects of this form, Pirandello, as well as Gombrowicz, uses the metaphor of clothing. It conveys a central idea in their plays and it clearly broadens the notion of Pirandello's form of social dimension. Gombrowicz's Operetta (1966), resembles in some aspects To Clothe the Naked (1922). In analyzing Pirandello's play, many critics stress the importance of its main theme and explain that the play is "merely dedicated to stripping us of our lies, our deceptions and illusions, in order to arrive at some naked truth about ourselves."
The main heroine of the play, Ersilia, seeks shelter at a famous writer's apartment after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Ersilia's desperate act was provoked by the news that her former lover Laspiaga, whom she met at the Consul's house (where she worked as a governess), is engaged and about to be married to someone else. Since the real story of Ersilia and Laspiaga's affair would ruin her reputation forever, she conjures a colorful version of events in which she appears as a victim, an innocent girl full of charm and naivete;. Her own version of the story is supposed to be published in a local newspaper as an interview just after her attempted suicide, but life complicates her plans and the rescued Ersilia visits Ludovico's apartment. The writer becomes apparently enchanted by her imagination and creative fantasy, but pretends to be impressed by the shocking story itself. Ersilia continues to play the role of a lonely and abandoned maid, but finally has to confront reality and face accusations that contradict her own interpretation of the story.
The truth that Ersilia attempts to hide is associated with her nakedness. Her fear of being naked has symbolic meaning and becomes obvious in her conversation with Ludovico's maid, Onoria:
ERSILIA: I mean, I haven't a thing, not a thing with me. At the hotel I had an overnight bag . . . I don't know where it is. Maybe the police took it.
ONORIA: We'll pick it up tomorrow. Don't you worry about
it. I'll send someone or go myself.
ERSILIA: Yes, but right now . . . right now . . . I'm naked (p.34)
When facing the public Ersilia must be dressed, so she tries to prepare her own gown, the costume that can beautify her own image in the eyes of others. However, her lies are not only meant to mask over the embarrassing elements of her story but also to enlarge her own image, to make her character appear more important:
LUDOVICO: . . . Forgive me, but how can you imply you were nobody? For one thing, you existed in the pity everyone felt for you when they read your story in the paper. You can't imagine the impression it made when it was published, the interest you aroused all over the city (p.14)
In her effort of "becoming somebody" Ersilia embodies Pirandello's idea of costruirsi . She "builds herself up" just as Henry in Emperor Henry does. Her clothes "made of lies and human pity" serve the same purpose as Henry's historical costume of the emperor. Similar to Henry, Ersilia's self-awareness and the knowledge of the painful truth terrify and torment her constantly:
ERSILIA: You, too, Mr. Nota--I'm not what you thought. But I swear to you I would have given anything, anything to be the girl you saw in your novel! For you, yes, for you I might have succeeded, because I would have found a new life in your art. But you see this other life, the life I tried to get rid of, won't leave me alone. It has me in its teeth and it won't let go! They're all still here, all around me. Where am I to go? (pp.43-44)
When Ersilia's lies become slowly unveiled over the course of the retrospective action, the truth seems to have a destructive power and its only positive aspect appears in the final death scene. Only then Ersilia has a courage to "be naked," that is to give an honest opinion of herself and the society in general:
ERSILIA: . . . It's only that we all, we all want to make a good impression. The more . . . the more hor--(she wants to say horrible, but she is so overcome with disgust and pity that she can barely get it out.)--the more horrible we are, the more beautiful we want to seem, that's all. Oh, God, yes--to hide our nakedness in decent clothing, that's all. . . (p.74).
Ersilia's character shows that the social conventions and forms do not allow the truth in. Ersilia cannot be accepted by the society "naked," since there is no room for human imperfection and no tolerance for morally suspicious actions based on natural impulses. In the closing scene, Ersilia switches her costume from a bridal gown to a funeral dress but since the truth is revealed--as she herself confesses--"her corpse dies naked" (p.75). On her death bed, Ersilia understands that to live and be accepted by the society means to lie, to wear a dress of skilful deceit which must be nice and pleasing in its appearances to all onlookers.
