“The Reality of the Dream” (“La realtà del sogno”)

Translated by Robin Pickering-Iazzi

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Reality of the Dream” (“La realtà del sogno”), tr. Robin Pickering-Iazzi. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2024.

“The Reality of the Dream” (“La realtà del sogno”) was published in the literary journal Noi e il mondo in November 1914 and included three years later in the miscellany collection E domani, lunedì (And Tomorrow, Monday, Treves: Milan, 1917). In 1928, the short story became part of Candelora, the thirteenth Collection of Stories for a Year.

"The Reality of the Dream" creatively examines the ambiguity between waking life and dreams, a theme that intrigued Pirandello consistently throughout his career and informed many of his short stories, such as his so-called “dreamlike tales” like “Effects of an Interrupted Dream” (“Effetti di un sogno interrotto,” 1936), “The Visit” ("Visita," 1936), “A Breath” ("Soffio," 1931), and “A Day” ("Una giornata” 1935). The plots of all these stories revolve around events that appear real but actually occur in dreams. In “The Reality of the Dream,” a married couple's arguments stem from dreams of infidelity that evoke negative emotions and guilt. The narrative centers on a pivotal night when the wife dreams of a challenge involving a friend of her husband; the challenge is meant to prove that she would not succumb to temptation, but she ends up betraying her husband in the dream. Upon waking, the woman experiences self-repulsion as well as resentment towards her husband for continually inviting unwanted friends, ultimately leading to her emotional breakdown. Pirandello explores the theme of modesty through a humorous examination of appearance versus reality, concluding that prudishness masks the woman’s repressed sexual desires. The story's ambiguous ending attempts to restore marital harmony when the wife confesses her dream betrayal to her husband, who absolves her by recognizing it was merely a dream.

The theosophical concept of the "real" dream, which has tangible effects even in waking life as discussed in “The Reality of the Dream,” inspired the one-act play A Dream, or Is It? (Sogno, ma forse no) composed between 1928 and 1929. This play also explores the intersection of dreaming and wakefulness to evoke a suspended atmosphere. Within the play, there is a suggestion that reality can unfold according to the phases predicted by the unconsciousness of the dream, akin to what occurred in this story from fifteen years prior. However, the themes of prophetic and life-like dreaming appear inseparable in the play, unlike in the earlier story where they remained distinct moments the characters have to deal with. Interestingly, the comedy premiered on September 22, 1931, in Lisbon in a Portuguese translation titled Sohno (mas talvez não) by Caetano de Abreu Beirão. It did not premiere in Italy until several years later, on December 10, 1937, at the Teatro Giardino d'Italia in Genoa, performed by the Filodrammatica of the University Group of Genoa.

The Editors

“It seemed as if everything he said had the same incontestable value as his handsome looks. Since it was impossible to question that he was an extremely handsome man, but really handsome in every respect, it was as if he could likewise never be contradicted about anything.

And he didn’t understand a thing, he really didn’t understand a thing about what was going on inside her!

While listening to the interpretations he gave so confidently, about some of his instinctive impulses, some of his even unfair animosities, some of his feelings, she became tempted to scratch him, slap him, bite him.

Also because in certain other moments she then missed him, with that coldness and confidence and that beautiful young man’s pride of his, until he would approach her because he needed her. Timid, humble, imploring then, in short, not the way she would have desired him in those moments, so that then too she felt irritated, for another reason, so much so that even though she was inclined to give in, she turned hard, unyielding. And the memory of every abandon poisoned by that irritation at the crowning moment turned into rancor.

He maintained that she was fixated on the awkwardness and embarrassment she said she felt with all men.

“You feel those emotions, dear, because you think about it,” he obstinately told her over and over again.

“I think about it because I feel those things!” she retorted. “Fixation—outrageous! I feel awkward and embarrassed. That’s how it is. And I must thank my father for it, with that fine upbringing he gave me! Do you want to question this too?”

Right, not this at least, her upbringing was promising. He’d gained experience with it himself during their engagement. There in her little hometown during the four months before their wedding not only had he not been allowed to touch her hand but not even to exchange a few little words with her in a whisper.

More jealous than a tiger, her father had instilled a real terror of men in her since she was a little girl. He’d never let one man, not one as people tell it, into their home, and all the windows were kept shut. And the extremely rare times that he had taken her outside, he’d made her walk with her head bowed like the nuns, looking at the ground as if to count the number of cobblestones in the pavement.[1]

Well then, was it any wonder that when she was in the presence of a man, she now felt that embarrassment and couldn’t look anyone in the eye, unable to either speak or move?

