“The Forgotten Mask” (“La maschera dimenticata”)

Translated by Marella Feltrin-Morris

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Forgotten Mask” (“La maschera dimenticata”), tr. Marella Feltrin-Morris. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2024.

“The Forgotten Mask” (“La maschera dimenticata”) was first printed in La lettura in August of 1918, where it had a different title: “Come Cirinciò per un momento si dimenticò d’esser lui” (“How Cirinciò Forgot that He Was Himself for a Moment”). Pirandello then included it with the revised (and final) title as part of the miscellany collection The Carnival of the Dead (Il carnevale dei morti), published by Battistelli (Florence, 1919). He later added it to Stories for a Year as part of the sixth Collection, In Silence (In silenzio), published in Florence by Bemporad in 1923.

This story develops a series of typically Pirandellian themes through a relatively straightforward plot: the protagonist, Don Ciccino Cirinciò has lived largely outside of the political and social vicissitudes of his fictional Sicilian hometown, Montelusa, after an incident at the local mill marked him as an object of some derision for the local people, who all now call him the mill man. However, quite out of character, he shows up at a political meeting to support a local candidate, Laleva, and in so doing transforms himself from a laughable outsider into an unexpectedly eloquent and serious man of action. Taken by his previously unknown rhetorical abilities, the townsfolk send him on a mission to campaign for Laleva in nearby Borgetto, where he becomes a fiery political activist and, in the process, also dons a totally new persona. After Laleva wins, however, Don Ciccino once again deflates into his former self, brought down by the incredulous gaze of a man who recognizes him not as his new, political self but rather as the old, laughable mill man from back home. While the story thus involves very little in terms of external plot events, its action is all directed toward our understanding of the inner transformations of the protagonist and how they are linked to not just his own sense of self but particularly his sense of how he is perceived by others. In this way, the story focuses on one of the ideas at the core of Pirandello’s worldview: our identity is not a real, fixed entity but rather a kind of mask, a persona that can be changed. And it is changed not just by the internal willpower of the individual subject but rather by the force of how that individual is perceived as an object for others. In his awareness of the difference between how he appears to the townspeople of Borgetto and how he appears to the man from back home who knows him in a different mask, Don Ciccino loses his ability to believe any longer in the new mask that he has donned in his new, active life. Such games of identity lost, reinvented, and found again are central in other works, like Pirandello’s famous novel The Late Mattia Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal, 1904) or his play Henry IV (Enrico IV, 1922). Likewise, his notion of how identity is shaped and reshaped by our own awareness of being perceived by others is articulated theoretically in his important essay On Humor (L’umorismo, 1908) and thematized in his later novel, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand (Uno, nessuno e centomila, 1926).

This translation is a revised version of the translation previously published in Pirandello Studies, Vol. 14, Fall 2020: 115-127. We gratefully acknowledge Pirandello Studies and thank them for permission to republish this revised version in Stories for a Year.

The Editors

Candidate Laleva’s living room was almost filled to capacity for the impending electoral committee meeting when a man hobbled in noiselessly, his eyes fixed and serious under a frowning brow. Suddenly, everyone turned and stared at him in bewilderment.

Don Ciccino Cirinciò? How could that be? Who had invited him?

It was well known that, many years earlier, he had stopped getting involved in anything, so utterly absorbed was he by all the tragedies that had befallen him: the death of his wife and two children; the loss of his sulfur business following a series of legal disputes; and his consequent destitution.[1] Still, he should have carried his tragedies around in a more dignified, less gloomy way. That way he would not have drawn any attention, in the eyes of all the town’s gossipmongers, to those peculiar marks of mockery which fate, that prankster, seemed to have amused itself by bestowing upon him. If it was even true that his wife had died giving birth, when she was about fifty years old, to... no one really knew what—someone said a deformed horse, others a groundhog. Or if it was true that he had lost the sulfur business because of a misplaced comma in the lease contract. And that he limped like that as a result of an infamous hunting accident, when he, not the bird he was after, had ended up flying in the air, along with his boots, gun, game bag and dog, knocked over by the nasty blades of an abandoned mill on the knoll of Montelusa.[2] All of a sudden the blades had started turning on their own, and so now he was known to all as Don Ciccino Cirinciò, the mill man.

