The Catastrophic 'Modernity' and the 'Uncivilized' Civilization in Luigi Pirandello and Luigi Antonelli
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The Catastrophic ‘Modernity’ and the ‘Uncivilized’
Civilization in Luigi Pirandello and Luigi Antonelli
Annachiara Mariani
Romance Notes, Volume 53, Number 3, 2013, pp. 251-262 (Article)
Published by The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department
of Romance Studies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/rmc.2013.0028
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/537025
[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]THE CATASTROPHIC ‘MODERNITY’ AND
THE ‘UNCIVILIZED’ CIVILIZATION IN LUIGI
PIRANDELLO AND LUIGI ANTONELLI
ANNACHIARA MARIANI
DURING the twentieth century many theorists discussed the ruinous
effects of modernity on individuals. Freud, Marx, Weber, Adorno,
Horkeimer and Marcuse talked about the high cost of modern civiliza-
tion because it entailed the loss of a sense of a universal meaning, alien-
ation from others, from nature, and from the self, which lead to the “dis-
enchantment of the world.” Freud developed the idea of a loss of
meaning, of estrangement, and focused on the pains and discontents
of modern individuals. In 1990, Bryan Turner returned to the concept of
malaise brought by modernity, and in his Theories of Modernity and
Post-Modernity he argues:
Modernization brings with it the erosion of meaning, the endless conflict of polytheistic
values, and the threat of iron cage of bureaucracy. Rationalization makes the world order-
ly and reliable, but it cannot make the world meaningful (Turner 6).
Considering this scenario, this paper depicts the creation and conse-
quent destruction of two social Utopias designed to replace modern civi-
lization and focuses on the effects of modernity filtered through two
plays written in the second decade of the twentieth century: Luigi Piran-
dello’s La Nuova Colonia1 (1926) and Luigi Antonelli’s L’Isola delle
Scimmie2 (1922). Even if the authors don’t explicitly refer to this specific
1
The title in English is The New Colony.
2
This play by Antonelli does not have an English translation. I use my own transla-
tion, The Monkey Island, when referring to this work.
251252 ROMANCE NOTES
historical and cultural climate, I argue that the choices of some charac-
ters represent a desperate response to finding a tolerable way of living in
a senseless world. Both plays depict an alternative utopian reality where
it is possible to live separated from modern society.
Nevertheless, these “perfect” substitute worlds crumble because
modernity channeled through the bourgeois mentality is an epidemic
disease that corrupts man and penetrates deviously into the human con-
science and becomes an integral part of the common frame of mind, as
Luis Althusser explains in his book Lenin and Philosophy (1970) and
Max Weber describes in his books The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism (1905) and From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946).
In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber
argues that the decline of religion, the growth of capitalism, the exces-
sive bureaucracy in society, and the socialization of science impose a
cognitive and instrumental rationalism against a magical-sacramental
one offered by religious groups. All these changes, Weber says, lead to
the birth of modernity and to its “disenchantment of the world,” the
“loss of a unified sense of the cosmos,” leading to a moral and cultural
crisis which manifests itself in the so-called “polytheism of values” at
the end of the nineteenth century.
The following extract, taken from From Max Weber: Essays in Soci-
ology (1946), summarizes the crucial motivations that lead to the disen-
chantment of the world caused by modernity:
Science has created a cosmos of natural causality and has seemed unable to answer with
certainty the question of its own ultimate presuppositions. Nevertheless science, in the
name of “intellectual integrity,” has come forward with the claim of representing the only
possible form of a reasoned view of the world . . . something has adhered to this cultural
value which was bound to depreciate it with still greater finality, namely, senselessness . . .
all “culture” appears as man’s emancipation from the organically prescribed cycle of
natural life. For this reason culture’s every step forward seems condemned to lead to an
ever more devastating senselessness. The advancement of cultural values, however,
seems to become a senseless hustle in the service of worthless, moreover self-contradic-
tory, and mutually antagonistic ends. (Weber 55-57)
Precisely this “devastating senselessness” is experienced by the charac-
ters of Luigi Pirandello’s La Nuova Colonia and will persuade them to
escape from their empty and useless reality to find a better and more ful-
filling one. Flora Bassanese, in her book Understanding Pirandello,THE CATASTROPHIC ‘MODERNITY’ AND THE ‘UNCIVILIZED’ 253
defines the play as “the hopeful construction and cataclysmic destruc-
tion of a modern utopian ideal.” (Bassanese 122)
The “prologue “ of the play shows us a cross-section of a corrupted
society in the modern world: a squalid tavern where a prostitute, La
Spera, is convincing a group of outlaws to leave their town and sordid
lives and start over again on a deserted island:
LA SPERA: Schifo, sì, schifo – voi della vostra, io della mia vita! Sono tutta un fremito.
