“In the Blissful Unconsciousness of Beasts”
a Posthuman Analysis of Nonhumanity in Luigi Pirandello’s
Novelle per un anno
University of Groningen
Research Master in Literary and Cultural Studies
Santi Luca Famà
Index
1. Introduction ... 1
2. Human and Animal: an Overview of the Existing Debates ... 5
2.1. Animal Minds: a Matter of Accessibility ... 5
2.2. Human. Nonhuman. Posthuman: a Non-Anthropocentric Conceptualization of Life ... 8
2.2.1. Human: from Darwinism to Enactivism ... 8
2.2.2. Nonhuman: Animals Encountering Humans ... 9
2.2.3. Posthuman: Transcending Speciesism ... 11
2.3. Modernist Animal: Animality in Early 20th Century Literature ... 13
2.3.1. Selection of the Case Study: Luigi Pirandello’s Short Stories... 15
3. How to Think Animals: Conceptualizations of Animality in Novelle per un Anno ... 17
3.1. Animal as Victim: Feeling for Nonhumans ... 19
3.1.1. Animal Communication and the (im)Possibility of it ... 23
3.1.2. Human Rules for Nonhuman Animals ... 25
3.1.3. Non-anthropocentric Switch ... 27
3.2 Animality and Freedom ... 29
3.2.1. Corollary: Unconsciousness as Freedom ... 34
3.2.2. An Enmeshed Environment ... 37
4. Animal: Hierarchical Tensions and Equalizing Balances ... 40
4.1. Human-Nonhuman Entanglement: a Matrix ... 42
4.1.1. Corollary: a Different Schema ... 46
4.2. Animal as Insult: Derogatory terms and Animal Hierarchy ... 49
4.2.1. Insult towards Human Animals... 50
4.2.2. Corollary: Insult towards Nonhuman Animals ... 54
4.3. Animal as Human: Interpreting and Transmitting Nonhumanity ... 54
4.3.1. Anthropomorphism: Conveying Nonhumanity in a Non-anthropocentric Manner ... 55
4.3.2. Animal as Explanation: Humancentered Parallels ... 63
5. Human: Embracing Animality ... 67
5.1. Human as Animal: Animalization ... 67
5.1.1. Human as Explanation: Non-humancentered Parallels ... 73
5.2. Specimen vs Nature: Overcoming Speciesism ... 74
5.3. Translating Animals ... 77
5.3.1. Human as Mediator ... 78
6. Conclusion: Where to Go from Here (Next Steps to Be Taken) ... 84
7. Bibliography... 86
1. Introduction
Certo non è facile valersi opportunamente di quelle nozioni che contrastino, ad esempio, con le illusioni dei sensi. Che la terra si muove, ecco, se ne potrebbe valere opportunamente, come di elegante scusa, un ubriaco. Noi, in realtà, non la sentiamo muovere, se non di tanto in tanto, per qualche modesto terremoto. E le montagne, data la nostra statura, così alte le vediamo che – capisco – pensarle piccole grinze della crosta terrestre non è facile. Ma santo Dio, domando e dico perché abbiamo allora studiato tanto da piccoli? Se costantemente ci ricordassimo di ciò che la scienza astronomica ci ha insegnato, l'infimo, quasi incalcolabile posto che il nostro pianeta occupa nell'universo… (IV 88-9)
This is how the second paragraph of “Rimedio: la Geografia” (1920) begins. Two main concepts are foregrounded: a) the relativity of the subject’s perspective and b) the little relevancy that the Earth—with its inhabitants—has in the universe. These two concepts are normally neglected—if not avoided—in most fields, because they showcase humanity’s ultimate irrelevancy in regard to the perpetuation of a potentially never-ending universe. On the contrary, humans tend to prefer depicting themselves as essential and dominant; thus, they have created constructs—like hierarchies between species and between social classes—in an attempt at preserving their alleged centrality. However, in order to achieve such a thing,
Bisognerebbe pur tuttavia pensare che questa grandezza dell'uomo, allora, se mai, è solo a patto d'intendere, di fronte a quell'infinita grandezza dell'universo, la sua infinita piccolezza, e che perciò grande è solo quando si sente piccolissimo, l'uomo, e non mai così piccolo come quando si sente grande. E allora, di nuovo, domando e dico che conforto e che consolazione ci può venire da questa speciosa grandezza, se non debba aver altra conseguenza che quella di saperci qua condannati alla disperazione di veder grandi le cose piccole (tutte le cose nostre, qua, della terra) e piccole le grandi, come sarebbero le stelle del cielo. E non varrà meglio allora per ogni sciagura che ci occorra, per ogni pubblica o privata calamità, guardare in sù e pensare che dalle stelle la terra, signori miei, ma neanche si suppone che ci sia, e che alla fin fine tutto è dunque come niente? (89)
The narrator takes here an unusual stance; simultaneously looking at the human from both outer space and within the skin, he questions the importance of human actions, considering that the Earth—that for humans is enormous—for the universe is infinitesimal, hence most-likely insignificant. If we were to frame this topic as metaphysical, we would not be able to discuss it; indeed, this study will not
attempt at putting an end to ever-lasting metaphysical debates. On the contrary, if we read these excerpts focusing on the relationship humans have with their ecosystem, we might start a fascinating detour from the anthropocentric path we are currently walking in. We will put as a starting point the realization that in front of the greatness that is Nature, all beings are of little importance—namely, that no singular being is indispensable for the preservation of life on Earth—and that in light of this, all earthlings are fundamentally equal. Then, we will go on researching proper narrative methods capable of offering a compliant account of human-nonhuman encounters.
Given this premise, I see as natural the employment of posthumanist theories as theoretical framework, since they conceptualize beings as environmentally based and aim at undermining anthropocentrism through the creation of a system of representation able to showcase nonhuman individual complexity. The corpus on which this theory will be applied on is composed of Italian modernist texts. The production of early 20th-century Italian literature coincided with the country’s
first massive industrialization, a period that brought people—and especially authors—to re-conceptualize their relationship with society, space, time and nature—in short, their ecosystem—and hence, brought them to re-negotiate their perception of life, often pushing towards a more non-anthropocentric direction. I will be taking Luigi Pirandello’s (1867-1936) Novelle per un anno (Short
stories for a year, 1884-1936) as a case study, focusing on two main queries: 1) how humanity and
nonhumanity are conceptualized, and 2) how nonhuman experience is mindfully conveyed to a human audience. The choice of the corpus is justified by Pirandello’s constant and thorough attention to nonhuman characters, and by the innovative and imaginative ways he utilizes to convey nonhuman lived experience to human readers.
This study has two main hypotheses, one being mainly nonhuman, and the other focusing on the human-nonhuman entanglement. Firstly, I argue that for Pirandello being an animal is not perceived as a curse but rather the opposite. Animals are described as lacking consciousness, and— for this reason—they are not able to think; this inability grants them the chance of enjoying the present without worrying about life and death. We will see shortly that being an animal is indeed considered as an immense luck. As for my second hypothesis, I argue that in these short stories Pirandello handles human-nonhuman encounters by representing a case-by-case based negotiation between the human’s stance taken towards the nonhuman—humancentric or non-humancentric—and the human’s degree of familiarity with (or foreignness to) said nonhuman. We will see the resulting combinations of these variables in a matrix—at the beginning of the second portion of the thesis—containing the narrative phenomena of this study and the techniques employed to narrate them.
