“From Nose to Sky” (“Dal naso al cielo”)

Translated by Marella Feltrin-Morris

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “From Nose to Sky” (“Dal naso al cielo”), tr. Marella Feltrin-Morris. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2021.

Originally published in the literary journal Il Marzocco (April 7, 1907), “From Nose to Sky” was then included in the volume The Carnival of the Dead (Il Carnevale dei morti, Florence: Battistelli, 1919). In 1925 the short story was made a part of Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno), becoming the title story of the eighth Collection, From Nose to Sky (Florence: Bemporad).

The story’s plot focuses on two key protagonists, Professor Vernoni and his old teacher, the Senator and scientist Romualdo Reda. Reda’s confidence in science, typical of the era of positivism, contrasts with Professor Vernoni’s belief in occult parapsychology, which he uses as a way to explain phenomena in life that exceed the bound of scientific knowledge. This conflict between late-19th-century modes of seeing the world, positivism and spiritualism, is a theme that recurs in numerous of Pirandello’s works and situates him in a field of lively debate at the turn of the century. In his novel The Late Mattia Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal, 1904/5), Pirandello likewise depicts spiritualism in the character of Anselmo Paleari; and in the early 1900s Pirandello entered into a public debate with his friend Luigi Capuana, a major proponent of the realist school of verismo, who was himself an avid follower of the “science” of parapsychology who wrote essays and stories about spirits and spiritualism. Other short stories with similar themes include earlier works like “Granella’s House” (“La casa del Granella, 1905) as well as later tales such as “A Breath” (“Soffio,” 1931). While Pirandello’s affirmation of spiritualism is never directly total, in many works he seems to make fun of scientists and doctors who have an arrogant belief in their own ability to explain the most complex mysteries of life. Another key theme in this short story, and indeed a part of the title given to the whole Collection, is that of the nose. Often the amusing focus of self-portraits and narratives across his corpus, the nose becomes an occasion for philosophical speculation about the instability of human perspective; this is thematized, for instance, in the protagonist of Pirandello’s last novel, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand (Uno, nessuno e centomila, 1926), Vitangelo Moscarda, whose existential crisis is provoked by his wife’s comments about his nose. Likewise, the dynamic of perspectival uncertainty and its meaning for the limits of knowledge are central aspects of Pirandello’s wider critical outlook, which is expressed theoretically in his important essay On Humor (L’umorismo, 1908). In “From Nose to Sky,” both the philosophical reflection on these dynamics and the ironic humor typical of Pirandello’s expression of uncertainty resonate with these broader thematics from across his corpus.

The Editors

For the past week, the few guests at the old hotel on top of Mount Gajo had had the pleasure of hearing Senator Romualdo Reda speak. [1]

“Finally!”

During the first twenty days or so, the renowned chemist, a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, [2] hadn’t exchanged a word with anybody. He wasn’t feeling well, he was tired—actually, rumor had it that he had recently suffered a mild fainting spell in Rome, in the chemistry laboratory where he spent his days. The doctors had ordered him to get some rest; he really needed to take a few months’ break from the research to which, even in his old age, he kept devoting himself with unwavering tenacity and his usual cranky rigor.

The same tenacity and rigor also ruled his personal conduct. Although he had been offered twice, and insistently, too, a position as minister of public education, both times he had adamantly turned it down, as he didn’t wish to be distracted from his studies and teaching duties.

Diminutive in height, almost neckless, with a flat, shaven, and leathery face, eyelids as swollen as two bags that drooped over his eyelashes, and long, gray hair, stringy and clammy, hiding his ears, he resembled an old, gossipy maid.

Every afternoon, he would come down to the patio in front of the hotel, followed by a waiter carrying a large bundle of journals and newspapers or some books. He would sit down in a wicker chaise longue and dedicate himself for a few hours to his readings, in the shade of the majestic, ancient beech tree that dominated the mountaintop.

