Il treno ha fischiato…

Luigi Pirandello

Farneticava. Principio di febbre cerebrale, avevano detto i medici; e lo ripetevano tutti i compagni d’ufficio, che ritornavano a due, a tre, dall’ospizio, ov’erano stati a visitarlo.
Pareva provassero un gusto particolare a darne l’annunzio coi termini scientifici, appresi or ora dai medici, a qualche collega ritardatario che incontravano per via:
— Frenesia, frenesia.
— Encefalite.
— Infiammazione della membrana.
— Febbre cerebrale.
E volevan sembrare afflitti; ma erano in fondo cosí contenti, anche per quel dovere compiuto; nella pienezza della salute, usciti da quel triste ospizio al gajo azzurro della mattinata invernale.
— Morrà? Impazzirà?
— Mah!
— Morire, pare di no…
— Ma che dice? che dice?
— Sempre la stessa cosa. Farnetica…
— Povero Belluca!
E a nessuno passava per il capo che, date le specialissime condizioni in cui quell’infelice viveva da tant’anni, il suo caso poteva anche essere naturalissimo; e che tutto ciò che Belluca diceva e che pareva a tutti delirio, sintomo della frenesia, poteva anche essere la spiegazione piú semplice di quel suo naturalissimo caso.
Veramente, il fatto che Belluca, la sera avanti, s’era fieramente ribellato al suo capoufficio, e che poi, all’aspra riprensione di questo, per poco non gli s’era scagliato addosso, dava un serio argomento alla supposizione che si trattasse d’una vera e propria alienazione mentale.
Perché uomo piú mansueto e sottomesso, piú metodico e paziente di Belluca non si sarebbe potuto immaginare.
Circoscritto… sí, chi l’aveva definito cosí? Uno dei suoi compagni d’ufficio. Circoscritto, povero Belluca, entro i limiti angustissimi della sua arida mansione di computista, senz’altra memoria che non fosse di partite aperte, di partite semplici o doppie o di storno, e di de-falchi e prelevamenti e impostazioni; note, librimastri, partitarii, stracciafogli e via dicendo. Casellario ambulante: o piuttosto, vecchio somaro, che tirava zitto zitto, sempre d’un passo, sempre per la stessa strada la carretta, con tanto di paraocchi.
Orbene, cento volte questo vecchio somaro era stato frustato, fustigato senza pietà, cosí per ridere, per il gusto di vedere se si riusciva a farlo imbizzire un po’, a fargli almeno almeno drizzare un po’ le orecchie abbattute, se non a dar segno che volesse levare un piede per sparar qualche calcio. Niente! S’era prese le frustate ingiuste e le crudeli punture in santa pace, sempre, senza neppur fiatare, come se gli toccassero, o meglio, come se non le sentisse piú, avvezzo com’era da anni e anni alle continue solenni bastonature della sorte.
Inconcepibile, dunque, veramente, quella ribellione in lui, se non come effetto d’una improvvisa alienazione mentale.
Tanto piú che, la sera avanti, proprio gli toccava la riprensione; proprio aveva il diritto di fargliela, il capoufficio. Già s’era presentato, la mattina, con un’aria insolita, nuova; e – cosa veramente enorme, paragonabile, che so? al crollo d’una montagna – era venuto con piú di mezz’ora di ritardo.
Pareva che il viso, tutt’a un tratto, gli si fosse allargato. Pareva che i paraocchi gli fossero tutt’a un tratto caduti, e gli si fosse scoperto, spalancato d’improvviso all’intorno lo spettacolo della vita. Pareva che gli orecchi tutt’a un tratto gli si fossero sturati e percepissero per la prima volta voci, suoni non avvertiti mai.
Cosí ilare, d’una ilarità vaga e piena di stordimento, s’era presentato all’ufficio. E, tutto il giorno, non aveva combinato niente.
La sera, il capo-ufficio, entrando nella stanza di lui, esaminati i registri, le carte:
— E come mai? Che hai combinato tutt’oggi?
Belluca lo aveva guardato sorridente, quasi con un’aria d’impudenza, aprendo le mani.
— Che significa? — aveva allora esclamato il capo-ufficio, accostandoglisi e prendendolo per una spalla e scrollandolo. — Ohé, Belluca!
— Niente, — aveva risposto Belluca, sempre con quel sorriso tra d’impudenza e d’imbecillità su le labbra. — Il treno, signor Cavaliere.
— Il treno? Che treno?
— Ha fischiato.
— Ma che diavolo dici?
— Stanotte, signor Cavaliere. Ha fischiato. L’ho sentito fischiare…
— Il treno?
— Sissignore. E se sapesse dove sono arrivato! In Siberia… oppure oppure… nelle foreste del Congo… Si fa in un attimo, signor Cavaliere!
Gli altri impiegati, alle grida del capoufficio imbestialito, erano entrati nella stanza e, sentendo parlare cosí Belluca, giú risate da pazzi.
