“I Have So Many Things to Tell You” (“Ho tante cose da dirvi…”)

Translated by Robin Pickering-Iazzi

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “I Have So Many Things to Tell You” (“Ho tante cose da dirvi…”), tr. Robin Pickering-Iazzi. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2025.

The story “I Have So Many Things to Tell You” (“Ho tante cose da dirvi”) was first published in the major Milanese newspaper Corriere della Sera on December 17, 1911. Pirandello then added it to his miscellany collection And Tomorrow, Monday (E domani, lunedì), which came out from Milanese publishing house Treves in 1917. Like many of the stories in that volume, he finally added it to his burgeoning Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno) in 1928, when it was published as part of the thirteenth Collection, Candelora.

The relatively simple narrative can be read as a kind of character study of a woman, Signora Moma, who is now a widow and desperately seeking company from the townspeople who used to come to her house for regular musical and literary salons when her husband, Aldo Sorave, an eccentric and well-liked musician, was still alive. Ostensibly focusing on an unexpected proposal to remarry from a seemingly well-suited friend, Signor Giorgio Fantini, the narrative in fact is largely occupied by a combination of flashbacks to Signora Moma’s earlier life and reflections on the alienated state that she now occupies, alone in her house with only the furnishings that seem to cling to the life of her previous husband and leave her in solitude. In the process, Pirandello has written passages of tremendous beauty on the ineffable transience of life’s vitality and on human attachment, as well as rich reflections on the nature of human estrangement from the world around us and the pitiable human condition – our desire for what we cannot have, and our desire to cling to a past that is no longer ours. In this respect, the story can also be seen as an instance of Pirandello’s typical form of humor, theorized in his essay On Humor (L’umorismo, 1908), which pairs the risibility of human folly with a deep compassion for the tragedy of human desire and loss.

The Editors

“The letter, written on a garishly pretty pink slip of paper edged in gold, that pinnacle of provincial elegance, ended thusly:[1]

…if I speak about anxiousness, you may say: but you are old, you are, my poor Giorgio! And it is true, I am old, yes. But you have to think, Momolina, that I have loved you since I was a boy, and so much! You said you loved me too, back then! The storm came—really the storm—and it took you away from me. How many years have even gone by? Twenty-eight… But how have I managed to remain always the same? To put it better—my heart has! So you shouldn’t make me wait any longer for an answer. You know? I’ll come to you tomorrow. You’ve had about a month to reflect. You have to tell me tomorrow either yes or no. But it has to be yes, Momolina! Don’t make the beautiful castle that I’ve built this month crumble, the beautiful castle where you will be queen and all my still youthful hopes will serve you like loving handmaidens….

Signora Moma noticed that this last sentence, so poetic, had been added, tacked on after the letter was written. Either Signor Giorgio had not wanted to waste the pretty slip of pink paper edged in gold or he had not wanted to go to the trouble of re-writing a polished copy of the letter, who knows with how much difficulty given all those flourishes at the end of every word. So he had very industriously squeezed the poetic sentence written in extremely tiny letters—an afterthought that had occurred to him perhaps while reading the letter again before putting it in the envelope, to be sure—into the little space remaining on the line after the words you will be queen. Since it stood out noticeably, tacking on the words made those still youthful hopes that were supposed to serve her like loving handmaidens clumsier than ever. And it achieved this fine effect: snorting, Signora Moma threw away the letter, without reading the last lines.

“Oh God, he’s coming tomorrow? The idiot, how can he not understand that I don’t want any part of it?”

And with her hat still on her head, she stomped her foot and raised her gloved hand in a very lively gesture of annoyance and anger.

It can be said that Signora Moma had been wearing that hat on her head for a year and four months. She never took it off except for half an hour or an hour here or there in a day. She would hastily stick it back on her head, and away she went again, out of the house.

A craving, for what she had no idea, drove her out that way, always going around here and there, a craving that became a bodily feeling of exasperation at the sight of the furniture in her home most of all, and especially at the sight of the magnificent reception hall, with those lush drapes and those damask curtains, those antique and modern paintings on the walls and that grand piano of her husband’s and those music stands that seemed like the ones in churches. Her husband’s colleagues with their stringed instruments and also Alda, her beautiful daughter, far, far away now, along with her violin too, used to sit in front of those music stands.