Dio! – Non vi sentite torcere dentro le viscere come una fune? – Che aspettate più?
Andiamocene, andiamocene via, andiamocene lontano!
Più a fondo di come sei qua non potrai più sprofondare! Ma sarà Dio almeno che
t’avrà sprofondato! (La Nuova Colonia, Prologue)
LA SPERA: Disgust! Yes, disgust! My life and yours! I am shaking! God! – Don’t you
feel your insides twisting like a rope? – What are you waiting for? Let’s leave, let’s go
away, let’s go far away! It’s not possible to get lower than here. But, at least, it will be
God to sink you.
Once they arrive on the island, they under go an incredible transforma-
tion, and find themselves in love with the freedom given by the absence
of laws and modernity. They seemingly live in a timeless3 mythical
dimension, where La Spera is the only woman that exists. Yet she
becomes faithful to only one man, Currao, and the mother of his child.
However, after a short, calm period, they decide that they must pass a
few social and religious laws in order to live in a peaceful community.
As Anna Meda puts it: “The island in not only an Eden, but it also has a
dark threatening side” (Meda 230) that foretells sacrifice, risk and death.
The situation worsens with the arrival of new colonists (led by the
evil Crocco) who bring along the evils of civilization, symbolized by
women, gold, and wine.
CURRAO: Guasterà tutto! Avete portato l’ozio, lo spasso; e nascerà l’invidia, per forza,
e la gelosia; nascerà l’ambizione e l’intrigo per forza. Tutti i vizii della città avete por-
tato, e le donne, il danaro. La città, la città da cui eravamo fuggiti, come dalla peste.
(La Nuova Colonia, Second Act)
CURRAO: He will spoil everything! You all have brought laziness, frolicking: therefore
there will be envy, jealousy, ambition and intrigues. You all have bought the vices of
the city, women, and money. That city, that city we ran away from like one escapes
from a plague.
3
In the first act, one member of the colony, Papia, says: “Pare che il tempo si sia fer-
mato.”[“It seems that time stopped.”]254 ROMANCE NOTES
Therefore, the order that the first colonists tried to establish disintegrates
under the new circumstances and celebrates its impossible nature. All
the evils of civilization from which they escaped are restored in the col-
onized island. La Spera is again considered a prostitute and forced to
give up her child because she is deemed unworthy, and all of the
colonists fight against each other to elect the king of the island. The vio-
lence of Nature solves this impossible riddle: an earthquake collapses
the island and the only two survivors are those who always resisted the
return to civilization and modernity: La Spera and her child (who are
standing at the top of the island’s highest mountain). Only the force of a
natural catastrophe can end the dichotomist struggle between the
“uncivilized” civilization and primitivism, and to the “modern disease”
which was spreading through the island like a plague.
The analysis of this play shows the impossibility of creating a social
Utopia in a place removed from society because once individuals meet
civilization they are permanently scarred by it and cannot go back to a
life unaware of it. Civilization and modernity are like an epidemic men-
tal disease, which penetrates the human mind and forever changes the
way people approach reality and the world around them.
To better understand this point, it is important to call to mind Luis
Althussser’s concept of ideology elaborated in his Lenin and Philosophy
(1971). He elaborates the theory regarding the negativity of modernity,
which is caused by the toxic effects of bourgeois ideals. He explains that
these ideals (which he calls “Ideological State Apparatuses”) deviously
penetrate our mind and become an active part of the common mentality.
He defines ideology as “a representation of the imaginary relationship
of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (Lenin and Philoso-
phy, 148) and explains that it assigns people a position in society and
operates through the “status apparatuses” such as religion, laws, and
education. The “imaginary” conscience that ideology induces offers a
representation of the way in which individuals relate to their real condi-
tions of existence. However, since ideology reflects a utopian and har-
monious image of reality, it deeply represses the real relationships
among individuals and the structure of society, which eventually leads
to disillusionment and cynicism towards modernity.
This concept of illusory well-being brought by modern ideology
comes as a result of what Max Weber elaborated in 1905 when he stated
that modernity leads progressively to that “disenchantment of the world”THE CATASTROPHIC ‘MODERNITY’ AND THE ‘UNCIVILIZED’ 255
and “a loss of the unified understanding of the cosmos” to which I
referred earlier in this article.
