Ice Friday: Pirandello’s “One, No One”

The idea that the others saw me as one who was not I as I knew myself, one whom they could know only through watching me from outside with eyes that weren’t mine, giving me the appearance fated to remain always an outsider’s to me, though for them it was inside me, mine, a life which, though for them it was mine, I couldn’t penetrate: this idea allowed me no peace. How could I bear the outsider in me? This outsider that I was for myself? How could I live without seeing him? Without knowing him? How could I remain forever doomed to carrying him with me, inside me, visible to others and beyond my vision?