‘Lanterninosofia’

The lantern casts a broader or narrower circle of light around us, beyond which there is black shadow, the fearsome darkness which wouldn’t exist if our lantern weren’t lighted.” Here the main protagonist Mattia Pascal, contemplates about the “little lantern that each of us carries with him. Pirandello, Luigi. The late Mattia Pascal. Translated by William Weaver. New York: New York Review Books, 2005, 155..

This definition of light falls in line with the fact that without light there can be no shadow and vice versa. ‘Lanterninosofia’ is a term coined by Pirandello which argues that our internal idea of the outside world (or in other words, our ‘lanterns’), is the only guideline we have in analyzing the outside world. These ‘lanterns’ are often biased, and as our light shines brighter, our idea of understanding the outside world becomes more and more prone to failure. However, in the novel The late Mattia Pascal the shadow represents something more...