Marella Feltrin-Morris (Modern Languages and Literatures) has published in Pirandello Studies 40 (2020) the first English translation of “Leviamoci questo pensiero” ("Let's Get It Over With," 1910) and "La maschera dimenticata ("The Forgotten Mask," 1918), two short stories by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936).
A concept that, in today’s culture of accumulation, has been hailed as eerily refreshing is that of döstädning, or Swedish “death cleaning”—the process of gradually eliminating one’s possessions so that others don’t have to go through them after our passing. While such decluttering is meant as a peaceful, almost meditative coming to terms with one’s own mortality, Bernardo Sopo, the protagonist of Pirandello’s 1910 short story, "Leviamoci questo pensiero" ("Let's Get It Over With"), takes döstädning and injects it with frantic, painful urgency: with his recently-deceased wife still lying in the viewing chamber, he already makes arrangements to dispose of her belongings, and of his own, too—not in an attempt to erase her memory or that of their life together, but because every action in his life has been dictated by the mantra of “getting it over with.”
In "La maschera dimenticata" ("The Forgotten Mask"), an unexpectedly brilliant career in politics in a new city seems to promise a welcome change in the life of Ciccino Cirinciò, who until now has been known exclusively as “the mill man” following a freaky accident in which he ran into a windmill and became lame. All this, however, comes to an abrupt end when, during a political speech, a stranger recognizes him as “the mill man.” Made a prisoner to his old body once again, Cirinciò is forced back into his old identity.