Luigi Pirandello Quotes

Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.

Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be, like the reality of yesterday, an illusion tomorrow.

If only we could see in advance all the harm that can come from the good we think we are doing.

THE FATHER: But don't you see that the whole trouble lies here? In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do.

Inevitably we construct ourselves. Let me explain. I enter this house and immediately I become what I have to become, what I can become: I construct myself. That is, I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve with you. And, of course, you do the same with me.

Our spirits have their own private way of understanding each other, of becoming intimate, while our external persons are still trapped in the commerce of ordinary words, in the slavery of social rules. Souls have their own needs and their own ambitions, which the body ignores when it sees that it's impossible to satisfy them or achieve them.

It is so.When YOU think so

Imparerai a tue spese che nel lungo tragitto della vita incontrerai tante maschere e pochi volti.

I am an "unrealized" character, dramatically speaking...

The capacity for deluding ourselves that today's reality is the only true one, on the one hand, sustains us, but on the other, it plunges us into an endless void, because today's reality is destined to prove delusion for us tomorrow; and life doesn't conclude. It can't conclude. Tomorrow if it concludes, it's finished.

…my real love has always been the sleep that rescued me by allowing me to dream.

For man never reasons so much and becomes so introspective as when he suffers ; since he is anxious to get at the cause of his sufferings, to learn who has produced them, and whether it is just or unjust that he should have to bear them. On the other hand, when he is happy, he takes his happiness as it comes and doesn't analyse it, just as if happiness were his right.

E l’amore guardò il tempo e rise, perché sapeva di non averne bisogno. Finse di morire per un giorno, e di rifiorire alla sera, senza leggi da rispettare. Si addormentò in un angolo di cuore per un tempo che non esisteva. Fuggì senza allontanarsi, ritornò senza essere partito, il tempo moriva e lui restava.

We all have a world of things inside ourselves and each one of us has his own private world. How can we understand each other if the words I use have the sense and the value that I expect them to have, but whoever is listening to me inevitably thinks that those same words have a different sense and value, because of the private world he has inside himself, too.

Do you recognize perhaps, also you, now, that a minute ago you were another?

When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody even in many other situations where the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him.

I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve to you.

When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.

You don’t appreciate the fact that madmen are very lucky.

No name. No memory today of yesterday’s name; of today’s name, tomorrow. If the name is the thing; if a name in us is the concept of every thing placed outside of us; and without a name you don’t have the concept, and the thing remains in us as if blind, indistinct and undefined: well then, let each carve this name that I bore among men, a funeral epigraph, on the brow of that image in which I appeared to him, and then leave it in peace, and let there be no more talk about it. It is fitting for the dead. For those who have concluded. I am alive and I do not conclude. Life does not conclude. And life knows nothing of names. This tree, tremulous pulse of new leaves. I am this tree. Tree, cloud; tomorrow book or wind: the book I read, the wind I drink. All outside, wandering.

The idea that others saw in me one that was not the I whom I knew, one whom they alone could know, as they looked at me from without, with eyes that were not my own, eyes that conferred upon me an aspect destined to remain always foreign to me, although it was one that was in me, one that was my own to them (a "mine," that is to say, that was not for me!)—a life into which, although it was my own, I had no power to penetrate—this idea gave me no rest.

And no one realizes we should all, always, look like that, each with his eyes full of horror at his own, inescapable solitude.

And the air is new. And everything, instant by instant, is as it is, preparing to appear. [...] This is the only way I can live now. To be reborn moment by moment. [...] I die at every instant, and I am reborn, new and without memories: live and whole, no longer inside myself, but in every thing outside.

The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die.

The unfortunate part is that you, my dear friend, will never know, and I shall never be able to tell you, how what you say to me is translated inside me. You did not speak Turkish, no. We both employed, you and I, the same language, the same words. But is it our fault, yours and mine, if words in themselves are empty? Empty, my dear friend. You fill them with your meaning, as you speak them to me; while I, in taking them in, inevitably fill them with my own. We thought we understood each other; we did not understand each other at all.

I wanted to be alone in an altogether unusual way, a new way. Quite the contrary of what you think: that is to say, without myself and, to be precise, with a stranger at hand.