Well, majestic so to speak: that beech tree must have been terribly irritated at having to stand up there, exposed to every wind; and the lofty honor and fortune of shielding with its copious branches such an illustrious personage clearly didn’t impress it in the least. One would have suspected it hadn’t even noticed.

The hotel also didn’t seem all too thrilled to host him either and maintained instead the humble, melancholy air of an old, abandoned convent. The hotel manager, on the other hand... ah, what a sight the hotel manager was! He had assumed, towards the other boarders, the haughtiness of a diplomat. The waiters, too! They had taken to performing their chores with priceless nonchalance, making it abundantly clear that they had very little time to dedicate to the other guests, busy as they were tending to this one.

The young attorney and amateur journalist Torello Scamozzi was literally sickened by this, not so much for his own sake as for the ladies’. And he threatened to retaliate by writing about it in the many newspapers with which he claimed he collaborated. But the ladies, considerate as they were, begged him not to put himself on the line for their sake.

There were four ladies altogether: Signora and Signorina Gilli, mother and daughter; Miss Green, an English spinster, blond and blue-eyed, who was getting on in years and always had a sizeable supply of headaches and analgesics; and Signora Sandrocca, whose husband, Dr. Sandrocca, suffered from ataxia and was relegated to a wheelchair.[3]

Another young guest, Leone Borisi, was much wiser, that is to say, more practical. He left it to Scamozzi to champion the ladies, especially the delightful, bubbly Signorina Ninì Gilli, and had taken it upon himself to push Dr. Sandrocca in his wheelchair down along the mountain pathways under the horse chestnut trees. With one hand he pushed the wheelchair, and with the other he made his way around the waist of the good doctor’s wife, a voluptuous, fun-loving brunette with curly hair, an impertinent little nose, and a twinkle in her eye. No hanky-panky, of course! All totally innocent, almost involuntary, behind the back of her husband who went on and on laughing, laughing, talking, and smoking his pipe.

II

The arrival of a new guest caused the four ladies to turn up their little noses, the hotel manager to grimace, and—miraculously—the famed Senator Romualdo Reda to speak.

Unkempt, dripping with sweat, flab rolling down the back of his big, bald head, Professor Dionisio Vernoni wore glasses that were constantly slipping down and resting crooked upon the hump of his nose. His large, bluish eyes looked like they were searching for those glasses, forcing his head to twist comically around his neck, so much so that he resembled a restless yoked ox. Truth be told, Vernoni didn’t strike you as the type who inspires familiarity. However, once you heard him talk...

Perhaps, inside his spacious chest, Professor Dionisio Vernoni suffered the volcanic turbulence of his many passions, but as far as what appeared on the outside, he looked irresistibly funny. Funny especially because, despite that mass of sweaty blubber, Professor Dionisio Vernoni was an incorrigible idealist. At the risk of being lynched, he refused, simply would not resign himself to the exasperating way in which science had thrown in the towel regarding the formidable questions of existence. As for philosophy, it was all too convenient (or cowardly, in Vernoni’s words) for it to hide within the limits of the knowable. Vernoni argued against all this, while his large, chubby hands chased the flies that insisted on landing on his big, sticky face.

When he saw, under the beech tree, the senator, who had been his instructor many years earlier at the university (every professor had been his instructor, because Dionisio Vernoni had racked up three or four degrees, from several different universities, one after the other), he astonished all the guests and outraged the hotel manager by running up to him, or rather, by barreling into him, waving his arms and yelling out:

“What? You? Here? My most distinguished professor!”

Almost immediately, the former student and the old mentor reignited the fervid discussions they had long been famous for at the University of Rome.

Well, fervid, yes, but only from one end—Vernoni’s. For his part, the senator responded tersely, bitingly, with a frigid sneer on his lips just to show that the only reason he deigned reply to that odd disciple of his was to make fun of him.

This became clear to all the other guests, who, little by little, drew closer to eavesdrop on their conversations. Now, after every meal, they would amuse themselves with the spectacle of the intellectual duel that took place under the beech tree.

