Pasolini

PASOLINI
Forms of
Subjectivity
ROBERT s. C. GORDON
CLARENDONPRESS OXFORD
1996 )
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Preface
I write this preface just days before the twentieth anniversary of

Pasolini's death on 2 Novemher IIn 5, and as onc would expect of a
figure already so persecuted and I ionized in the course of his lifetime, let
alonc since, his prescnce is still an uncannily vivid one in Italy's currcnt
and secmingly permanent state of crisis. To give only two examples,
Marco Tullio Giordana's book and film Paso/ini. Un tldilto ilaliallo
(Giordana, 1<)()4) has reopened the m,lIly unanswered questions sur-
rounding his murder, whilst the 'statesman' Giulio Andreotti, hcf()re
standing' tri,t! for collusion with the mafia, has reiterated as if in expia-
tion of an unnamed guilt that' Pasolini aveva ragione', Pasolini was right
in his analysis or thc dccline or the Christian Dcmocr.ltic (DC) party in
the mid-I<nos. Andreoui's claim is all the more remarkable since
Pasolini was almost certainly not right: indeed he very rarely was, in the
convent ional sense at least, and thercinlies a great deal orhis f~lscination.
Striking and highly c1urged responses to Pasolini or this kind have
heen an important catalyst to my work on this book, which has in a sense
been measured out in public at('empts at appropriation of his name:
since J<)XX he has been touted as a Ilco-f;lscist by thc MS] (Movimento
sociale iLdiano), a scparatist hy the I ,ega Non.l, and a privileged posthu-
mous authority on cverything ti'om the 'strateg'ia dello! tensione' to
'Gladio' and "1~lIlgentopoli'. It struck me early Oil, however, that these
apparcntly appropriative responses were in tact deeply conditioncd and
distortcd by his own rhetoric. Some quality of his presence infiltrated
and modulated their idiom and their impact. I beg'an to realize that even
the most soher and scrious critical work on Pasolini was g'uilty to some
degrce of thcse distortions, anu, what is more, that it could not he
otherwise sinee his work refused to become a vessel or innoccnt or
authentic sets of meaning·s. J-ittlc surprisc that the most incisivc and
rewarding account of his written work at least remains the raw, cumulat-
ive dialogue with Franco Fortini (now collected in Fortini, 1993).
Pasolini's actions and texts impingc upon, conuition and circumscribe
the hermencutic potential thcy creatc. They emanate a sort of centri-
petal force of gravity which draws in and distorts dependent discourses,
VIII PREFACE
including criticism. Behind this autocratic and ambiguous force, and

behind the vitality of his work in general, lie the processes of self-
construction, of subjectivity that are the focus of interest ofthis book. I
cannot nor would wish to claim that it is free from the pull of that grav-
ity, but I hope that it manages to watch itself being pulled along. To use
a Pasolinian metaphor, as one studies the workings of a mirror, onc
cannot but be distracted from the mirror and begin to study oneself.
I would like to thank the Pasolini Estate, Garzanti Editore and Giulio
Einaudi Editore for permission to reproduce a range of extracts from
Pasolini's work, in particular those from: Empirismo eretico (Milan:
Garzanti, 1972); Lettere, vols. i-ii, (Turin: Einaudi, 1986, 1988);Petrolio
(Turin: Einaudi, 1992); and Bestemmia. Tulle le poesie (Milan: Garzanti,
1993 (copyright held by Einaudi in part». Parts of chapters 2, 4 and
6 and 11 exist in earlier versions in my article 'Strategies of Self-
Construction in Pasolini' (Gordon, 1996b) and a version of chapter 13
has appeared as 'Being and Film-time in PasoIini's Cinema' (GonIon,
1996a ).
I am grateful to the following institutions and their staff for their
support at various stages of my work on the hook: StJohn's College and
the University Library, Cambridge; the British Academy; Collegio
Ghislieri and the 'Fondo manoscritti di autori contemporanei', Pavia;
Pembroke College, the Taylor Institution Library and the Modern
Languages Faculty, Oxford. In Italy, my research was helped im-
mensely by the generosity of Laura Betti and Giuseppe bfrate of the
'Fondo Pier Paolo Pasolini' in Rome. I would particularly like to express
my thanks to them and their jury f<H· the award of the 1993 Premio Pier
Paolo PasoIini to an earlier version of this book.
The following friends and collegues helped me in many diverse and
generous ways which I have greatly appreciated: Zyg Baranski, Paola
Benetti, Pat Boyde, Mike Caesar, David Forgacs, Jason Freeman,
Stephen Gundle, Peter Hainsworth, Genevicve Jackson, J ,aura
Lepschy, Nico Mann, Martin McLaughlin, Rachel Neaman, Geoffrey
Nowell-Smith, David Porter, Naomi Segal, and John Woodhouse.
Pasolini's friend and contemporary Francesco Leonetti deserves a spe-
cial mention for pointing me in a number of new directions, in a single,
illuminating conversation.
Finally, I would like to offer particular thanks to Ann Caesar for her
enthusiasm, openness of mind, good advice and good humour, first as
my doctoral supervisor and later as a friend and colleague.
R. S. C. G.
Contents
List ofPlates Xl
Abbreviations and References Xli
Introduction: The Work of Subjectivity
PART I PASOLlNI'S PUBLIC WORK I)
I. The Contours of a Career 12
2. Projects in Journalism 23
2. I. 'fheJournals of Fascist Youth Organizations, 1942-3 23
2.2. The Cultural and Regional Politics ofFriuli, 1943-<) 33
2·3· q/Jicilla, H)SS-I) 40
2·4· Vie lluove, T<)60-S 47
2. S. NU(Jvi argomenli, 1 1)6h-7 5 54
2.6. Tempo illu.I"lrato, (1)6X-70 61
2.7. Corriere del/a sera (and others), 1973-S 67
3. Vocations 75
PART 11 POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS 85

4. 'Who is me': The Impulse to Autobiography
5. 'Pura luce': A Vision of History 114
6. 'Un folIc idcntificarsi': Figuring the Self
7. 'Mio corpo insepolto': The Body and the Father
8. Poetry into Cinema

x CONTENTS
PART III CINEMA: TRACKING THE SUBJECT 187
9. Authority and Inscription 19 1
10. Style and Technique 20 5
11. Genesis and Intertextuality 21<)
12. Metaphor 228
13. Being and Film-Time 24 0
14. Spectatorship 25 1
PART IV UNFINISJlED ENDINGS 26 5

15. Pe/m!io: Sclfand Form 2(n
Bibliography 293
Index 31]
List ofPlates
I he/lIJeen pp. /64 ami J6S /
I. La rimlla. Orson Welles plays the Director of the Gospel film-within-the-

film, here isolated in morbid g;randeur
2. AUllllone. Acc;Htone (Franco Cini) is ti'amed in portrait, set against the
deep perspective and oppressive sunlight of Ihe 'borgata' lantlscape. Echoes
of Masaccio
3. Uacl/aai e urallini. TOl(> and Ninetlo (I hvoli), Pasolini's pseutlo-couple,
wander through the urban nO-ll1an's-hmd
4. Vat/gc/o. The scene o/" Ihe B"ptism in the River Jordan, filmed fi'om above
and at a distance, shattered the fi'ontal icollograpy ol"Pasolini's film-style
5. Mdca. The Centaur Chiron (I ,ament Terzieff) educates the young Jasoll
into ,1 pre-eivilized affinity with nature and t he gods
6. LIl riml/II (in colour in Ihc original). l'asolini/Orson Welles' Mannerist re-
construct ion of Rosso (iiorcntino's Mannerist /)epoIilion
7. Salt). One of the diseuses and the pianist per/iJl"lll their grotesque cabaret in a
luxuriant, if anomalollsly day lit auditorium, watehetl hy their terrified
audience
8. La ricotlll. The diva (I .aura Bet! i) relaxes, cardully framed by the extras, the
props and the Roman landscape
Abbreviations and References
I. Works by Pasolini are referred to by title only, with the following

abbreviations:
Br,B2 Beslemmia. Tutle le poesie (2 vols.)
Ceneri Le ceneri di Grams.-i
Edipo Edipore
EE Empirismo cretico
LL Lettere lu/erane
L'usign% L 'usigllolo del/a l'hiesa (Illto/iw
Meglio La meglio gioventu
Nuova La nuova gioventtl
Religiolle [,a religionc de/mio tempo
Rosa Poesia injimna di row
Sa"; Sal,; ole (en/ovenli giornate di Sodoma
se Saitti wnar;
1'rasumanar 1'rasumallar e orgallizzar
Vallge/o 11 Vangelll secondo Mal/ell Ifilm and screenplay I
2.References to Pasolini's works are to first editions, as cited in Part I of

the Bibliography, with the following exceptions:
AIi daKli oahi azzurri (1<)65), Milan: Garzanti, 1<)8<)
Leltere luteranc (1<)76), Turin: Einaudi, 1980
Passione e idcoloKia (1960), Milan: Garzanti, 1977
Scriui corsari (1975), Milan: Garzanti, 19<)0
Page references for poetry refer to BI, B2, and for the six verse-dramas
to Tealro (Milan: Garzanti, 1(88). References to secondary sources are
given using the author-date system. Books of multiple authorship are
referred to using the abbreviation AA. Vv. Sce Bibliography 2 for full
details. All translations into English are my own. When quoting sec-
ondary material I have most often only given an English version.
Introduction: The Work of
Subjectivity
When we attempt to tracc the history of the sell~ we of course

know wc arc dealing with shadows in a dark land.
(Trilling, 1974,52)
Pasolini was a relentlessly introspective ami rcstlessly experimental

artist. These two poles, of introspection amI expcrimcntation, mark out
the field of his work, conditioning and delimiting· thc scopc and focus of
everything he docs. Their interaction throws up a whole spectrum of
positions and pr;lcticcs of suhjectivity in languagc, action and form.
What is morc, thcse qualities condition a hody of work that is in con-
stant, stark confi·ontation with ideological, social and sexual realities,
from thc standpoint (at least rhetorically) of an exeluded othcr, so that
the potential for complex, surprising and at times radically eccentric in-
cisions into those realities is remarkahly rich. To understand Pasolini's
significance in thc panorama of post-war Italian and European culture,
and indeed to understand the exploitation and mythologization of his
figure during his life and since, requircs us to look upon and through the
refracting filter ofsclf-exploration that covers his every act, in person or
in language. This study scts out to reread Pasolini in such a light, to re-
claim the rhetoric of an a:uvre that, for all else it attempts to achieve,
never lets up in its contemplation and practicc of the potentially over-
whelming expressivity of the self and its desires: 'l'esprimersi t... 1c
semprc meraviglioso' (to express yourself[ ... 1is always wonderful, I
dialoghi, (84).
To give a taste ofPasolini's penchant for experimentation, one only
has to contemplate the vertiginous formal variety of his a:uvre: his
poetry, novels, plays, screenplays, films, essays in criticism, journalism,
and even songs; his work in Friulan and Roman dialects, and a number
of hybrid dialects of his own creation, as well as standard Italian; his
voracious, if always flawed, imbibing of philology, Marxism, theology,
semiology, anthropology and psychoanalysis, among other disciplines;
2 INTRODUCTION
and his constant fascination with mixtures of all of these, perhaps

epitomized in his much-used formula 'x in forma di y' (e.g. 'poesia in
forma di rosa', 'romanzo in forma di sceneggiatura', etc.). To attempt to
give a taste of the scale of introspection in his work, by contrast, would
be otiose, since self-expression-more or less overt, strategically de-
ployed or agonistically suffered, whether cast as pure impulse or pure
rhetoric-is everywhere in his work. Giorgio Barberi Squarotti,
writing only of his poetry and moreover in somewhat damning terms,
captures nicely the self's relentless ubiquity:
In the history of twentieth-century poetry, there is no other poet besides

Pasolini who has more tenaciously interrogated his own'!, [or 'ego'], more
persistently contemplated it, admired it, examined it, analyzed it and dissected
it in order then to show its suffering entrails to the world, as they beg lill· under-
standing, affection, and pity. [... J Without the'!' there is no possibility of[his I
creating poetry. (Translated from Barberi Squaroni, 1<)1\),206,214)
Were it simply a question of quantity, however, were Pasolini's art no

more than the indulgence of an unrepressed narcissist, there would be
scant interest in a study of this kind. Instead, his work offers an extra-
ordinarily fertile and dense example of how subjectivities arc built on
something other and something far more complex than merely saying
'1'. Indeed, onc might say that his work offers an illustration of the ulti-
mate incompatibility of saying 'I' and being '1', in ;my cohesive sense
these phrases might have (Benveniste, [()66, 259-(0). For Pasolini does
indeed, as Barberi Squarolli implies, constantly ofler himself up for
display in his work, but to such a degree of intensity that conventional
mediation is cast aside: he is personally, bodily present within language,
as he explains in Petmlio, 'in queste pagine io mi sono rivolto allettore
direttamente [ ... 1in came e ossa' (in these pages I have addressed the
reader directly [... ] in flesh and blood, 544). In other words, he uses the
textuality of his work or the semiosis oflYis multiform interventions in
order to embody himself~ to project himself into, rather than onto /()rms
of expression.
The project is, of course, deeply flawed and unrealizablc, but also
strangely utopian. It is an almost mystical aspiration to being-in-the-
text, to textual transubstantiation [ which can be related to his homo-
sexuality. It represents a recourse to the essential signifier of an
'authentic' body as a public locus of discourse, in response to the
I On transubstatiation as an autobiographical operation, see Flcishman, [983,33.

THE WORK OF SUBJECTIVITY 3
exclusion from discourse and from normative sexual ideologies. But
the recourse is a subversive and not a naturalizing one, since the irre-
ducible aura of presence surrounding the body disavows coded norms
(Casi, 1990a; Dollimore, 1991,14-17,39-48; and Ch. 1I bclow).1t rad-
icalizes the relations between sclfhood, signification and the real by
projecting irreducible markers of the latter into the first two. It brings
selfhood and form into uneasy synthesis, in a dynamic akin to that seen
by Dc J ,auretis, 1984, in Pasolini's essays in film semiology: a deploy-
ment and experience of forms of discourse as active and subjective
signifying practices, rather than as enclosed, objective systems. In
other words, meaning in Pasolini is the movement of/between self and
form.
The theoretical and methodological parameters that underpin this
book can be outlined by way ofa gloss on the phrase 'active and subject-
ive signifying practices'. In particular, the signiiicance of the phrase
becomes clearer if it is read as roundly tautologous, in Pasolini but also
perhaps in its general application. In other words, signifying practices
of whatever kind-and there is always a plurality of them at work in any
meaningful text, act or form-arc necessarily active and nacssariljl
subjective. Since they arc rooted in the continp;ency and determining
impact oftheir semiot ic, socio-political, and 'real' contexts, they always
constitute an 'action'-what i'asolini was wont to call 'I'azione', 'il
pragma' or 'il fiue' (e.g. 1:"1:' 21 1; 1 dia/oKhi, 734-5)--and arc steeped in
both ideology and physically tangible reality. Furthermore, this notion
of action carries with it an assumption of agency, even ifmomentary and
illusory: to quote Stephen I Ieath, 'signifying practices always produce
relations of subjectivity. I .. ·1 sig'nifying practices arc subject pro-
ductions' (lleath, 1991,38-9). Always in action, always interrclational,
subjectivity acts or works, through any number of simultaneous signi-
fying practices, to produce the efIect of a subject of speech ('sujet de
l'enoncC'), which in turn is in complex, ambivalent and flawed rclation
with the speaking subject ('sujet ue l'cnoneiation', Benveniste, 1(66),
and with the sutured 'spoken subject' at the moment of reception
(Silverman, 19H3, 43-53). The central enigma and focus of this book is,
precisely, that 'work of subjectivity'.
The phrase the 'work of subjectivity' is useful and suggestive for
two reasons. First, it contains echoes of Pasolini's own nostalgic, anti-
modernist penchant for metaphors of artisanal work to describe his
intellectual and aesthetic activities, apparent, for example, in the name
of his most important journal O.flicinlt (Workshop). Second and more
4 INTRODUCTION
tellingly, it is coined in analogy to Freud's 'Traumarbeit' or 'dream-

work', a process whose movement between latent and manifest
dream-content constitutes, for Freud, the essence of the dream's mean-
ing (Freud, 1973, 207-18; 1976; Laplanche and Pontalis, 1973, 112).
The work of subjectivity is a process that is similarly both transformat-
ive and secondary. It too tends towards the production of a 'manifest'
single entity, the subject, characterized by apparent presence, unity,
and plenitude, but can only ever produce incomplete and mediated
signifiers of subjecthood. Thus tokens of an acutely desired 'full'
subjecthood become arbitrary and even mutually contradictory, oscil-
lating between effects of stasis-a fixed subject is a strong subject-and
mobility-a fluid subject is living and immediate, and stasis is death. Its
primary manifestations are constantly and unpredictably being re-
inverted. Thus, the work of subjectivity is always projected towards an
elusive end point. Its work is never done. 2
To return to Pasolini, we find the consequences of the work of
subjectivity played out at several conscious and unconscious levels. If
his work is always profoundly conditioned by the fractures implicit in
the nature of subjectivity, it is also frequently marked by a conscious
and even strategic deployment of tokens of sclfhood. The latter are
absorbed and modulated from a panoply of subject positions thrown up
by the work of subjectivity in its most immediate manifestations. A
simple example would be Pasolini's reprojection of imagery of solitude
and exclusion as a cathartic and almost redemptive burden. As he says
in 'Versi dal testamento': 'bisogna essere molto forti / per amare la
solitudine' (You have to be very strong / to love solitude, Bl, 941).
Contrary to a rather worn critical shibboleth, the author is very defin-
itely not dead here, but nor is he quite fighting a rearguard action on be-
half of the pathetic fallacy or the life-as-work-of-art, despite
compelling analogies that have been drawn betwecn Pasolini and
d'Annunzio (e.g. Valesio, 198o-I). He is rather an actor, literally, in the
agonistic drama of his own subjectivity, and as such, his presence is
couched in a performative rhetoric whose origin can be traced at least as
far back as the 1949 poem, 'La crocifissionc':
2 The terms and issues raised in this paragraph, and thus some of the premises of the book,
are, as will be clear to many, informed by readings of theorists such as Laean and Kristeva. On
the foundation of subjectivity in lack and duality, see Laean, 1977 (and also Bclscy, 1980,60-1;
Bowie, 1991; Silverman, 1983,149-93); ami on the subject as always 'in process', or 'thetie',
see Kristeva, 1974; on the ideologies and sexualities of transgressive subjectivity, see
Dollimore, 1991; Silver man, 1992; Stallybrass and White, 1<)86.
Bisogna esporsi (questo insegna
il povero Cristo inehiodato?)
la chiarezza del euore edegna
diogniseherno,diognipeccato
di ogni piu nuda passione ...
(questo vuol dire il Croeifisso?
saerifieare ogni giorno it dono
rinunciare ogni giorno al perdono
sporgersi ingenui sull'abisso)·l· .. J
Noi staremo offerti sulla eroce I. ... J
per testimoniare 10 scandalo
(El, 376-7)
(We must expose ourselves (is this what! poor Christ nailed up teaches us?) !
clarity of the heart is worthy! of every derision, every sin! every barest pas-
sion ... ! (does the Crucifix mean this? ! sacrificing every day the gift!
renouncing every day forgiveness! leaning out ingenuous over the abyss).
[... ] ! ! We shall be offered on the cross! I ... 1to bear witness to the scandal.)
The matrix of imagery on show here-of display and openness, of

private innocence and public guilt, of sexuality and/through suffering
(passion)--inaugurates a rhetoric of authenticity and of the express-
ivity of the poetic which will pervade his work. In 1959, Fortini influ-
entially labelled this feature of Pasolini's literary project as 'the
proposition of an authenticity by way of the inauthentic' (translated
from Fortini, H)93, 29)· Dollimore, 1991, 14- I 7, includes 'authenticity'
and 'style/artifice' in his series of binary oppositions (founded in that
between culture and nature) which are subverted and inverted in dif-
ferent ways by what he calls 'transgressive desires'. Others include
surface-depth, change-stasis, difference-essence, personal rolc-
essential self, maturity-narcissism, all of which are constantly renegoti-
ated in Pasolini's work. But, as Fortini realized, Pasolini used such
binarisms as oscillating models of identity and difference, deploying
both sides of such oppositions and dramatizing the resultant discord as
the 'noise' of subjective work. He does not quite fit either of the arc he-
typalmodels of trangression offered by Dollimore, therefore: whether
Oscar Wilde's anti-essentialist and performative 'Don't ever write I
anymore' (quoted in Dollimore, 1991,74), or Andre Gide's essentialist
and ethical 'it is above all to oneselfthat it is important to remain faith-
ful' (quoted in Dollimore, 1991,39). Pasolini is both performative and
essentialist, to the point of obsession.
6 INTRODUCTION
Even Barberi Squarotti ends his polemic with an acknowledgement

of the potential complexity of the endless self-dissections he had de-
scribed so witheringly, once their nature as rhetoric or 'recitation' has
been acknowledged: 'the vast rhetoric Pasolini uses to declare and con-
fess his "I" [ ... ] is, nevertheless, also a sign of the difficulty, today, of re-
constructing poctry as the exclusive voice of the "[" '(translated from
Barberi Squarotti, 1986, 226). On closer inspection, then, that dif-
ficulty reveals itself as symptomatic of deep, ontological tensions be-
tween the individual author, the signifying practices and effects of
subjecthood that surround him, his public and distorted, strategic and
suffered presence as self or subject, and the elusive, floating qualities of
subjectivity that subtend them all.
Critical work on Pasolini already has a complex history in its own
right, partly for reasons suggested ill the Prefacc, and partly because of
the well-marshalled flow of int()rmation (e.g. biogTaphies hy Naldini,
1989; Schwartz, 19(P; Siciliano, 1l)llIa) and of unpublished or unavail-
able texts (sce Bibliography I) since 1<)75. 3 Perhaps the earliest mile-
stones in the critical history were Ferretti, J()74 (first published in
1964), who posited a series of structuring pathetic dualities echoing
Pasolini's own 'passione e ideologia', and Asor Rosa, H)f)() (hrst pub-
lished in H)65), who articulated a criti4ue of Pasolini's aestheticizing
(pseudo-)populist ideology. These two accounts set the parameters of
many later readings. In the early H) 80S, a number of rigorow. studies
appeared which reassessed his written !l'uvre as a whole, displaying a
particular, archaeological interest in his Friulan period (Brevini, {()8rb;
Rinaldi, 1982; Santato, H)8o; and cL Gonion . H)94, 35-7). These re-
main thc most convincing g'lohal accounts of Pasolini's work outside
cinema, and the most prominent interlocutors or this book. 4 11owever,
with the exception ofRinaldi, it could be said that they all treat Pasolini
as a more or less passive and un problematic object of analysis. By con-
trast, some studies of his cinema . often fi'om outside Italy and inf(mlled
by contemporary developments in film theory, and the few readings
sensitive to theories or homosexuality, have tended to tread more care-
fully and more subtly when dealing with the complex self-constructing
and self-framing dynamics that pervade his work (e.g. Casi, 1990<1; De
Laurctis, 1984; Willemen, 1977, p. vi). Even the latter, however, have
tended not to follow through their occasional insights in this direction.
3 Surveys of Pasolini's reception arc 10 he tClUnJ in Borghcllo, 1l)77; Martellini, "J7I);
RinalJi, H)8z, 3<)<)-423; Santato, ,<)80,325-55; and Voza, '<)90.
4 Scc also Fortini, '993.
If what follows strikes a balance between close attention to the contexts
and conditions ofPasolini's work, and an alertness to the theoretical and
practical complexities that colour any monographic portrait ofPasolini,
it will have at least succeeded in its preliminary aim to qualify the
dominant approaches to his work.
Before describing the general shape the book will take, a note
on omissions is in order. There are two important areas of Pasolini's
artistic work which receive less than complete treatment here: his prose
narrative (with the notable exception of Petrolio in Part IV) and his
drama (with the cxception of a handful of references to his verse-
dramas, mostly in Part 11). There is of course much to be said both
about the processes of autobiography and self-inscription in his narrat-
ive, and about the extraordinary mythicization of impulses and desires
in his verse-dramas. Indeed the latter in many ways constitute a con-
densation and redeployment of the fundamental structuring patterns
of his poetry. But, as will, r hope, become clear, fluidity of form is an
essential prerequisite of lhe work of subjectivity in Pasolini, and such a
conjunction is invariably identified in his work with a privileged, indeed
mythicized notion of the poetic. I lis narrative and his drama both
evolve as episodes in that vertiginous experiment in form. Both repres-
ent importanl moments in the genesis of new, hybrid poetic forms,
whose nature, however, I have found to be most radically and consist-
ently charted in his poel ry and in his 'cinema of poetry'. Perhaps only
with Pelrolio did he conceive ora f()rm in prose that might begin to make
such generic distinctions rcdundant. 5
The book is divided into t(Hlr parts, of which the first three are in-
tended to stand as a sort of triptych, and the fourth as a closing reflec-
tion. The (irst three explorc the work of subjectivity in the public,
poetic and cinematographic areas of Pasolini's (l!uvre respectively. In
chronological terms they run concurrently, from the H)40S (or the late
1950S in the case of his cinema) through to his death in 11)75, and should
thus be read as complementary and mutually integrating. 'Pasolini's
Public Work' (Part I) encompasses his varied activities and activism in
public, cultural arenas, broadly understood. It makes its first approach
through a survey ofhis career as an artist and intellectual (Ch. I), before
moving on to examine his particular involvements in a number of jour-
nals, magazines and newspapers throughout his life, and the modes of
5 Much important work has heen done on both Pasoiini', narrative and his drama. On nar-
rative see e.g. ,10 important recent stuuy, Ward, [995: and on urama, narheri Squarotti, [<)80;
(:asi, [990C; Groppali, [979; Van Watson, [989.
8 INTRODUCTION
public self-representation enacted in them (Ch. 2). The analysis

