“Sure, go on sleeping, dearie! Till noon, if you want! I’m warning you, though: no fool is going to go fishing for you today!” He walked over to the wall that divided his room from that of his niece Venerina and yelled out: Rossellini’s film thus repeats the essential structure of the story but reverses its gender dynamics.Īfter searching everywhere in vain for this and that piece of his outfit, and grumbling porco diavolo! a hundred times as he huffed and puffed and made all kinds of angry gestures, eventually Pietro Milio (or Uncle Trawler, as they called him in town) felt the need to let off steam. While none of these adaptation projects came to fruition, it is interesting to note that the director Roberto Rossellini took up a similar theme in his film Stromboli (1950) however, in this film the protagonist is a woman, Karin, played by Ingrid Bergman, who is displaced onto the small Sicilian island and confronts an existential crisis. Pirandello’s response was that the story focused on representing the drama of what it means to feel distant, far away even from those to whom one ought to feel close. The producer was not convinced, however, and remained skeptical of how Pirandello represented Sicily in the story as patriarchal and behind the times. While that project did not progress any further, Pirandello pursued other avenues later on: in 1932, he proposed a film adaptation of “Far Away” to Emilio Cecchi, head of production at Cines. In a letter to the writer and theater director Nino Martoglio, Pirandello offered both “On Target” (“Nel segno”) and “Far Away” as possible stories to be turned into movies, going so far as to request an advance payment of 500 liras for the project. In addition to being reprinted in 1915, “Far Away” was also part of a project Pirandello was attempting to pitch for a film adaptation in 1914. Other short stories also focus on the Sicilian sulfur mines, for example “The Fumes” (“Il fumo”), which was first published in 1904 and so dates to around the same period as “Far Away.” Likewise, there are strong biographical ties in this plot, resonating both with the history of Pirandello’s family, who were involved in the anti-Bourbon movements in Sicily, as well as the way in which the young Pirandello’s family made its fortune investing in sulfur mines. Similar themes are depicted in other stories, for example in “The Medals” (“Le medaglie”) and “The Dressing Room of Eloquence” (“Il guardaroba dell’eloquenza”). The story thus highlights a contrast between commitment to the common good versus materialism and selfishness. In “Far Away,” this element emerges in the contrast of two main characters, one who risked his life for his country as part of the effort to cast off the Bourbon tyranny, and another who is instead getting rich off of sulfur mining. This theme can likewise be traced in other works by Pirandello, including his autobiographical short story “Interviews with Characters” (“Colloquii coi personaggi”) written some years later, in 1915. ”Far Away” also has a political sub-theme, highlighting a sense of disillusionment that was typical of the post-Garibaldian era. The existential reflections occasioned by his feeling of difference resonate with a set of concerns that recur across Pirandello’s corpus. While he marries a local Sicilian girl, the marriage does not prevent him from feeling lonely in a foreign land. This story deals with a typical set of Pirandellian themes, focusing on the experience of alienation and displacement in its depiction of a Norwegian sailor who finds himself in Sicily after falling ill.
“Far Away” was later made a part of the Collection The Fly ( La Mosca), published in 1923 as a part of Stories for a Year ( Novelle per un anno). Grouping this long short story with his short novel, the volume labelled both as ‘novelle’, drawing together their genres: Il turno. Originally published in the literary and cultural journal Nuova Antologia (January 1 and 16, 1902), this long short story was then republished in the 1915 edition of Pirandello’s novel The Turn ( Il turno, also originally published in 1902). Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, 2021. “Far Away” (“Lontano”) Translated by Marella Feltrin-Morris
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