Le anime hanno un loro particolar modo d'intendersi, d'entrare in intimità, fino a darsi del tu, mentre le nostre persone sono tuttavia impacciate nel commercio delle parole comuni, nella schiavitù delle esigenze sociali. Han bisogni lor proprii e le loro proprie aspirazioni le anime, di cui il corpo non si dà per inteso, quando veda l'impossibilità di soddisfarli e di tradurle in atto. E ogni qualvolta due che comunichino fra loro così, con le anime soltanto, si trovano soli in qualche luogo, provano un turbamento angoscioso e quasi una repulsione violenta d'ogni minimo contatto materiale, una sofferenza che li allontana, e che cessa subito, non appena un terzo intervenga. Allora, passata l'angoscia, le due anime sollevate si ricercano e tornano a sorridersi da lontano.

This is the real drama for me; the belief that we all, you see, think of ourselves as one single person: but it's not true: each of us is several different people, and all these people live inside us. With one person we seem like this and with another we seem very different. But we always have the illusion of being the same person for everybody and of always being the same person in everything we do. But it's not true! It's not true! We find this out for ourselves very clearly when by some terrible chance we're suddenly stopped in the middle of doing something and we're left dangling there, suspended. We realize then, that every part of us was not involved in what we'd been doing and that it would be a dreadful injustice of other people to judge us only by this one action as we dangle there, hanging in chains, fixed for all eternity, as if the whole of one's personality were summed up in that single, interrupted action.

Io sono vivo e non concludo.La vita non conclude.E non sa di nomi, la vita. Quest’albero, respiro tremulo di foglie nuove. Sono quest’albero. Albero, nuvola; domani libro o vento: il libro che leggo, il vento che bevo. Tutto fuori, vagabondo.

Have you ever thought to go away and never come back? Run away and lose your tracks, to go to a place far away and start living again, living a new life, only yours, really live? Did you ever think?

What is the stage? It's a place, baby, you know, where people play at being serious, a place where they act comedies. We've got to act a comedy now, dead serious.

Thus, sir, you see when faith is lacking, it becomes impossible to create certain states of happiness, for we lack the necessary humility. Vaingloriously, we try to substitute ourselves for this faith, creating thus for the rest of the world a reality which we believe after their fashion, while, actually, it doesn't exist.

Ma che colpa abbiamo, io e voi, se le parole, per sè, sono vuote?...E voi le riempite del senso vostro, nel dirmele, e io nell'accoglierle, inevitabilmente, le riempio del senso mio. Abbiamo creduto d'intenderci, non ci siamo intesi affatto.

Una realtà non ci fu data e non c'è, dobbiamo farcela noi: non sarà mai una per tutti e per sempre ma di continuo e infinitamente mutabile.

Un'ora breve di dolore c'impressiona lungamente; un giorno passa e non lascia traccia.

In his madness he became a terrifying actor!

La solitudine non è mai con voi; è sempre senza di voi, è soltanto possibile con un estraneo attorno:

Lessi così di tutto un po', disordinatamente; ma libri, in ispecie, di filosofia. Pesano tanto: eppure, chi se ne ciba e se li mette in corpo, vive tra le nuvole.

Io non potevo vedermi vivere

But only in order to know if you, as you really are now, see yourself as you once were with all the illusions that were yours then, with all the things both inside and outside of you as they seemed to you - as they were then indeed for you. Well, sir, if you think of all those illusions that mean nothing to you now, of all those things which don't even seem to you to exist any more, while once they were for you, don't you feel that - I won't say these boards - but the very earth under your feet is sinking away from you when you reflect that in the same way this you as you feel it today - all this present reality of yours - is fated to seem a mere illusion to you tomorrow?

We all grasp on to a single idea of ourselves, the way aging people dye their hair. It’s no matter that this dye doesn’t fool you. My lady, you don’t dye your hair to decieve other people, or to fool yourself, but rather to cheat your image in your mirror a little.

وقتی شخصیتی آفریده می شود، بلافاصله از نویسنده خود فاصله می گیرد، مستقل می شود. بقیه می توانند او را در موقعیت های دیگری ببینند که نویسنده به فکرش نرسیده است. و در نتیجه "معنی" دیگری بدان داده می شود که نویسنده هرگز به عقلش نرسیده بوده است.

