Reviews

quand'ero piú piccola pensavo a volte, fissando il soffito, a come sarebbe stato assistere al mio funerale giusto per capire chi ci sarebbe venuto. leggere “il fu mattia pascal” mi ci ha fatto ripensare e mi sono rivista molto in tutta la storia perché, sebbene involontariamente, mattia si ritroverà nella medesima situazione.

pirandello é capace di descrivere sensazioni complicate in tre parole e farle percepire con una forza pazzesca al lettore. questo é in gran parte il motivo per cui continuano a piacermi i suoi libri nonostante li legga pianissimo :(

httpssofia's review against another edition

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3.0

3/5

zama04's review against another edition

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inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.75

iaintcorinne's review against another edition

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challenging reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

reneete's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

The story and main premise were interesting, but the execution got boring and hard to follow way too many times (like the philosophical discussions and character names). Not for my taste.

francesco05's review against another edition

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medium-paced

4.0

joannaautumn's review against another edition

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2.0

"And we often gladly forget that we are infinitesimal atoms; instead, we respect and admire one another and are even capable of fighting for a scrap of land or of grieving over certain things which, if we were really aware of what we are, would seem incalculably trivial."

Perhaps there is a time in each of our lives when we had thought about what would have happened if we just disappeared from our current life?
Shred our name, face, and identity and start anew somewhere else, in another town or a small village far from where we lived before.

Mattia Pascal does just that.

"There was little or nothing to boast of in that miserable life they had insisted on ending there in the millrace. After all the mistakes he had made, Mattia Pascal perhaps deserved no better fate.
Now I wanted to remove every trace of him, not only externally, but also within myself.
I was alone now, and no one on earth could be more alone than I, with every tie dissolved, every obligation removed, free, new, completely my own master, without the burden of my past, and with the future before me, which I could shape as I pleased."

Told as a fictional autobiography, Pirandello writes a story about an unhappy man trying to escape the tragic things that have happened to him with an almost absurd and comical nihilism.
What felt first as ecstatic liberation, turned out to be another form of imprisonment, which in return, pushed Pascal into an even deeper state of nihilism.

"Oh why . . . I asked myself desperately, . . . does mankind toil so to make the apparatus of its living more and more complicated? Why this clatter of machines? And what will man do when machines do everything for him? Will he then realize that what is called progress has nothing to do with happiness? Even if we admire all the inventions that science sincerely believes will enrich our lives (instead they make it poorer because their price is so high), what joy do they bring us, after all?"

Considering that this book also talks about progress(both industrial and social) it gives us a double-edged view on it - yes, it does make certain things easier, but if one were trying to escape there are limited options. Would Mattia Pascal be happier if he was born in an earlier century, where there were no banks or complex social laws, would he find new happiness? Could he be able to move on with Adrianna and leave his old life behind? As Don Eligio says, Pascal's experience proves that we can't live outside the law without our characteristics.

Mattia Pascal changes through an almost identity cleansing pilgrimage, so much so that he has grown apart from not only the people in his past life but from himself.

Although the themes were intriguing, and there were lovely passages where Mattia's reflections on life stay with the reader, like this one:

"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 are 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."

The book as a whole felt very underwhelming to me. The writing fluctuated from brilliant to average, making me question if Pirandello is a writer that I would enjoy in another form, reluctant to try anything from him in the future but still open to giving him a second chance. As for this book, as the wise people say: to each their own.
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Good idea but an awfully underwhelming execution. Review to come.

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