From what I have discussed so far, it seems impossible to get out of
this sense of dissatisfaction of society since I have shown that a corrupt-
ed society cannot go back to purity and innocence. What happens,
instead, to an individual who does not know civilization when he finds
out about it? In other words, what happens to a “noble savage”4 who is
put suddenly in contact with modernity?
In order to investigate this perspective, we may consider the work
written by Luigi Antonelli in 1922, titled L’Isola delle Scimmie, that
deals with a tragic encounter between modern civilization and primi-
tivism. In the prologue, the first actor justifies the choice of the mon-
keys onstage as protagonists of the play. They are preferred over human
beings because they are not contaminated by civilization, and they pos-
sess something that men have lost: the joy of instinct – and as a conse-
quence – the happiness of living (because they still haven’t come in
contact with the disenchantment of modernity).
Per sperare ancora qualche cosa dagli uomini e per credere nel loro avvenire, bisogna
mettersi a urlare per tutto quello che essi hanno distrutto e si apparecchiano a distruggere.
Tutto il bene che essi possedevano era nella gioia dell’istinto! Se questo istinto non
l’avessero abbruttito, possederebbero ancora oggi la felicità di esistere. (L’Isola delle
Scimmie, Prologue)
In order to know something from men and to believe in their future, we need to weep for
all that they have destroyed and they are ready to destroy. All the good they owned was in
the joy of the instinct! If they had not spoiled this instinct, they would still have today the
happiness of living.
The play is set on an island (just as is La Nuova Colonia), in a “big for-
est with an eternal aspect” where some monkeys speak about Alicano,
one who has traveled around the world and discovered all the evils of
society: suffering, slavery, deceit, pain and civilization – all of which he
has involuntarily brought into the island because they lurk in his sub-
conscious mind. This aspect of a detrimental modernity can be explained
4
The concept of “noble savage”was elaborated by the English poet Dryden‘s heroic
play, The Conquest of Granada (1672): “I am as free as nature first made man,/ Ere the
base laws of servitude began,/ When wild in woods the noble savage ran.” (Part 1, Act 1,
Scene 1)256 ROMANCE NOTES
with Althusser’s concept of negativity brought by bourgeois ideals,
which I have previously discussed. These ideals are powerful and dam-
aging at the same time because they take possession of one’s brain and
become part of common mentality (even if they go against the mental
welfare of people).
At the beginning, the monkeys feel threatened by these terrible
aspects of human civilization, and they agree on the idea that Alicano
ruined them by introducing modernity to them:
ARGIA: Per mio conto sostengo che Alicano ci ha rovinate (LE SCIMMIE protestano)
Eh, sì! Infine, avevamo dei boschi, avevamo degli appetiti . . . Ci bastava. Ora non ci
basta più niente! (L’Isola delle Scimmie, First Act)
ARGIA: I think that Alicano ruined us. Yes! Before we had woods, appetites . . . It was
enough for us. Now, nothing is enough!
Monkeys have learned the meaning of eternal dissatisfaction, which
characterized every human being. Alicano is aware of the evil that char-
acterizes the bourgeois world and he is upset by the news that four of
his friends want to go into the world and bring back someone who can
teach them about this captivating different reality.
ALICANO: Oggi l’uomo sta per posare il piede in questa terra incontaminata! . . . Se io
patii le ingiurie, se io fui presentato per tutte le fiere alle folle sghignazzanti e ubria-
che, se io fui contaminato dalla loro eredità di morte, se io fui detestato, pagato, ven-
duto, sputacchiato dalle donne incinte perché non somigliassero a me i loro nascituri,
se io fui comunque rinnegato come bestia e assomigliato per dileggio agli uomini,
chiedo che gli uomini non mettano piede qui dentro. Lo chiedo ad alta voce, perché
sento la vostra ostilità, sento, vedo che la malattia dell’uomo, la curiosità dell’uomo vi
accende gli occhi di cupidigia. (L’Isola delle Scimmie, First Act)
ALICANO: Today the human being is about to put his foot in this pristine land! . . . If I
suffered the insults, if I was dragged to all the fairs in front of scornful and drunk
crowds, if I got contaminated by their legacy of death, if I was detested, paid, sold,
spit on by pregnant women so that their babies would not look like me, if I was dis-
owned like a beast and mocked by men, I am asking that men do not put their feet
here. I ask it aloud, because I feel your hostility, I feel, I see that man’s disease, man’s
curiosity lightyour eyes with greed.