It’s true, it had been six years since she’d gotten free of the nightmare of that ferocious paternal jealousy; she saw people at home and on the street. And yet... It certainly wasn’t that childish terror she used to have before, but this embarrassment, that was the thing. As much as her eyes struggled, they couldn’t look anyone straight in the eye at all; while speaking, her tongue became all tangled in her mouth, and suddenly, without knowing why, her face turned red as burning coals, so everyone could believe that who knows what might have passed through her mind, while she really wasn’t thinking about anything. And in short, she saw herself condemned to make a bad impression, to be taken as a silly woman, as stupid, and she didn’t want that. Useless to insist! Thanks to her father, she had to stay shut inside without seeing anyone so as not to experience the vexation of that extremely stupid, extremely ridiculous embarrassment that was stronger than she.

His friends, the best ones, those he cared about most and would have liked to consider as decorations for his home, for his small world that he’d hoped to build around himself when he’d gotten married six years before, had already grown apart from him one by one. No wonder! They would come into his home, and they would ask:

“Your wife?”

His wife had instantly taken to her heels at the first ring of the doorbell. He pretended to go call her. He actually went, appearing before her with a miserable look on his face and open hands, though he knew it would have been useless, that his wife’s angrily blazing eyes would have shot daggers at him, and she would have yelled through gritted teeth, “Stupid!” He’d turn around and go back—God knew what he felt inside while smiling on the outside—and announce:

“Have some patience, dear man, she doesn’t feel well, she threw herself onto the bed.”

It happened once, twice, then three times—finally, of course, they got tired of it. Could he blame them?

Two or three of his friends, more loyal or more courageous, still remained. And he wanted to protect these friends, at least these, one of them especially, the most intelligent of all, really learned and loathing of pedantry, maybe a bit out of ostentatiousness, a very sharp-witted journalist, in short, a treasured friend.

Sometimes his wife had shown her face to these few friends, either because she’d been caught by surprise or, in a good moment, she had yielded to his plea. And no sir, it wasn’t at all true that she might have made a bad impression, quite the contrary!

“Because when you don’t think about it, you see... when you let yourself be natural... you’re lively...”

“Thank you!”

“You’re intelligent...”

“Thank you!”

“And you’re anything but awkward, I assure you! Sorry, but what pleasure would I get from letting you make a bad impression? You speak frankly, but yes, even too much so at times... yes, yes, very charming, I swear! You light all up, and your eyes... anything but shying away! They sparkle, my dear... And you say, you say even some bold things, yes... Are you amazed? I’m not saying they’re impolite... but bold for a woman, said with ease, with nonchalance, with wit all in all, I swear to you!”

He got carried away praising her, noticing that though she protested to not believe it at all, deep down she enjoyed it and was blushing, not knowing whether to smile or frown.[2]

“That’s how it is, it’s really like that. Believe it, you have a real fixation...”

He should have at least been alarmed by the fact that she didn’t protest against this “fixation” of hers, affirmed a hundred times over, and was clearly pleased at receiving that praise about her speaking frankly and nonchalantly and even boldly.

When and with whom had she spoken like that?

A few days earlier, with the “treasured” friend, naturally the one she disliked more than any of them. It’s true that she admitted the unfairness of some of her antipathies and said that the men she found most unpleasant were the ones with whom she felt most embarrassed.

But now the pleasure of having discovered she’d been able to speak even brashly came from the fact that this man (certainly to secretly sting her) had carried on a long discussion about the eternal topic of women’s honesty and dared to maintain that excessive modesty infallibly signals a sensual temperament. Therefore, a woman who blushes over nothing, who doesn’t dare raise her eyes because she believes she’ll discover an attack on her own modesty everywhere and an attempt on her own honesty in every look, in every word, isn’t to be trusted. It means this woman is obsessed with tempting images; she’s afraid of seeing them everywhere and gets upset at just the thought of them. Right? While another woman, at ease with her senses, doesn’t have these modesties at all and can also speak about certain romantic intimacies without getting upset, not thinking that there might be anything wrong in a... oh, what, in a faintly low-cut blouse, in lacey stockings, a skirt that leaves an ever so slight glimpse of something above the knee.

