“The Old Man’s Slumber” (“Il sonno del vecchio”)

Translated by Marella Feltrin-Morris

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Old Man’s Slumber” (“Il sonno del vecchio”), tr. Marella Feltrin-Morris. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2022.

“The Old Man’s Slumber” (“Il sonno del vecchio”) was first published in the 1906 collection Two-Faced Herm (Erma bifronte; Milan: Treves), although it had been written the year before. Pirandello then added it to his volume The Fly (La mosca), the fifth Collection of Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno), in 1923.

This story touches on a familiar theme in Pirandello’s works, the idea that there is a chasm between the public appearance we present to others (and the way they view us) and the actual reality of who we are. The plot revolves around the high hopes of young playwright Vittorio Lamanna and the humoristic epilogue of his encounter with renowned philosopher Alessandro De Marchis. What initially seemed a fortuitous encounter between an aspiring artist and an established intellectual will soon reveal the tragic and unexpected twists of chance. De Marchis’ age and disposition to easily fall asleep everywhere he goes in fact work against Lamanna’s talent and his hopes to make a name for himself by reading his drama to the guests of a literary salon. The similarities between Lamanna’s play and De Marchi’s marital life are not enough to interest the illustrious listener. At the same time, however, the press constructs an alternate account of what transpired, suggesting that what we hear of people and events can never really be trusted. In this story Pirandello thus addresses both the limitations of the modern press as well as the perils an artist faces when presenting his work to an audience that may not be suited to his message. Critics have in fact suggested a parallel between Lamanna’s misadventure and Ilse’s unfortunate performance before an uncouth public in Pirandello’s unfinished last play The Mountain’s Giants (I giganti della montagna), which he was working on in 1936 when he unexpectedly passed away. There is also a clear biographical reference in this theme, as Pirandello often lamented that the Italian public was ill suited to understand and appreciate his own art.

The Editors

While in Signora Venanzi’s salon the conversation spiritedly hummed on in multiple languages about the most disparate topics, Vittorino Lamanna was ruminating on the two announcements the hostess had made to him when he arrived.[1] One good, the other bad. The good news was that among the guests who would be present at the reading of his play that night was Alessandro De Marchis, a venerable scholar who had enlightened the world with his treatises on science and philosophy, and who was now rightfully considered one of the brightest stars in the country. The bad news was that Casimiro Luna, the “brilliant” journalist, was back from London, where he had traveled to “interview” a young Italian scientist who had recently made a major discovery.[2] Luna would speak about it at that night’s gathering, before the interview was published in the evening paper.

Lamanna was not jealous of Luna’s dazzling qualities, which in just a few years had won him a slew of admirers, especially women. He was jealous of his luck. He predicted that, very soon, all eyes would turn favorably towards that shallow, dapper journalist, and that no one would pay attention to him. Little by little he was becoming prey to a foul mood, fomented, as if there were any need for that, by a certain gentleman whom Signora Venanzi had stuck him with. A witty, baldheaded man whose name he didn’t remember but who, for his part, seemed to recall the name of every guest, and to find something unpleasant to say about each and every one of them.

“Dear sir, do you expect any of these people to understand anything at all about your play? Don’t lose any sleep over it, though. What counts is for the record to state that you read it at Signora Venanzi’s literary salon. The papers will talk about it. Which, nowadays, is all that matters. Most of them, as you can see, are foreigners who barely speak a word of Italian. They don’t even know how to spell the word money, but they know immediately if the money is counterfeit, and they know better than we do how much a coin is worth. Foreign industry? A wrong concept, dear sir. Because...”

Luckily, Signora Alba Venanzi came to rescue him from the torment. Marquise Landriani had just entered the drawing room, and Signora Venanzi wanted to introduce Lamanna to her.

“Marquise, here is our Vittorino Lamanna, future glory of our national theater.”

“Oh, please!” said Lamanna blushing dismissively as he bowed and smiled.

The old, fat Marquise Landriani, looking eternally dazed, took her time removing her blue-tinted glasses from the hump of her nose and replacing them with a clear pair. In between one pair and the other, she stood a while with her eyes closed and a cold, desiccated smile on her pale lips.

