In February 1925, the 58-year-old world-famous playwright Luigi
Pirandello met Marta Abba, an unknown, beautiful actress less than half
his age, and fell in love with her. She was to become, until his death
in December 1936, not only his confidante but also his inspiring muse
and artistic collaborator, helping him in his plans to reform Italian
theater under the Fascist regime. Pirandello's love for the young
actress was neither a literary infatuation nor a form of fatherly
affection, but rather an unfulfilled, desperate passion that secretly
consumed him during the last decade of his life. Bitterly disillusioned
by the conditions of the theatrical world in Italy, Pirandello and Abba
shared a dream of going abroad to earn their fortune and returning to
Italy with the means to establish a national theater dedicated to high
artistic standards. In March 1929, when Marta finally yielded to family
pressure and left Pirandello alone in Berlin to revive her Italian stage
career and to end rumors over their involvement, he endured a
devastating heartbreak and fell into a life-threatening depression--more
profound and long-lasting than any of his biographers have yet imagined.
The hundreds of letters Pirandello wrote to Abba during these years are
the only source that reveals the true story of his relentless torment.
Selected, translated, and introduced here for the first time in any
language, these powerful and moving documents reward the reader with the
unique experience of living in intimacy with a profound poet of human
pain. Here Pirandello encourages his beloved in her difficult career as
actor/manager, rejoices in her triumphs, and desperately implores her to
return to him. The letters are filled with glimpses of this major
artistic personality at some of his most distinctive moments--such as
the award of the Nobel Prize, his meetings with Mussolini, and Marta's
long-dreamed-of success on Broadway--but they remain foremost an
authentic confession of a Pirandello, without the mask of his art,
telling the story of his real-life tragedy. In 1986, two years before
she died, Marta Abba authorized the publication of the present
correspondence so that the world might understand how deeply Pirandello
had suffered. This English-language volume contains a selection of 164
letters from the complete edition of 552, which Princeton University
Press will publish in cooperation with Mondadori, in the original
Italian, in 1995.
Originally published in 1994.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from
the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions
preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting
them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the
Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich
scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by
Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
