%I Norvik Press
%J Scandinavica. An International Journal of Scandinavian Studies
%K Henrik Ibsen; Luigi Pirandello;Adriano Tilgher; sculpture; Pygmalion myth.
%L discovery10114311
%X The compelling mystery of sculpture as an art form – the shaping of a
three-dimensional body from a lifeless material – has exercised writers,
philosophers, anthropologists, and dramatists, among them Henrik Ibsen
and Luigi Pirandello.This article poses the question: what happens to the
verisimilitude of the statue on stage? Is there potential for fruitful
confusion, hybrids, blendings, between human being and statue in drama?
To explore this question, the article considers Ibsen’s dramatic epilogue
Når vi døde vågner (1899, When We Dead Awaken), and Pirandello’s tragedy
Diana e la Tuda (1926, Diana and Tuda).The petrifaction of the human being
and the animation of the statue do not happen explicitly in the two
dramas, but we are induced to imagine them through a series of symbols
and allegories: characters become stone-like but not of stone, and statues
become life-like but not alive. Both plays use these illusory
metamorphoses to examine ideas such as the pseudo-artist, the artist, the
model, the statue and the ‘enemies’ of art. To frame the discussion, this
article adopts the concepts of consistere, to stand, and muoversi, to move,
terms defined by the Italian philosopher Adriano Tilgher, particularly in his
Studi critici sulla estetica contemporanea (1928). The analysis begins with a
discussion of those artists in the two plays who strive to immobilise their
own existence and that of the people around them; we then consider
those characters who confront the artists and shift the balance in favour
of movement. The article ends with a discussion of the complex balance
achieved in each play between consistere and muoversi.
%O © The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
%T Consistere and Muoversi: The Meeting of Human Being and Statue in Henrik Ibsen’s Når vi døde vågner and Luigi Pirandello’s Diana e la Tuda
%A Elettra Carbone
%V 48
%N 2
%P 5-24
%D 2009