Several events in the city of Agrigento in Sicily are set to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the island's most famous writers, playwright, poet and novelist Luigi Pirandello, who was born on June 28th, 1857. Italy's president Sergio Mattarella will be in Agrigento's Valley of the Temples on July 6th to present the 'Pirandello Award'.
Pirandello is best known for his play Six characters in search of an author and his novel, One, no one and one hundred thousand, published in 1926.
In an interview with Republica, Italian crime writer par excellence and author of the Inspector Montalbano novels, Andrea Camilleri recalls meeting the playwright ("dressed like an admiral") in 1935, a year before his death, when Camilleri was still 10. Camilleri was later part of several groups who tried to return the playwright's ashes to the town of his birth, Agrigento.
According to Camilleri, one of Pirandello's final wishes, as written on a note he left, was to be cremated, placed in an old Greek amphora (an ancient jar) of his selection and returned to his home town of Agrigento for his ashes to be placed either "in the great African sea" before his house, as the playwright put it, or "in the pine that rises from just above" . So he was cremated and the ashes were placed in the Greek holder.
"Years later, five university students, including myself, we were all dressed in our fascist gear - we were young fascists at the time - and we asked for a meeting with the fascist prefect in Agrigento," Camilleri told Repubblica in the video interview. "We told him: 'We would like that Pirandello's ashes.."
According to Camilleri, the fascist official was less than pleased by the suggestion. "The official just replied: 'Pirandello? Don't pronounce the name of this dirty anti-fascist! The meeting's over. Viva il Duce!' So we waited for fascism to fall and in 1945 we tried again, this time with the democratic prefect of Agrigento. 'We would like to bring Pirandello's ashes from Rome according to his..:' He let us finish then said: 'Do you realise Pirandello was a fascist himself and that we never talk about it?' Nothing came of it until later when Professor Gaspare Ambrosini was elected in 1948."
The student group wrote a letter reinstating their desire to repatriate the ashes from Rome and the professor agreed. The amphora with the ashes was packed into a wooden crate and boarded onto a train with destination Palermo, accompanied by the professor himself. Ambrosini apparently got up to go to the toilet and when he returned the wooden box was gone. Four men in the carriage next door were using it as a table on which to play local card game tre sette.
No funeral had been organised, according to Camilleri, but word spread anyway and the square in front of the station was packed with people as the train with the amphora was due to arrive with Professor Ambrosini. Meanwhile a public official approached Camilleri and protested that the funeral could not proceed because the bishop had intervened and protested to the public prosecutor.
Camilleri met with the bishop to ask him what the problem was. The bishop would not permit that a hearse with ashes of a cremated man pass through the city, according to Camilleri.
"So I had a Pirandellian idea," recalls Camilleri. 'And if we put it inside a coffin?' I suggested to the bishop. The bishop hesitated and then gave his consent. So I rushed down to the nearest funeral home and asked if I could rent a coffin. The guy looked at me and calmly replied that coffins are not generally for rent."
Camilleri says he explained the situation to them and they said that they had one coffin that might work, albeit for children. So the hearse carried the ashes inside the amphora - inside the coffin - across Agrigento to the museum where the ashes finally rested with a sign saying 'here lie the ashes of Pirandello'.
"Years later," continues Camilleri, "a public competition was held and it was won by the sculptor Mazzacurati. His work was a huge rock, with the face of Pirandello sculpted on it and a crevice at the back where the ashes were to be inserted. The rock was placed below the pine and in some way Pirandello's wish to rest there was met.
Years later as they were cleaning the amphoras, they found there was still ash in Pirandello's. So they decided to put the remaining ashes where the others were deposited, in the sculpture below the pine. After extensive protocol, the ashes didn't fit and it was decided that 'the great African sea' might still be the best resting place for them."
But as the master of ceremonies heads up the hill towards the ocean with the ashes in a newspaper, "a gust of wind blows them in his face and he ends up spitting Pirandello's ashes onto the field," recalls Camilleri. So ended the saga of Pirandello's ashes.
Luigi Pirandello was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934. According to the Nobel Committee, it was "for his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art".
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Pirandello always said he was born "in chaos" - literally - for that is how Cavusu, the village he was born in near Agrigento, translates from the Sicilian dialect. His home is now a museum open to the public and part of Agrigento's Valley of Temples.