A strange phenomenon: if he overheard some boor make allusions to his wife’s delivery or to that comma in the lease contract, he smiled sadly or shrugged his shoulders. But if he heard them call him the mill man he just lost it, he threatened them with his walking stick and screamed that his was a town of imbecile scum.

Now the imbecile scum were baffled to see him participate in the electoral meeting. Was it so hard to accept that he owed, first of all, a debt of eternal gratitude to the old attorney Don Francesco Laleva, father of the current candidate, the only one among the court attorneys who had helped and defended him during the disputes about the sulfur mines? True, in the end he had lost those disputes, and so, in a way, that help had been for nothing. But still, didn’t his debt of gratitude remain undiminished and sacrosanct? And also, gratitude aside, was it so difficult to imagine him being capable of a sentiment that, in that time of need, every gentleman, luckless or not, should share? By God, the sentiment of dignity for one’s own town! Was he or wasn’t he a citizen, too? Tragedies, sure; but as a citizen, couldn’t he, too, feel appalled by the brazen, dirty tricks that the old outgoing deputy had been committing with impunity for twenty years? Ciccino didn’t speak up; he had never spoken up because words were like the wind.[3] But now the time to act had come, that’s right, and so here he was; he had come of his own accord, uninvited, to offer his services to the son of the only person who, long ago, had helped him.

The participants stared at him for a while, their mouths agape; some tapped their foreheads, as if to say: What did you expect? His brain’s flipped, poor fellow! Because they all knew it wasn’t true that he owed such a debt of gratitude to Laleva’s father, who had neither helped nor defended him, but only dissuaded him from filing a lawsuit over that cursed sulfur business. But who could tell how poor Cirinciò, who had constantly been musing on his tragedies, now regarded people, things, and all the events in his life? Or which roles, in those distant events, he attributed to his presumed friends and enemies? In the same way, no one could tell what strange reasons had now led him to show up at that place uninvited, and what, in the mysterious maze and secret predictions of his troubled spirit, his siding with Don Francesco Laleva’s son in the political struggle was supposed to represent. No one could tell what boundless advantages he expected would come from it, or what terrible risks and responsibilities he imagined he would have to face… All they could see were his eyes darting glances from under his frowning brow, and his hands, balled up into fists, resting on his knees… Poor Don Ciccino!

Cirinciò, instead, had that expression because he couldn’t understand why everyone was so surprised by his arrival.

Seeing himself being watched, spied on from a distance with looks of perplexed and grieved dismay, he started suspecting they might not want him there.[4] Had he perhaps misunderstood the electoral committee’s invitation?

At a certain point he couldn’t take it anymore. He got up scornfully and hobbled over to ask Laleva:

“Excuse me, should I stay or should I leave? Did I do something wrong by coming here?”

“Not at all! Why, my dear Don Ciccino?,” Laleva hurried to respond, “we’re all very glad, myself in particular, that you came! Don’t even entertain that thought! Go have a seat, go ahead. It’s an honor for me, and a great pleasure!”

But then— wondered Cirinciò, returning to his seat. Why is everybody looking at me like that?

Could it be there was something in him that he couldn’t see but that others instead saw? And yet at that moment it seemed to him that he could, just like everyone else, get involved in the elections and that there wasn’t anything extraordinary about it.

Did he understand clearly, or didn’t he? Well yes, by God, he understood perfectly well all the discussions that were going on around him regarding the likelihood of a victory, the distribution of the various local parties in this or that municipality of the electoral college, and the ballot count system. Not only, but it actually seemed to him he had a clearer sense than some others of the strategy to pursue with a few key voters who still hadn’t taken sides in the struggle. So much so that, at a certain point, forgetting the suspicion that until then had kept him frowning and doubtful, he could no longer restrain himself. He stood up, took the floor, and in just a few words, clearly and simply, he expressed his idea on how he thought they should proceed.

