“While the Heart Suffered” (“Mentre il cuore soffriva”)

Translated by Robin Pickering-Iazzi

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “While the Heart Suffered” (“Mentre il cuore soffriva”), tr. Robin Pickering-Iazzi. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2025.

“While the Heart Suffered” (“Mentre il cuore soffriva”) was first published in the Giornale di Sicilia in the issue from April 7-8, 1916. The following year it was published as part of the miscellany collection And Tomorrow, Monday… (E domani, lunedì…), which was printed by Treves in Milan. In 1928, Pirandello included it in the thirteenth Collection of his Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno), Candelora, published by Bemporad in Florence.

This story marks one of the most innovative efforts by Pirandello to craft a narrative work that eschews any form of human agent or thinking subject; instead, virtually the entire story is narrated “objectively,” that is, as a description of how various components of a man’s body operate in a pivotal moment, when his will has determined to commit suicide and is attempting to force his various body parts to take actions that will lead to the body’s own demise. In fact, while the plot revolves around an anguished man confronting his decayed face in front of a mirror, the story’s true protagonists are his body parts, especially his restless little finger, which seem to act independently to ward off paralysis and despair. While the limbs invent small games, the man’s spirit is consumed by a dark, hidden decision and the temptation of a revolver hidden in a drawer. Indeed, from a narratological perspective, this story should be grouped among the most cutting-edge modernist works that Pirandello produced, pushing the possibilities of narration to a breaking point in the effort to free itself from the human narrator and subject. On the other hand, the story also fits into another major tendency in Pirandello’s works as a tale focused on suicide. This theme was important to Pirandello, and it recurs in a large number of short stories; Giovanni Bussino collected twenty of them in the volume he translated, Pirandello’s Tales of Suicide (Boston: Dante University of America Press, 1988), which includes his own version of “While the Heart Suffered” (pp. 169-176). But the theme is hardly limited to his short stories, recurring in novels like The Late Mattia Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal, 1904) and plays like Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore, 1921/25), among others. While Pirandello wrote other stories that use estranging effects to depersonalize the narration, this one is thus set apart by the way it pairs that dehumanizing effect with a thematic exploration of the human will’s self-extinguishing ability to push itself toward death.

The Editors

The fingers on the left hand started. First, the pinkie finger, as the smallest, was also the most restless, and had always been a torment to the poor, languid ring finger, which had the misfortune of being its neighbor; but it had somewhat tormented the other three fingers as well.

It was a funny shape, with the last small bone poorly attached, bent inward, stiff, and almost impossible to move, making it look like a finger with a permanent crick in its neck.

But it had never been troubled by this defect. On the contrary, the pinkie finger had always used it so   that its fellow hand companions never had a moment’s peace, and as if almost glorying in it, would often even stick up straight, as if to tell everyone:[1]

“Look here, do you see? This is how I am!”

Instead of hiding that crippled little bone under the tip of the ring finger out of modesty, it overbearingly forced it onto the ring finger’s back, or, making it stay up in the air in an extremely uncomfortable position, stretched out to force it on the middle finger or the pointer finger, or reached its crooked little finger nail over to poke at the stocky thumb’s big hard nail.

But at times that nail, fed up and tired, violently opposed the little finger, jumping on its first bone, and held it underneath by pressing it down with the other three other fingers’ help, almost spraining it.

It did not give up.

Pressed down like that, it scratched at the thumb’s calf as if to tell it:

“You see? I can move! You’re worse off than I am.”

And in fact, as if caught in a vice, the thumb soon let it go.

However, that day they were all in agreement.

The other four fingers rather liked it that the odd little finger was so spiteful and overbearing and did not stay still for a moment because they were extremely afraid of becoming numb in the forgetful abandonment in which the entire body had been left for about a week.

Not only the fingers on both hands but also the toes and feet were entirely imprisoned, along with the legs, and further up, the trunk, shoulders, arms, neck, and on the head, the cheeks, lips, wings of the nose, eyes, eyebrows, and forehead. Each of them vaguely perceived an obscure, frightening threat in that prolonged state of abandonment, from which each on its own behalf was trying to escape.

For several days it was as if life had pulled away from them while gloomily concentrating itself in a profound, mysterious intimacy from which they were excluded, kept apart like distant strangers, almost as if the decision secretly maturing in that profound, mysterious intimacy did not have to concern them at all.