Allora il capoufficio – che quella sera doveva essere di malumore – urtato da quelle risate, era montato su tutte le furie e aveva malmenato la mansueta vittima di tanti suoi scherzi crudeli.
Se non che, questa volta, la vittima, con stupore e quasi con terrore di tutti, s’era ribellata, aveva inveito, gridando sempre quella stramberia del treno che aveva fischiato, e che, perdio, ora non piú, ora ch’egli aveva sentito fischiare il treno, non poteva piú, non voleva piú esser trattato a quel modo.
Lo avevano a viva forza preso, imbracato e trascinato all’ospizio dei matti.
Seguitava ancora, qua, a parlare di quel treno. Ne imitava il fischio. Oh, un fischio assai lamentoso, come lontano, nella notte; accorato. E, subito dopo, soggiungeva:
— Si parte, si parte… Signori, per dove? per dove?
E guardava tutti con occhi che non erano piú i suoi. Quegli occhi, di solito cupi, senza lustro, aggrottati, ora gli ridevano lucidissimi, come quelli d’un bambino o d’un uomo felice; e frasi senza costrutto gli uscivano dalle labbra. Cose inaudite, espressioni poetiche, immaginose, bislacche, che tanto piú stupivano, in quanto non si poteva in alcun modo spiegare come, per qual prodigio, fiorissero in bocca a lui, cioè a uno che finora non s’era mai occupato d’altro che di cifre e registri e cataloghi, rimanendo come cieco e sordo alla vita: macchinetta di computisteria. Ora parlava di azzurre fronti di montagne nevose, levate al cielo; parlava di viscidi cetacei che, voluminosi, sul fondo dei mari, con la coda facevan la virgola. Cose, ripeto, inaudite.
Chi venne a riferirmele insieme con la notizia dell’improvvisa alienazione mentale rimase però sconcertato, non notando in me, non che meraviglia, ma neppur una lieve sorpresa.
Difatti io accolsi in silenzio la notizia.
E il mio silenzio era pieno di dolore. Tentennai il capo, con gli angoli della bocca contratti in giú, amaramente, e dissi:
— Belluca, signori, non è impazzito. State sicuri che non è impazzito. Qualche cosa dev’essergli accaduta; ma naturalissima. Nessuno se la può spiegare, perché nessuno sa bene come quest’uomo ha vissuto finora. Io che lo so, son sicuro che mi spiegherò tutto naturalissimamente, appena l’avrò veduto e avrò parlato con lui.
Cammin facendo verso l’ospizio ove il poverino era stato ricoverato, seguitai a riflettere per conto mio:
«A un uomo che viva come Belluca finora ha vissu-to, cioè una vita “impossibile”, la cosa piú ovvia, l’incidente piú comune, un qualunque lievissimo inciampo impreveduto, che so io, d’un ciottolo per via, possono produrre effetti straordinarii, di cui nessuno si può dar la spiegazione, se non pensa appunto che la vita di quell’uomo è “impossibile”. Bisogna condurre la spiegazione là, riattaccandola a quelle condizioni di vita impossibili, ed essa apparirà allora semplice e chiara. Chi veda soltanto una coda, facendo astrazione dal mostro a cui essa appartiene, potrà stimarla per se stessa mostruosa. Bisognerà riattaccarla al mostro; e allora non sembrerà piú tale; ma quale dev’essere, appartenendo a quel mostro.
«Una coda naturalissima.»
Non avevo veduto mai un uomo vivere come Belluca.
Ero suo vicino di casa, e non io soltanto, ma tutti gli altri inquilini della casa si domandavano con me come mai quell’uomo potesse resistere in quelle condizioni di vita.
Aveva con sé tre cieche, la moglie, la suocera e la sorella della suocera: queste due, vecchissime, per cataratta; l’altra, la moglie, senza cataratta, cieca fissa; palpebre murate.
Tutt’e tre volevano esser servite. Strillavano dalla mattina alla sera perché nessuno le serviva. Le due figliuole vedove, raccolte in casa dopo la morte dei mariti, l’una con quattro, l’altra con tre figliuoli, non avevano mai né tempo né voglia da badare ad esse; se mai, porgevano qualche ajuto alla madre soltanto.
Con lo scarso provento del suo impieguccio di computista poteva Belluca dar da mangiare a tutte quelle bocche? Si procurava altro lavoro per la sera, in casa: carte da ricopiare. E ricopiava tra gli strilli indiavolati di quelle cinque donne e di quei sette ragazzi finché essi, tutt’e dodici, non trovavan posto nei tre soli letti della casa.
Letti ampii, matrimoniali; ma tre.
Zuffe furibonde, inseguimenti, mobili rovesciati, stoviglie rotte, pianti, urli, tonfi, perché qualcuno dei ragazzi, al bujo, scappava e andava a cacciarsi fra le tre vecchie cieche, che dormivano in un letto a parte, e che ogni sera litigavano anch’esse tra loro, perché nessuna delle tre voleva stare in mezzo e si ribellava quando veniva la sua volta.