This thesis is composed of two parts: this structuring allows us to firstly focus on theoretical analysis, and then to move on to studying the combination of pratical methodology representing nonhuman experience vis-à-vis the tensions involved in human-nonhuman encounters.
The first part—namely, chapters 2 and 3—will delve into the theoretical and philosophical ideas of nonhumanity occurring in existing debates, and Pirandello’ agreement or disagreement with such ideas. I will begin with an overview of the theoretical studies on nonhuman animals, starting with the debate on animal accessibility (2.1) and continuing with the examination of the conceptualizations of humanity, nonhumanity and posthumanity (2.2). Then, I will offer an overview of the literary studies on Modernism and the nonhuman, and I will justify the choice of the corpus texts (2.3). The third chapter will have a structure showcasing a broadening of the perspective taken towards the nonhuman: from deeply anthropocentric to ecocentric. Studying the ideas of animality occurring in the corpus texts, we will notice how animals are often perceived as victims, due to their impossibility of communicating (3.1); but we will also witness the freedom that their lack of consciousness affords (3.2).
The second portion of the thesis—chapters 4 and 5—will focus on the narrative techniques Pirandello employs to practically showcase different ideas of humanity and nonhumanity. In this part, I will be blending a qualitative with a quantitative approach, allowing me not only to analyze the conceptualizations and the narrative techniques contained in the 78 short stories of the corpus, but also to visually represent their frequency and hence studying the resulting patterns. At the beginning of the fourth chapter (4.1), we will compose the abovementioned matrix which I will be employing also for structuring the order of succession of the sections of the two remaining chapters. By this, I intend to say that to every box of the matrix will correspond a section of a chapter; chapter 4 will delve into the heterogeneous unfolding of the nonhuman animal in the texts—being the phenomena contained in the first half of the matrix; while chapter 5 will examine the way humanity is presented and how the entanglement of the human specimen with the ecosystem concurs in formulating a critical approach towards nonhuman encounters—corrisponding to the second half of the matrix.
The configuration of the second part of the thesis is justified by the will of following the natural evolution of a human-nonhuman encounter. Firstly, the human—taking on a humancentric stance—feels the nonhuman as foreign, hence creating hierarchical structures represented by the usage of animal names as insults (4.2). Secondly, the human gets physically and mentally closer to the nonhuman and starts trying to understand him/her, bringing about phenomena like the humanization of the animal and the employment of parallels clarifying human situations through the nonhuman (4.3). In the following step, the human-nonhuman encounter starts effecting the human.
The human begins reflecting on his/her own nature and recognizing the belonging to the same animal kingdom as the nonhuman. In the narratives, this point is represented by a process of animalization of the human characters and by the use of parallels—as we have previously seen—but for the opposite purpose, being for clarifying nonhuman circumstances (5.1). Lastly, the human realizing his/her own entanglements with Nature starts putting into question the constructs humans have created throughout history in favor of a more general critical approach to life; this evolution corresponds in the corpus texts to a ‘zooming-out movement’ allowing humans to see themselves from outer space (5.2). Another final narrative technique is tackled in this study, one that eludes the flow of the matrix for employing a liminal character—the mediator—affording an experential translation from nonhuman to human through a mediating work of nonhuman representation (5.3).
Concluded the analysis of the narrative techniques utilized in the texts of the corpus, I will finally draw the conclusion of this study and lure out the possibilities for future research.
2. Human and Animal: an Overview of the Existing Debates
Contrarily to general belief, it is Descartes—and not Darwin—the thinker who has subtly affected people’s conceptualization of nonhuman animals in the most radical and incisive manner. Drawing from the Aristotelian tradition, Descartes defined nonhuman animals as machines, thus lacking both consciousness and mind. According to the philosopher and mathematician, this deficiency is all tied to the necessity of speaking or articulating thoughts in a language; as also Locke agreed, he claims that words are necessary to understand universal concepts.
The underline theme running through the Aristotelian and then Cartesian tradition is a strong and stable anthropocentric viewpoint; made even stronger by a way of reasoning which consists in highlighting the differences between groups of living beings instead of the similarities, and then using such diversity as rationale for the creation of a hierarchy having humans on the top spot. Indeed, if one takes on a non-anthropocentric position and tries not to focus on the human way of dealing with the ecosystem, Descartes’ vision of nonhuman animals as machines starts resulting rather unreasonable. Among living creatures, it is possible to witness some characteristics belonging to one particular species (e.g. the ability to fly for birds) and others being transspecies—meaning that are shared by more than one species (e.g. feeling pain). This study stands with the tradition—that we will analyze shortly—aiming to comprehend the nonhuman starting from a categorization that cuts across kinds and so that does not attempt at defining nonhuman animals from what is inherently human (e.g. language). Consequently, I will turn towards a non-anthropocentric conceptualization of life, which pushes the human back as one among many species, and that studies human and nonhuman entanglements as creaturely events. In this chapter, it will be firstly clarified which position will be taken in the existing debate on animal minds. Secondly, we will analyze the evolution of the conceptualization of humanity during history; after that, we will move on to the conceptualizations of animality; then, we will see how to overcome the need of such notions, fighting speciesism and going toward a posthuman conception of life. The third section will offer an overview of the studies on nonhumanity in modernist texts, followed by a close up on the methodology applied in selecting the texts composing the corpus of this study.
