Luigi Pirandello

Poetry, evil of life, humourism and existentialism

Abstract

One of the most important points of criticism and theory made by Luigi Pirandello is the concept of humourism. In his essay L'umorismo (1908), Pirandello gives us the basis of his writing and points out that the fundamental question of the humorist focuses on the feeling of the contrary. In this work, we analyze Pirandello's poetic texts in depth, to understand the specificity of the humorous work of art and relate it to the concept of existentialism, especially that followed by Jean Paul Sartre. We conclude by stating that humourism is both a theory of literary criticism and a kind of theory of life, as it values ​​human actions that escape the harmonious framework that art in general paints, but that do not, in fact, exist in the praxis of life.