“The Old God” (“Il vecchio dio”)

Translated by Shirley Vinall

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Old God” (“Il vecchio dio”), tr. Shirley Vinall. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2024.

“The Old God” was first published in the literary magazine Il Marzocco in the issue from May 26, 1901, making it one of the early (though not among the earliest) stories Pirandello published. It was then republished in a miscellany short story collection, When I Was Mad (Quand’ero matto), which was printed by Streglìo in Turin the next year. That collection was reprinted by the Milanese publisher that eventually became Pirandello’s main collaborator, Treves, in 1919. Yet it was only in 1926 that Pirandello added “The Old God” to his developing Stories for a Year, including it in the tenth Collection, to which it gave its name as title.

The story is seemingly simple but deals with a number of key Pirandellian themes in interesting ways. Recounting a kind of vignette view of a single character, Signor Aurelio, the story examines the shift away from traditional religious values in modernizing Italy and thematizes the difference between urban modernity and a simpler, rural belief in the countryside. Signor Aurelio, whose name harkens to classical Roman antiquity (the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose name was given to the famous walls around the city of Rome), has lost access to his former countryside retreat and now spends his holidays visiting the churches of Rome, where he enjoys not only the art and history but also imagined conversations with the deceased and with God Himself. In one particular visit, he imagines an interaction that reveals a separation between the “old God” of a prior generation, who believed in the supernatural power of the divine, and the dwindling of that power for modern men who believed in science instead of religious faith. In its confrontation between the “old God” and the new world of faith in scientific reason, “The Old God” reflects similar concerns in other work by Pirandello, from his depictions of and critique of scientific reason in stories like “The Surprises of Science” (“Le sorprese della scienza,” 1905) to his examination of different modes of faith and confrontation with traditionalism in stories like “Faith” (“La fede,” 1922). The theme was also central to his play Lazarus (Lazzaro, 1929), which confronts the question of religion and science through a mythical lens. Of course, the depiction of Rome as a city caught between its religious past and a modernizing present is also central to modernist works like his famous novel, The Late Mattia Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal, 1904), where Rome is figured through the images of both holy water and an ashtray. The central dynamic in “The Old God” is thus a key issue of contention running throughout not just Pirandello’s corpus but the broader modernist imaginary, confronting the narrative of modernity proposed by a figure like Max Weber, for whom modernization meant the progressive disenchantment of the world. As Pirandello’s own repeated interest in the question shows, even in the heart of modernism such disenchantment is never really more than a hypothesis.

The Editors

Slightly bent, with his light cotton suit flapping around his thin figure, his open umbrella resting on his shoulder, and his old panama hat in his hand, Signor Aurelio set off every day on his own particular holiday.

He had found a place, a place that would not have crossed anyone’s mind; and it made him very pleased with himself when he thought about it, rubbing his hands together nervously.

Some people liked going to the mountains, others to the seaside, and others to the countryside: he chose Roman churches. Why not? Isn’t it perhaps cooler there than in a wood? And, what’s more, there is blessed peace. In the woods, there are trees; here we have the pillars of the naves; there, we are in the shade of the branches; here we are in the shade of the Lord.

“What can you do about it? You just have to put up with things.”

Once, he too had a beautiful place in the country, near Perugia, thickly wooded with cypress trees, with an elegant row of slender purple willows bordering the canal and casting such a sweet blue shade. And, of course, the magnificent villa with its valuable collection of objets d’art: oh, that collection! It made the decoration of Casa Vetti the envy of all around.

All that remained to him now, for his holidays, were the churches.

“What can you do about it? You just have to put up with things.”

Although he had now been in Rome for several years, he had not yet managed to visit all the most famous churches. He would do it this year, for his holidays.

Hopes, illusions, wealth: Signor Aurelio had lost them all, and so many other beautiful things in the course of his life. All that was left to him was his faith in God, which, in the distressing darkness of his ruined existence, was like a little lantern: a little lantern he huddled over anxiously to protect, as best he could, from the icy wind of the final disillusionments.[1] He wandered around like a lost soul in the midst of life’s turmoil, with no one to take care of him anymore.[2]

It doesn’t matter: God sees me! he murmured to himself in encouragement.

And Signor Aurelio was quite sure of this, that God could see him by his little lantern. He was so sure that, rather than terrifying him, the thought of his approaching end gave him comfort.

In the blazing sunshine, the streets were almost deserted. However, he found that there was always someone―a street urchin or a waiting cab driver―ready to shout out some joke at his expense when they saw him walk past with his shiny bald pate, his wispy beard quivering on his chin, and his gray locks fluttering in the same way down his neck.

“Oh, look at that! Two little beards, one at the front and one at the back!”

But Signor Aurelio could not bear wearing a hat on his head in the summer. He smiled at the joke too, and, almost unintentionally, hurried along, with his little partridge-like steps, in order to stop those idlers from being tempted to make another joke about him.

“What can you do about it? You just have to put up with things.”

When he went into the church he had chosen to visit for that day’s holiday, he first of all wanted to take the opportunity to sit down. He took a deep breath, wiped away his perspiration, and then carefully folded his handkerchief into a square and put it on his head, folded like that, to protect himself from the chill and the damp.

Occasionally, a woman church-goer would peep round at him and, seeing him wearing that strange headgear, would have a little laugh to herself.

But Signor Aurelio meanwhile was feeling blissfully happy, breathing in the damp, incense-laden air that stagnated in the solemn and silent emptiness of the sacred place. Nor did it not cross his mind that, even there, in the house of God, someone might enjoy making fun of him.