For a year and four months, Signora Moma had been a widow, of the illustrious maestro Aldo Sorave. The letter received that morning in which that Signor Giorgio called her Momolina had briefly reawakened the memory of her small hometown, that ferrous mountain village, entirely surrounded by beech, oak, and chestnut trees, where one day the young maestro Sorave, driven by who knows what storm, had come to take refuge, a misunderstood genius, with a libretto to set to music, The Storm.[2]     

She really was Momolina, back then. Sixteen years old, rosy and fresh skin, pretty, a bit chubby, and very meek. But she too had fallen in love with the young maestro Sorave. Perhaps she had fallen in love with him because all the girls in town had fallen in love with him. But she had never fully understood why he had chosen her out of so many other girls, precisely her, who certainly appeared less ardent than all the others to him; so much less that in front of him she could only blush and stammer. And, forced to say something to him, she had candidly declared she did not know anything, about music, poetry, or any other art.

Well then, precisely for that reason, perhaps, maestro Sorave married her. Yet nonetheless she believed, she was extremely certain that she had shared her husband’s life for twenty-eight years, tempestuous, gypsy-like at first, with hectic trips from one town to the next, with her tongue hanging out like a poor little dog behind his anxious eagerness as he wanted to reach the destination at any cost. Then, after their daughter was born—another life, never truly calm, but certainly less restless, one that followed his returns from triumphs or a concert tour or a music season directed in this or that city, until he had solidly gained prosperity with his fame and settled in Rome. Their daughter, blonde and ever so beautiful, grew up there amidst the exhilarating splendor of art that surrounded her husband. But one fine day, who knows how, who knows why, she had taken a fancy to an ugly, almost old journalist, toppling all her father’s ambitious plans. She had wanted to marry him and went off to America, to Buenos Aires, where her husband had been offered the editorship of an important Italian newspaper.[3] Three months after that wedding, her father, who had refused his consent until the end and had not wanted to see his daughter again even before her departure for America, had died of a broken heart.

Her only daughter’s moving away was a great sorrow, yes, oh, a great sorrow for Signora Moma. And then her husband’s death had been the greatest disaster of all for her.  But, well, Signora Moma still could not comprehend that really just her moving away and his death had ended everything, as if she had not remained there, as if the home had not remained just the same, due to the prosperity in which her husband had left her.             

Certainly that past life was no longer possible by now, that fervent life, so suddenly interrupted, the art festivals, the conversations, the splendid ladies paying court around the old illustrious maestro, small statured with a bushy head of hair, wild eyes under thick, drooping lashes, like he appeared in the oil portrait hanging on the wall of the reception hall, and the extremely elegant young men courting their daughter. Yes, Signora Moma fully understood this. But a life, such as it could now be under the changed circumstances, could well have been brought back there by the many, many friends of those days—women and men alike—into the home that had remained just the same, in that magnificent reception hall, around her, who had remained alone and wandered about inside as if lost.

And with her hat on her head, from morning to night, Signora Moma, anguished and exasperated, ran unceasingly about in search of the people who had frequented the home in the past, from one to another.

At first she was received with a certain cordiality. Many people had commiserated with her about the double misfortune. Some had also promised that they would come to pay her a visit. Hardly! No one ever came. And little by little Signora Moma had become almost aggressive.

“Rascal! Rascal! You had promised you would come…”

“My dear woman, believe me, I couldn’t.”

“Will you come today? Do me the pleasure, come! I have so many things to tell you… Between four and six o’clock. I’m counting on it.”

“Not today, I’m sorry, madam, I couldn’t. Tomorrow, I hope.”

“No! Tomorrow, of course. I’ll expect you, mind you! Between four and six o’clock. I have so many things to tell you…”

And from four to six o’clock Signora Moma stayed at home to wait for the visit. She really believed she had so many things to tell, and as the invitations became increasingly pushy, she repeated that sentence to everyone.

Four o’clock went by, five o’clock went by, six o’clock went by, and Signora Moma’s impatience, agitation, anguish, and exasperation grew. She snorted, jumping to her feet, went back and forth in the reception hall, appeared now at this window and then at that one to see if the expected visitor was coming. And after it had struck six o’clock, even though she was certain by then that the person would not come anymore, devoured by anger, she forced herself to wait another ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, and another quarter of an hour, and even an hour! Finally she would again put her hat on her head and, once more, off she went through the streets, furious, cursing at the scoundrel.