For several days they had been left there on a large, Vienna straw chair next to the window, waiting for the decision to become fully developed. Not knowing what to do during the wait, they played around on their own so that they would not grow numb in that abandonment. They really played like crazy.

It was a sight to behold how the legs danced, now one leg then the other, then both of them together, with the tip of the feet on the ground and the heel suspended so that the tendon trembled! Then, tired of that game, they stretched out to play a different one that consisted in them opening and closing rhythmically, first with the left foot over the right, and then with the right foot over the left so that each one had a turn on the bottom, without any bossiness! And even the shoes took part in that game with their creaking.

But the hands were playing most of all, now interlacing the fingers, then bringing their tips face to face and moving them like a lever so that first they stretched out until they pressed one against the other, and then they sprung apart. Or one hand and the other played separately. But almost always, what one hand did the other one did over again. If the right hand drummed on the right leg, the left did the same drumming on the left leg, as if it could not help but do so. A flutter or snap of the right hand and shortly after the same flutter or the same snap of the left one followed. Or else, and always just for fun, one hand squeezed the other’s fingers and vice versa, or it pinched them and then rubbed them with very slow, delicate strokes. Or it began scratching where it did not itch, so that the scratched finger rebelled, lunging violently, and then a scuffle ensued between the two hands, a convulsive rubbing, that finally ended with them grabbing and keeping each other confined very tightly for a while. And lo, then one of them rose up either to go pull on one of the earlobes, or the bottom lip of the mouth, or the swollen bag under the eye, or unnecessarily scratch the chin, with its bristly beard, left unshaven for several days.

The eyes, eyebrows, and forehead were the most pitiful of them all. They would have liked to play too, but the eyes were locked in a daze, or in a hard, cruel fixity by the somber tension of the spirit, the eyebrows frowning, the forehead tense.

The eyes could look but not see. If they ever so barely saw something, they were immediately distracted from seeing it, condemned to turn inattentively elsewhere. But, out of the corner of their eyes, they stealthily followed the game played by the legs or the hands. In passing, they suggested the hands take the letter opener from the small table next to the large chair, for example, in order to start a new game with it. And the hands did not wait to be told twice. They started that game down low, almost secretly, for the eyes’ entertainment, making that letter opener spin around and around again in all directions.

Sometimes they interrupted the game in order to draw the spirit’s attention to them through violent means, by hurting themselves. The terrible little finger on the left hand would stick its crooked bone through one of the small holes of the large  straw chair’s seat, and,  as it was unable to pull it back out again, it forced the man to bend entirely to one side to find a way to  without grazing his skin or ruining the large chair’s seat. Immediately, the thumb, and then all five fingers on the other hand threw themselves into compensating the little finger with soft caresses and loving strokes for the injuries it had suffered for the good of them all. Other times the thumb and pointer finger of the right hand would pinch the leg in order to let the man know that—if he had a heart that was suffering within—he also had that leg, also extremely sensitive, which is to say, very capable of suffering a pinch as a leg, of suffering, there, that sharp little burning… sharper… sharper… No? Didn’t he want to feel it? So forget it![2] The pointer finger rubbed the leg as if to erase the suffering that was fruitlessly inflicted on it. Then both hands took the leg and crossed it over the other one so it could have a good time for a short while swinging the foot.

Oh look! In the mirror of the armoire, placed in the corner on the other side of the window, the tip of that swinging foot was appearing and disappearing, casting a speck of light on the lacquered trim of the armoire.

Another game. The frowning eyes followed it, they waited steadily at the corner of the mirror for the tip of the foot to appear, but also pretended not to notice it, knowing that if they gave the slightest sign of paying attention, then the man, entirely absorbed in his deep pain, would make the swinging stop with a snort, and his body assume a different posture.

Who knows! Perhaps it would not have been bad…

By resting the elbow on the right arm of the chair and slightly craning the neck, the entire head would have appeared in the mirror, and this, the sight of his own face that is, would have been enough to make that man jump to his feet, indignant and fierce.[3]

Just maybe… No, no way, it was not advisable. It was better to carry on playing and not taunt the proud, enemy will that had penetrated the deep, mysterious intimacy where the frightening, somber decision was developing.[4] There was the risk that upon seeing the wretched, dazed face, the bald head, those swollen bags under the eyes, and that beard left unshaven for so many days, the will might oppose the violence with another violence. It was not advisable.

But by then the temptation of that mirror was too strong, not for the body anymore, but for that enemy will, which was now forcing the eyes to stare sinisterly at it.