“I’m familiar, I’m familiar...” she said, limply. “Help me remember where I have read your stuff most recently...”

“Well,” said Lamanna, pleased, searching his memory, “Let’s see.” And he quoted one or two journals where some of his writings had appeared of late.

“Ah, yes, that’s right. Congratulations. I couldn’t remember exactly. I read so much, you know, so much that I end up getting confused. Yes, yes, that’s right. Congratulations, congratulations.”

And she peered at him through her clear lenses, the cold, desiccated smile still on her lips.

“That one,” the baldheaded man who was clearly stalking him whispered in Lamanna’s ear a short while later, “is a dumb old bat, dear sir. She can barely read her own name, and yet she goes around bragging that she knows everybody, that she’s read everybody’s stuff. She must have said that to you, too, right? Did she? Don’t believe her, for heaven’s sake! She’s as dumb as she is blind, I’m telling you.”

Right at that moment, Casimiro Luna walked in. Vittorino Lamanna knew him well, having met him when Luna was, like Lamanna, a complete unknown. Precisely for that reason, Luna acknowledged him with no more than a gelid nod.

“Miro! Miro!”

Everybody greeted Luna by that familiar name, calling out to him from every corner of the room, and for each of them he had a smile and a compliment. He made as if to steal a rose from one of the ladies’ cleavage, then pretended to look shocked and appalled at his own audacity, and the lady, clearly flattered, went into a fit of giggles. The hostess didn’t need to introduce him. They all knew who he was.

Seeing him so worshiped and coddled, Vittorino Lamanna thought about how easy it must be for Luna to sell the little brain he possessed, what an easy life he had. “Life?” he asked himself at the same time. “What kind of life is he living? An ongoing, sickening pretense! Not a single look, gesture or word that can be called sincere. He’s no longer a man: he’s a walking caricature. Does one have to stoop so low, then, just to have a career these days?” As he thought that, he felt a profound disgust for himself, too—all dressed up and groomed in the latest fashion. He was ashamed of having come to seek praise, protection and support from those people who paid him no attention.[3]

All of a sudden the drawing room went quiet, and everybody turned expectantly towards the entrance. Walking in, holding on to his wife’s arm, was Alessandro De Marchis.

The brilliant man, corpulent and stocky, was panting. A web of tumid veins bulged from underneath the smooth, yellowish skin of his bald head. His wife, her reddish-brown hair ostentatiously coiffed, propped him up, and stood straight and pompous, smiling with her painted lips.

Everybody rushed towards them to pay their respects.

Alessandro De Marchis collapsed heavily in the big chair that had been prepared especially for him. He smiled toothlessly, his bare face sporting neither a beard nor a mustache, and as his stoutness and old age had made him wheezy, he grunted and stared at everyone with dull, glassy eyes.

But immediately, an acute embarrassment spread about the drawing room. As soon as people laid their eyes on the great man, they turned their gaze elsewhere, taking care not to look at each other.

Signora De Marchis blushed violently and, barely controlling her annoyance, darted towards her husband, stood right in front of him and hissed to him:

“Alessandro, button up down there! How shameful!”

The poor old man immediately placed his large, trembling hand where his wife’s imperious stare indicated, and looked at her almost in fear, with a foolish smile on his lips.

A little later, while Casimiro Luna “brilliantly” recounted his interview with the young Italian genius regarding the latter’s famous invention, the guests who had gathered in Signora Venanzi’s drawing room were forced to witness an even more pitiful scene as they looked at the old, illustrious man.

Alessandro De Marchis, who was also a renowned physicist and whose books had most certainly been consulted and studied by that young Italian inventor, had fallen asleep, his large head hanging over his chest.

Vittorino Lamanna was among the first to notice, and he felt a shiver run down his spine. Casimiro Luna kept talking, but at a certain point, following everybody’s stare, he too saw De Marchis sound asleep, and his face took on such a pathetic expression that more than a few people unintentionally broke into a giggle, which they immediately repressed.