Occasionally they would all burst out laughing at the senator’s witty answers, in response to which Vernoni would either spring up wide-eyed in shock, or, hardly controlling himself, press his massive palms against his chest as if to hold back an avalanche of objections.

Old Signora Gilli and Miss Green, however, were often swept away by the passionate vehemence with which Professor Vernoni would argue his noble and magnanimous theories, and they would end up involuntarily nodding in agreement. At that, the senator would grumble back, his shrill voice sour with irritation. In turn, Vernoni would either retreat in resentful silence, or he would mumble, with bitter contempt:

“Grass, then, is that what you are saying? Grass! As if we were a bunch of sheep…”

Ninì Gilli, at those words, burst into irrepressible laughter, and all the others followed suit, while the senator looked around as if confused, and asked:

“Grass? Why grass? I don’t understand.”

“Grass! Grass!” repeated Vernoni, almost crying with exasperation. “What is the only truth to sheep? Grass. The grass that grows under their chin. But for God’s sake, we can also look upward, my most distinguished Senator! Up, up at the stars!”

Old Signora Gilli and Miss Green nodded again, even more convinced this time around.

Then the senator muttered:

“Upward, sure, as Sallust says.” [4]

“As Sallust says, that’s right,” Vernoni shot back. “But allow me, even if we look down… the mole, Signor Senator, we look at the mole and we follow the logic of nature.”

“Ah, no!”

At the mention of nature, Senator Romualdo Reda really lost it, and sprang up in his chair, slamming his hands on the armrests:

“Oh, come on, please! That’s your logic, dear Vernoni! Let’s be serious…. Leave nature alone, for goodness’ sake!”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Vernoni hastened to clarify, putting his hands forward. “That nature has a logic of its own—can it really be questioned? If you allow me, we have irrefutable proof of it—its economy! No, wait, let me continue, my most distinguished professor… the mole… Why is the mole’s visual organ so weak? But of course, because the mole is meant to live underground! It’s the logic of nature. And what about man? Why then is man made to see the stars? There must be a reason, right?”

Everyone was held in suspense for a moment, waiting for the senator’s reply. But the latter half-closed his tired, swollen eyes, rocked his head back and forth and snickered in disdainful commiseration. Then disappointed them all by reciting in Latin:

“Gestit enim mens exilire ad magis generalia ut acquiescat: et post parvam moram fastidit experientiam. Sed haec mala demum aucta sunt a dialectica ob pompas disputationum.” [5]

“Bacon?” asked Professor Dionisio Vernoni, mopping the abundant sweat from his brow and the back of his neck.

And the senator:

“Bacon.”

III

One morning, very early, the guests of the mountaintop hotel were suddenly awakened by the loud shrieks of Signorina Ninì Gilli and her mother. What had happened?

The initial version of the story was that sweet Ninì had gone for a stroll at the crack of dawn to the Conventino thickets and that, on her way there, she had had a scary encounter.

Scary? How so? Had she been attacked, maybe? Who ever heard of the Conventino thickets being a hideout for… ah, but it wasn’t crooks? Who had she run into, then?

Sweet Ninì, or Gillina, as they called her, had darted back up from the thickets running, running, all disheveled, screaming hysterically.

What kind of encounter did she have? What had they done to her?

The Conventino thickets, tangled and impenetrable, grew on the western side of the mountain. It was more like a forest than a patch of trees—full of reedy chestnut trees which had become very tall and as straight as needles. They were named Conventino thickets because, in a small clearing right in the middle, there was a little, ancient convent, abandoned and in ruins, with a tiny church on one side, its mysterious entrance hardly visible through the cracks of the rotted front door.

Scamozzi, pale and dismayed, urged Borisi and the waiters to grab hold of some weapons and run with him down to the thickets, to see. But to see what? There was no clear information yet. Senator Reda, who was also a doctor though he had never practiced the profession, had rushed to the Signorina’s room. What was his opinion?

