La sagra del signore della nave
Luigi Pirandello / Vincente Pirrotta

“La sagra” – said Pirandello once – is for an audience who has a strong stomach. It is lively, or rather a violent and colorful representation of sin and penance, that is of what human bestiality bears of tragic in itself and that beasts luckily bear not.”
La sagra del Signore della nave is an apology on the dignity of human nature, the noble animal, compared to that of the pig, the vilest animal. This comparison is figuratively set in the background of a pig slaughter that is celebrated yearly in the countryside in front of an ancient, small Norman church, Saint Nicholas, just outside Agrigento, where the Lord of the Ship – a big crucified Christ by the terrible features but lavish of miracles - is worshipped. In view of the slaughter a quarrel arises between a Pedagogue and fat Signor Lavaccara who claims that one of his pigs, whom he is so fond of as if it were a dog, is an intelligent beast and that in the months of its breeding his son and himself have christened it with a Christian name. And, he talked to the pig and it answered - seeming to understand him – so much was it intelligent. Intelligence that the Pedagogue denies making use of an artful paradox: how can a beast that eats to fatten up in order to satisfy others be called intelligent? Intelligent is man who can afford the luxury of eating like a pig, knowing that fattening up he will not be slaughtered eventually. Thus, the superiority of man over pig is clear. The doubts regarding mankind’s supremacy rather arise from the show man gives of himself in the turmoil of the festival, which turns into an aroused and pagan atmosphere. A vulgar pandemonium that seems to prove Signor Lavaccara’s ideas regarding a mankind unworthy of respect, even more than pigs. But then, when the bells summon, the drunk crowds flock together in procession behind the terrible flagellated Christ beating their breasts.
This is the difference: “You, o pigs, spend a fat and peaceful life, until it lasts. Look at that of man now! They have turned into beasts, they got drunk, and here they are crying inconsolably behind their bleeding Christ on the black cross. Here they are crying for the pork that they ate! Can you imagine a more tragic tragedy than this?” (V.P.)