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Eleven Short Stories / Undici Novelle: A Dual-Language Book
Winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize for literature, Luigi Pirandello (1867 - 1936) is best known for such landmark plays as Six Characters in Search of an Author . One of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, he also distinguished himself in a vast outpouring of short stories, poetry, novels, and essays. The stories often provided the seeds for later novels and plays.
The 11 tales included in this collection are among his best. Presented in the original Italian with excellent new English translations on facing pages, they offer students of Italian language and literature a unique learning aid and a treasury of superb fiction by a modern master.
The stories range in time from the earliest known tale, "Little Hut," a study of rural passions written in 1884, to "Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law," a quintessential Pirandello story about the relativity of truth and the impossibility of penetrating other people's minds. Published in 1917, it formed the basis of Pirandello's first major play, Right You Are If You Think You Are . In addition to these narratives, the volume also includes "Citrons from Sicily," "With Other Eyes," "A Voice," "The Fly," "The Oil Jar," "It's Not to be Taken Seriously," "Think it Over, Giacomino!," "A Character's Tragedy," and "A Prancing Horse."
Accompanying the stories are a biographical and critical introduction to Pirandello and his work, brief introductions to each of the stories and explanatory footnotes.
The 11 tales included in this collection are among his best. Presented in the original Italian with excellent new English translations on facing pages, they offer students of Italian language and literature a unique learning aid and a treasury of superb fiction by a modern master.
The stories range in time from the earliest known tale, "Little Hut," a study of rural passions written in 1884, to "Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law," a quintessential Pirandello story about the relativity of truth and the impossibility of penetrating other people's minds. Published in 1917, it formed the basis of Pirandello's first major play, Right You Are If You Think You Are . In addition to these narratives, the volume also includes "Citrons from Sicily," "With Other Eyes," "A Voice," "The Fly," "The Oil Jar," "It's Not to be Taken Seriously," "Think it Over, Giacomino!," "A Character's Tragedy," and "A Prancing Horse."
Accompanying the stories are a biographical and critical introduction to Pirandello and his work, brief introductions to each of the stories and explanatory footnotes.
208 pages, Paperback
Published May 6, 1994
About the author
Luigi Pirandello
1,649 books1,497 followersLuigi Pirandello; Agrigento (28 June 1867 – Rome 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer whose greatest contributions were his plays.
He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art"
Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd.
He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art"
Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
August 26, 2017
ვერ ვიტყვი რომ რომელიმე მოთხრობა არ მომეწონა, საოცრად ვისიამოვნე, მაგრამ ქაღალდის სამყარო შედევრია, მოთხრობა კაცზე, რომელიც ლიტერატურას რეალობასთან მაკავშირებელ რგოლად კი არ იყენებს, არამედ ლიტერატურა ხდება მისი რეალობა. მაგარი ტიპია პირანდელო :)
June 3, 2020
I read this book to get further exposure to the Italian language. It’s a dual-language book, so one side is Italian and one side is English. I ended up mostly reading the English side because the stories used pretty advanced vocabulary in Italian. Nonetheless, it was still a good learning tool. The stories confused me sometimes though.
October 31, 2013
I knew very little about Luigi Pirandello prior to reading Undici Novelle, other than my girlfriend's assertion that if I wanted to read a great Italian writer I should start with either him or Italo Svevo. When I went looking for something I ended up bingeing: first on Svevo's Zeno's Conscience, then being compelled to buy Pirandello's One, No One & One Hundred Thousand just because I loved the title; but the short story collection Undici Novelle, a dual-language version translated and edited by Stanley Appelbaum, seemed like a good place to start. Having now finished it, I think it was.
Luigi Pirandello's career as a short story writer evidently underpinned much of his as a novelist and playwright. He wrote more than 230, many of which inspired or found their way into his longer works in one form or another. He would also continually modify them, so whenever one was to be included in a new collection it could show anything from a few typographical corrections to wholesale revisions.
Those collected here, given in chronological order of publication, are all taken from their original versions in order to give a feel for Pirandello's development as a writer. The first, Little Hut, which was written when he was only seventeen, is unsurprisingly the weakest; but it signals what is to come very clearly, that Pirandello's focus is far more on the description and nuances of character than plotting - and he is a master of it.
His creations are highly authentic, idiosyncratic people and there is a definite tendency towards the tragic in their brief time centre stage. An innocent coming to recognise the failure of his love and a needless martyr forever denying it to herself stand side by side with more obviously, more unpleasantly selfish figures who, even if motivated towards the benefit of others, are quick to turn on those who displease them. It must be said that Pirandello makes little effort to mask where his stories are heading; in the majority of cases the rough direction is clear from the opening paragraphs, leaving you knowing far more then the character about their imminent fate. This often sacrifices something of impact, and a few stories became a little repetitive with it, but the general effect is to generate a kind of fatalistic anticipation and these stories are all about emotional response, both of reader and subject.