Damned foot that first appeared in the mirror by swinging! But then the eyes… damned eyes that had caught sight of it!

Now, look… —(no no! the body was resisting)—but the enemy will made it get up from the armchair and appear there, in front of itself, in the mirror.

There it is!

That enemy will made so much disdain, so much hatred thicken in the eyes! With what malicious pleasure it discovered in that poor face the irreparable failings of time, the slow disagreeable alteration of the features, the tired, yellowed skin on the temples around the cheekbones, the hollows, the swellings, the humiliating baldness, the ridiculous, tormenting meanness of those few surviving hairs trimmed almost one by one on the shiny head, which was pinker than the forehead, all furrowed by harsh wrinkles.

And the face, which could only recognize those failings were real, but nevertheless was used to standing compassionately in front of the mirror in the most favorable way in the past, now almost did not understand the reason for that examination, so minute, so acute and ruthless, and remained as if mortified and astonished in front of itself, as if congealed in a frigid grimace mingling disgust and pity. But the eyes, well, they were trying to point out (not as an excuse though, not to object to the assessment of those failings that were perfectly well known), but rather, almost for their own account, they were trying to point out that those swollen bags, just to begin with, look, they would not have been there, they could have not been there, or they would not have been so pronounced, if four nights—four nights—had not gone by sleeplessly, between violent mania and ravings. And then, that long stubble on his face… But why?

There, a hand was rising up crookedly to grab the flabby, bristly cheeks.

Why? Why so much hatred toward that poor, sick man’s appearance? Was he suffering? What was he suffering from?

Unexpectedly, a convulsive tremor rose from the knotted gut, and the eyes—those eyes—filled with tears.

Come on, hurry up! The hands, right away, right away searching for a handkerchief… in this pocket… no, the other one… not even there? The keys, then… the set of keys to open the first drawer of the dresser where the handkerchiefs were… right away!

Oh! There… —the handkerchief, yes—the hand was taking one of them, from so many stored there—but it was taking it almost mechanically, going by touch through the other garments, while the eyes, in the back of the drawer, in a corner… yes, the small revolver… (With this, yes…) It was sitting so quietly, hidden there, with its smooth, white bone handle sticking out from the grey felt case

The other hand was furtively rising up to close the drawer again, in order to prevent the eyes from continuing to stare at that thing there, small as a toy, that ought to be left quiet and hidden in the drawer for now, just as it was.

The set of keys remained dangling in the keyhole.

The mild cool air of the approaching evening came in through the window overlooking the garden. The unexpected pity, from which those tears had flowed, felt ineffably cooled by it. The lungs, oppressed by anguish, expanded in long sighs, the nose sniffled the last tears. And the man went back to sit in the armchair, with the handkerchief over his eyes. He stayed like that for a time, then abandoned his hands on his legs. Well then, the left hand moved closer to the right, which was holding the handkerchief, and took one of its edges, timidly starting to run the thumb and pointer finger over it up to the corner, as if beginning to play again.     

“Let’s pass the time like this,” that hand seemed to say, “but it would really be time to go to dinner now. At least dinner, because today at noon he didn’t have lunch… Before going to dinner though…”

And rising up again, the hand, no longer crooked, grasped the cheeks to scratch the new bristly beard hair.

“What an ugly beard! It would have to be shaved so people don’t turn their heads when he entered the trattoria…”

How strange! Even his mind seemed as if it were joking around on its own account. It wandered, talked to itself about remote disconnected things, followed familiar images that appeared without being conjured at all, ethereal but precise, beyond consciousness, and gave suggestions, while certain of not being heard.

But all of a sudden, it happened as before, due to the temptation of the mirror. The enemy will, as if lying in wait for every instinctual urge every suggestion that might aim to oppose it, would seize it by surprise and make it its own, to turn it immediately against the body.

The beard, yes. Quickly, quickly. And then a bath…

“A bath? What? In the evening? Why?”

Just because. Clean, from head to foot. And everything changed: undershirt, underpants, socks, shirt… everything. Afterward, the body had to be found clean. To begin with, the beard, right away!

Contrary to what they had first wished, the hands felt themselves placed at the service of the enemy will for a normal and habitual act that was now transformed into a somber, decisive, almost solemn undertaking.

