Six Character In Search of An Author

Six Characters in Search of an Author

(Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore)

A COMEDY IN THE MAKING

By Luigi Pirandello

[1921]

English version by

Edward Storer

[New York: E. P. Dutton, 1922]

　　上文學作品讀法時，莉莉強烈推薦這劇作，

「它改變了我的一生」，

的確是很讓人好奇到底是什麼樣子的作品能夠讓老師如此震撼、忘懷，甚至令人改變自己。目前只讀到 Act One 近尾聲的地方，我讀的版本和這連結的版本不同，不過應該大同小異。

　　就我讀到的部分，我不能不說這劇作真的很特別，有「劇中劇」的場景，和必備的吸引人的情節。才讀了一點，卻發現裡面有很多很有意義、我覺得很有意思的句子。

FATHER "You know very well, as a man of the theatre, that life is full of all sorts of odd things which have no need at all to pretend to be real because they are acutally true."

"Nowhere. I want to try to show that one can be thrust into life in many ways, in many forms: as a tree or a stone, as water or a butterfly－or as a woman. It might even be as a character in a play."

"...Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die! ...But they will live for ever because－living seeds－they had the luck to find a fruitful soil, an imagination which knew how to grow them and feed them, so that they will live for ever. "

" Yes words, words! When we're faced by something we don't understand, by a sense of evil that seems as if it's going to swallow us, don't we all find comfort in a word that tells us nothing but that calms us?"

"...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. We think we understand each other: but we never do..."

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

"...I needed, I really needed to believe that she was happy, wrapped up in the simple cares of her life, lucky because she was better off away from the complicated torments of a soul like mine..."

　　還有更多有意思的內容和想法在後頭，不過很遺憾最近應該沒辦法讀完它。語言學概論禮拜一要考，而英語聽講辯論的 self-evaluation report 也是那天交；禮拜五還要 reading summary/presentation。

唉，最近事情真的很多、很忙、很煩、很累人。已經忘記要怎麼開懷大笑，甚至是微笑了；已經不再能體會日常生活中的美好。我開始對一切感到煩躁和不屑。我變得可憎，令我自己感到討厭、不解、困惑、厭煩。

　　什麼東西能讓我拋開現在這個討厭的自己，拾起以往的過去？

　　我應該要去追尋，就算這可能要花一輩子來解答。