In the novel The Old and the Young, as well in many of his short stories, Pirandello, like Nietzsche, aims at undermining humankind’s faith in history. Life and world events are ruled by chance, according to Pirandello; since history is a fictional creation dependent on the ideology and feelings of the historian, writing it makes no sense. This is why one character in the short story “Interviews with Characters” tells the writer to concentrate instead on what really counts, the joy and suffering of even one real individual with whom readers can identify. This approach can be seen in the stories written with World War I as their backdrop: In one, for instance, Pirandello’s own anguish about his sons going off to fight is mirrored in the story of Marco Leccio, who must witness his sons’ departure for a conflict he thinks should be fought by the fathers as the completion of Italian unification because it was for his generation, not his sons’, that Austrians were enemies. Perhaps this skepticism about history’s ability to teach us anything was what made Pirandello deaf to the dangers of Fascism.

The chapter is divided into three parts – places, attachments, and fables – that highlight Pirandello’s multiple connections with the southern Italian island of Sicily. Emphasis is given to the myth of the author’s Greek birth in Caos in Porto Empedocle and to the importance of Palermo in his coming of age. The essay then explores how Pirandello’s mythologized treatment of motherhood – present in works such as Her Husband, The New Colony, and The Mountain Giants – reaches back to his deep affection for his own mother. However, the importance of Sicily for the writer can be seen in multiple elements of his work, especially in the early novels and dialect comedies notable for their transformation from the naturalism with which he began his writing career. Recovering the idea of Sicily’s Greek heritage, the final section reveals the innovative nature of Pirandello’s mythic view of the island, even while acknowledging that Pirandello thought in historical terms, too, having dedicated The Old and the Young to the story of the revolt of the Fasci Siciliani in 1893–1894.