One of the few things, in fact about the only thing I was sure of was my name: Mattia Pascal. Of this I took full advantage also. Of this I took full advantage also. Whenever one of my friends or acquaintances so far lost his head as to come and ask me for a big for a bit of advice on some matter of important, I would shrug my shoulders, squint my eyes, and answer:
“My name is Mattia Pascal!”
The work for which Luigi Pirandello remains most famous is his play Six Characters in Search of an Author. The very title of that dramatic work summarizes the overarching thematic arc of this author’s body of work and the concern of his many characters. Mattia Pascal is a character in search of self living in a world where identity is a fluid thing at best. His outrageously unlikely story becomes a tragic tale of the reality of this fluidity of identity. The story opens with Mattia expressing the universal idea that name and identity and inseparable and linked inextricably. As it unrolls, however, it will become increasingly apparent that name and identity exist on two completely different levels that are connected only superficially at best.
“Adriano Meis, yes…Adriano Meis has a fine ring…”
I also felt this name was well suited to the beardless face and the dark glasses, the long hair, and the broad-brimmed hat I would to wear.
“Adriano Meis! Excellent! They’ve baptized me.”
Mattia has been mistakenly believed a drowning victim. The whole world—or at least that part of which gives a darn—thinks Mattia Pascal is no more. This, of course, opens up a whole world of possibilities. One of which would be to immediately rectify the misunderstanding, of course. No, but seriously: this offers Mattia Pascal the chance to become a new person and that identity is handed to him completely by accident on the part of others. He is now Adriano Meis. Except, of course, he is still Mattia Pascal. The name is not everything. There is the very serious exception to the rule that the name and identity are interchangeable: the body and the face. Mattia can change his name, but does that make him Adriano? Not unless he also presents an equitably differentiated physical presence. Hence, the glasses, hair and hat.
I took the wreath of flowers, as I had promised, and every now and then I got out there to see myself dead and buried. Occasionally, a curious passer-by follows me for a while at a distance, then walks back with me and smiles, considering my situation, when he asks:
“Who are you, after all?”
I shrug, shut my eyes for a moment, and answer, “Ah, my dear friend…I am the late Mattia Pascal.”
The novel comes to a close at the site of Mattia Pascal’s grave. The headstone commemorates his memory as a librarian blessed with a generous heart and noble soul. This the story of a man that opens with his claim to identity based upon his name along and end with that same exclamation. Over the course of the story of his life which takes place in between, however, the nation of identity is examined through the particular microscope of what it means to be Mattia Pascal. Is the man and the name the pathway to identity or is the name dissociated from the identity at all times? Is the name an illusion which is only a pretense to one’s identity or can identity one’s identity really be changed simply by changing one’s name? These and other questions of profound philosophical significance are examined through the story of Mattia Pascal’s exclamations.
