The Lonely Man (L’uomo solo, 1922)

This fourth group of fifteen short stories first appeared in the 1922 Bemporad edition of Stories for a Year.

Some of them, however, had already appeared in other collected volumes: “News from Around the World” (“Notizie del mondo”) in Jests of Life and Death (Beffe della vita e della morte), published by Lumachi in Florence in 1902; “The Reserved Coffin” (“La cassa riposta”) and “Watch and Ward” (“Di guardia”) in the 1911 Milanese Treves edition of The Naked Life (“La vita nuda”); while “The Lonely Man” (“L’uomo solo”), “The Train Whistled” (“Il treno ha fischiato”), “Professor Earthquake” (“Il professor Terremoto”), “The Long Dress” (“La veste lunga”), “Our Memories” (“I nostri ricordi”), “The Fish Trap” (“Il coppo”), “The Trap” (“La trappola”), and “A Character’s Tragedy” (“La tragedia d’un personaggio”) were all previously included in the collection The Trap (La trappola) Treves published in Milan in 1915.

Some of the fifteen stories also previously appeared in literary journals and magazines. These include “The Madonna’s Gift” (“Dono della Vergine Maria”) in Il Marzocco, October 29, 1898; “News from Around the World” (“Notizie dal mondo”), in Rivista d’Italia, March-April 1901; “To Fly” (“Volare”), with the previous title “The Flight” (“La volata”), in Rivista popolare di politica lettere e scienze sociali, June 30, 1907; and “The Reserved Coffin”, in Il Marzocco, August 4, 1907. Seven tales appeared in the Corriere della Sera: “Professor Earthquake”, April 10, 1910; “The Lonely Man”, July 9, 1911; “A Character’s Tragedy”, October 19, 1911; “Our memories”, January 22, 1912; “The Trap”, May 23, 1912; “The Truth” (“La verità”), June 23, 1912; and “The Train Whistled”, February 22, 1914. Two short stories were previously published in Noi e il mondo, a monthly supplement of La Tribuna: “Aunt Michelina” (“Zia Michelina”), May 1914 and “The Long Dress”, February 1913. The tale “The Fish Trap” had appeared in Rassegna contemporanea in June 1912.

The short story “The Truth”, together with the tale “Marital Duties” (“Certi obblighi”) from the Collection Nose to the Sky (Dal naso al cielo), served as source material for the two-act tragi-comedy Cap and Bells (Il berretto a sonagli), which Pirandello wrote in a single week in 1916 for a Sicilian dialect theatre company. It was performed in dialect in 1917 and later rendered into Italian.

The tale “A Character’s Tragedy”, together with “Characters” (“Personaggi”) and “Conversations with Characters” (“Colloquii coi personaggi”), was the source of the Pirandello’s most famous play Six Characters in Search of an Author, staged for the first time in Rome in 1921.

The fifteen short stories contained in the Collection The Lonely Man (L’uomo solo) are:

“The Lonely Man” (“L’uomo solo”)
“The Reserved Coffin” (“La cassa riposta”)
“The Train Whistled” (“Il treno ha fischiato”)
“Aunt Michelina” (“Zia Michelina”)
“Professor Earthquake” (“Il professor Terremoto”)
“The Long Dress” (“La veste lunga”)
“Our Memories” (“I nostri ricordi”)
“Watch and Ward” (“Di guardia”)
“The Madonna’s Gift” (“Dono della Vergine Maria”)
‘The Truth” (“La verità”)
“To Fly” (“Volare”)
“The Fish Trap” (“Il coppo”)
“The Trap” (“La trappola”)
“News from the World” (“Notizie del mondo”)
“A Character’s Tragedy” (“La tragedia d’un personaggio”)