Gombrowicz's version of a similar idea is expressed in Operetta. In his own commentary to this work, the playwright remarks:
The opposition clothing-nakedness is the underlying motif of Operetta. A dream about nakedness of man imprisoned in the most bizarre, the most atrocious clothing. . . (p.9)
Clothes, and more specifically fashion, used as a metaphor in Gombrowicz's play represents more layers of meaning than it does in Pirandello's version. In Operetta, clothing becomes a symbol for certain historical periods (aristocratic Poland), historical events (World War II), social events (fashion shows), scientific inventions (atomic bomb), and theatrical conventions (the genres of operetta and musical).
Since the action of the opening scene takes place around 1914, it renders a highly conventionalized aristocratic society which seems to have lost its ability of natural and spontaneous reactions in life long time ago. Count Charmant and Baron Firulet compete with each other continuously over girls they attempt to seduce and their scores are almost identical: Charmant boasts on his account 257, while Firulet has 256. However, in the light of a further action the competition looks highly unreal since the Count, in order to stay awake, needs frequent injections and speed pills, while the Baron cannot function without the constant service of his butler. The only motivation for Charmant is to appear better than Firulet, so he arranges a situation in which he can meet a beautiful girl named Albertine without breaking the rules of required savoir-vivre. Thus, he hires Ladislaus, whose task is to play a pickpocket, steal Albertine's locket from her neck, and let himself be caught by Charmant. Only then can the Count introduce himself to Albertine safely; he offers her the stolen chain back. But the sleepy Albertine is much more enchanted by the touch of the thief's hand than by artificial gesture of the Count's generosity.
This incident begins Albertine's never ending dream about nakedness and a lover's touch. Ironically, her wishes can never be fulfilled by Charmant, since he mostly desires to dress her and not to undress her, to mould her according to his own aristocratic taste in the newest trends in fashion:
ALBERTINE. Count! Instead of undressing me
You want to dress me?
CHARMANT. Pardon? Pardon? Pardon?
ALBERTINE. Can't you see.
Under my dress
I'm naked as can be!
. . .
CHARMANT. (bewildered) This is the first time I've ever known a woman who'd rather be undressed than dressed. . . (p.36)
Since Albertine belongs to a different social class, stiff conventions never invaded her life style and as a result her natural impulses are still preserved. Her dream of nakedness and youth reminds Ersilia's final desire for honesty which is identified with her "naked corpse." In both plays nakedness is juxtaposed to artificial and distorting clothes which evoke further oppositions such as truth of nature versus lies of society, instinctive behavior versus conventions, spontaneity versus rigidity and so on. All aristocratic characters, presented in Operetta, lack natural impulses and act in a highly artificial manner. One of their representatives, Professor, who--revolted by life--suffers from a chronic state of nausea seems to be a perfect commentator on this aristocratic society.
The lower classes constituting of butlers, maids, and thieves are the only characters in Operetta who reveal any natural desires and wish for things and experiences that can keep them alive and naturally alert. Observing the pickpockets around, Charmant bitterly realizes the advantages of the lower class who freely approach women they desire.
As nudity of Albertine's dream reflects in a metaphorical way the identity of the social group she belongs to, the fancy aristocratic way of dressing indicates the status of Charmant and Firulet. The Prince's sudden cry, during the fashion show ball: "Down with nudity! Let's all dance!" (p.76) is aimed at maintaining a clear distinction between two different classes. The problem that is represented in Pirandello's play as a deep psychological dilemma through showing two sides of Ersilia's personality; (1) her natural instinct "to be naked" and (2) her wish "to be clothed;" is rendered by Gombrowicz from sociological not psychological perspective. In Operetta, the opposition between clothing and nakedness occurs on the basis of human interactions when a representative of one social class faces a member of another class. Thus the focus shifts from inner conflict (Pirandello) to external mechanisms (Gombrowicz).
