Pirandello's Henry Attempt example essay topic

Varieties of consciousness in Pirandello's Henry IV Studies in the Literary Imagination, Fall 2001 by Fairchild, Terry Monsieur Berenger, the guileless hero of Eugene Ionesco's A Stroll in the Air, spies along the English waterside one afternoon a visitor from the anti-world. Unruffled by this unusual phenomenon, he considers the stranger's origins: 'There's not just one Anti-World. There are several and... they can all coexist in the same space' (47). Daughter Mar the realizes her father is accounting for 'a multiple universe,' a metaphysical concern that haunts the majority of Luigi Pirandello's plays as well, including Henry IV (Enrico IV). What differentiates Pirandello from Ionesco is that the earlier playwright locates his multiplicities not externally but internally-within human consciousness. Aesthetic thought in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth had, by Pirandello's time, taken a curious turn.

Breaking from the so-called naive certainties of the past, Pirandello and other writers sought out truths that were smaller, more governable, and more palatable. As a result, reality for Pirandello, as well as successors like Ionesco and Beckett, became increasingly fragmented, relative, and undependable. Interestingly enough, however, for all their turning away from historical certitude-the nightmare James Joyce wished to awaken-the desire for absolutes remains as constant for the moderns as it did for the romantics. Pirandello, in his famous essay on humor -- L' -- elaborates: Life is a continuous flux that we try to stop, to fix in stable and determinate forms, both inside and outside of ourselves...

The forms in which we try to arrest and fix in ourselves this continual flux are the concepts and ideal by which we wish to preserve, in a coherent manner, all the fictions we create for ourselves, the conditions and the state in which we try to achieve stability. (Oliver 4) Beckett may believe his Every men Vladimir and Estragon foolishly wait for Godot, a personage who has never arrived and never will; yet his tramps get up each day in anticipation of the man's arrival. For them, for all of us, the alternative is too awful. Beckett, Ionesco, and other so-called 'absurdists' made us understand that a belief in a sympathetic universe was ridiculous.

But they simultaneously convey that not believing in some form of organizing-intelligence is equally absurd. Hope, they ironically demonstrate, is as fundamental a human need as scientific certainty or impeccable logic. Pirandello's heroes, particularly Henry IV, possess a similar double-sided vision, one that is realistic, rational, nihilistic, and accepts factual evidence on the one hand, and on the other demands emotional consolation and embraces an eternal, omniscient, or transcendent reality against all historical, intellectual, and social pressures not to do so. For Pirandello's characters, reality-whatever its nature-is a projection of individual consciousness. What Pirandello understands is that our perceptions of life, and even life itself, will always be variable, even as we yearn for eternal constancy.

Henry IV, Pirandello's most renowned protagonist, is an absolutist. He is unyielding in his perceptions, and his rigidity both elevates and isolates him. Separating him from society, his highly personal vision ultimately leads him to madness. In the play, Henry spends the bulk of his life in the eleventh century, half out of chance and half out of choice, but in his thinking he has never been a twentieth-century man, even prior to his accident. At the carnival, life for his youthful peers is all play and time is virtually meaningless. In contrast, the painfully introverted Henry, much like Pirandello in his youth, behaves with a morbid seriousness: 'with him one couldn't joke' (156), Matilda says.

Such an inflexible disposition earmarks him for a psychological mishap, with or without his unhappy fall. 1 In other plays, Pirandello treats his absolutists with derision. The meddling bourgeoisie in It's So If You Think It's So, for instance, who search for an unblemished truth at whatever cost, are the constant source of Laudisi's laughter and the unmitigated butt of Pirandello's scorn. But, in Henry IV, our sympathies lie firmly with the title character. The reason we accept Henry's private reality-his attempt to construct absolute certainty in a relative universe-is that for however quixotic a goal, it is purchased with a cost (when left alone) to no one but himself. As an absolutist, he transforms himself into the near impossible: a twentieth-century tragic hero.

In a minimalist world that by its nature beats down the very idea of classical tragedy, Henry fashions for himself a new universe from his own consciousness modeled on the past. He has elevated himself to a level he will be unable to sustain: this is his tragedy. Henry IV has been called the Hamlet of the twentieth century (Star kie 189), and the resemblance between the two plays is striking. At the heart of Henry's private universe is madness, a malady that dominates Pirandello's play as much as Hamlet's does Shakespeare's. Moreover, Henry's madness is as baffling as Hamlet's. Let us examine Hamlet's madness for a moment.