concludes with a tracing of the general contours of his public selves as
they have emerged in the preceding two chapters, and the public roles
identified here as dominant throughout his career spill over into every
other aspect of his work and of this book (Ch. 3). 'Poetry: A Movement
of Forms' (Part 11) takes on the corpus of Pasolini's poetic work, the
defining locus of his private self-contemplation, in a series of four com-
plementary cross-sections (Chs. 4-7). Each follows a key aspect of self-
representation in poetry as a thread running from his Friulan dialect
lyrics of the H)40S through to his strident, politically charged anti-
poetry of the HOOS. 'Cinema: Tracking' the Subject' (Part Ill), exam-
ines his turn to cinema, in his theory and his practice, as a continuation
but also a prof(lllnd alteration of the concerns of both his 'public work'
and his poetry. Each of its six chapters analyses an aspect of filmic dis-
course, in order to build up a multi-layered picture of subjectivity at
work in a medium poised, as he saw it, between its collective and com-
mercial constraints and its liberating referential immediacy. Finally,
'Unfinished Endings' (Part TV), offers a reading' ofthe long, unfinished
novel PClrolio, as a conclusion and summation of Parts I-TIT. Petro/io's
own rhetoric, coupled with its accidental and willed incompleteness,
reatlirms the necessarily unending motion of f()rms of suhjectivity that
best embodies Pasolini's poetic masque. I jonel Trilling's enigmatic de-
scription of the self's history as 'shadows in a dark land', quoted at the
outset of this Introduction, is borne oul in all that t()llows: indeed,
Pasolini's work strongly sugg'Csts that the enigma of selthood is greater
still, that the shadows of its history arc restless, moving' shadows.
PART I
Pasolini's Public Work
Culture is something quite different from encyclopedic know-

ledge. It is oq\"anization, the discipline of onc's own inner sett; it is
a coming to awareness of one's own personality, it is the conquest
of a higher eonseiollsness, through which one can arrive at an
understanding of onc's own historical value.
(Antonio Gramsci)
AT AN early stage in his career, Pasolini intuited the indissoluble and
traumatic link between the private and the publie that determines both
the expression of selfhood and the relation of self to reality. The career
that he followed as an intellectual and artist represented a continual
interrogation of that founding intuition, often taken to paroxysmic ex-
tremes. He constantly laid himself, or versions of himself bare, with
only moment,try pause occasioned by the dangers of going public
through an ideologically fraught 'culture industry' (Adorno, 1991),
with its appropriating mcchanisms of exchange, promotion, produc-
tion and integration. Indecd, Pasolini's cvolution from provincial,
romanticizing young poct to Roman intellectual, tilm-director and
notorious polemicist lits almost paradigmatically into a history ofItaly's
post-war cultural transli)rmation, following the so-called 'economic
miracle' and tht: transition to a t:onsumerist culture in the late 1950S
and early I ()60s (Asor Rosa, H)7S; J,anaro, H)9z). Blurring the boundary
between willed and eot:rccd self-cxposure, his guiding maxim seems to
have been 'nt:ver bt: afraid mhcrc you speak' (AA.VV., H)77, 87). And all
the whilc he struggled to sustain the rhetoric of innocence and authen-
ticity in which the illusion of a strong, stahle subjectivity must be
grounded. This laying hare of thc self in a public arena became the
dominant paradigm of his activit y, and its rhetoric is of central impor-
tam:e in ulldnstamling his role as a cultural operator.
This first part sets out to cxaminc that rhetoric ami thus the workings
of subjectivity in Pasolini's public interventions. Its first chapter
sketch cs tht: evolution of his Clrcer as a writer, intellectual and cinc-aste,
following his self-positioning within or against various cultural metiers
and industries, each with their own cultural, linguistic, industrial, and
communicative characteristics. Its second and principal chapter ana-
lyses in detail the seven major moments in Pasolini's rich career as an
essayist ami journalist between 1942 and 1975. And finally, the third
chapter draws out /i·om the first two a series of almost talismanic roles
which characterize and structure Pasolini's public self-expression and
at times aftiml him the possihility ofsuhordinating the arena to express-
iveend'i.
I
The Contours ofa Career
Letters and documents of Pasolini's teenage life in the late 1930S and
early 1940S show all the traits of a highly traditional literary formation:
diaries, notebooks, passionate exchanges of juvenilia with friends, ac-
counts of feverish formative readings, proliferating, eclectic projects
for essays, books, paintings and treatises (e.g. Lellere, i. J 5; cf Naldini,
1989,24-48; Schwartz, 1992, 118-32). Such activity was fed by a
largely unproblematized appetite for literary success,' and by a mutu-
ally supportive circle of friends. A marginally larger stage was provided
by his involvement in Holognese journals of the fascist student organ-
izations GUt' ('Gruppi Universitari Fascisti') and GlL ('Giovani
Italiani del Littorio') (see Ch. 2 §J), and by occasional contributions in
still larger arenas, such as the international youth conference in Weimar
that he attended in 1942. Hut the primary arena ofliterary exchange tc)r
Pasolini was a private con fraternity, and its most important early
project was the unrealized journal, Hredi (I leirs), whose conservative
ag'enda was to revisit the literary canon. };'redi was planned in HJ4I-2
with Francesco J ,eonetti, Roberto Roversi-·--later co-tc)lJnders with
Pasolini of Officina-and T,1Iciano Serra, and although it was tc)iled by
wartime paper shortages, it did lead to the private publication in
Bologna ofPasolini's first collection of poems, in liriulan dialect, Poesie
a Casarsll, in H)42.2
The t()lJnding moment ofPasolini's literary career can be traced back
to Poesie Cl Casllnll, but not so much to its publication as to an extra-
ordinary review in the Corriere del Ticino by the already influential critic
Gianfranco Contini, who called it 'la prima accessionc dclla letteratura
"dialcttale" all'aura della poesia d'oggi, e pcrtanto una modificazione
in profonditi di quell'attributo' (the first accession of 'dialect' liter-
ature into the aura of contemporary poetry, and hence a profound
I A significant motifofPasolini's later work is its traumatic ironizatioll of such an heroic
notion of success, ('la viLtoria'), and failure ('la sconfitta') (sec Ch. 4 helow).
2 The others in the group also published collections of poems: Leonctti, Sop", unll padulll
estate; Rovcrsi, Poesie; and Scrra, Can/a tij memorie.

THE CONTOURS OF A CAREER 13
modification of that aspect, Contini, 1943). It is difficult to over-
estimate the importance of Contini's approval and Pasolini was aston-
ished, in all innocence:
Chi potra mai descriverc la mia gioia? Ho saltato e ballato per i portici di
Bologna: c quanto alla soddisfazione mondana cui ci si pUG aspirare scrivendo
versi t... 1ormai posso benissimo fame sempre a meno. (Quoted in Siciliano,
19 8Ia,86.)
(who could ever describe my joy? I jumped and danced under the porticos of
Bologna: and as hlr the social gratification that writing poetry might bring L... ]
I could now do without it tilf ever)
His relatively recent and somewhat eccentric interest in dialect 3 was
confirmed and redoubled, and it remained a flexible and distinctive
vessel f())· his poetic development in the fi:Jllowing decade and more, as
he moved from hermeticist to popular-fi:llkloric anu then to politico-
cultural forms. But more importantly, he was very quickly noticeu:
Antonio Russi, AlfiJI1s0 Gatto+ and the Bollcltino ddla socield ji/ologica
friulana all reviewed the book, and the latter led to a long and at times
difficult involvement with 'official' organs of Friulan culture (sce Un
paese di lelllpomli c tli primulc). This, alongside his teaching activity in
and around Casarsa after his night there in the autumn of U)43, leu in
turn to a committed interest in Friulan language and poetry and its
autonomous culture- -he set up his own Friulan 'Academiuta' in
1945 -- and thereby to his brief period of militancy in the pcr (Partito
eomunista italiano), from H)47 until his expulsion in H)49. At each
stage of his carly career, t hercfi:)re, the contours of a public persona, and
of a political position-'Ieft-wing' Ltscism, anti-fascism, reg'ionalism,
or communism-remain determined by a literary practice rooted in the
intimacy of private exchange or expression. The dominant register in
his poetry up to U)50 remains the diaristic (sce Diarii, I pianli, and Dal
Diario ([(J4.,)-f(J47) ).
Conlini's patronage was instrumental, in the years after 1947, in
aiding Pasolini's entry into a largely Roman intellectual world, which
would fi:Jrm the basis of his literary milieu and his career after his move
to Rome in 1950. For example, Contini offered an introduction to the
journal Fiera letteraria, and Pasolini began to publish reviews, poems
3 i'a,olini only began writing in Friulan a short time bci()rc publication ofthc book (I,dtere,
i. xxxvi-xxxix). lIe had planned an Italian collection entitled 1 (on/illi, some o[whose poems
are now in H2, 1937-54-
4 Russi's review was in Primalo, 1 July 1943 (now in RHssi, 1967,38-43); Gatto's ill La
molll, I, 1943.
PASOLINI'S PUBLIC WORK
and stories there, and then in several other literary journals, including
Paragone, which was edited by his former professor Roberto Longhi,
himself closely associated with Contini. Contini also arranged a meet-
ing with Giorgio Bassani, another former pupil of Long hi's, who would
provide a route for Pasolini into screenplay work, and become an
important literary friend, leading to encounters with Attilio Bcrtolucei,
Alberto Moravia and Eisa Morante, among others. It was in turn
Bertolueei who suggested Pasolini as editor of an anthology of dialect
poetry for Guanda, leading' to Poesia dialettale def Novt'ccnlo (U)S2) amI
Can:::;ol1it're ilaliano (H)SS).5 And Contini also directed Pasolini's liter-
ary eff()rts, including poems that would later t()nn part of /, 'usigmilo,
towards v,uiolls minor literary prizes, several of which he won, in the
tc)Uowing years (Schwartz, 1<)<)2, I7()-XS, 252-6<). Thus Pasolini under-
went a gradual, overlapping immersion in three very different intel-
lectual milieux-Ihe Udine-based Friulan cultural amI political enclave,
the group of youths under his aegis in the .·/wdI'1IliUla and in Ihe class-
room, and the Roman intelligentsia. Whal is striking is Ihe exlenl 10
which his rapport with alllhree is driven hy an innocenl amhilion and
self-conl1dence. Each is experienced as liTe from economic constrainl
and untroubled by lhe variel y of instilulions and j(m] involved. Such
eclectic activism marks Ihe origin of a romantic assumpl ion which will
characterize Pasolini\ puhlic self·t(IJ·nlations lhroughout his career:
tha t intimate self-expression, even if hosl ile 10 others, transcends iIs
location. An emblem of I"his ulllrouhled public engag'ement, and self·
definition, is discernible in Ihe arch lillc of an article attacking Ihe
tradil ional picl uresque idiom of Friulan poetry: 'Tranquil/a pofc11Ii{(l
sullo Zorutti' (A calm po/cmic on Zonmi, emphasis added: rif,crlll, f ()
October 1<)46; in Un/west: tli /cm/lllrafi /' ili primllfe, 2[4-17).
Pasolini published f(lLlr piaquelle volumes of poetry bel wecn 1945
and 1949 (sce llihliogTaphy f.I),;I1 private expense, as well as numerous
single compositions in journals (Bz, 15X4-63(l). Such small-scale pro-
jects continued weIl beyond his move to Rome in January 1950, t(lllow-
ing his prosecution for propositioning, dismissal from teaching and
expulsion from the PCI. Despite the trauma of this experience, and the
profound loss of innocence which it entailed, making his homosexuality
5 The former was co-edited by Mario Dell' Arco, although it was almost entirely l'asolini's
work (Lettere, i. 468-9). A third, less successful, anthology appeared in "J6r, co-cdited with
Moravia and Bertolucci [or Garzanti, but again with the detailed commentary by Pasolini, en-
titled Stllt/ori della reallli dall'VIII al -"OX ,.ewlll. The three would latcr collaborate Oil NlIllvi
argometlti (see Ch. 2 §s).
THE CONTOURS OF A CAREER IS
public for the first time, the capacity for literature to maintain a cordon
sanitaire around self-expression survived. His poetry, still in both
Friulan and Italian, continued to be personal, diaristic, published in
plaquettes, journals or not at all; am] narrativc projects, many of which
had been conceived and written in Friuli ('La meglio gioventu', later to
become If SIIf{110 tii una cosa; Aui impuri and Amado mio; 'I parlanti';
Romans), proliferated, on occasion published in literary journals, as he
moved towards the Roman sketches which would constitute Ragazzi tii
vita, Una vi/a vio/enta and Ali daKli oahi azzurri.(i As if to emphasize
the continuing intimacy, /Itti imflUri and Amatio mill were largely de-
rived fi-om Pasolini's own diaries, the so-called 'Quaderni rossi' (ex-
tracts used in Naldini, 'I)SI), 6-126); and the diary /(lfITI in poetry
continued in RII111a IIJSO. Diarlo (published in H)60). All this activity
demonstrates the survival of a broad freedom or lack of restraint in the
essentially private expression of a personal voice. Going public is still
secondary to the acl of self-expression; the trauma of subjectivity is loc-
ated and explored in I he movement from sclflo language, if anywhere,
rather than in the confi-ontation with the locus of acts oflanguage. J.ater
this rclal ion will be traumatically and irredeemably reversed, when, to
paraphrase Forlini, H)9J, 227, he gave his kecnest attention to his pub-
lic rather than privale pronouncements, and ("he possibility of unprob-
lemalic, private expressivilY survived only as a mourned residue.
Despite SHch continuity, I he period 1950-4 also saw the emergence of
signs of at rans/ilrmal ion in relal ions bel ween self and sites of expres-
sion. Pasolini slruggled to survive in awful private teaching posts in
Rome, living with his mother (and later his Llther also) in run-down
areas, first in the old Jewish ghetto and then in ("he grim periphery (the
'borgate'), which were to become personally and artistically para-
mount (ill· him. Poverty represented a grave threat to unmediated self-
expression, fracluring the idea of lilerary production as eclectic,
dilettante and autonomous (i·om economic parameters which had de-
termined much of his work, even his politicizing work heretofore.
Aesthetic expression in high cultural till·ms could no longer bc simply a
compliant instrument hlr the subject's narcissistic self-explorations.
But this alienation from 'pure', high culture was, fCI/· Pasolini, immensely
seductive and liberating, bound up with his headlong immersion in the
erotics of poverty, as shown with suggestive clarity in a letter to Nico
Naldini of Fehruary 1950:
6 On Pasolini's IirSl encounter with Rome, sce lIaranski, \()IISb; Dc Nanli~, ")77,67-103;
Thornson, 11)86.
16 PASOLINI'S PUBLIC WORK
CaroN.,
ricordi il protagonista di Sotto il sole di Roma? Ebbene suo fratello, di dicias-
sctte anni, molto piu bello di lui edivenuto il mio amico. Ci siamo incontrati ieri
sera per opera di un dio. Non ho dormito niente, sono ancora tutto tremante.
Mi occorreranno dei soldi: prendi un paceo di libri (edizioni Laterza, filosofi) e
con una scusa vai a Padova a vender ne per 3 0 4 mila: immediatamente, e poi
spediscimi i soldi l ... ] Roma cdivina. Bisogna assolutamente che lavori e che
guadagni molto.
Ciao
P. P. (Le/ll!rl:, i. 407)
(Dear N.,
remember the lead in Sotto if sole di Roma? Well, I've made friends with his
brother, who's I7 and much more beautiful than him. We met last night
through some divine stroke. I haven't slept at all, I'm still shaking all over. I'm
going to need money: take a pile o[hooks (J .aterza philosophers), lind some ex·-
cuse and go to Padua and sell them for 3 or 4 tholls'lIld, allll thell send me the
money [ ... 1 Rome is divine. I absolutely mllst work hard and earn some real
money.
Ciao
(P.P.)
The urgent need for money is hound to the erotic impulse surrounding
the discovery of a new world, and icons of [()flller cuhural value arc
sacrificed to it. 'l~he resulting direction of his literary work, based on a
sublime landscape (,Roma c divina'), represents an openltion of shift-
ing, suhterranean absorption of thc ncw or the other which will recllr
several times in his career. There is a weak analogy, commonly noted hy
critics, between the Friulan peasantry and the Roman suh-proletariat
(and later the poor of the Third World) in Pasolini's erotic and literary
perceptions, just as there is between these and the isolated, private suh-
ject. The weakness of the first analogy, however, shores up the strength
ofthe second, and thus allows the locus and f()rm ofliterary language to
alter strikingly without undermining its essentially private nature.
Hence, the stories which will make up Ruga:::.:::.i di vilu relocate literary
discourse and language in the mock-epic, erotic guest of the boys fi)r the
grail of 'la grana' (cash), and this voicing of a new economy of writing
recentres the marginalized narrating voice also. The key to the implicit
shift in the cultural and subjective status of his work here lies precisely
in that primitive notion of economic exchange and its link to the erotic.
Throughout Pasolini's career, the pattern of shifting absorption of the
other is paralleled in the radicallcaps in his conception of culture, from
the early aspiration to traditional 'high' culture, to his absorption of
Gramscian ideas of national-popular culture along with the broadening
vision of his dialect researches in the 1950S, and then to the 'aristocratic'
abandonment ofGramsci and increasing interest in an anthropological
definition of culture as a defining system of habits and customs (see se
45,211-·-12). The moment of immersion in the 'borgate' produces the
first major shift ofthis kind.
Two events in 1954 mark a turning-point in the modes of going pub-
lic in Pasolini's career: the publication of Meglio, by Sansoni, sponsored
by Longhi's Paragone, and his first screenplay collaboration, with
Giorgio Bassani, on Mario Soldati's La donna del jiume.7 The former,
'da considerare la mia prima opera pubblicata' (to be seen as my first
published work, I,eIlere, i. cxxix), transformed the scale and nature of
Pasolini's literary work, effecting a move away from the artisanal, inter-
personal subject-reader rapport, towards a public, mediatC<.1 and in the
final analysis commercial onc. Similarly, the latter, as with the advance
ofL. 50,000 oflered by Garz.lI1ti fix R aga.zzi di vila, merged his income-
source (previously teaching) with his aesthctic production: Naldini,
quoting l'asolini in pari, describes screenwriting as 'questo lavoro im-
provviso, che "per luCfo" andava sognando dOl anni' (this unexpected
work, 'filr lucre', that he had been dreaming or lilr years, I,el/ere, i.
cxxviii).x But again, scriptwriting brought frustrating problems of
alienation from the industrially, collectively produced finished work:
Illavo1"O di uno scrillore per il cinema pw\ essere bellissimo I . . . 1 Purrroppo si
lavora in mezzo a !?:ente i~llOrante, stupid .. , chc non sa qllello cite vuole. Uno
scrittore scene~~iatore non dovrehht.: neppllre sapere che csiste una produzione
o un nolq~~io: dovrehhe lavorare col re!?:ista t.: hasta. (I,et/ere, i. cxxvii-cxxviii)
(The work ofa screen-writer can he wondt.:rfllll ... 1But unfortunatdy we have
to work with i~norant, stupid people who have no idea what they want. A writer
of screenplays shouldn't even know that productions or hiring exist: he should
work with the director and no onc dse.)
The period betwecn H)55 and 1960 is often touted as the moment
when Pasolini held centre-stage in Italian literary culture, and as a
moment he never managed to transcend. RaKazzi di vila achieved sub-
stantial critical acclaim, despite its prosecution for obscenity. It was
caught up in the seminal debates over realism and nco-realism alongside
Pratolini's Melello (1955), Visconti's Senso (1954), the (rc)publication
7 For Pasolini's olher screenplays, see Belti and Thovazzi, II}BI}, 203-5.
8 In Pasolini's correspondence with Livio Garzanti after 1954 there is COllstant tension be-
tween the demamls of screenplay-work ('il mio lavoro falso', my false work, Lellere, ii. 388)
and literary projects which suffer as a result: scc Lellere, ii. 102, 113, 126-7,232,274.
ofGadda's Quer pastiaiaccio brutto de via Merulana (1957), and the de-
cidedly anachronistic best-seller Tomasi di Lampedusa's JI gattopardo
(1958) (Cadioli, 198 1,46--51; Ferretti, 1979). The journal he co-edited,
Officina, offered a genuinely fresh approach to the politics of writing
(Ch. 2 §3) and Pasolini became a major interlocutor for a large number
of literary and political journals. And Ceneri won praise as an historic-
ally vital departure in poetry from the post-war impas~e hetween nco-
realism and second-generation hermeticism (Brevini, 198 I b, 199-200).
In other words, Pasolini was suddenly in grcat demand. This 'market-
ahle' demand determined the appearance ofL'us~~ll()/() in 1958, the year
after Certeri and over ten years after its initial drafting as a collection;()
guaranteed immediate agrecmcnt from Garzanti fi)r a sequel to Ragazzi
di vita; and made viable a collection ofliterary-critical articles, Pa.l".liolll:
l' itie%gia, also with Garzanti.
This meteoric promotion into the ranks of the literary-intelleclual
dite both limited anu protected the stability and autonomy or the lirst-
person voice. The most telling limit is perhaps ideological: the elite
promotes a patlern of intervention, ofpuhlic pseudo-dialogue in which
both the primary position expressed and the expressivity of allY utler-
ance arc attenuated. One oflhe damning' erilicisms Icvelled al Of/hillll
by l'erretti is precisely Ihal its prestig'iolls g'uesl contributors (almosl all
contacts of Pasolini's) were accepleu hc/()l'e any inlclleclual or ideo-
logical criteria fi)r Iheir co-opera Iion were considered (Ferrett i, I (n 5,
33-'47). But I he dite also protecls ils own. The wil nesses f()I'lhe defCnce
in the trial of Rlll',a:::.:::.i di 1!ita (4July 1I)5{,) included Carlo Bo, Pielro
Bianehi and written testimony fj'OIll Ungareui, Contini, Dc Roberlis
and Schiaffini-antl Pasolini's co-dc/endanl Livio Ciarzanli. Thus, at
least hcf()re H)58-1), he paradoxically continued to separale thc lilerary
as a safe-haven, even when threatened on a juridical or political plane. If
the scale of intimacy has changed radically 1"0 encompass a hroad Iradi-
tional intellectual caste, his absorption of it has not seeming')Y threatened
the pattern of privacy shored lip by a delimited public exchange.
The ambitions of the young Pasolini to succeed in the arena oftradi-
tional high culture, then, are fulfilled to a remarkable degree, but at that
very moment of apotheosis, signs of fracture in the suhject-culture
9 There had been" series of abortive attempts to find a publisher filr }.'ltsiKIIO/t!. Contini ha<.l
tried as early as '947, as had Bassani, through his involvement with HOlleK"e oscure. It callle
close to publication by both Monda<.lori al\<.I Bompiani in 1950, with the help ofGiacinto
Spagnoletti and Vittorio Sereni, before appearing in '958, by Garzanti's concession, with
Longanesi, where Naldini worke<.l. Scc Lellae, i. 381-1)6,6[0; Lellere, ii. 364-73.
THE CONTOURS OF A CAREER
rapport appear and mark the inception of a different, more complex and
fragmented public work. After I958-9, for a combination of historical
and subjective reasons, he beg'ins to be distanced from the high collect-
ive of intellectuals, and to perceive the institutions of culture and its
denizens as alien. The traumatic end of Officina in 1959 broadly co-
incides with a series of events including the death of his father, the
ambivalent reception of Una vi/a vio/cnta and the subsequent failure to
complete a planned trilog'y of Roman novels, and a certain loss of poetic
vein after Ccncri. The end or Officina also shortly precedes the move
into film-direct ing (AuaIlOrlC, 19(1l), which marks a fundamental break
with organs of traditional high culture as a primary means for self-
expression and self-location, and a loss ofprestig;e, ofcastc solidarity in
thosc circles. Volponi, ((n7, 19, for example, suggcsts that cinema
diverted 1~lsolini's at t ention fi'om the 'serious' pursuits of reading and
writing. Thc t wo major poet ry collect ions after [(ll I----Rusa (1964) and
TraSU11lilllllr (1971)- were rclatively nq.,-kcted or disliked (Brevini,
I981 b, J51, 504). Siciliano makes the point in reference to the reception
ofthe complex book, '/I'orl'lI/{{:
it was n:ceivcd hy crit ics I . . . 1 as iCit welT;1 film t n:at mcnt allllnot hing; else: the
stratagem ora worried ex novelist, his cye fixed to the viewfinder, intended to
up his profile in the literary arl'11a. (Il)Xla, 3XI)
As if to con firm this (!;rowin!',' host ilit y, I'asolini Jinall y (dl out wit h l,ivio
Garzanti over what he saw as the poor promotioll of Ji'aslIlIllll7tlr, Hi;'
and Ca/dcl"/iu, and in unJ shifted alk(!;iance 10 Einaudi (Siciliano,
1981a, 440). 10
From 1()60 to un5, Pasolini was more or less constantly planning,
shooting', often durin!',' extensive periods oftravd, or promoting his own
film projects, whilst his published literary work became more sporadic
and of a different nature. The collective process and pragmatic and
technical constraints of film-production, with its reliance on the en-
abling figure of the producer and his budg-ct, and on promotion and dis-
tribution, inevitahly trans(ilrmed Pasolini's relation with the aesthetic,
as well as altering- radically the scale and nature of his audience, not only
for his film work, but also hii-> other activities. The implications of this
extraordinary move into film tilr the work of subjectivity will be exam-
ined in detail in Part Ill, but here three broad points can usefully be
made. First, Pasolini had relatively little difficulty in adjusting to the
10 LL was however (1ublisheu by Garzanti, and Schwartz, I<)92, 666, suggests that he in-
tended to return to Garzanli with Pe/mlio.
20 PASOLlNI'S PUBLIC WORK
strictures of production. After an initial failure to secure backing for