Professor Dionisio Vernoni was the only one who had volunteered to go along with Scamozzi, but the latter didn’t trust him, and pretended not to notice him.

At last, Reda emerged from the room. Oh, thank God, he was smiling… Well?

“Nothing, gentlemen. Never fear. A minor, temporary psychosis. Hysteria, that’s all. It will pass.”

But Professor Dionisio Vernoni stepped forward, frowning and agitated.

“Psychosis?” he said. “Down in the Conventino thickets? You say psychosis, but I know what this is all about! I know the truth, yes I do! Signorina Gilli saw! Signorina Gilli heard—and she was not the only one!”

Scamozzi, Borisi, Dr. Sandrocca, his wife, and Miss Green all turned and stared at him, dumbfounded.

“Saw… what?”

“Pay no attention to him, please!” exclaimed the senator.

“Hallucination, you mean?” shouted Vernoni, his voice mocking and defiant. “Psychosis… hysteria… Then how do you explain that I—that’s right, I, too—the other day, towards dusk, heard… yes, I heard, while I was alone in the thicket by the little convent, some music… some heavenly music coming from the church… organ and harps… a divine melody! I didn’t tell anybody; I’m saying it now because I’m sure that Signorina Gilli heard it, too. I kept mum about it because I was ashamed! Because I was scared, yes! Yes, I was scared, and I ran for my life!”

“Oh, stop it, Sir, please!” burst in at this point the hotel manager, noticing the effect those words were having on the other guests. “You will ruin me! I am sorry, but this is crazy! No one has ever said anything like this before. No one has ever heard anything! Luckily, we have here His Excellency… I mean our distinguished Senator… a luminary of science… and fortunately there’s another illustrious Doctor who has also found humor in all of this. Look! He’s laughing—and he’s right! This is something to laugh about, dear Doctor! A most ordinary case of nerves…”

“Hysteria,” corrected the Senator.

“Right, hysteria… in his own words!” concluded the hotel manager. “What music? What organ? What harps? Let’s all go to the thicket together… I’ll have breakfast served there… A lovely place, perfectly safe… We’ll open up the church… you’ll see…”

“But is there really an organ?” asked Signora Sandrocca.

“No, there isn’t… or rather… there is and there isn’t…” answered the hotel manager, getting flustered. “It’s been so many centuries, you can only imagine in what condition… It was probably a mouse… something to laugh about… to laugh about, right, gentlemen?”

He laughed, and so did Dr. Sandrocca, who was always laughing anyway. But the others didn’t, nor did they seem to welcome the proposal of having breakfast by the Conventino thickets.

As for the Senator, he turned around disdainfully and went to stretch out in the wicker chaise longue under the beech tree.

At precisely the same moment, with unusual energy and despite a sudden stiffness in her leg, perhaps as a result of overexcitement, old Signora Gilli hobbled in looking for the hotel manager.

She did not like it in the least, no sir, she did not appreciate the statement made by the most distinguished senator, which sounded as if it had been articulated expressly to protect the hotel manager. What hysteria, for heaven’s sake, if her daughter had never, ever suffered from any feminine disorder? Easy for them to say... but then the label sticks, people talk and rumors spread. No, no! They need to set the record straight! Signora Gilli wanted everyone to know exactly what had happened. Then she would settle her bill and the two of them would leave right away. Right away, because her poor daughter was still shaking like a leaf from the fright and kept repeating that she would die if she had to stay there even one more night.

So, Signora Gilli started recounting how poor Ninì had really heard an organ playing in the little Conventino church.

“See? See?” exclaimed Dionisio Vernoni, triumphantly.

Aghast, the old lady stopped speaking and stared at him:

“But, how? You… how did you find out?”

“I didn’t find out—I guessed it, Signora! I was sure of it, more than sure, because I heard it, too!”

