L'ossessione Tilgher

This article takes stock of the relationship between Sciascia and Adriano Tilgher in terms of his role as a critic of Pirandello, drawing (amongst other things) on unpublished letters from and to Liliana Scalero, executor of Tilgher’s estate. The relationship dates back to the early 1950s, when Sciascia published his first volume of literary essays, Pirandello e il pirandellismo, and continued until the 1980s. In this time there was substantial continuity in the relationship: Sciascia maintained that Tilgher, influenced by Pirandello himself, gave too much importance to the presumed philosophocal roots of Pirandello’s work, and underestimated the Sicilianness of the playwright, which Gramsci had rightly signalled in the Quaderni del carcere.