Alla fine, si faceva silenzio, e Belluca seguitava a ricopiare fino a tarda notte, finché la penna non gli cadeva di mano e gli occhi non gli si chiudevano da sé.
Andava allora a buttarsi, spesso vestito, su un divanaccio sgangherato, e subito sprofondava in un sonno di piombo, da cui ogni mattina si levava a stento, piú intontito che mai.
Ebbene, signori: a Belluca, in queste condizioni, era accaduto un fatto naturalissimo.
Quando andai a trovarlo all’ospizio, me lo raccontò lui stesso, per filo e per segno. Era, sí, ancora esaltato un po’, ma naturalissimamente, per ciò che gli era accaduto. Rideva dei medici e degli infermieri e di tutti i suoi colleghi, che lo credevano impazzito.
— Magari! — diceva. — Magari!
Signori, Belluca, s’era dimenticato da tanti e tanti anni – ma proprio dimenticato – che il mondo esisteva.
Assorto nel continuo tormento di quella sua sciagurata esistenza, assorto tutto il giorno nei conti del suo ufficio, senza mai un momento di respiro, come una bestia bendata, aggiogata alla stanga d’una nòria o d’un molino, sissignori, s’era dimenticato da anni e anni – ma proprio dimenticato – che il mondo esisteva.
Due sere avanti, buttandosi a dormire stremato su quel divanaccio, forse per l’eccessiva stanchezza, insolitamente, non gli era riuscito d’addormentarsi subito. E, d’improvviso, nel silenzio profondo della notte, aveva sentito, da lontano, fischiare un treno.
Gli era parso che gli orecchi, dopo tant’anni, chi sa come, d’improvviso gli si fossero sturati.
Il fischio di quel treno gli aveva squarciato e portato via d’un tratto la miseria di tutte quelle sue orribili angustie, e quasi da un sepolcro scoperchiato s’era ritrovato a spaziare anelante nel vuoto arioso del mondo che gli si spalancava enorme tutt’intorno.
S’era tenuto istintivamente alle coperte che ogni sera si buttava addosso, ed era corso col pensiero dietro a quel treno che s’allontanava nella notte.
C’era, ah! c’era, fuori di quella casa orrenda, fuori di tutti i suoi tormenti, c’era il mondo, tanto, tanto mondo lontano, a cui quel treno s’avviava… Firenze, Bologna, Torino, Venezia… tante città, in cui egli da giovine era stato e che ancora, certo, in quella notte sfavillavano di luci sulla terra. Sí, sapeva la vita che vi si viveva! La vita che un tempo vi aveva vissuto anche lui! E seguitava, quella vita; aveva sempre seguitato, mentr’egli qua, come una bestia bendata, girava la stanga del molino. Non ci aveva pensato piú! Il mondo s’era chiuso per lui, nel tormento della sua casa, nell’arida, ispida angustia della sua computisteria… Ma ora, ecco, gli rientrava, come per travaso violento, nello spirito. L’attimo, che scoccava per lui, qua, in questa sua prigione, scorreva come un brivido elettrico per tutto il mondo, e lui con l’immaginazione d’improvviso risvegliata poteva, ecco, poteva seguirlo per città note e ignote, lande, montagne, foreste, mari… Questo stesso brivido, questo stesso palpito del tempo. C’erano, mentr’egli qua viveva questa vita «impossibile», tanti e tanti milioni d’uomini sparsi su tutta la terra, che vivevano diversamente. Ora, nel medesimo attimo ch’egli qua soffriva, c’erano le montagne solitarie nevose che levavano al cielo notturno le azzurre fronti… Sí, sí, le vedeva, le vedeva, le vedeva cosí… c’erano gli oceani… le foreste…
E, dunque, lui – ora che il mondo gli era rientrato nello spirito – poteva in qualche modo consolarsi! Sí, levandosi ogni tanto dal suo tormento, per prendere con l’immaginazione una boccata d’aria nel mondo.
Gli bastava!
Naturalmente, il primo giorno, aveva ecceduto. S’era ubriacato. Tutto il mondo, dentro d’un tratto: un cataclisma. A poco a poco, si sarebbe ricomposto. Era ancora ebro della troppa troppa aria, lo sentiva.
Sarebbe andato, appena ricomposto del tutto, a chiedere scusa al capo-ufficio, e avrebbe ripreso come prima la sua computisteria. Soltanto il capo-ufficio ormai non doveva pretender troppo da lui come per il passato: doveva concedergli che di tanto in tanto, tra una partita e l’altra da registrare, egli facesse una capatina, sí, in Siberia… oppure oppure… nelle foreste del Congo:
— Si fa in un attimo, signor Cavaliere mio. Ora che il treno ha fischiato…		The train has whistled…

