Luigi Pirandello’s Concept of Life and His Way to Fascism

This article investigates Pirandello’s adhesion to the Italian Fascist Party by examining articles, interviews, letters, and essays with the aim of shedding light on the political dimension of this choice, so frequently mitigated by the critics, and of showing its relations to the author’s concept of life. Finally, by taking a close look at leading themes in the novel Il fu Mattia Pascal, the article raises the questions: To what extent is this text permeated with ideological elements? In what ways, similarly, does it transmit a view of the world that would connect Pirandello’s thinking to ideas that were mainstream in the society of his time.