Читать книгу One, None and a Hundred-thousand - Luigi Pirandello - Страница 16

Table of Contents

Let me say one thing more, and have done with it.

I do not wish to offend you. You speak of your conscience. You do not care to have any doubt cast upon it. Excuse me, I had forgotten. Yet I recognize the fact, I must recognize it, that to yourself, within yourself, you are not as I, from without, see you. There is no ill-will in the matter. I would have you be persuaded at least of this. You know yourself, feel yourself, will yourself in a fashion that is not mine, but yours; and once again, you believe that yours is right and mine is wrong. It may be so, I am not saying it isn't. But can your fashion be mine, and vice-versa?

Suppose we go back and start at the beginning?

I can believe everything that you tell me. I do believe it. I am offering you a chair; sit down, and let us see if we cannot agree upon this. After something like an hour of good conversation, we shall understand each other perfectly. Tomorrow, you will come to me with your hands to your face, crying: "How does it happen? What did you mean? Didn't you tell me so-and-so?"

Quite right, I did tell you so-and-so. The unfortunate part is that you, my dear friend, will never know, and I shall never be able to tell you, how what you say to me is translated inside me. You did not speak Turkish, no. We both employed, you and I, the same language, the same words. But is it our fault, yours and mine, if words in themselves are empty? Empty, my dear friend. You fill them with your meaning, as you speak them to me; while I, in taking them in, inevitably fill them with my own. We thought we understood each other; we did not understand each other at all.

Another old story, eh? Something everybody knows. I do not pretend to be telling you anything new; I merely have a question to put to you:

"Good Lord, why is it then that you insist upon acting as if you did not know it? Why do you insist upon speaking to me of yourself, if you know that, in order to be to me what you are to yourself, and in order for me to be to you what I am to myself, it would be necessary for me, inside myself, to confer upon you that same reality which you confer upon yourself, all of which is impossible? For alas, dear friend, whatever you do, you will always confer upon me a reality after your own manner, believing still that it is my manner; and it may be, I do not say that it isn't; it is altogether likely that it is; but it is a 'my manner' of which I know nothing and never can know anything; it is only you, who see me from without, that can know it; hence, a 'my manner' for you, not a 'my manner' for me.

"If there were only outside of us, for you and for me—if there were only a Mrs. My-Reality and a Mrs. Your-Reality, I mean self-existent, unvarying, immutable. There isn't. There is in me and for me a reality that is mine: that which I confer upon myself; a reality that is yours, in you and for you: that which you confer upon yourself; and these are never the same, either for me or for you."

"And then?"

"Then, my friend, we must console ourselves with this reflection: that mine is no truer than yours, and that they endure for but a moment, both yours and mine.

"Is your head swimming a little? Then, then—let's leave off."