A few years ago, I don't remember exactly how many, I found in a foreign shelf (is there more pleasure than chafardear foreign shelves and create a profile of that person/family/group of friends according to the books placed there?) a copy of Six characters in search of author, by Luigi Pirandello. The name sounded like something to me and I guess that's what made me take it, look at its cover, turn it around and read synopsis and some other commentary they gave of the book. Then I opened it, leafed through it a bit, saw that it was in theatrical key and decided to give it a try. Don't ask me why. But what a great decision. I loved reading it, I enjoyed it very much with this meta-theatre taken to the limit and loaded with so much significance. Shortly afterward, at a party, I met an Italian person who was quite a reader. I asked him about Pirandello, and he told me about the "bad" fame he has for many in his country. She also told me about the Nobel Prize. But what stayed with me the most was that there was still better work than that of Six characters in search of an author. Since that day I've had the title in my head: "One, none and a hundred thousand." Now I've finally read it.
"One, none and one hundred thousand" was originally published in 1927 and it was Pirandello's last novel and, for him, the one that contained everything that characterized his literature. And it may be true because it contains everything that can be read in that Six characters in search of an author, but much more. To the case: we meet here Vitangelo Moscarda, a man who one day is looking in the mirror when he realizes that something strange has his nose. His wife, Dida, who is next to him, warns him. He fixes himself well and sees it, his nose is slightly crooked. From this casual observation, he begins a reflection so profound (and very similar to that of The Passion according to G. H. of Clarice Lispector) that it ends up becoming a totally sudden change of life, of the way of thinking, of conception before others and before oneself. Seeing himself different for the first time, Genge, as he is known privately, begins to wonder if he has not been different more times, if not always different, if not that he is never the same and that every second, every situation or person that comes his way, will not always be someone different. From this reflection, he extracts that he is nobody. Someone who is in constant change is nobody. But his thought keeps flowing, and he realizes that no, it is not that he is nobody, it is that he is many. And that's where the hundred thousand come from.
"One, none and one hundred thousand" is a manifesto to a life where it is proclaimed about the diversity of masks that we wear over us. Where the possibility is questioned that there is something real, something original, behind the last mask. Perhaps we are only constructions of our environment, we adapt ourselves according to circumstances (like that "I am I and my circumstances" by Ortega y Gasset), we create those around us in the same way that they create us.
All these thoughts are hitting the mind of a Vitangelo Moscarda who trusts less and less in himself, who renounces his name, his past ("kills" the father), who decides to delve into himself (without knowing if his existence is real or a mere social construction) to reach the original meaning. But in this journey, his mind is transformed. He gets rid of things: people, possessions, money and even a name! He voices acts aggressively, laughs uncontrollably, sees through eyes that seem to start bathing in madness. He attacks and is assaulted. He is brought to justice, both as a defendant and as a victim. For everyone, Vitangelo Moscara is crazy. For him, he had never been saner. Life, for our Gengé, is in this book nothing more than a training camp where he can put into practice the changes he wants to establish within himself. The question is whether the price to pay is bearable for a human mind like yours.
One, none and one hundred thousand is madness, and that is all. But madness that makes you a promise, and it is nothing more than telling you that if you enter, that if you accept the game, it will lead you along a path of perhaps perfection or perhaps collapse, but always towards the deep, as José Ángel Valente would say. That depth that from above always looks like a bottomless pit but that, who knows, maybe when we start to go down we find the end sooner than expected. Or maybe not. Maybe never. But, at least, let's ask, let's take the first step, let's try it, let's undo our hair, we're always on time to stop. All we have to do is close the book. Although I don't know if I've done it.