The Consolation of Pirandello’s Green Blanket and an Autistic Theology

Abstract

Luigi Pirandello’s 1926 novel One, No One and One Hundred Thousand depicts its protagonist Vitangelo Moscarda as a troubled, introspective searcher for reality. Moscarda finds ultimate salvation though a mystical experience emanating from his contemplation of a green blanket. This paper performs a reading of Pirandello’s novel through a lens where Moscarda’s journey is a deeply theological one, and how his ultimate madness is in fact a place of consolation and rebirth. It becomes an autistic theology when its problematic stance towards relationships is taken into account, and the comfort of Moscarda’s ultimate consolation becomes an acceptance of the space where a mystical theology might resonate with a theology of autistic Mindblindness, namely, the ultimate failure of human knowledge and communion.