One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

by Luigi Pirandello

Reflect a moment. There was nothing about your old friend, in himself, to justify your sending him away when the new one came. The two of them, as a matter of fact, were not acquainted with each other; it was you who introduced them; and they might have gone on and had a pleasant little chat for a half-hour or so, in your parlor, with no embarrassment to either of them. It was you who felt the embarrassment, and your embarrassment grew until it became unendurable, as you saw the two of them little by little drawing nearer to each other, and you perceived that they were getting on very well together. Why was this? Why it was because you—you (won’t you understand?)—upon the arrival of your new friend, suddenly discovered that you were two separate persons, each of them different from the other; and as a result, not being able to endure it any longer, you simply had to send one of them away at a certain point. Not your old friend, no; it was yourself that you sent away, the self that you are to your old friend, for the reason that you felt that self to be altogether different from the one that you are, or would like to be, to your new friend.