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Pirandello's Love Letters to Marta ABBA

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Luigi Pirandello was one of the greatest Italian writers, certainly one of the best of the twentieth century. At the age of sixty-eight, he met the beautiful and vivacious Marta Abba, a lovely young actress. Though he was old enough to be her father, Pirandello fell in love with Marta, and she remained his muse, his confidante, and his emotional focus.

His letters reveal the many facets of his personality. Some readers might be a little weirded out by the intensity of his feelings for Marta (especially since she never entirely returned them), but many years in the future it's clear that even if she didn't exactly return his feelings, she did care about him, liked him, respected him, and appreciated his feelings about her. "To me he was like a god," she is quoted as saying, even though she got to see all his flaws. And Pirandello's feelings are not those of a dirty old man falling for a much younger woman -- he's revealed, even in old age, as being a very passionate and intense person.

In his letters, he often talks about making her a famous actress, and how the two of them would reform the theatre. The foreword written by Benito Ortolani includes his descriptions of meeting Marta herself, in the 1980s, and what she had to say about "the Maestro." Unfortunately there aren't any pictures.

The relationship between Pirandello and Marta was a unique one, a mishmash of unusual feelings. Definitely worth the read.