Accattone from Fellini's company Federiz, he was. well served by a series
of loyal producers, despite constant legal and financial difficulties. 1 I
Indeed, the banning and/ or prosecution of nine of his commercially
released films, with charges often directed against both director and
producer, which dragged on for years (Betti, 1977), seems only to have
reinforced his rapport with producers. As with Ragazzi di vita, trials
were often occasions of public displays of solidarity, as whcn Edoardo
Dc Filippo dramatically appeared in a Naples court to defend I racconli
di Canterbury (Schwartz, 1992,590-3). Furthermore, with some signi-
ficant exceptions, he felt well able to control the work of production-
from actors to editing to music and costumes -to manipulate film as a
viable medium for self-expression. \2 Second, the tensions created by
the problems of film-production and mass audiences were exploited
and promoted by Pasolini in thcory and in practice, and used as vehieles
for that very process of self-inscription which they would seem to
undermine, thereby maintaining the model of shifting absorption
noted above. F'inally, the relationship between poetry (and other writ-
ten work) amI film evolves into an intricate and fertile field of explora-
tion, within which both arc transformed. Ilis tirst three films,
Aaatlone, Mamma Roma and I.a rico/lit, tap into the same 'borgata'
world as his prose narrative; sections of Rosa and '/'rasumallar arc set-
diaries; EE theorizes a 'cinema di poesia'; and the vcrsc-1Tagcdies
begun in 1966 inspired the myth films made bctween 1<)67 and Hn I
(fdipo, Teorema, Prmile and Metlea). All these examples show the two
media constantly moulded to each other's contours. Indeed the bulk of
Pasolini's published work between 1<)60 and 1975 is partly or wholly de-
termined by film. In particular, the series of published screenplays amI
set-diaries (sec BibliogTaphy 1.4) reprel)ent a new model for the book, a
transitional, f()rward-projected work-in-progress, preliminary to the
realized object, the film itself (see Ch. I I). This f()rmal characteristic
runs throughout Rosa and Trasumanar, and works sllch as I.a divina
I I Alfred .. Bini produced Pasolini's (ilms, except I he episodes I.a mbbia, I,a terra v;.<la dal/a
tuna, and Che {Ma SMW le 1IIIVote, up to and including h'dipo (sce Vaell"ai e lIuellilli, 22S-H),
after which a variety ofprouuccrs took him on, sueh as Franco Rossellini (Tcoremll, Medca, 11
Decameron) anu Alberto Grimaldi (I rat,'nnli Ili Ca'llcrlmrj', IlliM'e delle 'Milk t' 11/11' "olle',
Salo).
12 Of the various unrealizcd projecls, only 11 padre seivagx;o and S""Paolo appear to have
been blocked by production objections. In the first case, the trial of La ricolla was to blame, and
in the second personal matters and the budget (Sa'l Pllolo, 169). As with the 'Orestcia' project,
the problems arc more practical than prejudicial.
mimesis arc little but work-in-progress. Indeed by repeatedly offering
such texts for publication, the aesthetic status of publication itself is
further modified. These contingent works, rooted in the future, claim a
different vitality for the word from the closed, monumental quality of
the traditional published work.
By contraf>t, works of a private, more straightforwardly literary or
textual nature published after 1960 tend to show a weakened and rc-
gressive quality. He reworks an early Friulan novel into Il sogno di una
wsa (I (62), collects fragments of his Roman prose in Ali dagli occhi
azzurri (I (lIS), and publishes the collcction of essays EE (1972) more as
a gesture of closure than of polemic: 'si presenta come disperatamente
inattuale' (it is offered as desperately out of date, Lettere, ii. cxli). In
each case the present explorations of the subject are only implicit at
best, and going public is now synonymous with retrospection. To take
only the literary texts of the period 1973-5, Nuova is a reworking of
Meglio, La divina mimesis a project largely elaborated in 1963-5, and
Caldel"lin, a play lirsl written in [()66·-7. These are nostalgic, not cul-
turally presenl interventions, even if the nostalgia is perverted, as in
Nuova. The subject in dialogue with its own history, as opposed to the
presenl, is indicative of isolation caused by ideological and cultural con-
ditions, ami a crisis in the efficacy of the published literary work as pre-
viously conceived. The latter now inhabits a sort of posthumous
afterlife, as both Nuova and I,a divina mimesis metaphorically express,
caught in a Illetahistorical or anachronistic stasis (Sanguineti, 1(75).
A parallel loss of vitality, and offaith in public dialogue, can bc seen
in the abandonmcnt of Gramscian aspirations to a 'national-popular'
cinema altcr (()67, and a withdrawal into a 'cincma impopolarc' (Betti
and Thovazzi, H)Xl), 10<); f f 273-80); and in the bitter ironization of
the possible autonomy of poetry or its origin in a stable subjective voice
which runs through ii-asumanar. At thc samc time, however, after
1967-X, he remained immensely tCrtile in untinished or unpublished
written work (/,cllerc, ii. 624-6). Beyond the plays, translations and
stories eventually available in book t(lrm (incluuing the massively ambi-
tious Pelmlio), numerous unrealized film projects and a planned series
of Greek or Greek-style tragedies (Leltc1"e, ii. 607, 644), his unpub-
lished works from this period include, among others, songs and plays
for Laura Betli, a ballet with songs entitled Vivo e coscienza, a verse
noveIl screenphlY Bestemmia (now in part in B2, 2287-93), a collection
of over 100 sonnets for Ninetto Davoli, L 'hobkv del sonetto (B2, 234 I -8),
and a 27-page poem-sequence entitled F.
In the last years of his life, then, Pasolini's cultural operations moved
ever further away from traditional forms of high culture and its elite
caste, into a more dynamic, protean and dispersed mode. His public
profile, national and international,13 grew exponentially, due to his in-
volvement in cinema, and his appearance in scandal after scandal, often
involving prosecution, and in polemic after polemic, in various mass-
circulation newspapers, mag'azines, and journals. Hc was still an im-
portant figure amongst the vibrant and culturally powerful Roman
intellectual milieux centred on Moravia (Siciliano, I<)9J).lIis intensely
controversial and increasingly current interventions-whether on
Dante, on semiology, on the barbarisms of the new techno-consllmerist
Italian language, on the weaknesses ofthe 'neo-avanguardia', anti then
the J<)6S student protests (all in j:"/:", passim), or on the wrong's of ab or-
tion, social homogenization, the 'new l:lscism' ofthe Christian Demo-
crat governing class (Se, j,r), or on the sexual-social and thus
ideological purity of the Third World-all provoked hostile response
from every quarter. The responses were often int()rmed by his constant
conflict with judicial authority and by the barely suppressed homo-
phobia of so many quarters of the broad cultural and political arena. I lis
position simultaneously fragmented vertically, into 'lower', mass-
produced culture, and horizontally, across a range of contingent inter-
ventions (reviews, preLlces, promotions, hook series, film festivals,
interviews, occasional writing 14) into a dizzying maelstrom of activity
ami image. 'I'his was paralleled hy an increasing'ly frustrating awareness
of a disjuncture between himself or his aesthetic trajectory, and that of
the booming culture industry spawned by nco-capitalism in which he
operated so prominently. And in another, final attempt at a synthesis of
his notion ofculture and his notion or project ion of seHhood, I his prob-
lem became an ever more traumatic concern openly explored in his
work. To adapt Umberto Eco's f()rmulation (I':co, Hi)4), Pasolini's ex-
perience of the fi'acture between selfhood and culture evolved in the
final period of his life towards a precarious position of apocalyptic
integration. His death and the immediate responses to it (GonIon,
1995a) thus merely set the seal on an extraordinary public rhcl"oric and
role which his career in public had moulded in all its ambivalent energy.
IJ Scc e.g. his encouIller wilh Alien Ginsherg(LC/lnc, ii. ('J 1-3); or I he first ,1,seSSlllenls or
him in Brilain (Macdonald, ")()(); Stack, ul)(); Wallin~ton, I()ll<).
14 Sce e.g. L'o"o!"/' del/'jllllia, an accollnl ora Irip 10 India with Mora,i. and Morante wrir-
ten for J/giorno and puhlishcd by I ,onganesi in 1<)62 to exploit the marketability orPasolini's
name, again Ihrollgh Naldini. Moravia's diary was also puhlished as Un'idea delf'l"di". Sec
Bongie, 1<)91, 2oH-·IO; Golino, I 'IllS, 241-.1.
2
Projects in Journalism
Over the course of his allult career, b'om H)42 to 197 S, l'asolini concen-
trated much of his journalistic and essaying activity in the f()llowing
seven journals or cultural arenas, ami this chapter examines in each of
fhem particular rhetorical practices anll ideolog'ical parameters of self-
expression:
I. The journals of Clscist youth organisations, 1 ()42--3.
2. The cuitunl and regional politics ofFriuli, 1943-'9.
3· 0lliut/lI, I (ISS'(),
4· Vic tlllli1'{', 19()O'-S·
5. NlIl17Ji argolllcllli, 19()6--7S·
6. Tcmpo il/lIslralll, Il)M! 70,
7. Corril'fL' dl'l/a Sl'ra (and otll(:rs), 1973-S.'
2. I. nil' ]ollrtla/s II(FIISl'isl YOllth Orglllli:::'llI ions, I (N2 .)
Pasolini's involvement in two Bolof!,"llese st udent periodicals, Architravc

and If SI'IIlU:ill, organized hy (iU F ami (JIJ. respectively, was relatively
limitcd, all houf!,"h he was oflicially 'vice cOllsulcnte' (vice consultant) of
the latter and enthusiastically supported the group of slullents who
produced it. 'I 'he journals were two of a large number of similar small-
scale operations which characterized a late flourishing of youth culture
encouraged by the t:lscist g-overnment, allll in particular by the Minister
I
, These cvi<lcnllv,c,eludc Ihe lar!(c r;IIl!(C 0'- P;lSolini's occasiollal work lill' olhcr journals,
ncwsp"pcrs a"d n"'~:,zines (sce R in.,ldi, ,,)lb, 4.>5 43, 4S' 2)_ Sec l'.J~, 1'0rticII ddlll mortl' It"
" selection of such an ieles from "142 III "171 . Several journals were ref(ul •• r, lonf(-term col-
laborators: IJtl./i"ra kUtTaritl, frolH" May 1<)47 arlicic, ~L'isJlirazionc nci cOlltclnporanci' to a
November "174 inlcrview, 'Q~leslo cinema "scdleralo" '; Pari/gm1l" which published poems
!'rom 'L'Appennino' (now in H" '7SH4) 10 '11 mondo Sir!vato dOli ragazzini' (Ill, H60-7H), and
his iII-faled allempls OIl I hnte crilicism in 19('S ·6 (I.lter ill 1,/:' HS-125; sce Garboli, '96S;
Magrini, It)H(,; SCf(rc, "llS); and Rina-,,,ilil, which was Ihe arena lilr an important dehate Oil
Ihe 'questionc delta linf(ua', prompted by Pasolini's article 'Nu()ve questioni linf(uistichc' (sce
Cadioli, 1911S, IS-107; Segre, 11)66), In "174, he even had a short-lived film-review column
with Italian Playlm)!.
for National Education, Giuseppe Bottai. 2 In practice, it provided

a focus for a radical 'fascismo di sinistra' (left-wing fascism), which
opened the path for many young intellectuals towards outright anti-
fascism. The group of students in Bologna were no exception. For
Pasolini, they constituted a first entry into public writing and into a
cultural arena charged with complex ideological connotations, which
nevertheless retained several characteristics of intimate, private ex-
change. Neither the constraints nor the risks run were ever very great
here, although tensions evidently grew with fascist authorities during
1943. Pasolini's handful of lucid articles, alongside several poetry ,md
art reviews and poems, display a superficial acquiescence to the status
quo, with submerged hints at a passive, non-do~'ll1atic resistance to fas-
cism. He enters into the current debate over the role of the intellectuals,
in particular during war, which had resurfaced at a national level in
Bottai's vibrant journal Primato (sce Mangoni, ]()77). Despite or per-
haps because of their relatively neutral rhetorical and ideological attit-
ude, Pasolini's contributions retrospectively illuminate a model or
subjective inscription which will underpin many of his future cultural
and political interventions.
The first important article, 'I giovani, I'attesa', in the opening issuc
of l! Sctatcio, November 1942, addresses a commonplace of fascist
intellectual dehate, the role and nature or youth in history and in fascist
socicty. A mythology of youth will become onc of the most consistent
and fundamental features of Pasolini's work, the principal locus where
sexuality and ideology are established as the two dominant economics
of self-cxpression, permanently reorganized into archetypal collision,
and no single work from his earliest poetry to his final Lutheran letters
omits it. This first confrontation with the theme consists of a bold, if
rhetorically imprecise account of the young as caught in a transitional
yet static pose:
Coscicnti che, prima di csscre degni delle nostrc speranzc, dovremmo segreta-
mente patire in intcnsid tllltc le distcsc cspericnzc di chi ci ha prccedut.o, non
abbiamo nemmeno timore di ammettcre l'impotenza, 0, almeno l'.lCcrbit,j di
questo nostro stato d'attesa. (49).1
(Aware that, before being worthy of our hopes, wc ought to suffer secretly and
intensely all tbe extensive experiences of those who havc gone bcfi)re us, we
2 Bottai was responsible for the campaign, amI Galeazzo Ci.mo amI Mussolini himself,
'Principe della giovcntu' (Prince of the Young), were fervent supporters. Sec Addis Saba,
1973; Bertacchini, 1980, 148-6,; Folin and Quaranta, '977; Zangrandi, [()62.
3 Page references arc La Pasotini e '11 ScllIa;o'.
PROJECTS IN JOURNALISM 25
have no fear even in admitting the impotence, or at least the bitterness of this
our being in waiting.)
They are suspended in heroic hiatus between a past which must be
suffered and a generational coming to fruition vaguely denoted as
'I'attuazione' (realization):
(; ora posta in noi giovani la nuda responsabilit,\ di non tradire il nuovo senso
della vita I ... J anzi di approfondirlo, seavarlo, ridonar\o alia storia come
purificato attravcrso la completa attuazione. (50)
(we the young now have in our hands the stark responsihility not to betray the
new sense ofli/c I ... 1but to deepen it, to f~lthom its depths, to restore it to his-
tory as purjlied hy its complete realization)
There is certainly a thinly veiled political message here: the wait can
only be fin· something other than I;lscism. But of more general import-
ance is the perception of a cultural locus as a state of continuous be-
coming, o/"polenti<lllemling to ideal realization, hased on an instinctual
dialectic bel ween past and future. In an image which extends that dia-
lectic metaphorically to incluJc intcraction between boJy anJ mind,
Pasolini shows how the very nature of 'attesa' renders its moral and
emotional (Hlntialions ambivalent:
Siamo, forse, come I'allela la cui !ill·za corporea non esuha in grilla 0 gioia ma si
concentra e si nlObilila in uno spasimo che solca di rughe il hel voho giovanile;
quando I'allcla si ahluJIllona alia gara, non sper;l di vincere, ma (; preso da una
delusa e ironiea amarezza. Se vinee, non sa valUlare la vil1oria, ehe gli altri
csaltano, e pensa quasi tremante, henehc pieno d'orgoglio, all'avvellire. (50)·'
(we are perh,.ps like the alhlcte whose bodily tim.:e does not rejoice in cries or
joy but is coneenl raled ami mohilized iIHO a spasm Ihat furrows the brow of his
handsome young Elee; when the athlele abandons himself 10 the race, he does
not hope to win, but he is caught in a fi·ustrated ,md inmie bitterness. Uhe wins,
he cannot set value on his victory, which others exalt, and he thinks almost
trembling, hut full of pride, of I he future.)
Fascistic imagery of pioneering physical f(>rl.:e and struggle is applied to

metaphysical ends, to what he calls the 'duro mestiere, di conoscerci, e
conquistarci [ ... J Fatica, estrema autoconoscenza, travaglio interiore
individuale e eolleuivo' (harsh business of knowing and conquering
ourselves I ... 1Toil, extreme self-knowledge, inner individual and
4 As already noted, imagery of victory recurs throughout Pasolini's poetry. There is a re-
markably similar image of unknowing victory ('quando sarcmo vittoriosi, non 10 sapremo',
when we arc victorious we shall not know it) in an article of revolutionary politics in Tempo
illl/strato,7 Dec. 1l)68, now in I dia./of!,hi, 537.
collective pain, 50). As was in many ways typical of intellectuals' re-

sponses to fascism, he is building an elusive position out of its vocabu-
lary and rhetoric which is sublimated into a semi-poetic, confessional
discourse. In this case, fascist rhetoric ofthe body and of youthful phys-
ical force is used as a means of intellectual posturing. Both his later real-
ism and his phenomenological semiology offilm derive from just such a
substitution of the bodily for intellectual praxis. Furthermore, the asso-
ciation sketched out here between a privileged materiality and a pres-
ent, caught between nostalgia for the past amI despair for the future,
develops into a recurrent pattern of self-inscription in his work.
An indication of the ambivalent, but crucial role of the self, and its
echoing of typical strategies of the time, in this putative youth mani-
festo is its forceful use of the first person plural to assert both a collect-
ive subjectivity of the young, speaking with onc voice, and an autonomy
for the single subjective voice within the group. Such a strategy is not
yet motivated by any traumatic imperative to shelter from a hostile
'other' in a stable group identity. On the contrary, here it is a declaration
of infallibility in so t;lr as it confidently reconciles two apparently ex-
clusive conditions, the individual and the collective. Nevertheless, it
will be little altered by later trauma, when the group will become the
marginalized (the poor) or the persecuted (homosexuals, Jews, blacks),
and when the autonomy achieved will be precarious, to say the least.
Here, the synthesis between the seH~ the group and vital reality is per-
fect: 'noi non vogliamo avere un nome: 0 meglio, ciascuno di noi vuole
avere il proprio nome' (wc do not want a name: or rather, each of us
wants his own name, 5 I). Pseudo-collectives, such as movements, arc
superseded by rhetorical absolutes such as youth, or 'real life' , as shown
in this typically cryptic analogy with ideological and national identity:
Come nun siamo faseisli, se senza llIutare il senso della parola, possiamo ehia-
marci italiani, cosi non vo~liamo chiamarci, ~enerica11lente, ne Illoderni ne
tradizionalisti, se modernitn e Iradizione non significano altro che viva
aderenza alia vita vera. (51 )
Oust as we an: not fascists, ifwithuut chan~ing the sense of the word, we can call
ourselves Italians, so we do not want to call ourselves, generically, either mod-
ems or traditionalists, if modernity and tradition mean nothing other than vital
adherence to true li fe)
By allying generational identity to such apparent absolutes as real life

or nation, ambivalence is ironed out, as intermediary, contingent
ideologies or cultural imperatives are diminished. Hence, the writer can
PROJECTS IN JOURNALISM
coherently represent a first person plural whilst working in isolation:

'noi sentiamo che la nostra ricerca ulteriore dovra svolgersi in solitud-
ine' (we feel that our further research must be undertaken in solitude).
As a final indicator of the untraumatic stasis brought about by a lack
of agonistic division betwcen internal and external discourse, the
article concludes with this statement of passive f()rbearance:
non abbiamo proprio niente contro cui batterci I ... 1Non chiediamo altro, a noi
stessi, che di esse re dolorosamente eoerenti alia nostra sofferta attesa, c, agli
altri, di non ul11iliarci nei nostri altissimi impeg·ni. (52)
(we have absolutely nothing to light against I ... 1 We ask nothing more of our-
selves than to be painfully faithful to our grim wait, and of others not to humili-
ate us in our immense undertaking)
The themes and strategies exemplified in '1 giovani, l'attesa' recur in

and inform all Paso\ini's articles /()r fI Settlccio and /lrrhitrave. The idea
of hiatus reappears in the poem-dialogue 'Consolazionl:' (66-8), in
Ungarettian imagery of dawn reawakenings in '( :ultura italiana e eul-
tura europea a Weimar' (68--7 I )'-' ·'I'incerta IlIce del\'alha che tllttavia c
una cerlezza del giorl1o' (the uncertain light of dawn that is still a surc
herald of dayt ime), and in the dialogue 'I ,e piag'he illuminate':
1I Sun/o, IIIcdil 11 III/f), diu: '('ulli gli uomini dormono. Nel pallore mortale che
precede il risveglio, anehc I'adulto cinerme, ma il sonno 10 prote{','ge. (77)
(The Saiut SlI)lS, lIIer/itlltiug: J\llmen are sleeping. In the mort',ll pallor that pre-
cedes reawakening, even the adult is ullarllll:d, hut sleep protects him)
Chino il capo e obhedisco. '('ulta la mia esistenza si c ineencrita, poichc io
credevo ilmio intnminato silcnzio IHe{','hiera, ma lul/>lrwllgdlll dici che era
attesa. J\ndn') dove t II mi guidcrai, nei luoJ!,'hi dovc la Icnchra si alterna al sole
luminosissimo, {','elando le lacrime ne! pai'.icnle riso degli uomini. (79)
(I bow my head and ohcy. J\l1my existence has hurnt to ;Ish, sinec I helicved my
endless silence to he prayer, hul' youllhc ."nhtll/g-dl say Ihat it was waiting_ I'll
go where you (','uide mc, in I he places where Ihe dark alternates with the hrighl'-
est sunlight, freczin{',' men's tears in their p;llienllau~h.)
Imagery of transition and waiting is here again associated poetically

with solitude.
Although much of Pasolini's poctry of this periou is intensely
aestheticizing,S there arc also instances of repeated imagery in certain
Italian dialogue poems of [(.142-3 and the discursive language ofthese
5 Porsir {{ Casal'Sa, prerared in precisely this period (I,ellm:, i. '27-43; /1 Sl'laaio, S(" IJI,
172-3), is largely immune from politics.
articles. To give one powerful example, 'Ultimo discorso sugli intel-

lettuali' (79-81) ends its argument on the role of the intellectuals with a
long parenthetical 'prose poem' on the ineffable personal pain of war,
which begins: '10 e mia madre sediamo dentro la stanza che ha protetto
prima la sua infanzia e poi la mia [.. .]' (I and my mother are sitting in
the room that once protected her as a child and now protects me [ ... l,
81). The stark juxtaposition of registers extends and elaborates the
political case through the aesthetic.
His articles of literary and artistic criticism, by contrast, adopt a
moral rather than political language, exploring the notion of 'pure'
poctry (52-5), again echoing current literary debates. This symbiosis
facilitates Pasolini's man(cuvering between a humanist and darkly
private view ofthe intellectual and a veiled anti-fascism, which increas-
ingly became the norm in GUF and GIL activities in 1942-3.6
Towards the end of' I giovani, l'attesa' Pasolini had explicitly ex-
pressed his support for Bottai: 'ci sentiamo perfettamente sicuri dell'-
opera illuminata del Ministro Bottai' (we have complete confidence in
the enlig·htened work of Minister Bottai, 51). The brief for Primato,
13ottai's studiedly open-minded review, was to promote a new sense of
civic responsihility in the Italian intellectual community, and to dehate
its mission t()[ thc nation (Bottai, HJ40). It presented oppositional views
in often polemical counterpoint to official positions-Giaime Pintor
was among the wide range of contrihutors-and thereby attracted the
attention of many of the radical members of GUF It is no surprise,
then, to sec such praise from Pasolini togcther with statements toying
with anti-fascism ('come non siamo hlscisti I... j'), or implicitly critic-
izing it-'ora da molte parti-e ancora privatamcnte-si avverte una
mancanza di una matura c alta civiitft che ci raccolga' (now on several
sides-still privatcly--one notices the lad of a mature and high
civilization that unites liS, 'Filologia c morale', 170 )--or indeed staking
claims against it:
I'odierna cultura emopea si cvenuta automaticamente maturando, al di fuori di
qualsiasi li.nalid politica, quasi a dimostrazione dell'l liherta della creazione
poctica c dcll'amorc alia poesia, non legata a nessuna 'lncora propagandistica.
('Cultura italiana e cultura cmopea a Weimar', 6il)1
6 Archilrave and 11 Selaail! both ceased publication "fter the tall of Mussolini inJuly [943.
A sixth issue of /1 Se/aail! appeared (n. 6, May [943), and a seventh was prepared, hut left un-
published.
7 Pasolini's attitude to fascism at this stage is unclear. Whilst in 'Allettore nuovo' (Poesie,
1970, 7) he claims to have been turned against fascism on being introduced to Rimbaud in
1937 (corrected to H)3H-<) in Siciliano, [9H1', 79, 82), his Jewish friend Giovanna Bemporad
(today's European culture has automatically matured outside any political end,
as if to demonstrate the freedom of poetic creation and of the love of poetry, un-
shackled by any propagandistic chain.)
The more complex semi-political, semi-poetical 'Ragionamento suI

uolore civile' (56-11) moves beyond questions of simple approval or dis-
approval, into a rhetoric of contradictory reasoning so ubiquitous in the
maturc Pasolini. The poct casts himself again as isolated-'questa
solitudine, questa turris eburnea' (this solitude, this ivory tower)-from
both the 'umili cd affannose tradizioni dell'csistenza famigliare'
(humble amI strug·gling traditions offamily existence) and the infinite
itself: 'L'infinito r... 1ora giace stanco e chius() nei propri conjini, Hdavanti
a noi che non ahhiamo un gesto 0 un grido per cancellarlo 0 conquistarlo'
(the infinite [... / now lies tired and enclosed in its OlIJn con/iues before us
who have neithcr a gesture nor a cry to cancel or conquer it, 56-7).9
Isolated in time and space, the poet nevertheless aspircs to a 'civilta':
li [gli uomini 1asslImiamo, parte della nostm slessa natura, ad un amOfe che da
egoistico I .. ·1 diviene civile. Al di \;\ di ogni schema idealistico 0 supcfumanist-
ieo, in qllesto Cda riconoscere una sorta di cosciel1\e ulllild. (57)
(we engage with them 1men I, as pari of"our ViT)1 Iw/ure, in a love which goes
from heing selfish I ... Ito heing civic. Beyond any idealistic Of superhuman
schema, tl1l're is to hc recognizcll in this a sort or conscious humility.)
In locating himselfin slIch a desert, where spiritual hrotherhood, rather

than the power of epic heroism, g·uides history, he can safdy depolitic-
ize or dellale the gTand bscistic themes of Man's adventure-'I'ignoto,
la gloria, i viaggi, la lotra, la patria, Dio' (thc unknown, glory, travel,
struggle, the nation, God). He elaborates on the nation, explaining the
possibility of a poetic patriotism tilr whoever loves their country as a
sort of platonic, impulsive love. He thus reduces his audience to a
'Happy l,'ew'-'a chi PlH) intendermi' (to those who can understand
me), 'a coloro che sono coscienti e quindi respol1sabili' (to those who are
consciolls and thus respol1siblc). Aping the idealism of both Crocc and
recalls his ahsolute lack ofqueslioningofthe morality of{'lScism as late as 1943 (ibid. 8]--4, and
IJarnabo Michcli, 1()H6). The imagery and rheloric of several of these articles has clearly bcen
initially absorhed from t'lscist cultures.
8 As noted above, •I confini' was the planned tide of I'asolini's first collection of poctry, bc-
t()re being substituted by the Friulan verse ofl'lIesie a Ca.,ars". Ct: 'Dialoghi e figure' (62-8).
9 Echoes of I ,eopardi (see Handa, 1990a) and Ungaretti (sce Siciliano, 198Ib) abound in
1hcse pieces. Beyond the cultural identity gleaned fi·om contemporary debate, l'asolini shows
<"qual energy in creating and legitimizing an identity through interaction with the literary
l",lnQn,
Gentile, he claims that 'piu che le vite offerte [ ... ] verra a contare
davanti alIa storia, la possibilita di amore che la patria avra ottenuto
dagli uomini' (more than lives offered [ ... Jhistory will take account of
the possibility of men's love that the nation will have garnered). ID
The lack of a sense of material, as opposed to metaphysical struggle,
which Pasolini was to learn from post-war Friulan peasant protests
(Naldini, 1989, I26-30; Siciliano, 1981a, 155-63) and from his own
prosecution in 1949, suggests an attitude of static conservatism, neither
revolutionary nor reactionary. But love, humility and stasis are them-
selves anathema to the rhetoric of fascism (except perhaps to its Cath-
olicizing currents). Even ideas close to a primitive materialism are
couched in a predominant humanism which carries with it a hierarch-
ical scnse of the relationship between intellectual and society, making a
privileg'Cd collective of intellectuals, as he had done with 'noi giovani',
but with no spirit of hum hie, retrospective submission:
la genesi di una eiviIt:i n,tsce da prof()J1tie ragioni umanc, e poi pratieo
economiche; e i\ conlrihulO che noi Icllcrali pol rcmo arrecarc-ripeto·-- Cl
riguanla come Hlllllinl 't:he han"o e che sanno'. (Filo\ogia e morale', 170)
(the genesis of a civilizal ion is horn OUI of" deep human, and also praetie,t1-
economic reasons; and Ihc conlrihulion lhal we men of Ictters can offcr- I
repeal·· -concerns us as III/'II 'who know and have', 'Filologia e morale', 170)
Earlier he had quoted Modigliani:
'I.a vila c un d()J1o dei pochi ai Illolli: di coloro che sanno e che hanno a coloro
che non sallno e ehe no" hanTlo': quesla fi'asc di Modigliani dovrebbe tocearci
nd pilt prolimtio ddb nosl ra coscieTlza di inlellelluali. (Uj9) 11
(' I ,ile is a gi n of" I he kw 10 I he many: of" illOse who know and have to those who
do nol know and do nol have': I his phrase of Modigliani ought to touch us in the
deepesl pari orour inlelIeclUal's conscience.)
10 On I'a,oli"i alld Croce, sec llaLl1iski, '1)1)0.