Luigi Pirandello

He was delirious. The beginning of cerebral fever, the doctors said. And all his colleagues repeated it, returning as they did in twos and threes from the mental hospital where they’d gone to visit him.
It was as if they delighted in using scientific terms, terms only recently acquired from the doctors, to announce the fact to the tardy colleagues they happened to meet along the way.
“Frenzy, frenzy.”
“Encephalitis.”
“Inflammation of the membrane.”
“Cerebral fever.”
And they wanted to look sad, but they were, in fact, so very happy for having carried out that obligation, of course, but also for being in the best of health as they left that sad mental hospital and stepped out into the gay azure winter morn.
“Is he going to die? Is he going mad?”
“Who knows!”
“He doesn’t seem to be dying…”
“But what’s he saying? What?”
“The same thing over and over again. He’s delirious…”
“Poor Belluca!”
And no one stopped to think that, given the exceptional conditions the sad man had been living in for so many years, his case might just be a very simple one, and also that what Belluca kept saying, and which everyone attributed to delirium, a symptom of frenzy, could very well be the easiest explanation for that very simple case of his.
In truth, the fact that the previous night Belluca had boldly stood up to his boss, and later, when his boss had reproached him severely, almost pounced on him, was a strong argument in favour of his supposed mental alienation.
For you could not begin to imagine a more modest and obedient, more methodical and patient man than Belluca.
Circumscribed…yes, who had said that about him? One of his colleagues. Circumscribed, poor Belluca, within the narrowest limits of his arid accounting duties, with nothing in his head but open entries, simple or double or reversing entries, and deductions and set-offs, annotations, account books, ledgers, notebooks, and so on. An itinerant archive, or rather, an old donkey very, very quietly drawing, always one step at a time, always down the same road, a cart, and with wearing blinders on.
So, this old donkey had been flogged hundreds of times, beaten mercilessly just for fun, just to see if he would react, just to get him to prick up his lowered ears, to show them he wouldn’t mind raising a leg and landing a few blows. But nothing! He had always put up with the unfair flogging and cruel stings in silence, without uttering a sound, as if he deserved them, or rather, as if he couldn’t feel them anymore, used as he was to years and years of the harsh, steady blows of destiny.
The fact that he’d rebelled was, therefore, truly inconceivable, unless it was due to sudden mental derangement.
Especially because, the night before, he had deserved the reprimand; the boss really had had every right to scold him. First of all, he’d arrived with a strange air about him, new, and―much stranger still, comparable, let’s say, to the fall of a mountain―more than a half hour late.
It was as if his face had suddenly opened up. It was as if his blinders had suddenly fallen off and he’d uncovered, springing forth all around him, the spectacle which is life.
It was as if his ears had suddenly opened and he could hear voices for the very first time, and sounds he’d never heard before.
This is how he’d arrived to work, joyful, a vague joy full of wonder. And he’d got nothing done all day long.
In the evening, his boss had entered his room and examined his ledgers and files.
“What’s this? What have you been doing all day long?”
Belluca had looked at him with a smile, with what was almost an air of impertinence, opening his hands.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” his boss had exclaimed walking up to him and shaking his shoulders, “I’m talking to you, Belluca!”
“Nothing,” Belluca had answered with that same smile, between cheek and folly, on his lips, “The train, Sir.”
“The train? What train?”
“It whistled.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“Last night, Sir. It whistled. I heard it whistle.”
“The train?”
“Yessir. And if you only knew how far I travelled! To Siberia…or, or…to the Congo forest…It only takes a minute, Sir!”
Upon hearing the boss’s screams, his coworkers had entered the room, and when they’d heard Belluca talking like that, they’d burst out laughing.
