“Chants the Epistle”

Translated by Scott Belluz

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Chants the Epistle” (“Canta l’Epistola”), tr. Scott Belluz. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2023.

“Chants the Epistle” was first published in the Corriere della Sera on December 31, 1911. It was then collected as part of the volume of stories The Trap (La trappola), published in Milan by Treves in 1915, before Pirandello added it to the third Collection of his Stories for a Year, A Prancing Horse (La rallegrata; Florence: Bemporad, 1922).

This story is in many ways a typical example of Pirandello’s special version of humor, which he theorized in his essay On Humor (L’umorismo, 1908): the narrative gradually develops from making jokes at the protagonist’s expense to revealing a deeper layer to his suffering that calls for the reader’s empathy or compassion. As the plot develops and gradually reveals the bizarre situation in which Tommasino finds himself, the tragic conclusion ends up feeling tragicomic, blending laughter and sadness. At the same time, the story engages in forms of existential reflection that are typical of many of Pirandello’s works, questioning the fleeting nature of life and the seemingly arbitrary or pointless manifestation of life in its various forms, while also positing immersion in nature as a response to the suffering that comes from self-consciousness. The story’s setting thus becomes especially important, and it is relevant that the location, the small town of Soriano nel Cimino on the slopes of Monte Cimino, was one of the vacation spots that Pirandello used to visit frequently, both before and after World War I, to escape from the city and find respite and tranquility in nature. In fact, Soriano nel Cimino was one of the locations that Pirandello found solace painting – he was an avid amateur painter for most of his life; and it is thus no surprise that in 2004 the town erected a monument to commemorate his time there and the legacy of those trips in Pirandello’s writing. The inscription on it reads: “The Town of Soriano nel Cimino / to / Luigi Pirandello / The citizens of Soriano, in memory of / his sojourns in the pearl of the Cimini Hills” (“Comune di Soriano nel Cimino / a / Luigi Pirandello / I cittadini di Soriano, a ricordo dei / suoi soggiorni nella perla dei Cimini / 29 agosto 2004”). Pirandello also set another of his short stories in the environs of Soriano, "Swift and Little Swallow“ (“Rondone e Rondinella,” 1913).

The Editors

“Were you fully ordained?”

“Fully, no. Only as far as sub-deacon.”

“Ah, sub-deacon. And what does the sub-deacon do?”

“He chants the epistle, holds the book for the deacon while he chants the gospel, manages the vessels during mass, and keeps the paten veiled during the canon.”

“Ah! So, you chanted the gospel?”

“No, sir. The deacon chants the gospel; the sub-deacon chants the epistle.”[1]

“And so you chanted the epistle?”

“Me, myself? The sub-deacon…”

“Chants the epistle?”

“Chants the epistle.”

What was funny about all this?

And yet, there in the town’s airy piazza, which rustled with dry leaves, and was alternately flooded by the sun and darkened by a rapid sequence of clouds, old Doctor Fanti was interrogating Tommasino Unzio (who had just been defrocked and dismissed from seminary for having lost his faith), and his face had taken on such a goat-like expression that all the town loiterers, who were sitting in a circle in front of the Hospital Pharmacy, covered their mouths or contorted their features and could barely keep from laughing.

They burst into raucous laughter as soon as Tommasino, chased by all those dry leaves, left the square. One of them then asked the other:

“Chants the epistle?”

And the other answered:

“Chants the epistle.”

And this was how Tommasino Unzio, ex-sub-deacon, defrocked and dismissed from the seminary for having lost his faith, got stuck with the nickname Chants the Epistle.

One can lose one’s faith for any number of reasons; and, in general, a man who loses his faith is convinced, at least initially, to have gained something in return––if only the freedom to do and say certain things that were previously incompatible with his faith.

However, when the reason for the loss is not the ferocity of one’s appetite for worldly things, but the thirsting of a soul no longer satiated by the sacred chalice or the font of holy water, it becomes difficult for the one who has lost his faith to convince himself that he’s gained anything in return. At best, then and there, he won’t lament the loss, so long as he recognizes that what’s been lost no longer holds any value for him.

Along with his faith, Tommasino Unzio had lost everything, including the only career his father could give him, thanks to the legacy of an old uncle who had been a priest. On top of this, his father never hesitated to strike him and kick him, to give him only bread and water for several days, and to hurl all manner of insults and abuse at him. But Tommasino had endured it all, resolute and pale-faced, and waited for his father to realize that these were not exactly the most appropriate means to restore his faith and vocation.

It wasn’t the violence of his father’s treatment that had hurt him, so much as the vulgarity of an act so contrary to the reason he’d been defrocked.

On the other hand, he understood that his cheeks, his back, and his stomach offered an outlet for the searing pain that his father also felt, because Tommasino’s life, irreparably ruined, had now been reduced to sitting around the house as an encumbrance.