In Act V, Hamlet acts with clear-mindedness, resolution, and a 'bloody' intent not seen in any previous act. This lucidity we take for sanity. His killing of Claudio is transformed from private, obsessive revenge into sober, public execution. At every other moment in the play, Hamlet vacillates under some species of madness, but identifying exactly its source at any given moment is impossible. Like Henry during the pageant, Hamlet at the beginning of the play is in an 'exalted's tate brought on by the recent death of his King-father and the 'er hasty marriage' of his Queen-mother. Technically, Hamlet suffers from depression caused by profound mourning.

But can we call his depressed spirits madness? Following his interview with the Ghost, Hamlet is in an agitated state far in advance of his original melancholy. He seems ever closer to insanity, but, again, how can we say conclusively that he is mad? Complicating our task is Hamlet's resolve to feign dementia as a means of stalking the King. So, when we next hear from Ophelia of his confused and dishevel led state, we are uncertain how much is invention and how much distraction. Polonius's penetration of Hamlet's condition, 'though this be madness, yet there is method in't,' complicates rather than clarifies matters.

Believing in his insanity helps us to overlook Hamlet's inertia and sympathize with him as he contemplates suicide. More importantly, Hamlet's insanity mitigates his cruelty to Ophelia and Gertrude and his callous disposal of Polonius and former comrades Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The point is, whether there is method in it or not, we can never unfailingly determine Hamlet's mental state, any more than we can judge Henry's. Genoni, like Polonius, fails to uk hd sent it the this point, for he too recognizes a method among the insane: 'We must take into account the peculiar psychology of madmen; which... easily detect people who are disguised; can in fact recognize the disguise and yet believe in it' (174).

Every time we see Henry, just as every time we see Hamlet, his consciousness is different, and the terms 'mad' and 'sane' are too broad to be used to define him. Moreover, if Hamlet's mood swings are far-reaching, Henry's are even more so. At the pageant and prior to his calamity, Henry exhibits obsessive / compulsive behavior, the object of which is Matilda. Like Hamlet in Act I, Henry's behavior is not so wild as to bring the Law upon him, but it is determinedly abnormal. The fall from his horse is the catalyst, like Hamlet's meeting with his ghostly father, that pushes Henry over the edge. A true paranoid, Henry has been divided from the ordinary world by a blow to the head and dropped into a reality of his own creation, albeit one drawn from history.

Unlike Hamlet, who never fully loses self-awareness, Henry falls into a schizophrenic state spanning a full twelve years. We might Freudian ly classify Hamlet as suffering from mild to extreme neurosis. Henry is at least part of the time completely psychotic. One way of accounting for Henry's misplaced life-all those lost years-is that he has repressed them in his unconscious (Wright 10-11). As Henry awakens from his psychotic state, everyone thinks of him as having returned to sanity, including Henry himself-'Not mad, any more. No.

Don't you see? We " re having a joke on those that think I am mad!' (191). But sanity, as Michel Foucault demonstrates, is a social rather than ontological construct (Selden 154). It is a matter of convenience for a society to assign the term 'insane,' just as Calvinism once conveniently assigned the word 'witch': after all, what do they succeed in imposing on you?

Words, words, which anyone can interpret in his own manner! That's the way public opinion is formed! And it's a bad look out for a man who finds himself labelled one day with one of these words... 'madman,' or 'imbecile. ' (190) Reality for Pirandello, therefore, is as much socially determined, an expression of collective consciousness, as it is subjectively projected, an expression of individual consciousness. Henry understands as much, and social alienation is his reason for public withdrawal. He 'is the typical eccentric who seeks refuge in a fiction because of a failed human relationship that humiliates him' (Matthaei 104).

Pirandello is also toying here with the social notion of who really are the insane, those who inhabit the sanatorium or those who place the inmates in it. Those who determine Henry's insanity live in a world arguably as dubious as is own. Matilda remains entrenched in the past; Belcredi retreats into a life of cynicism; and Genoni takes refuge in a scientific objectivity in which he treats his fellow beings as subjects in his experiments. In comparison, Henry's play-world seems almost benign. At the end of Henry IV, in a re-enactment of Hamlet's murder of Polonius, Henry wilfully thrusts his sword into Belcredi. This act also suggests Hamlet's revenge on Claudio, because it was Belcredi who spurred the horse and caused Henry's fall.

Prior to this climactic moment, we have taken Henry's recent sanity for granted. However, his violence in this case forces us to re-evaluate his sanity. If sane, Henry is criminally responsible for Belcredi's death, just as a sane Hamlet is legally responsible for Polonius's and morally responsible for Ophelia's, Rosencrantz's, and Guildenstern's (despite his own denial). Lucidity, the ability to think rationally and act resolutely, is not sufficient evidence to determine sanity, although Belcredi believes it is.