With these statements, let’s be careful, he wasn’t saying at all that to not be taken as sensual, a woman might have to appear brazen, vulgar, and show what must not be seen. It would have been a paradox. He was talking about modesty. And for him modesty was the compensation for insincerity. Not that it wasn’t sincere in and of itself. On the contrary, it was very sincere, but as an expression of sensuality. The woman who wants to negate her sensuality by showing the blush on her cheeks as proof is insincere. And this woman can be insincere even without wanting to, and also without knowing it. Because nothing is more complicated than sincerity. We all feign things spontaneously, not so much in front of others as in front of ourselves. We always believe things about ourselves that we like to believe, and we see ourselves not as we are in reality, but as we presume to be according to the ideal construction that we’ve created of ourselves.[3] So it can happen that a woman who, unbeknownst to her, is even extremely sensual, sincerely believes she is chaste and feels disdain and disgust at sensuality, for the sole fact that she blushes at nothing. This blushing at nothing, which in itself is a very sincere expression of her real sensuality, is instead assumed to be proof of the chasteness she believes in, and the blushing, thus assumed, naturally becomes insincere.

“Come on, Signora,” that treasured friend had concluded a few evenings ago, “woman, by nature (barring some exceptions, of course), resides entirely in her senses. You only have to know how to handle her, arouse, and dominate her. Women who are too modest don’t even need to be aroused; they immediately become aroused and inflamed all on their own, as soon as they’re touched.”

She hadn’t doubted for a moment that this entire speech was referring to her. As soon as the friend left, she ferociously turned on her husband, who had done nothing but smile like a fool and approve during the whole discussion.

“He insulted me at all costs for two hours, and you, instead of defending me, you smiled, you approved, thus letting him believe that what he was saying was true, because you, my husband, ah you, you would be able to know...”

“But what?” he’d exclaimed, dumbfounded. “You’re talking nonsense... Me? that you’re sensual? But what are you saying? If that fellow was talking about woman in general, what do you have to do with it? If he had remotely suspected you might think his speech were referring to you, he wouldn’t have opened his mouth! And then, sorry, but how could he have believed that if with him you didn’t appear at all like that prudish woman he was talking about? You didn’t blush at all. You defended your opinion forcefully, fervently. And I smiled because I was delighted about it, because I saw the proof of what I always said and maintained, which is, when you don’t think about it, you’re not awkward at all, or embarrassed at all, and all this presumed embarrassment of yours is nothing but a fixation. What does modesty, which he was talking to you about, have to do with it?”

She hadn’t been able to think of a response to her husband’s justification. She withdrew sullenly into herself to mull over why she’d felt so deeply wounded inside by that man’s speech. It wasn’t modesty, no, no, and no again, her feeling wasn’t modesty, that disgusting modesty that man was talking about; it was embarrassment, embarrassment, embarrassment. But certainly a malicious man like him could mistake that embarrassment for modesty, and therefore believe she was a woman... a woman like that, that’s it!

However, if she really hadn’t appeared embarrassed, as her husband maintained, she nevertheless felt embarrassed. Sometimes she could overcome it, force herself not to show it, but she felt it. Now, if her husband denied the embarrassment she felt inside, it meant that he didn’t notice anything. Therefore, he wouldn’t even have noticed if this embarrassment in her were something else, which is to say, the kind of modesty that fellow had talked about.

Is it possible? Oh God, no! Just the thought of it disgusted her, horrified her.

And yet...

The revelation was in the dream.

That dream began like a challenge, like a test to which that extremely odious man was putting her, following the discussion he’d had with her three nights earlier.

She had to show him that she wouldn’t have blushed at anything, that he could do whatever he liked to her and she wouldn’t have been either upset or lost her composure at all.

Well then, he began the test with cold audacity. First, he lightly ran a hand over her face. At the touch of that hand, she vehemently forced herself to hide the quiver that ran clear through her body, and not to shield her gaze, and to keep her eyes still and impassive, and her mouth slightly smiling. Well then, now he was moving his fingers up to her mouth, he delicately turned her lower lip outward and there, in the inner moistness, sank a warm, long, infinitely sweet kiss. She clenched her teeth, she stiffened her whole body to control the trembling and quivering within it. Then he calmly started to uncover her breasts, and... What was wrong with that? No, no, nothing, nothing wrong. But... Oh God, no... He treacherously lingered in a caress... no, no... too much... and... Defeated, lost, at first without allowing it, she was beginning to yield, not because of his strength, no, but because of her very own body’s agonizing weakness. And in the end...

Ah! She leapt out of the dream frantic, in pieces, trembling, and full of disgust and horror.

