Knowledge in Paradox: Pirandello's Humour and Bergson

The article focuses on the conceptual similarities between Luigi Pirandello and Henri Bergson on the grounds of vitalism. This affinity is so often evoked in Pirandellian scholarship that it has become a critical commonplace; however, its actual extent and artistic consequences on Pirandello's production are seldom explored. While common practice is to stress the differences between them, this article affirms that their agreement is substantial, and explores their common ideas about the limitations of human understanding and the ways these can be overcome, reconsidering Pirandello's humour as an aesthetic application of Bergson's philosophical method. This profound similarity between the methods of Bergsonian intuition and Pirandellian humour, followed through to its logical consequences, paints an innovative picture of Pirandello's aesthetics. His humour can be seen not only in the traditional light, as a tool to expose the fallacies of human logic and social conventions, but also as his aesthetic method to stimulate an intuition of life.