He, more than anyone, suspects Henry of feigning: 'You " re not mad,' he cries out at the end (208). The implications of Henry's calculated act are critical to understanding the play and grasping Pirandello's view of reality. By attempting to kill Belcredi, Henry chooses to spend his remaining life posing as a madman. But pretend ing to be mad does not invalidate his actual instances of madness, any more for Henry than for Hamlet. Attempting murder and condemning oneself to perpetual isolation are every bit as much forms of insanity as, say, Hamlet's desire for 'self slaughter. ' By the end of Henry IV, Pirandello has so completely blurred the idea of madness that he robs the word of any dependable meaning.

In It's So If You Think It's So, Pirandello proves that it is impossible to judge external actions; in Henry IV, he demonstrates that it is equally impossible to objectify human awareness. Now let us consider Pirandello's most celebrated expression of consciousness, his famous masks. Most interpreters understand his use of masks as promoting illusion and hiding truth. This they do. However, they are even more intimately connected with reality than this dichotomy suggests. Masks, for Pirandello, do not just hide reality; they are reality.

Let's begin with Henry's name. Knowing the protagonist only by Henry IV, his enduring disguise, makes it impossible for us to ever distinguish the mask from the person! Henry is the mask, and the mask is his reality. In the play, Henry's life chronologically begins with the pageant, at the moment when he puts on the costume, or mask, of his medieval predecessor.

Since the audience never sees him without his mask, he always has been Henry, not the historical Henry IV, but the Henry taken from history that his consciousness / unconscious remolds. Henry is so associated with the mask, that when the play made its American debut it was subtitled The Living Mask (Young 11). Ironically, at the pageant, Henry is both the most masked and the least masked. He is most masked because as a 'jolly good actor' he thoroughly dissolves into his role. He is like a method actor who remains in character. Simultaneously, he is the least masked because he is the least dishonest.

He is incapable of disguising his feelings. Like Dostoyevsky's ingenuous Idiot, he wears his consciousness for all to see. 'Every character in Henry IV possesses a double identity' (Schlueter 22), but Matilda, Belcredi, and the other revelers at the pageant wear their costumes and their masks less authentically than Henry. Their masks cover deeper masks that are their personal projections.

Henry wears a mask that is no longer a mask. It is the transformation of what he was into what he is: his new self. His madness has replaced his previous consciousness and is now his reality. Emerging after his fall, Henry's behavior shows us just how complex Pirandello's use of masks is: 'all our masked faces hideous and terrified gazing at him, at that terrible mask of his face, which was no longer a mask, but madness, madness personified' (159). Eighteen years after Henry's calamity, reality has been inverted. The eleventh century, at least in his villa, is now the norm and the modern world is removed to the shadowy fringes.

Characters that enter Henry's world must put on masks and act out a role, although they may assume that their masks do not essentially change them. In their minds they still see themselves in the twentieth century and perceive Henry's universe as no more than a fantasy. However, their behavior suggests otherwise. At best, they maintain a dual consciousness, which is different than the one they possessed when they entered. In Henry's universe he is the absolute monarch, not just the play monarch. In his presence everyone acts in deference to him, and when he is angry all cower before him.

Another dimension of masks that encompasses Pirandello's vision is the relationship of theater to reality. We see this connection most plainly in Pirandello's famous trilogy: Six Characters in Search of an Author, Each in His Own Way, and Tonight We Improvise (Oliver 51). But all his plays are in one way or another concerned with the overlapping of stage and reality, as are perhaps the greater part of Shakespeare's. For Henry, who first chooses to play Henry IV at the pageant, the role turns into an extended engagement, a life-long performance. The actors who play Henry and the other characters must put on costumes and apply make-up. They do this while mirroring characters within the drama, as in Six Characters in Search of an Author, who put on costumes and apply make-up.

In Henry's castle, his private theater as it were, no one goes unmasked. Even prostitutes recruited for his pleasure must wear costumes and play an historical role (one that extends beyond the ordinary role-playing of their profession), but disguises in Henry IV transcend even the limits of the fabricated court: we all of us cling tight to our conceptions of ourselves, just as he who is growing old dyes his hair. What does it matter that this dyed hair of mine isn't a reality for you, if it is to some extent, for me? -you, you, my Lady, certainly don't dye your hair to deceive the others, not even yourself; but only to cheat your own image a little before the looking-glass. You do it seriously! But I rise you that you too, Madam, are in m (169-70) After his first meeting with his disguised guests, Matilda, Belcredi, and Genoni, Henry decides it is time to remove his mask: 'are [you] amazed that I tear off their ridiculous masks now, just as if it wasn't I who had made them mask themselves to satisfy this taste of mine for playing the madman! ...

Let's stop it. I'm tired of it' (189). Although Henry avows he tires of wearing the mask, he fails to cast it off. His failure, we may assume, is the same excuse he himself gives; he cannot return to a world that has passed him by.