La solitudine non è mai con voi; è sempre senza di voi, e soltanto possibile con un estraneo attorno: luogo o persona che sia, che del tutto vi ignorino, che del tutto voi ignoriate, così che la vostra volontà e il vostro sentimento restino sospesi e smarriti in un’incertezza angosciosa e, cessando ogni affermazione di voi, cessi l’intimità stessa della vostra coscienza. La vera solitudine è in un luogo che vive per sé e che per voi non ha traccia né voce, e dove dunque l’estraneo siete voi

La vera solitudine è in un luogo che vive per sé e che per voi non ha traccia né voce, e dove dunque l’estraneo siete voi.

Se si guarda negli occhi un animale tutti i sistemi filosofici crollano.

-In cuor di donna quanto dura amore? (Ore) -Ed ella non mi amò quant'io l'amai? (Mai) -Or chi sei tu sì ti lagni meco? (Eco)

Fate, fortune, chance: all snares of life. You want to be, eh? There’s this catch: in abstract, you cannot just be. The being must be trapped in a form, and for some time it has to stay in it, here or there, this way or that. And everything, as long as it lasts, bears the penalty of its form, the penalty of being this way and no longer being able to be otherwise.

Voi credete di conoscervi se non vi costruite in qualche modo? E ch'io possa conoscervi, se non vi costruisco a modo mio? E voi me, se non mi costruite a modo vostro? Possiamo conoscere soltanto quello a cui riusciamo a dar forma. Ma che conoscenza può essere? È forse questa forma la cosa stessa? Sì, tanto per me, quanto per voi; ma non così per me quanto per voi: tanto vero che io non mi riconosco nella forma che mi date voi, né voi in quella che vi do io.

أن مأساتى فى الاحساس بأنى ، وبأن كلا منا يرى و يعتقد أنه واحد فقط ، ولكن هذا ليس صحيحا. أن كل واحد منا له شخصيات متعددة بعدد الامكانيات التى تكمن فينا : فبالنسبة للبعض يكون كل منا شخصاواحدا ، و بالنسبة للاخرين يكون شخصا مختلفا تماما ، ونحن دائما نتوهم أننا شخص واحد بالنسبة للجميع ، و هذا الشخص دائما لا يتغير ، إننا نعتقد أن هذا الشخص يظل كما هو عندما يفعل أى شىء ، و لكن هذا ليس صحيحا على الاطلاق

Abbiamo tutti dentro un mondo di cose: ciascuno un suo mondo di cose! E come possiamo intenderci, signore, se nelle parole ch'io dico metto il senso e il valore delle cose come sono dentro di me; mentre chi le ascolta, inevitabilmente le assume col senso e col valore che hanno per sé, del mondo com'egli l'ha dentro? Crediamo di intenderci; non ci intendiamo mai!

إذ انطفأ فجأة ،دون ان يعرف كيف و لماذا انطفأ ذلك الحماس الذي سانده و دفعه الى الامام سعيدا واثقا من نفسه .. انهارت تلك الثقة و انهار معها تلك المشاريع التي دعمها و اقامها بفن و طرق لم يعد يفهمها هو نفسه.. وهكذا بين يوم و اخر تغير كل شئ، واظلم في عينيه مظهر الناس و الاشياء ووجد نفسه فجأه تجاه ذات اخرى لا يعرفها مطلقا ، في عالم يكتشفه بذلك الذهول الذي يعتري اولئك الذين يعيشون وسط ضجيج الآلات حين تتوقف فجأه و يسود السكون ..

Because evil, my dear child, can be done to anyone and by everyone, but good can only be done to those who need it.

Anyone can be heroic from time to time, but a gentleman is something which you have to be all the time. Which isn’t easy.

For man never reasons so much and becomes so introspective as when he suffers;

Why are you so anxious to destroy in the name of a vulgar, commonplace sense of truth, this reality which comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic of the stage itself, which has indeed more right to live here than you, since it is much truer than you -- if you don't mind my saying so?

Era proprio la mia quell’immagine intravista in un lampo? Sono proprio così io, di fuori, quando vivendo - non mi penso? Dunque per gli altri sono quell’estraneo sospeso nello specchio: quello, e non già quale io mi conosco: quell’uno lì che io stesso prima, scorgendolo, non ho riconosciuto. Sono quell’estraneo che non posso veder vivere se non così, in un attimo impensato. Un estraneo che possono vedere e conoscere solamente gli altri, e io no.