But he wanted to prove to everyone that he had not left the priesthood to “live like a pig in clover” as his father had so elegantly been proclaiming all over town. He kept to himself, never leaving his room except for the occasional solitary walk or to go up to Pian della Britta by way of the chestnut forest,[2] or down the cart track and through the fields as far as the little deserted chapel of Santa Maria di Loreto;[3] he was always absorbed in meditation and never met anyone’s gaze.

It is however true that, even when the spirit is locked in deep pain or in dogged, ambitious determination, the body will often quietly abandon the fixated spirit to live independently and, without a word, enjoy fresh air and healthy food.

And so, as Tommasino’s spirit grew thinner and more melancholy, worn out by evermore despairing meditations, it was almost a mockery that his body so rapidly became plump and ruddy, like a father abbot.

His nickname was no longer Tommasino but Tommasone Chants the Epistle![4] By the look of him, his father had been right. But everyone in the village knew how the poor young man lived; and there wasn’t a single woman who could say that he’d ever cast so much as a fleeting glance her way.

To no longer be conscious of one’s being, like a stone or a plant, to no longer remember even your own name, just living to live, without knowing about it, like animals, like plants, without emotions, desires, memories, thoughts, with nothing to give meaning or value to one’s life: that was the way to live! To lie on the grass, hands clasped behind one’s neck, gazing at the dazzling white clouds swollen with sunlight in the blue sky, to hear the voice of the wind roaring like the sea through the chestnut forest, and in that roaring voice feel, as if from an infinite distance, the vanity of each thing, and the painful tedium of life.[5]

Clouds and wind.

What mattered was being able to perceive that what sailed across the immense blue void were clouds. Do they know they are clouds? Trees and stones know nothing of clouds; they ignore themselves, too.

As he observed the clouds, he also considered — and why not? — the sequence of events that transformed water into clouds and back into water again. Any second-rate professor of physics could explain this sequence of events, but how to explain the reason behind them?

Up in the chestnut forest, axes were chopping; down in the quarry, picks were hammering.

Destroy the mountain and hack down the trees to build even more houses there in that mountain village. Pain and struggle, every kind of toil and trouble––and why? To erect a chimney, have a little smoke come out of the flue, then vanish into thin air.

Every thought and memory of humanity was like that smoke.

But looking out over the sweeping spectacle of the countryside, the great, green plain of oak, chestnut, and olive trees sloping from the foot of Cimino down to the Tiber valley far below,[6] he was slowly soothed by a mild, forgetful sadness.

All the illusions and disillusionment, all the sufferings, joys, hopes, and desires of human beings seemed vain and ephemeral when compared with the feeling that emanated from those enduring things that impassively surpass humanity. In the eternal natural world, individual human affairs were like cloud formations to him. One had only to look at those lofty mountains far beyond the Tiber valley, hovering on the hazy horizon, growing faint in the setting sun.

Oh, the ambitions of men who cry victory because man can now fly like a little bird![7] But look how easily a bird flies, the unaffected lightness spontaneously accompanied by a joyous trill. Then think of the clumsy roaring aircrafts and the shock, the anxiety, the mortal anguish of the man who wants to be like a little bird! Here a flutter and a trill; there a noisy, stinking motor, and impending death. The engine fails, the engine stops, and goodbye to you little bird!

“Oh, men,” said Tommasino Unzio, stretched out on the grass, “stop flying. Why do you want to fly? And when did you fly?”

Then suddenly, an astounding piece of news spread through the town like wildfire: Tommasino Chants the Epistle Unzio had been slapped across the face then challenged to a duel by Lieutenant De Venera, commander of the military detachment, all because he had admitted, without any explanation, that on the previous evening he’d shouted “stupid fool!” at the lieutenant’s fiancée, Signora Olga Fanelli, on the country road leading to the little chapel of Santa Maria di Loreto.

There was astonishment mixed with hilarity, an astonishment that seemed to question this or that detail of the news to keep disbelief firmly at bay.

“Tommasino?” “Challenged to a duel?” “He called Signora Fanelli ‘a stupid fool’?” “And he admits it?” “He won’t give any explanation?” “And he’s accepted the challenge?””

“Well, he was slapped, for God’s sake!”

“And he’s going to fight?”

“Yes, tomorrow with pistols.”

“He’s going to fight Lieutenant De Venera with pistols?”

“With pistols.”

So he must have had a very serious motive. It seemed to everyone that a fiery passion long kept secret could not be discounted. Perhaps he’d shouted “stupid fool” at her because she loved Lieutenant De Venera and not him. It was obvious! And everyone in town was of the opinion that only a stupid fool could fall in love with the highly ridiculous De Venera. But naturally, the lieutenant did not share their opinion and had demanded an explanation.