Upset by the sound of that laughter, the boss―who was obviously in a bad mood that evening―had flown into a rage and beat the meek victim of his many cruel insults.
But this time, to everyone’s surprise and dismay, the victim had fought back. He’d cursed, repeating that wild story about the train whistle. And he’d added that now, by god, he’d had enough, now that he’d heard the train whistle he could no longer, he would no longer let himself be treated like that.
They had taken him by force, tied him up, and dragged him to the mental hospital.
There, he continued to talk about that train. He imitated the whistle. Oh, such a sad whistle, as distant, in the night, heartbreaking.
And he would add, “Off we go, Sirs…Where to, Sirs? Where to?”
And he would look at everyone with eyes that were no longer his. Those eyes, which were usually dark, overcast and frowning, were bright and shining now, like the eyes of a child or a happy man. And senseless sentences escaped his lips, extraordinary things, poetic, imaginative, bizarre expressions that were even more surprising because no one could fathom how, by what miracle, he could express them, he who had never cared for anything but figures, ledgers, and catalogues. He who had always been blind and deaf to life: an accounting machine. Now he talked about the azure face of snow-topped mountains that stretched to the heavens. He talked about slippery sea mammals which, voluminous, painted commas with their tails on the sea beds. Things that were, I say again, extraordinary.
Those who repeated these things when they came to tell me of his mental alienation were shocked to see that I was not at all surprised by the news, not in the least.
Indeed, I listened without speaking.
And my silence was full of sorrow. I shook my head, and, frowning, said:
“Belluca, my dear sirs, has not gone mad. Be assured, he has not gone mad. Something must have happened to him, some insignificant thing. No one can explain it because no one knows how this man has lived up until today. I, who know, am sure I will understand as soon as I go to visit him and we have spoken.
As I walked towards the place where the poor man had been hospitalised, I kept thinking about it: ‘Even the most obvious thing, the most everyday occurrence, like, for example, tripping over a cobble on the road, can have the most extraordinary effect on someone who has lived the life Belluca has lived up until now, that is to say, an “impossible” life. And no one can possibly understand the reason behind it if they don’t realise that man’s life is, indeed, “impossible”’. We must return there, to the conditions of that impossible life, and there we will find the answer, pure and simple. Those who only see a tail and ignore the monster it belongs to, may believe it to be monstruous. But it must be put back on the monster, and then it will no longer look that way, but as it should be, as something belonging to that monster.
‘Just an everyday tail.’
I had never met anyone who lived the way Belluca lived.
I was his neighbour, and I, like all the other tenants in the building, wondered how any man could endure such a life.
He lived together with three blind women, his wife, his mother-in-law, and his mother-in-law’s sister. The elderly women were blind because of cataracts. His wife, who didn’t have cataracts, was simply blind, her lids closed shut.
All three wished to be waited on. They screamed from morning to night because no one waited on them. His two widowed daughters, whom he’d welcomed into his home after the death of their husbands―one with four children and one with three―had neither the time nor the will to wait on them. They did, however, when well-disposed, sometimes help their mother.
How could Belluca possibly feed all those mouths with what he earned from his miserly bookkeeping job? In the evening, he worked other jobs at home, copying documents. And he copied them while the five women and the seven children screeched wildly until all twelve of them finally went to sleep in the only three beds found in the house.
Big beds, king-sized, but only three.
Furious battles broke out then, and running about, and overturned furniture, broken dishes, crying, screaming, crashes, because, in the dark, one of the children had run off and got into bed with the three blind women, who had their own bed, and who every night, also fought, because no one wanted to sleep in the middle and they protested when it was their turn.