Bewildered but relieved at the same time, Signora Gilli clapped her hands and exclaimed:

“You all see, then? I dare say that this gentleman here cannot possibly suffer from a feminine disorder…”

Dionisio Vernoni didn’t give the others a chance to smile at the thought and instead pressed on:

“Organ and harps?”

“Harps? I don’t know about harps,” she replied, terrified by the way in which Vernoni was staring at her. “Ninì talked about an organ and said that at first she was surprised… surprised that someone would go and play so early in an abandoned church. She didn’t believe that anything extraordinary was going on, and in fact she went to get a closer look… and then… I don’t know, I don’t know exactly what she saw… she hasn’t been very clear about it… she mentioned monks… a procession… lit candles…”

But Signora Gilli had to leave the story hanging because a maid rushed over to tell her that Ninì had suffered another fit. This was Professor Dionisio Vernoni’s moment, and indeed everyone instinctively turned to him. Right away, he launched into the topic with characteristic fervor, and started talking about occultism, mediumism, telepathy, premonitions, apports, and manifestations. Before the eyes of his astonished audience he conjured up enough wonders and chimeras to fill the earth, an earth which only idiotic human pride could conceive of as inhabited exclusively by man and by the few animals that man knows and employs. A colossal mistake! In the same, natural way that it hosts us humans and our existence, the earth also hosts other beings, of which we normally have—and this is our flaw—no perception. However, in unusual circumstances these beings do occasionally reveal themselves, terrifying us. They are superhuman in the sense that they exist beyond our own, limited humanity, but in themselves they are natural, perfectly natural, subject to other laws that we ignore, or rather, that our consciousness ignores but that we, perhaps unconsciously, also obey. In other words, they are non-human residents of the earth, elemental beings, natural spirits of all kinds that live among us in the rocks, woods, air, water, and fire. Invisible but sometimes capable of materializing.

Irked by the fact that Senator Reda would not engage in debate with him, to provoke him Vernoni intentionally threw himself into the most preposterous ramblings, the most outlandish theories, the most beguiling explanations, culminating with a formidable attack on logical positivism and against those so-called scientists who cannot see anything that is not right under their noses (he repeated this expression four or five times). Pretentious, callous, and shortsighted, they want to enslave nature to experience and confine it to the calculations they devise in their laboratories, they want to torture it with their pathetic instruments and worthless little contraptions.

Senator Romualdo Reda remained silent. Scamozzi, Borisi, Miss Green, and Signora Sandrocca were almost dumbfounded by Vernoni’s vehemence, and from time to time would glance over at Reda, spying his reactions. Quiet, unperturbed, Senator Reda kept reclining in the armchair under the beech tree, his eyes closed as if he were asleep. At a certain point, on his own, he got up and, without saying anything or looking at anybody, with two fingers slipped between the buttons of his vest, he strolled off, serene and dignified albeit diminutive, down the path that led to the Conventino thickets.

“Bless him!” exclaimed the hotel manager, blowing a kiss in his direction.

Then he turned to Vernoni:

“Sir, feel free to say whatever you want—you have the right to do so. But look: there’s your best answer!”

And he pointed to the tiny senator slowly disappearing under the tall sloping chestnut trees.

IV

Quite the gentlemen, Professor Dionisio Vernoni and Torello Scamozzi insisted on accompanying Signora and Signorina Gilli to the station in Valdana, [6] and then spent the rest of the day in town. When, late that night, they returned tired and hungry to the little hotel on the hilltop, they found all the other guests in dismayed silence, as if stupefied.

Senator Romualdo Reda hadn’t yet come back from the Conventino thickets.

After Ninì Gilli’s frightening experience and all the talk that morning, how was one to explain the senator’s prolonged delay?