Things 'happened for you but not for me... friends deceived me, my place was taken by another' (202). More importantly, Henry cannot return to an ordinary life that lacks what he most desires: order and certainty. This is what makes him bold in his attempt to murder Belcredi. He is unconcerned with the consequences because he has already given up the notion of returning to the world. Mad he may be, but he knows what he wants. He realizes that his criminal act will force him to continue his charade as Henry IV, a prison of sorts, for the rest of his life, but he makes the choice willingly.

He understands that he is destined to live the life of a man who suffers intensely; yet he is consoled by the knowledge that Henry IV is someone the world takes seriously. So he again takes up the mask he would discard, this time forever. A final realm of consciousness in the play, one that at first seems objective but is actually very much subjective, is time. Robert Bru stein says: 'the typical Pirandellian drama is a drama of frustration which has at its core an irreconcilable conflict between time and timeless' (282). References to time abound in the play.

Genoni views Henry as 'a watch, which has stopped at a certain hour' (178). In the throne room hang the ageless portraits of Henry and Matilda. Belcredi pessimistically describes life temporally-'as soon as one is born, one starts dying' (181). 3 For Henry, time has ceased psychologically while it paradoxically rages on. At the end, his attempt to run off with Frida reflects the temporal fixity of his mind, for he sees Frida as the young Matilda, just as he sees himself, unaffected by time. 'Life has cheated him,' says Stark Young, 'made a jest of him; he gets even with life by remaining permanent in the midst of everlasting change' (13).

If it were not enough that his mind has skipped over between twelve and eighteen years, it has come to rest in the eleventh century. So when Matilda and Genoni consider restoring Henry's lost decades, Belcredi reminds them, 'it isn't a matter of twenty years! It's eight hundred! An abyss!' (180). History, a correlative of time, is also suspect in the play. What corrupts history is unreliable, subjective memory-what Tennessee Williams considered the fountainhead of the emotions.

4 Because history is subjective, no universally agreed-upon history, like no constant personality, exists. In what is tantamount to the play's prologue, Henry's counselors-Harold, Landolph, and Ordulph-give the newest of their brethren, Berthold, who is completely at sea, a crash-course in German antiquity. In a parody of historians, Berthold has his historical facts so distorted that he cannot distinguish between Henry IV of France and Henry IV of Germany-a mere discrepancy of five centuries. 5 This scenario is replayed later when Matilda and Belcredi attempt to piece together the events of the pageant. Belcredi recollects that the idea for the carnival was his; Matilda is sure it was Belassi's, who is now dead and can neither confirm nor deny. Belcredi remembers that Matilda couldn't stand Henry; Matilda disagrees, '-No that isn't true!

I didn't dislike him. Not at all!' (156). Matilda believes she saw the rising of Henry's madness after the fall; Belcredi argues the opposite; 'Nobody saw it, Doctor, believe me!' (158). In this scene, Pirandello demonstrates that history is first a matter of individual ability to recall events and next a subjective interpretation of what has been recalled.

Finally, each version of history is a representation that is most convenient and of the greatest advantage to the historian. Discovering a new interest, Matilda's selective memory won't allow her to recall her former aversion to Henry. The history of written texts is even more spurious-the output of individuals excluded from the events they record. It is the selected and limited representation of a biased viewpoint of writer and class. Hence, there is no telling how accurate is the history of the German Emperor between 'a thousand and eleven hundred' at such places as Worms, Hartz, and Canossa that Pirandello relates and the modern Henry co-opts. Nor does Pirandello's Henry attempt to be faithful to the facts he possesses.

His history 'jumps about,' explains Landolph. Nevertheless, the facts of Henry IV's life provide Pirandello's protagonist with a consistency that life outside his castle does not. He can relive the same events, in the order he pleases, with a certain amount of acceptable improvisation. And what remains immensely comforting to him is the foreknowledge of their outcomes. If he must time and again be betrayed by the Marchioness of Tuscany and humiliated by Pope Gregory VII, so be it.

But, as Henry IV, he will never again have to face so capricious a life that the rug can be pulled from beneath him when he least expects it. What Henry achieves for himself is a temporal immortality. Beckett's tramps desire that Godot assuredly will come, Hamlet a life full of constant wives and honest uncles, and the rest of us perhaps the knowledge of a cheerful afterlife. Henry must settle for the certainty of a reality he manufactures from his own consciousness. As Henry IV, absolute facts correspond to his absolute desires. In their confrontation, he tells Matilda, 'A man can't always be twenty-six, my Lady' (172).

But, as the play ends, to be eternally twenty-six is exactly what Henry chooses. Maharishi University of Management Copyright Studies in the Literary Imagination Fall 2001 Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.