2.1. Animal Minds: a Matter of Accessibility
To put it simply, we could say to have two main understandings of animal minds: on the one hand, there are scholars who believe animal minds to be radically inaccessible, and on the other hand, there are scholars who conceive animal minds exactly as human ones and hence claim them to be
accessible. Belonging to the first group is Nagel, who in his influential article “What is it like to be a bat?” (1974) excluded starkly any possibility for humans to experience even partially an animal’s phenomenological world. According to him, the resources of the human mind are tied and restrained by the capacities of the body. This implies that since the body is human, we simply are not equipped to feel what a bat would feel. Following Nagel’s point, humans can only hypothesize on what being a bat for a bat would entail, and anyway those hypotheses would still be human projections. In his paper, the philosopher foregrounds the subjectivity of the animal’s experience, being something that it-is-like-to-be a specific organism. But this stress on the subjectivity makes phenomenological understanding fundamentally impossible. Nagel claims "the reason [to be] that every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view” (437). Hence, pushing the boundaries of Nagel’s position, we might claim that experiencing any other being’s lived world is beyond the bounds of possibility and that we are ultimately alien to each other in all spatial and temporal contexts. Just like for animals, it is not feasible for humans to experience other humans’ phenomenological worlds, since—even though with a different degree of difficulty—all humans have subjective and unique elements of their life which make it impossible to understand wholly another person’s experience. However, I want to point out that in his article, Nagel mentions that his example-species—bats—"feel some versions of pain, fear, hunger, and lust, and that they have other, more familiar types of perceptions besides sonar” (439). All these characteristics are closer to our kind and are thus easier to experience if we were to attempt at taking the bat’s viewpoint. If one decides to go beyond the relevance of the subjective experience, these shared elements can be extremely useful in transspecies understandings. But then again one could argue against my point asking—as Nagel does—"after all, what would be left of what it was like to be a bat if one removed the viewpoint of the bat?” (443). But what I argue is that what Nagel is dealing with is not the viewpoint of the bat but the viewpoint of a bat. The subjective experience the philosopher refers to is singular and unique for every specimen, independently from the species it belongs to. If we want to reason in such a drastic manner, experiencing any other beings’ phenomenological worlds in their entirety—humans included—is not possible; some things are not even partially describable or conveyable. Nevertheless, I believe that using such a radical approach is not productive for the debate in Animal Studies. If the aim is to overcome the human-nonhuman divide, we need to find productive and stimulating ways to approach such a delicate and intricate topic. Maybe taking into major account the characteristics shared by more than one species, they might lead towards more fruitful results.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Dennet (1991) stands for an objective conceptualization of animal minds. He asserts that there is not much difference in accessing human and nonhuman
minds; hence, that there is no fundamental distinction between human-human interactions and human-nonhuman ones, since animals’ behavior already “provides a clear basis for describing their heterophenomenological world” (446). Indeed, Dennet’s intention is to undermine and dispute the utility of the subjective element of experience. Following his point, nonhuman experiences are as accessible from a third-person-experience as human ones. However—as Herman (2018) notices—he does not take into account the risk of “a flattening out of qualitative differences in how differently structured beings might encounter the world” (215); such differences are the constituting points of Uexküll’s concept of “umwelt”. Using his own words, “all that a subject perceives becomes his
perceptual world and all that he does, his effector world. Perceptual and effector worlds together form
a closed unit, the Umwelt” (1934, 320, emphasis in the original). An umwelt is basically the subject’s experiential world. Excluding the specificity of the subject, Dennet erases the individual’s “umwelt”, hence flattening all different experiential worlds into a single one. Gallagher and Hutto (2008) and Herman (2018) critique Dennett’s approach—or as they call it “the intentional stance”—because Dennet posits it as a default mechanism put at work in every inter-relational encounter. Conversely, Gallagher and Hutto affirm that “the intentional stance” is a particular interpretative strategy used only when required, hence not an ordinary tool. As Herman explains,
From this perspective, when I interact with another person I will resort to the intentional stance only when the default, embodied, pre- or nonconceptual modes of sense making […] do not suffice to make clear exactly what someone is doing or why he or she may be doing that. (2018, 215)
Furthermore, they question Dennet’s approach also because of a residual presence of Cartesian dualism, even though in his intentions he aims at overcoming it. However, this is not why I find important to mention his work here1.
Against this background, it can be argued that trying to eliminate completely the subjectivity from the notion of experience is not a fruitful and productive way to convey nonhuman lives, nor it is undermining the objectivity of such experiences. I prefer to take Herman’s side and standing for a negotiating position between
the Scylla of the radical inaccessibility of nonhuman minds and the Charybdis of experiential homogenization or flattening” and argue “that mind-ascribing acts […] always unfold within particular arenas of practice, or discourse domains. Such domains […] determine when, to what
extent, and in what manner it is appropriate and warranted to impute subjective experiences to others, nonhuman as well as human. (2018, 212-3)
Now that we know clearly where this study stands in the debate on animal mind, we can start examining human and nonhuman entanglement, its conceptualizations throughout history and how it will be treated in this paper.
2.2. Human. Nonhuman. Posthuman: a Non-Anthropocentric Conceptualization of
Life
2.2.1. Human: from Darwinism to Enactivism
Darwin’s The Origins of Species (1859) pushed Western culture to reconsider the most elementary traits of human identity and the relations between humans and nonhumans. The retracing of humankind to an animal state was felt as a destabilizing menace, as if humans were suddenly on the verge of losing their power on their environment. Particularly, the concept of humans being animals put 19th-century intellectuals into an alarmed state of conflict in philosophical, political and
scientific discussions (Bowler 1990). Nevertheless, even though Darwin mentions that humans are “nothing more than highly developed animals and sought to explain our social behavior in biological terms” (179)—according to Bowler— “people found that they could reconcile themselves to the prospect of an animal ancestry provided that the evolutionary process was seen as a force driving nature towards a morally significant goal” (180). In other words, they preserved human privilege through humanism and morality. In this, Darwin’s opaque definition of ‘species’ surely helped:
Certainly, no clear line of demarcation has as yet been drawn between species and sub-species— that is, the forms which in the opinion of some naturalists come very near to, but do not quite arrive at the rank of species; or, again, between sub-species and well-marked varieties, or between lesser varieties and individual differences. These differences blend into each other in an insensible series; and a series impresses the mind with the idea of an actual passage. (107)
In it, many read the presence of a hierarchy which preserved humans on top. Not minding that in the third chapter of the same book Darwin dismantles the affective and cognitive uniqueness of humankind, people preferred to see a picture they could get more easily acquainted with, without much discomfort. Luckily, although Freudian psychoanalysis was also strongly tied to both Victorian humanism—trying to code the human as psychically nonanimal and storing all its animal traits in the unconscious—and Modernist literature and critique—claiming to have given more space to the
character’s thoughts, Victorian and—even more so—Modernist literature did not ascribe to such predicaments, revealing that this position of human privilege could not be preserved. In Freudian critique, there is a fundamental refusal of going beyond the Oedipal rubric, causing the exclusion of animality from the human but also the strengthening of the Cartesian division between the ‘in here’ and the ‘out there’, between the mind and the environment. This account cannot be used in this paper, since Freud still offers a humancentered analysis of history (Ryan 2015) hence leaving out too many elements fundamental for this study. If one understands that “the specter of the animal profoundly threatens the sovereignty of the Western subject of consciousness in modernist literature” (Rohman 2009b, 12), it becomes clear that our understanding of said literature would be incomplete without taking the nonhuman into account. For this reason, building on Herman’s 2018, I turn towards an enactivist2 approach to Modernism, which entails “that minds are inextricably embedded in contexts for action and interaction, and in fact arise from the interplay between intelligent agents and the worlds they inhabit.” (Herman 2011b, 161). In other words, the aim is to foreground the double-coupling between characters and their fictional environment, showing that characters’ minds shape the environment they are in but are at the same time shaped by it. Later in this paper, I will further develop on this topic. Departing from this point, I will now proceed in examining the notions of nonhumanity and of human-nonhuman relation that the theoretical debates have produced in the last century.
2.2.2. Nonhuman: Animals Encountering Humans
An interesting categorization of human-animal relationships is offered by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus (1980). They make a distinction between three different types of human-animal interaction, naming them depending on the role the animal assumes. We read about: 1) The ‘Oedipal animals’, that are the ones normally called pets, they are loved and perceived as small humans. The naming refers to “the only kind of animal psychoanalysis understands, the better to discover a daddy, a mommy, a little brother behind them” (262). 2) The ‘State animals’ are the ones included in myths and tales in a way to extract from them ‘series or structures’ and ‘archetypes or models’. Both of categorizations 1 and 2 are despised by the authors since they are not representations of animals but are simply stand-ins for either human characters or human features. 3) Finally, the ‘pack’ or ‘affect animals’ are the ones that “form a multiplicity, a becoming, a population, a tale” (263), meaning that we encounter these animals when the animality of the human is accepted and the human tends toward ‘becoming-animal’ (Ryan 2015). When the authors say ‘pack’, they do not mean
the actual group of animals, but instead they aim to highlight the multiplicity inherent in every single being. Indeed, they write: “Yes, any animal is or can be a pack, but to varying degrees of vocation that make it easier or harder to discover the multiplicity, or multiplicity-grade, an animal contains (actually or virtually according to the case)” (263). Then they also add that “schools, bands, herds, populations are not inferior social forms; they are affects and powers, involutions that grip every animal in a becoming just as powerful as that of the human being with the animal”, foreshadowing the later statement denying the existence of an animal hierarchy.