However, despite Alicano’s concerned appeal, some of the monkeys
manage to go into the world and bring back three prototypes of bour-
geois society (found outside a theater) in order to observe and learn
from them: a professor of morality, a pleasure-seeker, and a dancer.THE CATASTROPHIC ‘MODERNITY’ AND THE ‘UNCIVILIZED’ 257
When the three captives realize that the primitive monkeys are still
innocent and pristine, they resort to revenge, and they begin to teach
them how to be “civilized.”
The monkeys are enthusiastic about learning the ways of human
beings, and they get “initiated” into modernity unaware of the ill intent
of the captives. This is how the monkeys learn the meaning of sin, mar-
riage, adultery, divorce, scandal of nudity, grace, decor, duels, lies,
secrets and cunning, which change and corrupt them completely.5 In
Freudian terms, the three bourgeois represent the super ego because they
stand for society and its rules, and the monkeys represent the id because
they live in order to satisfy their impulses and pleasures without restric-
tion. However, with the arrival of the super ego, the monkeys learn frus-
tration and unhappiness because they have to suppress those impulses
not allowed by laws of society.
Slowly and deviously, bourgeois ideology creeps into the monkeys’
innocent minds, corrupts them and makes them unhappy because it com-
pels them to suppress their inner wishes and desires. The three “humans”
come from civilization, from a reality that disenchanted and nullified
them (according to Weber’s ideas) and they feel the sadistic pleasure in
“initiating” such pristine and innocent monkeys as a way to revenge their
capture. In Weber and Freud’s terms, those individuals have witnessed
modernity that, on one hand, leads them progressively to the “disenchant-
ment of the world,” to a “loss of a unified sense of the cosmos” (Weber
357) and to a cultural and moral crises, and, on the other hand, to destruc-
tive relationships with other people caused by the profound pain and
anguish they feel inside caused by repression (Freud 132). Therefore, the
three bourgeois avenge their desperate and alienating conditions caused
by modernity on the monkeys, which are still unaware of the evil they
will be introduced to shortly. The “humans” act with extreme sadism, and
they feel pleasure in initiating the monkeys to a world, which they know
will bring only pain and eternal suffering to them. Unaware of the
wickedness of the three, the monkeys welcome with extreme enthusiasm
their teachings, and they feel incredibly attracted to bourgeois ideology.
In the second act, the reader learns all that the “humans” taught the
monkeys: sin, marriage, adultery, the scandal of nudity, grace, décor,
5
In this passage we can draw a parallel between the mythical Pandora’s box and the
three bourgeois revealing the evils of modern society.258 ROMANCE NOTES
duels, lies, and secrets. Once the creatures learn all the aspects of bour-
geois ideology, they will never restore the previous innocence since the
ideology, as Althusser describes it, is an “imaginary conscience” that
takes possession of their mind and changes them radically. To clarify
this concept, Dolcina, one of the most innocent monkeys before the
arrival of the bourgeois, says after the bourgeois’ lessons:
DOLCINA: Sai che Guenone riveste oggi una grande carica? Quasi quasi me lo potrei
sposare per interesse. È diventato un importante funzionario. (L’Isola delle Scimmie,
Second Act)
DOLCINA: Do you know that today Guenone got an important assignment? I should
marry him for money. He’s become an important official.
Deviously, the ideology penetrates in the mentality of the innocent mon-
keys and makes them interested, wicked and ruthless. However, the
metamorphosis from monkeys to “human” does not happen suddenly.
Indeed, an attentive reader notices in the second act that, even if the
monkeys seem lured by bourgeois ideology, they show some resistance
to it. When Alicano gets sick, Dolcina still shows some humanity
towards him:
DOLCINA: Davvero sei molto malato?
ALICANO: (stupito) Sì. E che te ne importa?
DOLCINA: Vuoi che abbandoni tutto per venire a curarti?
ALICANO: Tu?!
DOLCINA: Sì.
ALICANO: Lo faresti?
DOLCINA: Sì
ALICANO: Ma che sacrificio? Non mentire.
DOLCINA: Sì, con sacrificio.
ALICANO: Perché ti dispiacerebbe lasciare gli uomini …
DOLCINA: Sì
ALICANO: Sei attratta dal loro vizio, dalla loro complicazione, dalla loro menzogna?
DOLCINA: Sì
ALICANO: E allora perché li lasceresti?