Un personaggio, signore, può sempre domandare a un uomo chi è. Perché un personaggio ha veramente una vita sua, segnata di caratteri suoi, per cui è sempre «qualcuno». Mentre un uomo – non dico lei, adesso – un uomo così in genere, può non essere «nessuno».

Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants does not live for the sake of living, without knowing how to live; but he lives so as to give a meaning and a value of his own to life.

Solitude is never where you are; it is always where you are not, and is only possible with a stranger present; whatever the place or whoever the person, it must be one that is wholly ignorant concerning you, and concerning which or whom you are equally ignorant, so that will and sensation remain suspended and confused in an anxious uncertainty, while with the ceasing of all affirmation on your part, your own inner consciousness ceases at the same time. True solitude is to be found in a place that lives a life of its own, but which for you holds no familiar footprint, speaks in no known voice, and where accordingly the stranger is yourself.

Was it really my own, that image glimpsed in a flash? Am I really like that, from the outside, when—all the while living—I do not think of myself? For others, then, I am that stranger whom I surprised in a mirror; I am he and not the I whom I know; I am that one there whom I myself at first, upon becoming aware of him, did not recognize. I am that stranger whom I am unable to see living except like that, in a thoughtless second. A stranger whom others alone can see and know, not I.

You don't know what it means to live the life that you could have lived, if an event over which you have no control, an unforeseeable circumstance, had not distracted and diverted you, and at times crushed you, as has happened to me.

وقضيتي كانت أفدح. فأنا لا أرى ما مات فيّ. ولكني أرى أني لم أعش أبداً. أرى أن القالب الذي أفرغت فيه حياتي، إنما أعطاه لها الآخرون، ولست أنا الذي صغتها فيه، فأنا أشعر أن حياة هذا القالب، لم تكن حياتي الحقيقية. لقد أخذوني كأية مادة، أخذوا دماغاً وروحاً وعضلات وأعصاباً ولحماً، وعجنوها على النحو الذي يريدونه حتى تنجز أعمالاً، وتقوم بأفعال، وتطيع الواجبات التي أبحث عن نفسي فيها فلا أجدها. وأصرخ، وتصرخ روحي في هذه الهيئة الميتة التي لم تكن هيئتي أبداً. ولكن كيف، وفي نفسي سأم وحقد ورعب من هذا الرجل الذي لم أكنه. من هذا القالب المميت الذي يقيدني فلا أقدر على التحرر. إنه قالب مثقل بالواجبات التي أشعر أنها ليست واجباتي. مرهق بأعمال لا تهمني، متخذ كرمز للتقدير الذي لا أعرف ما أصنع به. إن هذه الواجبات والأعمال والتقدير والإحترام صور خارجة عن حقيقة نفسي، إنها أشياء ميتة، لا معنى لها، إلا أن تثقل كاهلي، وترهقني وتسحقني، ولا تدع لي الفرصة للتنفس. أتحرر؟؟ ولكن متى استطاع إنسان إلغاء الحقيقة الواقعة فينكر الموت عندما يأخذ بخناقه .. والحقيقة أنه مهما كان مسلكك في الحياة فلا بد أن تقيدك المحن التي يجرها عليك. وتحيط بك تلك المسؤولية التي أخذتها على عاتقك كنها الجو الخانق الكثيف. فكيف أستطيع التحرر، وأنا سجين هذا القالب الغريب الذي يمثلني كما أنا بالنسبة للجميع، وكما يعرفني ويحترمني الجميع؟ إنني أعيش حياة مختلفة عن تلك الحقيقة التي أحلم بها. إنني أعيش حياتي في قالب أشعر أنه ميت وهو يعيش من أجل الآخرين. من أجل الذين رفعوه والذين يريدون له هذه الصورة .. فهو مرغم إذاً على أن يعمل من أجل زوجتي وأطفالي والمجتمع والسادة طلاب الحقوق في الجامعة والسادة العملاء الذين أودعوني الحياة والشرف والحرية والثروة. يعمل هكذا ولا أستطيع تغييره ولا أستطيع أن أركله بالأقدام وأزيحه وأتمرد عليه وأنتقم منه.

One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses. Everybody's in the same case. Some folks haven't the courage to say certain things, that's all! THE STEP-DAUGHTER: All appear to have the courage to do them though.