It is therefore absurd to establish a hierarchy even of animal collectivities from the standpoint of a whimsical evolutionism according to which packs are lower on the scale and are superseded by State or familial societies. On the contrary, there is a difference in nature. The origin of packs is entirely different from that of families and States; they continually work them from within and trouble them from without, with other forms of content, other forms of expression. The pack is simultaneously an animal reality, and the reality of the becoming-animal of the human being. (264)
The philosophy they want to showcase is the one of heterogeneity, focusing on functions and affects rather than on traits and characteristics. It is a philosophy of ‘becoming’, being “certainly not imitating, or identifying with something; neither is it regressing-progressing; neither is it corresponding, […] neither is it producing, producing a filiation or producing through filiation”. (261) Conversely, “it concerns alliance. If evolution includes any veritable becomings, it is in the domain of symbioses that bring into play beings of totally different scales and kingdoms, with no possible filiation” (260). In other words, becoming-animal does not entail identifying with or imitating an animal in its comportments and forms, instead it aims at a reconceptualization of our concrete reality asking ourselves “but which reality is at issue here?” (260):
For if becoming animal does not consist in playing animal or imitating an animal, it is clear that the human being does not "really" become an animal any more than the animal "really" becomes something else. Becoming produces nothing other than itself. […] What is real is the becoming itself, the block of becoming, not the supposedly fixed terms through which that which becomes passes. Becoming can and should be qualified as becoming-animal even in the absence of a term that would be the animal become. (260)
Deleuze and Guattari intend to uproot the ontological categorization humans are used to, destabilizing at the same time the notion of fixed subjectivities. Therefore, their account of animality of both human and animal is truly non-anthropocentric, in a way that fundamentally denies any kind of speciesism.
Denying speciesism entails intersubjective interactions that focus on shared characteristics of body and mind, which in turn allow beings to conceive each other’s existence and living. Such a categorization is extremely fitting to Pirandello’s short stories, since as readers we assist at a frequent blending of human and nonhuman categories, which—in a further step—brings to the questioning all human constructs. For instance, pain and suffering are feelings that both humans and nonhumans are able to experience, therefore they are by definition transspecies characteristics, which concede the understanding of any kind of being’s unpleasant condition. In a note in his 1789 book, Bentham makes a statement comparable to a plea to animal rights, saying that “it may come one day to be recognized, that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate”. Then, he goes on asking why a human should be highly considered vis-a-vis animals:
Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? (311, footnote 1)
His last questions are the heart of his reasoning—and also the most quoted passage of his—laying down the basis for a dispute on species equality. Pushing the limits a bit further, Lyotard (1983) affirms that “some [people] feel more grief over damages inflicted upon an animal than over those inflicted upon a human” (28), such a phenomenon is due to animals’ impossibility of “bearing witness according to the human rules for establishing damages, and as a consequence, every damage is like a wrong and turns it into a victim ipso facto” (28). That is why he claims the animal to be “a paradigm of the victim” (28). Both authors try to challenge their known notion of animality, but a substantial layer of anthropocentrism is still present. For a disruption of the boundaries between species—as hinted in Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy—we need to go beyond both the human and the nonhuman and encounter the posthuman.
2.2.3. Posthuman: Transcending Speciesism
In her 2013 book The Posthuman, Rosi Braidotti gave a programmatic account of the posthuman theory, conceiving it as a tool to help humans reframe the ‘basic unit of reference’ in the “Anthropocene”, the historical period during which humans have become a “geological force” able to affect the whole ecosystem (5). Hence, Posthumanism arises from an urgency of putting an end to human arrogance and exceptionalism, but it is also an opportunity “to empower the pursuit of alternative schemes of thought, knowledge and self-representation” (11). The posthumanist
conceptualization of life consists in an interactive open-ended process, where beings are environmentally based, “that is to say embodied, embedded and in symbiosis with other species” (67). This view overcomes speciesism in a way that rejects anthropomorphism even for the purpose of extending moral and legal equality to animals, because it strengthens the human-animal dichotomy and it flattens the specificity of different animals. Literary speaking, the goal is to create a system of representation able to portray the individual complexity of nonhuman animals and their ‘proximity’ to humans. “Animals are no longer the signifying system that props up the humans’ self-projections and moral aspirations. They need to be approached in a neo-literal mode, as a code system or a ‘zoontology’ of their own” [70 = citing Wolfe 2003]. Braidotti believes a post-anthropocentric shift to happen only with a repositioning on the part of the subject, being an estrangement through the method of defamiliarization. In order to obtain a critical distance from the ‘dominant vision’, she suggests using Spinoza’s monism as method for defamiliarization, since “it implies the open-ended, inter-relational, multi-sexed and trans-species flows of becoming through interaction with multiple others” (89). Indeed, we can consider Spinoza as a philosophical nemesis of Descartes, since he
Posits the equality of all forms of being, and the univocity of reality which follows from this equality. The philosophy of immanence appears from all vewpoints as the theory of unitary Being, equal Being, common and univocal Being. (Deleuze 1970, 167)
As it is easy to comprehend, this is a rather distant concept from the aforementioned Cartesian depiction of the animal as machine. In a posthumanist utopia, we would see beings having same legal and moral rights and predicaments, with no distinctions of any sort; and we would have a proper and respectful method of representation for each being, portraying the interconnectedness of each being with the environment. Obviously, we will not find this utopia in a 20th-century short story; nevertheless, we will read of attempts towards that direction, still presenting the human-nonhuman dichotomy with the intention of putting it into question and employing techniques as (non-anthropocentric) anthropomorphism to convey nonhuman experience in human-understandable terms. As a consequence, even thought this thesis aims to be a posthuman analysis of Novelle per un
anno, it will make use of these humancentric categorizations, since they are present in the texts, even
if only to dismantle them.
Now that we have a clearer idea of the existing debates and on the path this study walks in, we can turn towards an overview of the literary studies made on Modernism and nonhumanity, the two main focuses of this research.
2.3. Modernist Animal: Animality in Early 20
thCentury Literature
It is at the beginning of the 20th century that finding animals as proper characters started to be a more common phenomenon. I say ‘proper’ because in the history of literature there have been many examples of animal characters—starting with Aesop and Phaedrus—but they were simple stand-ins for humans, there was not an actual interest in animal life. Conversely, from the 1900s authors became more involved in expressing lived experiences without limiting them to the human species; and, in some cases, animals were not only active characters of the story, but also narrators of it.
Strikingly, scholars have been researching on this posthuman component of modernist texts only since the last decade. In these years, they have been able to produce a substantial number of studies on British literature (cf. Wallace 2005, Rohman 2009a, Alt 2010, Scott 2012), while neglecting non-Anglophone modernist works. A lack particularly noteworthy, since many early 20th century Italian and Iberic authors share the same intentions and (sometimes) narrative techniques with their British counterparts. Obviously, there are some exceptions to this shortage of studies but—for clear reasons—I will be focusing here only on the ones about Italian literature. Among them there are Amberson 2014 and Benvegnù 2016, both dealing with violence and the concept of the animal as victim in Federigo Tozzi’s work; and Driscoll 2017 and Godioli, Jansen and Van den Bergh 2019 on Luigi Pirandello, that we will examine in a moment. Nonetheless, other modernist authors—such as Carlo Emilio Gadda or Italo Svevo—have not been properly studied from a posthumanist perspective, even though their texts are products of a post-anthropocentric way of narrating life. For this reason, I believe a further study to be needed.
