After graduating from the University of Rome, Pirandello studied at Bonn and made some translations of Goethe's "Roman Elegies." Soon after he returned to Rome he published a book of verse and a book of short stories which made no particular stir. It was not until he published "Il fu Mattia Pascal" ("The Late Mattias Pascal") that he obtained any real success. Critics consider it still his best effort in the field of romance. From the standpoint of construction it deserves the commendation that it has received, but both the luck and the plans of the hero are too successful to be veristic, and the eventuations of his daily existence so far transcend ordinary experience that the reader feels the profound improbability of it all and loses interest. One pursues a novel that he may see the revelations of his own experiences or what he might wish his experiences to be under certain circumstances. When these circumstances get out of hand or when the events that transpire are so improbable, or so antipathic, that the reader cannot from his experience or imagination consider them likely or probable, then the novel does not interest him. Moreover, the Anglo-Saxon reader, unless he has lived in Italy, finds the flavor of many passages "too high"--certain experiences are related in unnecessary detail. Like a Cubist picture the charm and the beauty disappear in proportion with the nearness with which it is viewed and the closeness with which it is examined. In reality, Pirandello did not get his stride until he began to concern himself with social and domestic problems, such as those depicted under the title of "Maschere Nude" ("Naked Masks"). In the play "Il Piacere dell' Onestà" ("The Pleasure of Honesty"), he pictures a new type of ménage à trois: the "unhappy" husband in love with the mature daughter of an aristocratic Philistine mother, who, when she must needs have a husband for conventional satisfaction, appeals to a facile male cousin who finds in a ne'er-do-well disciple of Descartes one who is willing to act the part vicariously, the apparent quid pro quo being the payment of his gambling debts. The hypocritical, bombastic lover; the sentimental mother with a "family complex"; the anguishing, passionate daughter; the suave, aristocratic male procurer, and finally he who was to be the victim of the machinations of these experienced persons, but who proves to be the victor because he plays the game in a way new to them--that is, straight--each in turn delivers herself or himself of sentiments and convictions that reveal the social hypocrisies and conventional lies which form the scaffolding and supports of what is called "every-day life," and give Pirandello an opportunity to display his irony, his sarcasm, and his humor. The art of Pirandello is a subtle play of paradoxes and analyses of motives which are second nature to persons called complex, the result of inherited and acquired artificialities. To