After having a little rest, he began looking around the church, slowly and carefully, like a visitor who had a whole day to spend there. He devoted loving attention to the architecture and the different parts of the building. He paused in front of every altarpiece, every mosaic, every chapel, and every funerary monument, and with an expert eye immediately identified the particular features of the period and the school to which the work of art should be ascribed and decided whether it was genuine or whether it was spoiled by being patched or touched up by unsuccessful restorers. Then he went back to sit down; and if, as often happened at that time of day in that season, there was no one else in the church, he took advantage of the fact to make a quick note of his impressions, or a query to be resolved, in a simple little notebook.

When he had satisfied his initial curiosity and completed the artistic challenge that he had set himself for that day, he took some light reading out of his pocket ―a book that, due to its size, could seem to be a prayer book―and began to read. From time to time he looked up to go over what he had read or to picture in his mind the scene described by the poet. He was not afraid of causing offence in the house of the Lord by reading secular works. According to his way of thinking, God could not be offended by the beautiful things created by poets for man’s innocent pleasure.

When he tired of reading, he stared into the void, and, rubbing his forefingers and thumbs against each other at length, abandoned himself to his reveries or his memories of the past. Sometimes, when he was completely absorbed in these daydreams, he caught sight of a bust in a niche in the pillar opposite, which seemed to be gazing out into the church.

“Oh!” he said then, smiling and shaking his head. “How fortunate you are, my friend. Is it pleasant to be among the dead?”

And he got up again to read in the memorial inscription the name of the person buried in that tomb, then sat down again and, looking at him, began talking to him in his mind.

So here we are, my dear Hieronymus! What a pity that one is no longer allowed to be buried in a church. I would have a splendid little niche hollowed out in the opposite pillar, and you would hear what wonderful little chats we could have, you over there and me here! You have the face of a good man, you poor thing, and so I’m sure you would tell me all your troubles. Well! What can you do about it? You just have to put up with things. But it seems to me that when you are dead you must be better off in church, with this fine smell of incense, and masses and prayers every day. In the cemetery, if we are honest, it rains.

But, even there in the cemetery, death is... a release; since you endure your time on earth, not to live well, but to prepare yourself to die without fear.[3] Signor Aurelio did not expect any rewards in heaven; it was sufficient for him to preserve a clear conscience right up to the very last moment, and not to have ever done wrong on purpose. He was aware of the dark clouds of doubt raised by science over the shining explanation of death provided by faith, having read about them in some book or other or having breathed them in from the air;[4] and he regretted the fact that even for him, a believer, the God of his time could no longer be the God who had created the world in six days, and rested on the seventh.

That morning, when he entered the church, he had been struck by the appearance of the sexton, a handsome, heavily-bearded old man with a splendid head of hair, proud of his thick bushy beard and his wavy locks parted in the middle and flowing down over his shoulders. Only his head was beautiful. His squat, bent, failing body seemed to struggle to support it, with all that weight of hair.

Now, Signor Aurelio, contemplating life and death, and pondering bitterly on the meager advantages the soul could derive in this celebrated century of enlightenment, turned his mind to the old God of the unchallenged faith of his fathers, and, little by little, fell asleep. And behold! In his dream that old God came towards him, with his bent, failing body struggling to support on his shoulders the sacristan’s heavily bearded and shaggy-haired head. He sat down beside him and began to pour out his troubles to him, as old men do when sitting on the little wall outside old people’s homes.

“These are hard times, my son! Do you see what I have been reduced to? I am stuck here looking after the pews. Every now and then, some foreigner comes in. But they’re hardly coming here for Me, you know! They come to look at the old frescos and monuments; and, if they could, they would even climb up on the altars to get a better look at the images painted on some of the altarpieces. Hard times, my son. Have you heard? Have you read the recent books? I, God Almighty, did not do anything: everything was done by itself, naturally, little by little. It was not I who first created light, then heaven, and then the earth and everything else as you were taught when you were little. What are things coming to? I have nothing to do with anything anymore. The nebulae, do you see? Cosmic matter... And it all developed by itself. I’ll tell you something funny: there was once even someone, some scientist or other, who had the gall to declare that he had studied the heavens in all directions, and had not found even the slightest trace of my existence. Just tell me: can you imagine this poor man, really rushing around armed with his telescope to hunt for me in the skies, when he could not feel me in his wretched little heart? I would laugh so much and so heartily about him, my son, if I did not see people looking favorably on such foolishness. I well remember how I used to keep them all in a state of holy terror, speaking to them in the voice of the winds, thunder, and earthquakes. Now they have invented the lightning conductor, you see, and they don’t fear me anymore; they have explained the phenomena of the wind, the rain, and every other phenomenon, and they no longer turn to Me to obtain anything through grace. I must, I must make up My mind to leave the city and limit Myself to being God Almighty in the countryside: there one can still find some, though not many, a few simple peasant souls, for whom no leaf on a tree flutters unless I will it, and for whom I am still the one who brings the clouds or a clear sky. So come on, my son! You too are not at ease here, I can see. Let’s go, let’s go to the countryside, to be among God-fearing people, and good hard-working folk.”[5]

At these words, Signor Aurelio, lost in his dream, felt his heart miss a beat. The countryside! His great desire! ― He could see it as though he were there; he was breathing its balmy air... ― when, all of a sudden, he felt himself being shaken, and when he opened his eyes, dazed and overcome with amazement, he saw Almighty God Himself, living and breathing in front of him, and saying to him again:

“Come along, let’s go...”

“But it’s ages since...” stammered Signor Aurelio, wild-eyed, and terrified by the reality of his dream.[6]

The old sexton shook his keys:

“Come on, let’s go! The church is closing.”