“Please indulge me, dear sir, but at eighty-six years of age,” whispered that same witty gentleman from before, “at eighty-six, just a few steps away from death, do you really expect Alessandro De Marchis to give a hoot about Guglielmo Marconi and his wireless telegraph? Tomorrow the old man’ll be dead. He’s almost dead already. Look at him.”

Vittorino Lamanna, pale, agitated, turned to tell him, categorically, to keep his mouth shut, but he met Signora Venanzi’s gaze. As she stood up and headed out of the drawing room, she motioned to him. He got up shortly after her and followed her into the adjacent parlor.

He found her lighting a cigarette and voluptuously taking the first puffs.

“Go ahead, go ahead, Lamanna, have a smoke,” she said to him, handing him a cigarette case. “I couldn’t take it anymore! If I don’t smoke, I’ll go crazy.”

Through the glass door that led to the drawing room, they were reached by a roaring burst of laughter.

“Oh, what a darling, that Luna! Do you hear? He manages to make them laugh even as he talks about a scientific discovery. Let’s hope he wakes up!” she sighed after that, alluding to De Marchis. “It must be such an ordeal for poor Cristina!”

“Cristina?” asked Vittorino Lamanna, frowning.

“His wife,” explained Signora Venanzi. “Didn’t you see her? She’s so beautiful. Well, maybe nowadays she gets a little help from chemistry... Ah, what a shame it was that she sacrificed such beauty for the glory of that old man! What a miscalculation! The illustrious old man, as you can see, is still around, forsaken by life and forgotten by death. Poor Cristina clearly must have thought that she wouldn’t need to sacrifice her beauty for long, and that the light of that glory would make her beauty even more resplendent. What a miscalculation! Now, poor dear, she wants to draw all the meager satisfaction she can from the glory to which she sacrificed herself, and so she drags her husband everywhere. It’s only a miracle she hasn’t started wearing his countless national and foreign medals around her own neck. But the old man—huh! The old man takes his own revenge: he sleeps like that everywhere, you know. He sleeps, that’s right. Just be thankful he’s not snoring!”

Vittorino Lamanna felt his arms drop. He thought about the imminent reading of his play, with the old man sound asleep. He thought of a saying by a famous French playwright: During the reading or the performance of a play, sleep must be considered an opinion.[4] A disheartened lament slipped out of Lamanna’s lips:

“Oh, God! But then...?”

At that candid reaction, Signora Venanzi burst out laughing heartily.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry!” she said to him. “We’ll make sure he stays awake. But you’ll see there won’t be any need for it. Your art itself will do the trick.”

“But you just told me he sleeps all the time!”

“No, well, not all the time! But if it comes down to it, we’ll have Gabrini sit next to him—you know, the one who keeps harassing you. Yes, I’ve noticed. Ah, Gabrini is terrible. He wouldn’t be above pinching him on the sly. Let me handle it.”

At that moment, Flora, Signora Venanzi’s gorgeous daughter, came in to call upon her mother. Casimiro Luna had finished reporting his “interview” and had decamped.

Right in front of the young man, Signora Venanzi caressed her stunning daughter, fixed up her hair and rearranged the folds of her silk blouse over her shapely bosom. Flora complied, all the while smiling at Lamanna. Then she asked her mother:

“Did you hear? Signora Cristina took off, too.”

At that, her mother became truly incensed.

“Took off? And left me with that sleeping mausoleum? That is just a bit too much, I’d say! Where did she go?”

“No idea,” sighed her daughter. “She said she’d be back in a little while.”

Then she turned to Lamanna and added:

“Don’t worry: I’ll wake him up for you right away, with a cup of tea.”

Lamanna, his blood rushing madly through his veins, wanted to beg Signora Venanzi to scratch the reading of his play from the program and let him sneak out. But the Signora had already stood up and opened the partition to reenter the drawing room along with her daughter.