'I The imal,(ery of possession and kn"wlcd~e, alld Ihe I )al1tesque phrasing of il, remain
with P,lsolini inlo the laiC IIISOS and ()Ilicil/II. 'I'here, il is 1""" ofa nel work of mClaphorical as-
sociations bet ween havil1l,( and knllwill~, alld Ihe "ciusion from history by dint of their lack.
It is the basis of Ihe cOl,(nitive alliance of Ihe inlelleclual wilh the I.umpcnproictarial:
~Regrcdirc Ira chi nfJn sa c darllc lcslinHHli.lIlZ.l di fnutlt' a t..:hi sa, 1l()1l .. ielllra nci nostri dlJVcri,
non C Iln,1 delle possibili Iloslre azioni? I ... 110- a cui ti rivoll,(;--1101l sono lIllO di color che
sanna?' 0') 1,(0 back amongstlhose who do 1101 kllow ,lIld hear wilness 10 Ihem amonl,(slthose
who know; isn't this part o/" 01\1" duty, onc of our possible actions? I... 1I\m not I·-to whom
you're talking- ·-OIlC of those who know) (to Fortini, .1 Dce. !l15(" /,CIlCl"l', ii. 255). Sce also the
poems 'Una poicmica in "ersi' (Cl'lIai, B" Z('4 -72) ,lIld FOrlini's reply 'i\I,1i 1,\ dclla ,peranza'
(Ferretti, 1975,256-70)-
As before, this hierarchy has some mitigating aspects. The civilization
aspired to must involve 'un dcfinitivo progresso morale, politico, intcl-
lettualc' (definitivc, moral, political, intellectual progress, 169). And
just as solitude was turned paradoxically into an index of collcctivity, of
civilization itsclf~ so the Happy Few are humbled, and brought closer to
a broader social reality through the topos of pedagogy: 'eduwre; sara
questo f()rse il piu alto-----c umile-eompito affith\to ~llla nostra gcnera-
zione' (to a/urllte; this will perhaps be the highest--and thc humblest-
task assigned to our !!,·eneralion, 170) (see Ch. 3). Through such a
vocation, the artist can aspire 1.0 the high task of the expression of
shared truth, suggested by the doeull1entarist Grierson:
'L'opera dcll'arliSla i:: di dare espressione individuale e bcllczza tClrmale a un
complesso di sl·ntimenti e pensieri eOllluni ehe e~li eondivide col suo pub-
blico, pensicri C opinioni che per la sua ~enerazione h;lIlno valiJid di verid
universali' (irierson. ( 1(19)
('the work ort he art ist is to f!,"ive individual expression and fClI·mal beauty to a
complex or common reclin~s and Ihou~hts that he shares with his puhlic,
thoughts a"d opinions that h,r his ~ent:ration have the validity of universal
truths')
Finally, the pompolls lone of many ofl hcse arl ides is tempered hy their
conslant sense ofl ransienee, a residue of Etseist vitalisll1. The value as-
signed 10 YOUI h 11l'/".It' is always secondary 10 I he inevitability of its pass-
ing. In 'Cultura ilaliana e ellhllra europea a Wcilllar', this sensibililY to
time is applinllo lilerary I radiI ion:
La tradil.ione "011':, 1111 ohhlif!,"o, IIl1a strad;l, C l1eanche IIn sentimento 0 Ull
amon:: hisof>;l1a orlllai intel1dere qllesto termil1e in un senso antitradil.ionale,
cioi: di ullltinua l· infinita trasfcll·ll1al.iol1e. «()())
(The tradition is not a dllty, a road, nor even a fCclinf>; or love: the term needs
now to he taken in an anti traditional sense,;1S a continuous and infinite trans-
form;] t iOI1.)
And in 'Filologia e III ora le':
le present i condil.ioni della vit;1 storiea, che vuolc esscre vissuta intensamente,
ma tut tavia, con la cOlIseienl.a della sua continf>;enza. (t (,il)
(rhe presl:llt conditions of historieallife, t hat wishes to he lived intensely, and
yet with an awareness of its contin~eney.)
noi su~geriall1o I;Ii biovani I di g·llanlarsi Ull po' indict ro, e rahbrividire al silen-
zio mort ale chc h.llasciato dietro di se O~lli polemiea, og'ni recrlldes"enza cul-
tllralc, sia in h1Vore del COlHenllto ehe in E1Vorc del"l f(lrma, 0 di ljualisiasi altra
ljuestioneclla ret oriel. (16X)
(we suggest [to the young] that they look behind them a little, and shudder at
the mortal silence that every polemic, every cultural recrudescence, whether in
favour of content or form or any other petty rhetorical issue, has left in its wake.)
The work for Architrave and Il Setaccio does not form a coherent,
continuous or evolving whole. It is littered with unintentional contra-
dictions and with boldly oxymoronic syllogisms. 12 It suffers from de-
rivative forced rhetoric and lack of focus, and from an acceptance of or
abstraction from contemporary reality, despite latent signs of resist-
ance. But this is only onc side of the picture. Beyond such evident im-
maturity there is an articulated attempt to find a role and voice for the
self into the context of debates over youth and the role of the intellect-
uals. The implicit pattern of inscription outlined here prefigures
Pasolini's later cultural interventions well beyond his ideological epi-
phany of'the discovery of Mar x'. The emphasis on isolation, and hence
on autonomy of identity, is set alongside a certain non-threatening
eolleetivity through total, narcissistic identification. The tension be-
tween these two dynamics is smoothed over by a rhetorical appeal to
absolutes, whether moral, literary or ontological. Subjective aspiration
to 'success' is thus a desire to recast non-subjective reality-cultural,
civil or political-through dynamic subjective impulses such as pain
(,dolore') and love, much as the infinite became a source of moral
catharsis through being 'ent:iosed in its {)]pn confines'. The strategy ideally
achieves a temporary equilibrium, expressed in the notion of waiting
('attesa') and ever-deferred realization ('attuazione'). Ideological COIl--
sequences arc conservative, but the Bergsonian sense of expectant, per-
petual becoming looh lixwards to a possible role for the intellectual as
vessel of potential energy ti)r historical change. I3 The conflation of thc
potential ti)r stasis (Thanatos) and the potential for dynamic change
(Eros or Agape) is apparent in all its vibrancy, danger and heroic sub-
jection in a passage from 'Ragionamento sui dolore civile';
Ci siamo mcssi in UIlIlUOVO moto I ... J un moto d'amore (che a noi sembra
nuovo, anzi c nuovo, perehi: se cosi non tilsse un passo dell'esistenza umana
sarebbe inattuato), simile a qucllo che spinse la misurata anima greea a mari ig-
noti, al pMion pletos iiperon che estinse Bruno ncl rogo 0 Battisti ne! patibolo. (57)
12 See c.g. 'Filologia c morale' (168-71) ami' "Umori" di Bartolini' (165-7) which, rc~
spectively, mock and embrace attitudes of'moralism'.
IJ Asor Rosa, 1969,374-5, without referring 10 the work under discussion here, takes 'I'at-
tes.' as a key term in the development ofPasolini's vision of history. Rinaldi also uses it in his
general description of the structural slippage in Pasolini's work: 'a waiting l attcs.] continually
intersected by the future, always re projected forwards' (translated fmm Rinaldi, 1990, 34).
(We have followed a new impulse [ ... ] an impulse oflove (that seems new to us,
indeed is new, because if it were not, a step in human existence would remain
untaken), like that which moved the measured Greek soul to unknown seas, like
the chifdish milSS (!/"the IKnrmmt that snuffed out Bruno at the stake or Battisti at
the gallows.)I4
The strategy and the rhetoric become necessarily more strained in

the future as external institutions impinge on Pasolini's freedom to
create such a centralizcdlccntralizing space for cultural expression,
and as the possihilities of containment within subject-controlled limits
become ever fewer. The poised, tragic equilibrium of this early period
will later itsclfbe the object of retrospective, nostalgic attempts at re-
construction and liheration.
2.2. 'I'hl' CI/Ill/ta! rllld Rl'p,i(ma! Politics 4Ptiuli, f(J43 '-9
In the period 0[" the 'civil war' and Resistance in Italy, hack in Casarsa
following his escape from military service under the Germans at
Livorno in Seplemher II)4J, Pasolini developed furrher his already
strong at lachmenl tl) I'riuli. lie setup a peripatetic school/in' local chil-
dren whose education had heen interrupted hy the war. With the help
of friends, he 1aughl 1hem lileralure arid classics, ami encouraged his
pupils to compose poelry and music (Naldini, H)SI), 62 ff.). From these
classes a semifi)rlllal soeiely fiH' the promorion o("[oeal Frilllan culture
gradually emerged. According to Naldini, the idea was discussed as
early as OCloher 11)43, bUl the opening issue of the group's first journal
-Stroh~~/;1 tli Cl! tla l'i1ga--appeared in April 11)44, opening with
Pasolini's programmatic opening article 'I )ialet, Ienr;a e stil', and it was
followed hy a second issue in August. I S The 'Academiuta Ji lcnga
furlana' was fi)rmally founded Oil I X Fehruary 11)45, and provided a
meetin{!,"-vlaee filr the small group and their guests to read poetry and
play mllsic. [n August H)4S, the 'Academiuta' was redefined as a vehicle
for the promotion of I 'riulan culture through the puhlication and trans-
lation ofpoctry. StroliKut tli cd da {'aKa hecame simply /I SlroliKttt (n. I,
August H)4S). In Octoher H)4S, Pasolini also joined the 'Associazione
per I'autonomia friulana', the Association for Friulan Autonomy. At
14 For a fascin,"ing analysis, verging on the nccromantic, of Pasolini's obsession with

ucath, sce Zigaina, H)l:i7.
[5 The name was ill contrast to the Uuinc-bascd, esmblishcd journal Slro/il"jurlan, which
published five of Pasotini 's poems from [946 to H)49.
private expense, several plaquette volumes, by Pasolini and others,

appeared under the auspices of the 'Academiuta', including Diarii
(December 1945), I pianti (September 1946) and Dov'e la mia patria
(1949, illustrated by Giuseppe Zigaina). 16 The group entered into
lively debates with the more conservative organs of Friulan culture,
such as Ce Fastu?, broadened its brief to include the promotion of
Catalan and other minor Romance languages, [7 and Jl Slro/if{lll chang'ed
once more into Q}taderno romanzo (first and only issue, n. 3 [sic[, June
1947). IH Pasolini, now officially a teacher, signed the foundation mani-
festo of '11 Movimento Popolare l'riulano per I' Autonomia Regionale'
(The Popular Friulan Movement for Regional Autonomy), and his
activities extended across critical, political and narrative pieces for
regional newspapers (J,ibertd, II rflatlino de! popolo, 11 meS.l"aKl~ero
veneLo), org'anization of cultural events in Casarsa, increasing commit-
ment to the local PCI, HI entry of several poems and books tilr literary
prizes (including early versions of parts of];usignolo), composition of a
number ofFriulan and Italian plays pcrfi)fllled by his pupils (including'
I Tuns tdl Frul and If (appellano, later Ne! '40!), and a growing range or
correspondence and friendships with other intellectuals (including
hrst cont"acts with Roman circlcs).
The period, then, is one of intense and eclectic activism, cut short by
his trial, dismissal, expulsion ri'om the PC!, and his subsequent flight to
Rome. I le develops a collect ive, albeit highly localized, political outlook,
perceiving the prospect rilr dynamic change through a sentimental
militancy which marks a break from the aesthetic and passive 'attesa' or
his writings in /1 Seltl(cio. In most" respects, his central concerns arc
literary even now, ~o and his polit icizat ion comes about through interest
in a dialect which was in origin a precious literary hybrid of his own
,6 Poe.<ie was published in i\UI,:lISt IC)4S by the Stamperia Primon, S. Vito al Tagliamento,
shortly bctilTe the rclilIlndation of the 'i\c;IdUlliuta', and may he considered a prototype tin'
the later volumes.
17 On I'asolini's use of Proven"al poetry in particular, in both its lroubadour and ils mod·
cm 'felibriste' phases, see Clcciiui, IIIH7; Infulllil, lIIHS.
18 The five issues of the journal under its various ritles are reproduced in facsimile in
L'Academiu/(t/yiu/(tnll c le ,'lie rivisle.
19 The date ofPasolini's enrolment is in slime doubt, bur was prohably lowards the end 01'
1947. In 1947, his regular collaboration with Uberlii, a CLN (Comitato di Iihcrazione
nazionale) organ, came to a halt, and in Fehruary l'IolH he resigned from the 'Movimento
Popolare Friulano'. See Bandini, J()77, 25-0; Naldini, [(I HC) , 124, IJ I.
20 Even in the report orhis expUlsion hom Ihe 1'C1, although secretary of the local party
branch, he remained 'il poeta I'asolini'. IIis 1949 membership card of the party-backed
'Alleanza Giovanile' reads 'Profcssionc: intclctualc' (sid.
creation. Its use for political ends is apparent in the wall-posters written
in Friulan by Pasolini for his local PCI section in 1949 (Betti, 1977,
73-95; Guagnini, 1976, J()-29), which attack the Christian Democrats,
offer stirring calls f(II' peace, often cast in religious vocabulary ('the un-
thinking rich will surely bc punished by God', 'Christ our common
master') and several short, simple moral fables. Each has a trite but
strong political point to make, reinforced by thc f()lk-wisdom of dialect
culture. In 'La cuardura dal ho', f(H' cxample, the poor arc likened to
their oxen who, if only they knew they were being led to slaughter,
would never be held by such a wcak yoke.
But Pasolini's evolving notion of dialect can be t()llowed most in-
structively in a series orarticles written between ]()44 and H)49. 21 Some
of the elements of rhetorical excess fi)und in 'I giovani, I'attesa' survive,
but thc proccss or appropriatin!!," this and other half-grasped vocabu-
laries, such as that of linguistics ('non c'e nulla di piLI scicntitico della
glottologia', 't hcre is nothing more scientific than linguistics', 250), has
already becol1le more subt le. Pasolini builds up a sort of sub-lexicon of
terms fi)tll1d in such vocabularies, and proceeds to qualify their mean-
ing and connotations, to create a highly personalized, often ecu:ntric
cognitive system (I le Mauro, II)X); Viano, H)<)J, I 43). I lebmiliarizing
and then recreating these terms, hc all but fctishizes them, treating
them as talismans o/" precarious idcological and/or ontolop;ical ahsol-
utes, madc such hy the operat ions or subject ivity. 111 ot her words, he
begins to operate that process or ap;onistic misreading ·-what he calls
pastiche or reading 01 /111(;11' which will ddim: all his later encounters
with Marxism, ,)'Iy/l..,.ili/,', psychoanalysis, scmiology, anthropology,
'critical thcory' and other disciplines. In the dialect articles, rhe terms
he dwells on revolve aroll\l(l patterns of transfi)rmation or equivalence,
between language and dialect, and hy extension between languag-cs,
reality, and history. And the Illeans oftransfimnation or equivalence is
consistently bound lip with work ofa suhject:
se quakhidull, insoma, al erodes di esprimisi micj eu '1 dialct de la so eicra, pi
nouf, pi frcse, pi ruart si no la lell!!,"a nasional imparada tai libris? Se a
qualchidull a l(hi veil ehe idea, e al e bOil di realis.t1a I... \ alora ehcl dialct al
doventa 'lcll!!,"a'. I ... 1 PlIrtrop pen', il I,'rillll ... 1 a no '1 avut in nisun timp un
grant poeta e'al eiant,Is ta la so lenga e a l(hi des splendour e renomansa.l ... j
21 Unless st'lIed, p,lges reieren.:es in the rest of this section arc to Un paese di lemplJmli e di
prilllule. The analysis which ",llows summarizes a more extensive treatment in Gonion, H)94-
On the political-cultllral and literary implications of I'asolini', theories on dialect in this
period, ,ceHrcvini, 1979; Dc Mauro, 19X5; Fido, I<)XH; Guagnini, 1<)76 and 19H2; O'Ncill, 1970.
Chel stil al e ale di interiour, platit, privat, c, massime, individual. Un stil a

no '1 ene italian c ne todesc e ne furlan, al edi chel poeta e basta. ('Dialet, lenga,
stil', Strolif{ut di ca cia ['aga, April 1944,5-7)
(In short, what if someone thought he could better express himself with the
newer, fresher, stronger dialect of his land than with the national language he
learned from hooks? If someone had this notion and was able to put it into prac-
tice l ... J then that dialect would become a language. [ ... ] Unfortunately,
Friuli [... J has never had a great poet who sang in his language and gave it
splendour and repute·l· .. J
Style is something inner, hidden, private and above ail individual. A style is
not in Italian or German or Friulan, it is of that poet, and no onc else.)
Thus the equivalance between dialect an<.I language is founded in the

struggle of a subjective voice tllr self-expression and for the expression
of reality. And the subjective voice is empowered to enact this equival-
ence through its aesthetic embodiment in poetry. Pasolini took the term
'equivalenza' directly from Contini's review of his Poesie a Casarsa
(Contini, J()43), where it appears several times as a term for elevating
dialect to the level of 'lingua', or 'volg·are illustre' (illustrious vernacu-
lar). For Pasolini, it suggests a dual dynamic, in which the subjectivity
of poetry creates hmguages and collapses difference, but in which, con-
versely, the constant residual interplay between languages and dialects
(and any medium of expression, as Pasolini's entire career will demon-
strate) creates a style, and thus embodies and emblazons the subject.
The movement of t(lrms creates the phantasm of a unitary, originary
subject.
The process of binding subjectivity to language and to reality
through the difference and simultaneous equivalence between lan-
guages is evident in the inclusion ofItalian translations of the Poesie a
Casarsa, described in a note to MCJ;lio as 'parte integrante del testo
poetieo' ('an integral part of the poetic text, BI, 172).22 And it is ex-
plored further in the elaboration of several recurrent terms connoting
binding, synthesizing, moving between; terms such as grafting, cross-
breeding ('innesto'), translation ('traduzione'), and metaphor ('meta-
fora'):
22 Their importance is unucrlined by the tact that Contini, 1943, disliked the translations
('la non bella traduzionc IctLcraria'); and furthermore, according to Faggin, 1990, Pasolini was
the first Friulan poct to adopt this practice. I le discllsses in detail the 'translatability' of
dialect, a problem also brought up by Contini, in 'Dalla lingua al friulano' (1947) 225-7; and
'Sulla poesiadialettalc', Poesia, 8, '947, 1'4-16 (thc lattcr article is not included in Un parsedi
temporali e di primlt/e). Pasolini's polyglot tendency is eviuent also in his creation in 1945 of a
hybrid Romance languagc in 'Las hojas uc las Icnguas romanas' (82, 1996--2008).
e
poeticamente questa lingua non il dialetto degli zoruttiani e nemmeno il
dialetto, COS! suggestivo, parlato dal popolo, ma una favella inventata, da
innestani nel tronco della tradizione italiana e non gia di quella friulana.
('Lettera dal Friuli" August 1946, 211-12)
(poetically this language is not the dialect of the Zoruttians, and not even the
highly suggestive dialect spoken by the people, but an in vet/led tongue, to be
grafted onto the trunk of the Italian, and not the Friulan tradition.)
la fisionomia umana fa parte del paesaggio. I ... '1 Natura geografica Iratiol1tl in
natura umana, il Friuli piU. perfetto c nei eanti del popolo friulano. ('11 Friuli',
1953,200; cf 204, 211-12, 257)
(human physiognomy is parr of the landscape. L... JGeographical nature Ira1l.l-
fated into human nature, the most perfect Friuli is in the songs of the Frilllan
people.)
in che senso un poeta dialettale pui) illnesla,/"Si ora nella I'radizione italiano?
Risponderemo suhito: usando il dialetto come una lraduzione ideale dell'ital-
iano; ma pill che traduzione·la parola lIsata da Contini-noi diremo appunto,
meta/i,ra. ('SlIlIa poesia dialettale', 1 14)23
(In what sense can a dialect poet now gm/; ltimsclFonto the Italian tradition?
Our reply is swift: by lIsing his dialect as an ideal/uf.I1s!ali011 of the Italian; but
more than translation--the word used by Contini·-..·we can say, precisely,
metaphor.)
Each or these terms posits a iJealtTansition from a terminus it qUII-

whether a real ohject or the subject-to a terminus ad quem, its perfected
representation in language(s). But their power anJ resonance rely on
their continual deferral of actual, imperfect transition, and hence on
their autonomous status as aspects of a new f()I·m. Whence a final, key
contrast of terms:
un'ulteriore, piu essenziale distinzione tra lingua lelterale come 'illvclItum' e

lingua come ';l1V£'l1lio'.I . .. ] 101 seconda c lingua anti-costituzionale, adoperilla
sia dai pilrlanti in IIl1a coloritil e dinilmicil contaminazione con gli istituti (da qui
l'evoluziolle della lingua), sia dagli scriventi-poeti. ('Ragioni del i"riulano',
November 1948,236: emphases added)
(a further, more essential distinction between literal hlllguage as 'inventum' and
language as 'invent;o'. I ... 1 the latter is an anti-constitutional language, used
both by speakers in a ruddy and dynamic contamination with institutions
(hence the evolution of the language), and hy writer-poets.)
2] Emphases arc added.