The brush, the small box of soap paste, and the razor were on top of the chest of drawers… But first it was necessary to pour water in the basin, get the bathrobe… The hands no longer knew precisely what had to be done first. The bathrobe first, yes…

Among the plush folds of the white bathrobe in the small, round, swivel mirror, pulled forward on the marble surface of the chest of drawers, the bristly face appeared. God, in a terrible state! As if it were, sharpened under the gaze of the stunned, cruel eyes—unrecognizable. And then the hands, frightened by those eyes, stretched out trembling fingers to grasp the brush, took the cover off the small box of soap paste, took a fingerful of it, mixed it into the wet brush bristles, and began to soap up the cheeks, the chin, the throat…

At other times, the eyes and ears enjoyed seeing and hearing the bubbling and sizzling of the extremely white, cool foam, rising in soft, fluffy swirls on the cheeks and chin. And the fingers were delighted at that enjoyment of eyes and ears, and blissfully lingered to make the soap swell with other downier and thicker swirls.

But now, no. Now they were trembling. And the fingertips had almost lost their sense of touch. They trembled at arming themselves with the razor that way, no longer feeling so sure of themselves, as they were about to be guided by those frightening eyes.

The chest was heaving; the heart itself, though it was suffering within and was the cause of everything, was now beating tumultuously. Only a thin wisp of air was coming in, almost sharply whistling, through one of the dilated nostrils. The hands opened the razor.

Fortunately, as it leaned against the chest of drawers, the body suddenly sensed a painful pressure in the pit of its stomach. It was the set of keys left hanging there in the keyhole of the top drawer.

Then the right hand, almost on its own initiative, or rather, obeying an instinctual twinge of disgust toward the extremely vulgar weapon already in its grasp, set the razor on the marble top of the chest of drawers and, instead of taking the bothersome key out of the keyhole, pulled the drawer slightly open, took out the revolver, and set it on the marble top, at a distance.

This was a coming to terms with the enemy will. By setting the revolver on top of the chest of drawers, the hand was telling that will:

“Look here, this is for you. Didn’t you say with this? And so let me shave the beard in peace!”

The chest stopped heaving, the hand, no longer trembling, quickly and almost joyously picked up the brush again, since by then the foam was all congealed and cold between the whiskers.

With the danger cast aside, the breathing lighter, the fingers worked blissfully with the brush to lather up the soap again. Then, with the utmost confidence, they took the razor again, passed it over the right cheek with quick strokes, over the left cheek, and finally, without a hint of hesitation, over the neck, returning as before to delight in the ears’ enjoyment of the dense scraping sound.

Little by little, the eyes had lost their grim expression, but had now, almost immediately, become veiled by an enormous tiredness, while the bewildered look behind it expressed a distant, compassionate, almost infantile goodness. Those childlike eyes closed by themselves. And the tiredness suddenly invaded and weighed upon all the limbs. The will, however, flared up sinisterly one last time, and before the body, so suddenly drained of strength, drooping, could drag itself to the large chair at the foot of the bed, it forced the hand to take the revolver with it in order to set it there at the foot of the bed itself, next to the armchair, as if to say that yes, it conceded a bit of rest to the body, but meanwhile it did not forget the pact.

The last humid glimmer of the day faded in the window, squalidly. The shadows, then little by little the dark and gloom came into the room, and now the rectangle of the window now yawned open less dark, near and extremely far away, bitten by an infinite swarming of stars.

The body, the entire body was now sleeping with its head resting at the foot of the bed, one arm stretched out toward the small revolver.

Without noticing the cold night air that was coming in through the open window, that body slept in the uncomfortable position until the first glimmering light of the new day—bleaker and more humid than the last part of the day before—had slightly dissipated the shadow framed by that window with a vague flurry.

But the limbs did not wake up. The first to awaken was the heart, consumed by a torment that was unknown to the body. It awakened to the feeling of a frightening emptiness, suspended in its bleakness, and a sense of raw, atrocious bitterness that seemed to emanate from a reality that was not lived and where it was impossible to live. Well then, it was necessary to take advantage of this moment, while the numb body was still overcome by sleep’s torpor. Yes, yes, there, the will could swoop down on that hand that was still inert on the bed, make it seize the revolver… Right away! Taken out of the case, like this, here, an instant, in the mouth, yes, here, here… with the eyes closed… like this… —ah, that trigger, so hard!… all right, come on… th…ere…  yes.

In the body that had fallen heavily to the ground after the boom, the fingers gave up the violent effort in which they had been locked, ever so slowly opening again by themselves, already dead, with that crooked little finger on the left hand in front of them all, and they seemed to ask:

“And why?”