One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

by Luigi Pirandello

Reflections: 1. That I was not to others what up to then I had believed that I was to myself; 2. That I could not see myself living; 3. That, not being able to see myself living, I remained a stranger to myself, that is, one whom others believed they saw and knew, each after his own fashion, but not I; 4. That it was impossible to stand this stranger up in front of me, in order to see and know him. I could see myself, but could no longer see him; 5. That my body, if I regarded it from without, was like an apparition from a dream, a thing that did not know how to live, but which remained waiting there for someone to take it; 6. That, just as I took this my body, to be from time to time what I wished or felt myself to be, so another similarly might take it, to confer upon it a reality of his own; 7. That, finally, this body in itself was so near to being nothing and nobody that a draught of air might cause it to sneeze today and tomorrow might carry it off. Conclusions: These two for the time being: 1. I was beginning to understand at last why it was my wife, Dida, called me Gengé; 2. I made up my mind to find out who I was, at least to those closest to me, acquaintances so-called, and to amuse myself by maliciously decomposing the I that I was to them.