One, No One & 100,000: a fresh, modern translation by Kevan Houser

by Luigi Pirandello

My expression of rage, for example, wouldn’t be the same for someone who was scared by it, as it was for someone willing to excuse it, or for a third person inclined to laugh at it, and so on.

Preception alters reality for everyone. Different perceptions different reality

Now you say

Odd how he's referring to himself in the second person here when earlier he was talking directly to the reader. Is this a mechanism to show dissociation?

If only there were a master reality for each of us, outside of us, one that was independent, unvarying, immutable. But there isn’t.

Objective reality doesn't exist. Our at least is impossible to perceive objectively

Others’ mockery had in fact become the air that their dream breathed. Absent the mockery, they risked suffocating.

shadow inside me who lived his own reality in someone else—a

Junge?

And there, in those books, they’ll never change again, at least until some judgmental evil spirit comes along, taking malicious joy in upending that perfect order where all the elements had fit together so perfectly allowing you to sit back and relax in admiration of how every effect obediently followed its cause with perfect logic, and how every event unfolded precisely and consistently in every minute detail, with my Lord, the Duke of Nevers, who on a particular day, in a particular year, etc.

Pretty funny considering the forward written by the author describing their choice to update the language of the translation to be more accessible to modern readers

Our self-awareness loses its way because this thing that we believe to be the most intimate part of ourselves, our self-awareness, is really everyone else in us, and we can’t feel it in ourselves without others.

The problem was that, still being alive, I was seeing this game played by all the other people who were also still alive, but I couldn’t join in. And this inability of joining into the game, despite knowing it was right there where everyone could see it, exasperated my cheerful frenzy to the point of savage fury.

I was alone. In the entire world, alone. By myself, alone. And in a momentary shudder that made me tremble to the roots of my hair, I felt the icy timelessness of that infinite solitude.

People, you see? They need to build a house even for their feelings. It’s not good enough having them inside, keeping their feelings in their hearts—they also want to see them out there, to touch them, and so they build a house for them.”