As abovementioned, Italian modernists often share their stylistic strategies with the British ones. A good case in point to individuate such techniques is Ryan’s essay on non-anthropocentric
anthropomorphism (2015), where he focuses on “The death of the moth” (1942) by Virginia Woolf
(1882-1941) and “Snake” (1920-1921) by David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930). These texts show the author’s intention to switch the focalization from human to animal, depicting life from the point of view of—respectively—a moth and a snake. According to Ryan, the method they opt for consists in narrating animal experiences with human terminology and comparing them with human events. They do so by adopting the connective “as if” before attributing a human activity or sentiment to an animal. As we see in the following examples, the snake seems to be endowed of the capability of dreaming, and the moth appears to be made of fibers of pure energy; humanization is here employed only to narrate the animal character’s experience from its own viewpoint.
“It seemed as if a fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body.” (V. Woolf, “The death of the moth”, p. 10 emphasis added)
Ryan defined this type of humanization as non-anthropocentric anthropomorphism or ‘as if’
anthropomorphism, suggesting authors’ use of humanization in an attempt at finding a concept of
life, which is not centered on human experience (294).
Later on (section 4.3), I will delve into one of Pirandello’s way of portraying nonhuman life that—as we will see—recalls what Ryan wrote about Woolf and Lawrence. For now, suffice it to say that Pirandello has written a copious number of short stories that fall in the category of non-anthropocentric narrative. Amidst the few studies on animals in Pirandello, Franco Zangrilli is the only scholar who did it systematically using the (almost) entirety of Pirandello’s work. However, even though his Bestiario di Pirandello (2001) is a monumental attempt at giving a full overview of animals in Pirandello, it lacks critical reflection, limiting itself to a catalogue of animal occurrences. Therefore, it surely cannot be defined as posthuman; nevertheless, it can be useful to further research—as it did for this thesis. On the contrary, the aforementioned studies by Driscoll and Godioli et al. focus on selected works but analyze them thoroughly both diachronically and synchronically in view of Posthumanism. In his study, Driscoll (2017) examines the figure of the tiger in Pirandello’s
Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore (1916)3 comparing it to the one from Jorge Luis Borges’
poem “The Other Tiger” (1999); he studies the animal ontologically, analyzing the difficulty of framing an animal due to the tension between what the animal is and what the animal means (287). Furthermore, he shows how Pirandello tends to depict the tiger as real, raw and full of élan vital and reality as questionable, something constantly uncertain. In addition to this, he uses the animal’s cage as a symbolic element which separates nature (the tiger) from culture (humans). Godioli, Jansen and Van den Bergh’s article (2019) shows the different shapes that Pirandello’s posthumanism can take: a radical awareness of humankind’s “enmeshment” with nature, partly in the wake of Balzac—whose influence is extensively analyzed in the article; or what Godioli et al. call “cosmic irony” which consists, for instance, in “an absolute detachment from all things human, in compliance with the “filosofia del lontano” (philosophy of distance) underpinning [Pirandello’s] notion of “umorismo” (humor)”. This combination of elements puts anthropocentrism into question. Moreover, the article explores how Pirandello uses the “thresholds of the text” (foreword and epilogue): turning them into the active agents of the detachment. According to the authors of the article, this process is extremely visible in some texts of the collection which is also analyzed in this thesis, Novelle per un anno (Short
3 Originally published in 1916 with the title “Si Gira” and then revised and republished with the title “Quaderni di Serafino
stories for a year); these stories are often characterized by a cosmic detachment from the human
events narrated in the story. Godioli et al. 2019 aims to set the basis for a broader systematic analysis of early twentieth-century Italian literature from a posthumanist standpoint.
Indeed, it is in my intention to engage here with Pirandello’s animal narratives in Novelle per
un Anno in the light of Posthumanism and Animal Studies in a broader sense. But my aim is to go
beyond a new reading of Pirandello: I want to study 1) the way animality is narrated, 2) the methods employed to present humanity and its relationship with nonhumanity, 3) which conceptualization of animality is showcased and conveyed, and 4) how the narration allows a human reader to grasp an animal character’s experience. I will do so organically, meaning that I will use a broad corpus of texts, permitting me to foreground a general authorial and stylistic behavior.
2.3.1. Selection of the Case Study: Luigi Pirandello’s Short Stories
To create a corpus-study, I have made a selection among the many texts of Novelle per un
Anno employing data from primary and secondary sources. I have made great use of the
aforementioned Bestiario di Pirandello, which turned out to be really useful in finding out which short stories contain animals thanks to its ‘flaw’ of being a rather acritical catalogue of animal occurrences. After having made a provisional list, I filtered out the texts in which animals are simply mentioned or, if present, have not even a secondary role in the storyline. After this further selection, I have added to the corpus other six short stories4 that Zangrilli did not include in his study, but that
I believe to be important and fitting to this research, since not only they contain animals as characters, but they are also particularly rich in techniques attempting at overcoming anthropocentrism. At this point, I have obtained a corpus of 78 short stories, covering a timespan going from 1894 to 1936 (even though the majority has been written between 1900 and 1916, which roughly coincides with the periodization Luperini (1999) made of Pirandello’s work and defined as properly modernist).
Once identified the corpus, I proceeded to close-reading the texts highlighting animal occurrences and noting on the way animality is stylistically conveyed—for instance, the adoption of anthropomorphism or human-animal parallels. I also took notes on the way humanity is portrayed in relation to animality—for example, the usage of animalization or animal-human juxtapositions. Thanks to this data, I was able to look for patterns and draw a more comprehensive stylistic scheme.
4 The six short stories added are: “La mosca”, “Formalità”, “La casa del Granella”, “Pari”, “La liberazione del re”, “I
Now that a general framework for this study has been offered and the choice of the corpus texts has been justified, I can move on to the third chapter, where we will be examining the conceptualizations of nonhumanity contained in Novelle per un anno. Pirandello’s understandings of animality flow around two notions: 1) the idea of the animal as the victim par excellence, and 2) the portrayal of animality as freedom. In 3.1, will deal with the mismatch happening in human-animal communication; the application of human regulations on animals; and Pirandello’s attempt at presenting a non-anthropocentric perspective on the subject. The second section of the chapter will instead examine why being a nonhuman should not be described as a disadvantage, since the lack of consciousness is depicted by Pirandello as producing a major sense of freedom; in the last section of the chapter, we will conclude with an examination of the human entanglements with the ecosystem. It has been decided to structure the chapter in such a way to showcase a (Pirandellian) ‘zooming-out movement’—that we will encounter again in 5.2—affording readers to perceive a slow broadening of the perspective taken on nonhumanity, starting from the animal who is a victim only for humans, and concluding with visualizing all beings from the all-around perspective of the ecosystem. With the third chapter, will conclude the first portion of the thesis, regarding nonhumanity from an exclusively theretical point of view; after, we will hybridate our discussion with more pratical analyses of narrative techniques.
