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Luigi Pirandello Research Paper

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How miserable would life be if one were forced into your marriage after many family devastations? Luigi Pirandello could answer that question. Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet and short story writer. Pirandello had a strong drive to become a writer after his father pushed him to go to a technology school. After years of different schooling and jobs, he knew he wanted to pursue in a writing career. Pirandello went through many obstacles in his life before continuing on with his dream. Some of these obstacles were the destruction of his family’s sulfur mine, being forced into marriage, and the stress caused by his family. Luigi Pirandello’s wife, Antonietta Portulano, the art of theatre, and the conflict between reality and illusion all affected …show more content…

. Much of her affect on his writing was written in his book, Henry IV. Antonietta had mental illness for many years due to stressful events happening in her life like the destruction of the Pirandello sulfur mine. In Henry IV, Luigi Pirandello often put the characters in his shoes of his current life situation with his wife. Henry IV’s life in Henry IV was based off of the life of Luigi Pirandello himself. The mental illness caused Pirandello to write with and about madness, illusion, and isolation. “Because being in front of a fool do you know what that means? Being in front of one that shakes the foundations of all that you have built up in you, around you, the logic, the logic of all your buildings! - Eh! What do you want? They construct without logic, lucky them, the fools! Or with their own logic that flies like a feather” (Pirandello). This quote from Henri IV is relating the “fool” to Luigi Pirandello’s wife. It is stating that Antonietta Portulano had driven him crazy and broke him down every time after he built himself up. “Beautiful, but it’s finished! Now that you know, I could not do it anymore! Neither could

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