Well, not all. As the opening quote reveals, there is more than a little humour to be had from him as well and many of the stories raise more than just a smile. There are also moments of more analytical study of the human condition, such as in It's Not To Be Taken Seriously, the hero of which compulsively sees the ridiculous not just in those he sees putting on airs, but also in everyone he feels love for; he comes to see the beasts that still inhabit all men, the thieves, imposters, murderers lurking in potentia behind every civil veneer; but humour remains, as "after so many centuries of civilisation, many people now sheltered in their cave an animal that was excessively subdued: a pig that said the rosary, a fox that had lost it's tail."
There were four stories here that stood out, starting with A Character's Tragedy, forerunner to his most famous play Six Characters in Search of an Author, which gives an insightful glimpse of his creative process and the tangible reality he imbues his characters with - and even other writers' characters too. Although I found all the stories interesting, it was only with The Fly that I began to feel Pirandello's writing really bite - and with cruel power. Pirandello was apparently fond of stories sympathetic to those animals domesticated by man and one from the collection, A Prancing Horse, showed for me his greatest skill in rendering emotion. As noted above, this too was an easy tale to predict in its general tone, direction and climax - but here there was also a twist, of the knife almost, a face-slapping insight into how one could take pleasure from the pain of others.
The Oil Jar, which is unsurprisingly his best loved short, is more narratively complete than the majority and unusually upbeat. A land owner who can only be described as a litigious git is ripe for reprimand by the one person in a position to help him in his selfish hour of need, but against anyone else's literary conventions this person turns out to be every bit his childishly belligerent equal and the two quickly fall into a mutual downfall from which only one can rise the victor.
Atypically, the stakes here are more emotionally trivial and instead of a tragedy in the making The Oil Jar resolves into a warm, Much Ado About Nothing kind of rap on the knuckles for a man who probably deserves it - which one, I'll leave unsaid, but I will quote the opening passage of the story as it perfectly sums up the writer and his work: a fertile mind, strongly nourishing, a mix of the sweet with the sombre.
Luigi Pirandello's career as a short story writer evidently underpinned much of his as a novelist and playwright. He wrote more than 230, many of which inspired or found their way into his longer works in one form or another. He would also continually modify them, so whenever one was to be included in a new collection it could show anything from a few typographical corrections to wholesale revisions.
Those collected here, given in chronological order of publication, are all taken from their original versions in order to give a feel for Pirandello's development as a writer. The first, Little Hut, which was written when he was only seventeen, is unsurprisingly the weakest; but it signals what is to come very clearly, that Pirandello's focus is far more on the description and nuances of character than plotting - and he is a master of it.
His creations are highly authentic, idiosyncratic people and there is a definite tendency towards the tragic in their brief time centre stage. An innocent coming to recognise the failure of his love and a needless martyr forever denying it to herself stand side by side with more obviously, more unpleasantly selfish figures who, even if motivated towards the benefit of others, are quick to turn on those who displease them. It must be said that Pirandello makes little effort to mask where his stories are heading; in the majority of cases the rough direction is clear from the opening paragraphs, leaving you knowing far more then the character about their imminent fate. This often sacrifices something of impact, and a few stories became a little repetitive with it, but the general effect is to generate a kind of fatalistic anticipation and these stories are all about emotional response, both of reader and subject.
Well, not all. As the opening quote reveals, there is more than a little humour to be had from him as well and many of the stories raise more than just a smile. There are also moments of more analytical study of the human condition, such as in It's Not To Be Taken Seriously, the hero of which compulsively sees the ridiculous not just in those he sees putting on airs, but also in everyone he feels love for; he comes to see the beasts that still inhabit all men, the thieves, imposters, murderers lurking in potentia behind every civil veneer; but humour remains, as "after so many centuries of civilisation, many people now sheltered in their cave an animal that was excessively subdued: a pig that said the rosary, a fox that had lost it's tail."
There were four stories here that stood out, starting with A Character's Tragedy, forerunner to his most famous play Six Characters in Search of an Author, which gives an insightful glimpse of his creative process and the tangible reality he imbues his characters with - and even other writers' characters too. Although I found all the stories interesting, it was only with The Fly that I began to feel Pirandello's writing really bite - and with cruel power. Pirandello was apparently fond of stories sympathetic to those animals domesticated by man and one from the collection, A Prancing Horse, showed for me his greatest skill in rendering emotion. As noted above, this too was an easy tale to predict in its general tone, direction and climax - but here there was also a twist, of the knife almost, a face-slapping insight into how one could take pleasure from the pain of others.