DOLCINA: Perché ti ammiro. E perché sei malato. E perché non mi posso dimenticare
di te. Ma prendimi in fretta altrimenti non lo potrò più.
ALICANO: (disperato) Non ti credo più! Non capisci il dolore che io provo di non
poterti più credere? (L’Isola delle Scimmie, Second Act)
[DOLCINA: Are you really very sick?
ALICANO: (shocked) Yes. Why do you care?THE CATASTROPHIC ‘MODERNITY’ AND THE ‘UNCIVILIZED’ 259
DOLCINA: Do you want me to leave everything to come to take care of you?
ALICANO: You?
DOLCINA: Yes.
ALICANO: Would you do it?
DOLCINA: Yes.
ALICANO: What a sacrifice? Don’t lie to me.
DOLCINA: Yes, with sacrifice.
ALICANO: Because you would not like to leave the humans …
DOLCINA: Yes.
ALICANO: Are you attracted by their vices, by their lies?
DOLCINA: Yes.
ALICANO: And then, why would you leave them?
DOLCINA: Because I admire you. And because you are sick. And because I cannot
forget you. But take me quickly; otherwise I will not be able to do it.
ALICANO: (desperate) I don’t believe you anymore! Don’t you understand the pain
that I feel, knowing that I cannot believe you anymore?
This passage emphasizes the goodness and compassion that still linger
in Dolcina’s heart and which characterized her before the arrival of the
“humans.” However, Alicano cannot believe in her words because he
knows that once one meets modernity one is contaminated by it and can-
not help but act on his or her own best interest since there is no genuine
concern for the well-being of other people. Alicano is torn between his
desire to still believe in the possible innocence in Dolcina and the bitter
awareness that society has inevitably and perpetually corrupted her.
In the final act, the reader learns shocking facts about her, which
prove that the metamorphosis into bourgeois is complete. Dolcina mar-
ries Guenone, the “superintendent of morality” and shortly after their
wedding, he is sent on an expedition to an island of cannibals. During
that time, Dolcina has an affair with another monkey and becomes preg-
nant. When she finds out that Guenone is coming back, she has a ner-
vous breakdown and finally decides to confess her affair to her husband,
accepting the consequences of adultery in the bourgeois world (pun-
ished with the killing of both adulterous wife and lover). To Dolcina’s
surprise, after her confession, Guenone also has a secret to profess:
GUENONE: (sinceramente disperato) Ah! . . . E nulla è vero . . . e la mia carica di com-
missario è un’altra beffa che mi impedisce di essere quello che vorrei . . . e tutto in me
è una rivolta terribile . . . Non piangere, non piangere . . . Io non posso vederti piange-
re . . . povera creatura . . . povera Dolcina … se mi vedono! È la prima volta che sento
l’infelicità che invade tutto il mio essere . . . l’ infelicità di un intruso che si è impa-260 ROMANCE NOTES
dronito di tutti i miei nervi, del mio sangue e di tutta la mia coscienza. Vattene Dolci-
na, vattene povera creatura, perché io non voglio farti del male e invece sto per farte-
ne . . . (L’Isola delle Scimmie, Third Act)
GUENONE: (sincerely desperate) Ah! . . . Nothing is true, . . . and my job as superinten-
dent of morality is also a mockery which prevents me from being what I would like to
be . . . everything in me is terribly wrong . . . Don’t cry, don’t cry . . . I cannot see you
crying . . . poor creature . . . poor Dolcina . . . if they see me! It’s the first time that I
feel unhappiness invading all my feelings, my blood and my conscience. Go away,
Dolcina, go away, poor creature, because I don’t want to hurt you but I am about to
hurt you . . .
Here, Guenone confesses his inner conflict caused by what his heart
wants and what modern society requires in specific circumstances.
Indeed, Guenone would like to forgive Dolcina but society prevents him
from doing it. Dolcina is devastated and tries to kill herself, but Alicano,
the first monkey to involuntarily introduce modernity to the rest of
them, miraculously saves her. Alicano is distraught by the degeneration
brought by “civilization” and he tries desperately to find a boat to send
the “humans” back to their world. By doing so, the monkey hopes to be
able to restore that atmosphere of happiness, which characterized his
island before the contamination brought by modernity.