In the end, silence fell upon the house, and Belluca continued copying until late into the night, until the pen fell from his hand, and his eyes fell shut.
Then he would throw himself, often dressed, on an old dilapidated couch and fall into a deep sleep from which every morning he could barely tear himself, evermore confused.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it was in this condition that something quite ordinary happened to Belluca.
When I went to visit him in the hospital, he told me the whole story himself. He was still somewhat excited, but naturally so, by what had happened to him. He laughed at the doctors and nurses and at all his colleagues who thought he had gone mad.
“I wish!” said Belluca, “I wish!”
Ladies and gentlemen, for years and years, Belluca had forgotten, truly forgotten, that the world existed.
Lost as he was in the continuous torment of his miserable existence, lost in his accounts in his office every day, without ever a moment’s pause, like some blindfolded animal, yoked to the shaft of a noria or a mill, yessir, he’d forgotten, truly forgotten, the world existed.
Two nights earlier, when, exhausted, he’d thrown himself down on that old couch he hadn’t been able to sleep, perhaps from extreme fatigue. And suddenly in the profound silence of the night, he’d heard, in the distance, a train whistle. It had seemed to him that his ears, after so many years, who knows how, were suddenly unplugged.
The whistle of that train had suddenly ripped out the pain of all those horrible miseries and cast them away. It was as if from an open grave he’d found himself drifting ardently in the airy space about the vast world that was opening all around him.
Instinctively, he’d found himself hanging on to the covers he would throw over himself every night, and in his mind, he’d followed that train as it moved away in the night. There was, oh, there was, beyond that horrific house, beyond his many sufferings, there was so much world stretching far and wide, and the train was heading there: Florence, Bologna, Turin, Venice…all the cities he’d visited as a young man, cities whose lights still shone on the earth, unquestionably, that night. Yes, he knew the life people lived there! The same life he had once lived too! And that life continued; it had always continued while he, like a blindfolded animal, turned the pole of the mill. He’s stopped thinking about it! The world had been closed to him, in the torment of his house, in the arid, barbed misery of his accounting…But now, oh yes, he was entering the world again, as if his spirit had been violently shaken. The moment, which was striking for him, here, in his very own prison, was flowing like an electric tremor throughout the world. And he, with his newly awakened imagination could, well, he could follow it to cities known and unknown, plains, mountains, forests, seas…The very same tremor, the same pulsing of time. There were, as he lived this “impossible” life, millions and millions of men all over the world who were living differently. Now, in the very moment he was here suffering, there were remote snow-capped mountains whose azure slopes stretched towards the night sky…Yes, yes, he saw them, he saw them, he saw them like that…there were oceans…forests…
And so, he―now that the world had made its way back into his spirit―could in some way console himself! Yes, lifting himself from his anguish every now and then to breathe, with his imagination, a bit of fresh air in the world.
It was enough for him!
Naturally, on that first day, he’d overdone it.
He’d become inebriated. The whole world, suddenly inside him: a deluge. Little by little, he would regain his composure. He was still drunk from so, so much air; he knew it.
He would, as soon as he had completely regained his composure, go and apologise to his boss, and he would go back to his accounting. It’s just that his boss had not to expect too much from him now, like he had in the past: every now and then, between the filing of one account and another, he would have to let him skip over to, yes, Siberia…or, or…the Congo forests.
“It’ll just take a second, my dear Boss, Sir. Now that the train has whistled…”