When, a short while later, the latter stood over De Marchis with a cup of tea in one hand and a pitcher of milk in the other, and asked the British lady who was sitting next to De Marchis to please shake his arm and wake him up, Vittorino Lamanna, who was by then a bundle of nerves, wanted to scream: “Let him sleep, damn it!” If she did, those who knew nothing about the old man’s never-ending drowsiness might attribute it to Luna’s lecture and not to the reading of his play.

Once awake, Alessandro De Marchis stared at Flora with his eyes wide open.

“Ah, yes... Guglielmo... Guglielmo Marconi...”

“No, Your Excellency, excuse me,” said Flora, smiling. “With or without milk?”

“With... with milk, yes, please.”

After he drank his tea, De Marchis remained awake. Vittorino Lamanna, who was preparing for the reading, secretly cherished the illusion that, as Signora Venanzi had led him to hope, his play might actually capture the old man’s attention. He recited the title: Conflict.

He read the names of the characters, a description of the scene, then glanced swiftly at De Marchis.

The old man was still sitting up sternly, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration. Lamanna took it as a hopeful sign and started reading the first scene, feeling confident again.

His purpose, he said, had been to portray a conflict of souls. An elderly but still able-bodied benefactor marries his protégée. Before long, she falls in love with a young man and struggles between her sense of indebtedness to her husband’s generosity and the revulsion of having to fulfill her conjugal duties while her heart belongs to another man. To be unfaithful—no, never. But to lie... she cannot do that either....[5]

Perhaps—who knows?—De Marchis would glimpse in that predicament a situation similar to his own and pay attention until the very end. Lamanna continued reading with great pathos.

At a certain point, however, from the expression on the other listeners’ faces he understood that the old man had fallen asleep again. He didn’t dare look over at him to confirm it. Instead, he searched around for Gabrini. He immediately met his stare, which was fixed right on him, piercingly ironic.

In that stare, he thought he read: “At eighty-six years of age, just a few steps away from death...” and right away he felt the blood rush to his face from anger. He became frazzled, stumbled through his text, lost his tone, his timbre, his rhythm. His ears started ringing, and with growing exasperation he dragged on miserably until he reached the end of the play.

The torture seemed to last forever, for him and for everybody else. When it was finally over, he couldn’t wait to be back home alone, and to shred into a million pieces that one-act play that had caused him such unbelievable torment.

Half an hour later, no one remained in Signora Venanzi’s drawing room except for the old man asleep in the big chair, his head hanging over his chest, his lips saggy, a thread of drool running down upon his vest.

Mother and daughter, in the adjacent parlor, chatted about Lamanna’s terrible performance as they munched on candied violets.

“Hey!” the mother exclaimed at a certain point. “That floozy’s not coming back. We need to wake up the old fogey.”

They went into the drawing room and stared for a while, with a mixture of pity and disgust, at the illustrious sleeper, whose intellectual brilliance had long since been extinguished.

They shook him gently, then more forcefully. It took quite a while for Alessandro De Marchis to realize that his wife had just left him there.

“If you want,” said Signora Venanzi, “I’ll have someone take you home.”

“No,” answered the old man, trying several times to get up from the chair. “Just... just down the stairs. Then I’ll get a cab.”

He finally managed to get up on his feet. He looked at Flora, caressed her cheek.

“You look a bit worn out,” he said to her. “What’s going on, sweetie, have you been out lovey-doveying?”

Without blushing, Flora shrugged and smiled.

“Oh, what nonsense, Senator!”

“That’s bad!” said De Marchis then. “At nineteen one must go out lovey-doveying. Believe me, sweetie, there’s nothing better.”

He shuffled over to a shelf and thrust his face into a large bunch of roses. Then he drew back and sighed:

“Poor old man...”

Slowly, slowly, with great effort he climbed down the stairs, leaning against one of the servants. He got into a cab and soon feel asleep there, too, without the slightest clue that later that night, the gossip columns of the most prominent papers would talk about him, mentioning his delight in hearing of Guglielmo Marconi’s accomplishments, his enthusiastic opinion of Casimiro Luna, and even his paternal encouragement of the young, promising playwright Vittorino Lamanna.