The Oil Jar, which is unsurprisingly his best loved short, is more narratively complete than the majority and unusually upbeat. A land owner who can only be described as a litigious git is ripe for reprimand by the one person in a position to help him in his selfish hour of need, but against anyone else's literary conventions this person turns out to be every bit his childishly belligerent equal and the two quickly fall into a mutual downfall from which only one can rise the victor.
Atypically, the stakes here are more emotionally trivial and instead of a tragedy in the making The Oil Jar resolves into a warm, Much Ado About Nothing kind of rap on the knuckles for a man who probably deserves it - which one, I'll leave unsaid, but I will quote the opening passage of the story as it perfectly sums up the writer and his work: a fertile mind, strongly nourishing, a mix of the sweet with the sombre.
January 17, 2016
Luigi Pirandello, 1934 Nobel Prize for literature winner, is best known for his plays. However these eleven short stories portraying life in southern Italian villages are truly gems! My favorite is the intricate "Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, her Son-in-Law." In this complicated short story, one of the two characters is insane, but neither the townspeople, nor the reader, can figure out which is true. In the final lines, Pirandello states "One thing is certain anyway: that both of them manifest a marvelous, deeply moving spirit of sacrifice for each other; and that each of them has the most exquisitely compassionate consideration for the presumed madness of the other." and later to the "dismay of the people who study them, scrutinize the, spy on them, but - no use! - cannot yet in any way manage to understand which of the two is the crazy one, where the illusion is, where the reality." Fabulous!!
September 28, 2026
One of the interesting things about reading a collection of short stories in a foreign language that are collected in chronological order is that it is very obvious when the author’s language becomes more complex. The first couple of stories—starting with one from when he was seventeen—were far easier to read without consulting either a dictionary or the facing page translation than the last couple of stories, which ended when he was about fifty.
Further, the facing page translation tended to be much more of a direct translation in the beginning, making it easy to see where the correspondences were. Toward the end, the translations were, and I assume needed to be, much more holistic, so that I had to consult a dictionary to tease out the meanings of individual words.
All of the stories are interesting, and even “Capanetta” or “Little Hut” that he published at seventeen exhibits multiple levels and characters with hidden depth.
All of them are very modern, in the sense that happy endings are assiduously avoided, with the possible exception of the final story, “La Signora Frola e il Signor Ponza, suo Genero” (“Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law”), a playful vignette that doesn’t really have an ending but rather paints a mystery for the reader. Who is mad? Who isn’t? What is truth? What is a lie? What is inherent in the people we meet, and what do we make up about them? That latter is closer to the heart of the story, because the “mystery” is perfectly acceptable to the two title characters. It is only the people around them, and the reader, to whom it is something that needs solving.
To modern eyes the mystery seems easily solvable by going to the other city and looking up the records and witnesses, but this may have been more believably difficult in Italy in 1917.
The final four stories, in fact, are all a bit light-hearted, with the penultimate story, “La Rallegrata”, or “The Prancing Horse”, being a bit of satire on aging and death told from the point of view of a team of carriage-horses—retired from many occupations, and now pulling very special carriages.
Further, the facing page translation tended to be much more of a direct translation in the beginning, making it easy to see where the correspondences were. Toward the end, the translations were, and I assume needed to be, much more holistic, so that I had to consult a dictionary to tease out the meanings of individual words.
All of the stories are interesting, and even “Capanetta” or “Little Hut” that he published at seventeen exhibits multiple levels and characters with hidden depth.
All of them are very modern, in the sense that happy endings are assiduously avoided, with the possible exception of the final story, “La Signora Frola e il Signor Ponza, suo Genero” (“Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law”), a playful vignette that doesn’t really have an ending but rather paints a mystery for the reader. Who is mad? Who isn’t? What is truth? What is a lie? What is inherent in the people we meet, and what do we make up about them? That latter is closer to the heart of the story, because the “mystery” is perfectly acceptable to the two title characters. It is only the people around them, and the reader, to whom it is something that needs solving.
To modern eyes the mystery seems easily solvable by going to the other city and looking up the records and witnesses, but this may have been more believably difficult in Italy in 1917.
The final four stories, in fact, are all a bit light-hearted, with the penultimate story, “La Rallegrata”, or “The Prancing Horse”, being a bit of satire on aging and death told from the point of view of a team of carriage-horses—retired from many occupations, and now pulling very special carriages.
January 7, 2025
Pirandello, who won the 1934 Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote more than 230 short stories, and this dual-language collection of eleven stories showcases his talent, especially his delineation of character and his appreciation of irony. As with most story collections, these are uneven, ranging from "Little Hut," which Pirandello wrote at 17, to "A Character's Tragedy," the forerunner to his most famous play, "Six Characters in Search of an Author." My favorite is "Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law," in which one of the two characters is insane, but neither the townspeople nor the reader can determine which. "[We] cannot yet in any way manage to understand which of the two is the crazy one, where the illusion is, where the reality." The Italian is often complicated, so for the most part, I stuck with the English translation. When I did compare the two texts, Appelbaum's translation seemed quite good.