After the departure of the three bourgeois, Alicano ends the play
with a long line in which he offers his point of view regarding the whole
situation:
ALICANO: [. . .] Fratelli, voi credete che io sia nemico dell’uomo! No! Egli mi faceva
troppa pietà, e perciò io non volevo che voi gli rassomigliaste: ma per quanta ferocia
egli abbia, per quanta civiltà lo avveleni, è sempre un povero cuore che batte! E guar-
date: io volevo risparmiarvi quel veleno. Ma siccome ora è impossibile per voi dimen-
ticare di essere stati uomini, e giacché l’umanità vi ha portato il suo piccolo dono – il
dolore – fatene un’arma per salvare le cose buone che io vi ho insegnato a rispettare . . .
Poiché gli uomini uccidono sempre le cose che amano! Fratelli! Cercate, col dono che
gli uomini vi hanno dato, di riprendere a poco a poco la vostra faccia e ritrovare la
vostra innocenza! Addio, fratelli. (L’Isola delle Scimmie, Third Act)
ALICANO: Brothers, you all believe that I am an enemy of man! No! I felt too much
pity for him and therefore I did not want you to look like him. But, despite his ferocity
and his poisonous civilization, he remains a poor beating heart! And look: I wanted to
spare you that poison. But since now it is impossible for you to forget having been
“men” and since humanity gave you his small gift – pain – make it a weapon to save
the good things I have taught you to respect . . . because men always kill that which
they love! Brothers! Try to slowly regain your true face and your innocence with the
gift that men left you! Goodbye, brothers.THE CATASTROPHIC ‘MODERNITY’ AND THE ‘UNCIVILIZED’ 261
The last words of Alicano before dying stress the idea that modern civi-
lization has poisoned the human being and that pain suffering are the
only legacies left behind by men and their civilization. Now, the mon-
keys can only acknowledge their psychological changes and try to
recapture their original state of innocence and freedom with this new
awareness. However, as Weber and Freud teach us, this will never hap-
pen since once someone is corrupted by civilization, he can never be
brought back to his previous innocence! That original and primitive
state of pure freedom and happiness has turned into slavery because the
rules imposed by modernity have also led the monkeys to frustration.
To better understand this point, I need to make a reference to Freud’s
ideas developed in his book Civilization and Its Discontents (1929),
which was inspired by the desolation followed by the World War I. In
his book, Freud applies the psychological conflicts (between the ego and
the id, the pleasure and the reality principle, the conscious and the
unconscious) to the study of human civilization. The civilization itself is
defined as a space filled with conflicts and as an extension of the ten-
sions that stigmatize human psyche. In this sense, together with other
scholars of his time, Freud shares a sort of cultural pessimism, or anti-
modernism, which is skepticism towards the progresses of society.
Freud also states that civilization and its laws (superego) prevent
men from expressing their impulses (id) that eventually cause hysteria
and mental disorders. In other words, civilization castrates the human
need to vent in aggressiveness to satisfy desires and, therefore, makes
it impossible to satisfy pleasure and instinctual needs. As a conse-
quence, civilization leads to unhappiness since it reduces man’s free-
dom, and dissolves the possibility of behaving as everyone truly would
want. Civilization slowly leads humanity to a sense of “cultural frus-
tration” since it inhibits everyone to conduct in a certain, predictable,
and proper way.
This is precisely what happens to the monkeys in Antonelli’s play
and to the colonists in Pirandello’s play. Both the monkeys and the
colonists experience the castration brought by modernity. They would
like to express their feelings and inner passions but modern civilization
prohibits the expression of their real self, and they end up either
deranged in L’Isola delle Scimmie or killed in La Nuova Colonia.
The two plays analyzed in this paper points out a gloomy picture of
the modern civilization. It is seen as an infectious disease that injects262 ROMANCE NOTES
sorrow and discontent into each character’s heart, which causes depres-
sion and suicidal instincts.
An analytical juxtaposition of these two plays reveals the superiority
of primitiveness to modernity. The monkeys lived in a state of freedom
and happiness until they were introduced to the notions of civilization
and modernity. Unfortunately, civilization changed them permanently,
and from then on, they perceived a sense of dissatisfaction, which leads
them to eternal unhappiness and grief. As Pirandello proves in La Nuova
Colonia, it’s useless to flee from modernity (as does the group led from
La Spera) because no one can rid themselves of the evils present in civi-
lization once they are encountered. The principles of modernity are insin-
uated in everyone’s conscience and irreparably corrupt their souls.
Nobody can return to innocence once their soul meets modernity and the
bourgeois’ ideals. Similarly, and paradoxically, Antonelli’s monkeys had
their chance to live true happiness only before they come in contact with
modernity and bourgeois world. But once that happens, they are doomed
to eternal damnation and despair.
THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE, KNOxVILLE
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