3. How to Think Animals: Conceptualizations of Animality in Novelle per
un Anno
Conceiving nonhuman animals as human ones is surely not the most effective approach to overcome the human-nonhuman divide. By definition, nonhumans are not-humans and hence fall into a separate category. But what happens when we try to understand nonhuman experience? What do we do to put ourselves into the animal’s metaphorical shoes? To relate to someone else, we usually try to find engaging elements that allow us to see ourselves in the other. In the case of the animal, we look for what we perceive as sensory-motor processes and we attempt at filling the meaning gap through human projection. We may call an animal phenomenon with a human name and see in animal actions something that is not actually there. Nevertheless, the attempt might have some truth to it, in the sense that it recognizes that certain abilities are not reserved only to humans and that it is possible to recognize them. On the other hand, if on the emotional side human projection can mainly do good, on the logical one can be rather harmful. Applying human reasoning to nonhumans, we do not consider the specificity of the species, a nonhuman specimen might express its needs in a variety of ways foreign to us. In “Il Signore della Nave” (1916), a man believes his pig to be intelligent almost as a human. The intradiegetic narrator tries to convince mister Lavaccara that such a thing is not possible since if the pig was intelligent as a human, it would have been thin in order not to get eaten, and Lavaccara’s pig is really fat. Against this argument, Lavaccara—talking to other people—affirms
che non avrebbe senso quel mio discorso riferito a una bestia la quale anch'essa crede di mangiare per sé e non può sapere che gli altri la facciano ingrassare per conto loro; e se un porco è nato porco che può farci? per forza come un porco deve mangiare, e dire che non dovrebbe e dovrebbe rifiutare il pasto per farsi mangiar magro è una sciocchezza, perché un tal proposito a un porco non può mai venire in mente. (V 293)
What Lavaccara might be hinting at here is a lower-degree animal intelligence but instead he frames his pig’s intelligence as human, therefore the narrator reminds him that such an ability is indeed exclusively human. We are the ones allowed to get fat, knowing that at the end we will not be butchered. This theme of the pig not being intelligent because of his eating is anticipated in “Pallino e Mimì” (1905), where the butcher Fanfulla Mochi asks to his dog
Se fossi porco, Bistecchino, mangeresti tu? Io no. Il porco crede di mangiare per sé e ingrassa per gli altri. Non è punto bella la sorte del porco. Ah — io direi — m'allevate per questo? Ringrazio, signori. Mangiatemi magro. (III 210, emphasis in the original)
In both short stories is foregrounded that the pig’s stupidity morally allows humans to kill him, due to his perceived hierarchical inferiority (see 4.2). Indeed, the narrator defends his position by saying
che i porci grassi non possono essere intelligenti, perché se questi porci parlano tra sé come il signor Lavaccara pretende e va dicendo, non essi, ma la dignità umana appunto sarebbe scannata in questa festa del Signore della Nave. (V 294)
It is “human dignity that would be butchered” because if we attribute human reasoning to animals, we have no other choice than recognizing that killing a nonhuman animal is no different from killing a human. Human dignity as a whole would crumble under the burden of genocide. Then, the author continues defending his ideas by judging the way pigs look and despising them for lacking morality, which is one of the contruct that defines us as humans. He also reifies the pig asking
Ma scusate, e se non se lo dovesse mangiare, che obbligo avrebbe l'uomo d'allevare il porco con tanta cura, fargli da servo, lui carne battezzata, condurselo al pascolo, perché? che servizio gli tende in compenso del cibo che n'ha? (V 295)
As it is easy to understand, this is a very humancentered question, highlighting the difference between the two species, and using the triggering juxtaposition slave-‘baptized flesh’ (meaning human). But he also adds
Nessuno vorrà negare che il porco, finché campa, campa bene. Considerando la vita che ha fatto, se poi è scannato se ne deve contentare, perché certo per sé, come porco, non se la meritava. (V 295)
According to this man, pigs have no other function than being humankind’s nourishment. They do not deserve to exist if not in the shape of edible pork. There is no point in taking care of them if not for this purpose. Indeed, in “Chi la paga” (1912), the general reaction to Trisuzza Tumminìa treating her sow with tremendous care and without the intention of butchering her is a sense of injustice. People cannot wrap their heads around the “sviscerato amore” the woman has for what we can call her pet-sow. In fact, they felt the need to bring back what they perceived as the right order of things, and not only killed but butchered the sow and served her liver to Trisuzza.
Something the narrator of “Il Signore della Nave” admits as also belonging to pigs is pain. The screams he hears “non erano però grida giulive, di festa, ma grida strappate dalla violenza di un ferocissimo dolore” (297), and he even includes an ironic “oh sensibilità umana!” followed by the ascending climax describing how pigs were dealt with: “in mezzo alla folla, erano macellati, sparati, scorticati, squartati”. In the short story, the narrator makes a parallel between the sacrifice of Christ
and the one of the many pigs killed for the festivity of ‘il Signore della nave’. In a way, here he critics humans’ hypocritical behavior: they slaughter and butcher pigs, they eat as much as pigs, and then they cry immensely with heartfelt sorrow for Christ’s immolation. At this point, the narrator suddenly focalizes the narration on two pigs looking at the crying humans; one of them reacts by saying to the other: “Ecco, fratello, vedi? e poi dicono che i porci siamo noi” (298). The narrator’s final thought about the hypocritical happenings makes clear his early pinning of pigs’ life as “fortunata” compared to humans’:
Voi, o porci, la passate grassa e in pace la vostra vita, finché vi dura. Guardate a questa degli uomini adesso! Si sono imbestiati, si sono ubriacati, ed eccoli qua che piangono ora inconsolabilmente, dietro a questo loro Cristo sanguinante su la croce nera! eccoli qua che piangono il porco che si sono mangiato! E volete una tragedia piú tragedia di questa? (299)
As we have anticipated through these short stories5, in the following section, we will examine the different conceptualizations of animality and the linked ethical animal rights. We will start analyzing some of Pirandello’s dog-characters portrayed as victim; we will continue with the study of the animal as communicator (3.1.1); then, we will move on to examining some first steps towards animal rights (3.1.2); and finally, we will focus on a more general non-anthropocentric switch present in some corpus texts (3.1.3).
3.1. Animal as Victim: Feeling for Nonhumans
While making a comparison between dogs and other animals, Pirandello affirms that dogs’ eyes are “umani, che chiedono scusa o pietà, che sanno anche fingere” (“Fortuna d’esser cavallo” 1935, VI 310), hence endowing them with an expressive ability normally perceived as inherently human. The interest in animal faces—or facial traits, like in this case—and in their capabilities of expression has produced an intense debate, fueled by thinkers as Levinas, Derrida, Bataille and Waldenfels. Derrida in particular has been focusing on the ‘gaze of the animal’ (2002). Accordind to his theory, the animal gaze is “vacant to the extent of being bottomless, at the same time innocent and cruel perhaps, perhaps sensitive and impassive, good and bad, uninterpretable, unreadable, undecidable, abyssal and secret” (381). Thus, he foregrounds the difficulty (if not impossibility) of deciphering the animal face.
Having this framework in mind, we can read the previous quotation about dogs’ eyes in the context it belongs to. In it, we read that
Un cavallo è un cavallo: […] e poi con quegli occhi, con quel bianco che a volte si scopre feroce e insanguato; occhi cosí tutti specchianti, con un brio di guizzi e certi baleni, che nessuno comprende, d'una vita sempre in ansia, che può adombrarsi di nulla.
