1922: The Birth of Now

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Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism, that have an impact today.

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1922: The Birth of Now: Pirandello's Henry IV and the Idea of Truth

Pirandello's Henry IV and the Idea of Truth

BBC Radio 4 - 1922: The Birth of Now, Pirandello's Henry IV and the Idea of Truth

Luigi Pirandello's 1922 play Henry IV and the idea that truth can be what we say it is.

Henry IV, in Pirandello's play is about a man who believes he is the Holy Roman Emperor, or pretends to. The truth is what he wishes it to be; a position clearly resonant today.

1922: The Birth of Now - Ten programmes in which Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism, that have an impact today.

9. Pirandello’s Henry IV, first produced in 1922, is a play about a man who believes himself to be the Holy Roman Emperor, and lives in a fake palace with courtiers (in reality he’s sane and knows that he is being humoured). It’s the Truman Show with a great twist and illuminates the confusion and uncertainty of the 1920s - a decade full of swirling ideologies and manifestos, some distinctly fascist in character. The play, which has been translated by Tom Stoppard, has strong resonances in our own time, too: an era in which truth has become an oddly personalised concept. Matthew Sweet discusses truth, reality and fascist ideologies in 1922 and now, with guests including the drama critic Michael Billington, who has probably seen more productions of the play than anyone, and the historian Roger Griffin.

Producer: Julian May

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1922: The Birth of Now

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