She gaped at her husband, who was obliviously sleeping beside her, and the shame she felt inside immediately changed into a feeling of hatred for him, as if he were the cause of the disgrace whose pleasure and horror she was still feeling, hatred for him, him, for his stupid obstinacy about welcoming those friends in their home.

There, she had betrayed him in a dream, betrayed him, and she had no remorse, no, but was angry at herself, for having been defeated, and resentful, resentful toward him, also because in six years of marriage he had never been able, never, to make her feel what she had just felt in her dream, with another man.

Oh, entirely in her senses... Therefore, was it true?

No, no. It was his fault, her husband’s. By refusing to believe in her embarrassment, he forced her to control herself, to do violence to her nature, he exposed her to those tests, to those challenges that gave rise to the dream. How could someone hold out against such a test? He, her husband, had insisted on it. And this was his punishment. She would have enjoyed it if she could have separated the shame she felt about herself from the malicious joy she felt at the thought of his punishment.

And now?

The clash occurred during the afternoon the next day, after she had maintained a steely silence the whole day at each insistent question her husband asked, wanting to know why she was acting that way and what had perhaps happened to her.

It occurred when that treasured friend’s usual visit was announced.

Hearing his voice in the entrance hall, she gave a start, suddenly turning livid. Her eyes glinted with furious wrath. Trembling from head to toe, she pounced on her husband and ordered him not to receive that man.

“I don’t want you to! I don’t want you to! Make him go away!”

At first, he was almost more alarmed by that furious outburst than amazed at it. Unable to understand the reason for so much loathing, as he already believed that his friend had instead won a bit of her favor due to what he had said following that discussion, he became fiercely irritated by the absurd, peremptory order.

“But you’re crazy, or do you want to make me go crazy! Do I really have to lose all my friends because of your stupid madness?”

Struggling free of his wife, who had grabbed onto him, he ordered the maid to have the gentleman come in.

She leapt away to hide in the next room, shooting a hateful, disdained look at him before she disappeared behind the door.

She fell into the armchair, as if her legs had given out all of sudden. Her blood boiled through her veins and her whole being churned inside, in that desperate abandonment, while hearing through the closed door the words of warm welcome her husband expressed to that man with whom she had betrayed him in her dream the night before. And that man’s voice ... oh God... That man’s hands, his hands...

While her entire body was writhing on the armchair, her clawed fingers squeezing her arms and breasts, she let out a scream and fell to the floor in the throes of a nervous breakdown, a real attack of madness.

The two men rushed into the room. For an instant they were terrified at the sight of her, twisting on the floor like a snake, moaning, howling. Her husband tried to lift her up; his friend rushed over to help him. Would that he had never done it! As her body felt the touch of those hands, unconscious and under the absolute power and lingering memory of her senses, it began to quiver all over, with voluptuous quivering. And in front of her husband’s eyes, she clutched that man, asking him longingly, with horrible urgency, for the frantic caresses in the dream.

Horrified, he ripped her away from his friend’s chest; she screamed, struggled, then rolled over into his nearly lifeless arms, and was put into bed.

The two men looked at each other astounded, not knowing what to think, what to say.

Innocence was so obvious in his friend’s painful astonishment that it was impossible for the husband to suspect him. He asked him to leave the room and told him his wife had been upset, experiencing a strange nervous disorder since that morning. He accompanied him clear to the door and apologized for taking his leave from him because of that painful, sudden incident, then he rushed back to her bedroom.

He found her on the bed. She’d already regained consciousness and was all curled up like a wild beast, her eyes glazed. Her arms and legs were trembling, as if they were cold, and violently jerking, and she gave a start now and then.

As he moved gloomily over her to ask for an explanation of what had happened, she pushed him away with both of her arms; through gritted teeth she hurled the confession of her betrayal in his face with overwhelming sensual pleasure. Huddled up and opening her hands, with a wicked, convulsive smile she said:

“In the dream!... In the dream!...”

And she didn’t spare him any of the details. The kiss on the inside of her lip... the caress on her breast... With the treacherous certainty that although he, like she, felt that betrayal was a reality and as such, irrevocable and irreparable because it was consumed and savored to the very end, he couldn’t ascribe any blame to her for it. Her body—he could beat it, torture it, tear it to shreds—but here you have it, it had belonged to another man in the unconsciousness of the dream. The betrayal didn’t exist as a fact for that other man. But it had happened and remained here, here, for her, in her body that had enjoyed a reality.

Who was to blame? And what could he do to her?