Signorina Olga Fanelli, however, with tears in her eyes, swore up and down that as far as she was concerned this wasn’t the reason for his insult as she had only seen the young man two or three times in her life; and that he had never once raised his eyes to look at her; and never, not even in the slightest, had he shown that he harbored any fiery secret passion, as everyone claimed. Nonsense! No, that wasn’t it––there had to be another reason behind it. But what? One doesn’t call a young lady “stupid fool” to her face without a reason.

Everybody, particularly her mother and father, the appointed seconds to the duel, De Venera and the young lady herself, endeavored to find out the true reason for the insult, but Tommasino, more than anyone else, suffered in silence. He was convinced that even if he disclosed the reason, no one would have believed it, and that it would seem as though he were trying to add ridicule to the unspeakable secret.

Truly, who would have believed that for some time now he, Tommasino Unzio, mired in increasingly abysmal melancholy, had been overcome with a tender pity for all the things that are born to life and last only fleetingly, waiting for death and decay without knowing why. The more transient and tenuous and almost insubstantial the forms of life, the more he was moved by them––sometimes to tears! Oh, the many different ways a thing could be born, but only once in that uniquely given form (as no two forms were exactly alike), and be given such a short life, sometimes only a single day, and to occupy such a small space in the enormous, unknown world––the enormous, impenetrable void of the mystery of existence. A little ant was born, a little fly, a blade of grass. A little ant in the world! In the world a little fly, a blade of grass. The blade of grass was born, grew up, flourished, withered, and was gone forever. Never again that blade of grass, never again!

As a matter of fact, he’d followed the brief life of one blade of grass in particular: day by day, for the past month or so as it grew between two grey boulders that were striped with moss behind the abandoned little chapel of Santa Maria di Loreto.

He’d followed it with an almost maternal tenderness as it slowly grew up among the shorter blades around it, and had watched it rise, timidly at first in its trembling slenderness, above the two encrusted boulders, as if it were both curious and afraid to admire the boundless, green plain that unfurled below; then up, up, ever higher, bold and pert with a little reddish plume on top like a cock’s comb.

For an hour or two every day he’d contemplate it and experience its life, wavering along with it at the slightest breath of air, hurrying anxiously to its side on days when there was a strong wind, or fearful that he would arrive too late to protect it from the small flock of goats that passed behind the chapel every day, often lingering to pull a few tufts of grass from between the stones. So far, the wind and the goats had spared that blade of grass. And whenever he found it intact there, its jaunty plume on top, Tommasino experienced ineffable joy. He caressed it, stroking it between his fingers as though tending it with his soul and breath: when he left in the evening, he’d entrust it to the first stars that appeared in the twilit sky so that during the night they would watch over it with all the other stars. And from a distance, he’d see that blade of grass in his mind’s eye, there between the two boulders under the thick canopy of stars that glittered in the black sky and kept watch over it.

And so that day, he’d gone at the usual time to spend an hour with his blade of grass, and was only a few steps away from the chapel when he saw that behind it, sitting on one of those boulders, was Signorina Olga Fanelli, perhaps resting a moment before resuming her walk.

Not daring to approach, he stopped to wait until she was rested and gave up the spot. And sure enough, the young lady rose to her feet shortly afterwards, perhaps annoyed that he appeared to be spying on her. She looked around for a moment, then absent-mindedly reached out to pluck that very blade of grass, and put it between her teeth, the plume left dangling.

Tommasino Unzio felt his soul tearing apart and couldn’t keep himself from shouting “Stupid fool!” when she passed in front of him, the grass stem dangling from her mouth.

Now, could he really confess that he’d insulted the lady over a blade of grass?

And that’s why Lieutenant De Venera had slapped him across the face.

Tommasino was tired of his useless life, tired of being hindered by his stupid flesh, tired of everyone treating him with contempt, a contempt that would have become more bitter and persistent had he refused to fight after the slap. He accepted the challenge, but only if the terms that ended the duel were grave. He knew that Lieutenant De Venera was an excellent shot, as he demonstrated every morning during target practice. And so, Tommasino had chosen to fight with pistols the following morning at dawn, there on the shooting grounds.

A bullet in the chest. At first the wound did not appear serious; then his condition grew worse. The bullet had pierced a lung. High fever, delirium. Four days and four nights of intensive care.

When the doctors finally declared that nothing more could be done, the devout Signora Unzio begged and pleaded with her son to at least return to the grace of God before he died. And to please his mother, Tommasino acquiesced, and received a confessor.

When the priest, at his deathbed, asked:

“But why, my son? Why?”

Tommasino sighed and smiled tenderly, and with his eyes half closed, his voice failing, he answered simply:

“Father, it was all for a blade of grass…”

And everyone thought he was delirious right up to the very end.