Il ricordo non è altro che il riconoscimento di realtà passate, che restano in noi come un sogno. E sarà sogno domani per noi la realtà d'oggi.

we are ready enough to note the faults of others, while all the time unconscious of our own.

Nati vivi, volevano vivere.

We want to live. THE MANAGER (ironically). For Eternity? THE FATHER No, sir, only for a moment... in you.

Ebbene signor Meis, il destino di Roma è l’identico. I papi ne avevano fatto – a modo loro, s’intende – un’acquasantiera; noi italiani ne abbiamo fatto, a modo nostro, un portacenere.

Siamo o non siamo su un’invisibile trottolina, cui fa da ferza un fil di sole, su un granellino di sabbia impazzito che gira e gira e gira, senza saper perché, senza pervenir mai a destino, come se ci provasse gusto a girar così, per farci sentire ora un po’ più di caldo, ora un po’ più di freddo, e per farci morire – spesso con la coscienza d’aver commesso una sequela di piccole sciocchezze – dopo cinquanta o sessanta giri?

Tutti i fenomeni o sono illusori o la ragione di essi ci sfugge, inesplicabile. Manca affatto alla nostra conoscenza del mondo e di noi stessi quel valore obiettivo che comunemente presumiamo di attribuirle. È una costruzione illusoria continua.

Tu non le sai, povero ubriaco filosofo, queste cose; non ti passano neppure per la mente. Ma la causa vera di tutti i nostri mali, di questa tristezza nostra, sai qual è? La democrazia, mio caro, la democrazia, cioè il governo della maggioranza. Perché quando il potere è in mano d’uno solo, quest’uno sa d’essere uno e di dover contentare molti; ma quando i molti governano, pensano soltanto a contentar se stessi, e si ha allora la tirannia più balorda e più odiosa: la tirannia mascherata da libertà.

Nowhere! It is merely to show you that one is born to life in many forms, in many shapes, as tree, or as stone, as water, as butterfly, or as woman. So one may also be born a character in a play.

ولكن ألا ترين أن علةالبلاء فى الكلام ، كل واحد منا لديه عالم كامل فى نفسه ، و كل واحد منا له عالمه الخاص ! فكيف يفهم بعضنا بعضا أيها السادة إذا كنت أضع فى كلماتى التى أقولها معانى و قيم الأشياء كما أفهمها فى عالمى أنا ، بينما يفترض من يستمع إلى إن كلماتى لها المعانى و القيم الخاصة بعالمه هو ، نحن نظن أننا سوف نتقابل ، و الواقع أننا لن نتقابل أبدا !

Ah, to be no longer conscious of being, like a stone, like a plant! To remember no longer even one's own name! Stretched out upon the grass, hands interlaced at the back of one's neck, to look up at the dazzling, sun-puffed clouds as they sail past in the blue sky, to listen to the wind which makes, up there in the chestnut grove, a sound like the breaking of the sea.

Perché trovarsi davanti a un pazzo sapete che significa? Trovarsi davanti a uno che vi scrolla dalle fondamenta tutto quanto avete costruito in voi, attorno a voi, la logica, la logica di tutte le vostre costruzioni! - Eh! Che volete? Costruiscono senza logica, beati loro, i pazzi! O con una loro logica che vola come una piuma!

Si reconocemos que equivocarse es propio del hombre, ¿no es una crueldad sobrehumana la justicia?

Lessi così di tutto un po', disordinatamente; ma libri, in ispecie, di filosofia. Pesano tanto: eppure, chi se ne ciba e se li mette in corpo, vive tra le nuvole.

I libri pesano tanto: eppure, chi se ne ciba e se li mette in corpo, vive tra le nuvole.

But a fact is like a sack which won't stand up when it is empty. In order that it may stand up, one has to put into it the reason and sentiment which have caused it to exist.

Because I suffer, sir! I'm not philosophizing: I'm crying aloud the reason of my sufferings. THE

Parlo, parlo, dico sciocchezze, faccio lo svagato; ma non è vero, sai? Perché osservo tutto io, invece; osservo tutto!

We get paid to hang out in this beautiful court! Four puppets on a string, just like those two up there (pointing to the two hanging puppets), waiting for someone to jerk them into life and make them talk.