According to Gombrowicz, the essence of the person is a contentless concept. Human beings are formed by their contacts with other human beings. This interaction is the only reality--there is no other. To analyse Ersilia's character using Gombrowicz's definition of form, one would have to agree that Ersilia becomes aware of her nakedness upon her interaction with the society. It is the society that forces Ersilia to create her "dress of lies" and makes her aware that this form of deceit is absolutely necessary for her survival. Choosing her own truth, Ersilia resigns from a further struggle and sentences herself to death. By doing so, Ersilia refuses to be moulded by the society into a creature of their wishes. In Gombrowicz's terms, "she refuses to produce form," since "to live means to produce form, an activity which ceases only with death. In this sense there is no escape from Form." The major difference between Pirandello's and Gombrowicz's way of exploring the leading duality of their plays is that the Italian playwright concentrates on the inner world of his characters, while Gombrowicz, assuming the presence of inner mechanisms, penetrates the external forces which--according to him--are more crucial in seeking the answer where the source of human Form resides.
Another point of correspondence between To Clothe the Naked and Operetta is the characters' mental suffering caused by the masquerade of everyday life. The characters suffer from being disfigured by the form imposed on them, but at the same time their disguises give them a security which is unattainable otherwise. In order to protect her safe position in society, Ersilia gives her own version of events for the newspaper interview. Her lies will haunt her later and she will have to decide what price she can pay for her security. In Operetta, Gombrowicz illustrates how the mechanism of necessary disguise has been used over different historical periods:
HUFNAGEL. . .
Let the ball that's to be staged
Be a masquerade ball!
Let the ball be masked
Exactly like our age! (p.44)
When the guests' sacks fall down and their costumes become apparent, the revolution follows, and various historical events are symbolized by different clothing. In Gombrowicz's version, people not only change their masks and clothes but they identify with objects around them as well, pretending to be a lamp or a table. Although Fior, the clothes designer and master of ceremonies, becomes alarmed by these sudden and unexpected changes, he can neither stop them from happening nor avoid them himself. The terror continues, grows into madness and more radical changes among the ball guests occur:
FIOR. Friends!
Be yourselves again! Get rid of those disguises!
Enough of these games, it's much too painful!
THE PRINCE-LAMP. The point is they can't be themselves any more.
THE PRIEST-WOMAN. There's no possible way.
THE PRINCESS-TABLE. Be ourselves again? How, I'd like to know? (pp.90-91)
The dialogue resembles the protagonist's monologues from Emperor Henry, and especially one of Enrico's long speeches during which he argues that everybody becomes a puppet in a masquerade of life. The similarity becomes even more explicit when Fior frantically advocates:
FIOR. (to HUFNAGEL) Be a man again! Throw off your mask!
HUFNAGEL, LACKEYS, PRINCE AND PRINCES, PRIEST.
The storm! (A gale, thunder, lightning)
FIOR. Here one mask is tormenting another!
Off with those masks! Be normal people again! (p.96)
. . .
FIOR. I curse man's clothing, I curse the masks.
Those bloodstained masks that eat into our bodies
I curse the cut of trousers and blouses
They've eaten too far into our flesh! (p.103)
The characters of Operetta become imprisoned by their masks as Henry is possessed by the image of the Emperor, the German king. All of them appear totally confused and can no longer find their real selves. It becomes clear that their confusion and the loss of their own identities protect them from their responsibilities and make them feel more secure. In order to avoid the consequences of stabbing the Baron, Henry has to remain in the world of madness "forever." Likewise, the characters from Operetta must find a comfortable disguise to escape political and religious persecutions of a contemporary world. The price for their security is their mental suffering which some characters confess directly:
FIOR. Excuse me, excuse me, but I don't quite understand, I'm somewhat at a loss in the haze and the maze of these odd transformations, transfigurations, transpositions, trans-fashion, a fashion. . . A fashion on the world's devious paths. . . Oh, what a painful masquerade! (p.101)
While the Emperor and the aristocracy from Operetta try to endure their suffering, becoming more and more the form-mask they choose to wear or agree to be identified with, Ersilia--no longer wanting "to be dressed in her lies"--has to die. Her death confirms a belief that deceit becomes an indispensable element in human life which exists as long as one is alive.