Leone Borisi immediately took care of filling in the two friends on the details: two waiters had already been dispatched to search for the renowned personage, but they had returned without having found him; then the hotel manager, suspecting that the waiters may not have walked all the way down to the convent, had decided to go himself, accompanied by another waiter, but they had not found Reda either. At that point they speculated that, livid at Vernoni’s outburst, the senator had cut across the whole forest and reached the neighboring village of Sopri. But the hotel dishwasher, sent to Sopri to investigate, had just returned with no information whatsoever, though he had—so he said—knocked at every door in the whole village.

“For God’s sake,” concluded Borisi, “don’t let the hotel manager see you two—especially you, Professor Vernoni! He is so furious, he might jump at your throat.”

“Let him try!” said Vernoni, darkly. “Listen, I would be sorry if something serious had happened to Senator Reda. He suffers from a heart condition. But a little lesson… a little organ playing would do certain scientists so much good!”

A short while later, the hotel manager came back upstairs from the basement where he had gone to fetch some windproof torches for one last expedition to the thickets. He pretended not to notice that Vernoni and Scamozzi had returned.

“Gentlemen,” he said, almost with tears in his eyes, “if you would be so kind as to help me… Everyone’s assistance is appreciated! You can imagine how I’m feeling, with the burden of such responsibility.”

Although exhausted, Vernoni and Scamozzi didn’t hesitate. The three waiters and the dishwasher lit the torches, and off they all went, a party of eight in search of the little senator lost in the steep, thick forest of chestnut trees.

As overwhelmed as they were with dismay and anxious solicitude, they could not resist the urge to witness the otherworldly effect of the forest at nighttime, eerily illuminated by the reddish, smoky glow of their frantic torches. Gigantic shadows sprang up at every step. Lithe, straight trunks reached up towards the sky and took on a blood-like hue. One moment they seemed to line up neatly on each side of the forest as if marching, another moment they were all spinning around. The creaking sound of dead leaves and the distant shrieks of fleeing birds and squirrels pierced the heightened senses of the amateur nighttime explorers.

More than once the hotel manager proposed they split up, into twos maybe, since it was useless to search for the senator along the path that led to the Conventino. But no one, out of instinctive terror, dared separate from the others and risk the experience of facing those bizarre, violent stimuli alone.

When they reached the Conventino, all eyes turned to the rotted front door of the little church. They felt a shiver run down their spines as the hotel manager drew closer to it and pushed it several times with his hand.

“Closed!”

Scamozzi and Vernoni suggested searching among the ruins of the convent, but the hotel manager assured them that he had already done so most scrupulously. No, he said: the forest. It was in the forest that they needed to search, because it may be that the senator ventured through the woods and could no longer find his way out. There were eight of them, and only four torches. Let’s split up by twos, then! One pair here, one pair there. Slowly, slowly, carefully.

And so they did. The search went on for about an hour; some torches blew out and the men struggled a while to light them again. Then the very horror of the place, along with everyone’s exhaustion, began on the one hand to make them lean towards less sinister hypotheses, and on the other to fill them with discouragement about the outcome of their endeavor. They called out to each other and gathered again on the path, though none of them had really strayed very far from it. It didn’t take much convincing to make them all agree to put off the search and try again in the morning, with the daylight.

This time, each of the eight men went off on his own, and the forest was searched from top to bottom, but still in vain.

Finally, a scream! It came from the clearing, where the Conventino ruins were located. They all rushed over at breakneck speed.

There, right under the first few chestnut trees, about fifty steps from the little convent, the tiny body of Senator Romualdo Reda lay supine. No sign of violence on it—on the contrary, it looked as if someone had arranged the body for eternal rest, its feet next to each other, its little arms stretched on either side of the diminutive figure.

Everyone stared at it in astonishment.

From the canopy of tall chestnut trees a thin spider thread reached down to the tip of the little senator’s nose.

The top of the thread remained out of sight.

And from the senator’s nose, a tiny, almost invisible spider, having perhaps emerged from inside his fuzzy nostrils, was now climbing up, oblivious to all, higher and higher along that thread that seemed to disappear into the sky.