Mechanical system of life against humanity in Pirandello’s I quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore (1925) (The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio Operator of Cinematograph)

This study investigates the process of dehumanization caused by a bizarre relationship between man and the machine. In the area of Italian literature there are very few novels that take into consideration the heady world of industrialization. Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) one of the most famous European playwrights, novelist and short story writer places accurate emphasis on this problem. He chooses motion picture as symbol of mechanical system of life against humanity. The author insists that in the modern world the control we exercise over the work process through machinery undergoes a radical transformation. Mechanism becomes the principal means of controlling production and, as such, it controls human creativity. After the machine takes control of human creativity, man is no longer an individual and has no identity apart from the machine. The issue of industrialization against humanity is partially reflected in Pirandello's other novel The Late Mattia Pascal but it creates a bitter polemic in the author's sixth novel The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio Operator of Cinematograph. This research focuses on the theme of life undermined by the voracity of industrialization. I additionally explained in the introduction that there is no affinity between Pirandello's theory of mechanical life and ideology of two contemporary thinkers of Postmodernism: Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) and Paul Virilio (born in 1932).