She did not even realize that now friends and acquaintances who spotted her at a distance would duck around the corner and hide to avoid being attacked, and when they were caught, they held their hand out to her while turning their face away, without giving her the time to finish the usual sentence:

“Tomorrow, right? I’ll expect you tomorrow. Between four and six o’clock. I have so many things to tell you…”

The poor woman remembered she had always appeared friendly and cordial with her lady friends, male friends, her husband’s female admirers, and daughter’s suitors. Back then her women and men friends sat next to her during their gatherings, they even talked with her, they greeted her with a complimentary and deferential air as they came into the reception hall and left. Bows, compliments, smiles… She patiently listened to all that music, all those debates about art. Sometimes she had happened to nod her head or smile in response to someone who had glanced her way in the heat of the discussion... No, no, really no, she could still not comprehend why everyone had abandoned her like that after her daughter had moved away and her husband had died, as if she had committed some shameful act, why everyone had deserted the beautiful home like that, where those precious art objects had remained around her as if suspended in a silent and almost solemn immobility.

The pieces of furniture and the house were now hers, all of them, absolutely hers. She was the lady and mistress of everything. And yet... and yet she felt overcome by a horrible sense of agitation while looking at, or rather, feeling herself looked at like a stranger there, by all those objects that did not say anything to her, that could not say anything to her, because they still had a living memory of either her husband or her daughter, and for her, nothing. [4]

If she raised her eyes to look at a painting in the reception hall, for example, she knew it was an antique, of course! She knew it was valuable. But she really would not have been able to even say to herself what that painting might represent, why it was beautiful. And if she looked at the piano... right, she actually could do nothing other than look at it… she did not even dare to uncover the keyboard, because before dying, her husband had expressly warned her not to let anyone touch the piano anymore. As for touching it herself, she did not even think about it, because music…—yes, she had always lived amidst it—but she had never even learned to distinguish the notes, not even the do from the re.           

That home wasn’t alive for her, that was it, it could not be alive around her anymore. To start being alive again it was absolutely necessary that a bit of that old life, that of others, her daughter’s, and her husband’s return to move around in it.

Another life, there, a life of hers, was not possible, because actually she, Signora Moma (say it softly, please, if you do not want to be too cruel, all of you who are now calling her “a terrible nuisance”),[5] Signora Moma, there, in her house, had never had a life of her own and had almost never been there.

Naturally, she could not understand this; she only had a sense of agitation that became increasingly exacerbated and unceasingly drove her outside, set on calling and bringing that life back around her again, in the desperate anguish of feeling it was missing and escaping her, without knowing why.

The next day—to be clear—she received that poor Signor Giorgio Fantini, her fellow townsman and sweetheart of twenty-eight years earlier, like a dog, even though with his wedding proposal he intended to call and bring her back instead to that only life that she really could have lived, there in the ferrous mountain village among the woods of beech, oak, and chestnut trees. It was a modest, tranquil life of simple days, all the same, where nothing ever happened that she could not have understood, where she could have felt and touched the secure reality of her own existence in everything known.

And after all, that Signor Giorgio Fantini was not so old, and he was also a handsome man, certainly much more handsome than that small, bushy-haired storm-maestro Aldo Sorave. And he was also rich, the owner of a lot of acres of land and a lot of houses, and did not lack in a certain healthy, ancient culture if he could read Virgil’s Georgics in their Latin text, and without the help of a translation.[6]

Of course Signora Moma did not even allow herself to be caught at home. After about two hours when she came back home all hot and fuming, more embittered than ever by her anger toward all those ungrateful and rude people who ran away from her and did not keep their promises to her, she rudely assailed him there in the reception hall, without even taking off her hat, just lifting its veil to let him clearly see the anger in her eyes and her firm intention to refuse that proposal, which seemed almost like an insult to her, or rather, an act of arrogance.

“But who told you to come, dear Fantini? I didn’t tell you to! I didn’t even answer you! But yes, excuse me. Do you seriously think it might be something possible? But you only need to look a bit around, dear Fantini! Do you see? This is my home… Do you think it’s actually possible that I, at my age, might now give up what has shaped my life for so many years? Come on, come on… Reflect a little… You should have reflected a little first, really… That will do! Let’s not talk about it anymore. Let’s shake hands, dear Fantini, with no hard feelings, and we’ll stay friends.”

Signor Fantini did not have the courage to insist. He looked around that solemn reception hall where she said she had her life, and shortly afterward went out of the house with her, who, because of him, had had to interrupt her daily, inexorable search for a moment.  

And in the misty sadness of the December evening, he saw her in the street as she stopped three or four times in the middle of a stream of people to attack this one and that. And he realized that those people who were attacked held out their hand to her while turning their faces away. And each time he heard her repeat that same sentence of hers in a strange voice, enraged by tears:

“But you had promised to show up! Come! Come! Between four and six o’clock. I have so many things to tell you…”