24
" No name. No memory today of yesterday's name; of today's name tomorrow. If the name is the thing, if a name in us is the concept of everything that is situated without us, if without a name there is no concept, and the thing remains blindly indistinct and undefined within us, very well, then, let men take that name which I once bore and engrave it as an epitaph on the brow of that pictured me that they beheld; let them leave it there in peace, and let them not speak of it again. For a name is no more than that, an epitaph. Something befitting the dead. One who has reached a conclusion. I am alive, and I reach no conclusion. Life knows no conclusion. Nor does it know anything of names. This tree, tremulous breathing of new leaves. I am this tree. Tree, cloud; tomorrow, book or breeze; the book I read, the breeze I drink in. Living wholly without, a vagabond "
― Luigi Pirandello , One, No One and One Hundred Thousand
25
" Ah, yes, ah, yes, my dear friend, think it over well: a minute ago, when this thing happened to you, you were a different person; not only that, you were at the same time a hundred others, a hundred-thousand. "
― Luigi Pirandello , One, No One and One Hundred Thousand
31
" La solitudine non è mai con voi; è sempre senza di voi, e soltanto possibile con un estraneo attorno: luogo o persona che sia, che del tutto vi ignorino, che del tutto voi ignoriate, così che la vostra volontà e il vostro sentimento restino sospesi e smarriti in un’incertezza angosciosa e, cessando ogni affermazione di voi, cessi l’intimità stessa della vostra coscienza. La vera solitudine è in un luogo che vive per sé e che per voi non ha traccia né voce, e dove dunque l’estraneo siete voi.
Tempo, spazio: necessità. Sorte, fortuna, casi: trappole91 tutte della vita. Volete essere? C’è questo. In astratto non si è. Bisogna che s’intrappoli l’essere in una forma, e per alcun tempo si finisca in essa, qua o là, così o così. E ogni cosa, finché dura, porta con sé la pena della sua forma, la pena d’esser così e di non poter più essere altrimenti. "
― Luigi Pirandello , One, No One and One Hundred Thousand
34
" ¿Sabéis, en cambio, en qué se apoya todo? Yo os lo diré. En una presunción que Dios ojalá os conserve para siempre. La presunción de que la realidad, tal como es para vosotros, tiene que ser igual para todos los demás.
Vivís dentro de ella; andáis fuera de ella, seguros. La veis, la tocáis; y dentro también, si os apetece, os fumáis un cigarrillo (¿la pipa?, la pipa) y os quedáis mirando dichosos las volutas de humo que poco a poco se desvanecen en el aire. Sin sospechar lo más mínimo que toda la realidad que os rodea no tiene para los demás mayor consistencia que ese humo. "
― Luigi Pirandello , One, No One and One Hundred Thousand
37
" You stand at a window; you gaze upon the world; you believe that it is as it seems to you. You see people passing down there in the street, very small in your vision which, from that high win-. dow where you are standing, is a large one. That largeness is something that you cannot help feeling in yourself; for if a friend should happen to pass just now, down there in the street, and you should recognize him, he would not seem to you, viewed from your altitude, any larger than one of your fingers. Ah, but if it should occur to you to call down to him and say, `Tell me something; how do I look to you, standing up here at this window—?' It does not occur to you, because you do not think of that image which passers-by in the street have, all the while, of that window and of you who stand there gazing out. The thing to do is to make an effort to detach from one's self the conditions which make for the reality of those who pass down below, and who live for a moment in your wide-sweeping vision as tiny transients in a street. The reason you do not make this effort is that you have no inkling of that picture which they form of you and of your window, one among so many, a small one and so very high, and a picture of you as very, very small, standing up there with a diminutive arm waving in the air. "
― Luigi Pirandello , One, No One and One Hundred Thousand
40
" E ne sorrido. Forse, sì, un po' pallido. Ma pure con una voluttà che mi tiene sospese le viscere e mi solletica l'ugola e mi fa inghiottire. Solo che, di tanto in tanto, sento il bisogno d'attaccarmi con gli occhi a qualche cosa, e guardo quasi con indolenza smemorata l'architrave della porta di quella catapecchia, per isolarmi un po' in quella vista, sicuro che a nessuno, in un momento come quello, potrebbe venire in mente d'alzar gli occhi per il piacere d'accertarsi che quello è un malinconico architrave, a cui non importa proprio nulla dei rumori della strada. "
― Luigi Pirandello , One, No One and One Hundred Thousand