The exploration of experimentalism or stylistic freedom which Pasolini

will undertake in OjJitina between 1955 and 1957 (see §3 below) has its
roots here. This 'inventio'--or continual 'creation de langue' (258), or
'lingua virtuale' (virtual language, 215)-identified with poetry and
thence with subjectivity, has ramifications of an ideological kind for
Pasolini, as the second part of this quotation illustrates, as well as of
a historical kind, as each act of invention reclaims the archaic, pre-
historical, absolute aspects of language in order to project them sub-
versively onto the worn reality of evolved language. This is an early
formulation of the notion of nostalgia and regression as critique which
will inform his mythcial films and the TriloKia delta vita, as wcll as
the provocatory nostalgia for fascism in some of his later polemics (e.g.
se 140--7).
The patterns of self-inscription traceable in this sequence of terms
also inform Pasolini's evolving notion of education, or pedagog·y,
already seen in 'Filologia e morale' in An-hi/rave, and in his professional
activity as a teacher hetween H)44 and f 949. Four articles for Il maUill1l
del pop% in November 1947 and July 1945 (266-S3) describe a teacher
who stimulates curiosity throug·h scandal ('scandalo'), revelation
('rivelazione') and drama (,drammaticit;l'), and becomes a 'means not
an cnd oflove' ('mezzo non gi;l fine d'amore') for the students. In other
words, the teacher should initiate the child into a potentially liberating,
subversive 'inventio' (2S I). A fundamental role in Pasolini's later pub-
lic work is present here in flua (sec Ch. 3).1.4 The love which character-
izes this act oscillates between the Platonic and the erotic, reclaiming
the subjective by precluding the model of teacher as object or modcl or
fetish ('Scuola senza feticei', 277-9).
Finally, the 1947 article 'Sulla poesia dialettale' suggests a broad ami
suggestive analogy between the notion of poetic practice as a metaphor-
ical or unrealized form oflanguage and a personal sense of marginaliza-
tion. Such poetry is metaphorical, he notes, '[perche] risponde a un
bisogno profondo di diversita. I... E'l atto a ottenere una poesia
"diversa" ([because] it responds to a deepfclt need for difference. [ ... It
is] apt to obtain a 'different' poetry, 'Sulla poesia dialettale', 1I6). This
is doubtless a figuring of his own 'diversiti'-his homosexuality-and
his perception of his own marginalization, but it is an idealized figure of
difference which is not traumatic, but rather itself an essential, absolute
24 On pedagogy as a interpretative key to all ofPasolini's work, sec Golino, 1985; Santa to,
1986b; Zanzono, 1977.
metaphor ('metafora assoluta', 257) of the work of subjectivity, imman-
ent to but not bound to reality.
Towards the cnd of this period, in 1949, Pasolini also began to pro-
nounce on the explicitly political aspect of the role of the intellectual in
the PCI. In a speech written for the first 'Congresso della Federazione
comllnista di Pordenone' (Pordenone Communist Federation Confer-
ence), but never given/ s he set out the vocation of the 'modern man of
letters' as a hourgeois 'disposto a tradire la sua classe sociale' (prepared
to betray his social class), as exempli/led in Gide, Proust, Joyee and
Eliot. The ambivalence or this position, however, complicates the
adherence ofthe intellectual to a workers' movement: 'non scmpre chi
ea sinistra in leUeratllr,1 C a sinistra in politica cec.; c'c dunque un
doppio gioco di rapporti tra I'avanguanlislllo letlerario e I'avanguard-
ismo polil ieo' (nol everyone who is 10 the len in lileratme is 10 the left
in politics elc.; there is thus a double play of links hetween literary
avant-ganlislll and political avanl" -ganlism). Jf the intellectual retains
but modifies his tradil ional inlrospective pursuils 10 eflecl an historical,
materialist 'pn:sa di cosciellza' (coming 10 consciousness), he Ihen re-
mains hOI h literarily 'completely free', and politically 'a loyal comrade'.
Both in ils admiratioll fi)r lllodernism and il's rcf"usalto 'suonare il
pifTero della rivoluzione' (10 play the pipe of the revolulion), Pasolini's
posit ion is closer 10 Vittorini's in his fiulloUS 11)4() dellale wit h Togliatti
in Po/il("(lIi(o, than to a party line which had tightened st ill hlnher since
then.!h IIUI, Illore I han Vittorini, he insisls on anchoring- t he ideological
validilY of an intellectual positioll in an operalion of subjective intro-
spection, in an elusive quality of disavowed sellllOod.
The crescendo of act ivislll hel ween 1943 and I 94() was curtailed by
an eXlernal apparalus (his prosecution), and by a polil ical instilulion
(expulsion rrom the PCI), which inaugurated a traumat ic hostility
between Ihe private and public and a necessary loss of confidence and
control. The fluid, open rapport hetween intellectual and conlCssional
self-expression and its site, which characterizes the work in the fascist
student journals and the Friulan intervention:>, cannot survive sHch
a trauma intact. N(;verthcless, the patterns and strategies of sclf-
inseripl ion tilll11d there do not disappear. Indeed the extent to which
they retain their eflicacy is rcmarkable, until, shot throug'h with loss and
25 It was published as 'Un inlervcnl" ril11a"dalo' in the con[:ress reporl, f'er III P"ce c per if
lavoro, and latcr in Nil/llIrila, n. 43, 4 Nov. [977, 4!! ( :adioli, H)HS, 107-10).
26 On P"IiICmi((), scc Valentc, fin!!. Pasolini disliked Viuorini inlcnsciy: scc I.ellerc, ii. 35[,
37 8.
agonistic instability, they evolve into ever more dynamic and strident
forms, which, certainly after T9Sil, render the possibility of an unchal-
lenged 'completely free' subjectivity nothing more than a phantasm.
2·3· Officina, 1955-9
The four years of OfJi(ina 27 represent both the apotheosis and the nas-
cent disintegration of the model of public self-inscription encountered
in Pasolini's work thus far: that is, the identification with an in-gToup or
category which extends the suhjective into a puhlic arena with minimal
risk of a loss of autonomy. The periodical hcgan as the resuscitation of
the Hredi project, with T.eonelti and Roversi as co-editors,2H and it is no
coincidence that the group reformed as the dominant cultural debate of
the intervening years-over nco-realism and 'impegno'-was dying
out. ]t marks a period of retrenchment of post-war cultural ideals and a
hiatus bctl)re the rapid transtl)J·matiol1 in culture and society effected
hy economic expansiol1 in lhe late 19Sos. Its pluralistic, rescarch-
oriented and text-based approach madc it an apt vessel for such a
transitional mOlllcnt. ~'I Its project was litcrary, but born of an acknow-
Icdg·cmellt of the need fill· a materialist socio-politieal reinterpretation
of culture, and it saw the means to that cnd in historical stylistic ana-
lysis. Indeed, its systemat ic dual assault on hoth nco-realism and 'nove-
centismo' (a label fi,r the f(lI·malist, hermeticist aesthetic that had
characterized the century), on both 'impegno' and 'l'autosufficienza
dcll'illlellettuale' (the sclf-suniciency of the intellectual), found its
most fertile moments in the rc-evaluation of the nineteenth-century
canon, in the section of the journal called 'La nostra storia': Pasolini's
27 Rclcrences are to Ihe ori!:inal isslles of Ol.7i{illa, now reprinted in t'lCsimilc (sce
llibliography , ..\). The jo"rnal has heen amply anlhologized in Ferreni, 1<175. For ,'ssess··
mcnts of its intelleclu," projeel in Ihc conlexl of post-war Italian cultural hislory, sce Foni,
1971,29-37; Paula"o, ",rll; I'elrllceiani, "1("), '5--('Z; Siciliano, 1965,47-£>1.
28 For the shorl-lived second series in 1<)5'1, the three original editors were joined hy
Franco Fortini, Angelo Roman" and (iianni Sc:!li", who h'ld all heen involved in Ihe first scries
also.
29 See Ferretli, 1979; hlq~acs, H),!O. Ollirilltl coincided wilh signiticant developments in
literary journals in the mid-I!),os. For example, in H),4, the PC! launched a weekly cultural
journalll conlemporall~o, edited hy Carlo Salinari and Anwncllo Tromh"dori, whieh took ,I
markedly less dogmatic, 'zhdanovist' line than h,ld Emilio Sereni, Togliatti's cultural com-
missar after the war; Moravi" and Albcrto Carocci founded Nu()v; arKo/lle/lti in 1953 (sce §5
below); and Luciano Ancesehi launched II Vcr,.;, which would lalcr become the main vehicle
of the neo-avanguardia of the "l)os, in 1 95('. For a survey oflhese scc Piseopo, [978.
'Pascoli' (n. I, May 1955, 1-8), Leonetti's 'Leopardi' (n. 2,july 1955,
43--58), Romano's 'Manzoni' (n. ], Sept. 1955,87-91) and, although
not in that section, Scalia's 'Un paradigma: l'attualiti di De Sanctis'
(n. I, May 1955,28-31) ..10 Dc Sanctis in particular proved a useful
model for Officina's grounded historical criticism, hostile to the onto-
logical 'malattia dell'ideale' (sickness of the ideal, JI), as Scalia ex-
plained shortly after t he collapse of the journal:
Da oll/%Kiol la niliea I in Of/it/nil I si fCee melod%gim. I ... 1 I.a critica
onlO/ogiCll cra il rillcsso della poesia consider,lta COllle on/%gia: assollltezza,
auto~enesi, alltosuflicienza, inte~ralc 'aulOl1omia' extrarazionalc cd extra-
comunicat iva I .. ·1· In soslanza: I.a concezione dclla pocsia come rdiKio c della
criticl come at to rituale I· .. 1· (Scalia, 11)61,31),4°,43)
(In Oflicillll crilicism welll fi'om hein~ oll/II/ogim/lo hein~ 1II1'//IO'/o/lIgiral.l· .. 1
On/o/lIgirll/ criticism was a reflection OfP0c(TY seen as I1I1/%gv: the ahsolute,
self-~eneralion, sdf-surticiem:y, inte~ral 'autonomy' heyond reason and he-
yond conll11unicat ion I ... 1. In short: 'rhe concept ion or poet ry as rd(~'io and of
criticism as ,I ritllal ,let I ... 1.)
This pro!-\T<lmlll<ltic hostility to the ahistorical autonomy of literature

and criticism was clear also in Pasolini's art icle on Pascoli, which
opcned the firsl iSSllCOU)fficillll:
Si consideri la stllpenda possihilil,. di 'dcserizione' che presenl:1 il tCnomeno
stilist ieo pascoli,lIlO, pLT lIn f!,'rLlppO di ideolo[':i, UlIllL: l: ilnost rn, che si definisce
fuori dal LIIIlP" d'lIn,1 morale ont"IC)~iealml'ntt: lelleraria, tipica del
Novecenlo. 'I kscriziclIW' ,Inzitutto o~~t:lliva, da lahoratorio I ... 1 e poi, per
una SUol intima lil1'za paradiplIatica, sOf!,'J!,'CItiva e di tendenza. ('I'aseoli', n. I,
May 11)55, I)
(Think or the marvellous possihility fill' 'description' ofren:d hy the stylislie
phenomenon or I'aseoli fill' a ~ro\lp or ideolo~\les slleh ,IS ours, tlut places itselr
outside the ficld orthe ontolo~ieally litl'rary morality that typifies this century.
'Description' that is first orall ohjective, as in a lahoratory I . . . 1 and then, f(u' its
intimate, paradi~matic liu'ce suhjeet ivc and tendentious.)
But if ()l!irini/'s hostility towards the 'two fi'onts' (Ferretti, 1(J75,

9-13) of t went icth-eentury literary culture was clear, its proposed
alternative was less so. In its choice of collaborators, which Leonetti
0
3 The scries conlilllled with Seali" on 'I Renalol Serra', n. 4, Dcc. "IS5, 127' .16; P'lSolini,
'11 nco-spcrimcnt,llisl11o', n. 5, Fell. IlIS6, 16<) Hz; l.conClti, '1I,lccadcnlismo come prohlema
contcmporilllco', n. h, Apr. I()S6, 211-27~ Roman(.., 'I.a Scapiglialura\ 11. 7, Nov. H)S6,
255-6); Sell;a, 'I ncpuscoLtri', n. H, Feb. IIIS7, )01--11; Roman,), 'Osscrvazioni sulla Ictter-
atura del Novccento', n. 11, Nov. 1<)57,4'7"44; I,conclli, '])uc vcr si sulb rivolllzionc' Ion
CarducciJ, n. '2, Apr. '<)5H,477-<)0.
affirms was largely Pasolini's domain, it produced an eclectic literary

mix, and seemed to operate few programmatic restrictionsY Indeed,
Pasolini seems to have effected an un discriminating combination of his
Officina in-group and his immediate circle of personal, intellectual
friends in Rome, unhindered by qualms over aesthetic or ideological
differencesY The journal operated in dialogue with other similar
organs, as its sales figures demonstrate: around 600 copies of each series
(1,000 for the Bompiani-funded second series), were produced-twice
the number of a similarly organized left-wing review such as
Ragionarnenli, but much fewer than party-backed organs such as Il aln-
ternpoYaneo. Subscribers were in the main other journals and colleagues,
and very few copies were sold commercially)3 Pasolini's policy is an ex-
tension of the drive fill" success in a sense already seen, a search for dia-
logue, for a presence anti authority in a circumscribed arena of high
culture, untroubled by incidentals of aesthetic or ideological coherence.
And as in Friuli, the operation is ohcn enacted through the confident
drawing of polemical lire. With his 'Piceola antologia sperimentale'
(nn. 9-10,June 1957, 347-5S), he takes on the role of analyst and arbiter
of trends in recent poetry. But Sanguineti's damning, parodic riposte to
the idea of the anthology ('Una polemica in prosa', n. Il, Nov. 1957,
452-.7) tilreshadows his almost complete intellectual marginalization in
the generation dominated by Sanguineti and the 'neo-avanguardia',
and challenges the inclusive eclecticism of O.fjicina in general.
Nevertheless, it also offers the mirage ofa position and a clearly deline-
ated voiee filr the interlocutors. Similarly, the fierce exchanges between
Pasolini and several PCl intellectuals, sparked off by 'La posizione'
(n. 6, Apr. ]956,245-50) and 'Una polemic\ in versi' (n. 7, Nov. ]956,
283--<)0; then Cmeri, lh, 264-72, 2S0-2), over Lukacsian prospectiv-
ism, which spilled over well beyond Ollitina into Il conlernpoYalleo and
even Pasolini's Vie mlOve coitmm,.l4 emphasize the irritant power and
authority that polemic aff(lrds. And the epigrams in 'Umiiiato e olfeso'
)1 Pasolini denied I.conelli's claims (('errelli, "175,33·-4).
)2 Outside contrihutors, excluJinf'; the six editors of the second series, were G. Bassalli,
A. Bertolucci, I. Calvillo, G. Caproni, 1.. Erha, C. E. Gadda, C. Girholi, M.I.nzi, A. MO«lvia,
S. Penna, C. Rehora, C. Sharharo, L. Sciascia, C. Vivaldi, P. Volponi, G. Ungaretti (sevell
others made up Pasolini's 'I'iccola antologia sperimenmle', nn. 1)-lo,Julle 11)51' A. Arhasino,
M. Diacano, M. Ferrctli, E. I'agliarini, B. ROlldi, E. Sanguineti, M. StTallicro).
)) In the 'Fondo manoscritti di autori contemporanei', Pavia, the Officina papers include a
balance sheet by Roversi for nn. 1-1' 'expenditure D,]6,H02-illcome [, 14t),('oo--copies sold
[36'.
H For two exchanges bet wcell I'asolini and Salinari in Vie 11/1""'·, ill July J<)6o and
Oct./Nov. 1961, which are a reprise of the 1956 debate, sec I dia/"f{hi, 24-H; [95 -9.
(NS n. I, March-April 1959,32--9; then in part in Religione) are vital, but
strained rejections of a wide range ofliterary-cultural figures, indicative
of an inner crisis of doubt over his own legitimacy, authority and stabil-
ity, confirmed by the paradigmatic epigram 'A me'. The inauguration
in 1959 of the permanent series of juridical attacks on Pasolini simply
amplifies the sense of nascent crisis.
The collapse of 0lJidna's editorial consensus in 1958--<), leading to
the demise ofthe rcview by the second issue of the second series pointed
up this inherent instability in Pasolini's eclectic and polemical ap-
proach. In particular Fortini's dissent was fierce, as he insisted that the
journal he subject to collective planning and constraint, to some inter-
nal coherence;J5 and Scalia declared his 'rifiuto decisivo dcll'eclettismo
che c sostanziale a~nosticismo etico-politico e inditlerentismo scienti-
lico' (decisive rejcction of an eclecticism that is in substance an ethical-
political agnosticism and scientil1c indifference, Scalia, 1961,57). It
marks an important moment of rupture, not only fcx the breakdown of
group identity, but also, more importantly, because the attack on the
strateg·y of eclecticism was an attack on the vitality and validity of
Pasolini's analogous research into a poetics of experimentalism and
pastiche.
Ling·uistic past iche, or 'contaminatio', was the predominant stylistic
characterislic of Rllga::::.::.i di villi, with its intercalating of idioms and
registers to create a dynamic linguistic energ·y, between imitation,
record and creation. It represents a general departure from the em-
phasis on purity and morality in his earlier work, setting value on the
contrary hy impurity and interference (Ferretti, 1')75, 55-H). Its souree
is in Contini's notion of 'pluriling·uismo antipetrarchesco' (anti-
Petrarchan pluri-lingualism, (:ontini H)SI), which Pasolini turns into a
celebration of the non-lyrical, dialogic possibilities of poetic language,
through which it can encompass histury and rcality. In this sense, along
with other terms derived from Conlinian or Spitzcrian Stylkritik, ec-
lecticism or pasl iehe point to the connections bctween the dominant lit-
erariness of 0flidllil and its pretences :Is an organ of cultural ideology.
The most signil1cant t()rmulation of this pluralism in the journal, and
perhaps the most important correlative in all his theoretical work to the
dynamic of subjectivity in his own work, is to be found in three key
articles written between 1955 and 1957-'Pascoli' (n. I, May 1955,
1-8), 'Il-neo-sperimentalismo' (n. 5, February 1956, 16!)--82) and 'La
35 Sce rhe internal report by Fortini of May 1958, in Ferretti, 1975,437.

liberta stilistica' (nn. 9-10, June 1957, 341-6)36-which show him

developing and defining what he terms 'sperimentalismo' (experi-
mentalism).
In Pascoli 37 he finds a dialectic between an obsession with stasis-
'tendente patologicamente a mantenerlo sempre identico a se stesso,
immobile, monotono' (tending pathologically to keep him identical
to himself, immobile, monotonous, 3)-and with renewal-'uno
sperirnentalismo che [ ... ] tende a variarlo e a rinnovarlo incessante-
mente' (an experimelltalism that r... 1tends to vary him and renew him
unceasingly, 3). The dialectic, rather than elements of innovation
within it, is the clear source of Pascoli's latent, but powerful influence
on twentieth-century poetry. Furthermore, Pasolini identifies a sub-
jectivizing impulse in Pascoli's linguistic experimentalism: 'e sempre in
funzione dell a vita intima e poetica dell'io' (it is always a function of the
intimate, poetic life of the 1,8). '11 neo-sperimentalismo' returns to this
problematic rclation between subjectivity and stylistic experimental-
ism, identifying' three experimental tendencies in contemporary
poetry-the pathological or expressionistic, the hermeticist and a new,
formalist 'impegno'-each of which is innovative, but conditioned
more or less consciollsly by the dominant ontological poetics of
'novecentismo'. He reservcs his most personal and intense comments
f()!· poets ofthe expressionist type, including Leonetti and, in particu-
lar, the young Massimo Ferretti:
11 suo sperimentare non c altro che il suo attaccarsi alia vita: un solo gesto, cioc
per valcre deve essen: sempre diverso. lnoltn: appunto perche la vita 10 esclude
e 10 isola, il 'segnato' la ama di un amore pill fill'le: e la ricerca di continuo, ndla
sua monotonia si rinnova incessantmente. (l73PH
(I lis cxperimellling is nothing' more than his attachment to life: that is, a single
gesture must always he different to have any value. Furthermore, precisely
because life excludes and isolates him, the 'marked one' loves life all the more
strongly: and he searches fi)r it continuously and in its monotony he is COI1-
stantly renewed.)
Again, stasis ('monotonia') is indivisible from renewal, and, in a pat-

tern familiar from 'I giovani, l'attesa', their synthesis is guaranteed by a
6
3 All three were later included in Passio,,/! e itlc%Kia, 26)-71,466-79,4110--7 respectively.
37 Pasolini's interest in Pascoli began with his 1945 degree thesis (AnloloKia della lirim pas-
coliana) and continued in an important H)47 article 'Pascoli e Montalc' (11 portico della morte,
5-13)· Pascoli also plays a key role in his introductory survey of PoeIia dia/ellale del Novecmlo
(later in Passione e idc%Kia, 5-134). Scc Borghdlo, 19!16.
38 On Pasolini and M. Ferrctti, see Mumri", 1989.
profound affinity or love for life. But that love is now formed out of re-
jection and difference, out of violent trauma, not harmonious identi-
fication. Hence a dynamic of constant movement-'sperimentalismo'
-rather than suspense-'attesa'-now binds form to the expression of
selfhood. That the portrait ofFerretti is also a self-portrait is confirmed
by 'La Iiberta stilistica', where he sets out an alternative to the illusory
and prosaic stylistic freedom of 'novecentismo' in similar terms: 'un
vero e proprio sperimentalismo r... J intimo e sprofondato in
un'esperienza interiore, non solo tentato nei confronti di se stessi, della
propria irrelata passione, ma della stessa nostra storia' (a genuinely real
experimentalism [ ... 1 intimate and deep within an inner experience,
not only attempted in regard to themselves, and to their own unrelated
passion, but to our very history, 342). Thw; stylistic choice is intimately
bound lip with ideolog'y and subjective crisis, given its constant
acknowledgement of the redundancy of the self and its choices:
Nello 'sperimenlare', dunque, ehe rieonoseiamo nostro I ... 1 persiste un
momenlo con1 raddilorio 0 negal ivo I ... 1 che richiede il continuo, doloroso
sforzo dclm'lIllenersi all'altezza di un'altualid non JlosSedUla ideologicamcnte
[... J: e queslo, poi, implica una ceria gr'lIuil;llli lJuello sperimentare, un certo
eceesso I .. ·1
Ma vi illcide anche ullmomenlo pOSilivo, ossia l'identilicaziol1e dello speri-
mentare eOIl I'illvelllare I... lull'operazione cuiturale ideallllenle precedente
l'operaziolle poelicl. CH4)
(In that 'experimenl ing', Ihell, that we recognize as our own I ... 1 there persists
acont radiuory or Ileg"tive moment I ... Ithat requires the cOI1linual, painful cf-
fortofstayingellual to a present we do not possess ideologically I... .1: and so this
implies a certain gratuitolls clement in tha.- experimenting, a certain exeess I ... ]
But Ihere is also a posit ive moment, or the ident ilieation of experimcnting
with invcntin[,!: I ... 1a cultural operalion that ideally precedes Ihe poetic opera-
tion.)
The essay ends with an admission that a new freedom ofthis kind would
return inevitably to the expressionistic:
ma sappiamo t:he, alia line, la serie di esperimentazioni risulter:l una strada
d'amore-amo)'c fisit:o e sentimentale per i fcnomeni del mondo, c amore
intcllettuale per illoro spirito, la storia: che ci fara semprc esse re 'clIl scntimenlo,
al punto ill cui if nunlllo si rinnova'. (346)
(but we realize that, in the cnd, the serics of experimentations will turn into a
road oflove-a physical and sentimental love for the phenomena of the world,
and an inteIJectuallovc for their spirit, history: that will always place us 'with
feeling, at the point lvhere the wllrld is renewed'.)
This is much more than a clarion call to 'Make it New'. It is a synthesis

of possible desires of the subject to write itself across history and reality,
through permanent, monotonous renewal, thus dissolving its actual
alienation from them. It makes of the dynamic of the movement of
forms in experimentalism---or of pastiche or eclecticism-a potent
vessel for subjective plenitude.
Eclecticism might also be said to characterize the hybrid model for
the intellectual developed in Ojji(ina. For Ferretti, as for Fortini and
Scalia, it was based on an anachronistic, Romantic model, guided only
by literary taste and a diffidence of genuinely 'avant-garde' cultural
militancy (Ferretti, 1975, 31). And indeed, it did represent a rejection
of the 'scientific' or 'technical' model of the intellectual, which would
be championed in literary milieux by 11 mCllahri of Calvino and
Vittorini ..l<) However, the interdisciplinary vitality of 11 menabd bears
interesting comparison with the less rationalized eclecticism of OjJicina.
The latter's ideological reinterpretation of the texture and style of
poetie language prcJigures a wide range of intellectual currents in the
period shortly after its collapse, from early structuralist critiques and
the 'nouveau roman' to the 'nnuvelle vague' and Antonioni, just as
Pasolini's 'neo-sperimentalismo' prctig'ures the 'neo-avanguardia', de-
spite the mutual hostility between them (Giuliani, 1965,5-6). Fortini
himself conceded in H)74 that Pasolini did indeed represent some sort
of a forerunner or the Marxist structuralism of the 1960s (Ferretti,
H)75, 23), and Scalia similarly grew more tolerant of Pasolini's 'dis-
org'anic' method, as it evolved in his H)7J-5 polemics (Scalia, 1978),
But what sets Pasolini's work ti)r Of/it'illa apart from its immediate suc-
cessors (but not their successors) is the distinct role played by subjective
practices. This is perhaps most evident when a state of crisis in the per-
ception of selthood and of a historical condition, and in the choice of a
style, is directly bound to an ideological position:
l'ingcnua c quasi iJlcttcrata (c anchc hurocratiea) eoazione teoriea Idi Salinari c
di altriJ derivava dall" convinzione che una letteratura realistic;! dovesse
fondarsi SlI qucl 'prospettivisl11o': I11cnlrc in una societa come la nostra non puo
venire semplicel11entc ril11osso, in nome di una salute vista in prospcttiva,
antieipata, eoatt", 10 stam di crisi, di dolore, di divisione.' ('J.a posizione', n. 6,
April 1956,250)
39 Published in ID isslIcs, 1/ menab,; (")5'1-67) was supportcd hy scveral of those involved
in Officina, induding Fortini, Sc,lia ,md Lconctti, but not by Pasolini. Sec Vittorini, 1967, for
his notes on a new 'rationalist' tellsion in literaturc, On the ucvclopment of the technical
model of the intellectual, and other new intellectual functions at this time, see Caesar anu
Hainswonh, 1<)84, 25-JJ; Capizzi, "17 I; ]>ran.Jstaller, 1972; Romano, 1977,
(the ingenuous ami almost illiterate (and also bureaucratic) theoretical imposi-
tion [of PCI critics such as Salinari and others] derived from the conviction that
a realistic literature should be fuunded on that 'prospectivism': whilst in a soci-
ety such as ours, it is not tenable simply to suppress, in the name of prospective
good health, the present state of crisis, (If pain, of division.)
A literary style is bound up with the traumatic subjective perception of

a historical condition.
OJ/i(ina collapsed filr certain practical and financial reasons. Most
notorious was the withdrawal of the backing of Valentino Uompiani,
who had been refused mcmbership of the aristocratic 'Circolo Romano
dell a Caccia' hecause ofPasolini's epigram on the death of Pi us XII CA
un papa', NS 11. I, March-April 1959, 37-(): HI, 536). But the increasing
strain on its intellectual projcct (and particularly Pasolini's) was also
clear: its centre could not hold and would not coalesce into any filcused
programme of cultural ideology, which it had aspired 10 filrmulate, hut
never to realize. This and the historical moment dictated that a method
of working through eclectic, suhjective plurality towards ideology
could not be sustained. The conditions (iH· a ret urn to ami development
ofPasolini's implicit str~ltq;y in Of/hina will he Iillll1d in thc linOS, but
for now, thc desire tiH· renewal has overllown the very vessel of renewal,
and the moment of closure is all too evident: 'una fi)r:/.a confusa mi dice
che un nuovo tempo / comincia per tuui e ci obbliga a essere nuovi' (a
confused (illTe tells me that a new time / is hCf:~inning li)J· all and is
forcin!!," us to be new, 'Ai redattori di "OHicina" " NS n. I, March-April
1959, 36; ReligiOIl£', B I, 534). ] n (1)60, Pasolini looked back gloomily
over the live years of Of/irillll and how it had been mislInderstood. l-Ie
concluded, simply, 'Of/int/tI Cstata inutiic' (Of/itinll achieved nothing,
II portiw delllf.lIlortc, 174).
2.4. Vie nuove, 1<)60-.')
The column '] )ialoghi con Pasolini' (Pasolini in Dialogue) in Vie lIUOVC
lasted from May H)60 until Septemher 1965, interrupted hy a long
break between Deeemher 1962 ami October l()Cl4. 40 Vie nuove was a
mass-circulation PCI weekly, tillll1ded in 1946, with a declared ped-
agogic ambition to educate and inf()rrn party members, but also to
40 Articles are referred with their ,hlte ofpuhlication in Vie ,,/lIIVe, f()liowed hy a page refer-
ence to J dialoghi, which reproduces all the artides. The artides' titles were editorial and arc
thus not used here.
provide an alternative to the expanding commercial magazine sector. It

was highly successful in these terms, running series on 'I grandi Italiani'
(17 figures from Frederick II to Gramsci) and 'I grandi dell'umanita'
(Christ, Dante, Marx, Lenin, Einstein, ete.) in 1958, and using modern
formats and language, to grow to a peak readership of 350,000 in 1952.41
Already a regular contributor-he covered a Moscow Festival of Youth,
the 1960 Rome Olympics and had a book review column (for two weeks
only) in 1957 (Jl portico della morte, 170)-Pasolini was given the task of
responding to readers' letters on an extraordinary range of topics.
These included Hung·arian literature, existentialism, religious doubts,
Latin, the mining industry, Soviet military power, family legislation,
the Communist youth league, Marxist theory, how to find a job, a
reader's literary manuscript, drugs, Eisenhower, D' Annunzio and
llrigitte Bardot (Ferretti, 1992, pp. xi-xii). The extent of official ap-
proval of his pedagogical role was nevcr made clear, and conflict in-
evitably arose with and within the editorial board, particularly after the
departure of the instigator of the column, Maria Antonietta Maeciocehi,
on 4 November 1961.42 Internal politics aside, however, this was
Pasolini's entry into the consumer-driven (if tendentious) mass media,
and his first committed and sustained attempt at public dialogue. The
alienating and dehumanizing qualities of the medium were partially
offset by direct contact with the readers. Clearly his was a position of
considerable authority, and knowledge, but the often personal, provi-
sional and eccentric nature of his responses worked to confuse and
complicate his ex cathedra power.
Despite echoes of the intimacy and pedagogical militancy of the
'Academiuta', the column becomes in practice a vehicle for the evolu-
tion of a deepening crisis of subjectivity, whose origins lie beyond the
pages of Vie IlUOVC, and which overwhelms the project of the dialogues.
The vacillating register resulting from this intrusion gives the column
a dynamic uneasiness which reflects Pasolini's new-found, and often
extreme, ambivalence towards culture and the cultural arena.
The project was not, initially, to he in any way confessional, and he
insists in several early articles that he wishes to avoid talking about
himself: 'Vorrei evitare di parI are troppo di mc' (I'd like to avoid talk-
ing about myself too much, n. 30, 30 July 1960: 26); 'Mi vergogno di
41 On Vie nuove, sec Gundlc, HI')I; Isncnghi, 1<)83, 159-1i2.

