“The Luck to Be a Horse” (“Fortuna d’esser cavallo”)

Translated by Arianna Autieri and Charlotte Spear

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Luck to Be a Horse” (“Fortuna d’esser cavallo”), tr. Arianna Autieri and Charlotte Spear. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2024.

This story first appeared in the newspaper Corriere della Sera on November 23, 1935, though not in its complete form. Due to the newspaper’s constraints on length, the initial part of the story was cut, much to Pirandello's dismay. However, the full version was later restored and included in the fifteenth Collection of his Stories for a Year, titled A Single Day (Una giornata). This final collection of stories was published posthumously in 1937 by Mondadori in Milan, a year after Pirandello's death in 1936. The editors were careful to respect both the author’s intent and the original manuscripts, ensuring that the text reflected Pirandello’s complete vision.

In "The Luck to Be a Horse,” the author blends existential themes with his signature tragicomic humor, characteristic of his mature period, by contrasting the complex, often painful world of human beings with the simpler existence of animals. The protagonist—an old horse—finds itself abandoned by his owner, wandering a small village in search of food and enduring ridicule and mistreatment from the local children. Despite this bleak situation, the horse remains largely unaffected, driven by its basic needs and the simple pleasures of fresh grass and the refreshing breeze. Pirandello focuses on the horse’s simplicity, a quality that he portrays as a form of “good fortune” because, unlike humans, the horse is unburdened by overthinking or existential dread. The horse’s ability to endure cruelty without lashing out shows how its limited cognitive capacities actually protect it from the kind of self-inflicted suffering that characterizes human existence. This motif of the superiority of animal instinct over human reasoning also appears in other works, such as “The Faithfulness of the Dog” (“La fedeltà del cane, 1904), “The Dog’s Revenge” (“La vendetta del cane, 1913”), and “The Lord of the Ship” (“Il signore della nave, 1916”), where animals embody loyalty and wisdom that outshine human beings’ unpleasant traits. By viewing the world through the animal’s perspective, Pirandello lays bare the absurdities of human behavior, illustrating how, despite their higher intelligence, people often suffer more due to their ability to overthink, make poor judgments, and inflict harm on themselves and others. In this story, the horse’s carefree nature stands in stark contrast to the existential weight borne by humans, revealing that sometimes, ignorance is a form of bliss in the face of life's cruelties.

The Editors

The stable is there, behind a closed door, right after the entrance to the rustic, cobblestone courtyard on a slope, with the water tank in the middle.[1]

The rotten door, green once, is now almost colorless; similar to the house, with its once yellowish, plastered walls, which now seems the oldest and most miserable house in the neighborhood.

This morning, at dawn, the door was locked from outside, with a big rusty bolt. And the horse that used to be in the stable was left just outside, who knows why. With no bridle, or saddle, or saddlebag; not even a halter.

It has been standing there patiently, barely moving, for many hours. It inhales the familiar smell of the stable through the locked door, so close, and the courtyard’s smell; from time to time, when inhaling with its nostrils flared, it seems to be sighing.

With every sigh, the skin on its back jitters strangely, where there are traces of an old saddle sore.

With its head and body freed from any equipment, one can see how the years have worn it down: the head, when it is raised, still has something noble, but sad, to it; the body is in a deplorable state; the hair on its back is knotted; its ribs protruding, its hips pointed; its mane, however, is still thick, and its tail long, just a bit thin.

A horse that serves no purpose anymore, as a matter of fact.

What is it waiting for, there in front of the door?[2]

Passersby who see it and know that the master has already left, having taken all the stuff from the house and gone to live in another country, think that someone will probably come on the master’s behalf to collect the horse; stripped in this way of everything, however, it looks to be abandoned.

Others pass and stop to look; some claim to know that the master had searched for all the ways to get rid of the horse before he left, first trying to sell it at a low price, then offering it to many as a gift, even to him. But nobody wanted it, not even for free; not even him.

If only a horse did not eat… but it does. And, for the work it is still able to do, now that it is so old, and in such bad shape, let’s be honest, do you think it is worth the price of the hay, or even a bit of straw, to feed it?

To own a horse and not know what to do with it must be a real nuisance.

Many people, to rid themselves of one, choose the fastest route and kill it. A bullet costs very little. But not everybody has the heart to do this.

It remains to be seen, however, if it is not crueler to abandon it in this way. Surely, when you look at it now, as it stands in front of the locked door of an empty and deserted house, poor thing, you feel pity. You would almost want to go and whisper into its ear that it is not waiting in vain.

If only the owner had left a rope around its neck at least, to take it away somehow; but nothing. The equipment, for sure, the owner was able to sell it: it is always useful. But even if someone had taken the horse, they would have probably sold the equipment just the same, leaving the horse equally naked in the middle of some other street.

In the meantime, oh! Look at those flies! Eh, in such a state one would never say that the flies would want to leave it. And the poor horse, if it moves anything at all, it is only its tail, to drive them away, when their bite stings harder: which happens frequently now that it does not have so much blood left for them to easily suck.

But it is already tired of standing on its legs, and it kneels down painfully to rest on the ground; its head always facing the door.

It certainly cannot imagine that it is free.

But is a horse really able to realize freedom if it has it? If it has it, it has it and enjoys it without thinking. At first, when they take its freedom away, by instinct the horse rebels; then, once tamed, it gives in and adapts.

Maybe this one, born in a stable, has never been free. Yes, maybe when it was young and left to graze at pasture. But it was not, so to speak, free: pastures enclosed by fences. If freedom ever was there, what memory can it possibly have of it?