Everyone in the room was astonished. No one, absolutely not a single one of them could fathom how in the world Don Ciccino Cirinciò could possibly see so clearly and correctly. And yet it was indeed the right strategy. Yes, they had to proceed exactly as he had said.

Three, maybe four times during the long debate people were again astonished by his sensible judgment, the accuracy of his suggestions and the sharpness of the tactics he proposed. One could hardly believe it. Gentlemen, Don Ciccino Cirinciò… Well, he spoke brilliantly! Who would have thought? An orator… Bravo! Well done! Hooray for Cirinciò!

In the end Cirinciò was more astonished than everyone else. On the one hand, he didn’t think he had said anything so extraordinary as to inspire such wonder, such zealous admiration. On the other, half intoxicated by all the cheers, he found himself appointed to campaign in an especially difficult battlefield, the municipality of Borgetto,[5] which was considered the impregnable stronghold of the rival party.

He tried to back out with the excuse that he didn’t know anyone there and that he had never even been to that town. He also said he was not the right person for such an undertaking, that he had just presented his idea in theory, but that in practice he would feel lost. They didn’t even let him finish and forced him to accept that appointment. And so, the next morning, Don Ciccino Cirinciò, equipped with funds and letters of recommendation, left for Borgetto.

According to everybody, in the fifteen days he spent there prior to the elections, he worked miracles. Honest-to-God miracles, which in just two weeks allowed him to completely turn around Laleva’s ranking in that municipality.

Was it because of his need to reach out and touch a reality, any reality, now that he had been plunged into a strange void by that unanticipated adventure? A breezy, lightweight void inside of which all of the new images of people and things appeared to him as if bathed in a dreamlike glow, in the crispness of that March sky traversed by sunny clouds? Or was it because of a burst of energy, which had been bottled up inside of him for years, stifled by the nightmare of his tragedies, but still unexpectedly alive? A youthful energy, still intact, which would have led him who knows where, who knows to what feats, to what triumphs, if his life hadn’t closed in on itself mourning those tragedies?

The fact is that he worked miracles in that little town where no one knew him. Precisely because no one knew him.

Over there, completely beside himself with all of that unsuspected energy, he tenaciously confronted the opposition, forcing them first to discuss and acknowledge the mistakes and lack of commitment of their former deputy, and then to admit openly that he was a shameful choice. He did not rest for a single minute: one moment he would be stirring the hesitant ones to action; the next moment he would be thwarting a trap, then chairing an assembly, challenging the outgoing deputy himself or his representative to a debate. In short, he took over the whole town!

Things he never imagined he would ever think, let alone utter, now flowed spontaneously from his lips with such abundance and ease of expression, such effectiveness, that he himself was stunned by it. It was as if a new vein of life had sprung and started flowing inside of him with impetuous urgency. He noticed everything in a flash, he grasped everything through the slightest hint. All those things remained new and fresh inside of him, but he immediately absorbed them and understood them deeply. He seized them with his yet-untapped power, which now made him youthfully tireless and confident of victory, while all around him people filled with frenzy kept gathering in increasing numbers, hardly able to keep up with him in that tumultuous agitation.

He even stopped focusing on his limp. His leg no longer bothered him. How old was he? Sixty-two, yes… but what of it? Onward! It was as if life were beginning right then. Onward, onward! For the time being, he had to get busy threatening with legal action the town councilor who had withheld a hundred ballots cast by the members of the workers’ association. Then he had to document an attempt at corruption: the mayor had bribed fifty voters with ten lire each. How to prove it? By golly, with testimonies! He himself had taken on the task of getting those farmers to confess in the presence of a notary—yes, he had! Onward!

