b02
PARTISAN REVIEW
merely conceptualized) he accepts his paradoxes as various versions
of a final split in human nature and destiny itself.
In
the same way
Racine, accepting the split between Reason and Passion as final,
thereby transcends it: i.e., transfOlms it into an object of contempla–
tion. Pirandello's version of this tragic contradiction (after the end–
less explorations of modern realism and romanticism) is more general
than Racine's, and his concept of Art is (after modern Idealism)
deeper and wider than Racine's
Raison,
which corresponds to it.
Pirandello's utter darkness of unformed Life (or
elan vital,
or
Wille,
or libido) is perhaps even more savage and
l~<;s
human than Racine's
Passion. Pirandello is not limited, like Racine, to the rigid scene of
the enlightened moral will; he can present characters of various de–
grees of heroism and enlightenment; and, as I have remarked, he
can accept and exploit the comic as well as the tragic aspects of his
basic contradiction. Nevertheless, his tragedy is a limited, an invented,
an
artificial
tragedy, on the same principle as Racine's; and in the
same way it offers to the eye of the mind the eternity of the perfect,
and perfectly-tragic artifact- the human damned in his reaIization–
instead of the transcendence of the Tragic Rhythm, which eschews
the final clarity and leaves the human both real and mysterious.
One may also understand the limitations of Pirandello's theater
by thinking again of its relation to modern realism. I have said that he
"inverts" the
scene
of modern realism, and thus vastly increases the
suggestiveness and the possible scope of the stage itself. But of course
he does not, by this device, provide the chaotic modem world with
a " theater" of action in the ancient sense. One might justly say that
his attitude is more "realistic"- more disillusioned and disbelieving–
than simple-minded positivism itself, for he does not have to believe
in
the photograph of the parlor, and he can accept the actual stage
for the two boards it is. But he is left, like Ibsen and Chekhov, with
neither an artistic convention like the Baroque, nor a stable scene
of human life like the Greek or Elizabethan cosmos; and, like Ibsen
and Chekhov, he has only the
plot
as a means of defining his action.
The inspiration of
Six Characters
is thus not only the view of action
as theatrical, but the plot-device whereby this vision may be realized:
the brilliant notion of making his protagonists unwritten "characters"
and setting them to invade a stage. This plot is so right, so perfect,
that it almost exhausts, and certainly obscures, the deeper insights