Non è per ingiustizia. Ma non sono gli occhi d'un cane, umani, che chiedono scusa o pietà, che
sanno anche fingere, con certi sguardi a cui la nostra ipocrisia non ha piú nulla da insegnare.
Gli occhi d'un cavallo, ci vedi tutto, ma non ci puoi legger nulla. (310, emphasis added)
Juxtaposition the dog and the horse, the narrator delivers a stronger representation of the horse’s otherness. Especially the last sentence of the quotation accurately summarizes Bataille’s position; who writes that the animal "opens before me a depth that attracts me and is familiar to me" but simultaneously "is unfathomable to me” (1992, 22). In other words, he perceives a tension between attraction—due to a sense of closeness—and unexplorability—due to a felt distance between species. This divide does not seem to be bridgeable employing human devices (like language) (Driscoll 2017, 290). However, I would avoid throwing the baby with the bathwater, and decide not to surrender to the transspecies devide. By this I mean that we should attempt at circumventing the human-animal gap, using the knowledge and the abilities we possess, and taking with great effort on a position as non-anthropocentric as possible. Obviously, the tension will not disappear, and the possibility of misinterpreting animal expressions will persist. Nevertheless, since the events we mentally simulate in response to reading a story might contribute to impact our feelings, behaviors, and attitudes after the end of the engagement (Mar 2011), the act ofborrowing someone else’s standpoint might produce interesting effects, potentially making this perceived interspecies distance a bit shorter.
Keeping what just said in mind, we shall go on to the analysis of the figure of the ‘human’ dog6. The choice of analyzing the dog first, instead of the mentioned horse—which will be examined
in 3.2—is motivated by 1) the structuring of the chapter, going from a more anthropocentric representation of animals to an ecocentric conception of life; and 2) the better fit of Pirandello’s dog characters as ‘communicator’ and all-around ‘victim’. Furthermore, we might say that dogs have a particular position in Western culture; we tend to read their behaviors as we do with children, trying to fill in the gaps caused by the lack of human-like communication through an exaggerated version of mind-reading—which “is a term used by cognitive psychologists to describe our ability to explain people's behavior in terms of their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and desires” (Zunshine 2003, 271). Indeed, in the short stories I am about to analyze, the canine characters have some behavioral features
comparable to small children’s’ attitudes. They are kind, terribly loyal to their owners (‘loyalty’ even appears in a short story’s title) and are never unnecessarily vicious to others.
In “La vendetta del cane” (1913), a dog is used as a protesting device by its owner. Jaco Naca had been wronged by a man who asked to buy his land for a little price, omitting his plan to build a new luxurious living complex. Jaco Naca, in an episode of animalization (see 5.1), “s’era sentito gabbato e frodato” (IV 429-430). His response to human injustice is getting a dog and putting him next to the luxurious buildings to give nuisance to the new tenants. From the tenants’ perspective what is problematic and unjust is not only the irritation of not being able to sleep due to the dog’s howls, but also the dog’s living condition. He was left alone during both days and nights, with little water and no food, tied with a short chain secured on the ground, which did not allow him to move. His “guaire”, “uggiolare”, “sguagnolare, così forte e con tanta intensità di doglia e tali implorazioni d’ajuto e di pietà” that make the tenants stay awake are rather justified. Some of the tenants started feeling for the “povera bestia” while others perceived it more as an extension of its owner. A contraposition among two opposite stances is thus created: on one side, Mrs. Crinelli who wanted to feed the dog to make him quiet, and on the other side, Mr. Barsi wanting to kill him to send a message to Jaco Naca. To this last idea, Crinelli outbursts
Ammazzarla? E non si sarebbe fatta allora scontare iniquamente alla povera bestia la colpa del padrone? Bella giustizia! Una crudeltà sopra la crudeltà, e doppiamente ingiusta, perché si riconosceva che la bestia non solo non aveva colpa ma anzi aveva ragione di lagnarsi cosí! (IV 433)
We could use here some of the ideas discussed in the previous chapter; like Lyotard’s belief that humans tend to feel more grief for animal damage than human, since the animal is not able to (humanly) communicate. But also, Bentham’s understanding of early animal rights using pain and the general ability to suffer as rationale. Surely, Crinelli is the advocate for both these positions, Barsi—like Jaco Naca—stands for the opposite stance, carrying a reifying conception of animality. For Barsi and Naca, the dog is a tool, a mechanism for humans to express their message. On this account, animals are conceived in a Cartesian way, so lacking consciousness and mind. In fact, we see two different practical approaches to the problem: Crinelli’s daughter goes to feed the dog, who has a placid and positive response, while Barsi decides to poison the dog and thus kills him. What happens at the end of the story is a symmetry of deaths: as I will explain later in further detail, Pirandello often creates juxtapositions between human and animal situations. Here, the animal death calls for a human one; in fact, when the little girl goes to feed the dog again not knowing he is already dead, Jaco Naca jumps from behind a boulder and—thinking it was the killer—shoots her with a rifle.
These characters, all looking for both interspecies and transspecies justice, end up having to deal with across-the-board injustice.
In two other short stories—“La fedeltà del cane” (1904) and “Cinci” (1932)—the figure of the dog is strongly liked with a sense of loyalty to the owner(s). In the first one, the dog Liri shows a terrific devotion to his unfaithful owner, which is perceived by the narrator and Don Giulio—the betrayed husband on whom the story is focalized—as “uno spettacolo commoventissimo” (II 415). But it is at the same time a great nuisance for humans to see such a loyal being compared to their own species, which in turns lacks something so pure but so simple. This explains why Don Giulio, at the end of the short story,
Fu assalito da una rabbia furibonda: gli parve oscenamente scandalosa la fedeltà di quella brutta bestiola, e le allungò anche lui un violentissimo calcio.
— Va' via! (II 416)
Violence is very often entwined with animal characters, since human rules are forcefully applied to them, and we—as readers—can do nothing besides seeing them as victims. For instance, in the last case, Liri is a victim because he is used as a relief valve for Don Giulio’s distress and dissatisfaction, and he is not in the position of understanding why a person he loves is kicking him. Being saddened by this, we uphold Lyotard’s case; simultaneously, we also prove as successful the contraposition of human and animal behaviors that Pirandello employes to make the dog’s and the owner’s attitudes strarker at the eye of characters and readers.
In “Cinci”, we witness another episode of absolute trust in the master. The difference here is that the dog Fox seems to know what he should or should not do, in a way that we could assume he has actual consciousness. However, it is of a particular kind: the dog is aware of the limits his belonging to the canine species brings. This recalls Heidegger’s (1983) claim about animals, namely that they are not world-making, nor without world, but rather “poor in world”. In fact, in the opening lines of the story we read that
Un cane, davanti una porta chiusa, s'accula paziente aspettando che gli s'apra; al piú, alza ogni tanto una zampa e la gratta, emettendo qualche sommesso guaito.
Cane, sa che non può fare di piú. (VI 276, emphasis added)
Fox knows that for him a closed door is a limit, and he needs a human to overcome it; his “umwelt” does not coincide with the human one. In his portrayal, he flows from being an independent being who needs others to accomplish certain tasks and in a way decides where he wants to go and with
whom he wants to stay, to being a purely affectionate dog who follows his master wherever he is allowed to follow him. Indeed, when Cinci enters a church, Fox “si ferma a guardarlo, perchè sa bene che a lui non è permesso” (278) and when Cinci leaves the church, he “ritrova Fox pronto a seguirlo” (279). In a combination of the two, Fox follows his master, since his limited consciousness affords him to know “che cosa deve fare: seguire il suo padrone” (278).But he also mirrors his master’s attitude; indeed, when Cinci willingly murders another kid for having killed a lizard—again, an animal death which calls for a human one—they both regress to unconsciousness. Firstly, Cinci “non ne sa nulla” (281), then Fox “anche lui non sa nulla”. The bound turns in compliance, but no matter the crime the dog stays loyal to his master.