Una notte di giugno caddi come una lucciola sotto un pino solitario in una campagna di olivi saraceni affacciata agli orli di un altopiano d'argille azzurre sul mare africano".                                                                   

Prima di guidicare la mia vita o il mio carattere, metti ti le mie scarpe, percorri il cammmino, che ho prcorso io. Vivi il mio dolore, i miei dubbi, le mie risate. Vivi gli anni che ho vissuto e caddi la dove ho caduto io e rialzati come ho fatto io.

Are we or are we not on an invisible spinning top, whipped by a thread of sunlight, on a grain of crazed sand which turns and turns without ever knowing why, without ever reaching a destination, as if it enjoyed turning like that, to make us feel a little colder or warmer, and make us die (often feeling that we have merely carried out a series of meaningless gestures) after fifty or sixty years?

Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do.

Porque la vida, por todas sus descaradas absurdidades, pequeñas y grandes, de que está felizmente llena, tiene el inestimable privilegio de poder prescindir de esta estupidísima verosimilitud, a la que el arte cree su deber prestar obediencia. Las absurdidades de la vida no tienen necesidad de parecer verosímiles, porque son verdaderas. Al contrario de las del arte, que, para parecer verdaderas, tienen necesidad de ser verosímiles. Y entonces, al ser verosímiles, ya no son absurdidades.

Per chi cade nella colpa, signore, il responsabile di tutte le colpe che seguono, non è sempre chi, primo, determinò la caduta?

...and here, in this if I always lose myself.

Ogni oggetto in noi suol trasformarsi secondo le immagini ch’esso evoca e aggruppa, per così dire, attorno a sé. Certo un oggetto può piacere anche per se stesso, per la diversità delle sensazioni gradevoli che ci suscita in una percezione armoniosa; ma ben più spesso il piacere che un oggetto ci procura non si trova nell’oggetto per sé medesimo. La fantasia lo abbellisce cingendolo e quasi irraggiandolo d’immagini care. Né noi lo percepiamo più qual esso è, ma così, quasi animato dalle immagini che suscita in noi o che le nostre abitudini vi associano. Nell’oggetto, insomma, noi amiamo quel che vi mettiamo di noi, l’accordo, l’armonia che stabiliamo tra esso e noi, l’anima che esso acquista per noi soltanto e che è formata dai nostri ricordi.

Mah! C'è chi comprende e chi non comprende caro signore. Sta molto peggio chi comprende, perchè alla fine si trova senza energie e senza volontà. Chi comprende, infatti, dice: . Benissimo! Ma a un certo punto ci si accorge che la vita è tutta una bestialità, e allora dica un pò cosa significa il non averne commesso nessuna: significa per lo meno non aver vissuto, caro signore.

Ours is an immutable reality which should make you shudder when you approach us if you are really conscious of the fact that your reality is a mere transitory and fleeting illusion, taking this form today and that tomorrow,

«Era proprio la mia quell’immagine intravista in un lampo? Sono proprio così io, di fuori, quando vivendo - non mi penso? Dunque per gli altri sono quell’estraneo sospeso nello specchio: quello, e non già quale io mi conosco: quell’uno lì che io stesso prima, scorgendolo, non ho riconosciuto. Sono quell’estraneo che non posso veder vivere se non così, in un attimo impensato. Un estraneo che possono vedere e conoscere solamente gli altri, e io no»

Every object is transformed within us according to the images it evokes, the sensations that cluster around it. To be sure an object may please us for itself alone, for the pleasant feelings that a harmonious sight inspires in us; but far more often the pleasure that an object affords us does not derive from the object in itself. Our fantasy embellishes it, surrounding it, making it resplendent with images dear to us. Then we no longer see it for what it is, but animated by the images it arouses in us or by the things we associate with it. In short, what we love about the object is what we put in it of ourselves, the harmony established between it and us, the soul that it acquires only through us, a soul composed of our memories.