42 According to Ivlacciocchi, she left because of an attempt hy Togliatti himsclfto remove
Pasolini's column from Vie nuove (Ivlacdocchi, 198ob, 32). But this claim is dismissed as
highly implausible by Ferretti, 1992, pp. xxx-xxxii.
parlare di me' (I'm ashamed to talk about myself, n. 48, 3 Dec. 1960: 69);
'mi obbliga a fare della mia opera e di me oggetto di discussione, cosa
che io vorrei evitare il piu possibile' (it forces me to make my work and
myself a topic of discussion, something I would like to avoid as much as
possible, n. 44, 29 Oct. 1964: 331). But these remarks soon come to seem
disingenuous beside the intensely personal or autobiographical tone of
many ofthe articles. The most obvious examples arc discussions of his
own work-in-progress with the readers. The second and third articles
of all, in June 1<)60, arc taken up with extracts from Ceneri and Ulla vila
vio/elltll, indicating a wish for the readers to become familiar with and
address themselves to Pasolini the writer-artist above all else. The poet
thus acts as the intermediary between the people and the party cadres,
through the conceit of his organic identification with the immediacy
(noll-intellect uality) of the former, in a variation on a Gramscian theme.
But more important in terms of emotional investment arc the discus-
sions of recently or not-yet-puhlished works, such as A((allfllle (I July
1961, 144--X), I,a raMia (20 Sept. 1<)62, 21J4-X), Mamma Rflma (4 Oct.
1962, .W2- 7; I XOct. (1)62, 30<)-10), ~-allgc/fI (22 and 2<) Oct. 1964, ]27-
34; H) Nov. I<jC)4, 341-5 etc.), and, most importantly of all, the complete
working through of the orig'inal conccption of [lac/lacci e ucccllilli (29
April to 20 May Ic)65, ]CJX--412). These show an intimacy which is lost
when his arl icles respond 10 'high-level' intellectual ljg'ures or journals,
such as Carlo Salinari (16 Nov. u)6 r, 195-<), J,ucio I.omhardo Radice
(26 July r<jCIZ, 272--5) or Mot/do nl/flVfI (22 Oct. 1l)64, ]2X-]0).
On an aUlohiographicallevel, several replies consist of narratives of
Pasolini's own past, otien in contradiction with his other versions of
the same events or peri()(J.4-' This illuslrates the ideological pressure of
his position as well as a constant. in his poetic practice, the reinterpreta-
tion and rcf()]'Jl1ulation of the past as a key to the present and future.
Such minor inconsistencies arc signilicant only in so far as they show a
concerted modulating of the scll~ in order to accommodate the f()rm and
arena of the dialogue. They ccho explicit expressions of concern as to
the inadequacy of his personal responses. 'So hene che le mic lcttere su
Vie IlUO'VC sono piene di difetti' (I am well aware that my letters in Vie
nuove arc full of defects, 22 Nov. 1962, ] '4); or, in reply to an accusa-
tion that his letters arc monologues, 'I'egoismo che mi protegge nel mio
vero lavoro I fa si che] questa rubrica di Vie nuove e spcsso una faticosa
43 Sec e.g. on hi, joining the 'Partito d' Azionc' in ")45, the articles ofH and 15 July 1961,
148-53, and er I,cllere, i. 201; or the literary autobiography of ,6 July 1960,23-4; or the de-
scription of hi, non-Christian upbringing on 22 Oct. '964, :\29.
interruzione' (the egoism that protects me in my real work [means that]

this column in Vie Nuove is often a tiresome interruption, 3 June 1965,
418). The latter points to a further peculiarity of the column, its de-
clared subordination to other areas of discourse. Relative to his first ex-
periences of film-directing, and a whole swathe of more or less absurd
criminal and civil prosecutions, Vie IlUIIVe represents for a time another
liberating 'safe-haven'. Hence Pasolini makes clear his ambivalence
over the authority that might be incumbent upon him:
E' vero che noi abbiamo hiso~no tli 'miti' e 'autorira', e COllli chc, attraverso
I'industria clllturalc 0 l'appoggio di una corrente di opinione 0 I'organizzazione
di un partito 0 il caso, divema un 'mito', 'un'alltorira', acquisisce nllovi doveri
verso sestesso e verso gli altri. Forse un po' anch'io ormai: ma lasciatemi ancora
qualche anno di lavoro e di studio per imparare a farlo meglio, a trovare meglio
il pun to di coincidenza tra "utmit;) e sincerit;1. (15 Oct. 1964,324)
(It is true that we nced 'myths' and 'authori.-ies', and that whoever becomes a
'my.-h' or an 'authority', '-hrou~h the culture industry or through the support
of a current of opinioll or the organization of a party, or by pure chanee, ac-
quires new uuties towarus himself and towards others. And perhaps it's now
tTue of me a little: hut ~ive me a kw more years of work and study to learn to do
it better, to search out further rhe meeting-point of authority and sincerity.)
Concern over the stat us of the project spills over into concern over the
sta tus of the self~ both in and beyond Vie nUllve. His defence of his own
coherence rests on an extension of the policy of eclecticism, contradic-
tion and pastiche fiHlI1d in Officina. He identifies absolutely that policy
with the poetic, and himself with both: 'in dcfinitiva io sono protetto
dalle mie contraddizioni' (1 am definitively protected by my contradic-
tions, 15 Oct. 1(,64,325); 'a un artist.. va lasciato il diritto all'errore
almeno in quanto contraddizione () ipotesi precoce 0 ritardata' (an artist
should be given the right to make mistakes, or at least to contradict him-
self or to formulate premature or out-or-date hypotheses, 3 Dee. 1964,
349). Hence he is able to defend himsdfwhen read over-literally, as in
the controversy caused by his claim that Marxism had bccome a ritual-
ized church (26 July H)62, 274-5). In a device which will be used in
much of his polemical writing up to the final 'corsair' writings, he de-
scribes his struggle as ideal, not literal, in need of , integration' via his
other works. 44 The poetic text, or the text of the poet, is an incomplete
text, awaiting realization.
44 See se 1-2; and his disingenuous deni.l, after much hostile response, that his 1975 pro-
posals to abolish school and television were meant to he taken literally (LL 165-78;
Volgar 'e/oljuio).
In his general discussion of cinema, also, the poetic is privileged, as in
an article on the expressivity ofChaplin's Modern Times (10 Dec. 1964,
352-3), or in his view of the 'cinema d'auteur' as a 'cultural necessity' (4
Oct. 1962,305--6). Furthermore, in the former article, the notion of the
expressive or poetic is contrasted with the 'comunicativ(}-funzionale 0
tecnico' (technical or functional-communicative), using a Crocean dis-
tinction that was the basis of his influcntial historico-linguistic broad-
side 'Nuovc 4uestioni linguistiche' (Rinascila, n. 51,26 Dec. 1964:
19-22; then /:1:' 9-2H), in which hc declares the existence of the first
truly national Italian language in the homologizing communicative,
non-expressive blandness of commercial language. The shift to a tech-
nical nco-capitalist culture leaves the artist with the desperate task of
simply retaining an arena li)r expression: 'Egli Il'artista I non deve
tacere llulla, perchc in un artista il peccato piLI grande c l'omissione-
essendo la sua funzione l'esprimere, e dunque l'esprimere c tuUo' (I the
artist I must not kt:cp silent on anything, hecause the greatest sin ti)r an
artist is the sin of omission--since his function is 10 express and hence
expression is .111, .1 ] kc. I()()4, 349). Furthermore, the artist has a ljuasi-
contractual ohligation to express the truth: 'Non pensa il giornalista
borghese, nelllmeno per un istanle a servire la verit.\: a esscre in 4ualche
modo onesto: cioc personale' (the bourgeois journalist never ti)r a
moment thinks of serving tTut h: of heing in soml~ bshion hones\: in
other words, personal, 15 Oc\. 1960, 50). 'I m pC!!,'n 0' , therdill'e, is no
longer a tactical subordinat ion to ideology, but rather this very drive t(lr
org'anic exprcssion in an historicalmolllent of rupture, Even at sllch a
'momcnto di "zero" slorico' (;1 historictl 'zero' moment, 3 I kc. H)64,
351), the past remains vitally present and the futurc 'non partle] da
zero, ma dalla sOl1lmid delle cspericnze culturali e storiche vissute
anche a rovescio, come delusione' (does not start from scratch, but ti"om
the height ofcllllural and historical experiences lived also in reverse, as
disappointment, 351):~5
The impulse to Iotal and truthful expression on the part of the intcl-
lectual tinds several examples in Pasolini's sustained explorations of
taboo issues, starting from onc of the earliest articles (25 June H)60,
ID-13), which discllsses erotic literature, 'gallismo meridionale'
(southern machismo), prostitution, women's rights, and the sexual
taboos of the left, largely influenced by Freud, who ini(lrms several
areas oftl1l: column, As well as confronting moral-political issues, such
45 On 'impcg;llo' and the illusory natmc of" uncommiltcd ti'ccdom, sce also zll Aug, 1965,
443-~);
IHJunc J()6o, (,-10.
as youth-as ever-racism, illiteracy and fascism,4 6 he clashes with the

editors of Vie nuove itself over his comments on the crisis in Marxism,
and on the Catholic-Marxist dialogue encouraged by Pope John XXIII
and the Second Vatican Council, to the cxtcnt that an article on the
Church was censored by the management of the magazine in December
1964 (77 1- 2 ).
On the question of Marxism and tradition, Pasolini repeats the ti:lr-
mulation of his new 'impegno'-progress through awareness of history
as crisis: 'Andare avanti significa metterc in crisi quello che c'c dietro,
sempre' (To go forward entails instigating a crisis in what has gone
before, always, J8 Feb. 1965,382); 'Solo la rivoluzione pue> salvare la
tradizione: solo i marxisti amano il passato' (Only revolution can save
tradition: only Marxists love the past, I S Oct. J 962, 310). Similarly, he
describes his own status within literary history as a 'scontro-fusione'
(clash-fusion) between a politics of revolution (Marxist and prospect-
ive), and a 'modified' aesthetics of decadentism (retrospective).47
Poetry is located beyond the present-in his misused terminology, it is
'diachronic' (11) March 1965, 389-{)0). These parallel modes of inser-
tion of the subject into time cach point to a by now familiar dynamic or
permanent transition. The writer, commodified by the culture industry
(6 Dec. 1962,3 J 8-H», is no longer a sacred oracle, but is potentially still
bound up with the prophetic in his/her relationship with time.
Furthermore, the culture industry itself artificially reconstructs the
'aura' (Benjamin, J(73) of art, encouraging the traditional role of the
artist as an instrument tilr the manipulation of consumer desire, within
limits.
Pasolini, however, did not fit the limits. His creation as a public
'personaggio', as a victim on a public stage, brought a profoundly suf-
fered loss of subjective autonomy which informs and precedes the dia-
logues in Vie nuove. A scries of tortured confessions reveals the true
penetration of hostility, which cuts offthe strategy of shifting absorp-
tion as the guarantor of the stability of the subject. The key word he uses
to describe his bound subjectivity is 'mistificazione' (mystification):
46 The theorization of a 'new fascism' in the polemics of I<J7]-5 is already to be fOllnd ill
nuce in 20 Aug. 1960,35-7.
47 His relationship to decadentism is most often deeply hostile: he denies vehemently
having anything in common with a series of decadent 'poctes maudits' from Villon to
Rimbaud (28 Dec. 1961,219), and he strongly rejects the 'esaltazione dell'io' (exaltation of the
self) typical ofD'Annunzio (22 July 1961, 1.13-7). Indeed there is an extended series of anti-
D'Annunzian articles in 1960-1 (19 Nov. 1960,59-62; 30 Sept. 1961, 175-8; 14,21 and 2H
Oct. 1961, 182-8).
Mettiti un po' nei miei panni, e cerca di capire esistenzialmente I'esperienza di
uno che viene sistematicamente, regolarmente, atrocemente mistificato. (16
Nov. 1961,199)
(Put yourselffor a moment in my shoes, and try to understand existentially the
experience of someone who is a victim of systematic, regular, atrocious
mystification.)
la mistificazione dclla mia opera leJ una mistifieazione totale, eompleta,
irrimediabile. (10 May I (lI2, 255)
(the mystification of my work lis.! total, complete, irremediahle.)
The agent of that 'mistificazione' is industrial power and its corollary,

state and political conformism. And power entraps through the desire
for success, which is now scen as always prof()Undly alienating:
Ecco che cos'': il successo: lIna vita mistificata dagli altri, che torna mistificata a
te, e finisce col Irasf(lrmarti veramente. I ... 1So cosa signitica essere guardati
come heslie rare, essere dali in pastil senza discriminazione aJl'odio (e assai piu
raramente alia simpatia), esse re continuamente, sistematicamente falsificati.
(15 Oct. I ()60, So . I )
(This is what sllccess i~: a life mystified hy others, that comes back \0 you in ils
myslified form, and el1(.\s up actually changing you. I ... 11 know whal it means
to he stared 011 like rare heasls, \0 he ted indiscriminately to halTed (ami, much
less freqllenlly, 10 sympathy), \0 he continuously and systematically falsified.)
1I successo':, pcr IIna vila morale e senlimcntaie, qualcosa di orrendo, c hasta.
(6 Sept. \1)62, zHI)
(For a moral ,lilt! cmotionallite, success is appalling, and that's thal.)
The degmdal ion of the t(lrmeriy creative, harmonious drive fill" success
is the result ofa loss of control over his work, attacked not only by an in-
visible oligarchy, but also by a (manipulated) public:
10 non posso pcnnellermi di shagliarc un'opera; sono ridotto a questo I· .. J. J.c

masse I.. ·1 sonocol1le dei re. E io di fronte a questi re, ormai, sono un po' come
un giullarc che se shaglia un motto viene condannato a morte. (J 2 July 1962,
270 )
(1 cannot allow mysclfto get a single work wrong; it has come to this [ ... 1. The
masses l ... Jare like kings. And I am now, hefore these kings, rather like a court
jester who has only to put a word out of place to be condemned to death.)
But, more seriously still, the subject becomes alienated from its very
self: 'io cereo di lottare, donchisciottescamente, contro questa fatalita
che mi toglie a me stesso' (I endeavour to struggle, like Don Quixote,
against this fatal destiny that removes/steals me from myself, 6 Sept.

1962,289). It is a grim panorama, but onc containing seeds of a future
strategy of resistance: here, the image of the 'jester' and of Don ~ixote
creates a mock-heroic, tragicomic circle of sympathy for his struggle,
and works to preclude rational dissent from his position at the margins.
The mock authority which is acquired and cultivated as it is denied in
these articles actually enhances his condemnation of power. In defiance
of the increasing negativity ofthe governing ideology of the site, and the
consequent weakened autonomy of a subjective voice, thc latter begins
to learn how to resist and undermine the t()rmer by rhetoricizing itself,
its instability and its potential interlocutors.
The atmosphere of crisis is at its most acute in the dialogues from
Il)60 to 1962, and particularly the period of the trial for attempted
armed robbery at Circeo of 1961.11ut it remains in some form through-
out, as each new film brings further controversy and publicity. The final
article (30 Sept. H)65, 450-3) expresses regret at the lack of a role for a
Marxist intellectual outside the party, hut more importantly, perceivcs
a historical fracture which simply leaves Pasolini at a loss as to how to
sustain the subjectivity-with in-history, which is his defining state,
when history has turned in on itself (what he calls 'la nuova preistoria',
the new prehistoric age, in his poetry) and will tolerate only the inscrip-
tion of com11lodified, reitied, subjugated subjects.
2·S. Nuovi argo11lenti, 1966-75
The cnd ofPasolini's collaboration with Vie nuove coincided with, and
was partly caused by, his decision to co-edit a new series of Nu(}vi
argmnenti. FounJed in 1!)53 hy Alberto Moravia and Alberto Carocci,
Nuovi argomenti had been a cultural-political review broadly similar in
outlook anti many of its aims to Otlhillll, seeking a left-wing cult ural and
ideological renewal to salvage the by now worn optimism and vigour of
post-war debate. It was centred on the Roman intellectual milieu of
whieh Moravia was the dominant figure, and, like Ollicinll, it looked to
ask fundamental questions and open debates----()ften through its hall-
mark, the questionnaire or enquiry-rather than make dogmatic pre-
scriptions. Unlike qflicitla, it did not normally accept poetry, but a major
exception to this rule was the publication in nn. 17-18 (November
1955-February 1956) of ' Le ccneri di Gramsci', after the strong insist-
ence of first Eisa Morante and then Moravia (sec Siciliano, 1981a, 252).
In the early 19605, the impetus of the review had been dented some-
what by the success and high-profile of the Gruppo '63 and its own
journals, such as Il Verri, Quademi Piacentini and even, although not
strictly adherent to the 'neo-avanguardia', Il menab(l, and hence the
launch in I96S ofa new series. Siciliano (i98Ia, 363-4) describes how
Pasolini was initially even more keen to realize the project than Moravia
himselt~ arranging for backing first from Editori Riuniti, and then from
his own long-term publisher J jvio Garzanti. The new series was more
literary than the old, and more intent on the promotion of new writing.
For Pasolini, the experience of mass-communication through Vie nuove,
even if the 'mass' was of a focused, orthodox kind, was suspended, and
Nu()vi argomcllti represented a return to some of his unacknowledged
roles in Officina; [hat of pat ron, ami of eclectic co-ordinator of ideas and
responses. If the rejection of his' Piccola antologia sperimentale' by
Sanguineti had marked a point of rupture with an emergent g·eneration
of poets, Nllllvi argrnnC1lli saw Pasolini discovering a third generation in
poets such as I hrio Bcllczza, Giorgio Manacorda, Silvana Mangini and
Renzo Paris, and promoting other established voices such as Attilio
Bcrtolucci and Amelia Rosselli. Another onc of t he third g-clleration,
Enzo Siciliano, was editorial assistant, and would later become a /"ull
editor after the death of( :arocci in [()7z.+H
Pasolini's opt imismii)J· the new series is evident in a letter to l.eoneHi
fromiale I()('S: 'comincia dllnque una nuova epoca. Ell c 4uinili neces-
saria ulla nuova rivisLI' (so a new era is beginning. And so a new journal
is needed).+'l But his most extelllle<J expression o/" intent is to be fimnd
in t wo letters wriuen to Franco Fortini in November 1()6S and January
H)6(" in which he implores Fortini to hecome a re!!,"ular contrihutor, to
little clfect.so In the iirst, he describes the review in terms even more
open anil provisional than Officina's ilirected eclecticism: it is to he a
'trihuna lihera' (opcn platti,,·m), 'sede delle autonomc ricerche di 1111
gruppo di amici-l1emici' (site of the indepcndel1t research ofa group of
friends-cum-encmies):
{H Several of these tiPIITS (Siciliano, M:m:lconla, llellez4a) laler hecame important critics
amI cha11lpions ofl'asolini's work, as did olher conll'ihlllors (Zanzollo) ano members of the
Roman circle (Belli). (ii,\Il Carlo FelTelli :mo Watter Siti, although not involved in Nllm,i ar-
gommli, were lirst in touch with I'asolini in this period (I,,'lIere, ii. S50, 655, 674, 70S).
4') I,ellar, ii. S91l. The sense of a new era is a strong underlying motif of lfacllaai e 1I{-
celli,,;, completed inJan. 1966.
50 I,ct/ert', ii. 600-[, 60S· 6. The exch,mge was continued in a third letter oflan. 1966 (609),
and Fortini's name did appc,1f in l'asolini's list ofeollahorators in the call li)T comributions in
the first issuc. On the remarkahle relationship hctwe~n Fortini and Pasolini, scc Fortini, 1993,
passim; J.upcrini, 1'l1l!; Thiine, 1990, 157-86.
I nuovi 'Nuovi argomenti' non sono dunque una rivista, come noi l'abbiamo
concepita finora: sono la sede per la costituzione di una futura rivista possibile.
Percio cominciamo non da zero, ma dai punti in cui ognuno di noi si trova:
[ ... ] illavoro in comune-svolto 'a puntate' neIla stessa sede-in ricerche
parallele-finiriJ. forse con 10 stabilire un reale equilibrio: 0 la convergenza su
certi problemi e certe soluzioni, 0 la definitiva divergenza. Lascieremo
insomma tutto aperto, in questa 'costituente'.
(So the new 'Nuovi Argomenti' is not a journal in the sense we have conceived
of them previously: it is the site for the constitution of a future, potential journal.
So we are not starting from scratch, but from wherever each of us finds our-
selves: l ... J the work undertaken together--carried out 'in instalments' in the
same place--in parallel-will perhaps result in a real equilibrium: either a con-
vergence on certain problems and certain solutions, or definitive divergence. In
short we are leaving everything open in this new 'constituent assembly'.)
His enthusiasm f()r the project is based on its tentative and pluralistic
openness, and this is reaffirmed in his call for contributions, placed in
an appendix to the first issue, where he repeats his formulation of the
journal as a collaboration of autonomous voices who have in common
only the perception of a crisis and the site at which to resolve it. There
is no programme apart from 'la necessita di ricominciare tutto daccapo'
(the need to begin all over again). There is no journal as such: 'la nostra
e anzitutto "una rivista che serve a preparare una rivista" , (ours is
above all 'a journal to help to prepare f()r a journal')Y Even the decision
to place these pseudo-manifestos at the cnd ofthe journal displays a de-
sire for continuity and unclamorous renewal, rather than anything
more forceful.
The trajectory ofPasolini's involvement with Nuovi argomenti seems
to fall into two distinct periods, before and after 1970. From 1966 until
1970, he contributed a steady stream of articles, poems and plays to the
journal, and his hand is clearly behind several of the unsigned editorials
which often adapt his theoretical, aesthetic thoughts to political issuesY
51 See 'Appendice: uue note per I'invito alia collaborazione', Nu()v; "'KIIII1Wti, NS n. I,
Jan.-March 1(j66, 231-6. The first ofthese two notes is by Moravia, who claims that liule has
changed between the old and the new series. Roth are dominated by 'una eflcniva presa sui
reale, comunque e con '1ualun'lue mezzo ottcnuta' (an effective grasp of reality, achieved in
whatever way and by whatever means). In the past that 'impcgno' had qlincidcd with
Marxism, but now that coincidence was in crisis and required renewal. Pasolini felt uneasy
about Moravia's attitude, as his second lctter to Fortini shows: 'tieni conlO, ti prego, piu del
mio prcamboletto che di Ijuello di Moravia' (please pay more attcntion 10 my short preamble
than to Moravia's, Lettere, ii. 605). The formula 'una rivista per preparare una rivista' had first
been used by Pasolini in his last Vie nuove 'Dialogo'.
52 Sec e.g. 'Il presidentcJohnson sogna', n. 2, Apr.-June 1966,3-7, or 'Napalm LTD', n.
9,Jan.-March 1968: 3-6.
A series of often controversial essays-'Appunti en poete [sic] per una
linguistica marxista', 'La sceneggiatura come "struttura che vuole
essere altra struttura" , (n. I), 'La lingua scritta dell'azione' (n. 2),53
'La fine dcll'avanguardia' (nn. 3-4), which provokcd fiercc debatc, 'La
paura del naturalismo' (n. 6),54 'Ci() chc cneo-zdanovismo c cia che non
10 C' (n. 12), '11 cincma impopolare' (n. 20)-and the pocm '11 PCI ai gio-
vani!!' (n. IO), were all later included in FE. Indeed, a Icttcr ofJune 1966
to Livio Garzanti suggests that HE, originally entitled Laboratorio,55
was first conceived of as an anthology of his Nuovi argomenti pieces: 'per
questa primavera, io penserei I... 1a "Laboratorio" (volume di saggi e
poesie sag-g-istiche-Ia questione linguistica e tutte le altre cose che ho
scritto e amlro scrivendo pcr N uovi argomenti), (fix this Spring, I'd
look to I. _.1 'I,aboratorio' (a volume of essays and essay-pocms-the
debate on language and all the other things I've written and am writing
fi,r Nuovi argomenti), Ll'llm:, ii_ 617)-
'l'he letter to Garzanti is onc of ten horn January 1<)66 to June 1<)67,
and together they indicate Ihallhe start of Pasolini's involvement with
Nuovi llfWJlllcnti coincided with a pcriod of intense creative activity.
Within these months, and these letters, plans Ii,r many of the projccts
which were 10 dominate the final decade of his life arc sketched. Apart
from 1,Il/mrtlIOrio, he hq!;ins editing li,r Garzanti a series of published
screenplays (' Film e discussioni') and another of film theory (again
'I ,ahoratorio') with (iiacoll1o Gambetti, and these will include his own
work, ami that or Marco Bellocchio, Sergio Citti, Godard, Bazin and
Metz; hc makes a drati or the screenplay of .\'a.n Paolo; he begins
Bcsll'mmia, a screenplay or novel in verse, and plans an anthology of his
poet ry ('un alto conclusivo di un mio "periodo" letterario per aprirne
un altTo', a closing act one of my literary 'periods' so as to open up an-
other, L:llcre, ii. () '7); he completes the treatmenlS of both Teorema and
/idipo; he makes further progress on I,a divina mimesis, known at this
stage as Frll11l11ll'1lli or /vlcrnoric pralithe; he makes a first, very vague
reference to Pclmlio; and he plans a comic-book growing out of his work
with Toto. His greatest enthusiasm, however, is reserved ti.)r thc six
verse-dramas, conceived during- his month-long convalescence from an
Sol I.aler entilled 'I.a lingua scrilta ddla rca\1;\', U! 202-30. Much ofthe issuc is dedicated
to papers !(ivcn at the I'esaro cinema fCstival of [966, including a strong attack on I'asolini',
scmiology from Saltini, 1966. These fCstivals were central to I'asolini's developing intcrest in
semiotics ;111<1 film theory.
S4 Lller partly entitled 'Osservazioni suI piano-scquenza', FE 24[-5.
SS Lahora/,,,,'() was a title Pasolini went to some lengths to preserve. It suggests a return,
with a certain clement of modernization, to the model of the 'olneina', or workshop_
ulcer operation (March-April 1966), his subsequent plans for a new

