One, None and a Hundred Thousand

After all, the “Moscarda” he believed himself to be was different when he was alone, or with his wife, his tenant, or his friends. And there were hundreds—no, thousands—of additional Moscardas in the minds of everyone who had met or heard of him. Moscarda grappled with this new knowledge: that he was not who he thought he was, nor who anyone else thought he was. And the people around him? They were not who he thought they were either. So he decided, in his own words, to “...find out who I was, at least to those closest to me, acquaintances so-called, and to amuse myself by maliciously decomposing the I that I was to them.” What follows is a series of experiments, meant to befuddle and confuse those around him and prove that he was not, in fact, who they believed him to be. Written by Nobel Laureate Luigi Pirandello over the course of 15 years, One, None, and One Hundred Thousand was a groundbreaking look at the nature of identity