When at last the day of victory came, he had become a new person, rejuvenated by that aura of popularity, surrounded by new people, in a new town, which he had besieged, turned upside down and conquered in the span of just a few days. And on the night of Laleva’s proclamation he showed up beaming at the ballroom of the Citizens’ Club, where a sumptuous banquet had been organized in his honor. Beaming, but already with some signs of fatigue in his old, forgotten mask.[6]

Meanwhile, as the guests waited to be seated, a sordid, gnarled little man circulated around the ballroom, his ivory scalp glistening under the chandeliers. He kept his head buried in his bony shoulders almost as if he were trying to hide, but would stick the tip of his pointy, flaxen goatee into every corner, and stare at this or that person with sparkling little eyes, as sharp as needles, that stood out wickedly in the waxy pallor of his face. Every now and then he would stop and ask people a gnawing question to which it was clear he had yet to find a satisfactory answer. He would shake his head no, shrug his shoulders as if exclaiming: That can’t be! That can’t be! Impossible!, or he would pull the corners of his mouth downwards and screw up his lips like one who can’t work out a problem, and then walk away, turning around every so often to peek malevolently, with those needle-like eyes, at Cirinciò.

Cirinciò noticed him immediately.

Despite the enthusiastic welcome he was receiving, he felt hurt right away by those tiny little eyes. He tried to avoid them, thrusting himself again into the turmoil of the celebration. But here, there, from up close or from far away, wherever he least expected it, he felt pricked by the almost obsessive stare of those tormenting eyes. And as soon as he perceived it, he was filled with a chill, with confusion, all muddled up by an obscure feeling that pressed furiously into him, overwhelming his mind with a dizzying shroud of darkness. He regained his composure, but sensed by then that he could no longer keep calm, that everything inside of him was reeling, not so much from the torment of those eyes, which after all posed no real threat, as from… from what he himself didn’t even know.

He felt neither fear nor shame, but an urge, coming from within him, to hide, to disappear from that celebration.

Too much noise, oh God… too much noise.

Wandering around the ballroom in a daze, he waved his hands about, begging for someone to turn down the noise.

But the more he did so, the more feverish the curiosity in those eyes grew, to the point of agony.

Cirinciò then fell prey to such a dark exasperation that, from the outside, he strangely appeared as if he had almost become a different person.

When they hoisted him up and carried him triumphantly to the seat of honor, he briefly felt better. But as soon as the commotion subsided and everyone was seated, Cirinciò looked around and plunged into a deeper stupor than ever. He was petrified. Only four seats away, the little man continued staring at him, and now, craning his next towards him, with his index finger pointed like a weapon next to one of those diabolical little eyes, he asked him:[7]

“Excuse me, aren’t you Ciccino Cirinciò?”

The question wasn’t about his name. The others couldn’t understand, but he, Cirinciò, understood all too well.

The little man must have been told a hundred times that he was indeed Ciccino Cirinciò. But that was precisely what the little man could not wrap his head around: that the Ciccino Cirinciò he had met some time in the past was the same one who was now in front of him… The same one? How could that be?

“The mill man?”

Yes, yes, the mill man… He was right! It wasn’t believable! Suddenly, Cirinciò himself was acknowledging it.

“It wasn’t believable, it no longer seemed believable even to him that the mill man, yes, he himself, could be sitting right there in the middle of this celebration, and that he had been able to do all that he had done—he no longer even knew the reason why he had done it.

Indeed, what did he care, now that through the little man’s eyes he saw himself retreat into his former self with all his tragedies and misfortunes, what did he care about Laleva’s victory? What did he care about the defeated deputy’s tricks?

Seeing him wilt so suddenly, all the guests initially thought it was due to temporary fatigue, and they tried to revive him with encouragement and congratulations. But they were frozen in their tracks by his dull, dragging replies: “Right… right…,” which revealed his spirit to be absent, as if it were a thousand miles away from the celebration.

When, the following day, Cirinciò left Borgetto looking sulky and funereal, and barely responding to those who had come to bid him farewell, everyone looked at each other, not understanding the reason for such a sudden change. Many of them speculated that he was a swindler, a miserable impostor who had come to deceive them.