'teatro della parola' (Theatre of the Word), and a series of classical
works to be staged by the Teatro Stabile di Torino, translated by him-
self, Moravia, Leonetti, Siciliano, Morante, Bertolucci, Piovene and
others. Nuovi argomenti is at the heart of this new lease of creative life.
In another letter to Garzanti, he writes complaining of the delay in dis-
tribution of an issue of the journal:
cio mi allarma pcrche vi ho pubblicato una cosa a cui tcngo moltissimo, e da cui
dipendc tutto il mio lavow futuro: cioc il 'Manifesto per un nuovo teatro' I... 1.
11 nuovo teatro, poi, sara oltre che teatro anche movimento culturale e in
qualche modo politico (una componente <.Ii una vera 'Nuova Sinistra' ecc.: e
'Nuovi argomenti' ne sad I'organo). (I.eller!:, ii. (34)
(it alarms me because it includes a piece of work I am very attached to, which is
the basis of all my future work: the 'Manifesto till" a New Theatre' [... J. Ant!
the new theatre will be a cultural and in some sense political movement, he-
sides being a theatre (a componellt of a gelluine 'New J.eft' etc.: and 'Nuovi
argomenti' will he its mouthpiece).)
As well as the manifesto, he published two of his plays in NUOlli
argo11lenti, Pi/ade and AITahulazione (see Bibliography 1.6).
After the publication of Rosa (Ui)4), Pasolini wrote little significant
poetry fi)r several years. 56 In a note to '11 PCI ai giovani!!' he describes
himself ,tS 'un poeta che da alcuni anni non scrive piu versi c ha deciso
di non scriveme piu' (a poet who has not written poetry for several years
and has decided not to write any again).57 He had done much to pro-
mote younger poets' work in Nuovi arJ!,()menti, but had only published
some old poems of his own written in 1963 in n. 6 ('Israele'), as a reflec-
tion on the Six-Day War o/" 1967. However, after the furore over '11 PC!
ai giovani!!', he began to present new poetry regularly, and for much of
1969 and 1970, he ceased to publish essays here and contributed almost
exclusively poetry. All of'L'enigma di Pio XII' (n. II), 'Trasumanar e
organizzar' (n. IJ), 'Poemi zoppicanti' (n. 16), 'Poesia della tradizione'
56 Fcrretti, H)(j2, p. xxix, links Ihis crisis with Ihe arguments oflhe two key essaysoflhc pe-
riod, 'Nuove questioni linguistiche' (H)64) and 'La fine dell'avan~lIardia' (H)(,(»). The return
to poetry in 19M1....j was f()reshadowed in 1(j66-7 by the composition ofa small numher ofim-
portant long poems, in part conncctetl lO the verse-tragedies begun in lhe same period (sce
Tea/TO): for example 'Teoria dei due paratlisi' (lh, rll! 8-23), 'Beslemmi.' (H2, 1824-30) and
'Poeta delle ceneri' (B2, 20S6--H4).
57 'Note (importanli), to 'I1 PC! ai giovani!!', n. 10, Apr.-June 196H, 2]. The poem, al-
though intended for NUllvi argolllC11li, had already been publishetl in L'Espres.\fI, I ()June 196H.
under the editorial title 'Vi odio, cari studenti!' (I hate you, dear students!). It was fmm th;lt
base that it became something of a cuuse cilebre of the 1968 student movemenl in Italy. See
Pasolini's comments in Tempo illus!ralo, 17 May 196(j (1 dialllghi, 629-30).
(n. 17), 'La restaurazione di sinistra' (n. IS) and 'Manifestar' (n. 20)
would, with minor rewriting, become part of Trasumanar (1971).
Whatever the significance of the return to poetry on an aesthetic level,
it clearly represents a final flourish of activity within the confines of this
version of the fraternal intellectual group, and also a certain withdrawal
from cultural politics. Solitude will return as a constant theme of the
Tempo it/uslmlo columns in 1969, in the wake of persccution and con-
troversy over both Teorema and Poreite. The extent to which the arena
and audience provided by 1('mpo illustrato supersedes aspccts of Nu()vi
arp.mnenli \ function as an arena jill' self-expression and confession is
further indicated by several articles in the former on film theory, and,
perhaps most strikingly, by a public exchange of letters on the matter
between Moravia and Pasolini in 7i'mpo illuslra/o, and not in the journal
they jointly edited. sx
Other aspects of Pasolini's activity, the state ofNuovi arg01nenli, and
its position in the context ofthe cultural status quo, reintiH'ee the sense
of a withdrawal or modulation of role after uno. The publication of
TrasulIlanar, and thus an acknowledgement that the period of new
poetic creativity h,ld in turn come to an cnd, fi)lIowed the ti)rced end of
the column in 'li'lI/po il/lIslrlllo in January lino (sce § () below), ami the
start of t he long location-·work tilr the tilming of 11 /)ccllllleroll. The
(iarzanti paperback ant hology, Pllesic, first planned in H,67, finally ap-
peared in lino also. Furthermore, n. 21 of Num,j argllflll'1lli (Jan.-Mar.
un 1 ) explicitly declares the cnd 01" an era tiH' the journal, and a return
to a more convent ional till'mat of literary criticism and creative new
writ ing which it has retained ever since. 'Editoriale per i NI/woi argllmenti
'97' (Appunti)' acknowledges that the journal has survived the chaos
ol"the J()(IOS, and is now EICed with a void. The ncw direction it will take
will simply aim to fill that void, to 'man\cnere il disordine' (kecp the dis-
order), but in a more stable manner. The none-too-hidden subtext of
the editorial refers pI" course to the demise of the 'neo-avanguardia' in
the wake of the 'hot autumn' of social and industrial unrest, and nascent
terrorism. Pasolini's long crusade against the generation of the 'neo-
avanguanlia' loses its object, and thus that role which had created a
form of stability through hostile isolation during much of the decade
founders in turn. In this conted, two articles are particularly signific-
ant in that they show him constructing a new adversarial target: the
SH Sce I dill/OKhi, 6!lS-7, 692-7,700-1. The argument was sparked off by onc of Moravia's
regular lilm reviews (o[Fellini's Sall'ri(()l1) lilT I:Hspresso.
damning review of Montale's Satura (n. 21);59 and his last signed arti-
cle for the journal before his death, a prologue to the first Nu()vi argo-
menti 'inchiesta' in the new series, entitled '8 domande sull'estremismo'
(n. 31, Jan.-Feb. 1973, 5-I05). The latter, a version of a lecture he had
given in April 1972 ('E. M.: estremismo morale 0 estremismo
metapolitico'), opens and closes on notes of crisis:
Prima di tutto devo dire ehe non mi trovo in un momento molto felice della
mia vita di intellettuale: sento vagamente, per esempio, ehe qui le mie parole
suonano senza i caratteri ne della novita ne dell'autorita (5).
(First of all 1 must say that this is not a very happy moment of my intellectual
life: 1 have a vague feeling, for example, that here my words lack the ring of
either novelty or authority.)
Ho eomineiato con un aceenno al mio ca so pcrsonale, e con un altro aeeenno al

mio caso personalc voglio finirc. Trovo scritto in un libro che sto leggendo [ ... 1:
'Chi semina virtil raccoglic la fama, chi dicc la verira raccoglie l'odio'. (17)
(1 began with a reference to my personal position, and I want to end with an-
other. I find in a book I am reading [ ... 1: 'lIe who sows virtue reaps fame, he
who speaks the truth reaps hatred')
He casts himself as Cassandra, condemned by his insight into truth to

be rejected by those closest to him. Hut evidently the melancholy of
these statements is also a rhetoric of self-reinforcement through posi-
tioning a perceived enemy as 'other'.
The new policy after n. 21 was clearly successful, as the journal re-
verted to two-monthly puhlication from n. 25, January-February 1972,
but Pasolini contributed little. 6o Othcr openly conflictual and wider
arenas drew Pasolini incxorahly away. This last contribution to the
journal coincides precisely with his first articles for the open platform
('tribuna libera', just as he had described Nuovi argomenti) in Corricre
della sera, which inaugurated the 'Scritti corsari' and would be his last
public stage (sce § 7 below). (lI Nu()vi argomenti, during the first period in
particular, acted as a reliable site in a way which Pasolini had described
hopefully to Fortini at its inception. It provided a forum for the limited
59 Montale replied to the review with the hitingly sarcastic poem 'Letter;\ a Malvolio', in
L'Espresso, 19 Dec. 1971 (now in Diu,io del '71 e del '72, Montalc, I!JH4, 466..... 67). Pasolini
followed up with a scries of epigrams ending in one addressed to a Homeric Nobody: 'Ouli.,',
n.z7,May.....June 197z,146-8;Bz,19ZJ--8.
66 He was the author of an anonymous editorial note in n. 26 explaining the shift to mOre
frequent editions in characteristic terms of a struggle against 'neo-zdanovismo'.
61 The first, 'Contro i capeUi lunghi', appeared on 7 Jan. 1973. Only two others followed in
1973, but the rate increased markedly during 1974 and 1975 (see Let/ere, ii. 748-9).
dissemination of a series of ideas on a varied range of to pi cs, and it con-

trasted sharply with periods of withdrawal from poetry, of persecution,
judicial and otherwise, and of lack of creative direction with which it
partly coincided. In its stability then, it had much in common with the
role played by qflicina; however Nuovi ar!{omenti itself, and its con-
stituent parts, lacked meaning in their project in a way that OjJicina did
not. The conjunction of ideas and people failed, and indeed never as-
pired, to achieve a synthesis. It lacked ideological direction, even one of
eclecticism, and instead developed into an anthological review, not un-
like in this respect more glossy, popular magazines. As a result, perhaps
here more than anywhere else, Pasolini treated a public space as a work-
shop tilr new anti oltl work anti ideas, for learning, without constantly
ceding to his obsessive need ro confront the nature of the site in his ex-
ploration ofthe self
2.6. Tempo iIIustr<tto, f()bg·]o
The weekly column clll i tied' II caos', lilr Tempo illustrato 6Z (6 Nov.
Iq6H-24 Jan. [(no), tits neatly into the last part of the first period of
Nu(rvi arp:011ll'llli, IJUt is a very different case of public intervention.
'/i'mpo i!{u.llralo was a mass-circulation weekly, like Vie rluove but with-
out the explicit political direction ofthe latter. The rules of party ortho-
doxy, which Pasolini adhered to as an ambivalent and transgressive
'fellow traveller', were here replaced by the rules of market and con-
sumption. '/l'1I/PO illu.l"lrato had;) long history as a major player in the
popuLlr magazine market, having been lilllnded in UHt) and relaunched
in I1)4(l, as.I pioneering vehicle for the introduction of American-style
glossy journalism of magazines slIch as 14e, Look or Paris-Match to the
Italian market.().! At the time ofPasolini's collaboration, its circulation
was r.IlIing but remained around 300,000.64 Arturo Tofanelli, editor
since 1946, created and refined a mosaic or anthological structure to the
magazine, which relied on a variety of high-profile contributors not
linked by any commonly held attitudes: Pasolini's slot had been
62 The magazim: is commonly referred to as Tempo, out the fuller title has been retained to
avuiJ eunfusion with the daily newspaper Il Tempo. The page references following the date of
original puhlication in Tempo illu.</m/o arc 10 I diu/l'Khi, which reproduces all the articles.
6.1 Ajcllo characterizes the P05t-1946 Tempo illuJ/ra/o as 'the most visible turning-point in
the industrial SCI-Up of the [Italian] periodical press' (translated from Ajello, 1976, 190).
64 Ajcllo, 1976,244, quotes the often unreliable lAD (lstituto Accertamento Diffusione)
figures for the following years: 1964-334,000; 1968-28B,000; 1972-290,503. Ferretti.
1992, p. xxxv, estimates a distribution of 400,000 families, and a readership of 1,600,000.
previously filled at various times by Massimo Bontempelli, Curzio

Malaparte and Salvatore Quasimodo. Unlike the Vie nuove column,
here there is only a limited amount of direct interchange with readers. 65
'Il caos' is largely a column of thoughts offered ex cathedra, by a notori-
ously controversial writer, and where there is dialogue, it is most often
polemical exchange with other public figures. 66 The consequent de-
tachment restricts the sense of intersubjective reinforcement offered by
dialogue, but also acts to liberate and extend Pasolini's field of enquiry,
opening out the possibility of a forceful maverick's role which will be
further crystallized in se
and LL. Hence, he engages with and attacks
a series of important contemporary political and cultural events, from
the Premia Strega, Italy's principal literary prize, and the Venice Film
Festival to the centre-left government and the Socialist leader Pietro
Nenni; from the student movemelits in Italy to Vietnam and the
American 'New J .eft' to Alexander Panagulis, Rudi Dutschkc and Jan
Palach in Europe; there arc even articles on the moon-landings. The
news-driven nature and range of these issues make of the column for
Pasolini 'un fronte di piccole battaglie quotidiane' (a front of little
everyday hattles, rH Oct. I!)6!), 707) whieh ahandon the high ground of
revolutionary subversion ti:)r more active, pragmatic targets.
The function of' 11 cows' as an intermediary stage between the
pessimism and sclf.. marg·inalization of the public self in the early Hi)os,
and the public monllism ofthe mid-J()7os is emphasized by Ferl-ctti,
H)!)2, who notes the nascent polemics against superstructural cultural
institutions such as school, thc Church and television, as well as ex . ·
tended engagement with the 'prohlem' of youth, and consumerism,
and secs the column as an 'apprenticeship' for the 'Corsair' season.
However, the evolution ti-om thc {()rlller to the latter is far from sl1looth.
The voice of the Con;air will be more f()rccful and more suhversive, and
will create a powerful instrument for resistance out of the somewhat
uneasy compromise with thc organs of consumerist culture seen here.
Pasolini's typical rhetorical tricks recur. He protects himself by
disingenuously declaring 'ho semprc detto e ripetuto che sono un
dilettante' (I have always said and repeated that I am an amateur, 7IH).
65 Sec the following- exceptions: 3 Sept. [()oH, 477 (where a reader regrets l'asolini's move
from Vie mlOve to Tell/jlo illuslralo and predicts that he will cnd up in COlTierc "clla sera); a sc-
ries oflctters in dialogue with/ about prisoners in Parma (2 I Dec. I <)6H, 545-56; 3 I May 1<)01/,
634-8; 5 July H)69, (,52 ...6; 30 Aug. 196<),677-<); 4 and I I Oct. H)O!), 701-07); and the final
three columns in HJ70(1O, 17 and z4Jan. 197°,756-67).
66 These include a Prime Minister, Giovanni J.cone, Moravia, Silvana Mangano, Arpino,
Pampaloni, Zcflirelli, Suldati, Fcllini, Maccioechi, Arbasino, Visconti, Anna Magnani.
He privileges the physical 'gettare il nostro corpo neIIa lotta' (hurling

our bodies into the fray, 745) over the cerebral. He continues his famil-
iar imagery of solitude and exclusion: 'il mio non c qualunquismo, ne
indipendenza; c solitudine' (mine is not an attitude of Q!.Ialunquism
[approx. I'm-all-right-Jack1, nor of independence; it is solitude, 6 Aug.
I96H, 459); 'io sono wmpfetamente solo [ ... 1 Amo la solitudine' (I am
(Ompfelely afone I... JI love loneliness (11 Jan. 1969, 557-H; and cf 631).
And he constantly slips ti'om politics into self-analysis, only to regret it:
'ho poi pariah) troppo di me' (I have anyway talked too much about
myself, IH Oct. 1969,707), 'si, sono "egocentrico" [ ... ] come tutti gli
autori' (yes, I'm 'egocentric' I... ] like all authors, 1 Nov. i969, 718).
But there is a new quality to his writing, engendered by the nature of the
arena and t()rmulatcu in the earliest articles, which heralds a new com-
plexity of understanding of the medium in which he is working and the
need to exploit it through its own structures. The programmatic open-
ing piece (6 Aug. 11)6H, 4S7-(2), stakes his claim as an authority who
denies authority and protection, and who rcf()rmulates the trauitional
role of the int ellectual with a new cynicism: 'io approfitto delle strutture
capitalistiche per esprimermi: e 10 /;u;cio, percill, ciniwlIletlte' (I am ex-
ploiting capitalist structures in order to express myself: and I am there-
I()JT doing it IYllicalll', 460; and see 27 Aug'. 1!)6H, 472). If the goal of
self-expression remains ('I'esprimersi I ... 1 c sempre l1leraviglioso' (to
express yourself I ... 1 is always marvellous, q Sept. II)6(), 6H4) ), the
new awareness or the need to ex ploit all intrinsically hostile medium
with irony, cynically, produces the most extensive analysis yet of that
culture industry. The authority which he shuns is gencralized into
principle in the opening article: 'l'autorit.\, infatti, c semprc terrore'
(authority is, indeed, all/'a)!s terror, 4SH). And indeed he offers a work-
ing suhtitle t(lI' his column, 'Contro il terrore' (Against Terror, 4SH).67
Part icularly in H)6H, the terminology of terror and terrorism recurs
regularly as indicative of the repressive. mechanisms of power, from left
ami right. The attempt to prevent the showing of films at Venice was
terrorism, and Morante's long poem If mondo salvato tiai raKazzini is
a blow struck against cultural terrorism (27 Aug. 1968,470,473-4);
terror is labelled the partner of resignation in public opinion (7 Dec.
H)6H, 536). Terroristic structures of power are described as mono···
logistic, and hence television (28 Dec. 1968, 547) and the moon-
landings (9 Aug. 1969,667) are given as typical authoritarian vehicles.
67 Indcec.l, Falaschi points OUl in his notes to J dilllllglri (lxxxi) that 'Contro il terrore' was
the only title Pasolini used when beginning to work on his column.
Under these vague, totalizing notions of 'terrore', 'autorita' and

'potere', Pasolini assimilates the actually repressive-such as the con-
tinuing sequestration of Teorema despite its acquittal (11 Jan. 1969,
555-8)-with institutional and cultural apparatuses of integration. He
borrows from Marcuse 68 another term, 'il sistema', the system, which
either marginalizes or integrates the intellectual:
I'intellettuale C un reietto, nel senso ehe il sistema 10 relega al di fuori tli se
stesso, 10 cataloga, 10 tliserimina, gli affihhia un eartello segnaletico: ontle: 0
rentlerlo tlannato, 0 integrarlo. (14 Dec. 1l)6H, 538)
(the intellectual is an outcast, in the sense that the system banishes him to exile,
catalogues him, picks him out, and attaches a placartl to him: so as cit.her to
tlamn him or absorb him.)
The alternatives are deeply pessimistic, and arc reiterated elsewhere

in the formulation of his own role as the 'bufl<)lle di corte' (court jester)
who is not only reduced to total dependency and thus loss of
autonomy-'l'intellettuale cdove I'industria culturale 10 colloca: perch,;
e come il mercato 10 vuole' (thc intellectual is where the culture industry
places him: because and hOIll the market wants him, I3 Aug. 1908, 462}---
but who is more seriously 'incapace di t:lre vera esperienza e capace solo
di vegliare sulla sua coscienza' (unahle to have true experiences, able
only to watch over his conscience, 7 Dec. 1968, 534). But at other
points, the system is not so all-cmbracing as to eliminate altogether the
possibility of true knowledge and experience of reality which, lilr
Pasolini, is a radical challenge to the consumerist status quo. Know-
ledge is inevitably mediated-'Ia rea Ita [ ... ] potremo sempre
conosceria "attraverso" il sistcma, mai "al di la" del sistema' (we shall
only ever be able to know reality 'through' the system, never 'beyond'
the system, J Sept. 1968, 476 )-but in this dynamic of integration, a
positive potential is mapped out. The system works vertically, mono-
logically and through abstraction, but leaves freedom t()r change and
subversion on the converse horizontal, dialogieal and concrete levels:
'eio che e male in astratto (l'assimilazione del sistema) c bene in con-
creto (il rapporto col singolo)' (what is bad in abstract (assimilation to
the system) is good in concrete (rapport with the individual), 478).
68 According to Gcrard, Pasolini was introduced to Marcusc by Fortini in 11)57 (HjH 1,33).
If the vocabulary of 'critical theory' begins to inform the anicles of 1968, from April ul'9,
they shift towards the anthropological works ofJung, Mauss and Eliatle. The combination of
these two discourses, leading to the proclamation of a 'mutazione antropologica' (anthropo-
logical mutation) in Italy brought about by the homologization of nco-capitalism, will be a
founding intuition of the 1973-5 articles.
Poetry equally survives the system because of its intrinsic resistance to
modes of consumption: 'La poesia [ ... ] non emerce perch€: non econ-
sumabile' (poetry is not merchandise because it is not consumable, 14
Dec. 1968,540). Poetry is neither produced nor consumed, except in a
brief interval between writing and reading: 'io "faccio" un libro [ ... ]
"come un vecchio artigiano" che "fa" vasi, sedie, stivali' (I 'make' a
book r... '1 'like an old craftsman' who 'makes' vases, chairs, boots) (27
Aug. H)68, 471). The return of the artisanal model, and hence a re-
course to humanist values/'l) at the same time as Pasolini is producing
his most uncrati:ed poetry, is not so contradictory as might first appear
once the full impact ofthe emphasis on action, on 'fare', with particular
reference to the student movements, is appreciated.
Pasolini is far more positive towards the students than any of the
polemic over '11 PCI ai giovani!!' might suggest. They are seen as anti-
elite, mass movements (9 Nov. 1968,517), 'giuste e oggettive' (right and
objective) in their accusations against their elders (IS Oct. 1969,708),
and arc even coupled with the mythical moment of revolutionary
potential ti)r Pasolini ,md the Italian left in general: 'la Resistenza e it
Movimellto Studentesco sono le due uniche esperienze demoeratiehe-
rivoluzionarie del popolo italiano' (the Res:;;tance and the Student
Movemcnt arc the only two democratic-revolutionary experiences of
the] talian people, 21 Sept. [q()S, 489). But the profound est moment of
epiphany on the actions of the students comes in an article of 6
December l(l)() (7345), where the governing image and structuring
principle or '/"rIlSUmal111r is worked through. lIe picks up an idea from
the radical journal Po/ere o/Icraio--'solo chi si da praticamente a
"organizzare" la lotta I ... 1si trova veramente nel corso rivoluzionario'
(only those who work practically to 'organize' the struggle I ... ] are
really on the revolutionary track, 734)-and notes the exelusion of the
intellectual, whose revo\utionarincss had always consisted in words, or
in 'la sua pura e semplice presenza' (his presence, pure and simple):70
Ho capito di colpo chc cosa Coggi il Movimento Studentesco. Esso cun movi-
menlo politico la cui ascesi consiste ncllilre. (735)
(I understood in a flash what the Student Movement is today. It is a political
movement whose asceticism is action.)
()(I Sce 1I Jan. 11)61),558-<) and I) Aug. 196<),668-9, which attempt to salvage and redefine
the term 'umanita' against the terrorism of the modern world.
70 cr 'I'opera di un'autorc i: come la raccia di un negro. E'con la sua stessa prcsenza, con il
suo "esscrci" che c rivoluzionaria' (the work of an author is like the face of a black man. It is
with its very presence, its 'being there' that it is revolutionary, 14 Dec. 1968, 539).
The aspiration to 'il fare' or praxis as mystical, transcendent and