August 29, 2023
Mixed for me. I think reading these was super difficult. Mostly I needed to reread repeatedly because I was multiple context confused. Very egocentric for the most part too. Seeing the Italian was interesting. These sets of eyes are just not for me in majority. Way too aesthetic and ephemeral in bottom lines!
June 6, 2018
A book for reflection
A thought-provoking, inward-examining, self-reflection yet witty, fun, and memorable book. I like It's Not To Be Taken Seriously the most. My next TBR by Pirandello is One, No One, and a Thousand.
A thought-provoking, inward-examining, self-reflection yet witty, fun, and memorable book. I like It's Not To Be Taken Seriously the most. My next TBR by Pirandello is One, No One, and a Thousand.
April 10, 2020
Capannetta: Bozzetto siciliano
Lumie di Sicilia
Con altri occhi
Una voce
La mosca
La giara
Non e una cosa seria
Pensaci, Giacomino
La tragedia d'un personaggio
La rallegrata
La signeore Frola e il signor Ponza, suo genero
Lumie di Sicilia
Con altri occhi
Una voce
La mosca
La giara
Non e una cosa seria
Pensaci, Giacomino
La tragedia d'un personaggio
La rallegrata
La signeore Frola e il signor Ponza, suo genero
May 24, 2026
Most stories seem like random Creative Writing course takes by a C- student; except maybe "The Jar," that one could clock a C+.
Maybe I'm lost in translation and they read much better in Italian.
Maybe I'm lost in translation and they read much better in Italian.
July 2, 2018
Especially loved the story, "A Character's Tragedy."
May 12, 2025
ყველა ეს მოთხრობები ცალ-ცალკე ტრაგედიაა. კარგად რომ დაგაფიქრებს ისეთია, იმის და მიუხედავად, რომ მცირეა.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 3, 2008
There are a few stories translated in this compendium.
As suggested by the title there are 11 short stories by the Sicilian turn of the century Author. Stanley Appelbaum has completed both a brilliant intro which is more of a biography of Pirandello than anything else. Capannetta, Lumie di Sicilia, Con Altri Occhi, Una voce, La mosca, La giara, non e una cosa seria, Pensaci Giacomino, La Tragedia d'un personaggio, la rallegrata, la signora Frola e il signor Ponza, suo genero - I have yet to read the last 3 of the total 11. Appelbaum describes Pirandello best, which a scholarly oral painting of the utmost clearness. The stories are chosen well and they are cute, smart, alleatoric and a great means to learn Italian.
As suggested by the title there are 11 short stories by the Sicilian turn of the century Author. Stanley Appelbaum has completed both a brilliant intro which is more of a biography of Pirandello than anything else. Capannetta, Lumie di Sicilia, Con Altri Occhi, Una voce, La mosca, La giara, non e una cosa seria, Pensaci Giacomino, La Tragedia d'un personaggio, la rallegrata, la signora Frola e il signor Ponza, suo genero - I have yet to read the last 3 of the total 11. Appelbaum describes Pirandello best, which a scholarly oral painting of the utmost clearness. The stories are chosen well and they are cute, smart, alleatoric and a great means to learn Italian.
November 22, 2007
this is not actually the pirandello's work I owned,But since I find it is interesting in the way he put his character in the tragic or pathetic condition i think he should be in the list.I would say that he really described the real live. biographically his own life is not really different with those stories he has written. I got the indonesian version of his work by "akubaca" publisher, and still in a very good mood in finding his others work or to discuss about it.
August 1, 2007
Like the other Pirandello on my list, I hardly gave this (probable) masterpiece my undivided attention. Hence, this really ought to be on my to-read shelf.
September 4, 2007
I loved these stories. I think he's an excellent writer and the translator did a good job, as well.
July 12, 2011
8,5/10
November 10, 2013
talked about it some here: http://www.5cense.com/13/Roma_re.htm
January 22, 2016
good intermediate Italian reader.
February 18, 2016
"The Wheelbarrow" - 4.5 stars (not in this book)
"Citrons from Sicily" - 4 stars
"The Oil Jar" - 2.5 stars
"Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law"
"Citrons from Sicily" - 4 stars
"The Oil Jar" - 2.5 stars
"Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law"
August 6, 2016
Some of the stories were really sweet and nostalgic, others were sad, and there were a couple which were a bit boring. I've read better short stories collection, but this one wasn't bad either.
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August 28, 2018,, მე ის მანიჭებს სიხარულს, რომ ვიღაც კითხულობს მათ აქ, ჩემ მაგივრად... თქვენ ალბათ ვერ გაიგებთ ამ სიხარულს"
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