Ogni oggetto in noi suol trasformarsi secondo le immagini ch'esso evoca e aggruppa, per così dire, attorno a sé. Certo, un oggetto può piacere anche per se stesso, per la diversità delle sensazioni gradevoli che ci suscita in una percezione armoniosa; ma ben più spesso il piacere che un oggetto ci procura non si trova nell'oggetto per se medesimo. [...] Nell'oggetto, insomma, noi amiamo quel che vi mettiamo di noi, l'accordo, l'armonia che stabiliamo tra esso e noi, l'anima che esso acquista per noi soltanto e che è formata dai nostri ricordi,

Dalle vette nuvolose delle sue astrazioni il signor Anselmo lasciava spesso precipitar così, come valanghe, i suoi pensieri. La ragione, il nesso, l’opportunità di essi rimanevano lassù, tra le nuvole, dimodochè difficilmente a chi lo ascoltava riusciva di capirci qualche cosa.

... you can also be sure that, no matter how many heroic remedies the playwright invents, ninety-nine drama critics out of a hundred will declare the suicide is absurd and the play unbelievable. For life, happily filled with shameless absurdities, has the rare privilege of being able to ignore credibility, whereas art feels called upon to pay attention to it. Life's absurdities don't have to seem believable, because they are real. As opposed to art's absurdities which, to seem real, have to be believable. Then, when they are believable, they are no longer absurd. An event in life may be absurd; a work of art, if it is a work of art, cannot be. It therefore follows that to criticize, in the name of life, a work of art for being absurd and unbelievable is sheer stupidity. In the name of art, yes. But not in the name of life.

¿Me ha parecido una suerte que me tuvieran por muerto? Pues bien: estoy muerto de verdad. ¿Muerto? Peor que muerto me lo ha recordado don Anselmo: los muertos ya no tienen que morirse, y yo sí, yo estoy todavía vivo para la muerte y muerto para la vida. En efecto, ¿qué vida puede ser la mía?

Se la morte, signor mio, fosse come uno di quegl’insetti strani, schifosi, che qualcuno inopinatamente ci scopre addosso... Lei passa per via; un altro passante, all’improvviso, lo ferma e, cauto, con due dita protese, le dice: «Scusi, permette? lei, egregio signore, ci ha la morte addosso». E con quelle due dita protese, gliela piglia e gliela butta via... Sarebbe magnifica! Ma la morte non è come uno di questi insetti schifosi. Tanti che passeggiano disinvolti e alieni, forse ce l’hanno addosso; nessuno la vede; ed essi pensano intanto tranquilli a ciò che faranno domani o doman l’altro.

That drawer was full of photographs of her. She showed me any number, old and recent. "All dead," I told her. She turned her head and glanced at me quickly: "Dead?" "Yes, for all they appear to be alive." "Even this one with the smile?" "Yes. And this pensive one: and the one with the eyes drooped." "But how can they be dead, if I here am alive?" "Ah, you, yes; because you do not see yourself now. But when you are in front of a mirror, the moment you look at yourself again, you are no longer alive." "And why not?" "Because, in order to behold yourself, you must for a moment halt life within you. Excuse me, but seeing that you go to the photographer's so often—when the photographer, in front of you with his camera, tells you to be sure not to move, you must have noticed—life is suspended in you—and you feel that such suspension cannot last more than a second—it is like turning into a statue—For life is constant motion, and one can never really see one's self." "You mean to say that I, while living, have never seen myself?" "Never; not as I can see you. But I see a likeness of you that is mine and mine alone; it is assuredly not yours. You, while living, have possibly been able to catch no more than a bare glimpse of your own in some snapshot or other that has been made of you; and it has come as an unpleasant surprise; it may even have pained you to recognize yourself, in helter-skelter motion like that." "That's true." "For you can only know yourself when you strike an attitude: a statue: not alive. When one is alive, one lives and does not see himself. To know one's self is to die. The reason you spend so much time looking at yourself in that mirror, in all mirrors, is that you are not alive; you do not know how to live, you cannot or you do not want to live. You want too much to know yourself; and meanwhile, you are not living." "Why, nothing of the sort! I never can succeed in keeping still a moment." "But you want to see yourself always. In every act of your life. It is as if you had before you always the likeness of yourself, in every action, in every gesture. It is from this that your intolerance comes. You do not want the feeling in you to be blind. You compel it to open its eyes and look at itself in a mirror which you are forever holding up in front of it. And feeling, the moment it sees itself, turns ice within you. You cannot go on living before a mirror. One's aim should be never to see one's self. For the reason that, however much you may try, you can never know yourself as others see you. And of what use is it, then, to know one's self for one's self's sake? You may even come to the point where you will no longer be able to understand why you must have that likeness which the mirror gives you back.