In both dramatic worlds, there is no room for nakedness which either has to be kept away (To Clothe the Naked) or deeply hidden (Operetta):
FIOR. O sacred nudity, sleep forever!
We shall never come to know you. . . (p.103)
In the final scene of Operetta, nudity appears as a leading theme in everyone's dream. The closing victorious exclamation of Fior, Charmant, and Firulet:
O nudity eternally youthful, hail!
O youth eternally nude, hail!
O youthful nudity, nudely youthful
O nudity of youth, youthful nude! (p.107)
sounds hopeful and optimistic. However, the appearance of naked Albertine--smuggled by the thieves in a coffin--functions as a wish-fulfilling dream rather than a real event. In both plays, fashion becomes an intrinsic part of characters' created forms and helps them to maintain their false personas.
An interesting example of a play in which Pirandello does not rely on a character's appearance while he is exploring the mechanisms of creating this character's persona is Right You Are. The main heroine, Signora Ponza, the object of everyone's gossip and speculations, does not come into the picture until the last scene. There are some rumors that the first wife of Signor Ponza is dead and he is married to another woman. However, the mother of Signor Ponza's first wife, Signora Frola, sustains the belief that her daughter is still alive and happily married to Signor Ponza. Since the woman stays in her shelter all the time, she can be seen only from a distance in a window, and people see in her whomever they wish to see. Her close appearance does not clarify everyone's confusion about who she really is either:
SIGNORA PONZA (with slow staccato speech). What? The truth? It is simply this. I am signora Frola's daughter--
ALL (with a gasp of pleasure). Ah!
SIGNORA PONZA (without pausing, as above). And I am
Signor Ponza's second wife--
ALL (astonished, disappointed, in low voices). And to
myself I am no one. No one.
GOVERNER. No, no, Signora, at least to yourself you must
be either one or the other!
SIGNORA PONZA. No! To myself--I am the one that each of
you thinks I am (p.54).
Right You Are exemplifies the most extreme version of Pirandello's conviction that people mostly exist in the perception of others and are created by those who interact with them. In this particular aspect, the play Right You Are is very closely related to Gombrowicz's theory of Form which argues that one becomes--first of all--through contact with other human beings. Signora Ponza's identity clearly depends on people who surround her and cannot even be articulated by her herself. Her final confession suggests that she either lost the sense of her own identity or, in order to express it, she has to interact with others. Perhaps her own identity is beyond her ability of verbal articulation and can only be performed, not verbalized?
The analysis of Pirandello's selected plays show that both options are possible. The case of Ersilia proves that the expression of one's identity is not always beyond one's ability to articulate. The example of signora Ponza questions this conviction, and finally the performance of Henry IV abolishes it quite clearly. In all of the examples, the element of performance seems to be absolutely crucial in the process of expressing one's identity regardless of the fact whether this identity is real, false, or half-real and half-false. Most Pirandello's characters, when left by themselves, deliver their monologues in front of a mirror while in Gombrowicz's world they simply remain mute and cannot articulate anything without the presence of others. Does it mean that each individual who is a performer, who becomes a persona and embodies a certain image of oneself needs an audience in order to become, or even to survive?
All the characters from the works by Pirandello and Gombrowicz analysed here prove that this is exactly the case. Everybody needs a spectator or at least--as it is in the works by Pirandello--a mirror. In his analysis of everyday life, Goffman arrives at the same conclusion, defining individuals in the process of social interactions as "one-person team." His term implies an inner duality of each person: one half is a performer and the other an audience:
In other words, an individual may be his own audience or may imagine an audience to be present. This should make us go on to see that a team itself may stage a performance for an audience that is not present in the flesh to witness the show. (The Presentation of Self, pp.81-2)
This kind of situation, defined by Goffman also as self-delusion, results in self-deception which becomes inevitable when two different roles "come to be compressed into the same individual" (p.81).
Thus, deception, considered by Goffman necessary in any communication process, proves its presence in all dramatic situations from the plays by Gombrowicz and Pirandello. This deception has been proved to be a philosophical necessity for all the characters in both literary worlds.
WORKS CITED