One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

by Luigi Pirandello

do you feel like fathoming the terror-inspiring jest that lies beneath the pacific natural-seemingness of daily relations, those relations which impress you as altogether normal and ordinary, beneath the tranquil appearance of the so-called reality of things? This, in the name of Heaven, is the same jest that works you up into a fury every five minutes or so, and which causes you to exclaim to the friend at your side, “I beg your pardon! But how does it come that you don’t see this? Are you blind?” And your friend does not see it, but sees another thing, when you all the while feel that he ought to be seeing what you see, as you see it. He, on the contrary, sees it as it appears to him; and for him, therefore, the blind man is yourself.