Translation © Matilda Colarossi 2024

I prepared this short story some time ago. Then life got in the way, but here it is now.

This short story is dedicated to all the Belluca’s in the world. Listen to that train whistle; let it take you far and wide, away from boring office work, mad, demanding families, money troubles…

Have a wonderful Fine and a exciting Inizio (if you believe one day could make such a difference!): Buon Anno Nuovo – M.C.

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International 

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7 thoughts on “Luigi Pirandello: Il treno ha fischiato / The train has whistled”

  1. Joseph Alan Roberts's avatar

    Happy New Year to you, too, dear Mati.

    Thanks for a wonderful translation here at the end of 2024 and for returning me to Pirandello. I was brought up to see him, appreciate him, as an absurdist, as shown in plays, “Six Characters . . . , ” and so forth. In this story of a train whistle suddenly awakening a deadened spirit, there is sanity, without speculation, a story chosen well by you perhaps to symbolize a year and a life that has reached a time to end.

    Interestingly, there is an acknowledgement by the protagonist at the end of the story that a return to normal is possible, but with renewed outlook. Perhaps you are right to show us at this time the work of a great author, returning from his absurdist and fantastic plots to a simple rendering of a man enduring the burdens of his bickering, handicapped family at home and the victimizing power relationship brought by an overbearing boss at work, suddenly realizing his liberty to choose freedom in thought–a change of attitude.

    I note the mention of the donkey in the story, a biblical reference to Balaam’s Ass, who one day got tired of his burdens and spoke up. In using this device Pirandello reminds us of the eternal nature of the mental imprisonment caused by such suffering at the hands of human exploiters.

    Best of health and happiness to you in 2025, dear Mati. I hope to continue enjoying your reflections in poetry and prose.

    Warm regards,

    Joseph Roberts

    Oliva, Spain

    Liked by 1 person

    • Matilda Colarossi's avatar

      Thank you so much for your comment, Joseph.

      It always amazes me how Pirandello is able to understand the lives of the less fortunate. On the surface, his life seemed so different from the one of poor Belluca, but was it? Maybe he spoke so much of masks because he was the first to wear one…perhaps to hide the Belluca within him.

      Every time Pirandello describes a person who is a victim of some form of madness in the home, I think of his own life with his wife, whom he himself cared for until he had to have her put in a mental hospital: she, mad with jealousy and convinced their daughter was trying to take Pirandello away from her, even tried to kill her.

      But, mad family or not, aren’t we all a little Belluca sometimes? The important thing it to hear that train whistle…

      Happy new year! And thank you again for writing.
      Mati

      Like

  2. Joseph's avatar

    Hi, Mati,

    It’s so interesting to learn more from you about Pirandello’s personal circumstances — I had no idea — they do seem to be reflected in the story.

    As I scrolled down just now to get to this space, I was reminded by the length of the two columns side by side how much work you put into this reflection, into this issue, to share with us. It’s a great gift–thank you!

    Until next time,

    Warm regards,

    Joseph

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Matilda Colarossi's avatar

    He was just so interesting. No wonder his work is.

    Did you know he thought of himself as a ‘figlio cambiato’, literally switched at birth? There’s a great book about him by Camilleri!

    My translation of his ‘L’esclusa’ should be out this year. In the 1901 version (his first: there were three) of the book he introduces an aunt who is one of ‘le donne’. And these magical women switched children at birth. Pirandello later removes this description of Zia Sedora and makes it a short story!

    Liked by 1 person

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