3.1.1. Animal Communication and the (im)Possibility of it
The representation of the animal as paradigm of the victim is retraceable in many of Pirandello’s works7. Among these, other two examples are in “Le sorprese della scienza” (1905) and
in “Un cavallo nella luna” (1907), with horses taking the place of dogs as characters. In the first one, a horse is forced to draw a carriage in a road in awful condition and with unshod hooves. To the horse’s obvious pain, the passengers react with mercy; in fact, the first-person narrator depicts the driver, who
aveva il coraggio di dire che bisognava saperla guidare, lasciarla andare col suo verso, perché ombrava, ombrava e, a frustarla, ritta gli si levava come una lepre, certe volte, quella bestiaccia lí. (III 219)
with epithets of loathe as “boja”. What makes this short story interesting is that what is actually triggering the narrator’s reaction is not only the compassion for the suffering horse but the complete lack of communication: “Ma piano con questo correre! Doveva dirlo la bestia. E quella bestia non diceva nulla” (219). We will see shortly what this implies, for now let us turn towards the other text mentioned. In “Un cavallo nella luna”, we read of a newly-wed couple finding a dying horse in the farmland. The woman engages immediately with the animal wanting to save him from the crows waiting for him to die. Her husband is not of the same opinion, aiming at getting his spouse’s attention, and complains to the woman that “tu senti così tanta pietà per una bestia […] ma non ne senti per me!” (III 386), to which she replies asking “e che sei bestia tu? che stai morendo forse di fame e di sete, tu, buttato in mezzo alle stoppie?” (386). What the woman implies is that his husband
7 “Notizie del mondo” (1901), “E due!” (1901/1919), “Il corvo di Mìzzaro” (1902), “Il «fumo»” (1904), “La fedeltà del
cane” (1904), “Le sorprese della scienza” (1905), “Fuoco alla paglia” (1905), “Un cavallo nella luna” (1907), “La vendetta del cane” (1913), “La liberazione del re” (1914), “La carriola” (1915), “La distruzione dell’uomo” (1921), “Cinci” (1932).
is not a beast, he is not an animal; but the ending of the story proves her wrong, since in a few moments Nino will be “come morto”, dying on the ground just like the horse. In a way here, we see again Lyotard’s idea of humans feeling more for animals than for other humans. Ida does not realize what was happening to Nino due to her complete attention to the horse. While—going back to the first short story—it is the lack of human-like communication to make of the horse the ‘paradigm of the victim’. Now, I believe a specification to be due: the passage about animals written by Lyotard in The
differend: Phrases in dispute (1983) that has been quoted many times in researches in Animal Studies,
does not refer to communication as a general concept; in his discourse, Lyotard conceives ‘communication’ as the human ability to bear witness. To be clear, the animal becomes the paradigm of the victim for the only reason of not being able to talk, hence human legislation cannot apply in any way. In the case of “Le sorprese della scienza”, it is not the lack of language to trigger sympathy for the horse but the lack of any sign of communication denouncing pain. In fact, it is Pirandello in “La carriola” (1915) to show how animal can actually communicate with humans without needing language. The dog—main animal character of the story—is defined as “vittima” many times and even though what makes her a victim is not serious—the owner from time to time holds her back-paws up and let her walk some steps on two legs—she is feared by her master for her ability to communicate without language and hence bearing witness, in a way. Indeed, he says
La mia vittima non può parlare, è vero. Tuttavia, da qualche giorno, non mi sento piú sicuro. Sono costernato e inquieto. Perché, se è vero che non può parlare, mi guarda, mi guarda con tali occhi e in questi occhi è cosí chiaro il terrore, che temo qualcuno possa da un momento all'altro accorgersene, essere indotto a cercarne la ragione. (V 214-5)
Hence, the dog does not actually bear witness, but her terrified glance might cause some humans to question the reason of that attitude. I would argue that the dog’s physical reaction is indeed due to the change of behavior of his normally very serious master; however, I believe that what the man interprets as the reason behind her terrified glance is most likely to be purely human projection. He says
Comprende, la bestia, la terribilità dell'atto che compio.
Non sarebbe nulla, se per ischerzo glielo facesse uno dei miei ragazzi. Ma sa ch'io non posso scherzare; non le è possibile ammettere che io scherzi, per un momento solo; e séguita maledettamente a guardarmi, atterrita. (V 220)
The complete understanding of the mechanisms of human life is not something that Pirandello usually endows animal characters with. Thus, starting from the usual conceptualization of animality he offers (see section 3.2), I would confirm this last example to be just a projection of the master—an austere
lawyer—on his dog. With this last example, I want to make clear that Lyotard’s paradigm of the victim cannot be understood as an all-purpose concept that can always be applied to animal narratives. As we have seen, animal characters can show and express their emotional and physical state through methods that are inherently nonhuman but being readable from a human standpoint too.
3.1.2. Human Rules for Nonhuman Animals
In some of Pirandello’s narratives8, animals living in human contexts are presented as serving a term of imprisonment. Living according to rules they do not belong to, they lose their freedom and turn into prisoners. Not only they lose autonomy but—as we have seen—they are sentenced via human rules by human judges. However, the rules mentioned are not the same ones applied to other humans, these are rules specifically made by humans for other species; such regulations need to be different in consideration of the human belief in an animal hierarchy (see 4.2). This is why in “Il «fumo»” (1904), we read of a monkey who gets executed for having killed her master don Filippino, not considering the reasons behind that death. Filippino’s neighbor, Don Scala—the story’s focalizer—talks about “delitto incosciente della bestia” (II 458) and gives an explanation for her actions:
Tita, malata di tisi, si sentiva forse mancare il respiro, anche a causa, probabilmente, di quel fazzoletto che il povero don Filippino le aveva legato al collo, forse un po' troppo stretto, o perché se lo fosse stretto lei stessa tentando di slegarselo. Ebbene: forse era saltata sul letto per indicare al padrone dove si sentiva mancare il respiro, lí, al collo, e gliel'aveva preso con le mani; poi, nell'oppressura, non riuscendo a tirare il fiato, esasperata, forse s'era messa a scavare con le unghie, lí, nella gola del padrone. (II 458)
Nevertheless, Filippino’s cousin—Saro Trigona—decides to kill her immediately, basically applying the law of talion. Although Scala somewhat defends the monkey implying her unconsciousness and saying “Bestia era, infine. Che capiva?” (458), Trigona’s action does not get punished in any way.
Different is the case of “La liberazione del re” (1914), where a situation of human normalcy is depicted from the viewpoint of a rooster and perceived as conviction. The rooster is described as a king who used to live among his many hens-spouses and that was then sold to a woman who made him live alone in her small garden, leaving him to wonder “ma perchè? che vita era quella? che stato?” (V 173). He, indeed, “si sentiva re, e si sentiva in prigione” (172) and thus he sang “gridi di protesta, di indignazione, di rabbia, di vendetta” (173). The situation changes when he finds out that the