It lies there on the ground, until hunger urges it to stand up again, with more difficulty than before; and since it no longer hopes for any help from that door, after such a long wait, it turns its head to look to one side, down the neighborhood street. It neighs. Paws the ground. It does not know what else to do. But it must be sure that it is no use, because after a little time, it snorts and shakes its head; then, uncertain, it takes a few steps.

There is now more than one curious person observing it.

Not even in the countryside, where the land is under cultivation, are horses allowed to roam free; let alone in a town, where there are women and children.

A horse is not like a dog; a dog can have no owner and, if it passes by, nobody pays attention to it. A horse is a horse, and if it is not aware of this, others are, seeing it, its body, way bigger than a dog’s body, bulky; a body which cannot inspire total confidence. Everyone mistrusts it, because, you never know, it might suddenly, unpredictably, shy away. And then, with the whites of those eyes which at times become so ferocious and bloody; those eyes, so glassy, lively with flickers and certain flashes which no one understands, flashes of a life filled with anxiety, which can descend into nothingness.

This is not out of injustice. But they are not the eyes of a dog, which can, like human eyes, ask for forgiveness or pity, and can even pretend, with certain looks to which our hypocrisy has nothing else to teach.

In a horse’s eyes you see everything, but can read nothing.

It is true that this one, in such a bad shape, does not seem dangerous to anyone. But, anyway, why interfere?

People can go close to it; if it annoys them, they will chase it away, or the guards will.

Children, don’t throw stones. Don’t you see it has nothing on anymore? So free and loose, if it runs away, who will stop it?

Let’s stay here instead, and quietly watch where it goes.

There, first it goes to that man who makes pasta with the hand press and hangs it to dry outside on some framed nets, laid on unsteady trestles.

Oh God, if it gets close, it will make everything fall.

But the pasta maker comes just in time to stop it and chase it away. Bloody… whose horse is this?

The rascals can’t help themselves, they run after it, shouting, laughing.

“A runaway horse?”

“No: abandoned.”

“What, abandoned?”

“So it seems. Left by its owner. Free.”

“Really? A horse which roams free on its own, through the town streets?”

Come on, if it were a man, you would want to know that he isn’t crazy. But a horse, what do you want to know about it? The horse only knows it is hungry. Now, over there, it stretches its muzzle towards a nice basket of salad on display among many others at a greengrocers.

It is rudely pushed away from there too.

It is used to being beaten, and would accept it quietly, if only then they let it eat. But they do not want the horse to eat at all. The more it resists to show that it does not care about the beating, the more they twist its neck to keep the muzzle away from that beautiful basket of salad. And its obstinacy is ridiculous. What does it take to understand that that salad is displayed there to be sold to those who want to eat it? It’s so simple, and, because the horse does not seem to understand, it is subject to all that vulgar laughter.

What a beast! It doesn’t even have one bit of straw to eat, yet it thinks it can have the salad.

No one imagines that a beast, for its part, might see it in a totally different, simpler way. But there is nothing to do about it.

And the horse leaves, with all those rascals following: since it has demonstrated that it can take a blow peacefully, who can stop them anymore? They make a hell of a fuss around it. So much so that the horse freezes at a certain point, stunned, as if searching for a way to end it. An old man rushes to warn the rascals that it is better not to fool around with horses.

“See how it stopped?”

And the old man raises a hand to the horse’s neck to calm and reassure it. But now the horse gives a sudden, twisted leap, pricking its ears up. The old man, who doesn’t expect this, is upset at first, but then sees in that movement the proof of what he just said and repeats:

“Here, you see?”

Having witnessed this proof, which held them off for a moment, the rascals resume following the horse from a distance. Where is it going?

Straight on. Not daring to approach any other shops, it crosses the entire neighborhood on the top of the hill, and where the street slopes down, uninhabited for a long stretch, it stops again, undecided.

It’s evident, it does not know where to go anymore.

A small wind blows in that stretch of the street. And the horse raises its head, as if to drink it, and half-closes its eyes, maybe because it smells the grass from far away, from the fields.

It stands there for a while, a long while, with its eyes half-closed and the crest of hair on its hard forehead slightly swaying in the breeze.

But let’s not be touched. Let’s not forget the luck that, like all the others, that horse has: the luck to be a horse.

If the first rascals finally got fed up with staring at the horse and left, an even larger group made a cheerful crowd later in the evening when, pulling itself together, who knows how, strangely excited by hunger, and drunk with impatience, it shows up again, its head raised, in the middle of the town’s main street; and it stops there, pawing the hard pavement, as if to say: I order you to bring me some food immediately, here, here, here.

Whistles, claps, laughter, cries of all sorts follow that imperious gesture; people throng there, leaving the tables of the Café, the shops; everybody wants to know about that “runaway,” “not runaway,” “abandoned” horse, until two guards make their way through the crowd. One grabs the horse by the mane and drags it away; the other stops the rascals from following it, pushing them back.

Taken away from the town, beyond the most peripheral houses and factories, beyond the bridge, the horse, unaware of everything,[3] only notices one thing: the smell of grass, this time nearby, on the sides of the street that leads to the countryside.

For, among the many misfortunes a horse can encounter when in men’s power, it always has, at least, this bit of good fortune: that it thinks of nothing. Not even that it is free. Or where or how it will end up. Nothing. Will they chase it away from everywhere? Will they push it down a cliff, and let it crash to the ground?

For now, it eats the streetside grass. The evening is mild. The sky is starred. Tomorrow will be what it will be.

A horse does not think about it.