revolutionary, is the impetus behind the modification of the poet's role
in accepting the site of '11 caos'. If poetry can become action, and the
poet-intellectual an 'actor' or 'organizer', it can bypass or 'cut across'
the system, and preclude reification. Hence, the assertion of an artisanal
model for poetry is emblematic of a dual dynamic in Pasolini's concept-
ual framework-both retrogressive (what he calls 'battaglie di retro-
guardia', rearguard battles, 14 Dec. 1968,541) and, or in order to bc,
progressive and revolutionary. The dual-projected nature of the ethics
of action is thus coterminous with an attempt to resist the dehistoric-
ization brought about by nco-capitalism, to salvage from bourgeois
conservationism 'la sacral ita del passato' (thc sacredness of the past, 22
March H)69, 600):
it futuro si prescnta come L... 1privo di prumesse e di 'domani', vissuto intera-

mcnte 'qui', da un umno eome mens momentanea, immunizzato dall'angosei"
dell a storia I... 1it tempo sta per divenire un 'continuum' senza principio ne
fine (se non puramente tcnomenici) eome per !:(ti uomini della preistoria. (I ()
April H)6(), (16)
(the ti.,ture is offered as I ... 1 stripped of promises and of 'tomorrow', lived
entirely 'herc', hy a man as momentary 'mens', immunized against the anxiety
of history \ ... 1time is ahout 10 hecome a eontinuum without beginnin!:(or end
(exeept in purely phenomenal terms) as for prehistorical man.)
This is clearly a restatement of the image of the New Prehistory that

pervades Rosa (sce Ch. 5). But the vibrant overlaying of such a nascent
socio-anthropological critique onto wide-ranging interventions on
topics of current affairs points to a potential synthesis between poetry,
or at least poetic discourse, and political, subversive action. The realiza-
tion of that synthesis still awaits the final recreation of the self as a dis-
embodied, mythical voice-of-truth achieved in 1973-5, which is most
clearly adumbrated in onc ofthe unpublished pieces of'Il caos', where
Pasolini sees himself cast once more as Cassandra (1 dia/oghi, 783). But
already the power ofthis developing use of journalism as political action
contributed to the cessation of the column. After the retirement of
Tofanelli, Tempo illustrato was edited by Nicola Cattedra from 17 May
1969, who wrote to Pasolini on 20 January 1970:
La rubrica non appare perche Lei affronta temi specificamente potitici, anzi
direi tecnicarnente politici ehe non rientrano nella ternatica del 'Caos'. (I
dialoglzi, Ixvi; and cf Naldini, 1989,348)
(The column has not appeared hecausc you discuss specifically political,
indeed I might say technically political themes, that arc not part of the brief of
'Il caos'.)
And on 3 March 1 ()70 came another letter summarily suspending' the

culumn (I dia/ogizi, Ixviii). Specifically, the magazine took fright at
Pasolini's increasingly direct ealling into question of the Italian presid-
ent Giuseppe Sarag'at's response to terrorism (r dia/ogizi, i,i,z-7; cr 131,
I04S-6; Ferretti, H)<)2, pp. xli-xlii). But more generally, the possibility
of real, incisive political action through polemic seems to he confirmed
here as it is suppressed, and the cynical, hostile alliance between the
consumerist mediulll and the public voice of the 'poet' is, for the
moment, broken.
2·7. Corriere dclla sera (ami others), f()73 S
Pasolini returned 1"0 "/1'/11/111 i/lusl1"it/o with a weekly series of hook re-
views from z() November 1()72 to 24 January 1(n 5.1' The magazine
clearly kit no qualms ahout wekoll1ing hack a writer they had sum-
marily dismissed thirty months earlier as too 'politicl]'. Indeed, the
marketahilit y of Pasolini's namc is apparent in t hc shamcless exploita-
tion of that incident in the presentation of his new slot:
(Vlesto di P"solini C UIl ritorllo sulle colOlllle dd Iloslro sellimanale. Per due
alllli IPasolillil ha tcnuto, illEltti, ulla ruhrica, '\I Cows', chc, COil il 'Ballihecco'
di (:urzio Malapartc, rapprescllta la pit'l alia e 'Ilt iva punt a polemicl del passato
prossimo di 'Tcmpo': Ull momcnlO allehe di Iaccrazione, perchc la sua firma,
il suo impq!;llo, \;1 sua liher!;' di Icslimone, il suo coraggio di cOlllraddirsi,
provocarollo I .. ·1 viokllle prcsc di I'osi/.iolli, scandalizzati ahhandolli, i11llig-
natc rinuncc all'ahhollamcllto. (,/i.·III/w i//lIs/ 1":: /11,11.47, 2() Nov. I (J72; [ dia/lIghi,
Ixviii)
(Pasolil1i's appearancc is a return tu Ihe I'ag'es orour magazine. Ilor t wo years he
r,1Il a columl1, '( :haos', which, "Iongside (:urzio Malaparte's 'Squabble', repres-
ents Ihe highesl and most vibrant level of polemic in Tcmpo's rccelll history:
and also a moment or dispule, sillce his hy-line, his commitmcnt, his ti-eedolll
as witness, his hold self-contradictions, provoked I... 1violent stands, scandal-
ized dcsert ions, indignant cancel\at ions of subscriptions,)
The extraordinarily wide range of books reviewed-from contempor-

ary Italian prose and poetry to anthropology to Italian and foreign
7' Collecled ill Ikwr;;:';()J1; ili d('sa;;:.i()/li, excepl fill' the ")lIr1CCn ;llrcady in the 'I )oclIrncnti
c allegati' section orSc.
classics such as Strindberg, Dostoyevsky and Manzoni-indicates an

important resuscitation ofliterary energies and interests, confirmed in
turn by the work on Petro/io, begun in earnest in 1974 and heavily
influenced by books reviewed here (Fortini, 1993,245-6), by the con-
tinuing elaboration ofthe verse-plays, by the re-written Nuova and the
'ltalo-Friulan' poems of 'Tetro entusiasmo', first published in La
stampa (16 Dec. 1973). But such renewed literary interest by no means
represented a turning away from political concerns, as was evidently
the intent of the managers of Tempo i//ustrato. Indeed his reviews were
deeply conditioned by and fed into the dominant and more public mode
of the so-called 'Corsair' or 'Lutheran' writings of the period 1973-5,
which have come to overshadow the whole of Pasolini's other work
through their dramatic rhetorical impact on the socio-cultural and
political debate over modern Italy. The articles for Corriere del/a sera,
and related pieces for Paese sera, I/ mondo, EpoC(l, Rinascita, L'E'lIropeo,
Panorama amI Tempo i/lustralo, which go to make up SC and LL,7 2
began in H)73 when Piero Ottone and Gaspare BarbieIlini Amidei,
editor and assistant editor of a new, liberalizing regime at Italy's most
authoritative daily newspaper Corriere dellll sera, invited Pasolini to
become a regular contributor to the 'tribuna libera' in their paper. The
first article appeared on 7 January HJ73, entitled 'Contro i capelli
lunghi' ('11 "Discorso" dei capeIli'), but, as Siciliano notes (198Ia,
444-8), his contributions only acquired their extraordinary provocat-
ory momentum with 'Gli italiani non sono piu queIli' ('Studio sulla
rivoluzione antropologica in Italia', 10 June 1(74), which declared a
transformation in Italians so protc)Und that a fascist and an anti-fascist
'sono culturalmcnte, psicologicamente, e, que! che e piu impression-
ante, fisicamente, interscambiabili' (are culturally, psychologically, and
what is most terrifying, physically, interchangeable, SC 42). In a
crescendo of radical fervour over the course of 1974 and 1975, Pasolini
elaborated a damning critique of an homologized, hedonistic and
pseudo-permissive Italian society, attacking the Christian Democrats,
elements of the PCI, several respected intellectuals and writers, and, of
course, the Church and the Pope (Paul VI). It is to the sheer power and
awkward grace of this Pasolini that Italian political culture has regularly
72 The books also include a number of other items: a preface 10 a selection of sentences of
the Sacred Roman Rota (Se 34-R), and the address to the 'Partito Radiealc' conference, read
Ollt by Mareo Pannella two days after his death (I,I- 185-95). Articles are referred to by their
original newspaper titles and followed in brackets hy the title as given in se, if different. The
editors of LL have standardized the titles as explained on p. 206.
and often fantastically returned since his death, whether over the kid-
napping of Aldo Moro (Sciascia, 1978, II-16; Siciliano, 198Ia, 521), his
putative proximity to the MSI (Forcella, 1988; Pepe, 1988) or the 'Lega'
movement,73 his knowledge about the 'strategia della tensione', 74 or his
views on the 'Tangentopoli' corruption scandals which erupted after
1990.75 But at the moment of apotheosis of the public role of the subject
as freewheeling maverick, neither marginalized nor neutralized, the
nature of the subjective work in the texts undergoes a substantial and
unexpected transformation, so as to work for its own attentuation, and
this transt()rmation accounts for both the resonance and fertility of the
new voice, and the constant misreading of it by Pasolini's closest and
most direct interlocutors.
The substance ofPasolini's arguments and, to some extent, his style
in expounding them have been analysed extensively.76 But less note has
been taken of the compelling subjective undertow to this textual praxis.
The articles accumulate their momentum largely by reiterating key-
words, and by appropriating and transforming their meaning. This
familiar pattern, already identifiable in his writing on dialect in the late
H)40S, here achieves its most reson,mt realization. The new meanings,
produced by ,\ new context or a new perspective, thus inject a vitality
into worn concepts and create a diachronic, metaphorical dynamic for
the words themselves which reflects Pasolini's more substantive con-
tenlion that there had been a qualitative leap in conditions of being
since the years of t he 'economic miracle'. Indeed, the failure to perceive
the radical nature of the transi()rmation of political reality, and to re-
spond adequately, is his primary accusation against the stultified ruling
Christian Democrats and the Church, whose power no longer obtains
despite their belief that nothing has altered (Se 34-8, 77-87; 1-1,
114-2 3).
The link between meaning and social transformation is evident in the
on-going interest in semiotics as a method of deciphering non-linguistic
systcms. Hence the early articles of se
'rcad' semiologically the
7.1 L'E.<pre.<.WI fcatureo extracts !i'om his Friulan writings in U" pae.<e di temporali e di primule
unocr the title 'Vos[ro Pier Paol" leghista' (3 Qct. l()I)3, 102·-6).
74 The 'Strategy orTension' was the extreme right's attempt to destahilize the state under
the guisc of extreme Icli terrorism, in order to provoke an authoritarian backlash. Cr. '11
romanzo delle strap;i' ('Che cos'c '1uesto golpe?', se 88-93), anu Asor Rosa, 1990.
75 Pa,wrama, 30Ct. 1993, featured a survey often prominent intellectuals under the title
'Tangcntopoli. Che cosa ne avrebbc detto Pasolini?' (134-43)
76 Sec e.g. Caesar, [985; Fcrrctti, 1976,86-100; Golino, 1985, 187-204; Romano, 1977,
162-84; Roversi, [985; Sealia, H)78; Zanzotto, [977.
PASOLlNI'S PUBLIC WORK
implicit meanings of faces, and of long hair as it developed gradually

from a token of rebellion towards a declaration of quasi-fascistic vacu-
ity (5-1 I; and cf. LL 34-63), or, in the Barthesian '11 folic slogan dei
jeans Jesus' ('Analisi linguistica di uno slogan', I7 May 1973, se
12-16), the meaning of the slogan 'non avrai altri jeans all'infuori di me'
(Thou shalt not have any jeans besides me). In each case, meaning is
dependent on context and is subject to radical change, depending on
the recipient.
The recurrent keywords are similarly reread, transformed or trans-
lated into a new language by thc new reality: 77 tolerance (tolleranzll, se
199-200), both sexual and political, has become a false and monovalent
force which conceals coercion and actually reinf(lrces difference and
prejudice;/ascism (Se 143-5) is split into the historical regime, which
was reactionary and pernicious but under which, he maintains, the
plurality of cultures and the notion of strident opposition survived, and
the new fascism (Iluovo/ascismo, se
50) or new power (llUOVO polere, se
45-6), which is more insidious, elusive and destructive, and which
assimilates and homologizes (om%ga.z.ioflC, se
45) all-including
previous forms of anti-fascism-through consumerist levelling, and
through nco-capitalist development (sviluppo, se
17 5-8), which has no
regard for the more pluralistic and experiential progress (progresso,
ibid.). Hence, the sub proletariat arc now indistinguishable in their de-
sires and in their bodies from the bourgeoisie-there has been an
anthropological mutation (muta::.ione antropologica, se 41), or a gC110-·
(it/e (Se 226 ),7 Hrepresented poctically by the disappearance of fireflies
from the landscape (Se 128-:)4). The radical responses to this cata-
strophe also cluster around keywords and ideas. Most notably, Pasolini
instigates a campaign filr a Trial (if Processo, L/, 107-5 I) of the Chris-
tian Democrat leaders, the courtesans of the palace of power (/1
Palazzo, /,L 92-8). But he also returns regularly to (Lutheran) pro-
posals for the rcfimn of the Church ('dovrebbe passare all 'opposi::.iofle',
it ought to go over to the opposition, se
80), to the pernicious influence
of television and schools on language and society (LL ) 68-7 I;
Vo!gar'eloquio), and to the politics of sexuality, {i·om his obliquely
argued opposition to abortion (Se 98-127) to his clearest public state-
ments yet on homosexuality (Se 197-210). At several points (,\'C 20,
73) Pasolini acknowledges that, in fact, only parts of what he has to say
77 In the following paragraph, the keywords have been italicize'!. One reference, which is
either comprehensive or representative, is given lor each.
78 See Caesar, 1985,58, on the sources of this tcrm.
are original-the Frankfurt School continues to be an unspoken and

only half-familiar precursor-but he insists on the importance of say-
ing them where he does-in Italy, on the front page of Corriere della
sera-and in the way he does. The terms of the debate which he instig-
ated, and which attracted an astonishing range of interlocutors,79 are
set by his reiterative ami consecutive style, so that words and concepts
t<)llow rhythms of prominence and eclipse over the course of two years.
However, this striking level of self-projection and control is achieved
through a high pitch of hostility and a sharp reduction in the frequency
of self-analysis or introversion, which was the norm in so much earlier
activity.
or the relatively few occasions when Pasolini does talk about himself,
the mosl numerous are (i'om specific replies to counter-attacks on his
ideas and his person---hy Moravia (Se 105-7, 56-7), Calvino (se
51--2), Franco Rodano (Se 117-11'), Leo Valiani (1.1.125) and in gen-
eral (1,/, ISS)-which are often presented as tiresome deviations, or
necessary pedagog'ic correclions. The paradigmatic example is
'Pasolini replica sull'ahorto' ('Sacer', se
10.59), where he defends his
ideas a~ainsl Mor.lvia's accusation Ihal they all derive fi'om his (atyp-
ical) personal experience, and arc thus eccenlTic to ~eneral realilY.
Pasolini rcplies that many, includin~ Moravia in his way, arc horrified
hy what he has simply ohserved:
c
In qllanto rill adino, vno, lll'l dal conslIll1ismo Isono tocctto comc Il:, c slIhisco
cOllie le una vioknza chc mi olh.'ndc (c in lIUl:sto siaJllo al"fi-atdlali, possiamo
pensan: insiellle a un esilio cOlllune). (l 07)
(As a citizen, it is I ruc, I am touchcd Ihy consumerism I jusl like you, and I
lIndeI"l~1I it jusl like YOll a~ a viobtion Ihat olfends me (and in this we arc
hrot hns, wc cm look lin'ward tll~cl her to a shared cxilc).)
Bul he perf()rce invesls a further de~ree orhimsclfin his experience of

Ihe clIaclysm ofhomol()~izalion:
mol come persllna (IU 10 Soli hene) ill sono inlinitollllente pit"l coinvolto di le. 11
consumismo eonsiste in ElIt i in un vero e proprio cll adisma anlTopologico: e io
l,i1111 esist'cIlziolIIlleIllc, talc cataclisma I . . . 1 Ilci mici ~iorni, ndlc limnc della mia
esistcnza, IIclmio wrpo.l . .. 1E' dOl lI11esta espcricIlza, csistcnzialc, dirctta, COI1-
creta, (l}rporct:, che naSCOIlO in conclllsione IUlli i miei diseorsi ideologiei. (107)
7') Thc,c included M. Fcrrara, F Fcrral"OlIi, I. Ctlvino, T Dc Mallro, A. Moravi:!, L.

Sei'lscia, N. Ginzhurg, F Forlini, G Bon:a, U. Em, G Manganclli, F Rodano, M. '}anndla,
(i. AnllrcDUi, J o. Vali,mi, J o. FirpD, ran [(cd across thc Spl'clrum ofncwspapcrs and m'1gazincs
frum J,'m.'il·n~{II"n·"()IlItUWllO (,'h"spreSHJ,1O Ilman~/i·slo.
(but as a person (and you well know this) I am infinitely more involved than
you. Consumerism consists in fact in a veritable anthropological cataclysm:
and I live that cataclysm, existentially [... Jin my days, in the forms of my exist-
ence, in my bo(i:V. [... JIt is from this existential, direct, concrete, bodilJl experi-
ence, in conclusion, that all my ideological discourses are born.)
The extra degTee of investment of bodily persona manifests itself in the

displacement or sublimation of subjectivity. The authorial voice of
these articles is no long'er a diffuse subject with a history autonomous
from the text, but is detached from its bodily origin, all but exclusively
focused on the reinforcement of the 'sujet de l'enonce', of the textual,
ideological voice and the rhetoric of its campaign. Hence, when un-
reconstructed self-observation does occur, it often reveals the latent
personal investment in general statements clsewhere: the third para-
graph of the 'trattatello pedagogico' (little pedagogical treatise) to
Gennariello (1,/, 23-6), is in fact a restatement of his general usage of
the keyword 'tolleranza', but it is prefaced by the simple declaration of
what was implicit in that general usage: 'sono, cioc, un tollerato' (that is,
I am someone who is tolerated). Similarly the second section (1-J,
19-22), is an impassioned restatement of several of the 'corsair' themes,
after a paragraph of warning about 'ci() che la gente dice di me' (what
people say about me). The treatmenl" of the term 'scandalo' is particu-
larly noteworthy, given its paramount importance as a figure in
Pasolini's work from as early as 'La crocifissione' (L'usir:no1o, BI,
376-7).1 lere, the self is no IOllg;er a giver of scandal, but a receiver: 'ci(')
c scandaloso. E io sono scandalizzato' (that is scandalous. And I am
scandalized, se140). Ile is thus guilty of all the banality and con-
formist wrong-headedness of those whom he had previously scandal-
ized (Se 97; IJ 134), and his alLempt at action, or praxis, throug'h
writing-'c I'agire che qualitiea' (it is action that qualifies, IJ, 47)-
constantly risks being mere reaction. So
The force and particularity of the subject is, then, strengthened by
what amounts to a radical challenge to the role of the intellectual, a
theme which becomes more prominent in LL, acquiring its own set of
keywords. In se
Pasolini had tilrmuiated the need filr the intellectual
constantly to question and to move on from received opinion:
80 Sce also se 51-2, where he denies Calvino's acclIsation of nostalgia for 'I'Italictta', re-
counting his long experience of'linciaggio' (lynching), a keyword bmiliar horn Vic nllove and
poetry of the same period (e.g. B I, 62 I, 6(5), and now transformed under the new power (ef.
SC7 1-6).
il proprio modo di essere intcllettllali: consistente prima di tutto nd doverc di
rimcttere sempre in discllssione la propria funzione, speeialmente hi dove essa
pare piU. indiscutibile: cioe i presupposti di illuminismo, di laicitii, di razional-
ismo. (126)
(their own way of being intellectuals: consisting above all in the need always to
challengc thcir own function, aIllI cspecially wherever it seems to be least in
question: and that is in its Enlightenment, lay, rationalist assumptions.)
In the first of the 'lettere lutcrane' proper, 'Ahiura dalla Tri/op;ia della
vita', he develops this dynamic image into a devastating and ambivalent
response to failure and historical change-the sort of response he
consistently accuses the])(; and the Church of failing to entertain:
Il croJio del presentc implica anche il nollo del passato. I ... 1 Mi c davanti-
pian piano senza pill alternative--- -il presente. Riadallo il mio impegno ad lIna
maggiore leggibilit;\ (,""IIIt/?). (73,76)
(The collapse of the present implies also the collapse of the past. I ... 1 Bcli,re
me---slowly without any alternative- -is the present. I shall readapt my
'impegno' towards greater legihility (,,">'a///?).)
The enignutic 'S'alr;?' leaves the full negativity of this response
sllspended and throws emphasis on the open-ended dynamic of 're-
adaptation', which recurs several times in ensuing articles (fJ. 75, So,
127) and is characterized as necessary, but also degrading-'un
patlC!~giamento col male' (a pad with evil). its relationship to the earl-
ier dynamic is clear:
hisog-na avere la liH'za di 'riadat tarsi' I . . . 1 di ahbandonare···--del proprio
hagagJio di idee- proprio le idee ehiave, le idee pill eerle, le idee pil'l eon-
solarriei. (12S)
(yoll need to have t he strength to 'readapt yourself' I... 1to ahandon--from
your own baggage ofideas-· --the very core ideas, the most certain, the most con-
soling.)
The constant modulation of position allows the intellectual to appreci-
ate the larger picture (,1'Insieme') rather than t()llow the political expedi-
ent of self-serving 'separazione dei fenomeni' (separation of phenomena,
I I 10<), 148), In contrast to the 'piecolc hattaglie quotidiane' of '11
caos', Pasolini instructs Gennarie\lo, 'hisogna avere la forza della critica
totale' (you need to have the strength for a total critique, LL zS). The
capacity to sce beyond the immediate to a macrocosmic picture echoes
the interest in transformations of meaning and languages already
noted. The intellectual, despite a lack of'scientific' (i.e. materialist; LL
184) knowledge, is privileged through such intuition, which may be
translated into scientific language by others. 81 The elusive and polyval-

ent potential ofthis position echoes the insidious ubiquity ofthe 'nuovo
potere', which is the cause of the 'riadattamento'; it is, in other words, a
subtle elaboration of the cynicism of'l1 caos'. In response to the amor-
phous and contradictory conditions of power-'condizioni ambigue,
contraddittorie, frustranti, ingloriose, odiose' (ambiguous, contradict-
ory, frustrating, inglorious, odious conditions, se
28)-the subject
apes and exploits equivalent features in itself. Against the permanent
presence ofthe new reality, the struggle of the intellectual must he both
'anticipato' (ahead of time) and 'estremamente ritardato' (extremely
retrograde) (Se 28; and cr IJ 40)' Against its ungraspable nature, in-
tellectuals must render themselves 'contilluamenlL: irriconscibili I ... 1 e
continuare imperterriti, ostinati, eternamentc conlrari, a pretendcrc, a
volcre, a identificarvi col diverso; a scamtllizzare; a bestemmiare' (con-
tinually unrecognizable I... 1 and continue undaunted, obstinate,
eternally contrary, to make demands, ro want, to identify with the other;
to scandalize; to blaspheme, 1,1, r <)5; Rinaldi, r <)<)0, J8 and passim).
By being unrccongizable·-··c1usive, in permanent movement, present
in and through the past and future, positive and negative, apocalyptic
and integrated-·t he 'radical' Pasolini delineates a position as a subject
which, tin' the first time since the H)50S, is onc of limited control and
centrality, at least Il'i/hill the ambit of the homologizing system. lie is
constantly misread by his interlocutors-they claim to 'recognize'
him-but he sets the terms or t he dialogue, even if through paranoia,
negation and neg;ativity. The remarkahle ability to infiltrate and
influence the apparently autollomous voices of his critics, both journal-
istic and, elsewhere, literary,X2 is emblematic of a flawed subjective
strength, independent of ohsessive self-scrutiny, which represents the
final twist in the trajectory ofthe cultural operations of the subject.
Indeed, even the imag'ined leg'ihility of Su/,; disguises a deeper, pro--
foundly disturbing exploration of illegibility (Petro/io?),
H, The ide" oftr,lIIsl:llion (1-1. 1114) as 'Ill intcr"Llion het ween dilfercnl 1ll00ics o!"expression
and imervenrion is an extension of the intmduLlory note of se (1--2), where the reader's' !er--
vore lilologieo' (philologic,1 fervour) is Lalled upon to 'ril1lettere insieme' (pllt h"ek together),
'ricongiungere passi lontani Lhe pen; si integ'rano' (link distalll pans that go together),
'organizzarc i nlomcllri (;oIltraddittori' (org-anizc lllc contraJic..:tory m0I11cnts), 'dilninarc
ineocrcnze' (eliminate inLoheren.:e), 'ri.:ostruire' (reconstruct) (cf. se 11, [4H), Sce also
Lettere, ii. 7411-<), Sealia, ((nil; and Wagstafl; 191\5, '2J- 4 on its role in h'F, It has its roots in
Pasolini's theories of'tr;\IIslatability' li'om the (()40S (§ 2 ahove).
82 On the influence of his style and ideas on the media reaction to his death, sce Gonion,
1995:1, On his exceptional symhioti.: relationship wilh his critics, sec, among others, Rinal<li,
1990 ,11-13.
3
Vocations
Archin~ across the chronolo~ical history ofPasolini's public work as it

has emerged from chapters I and 2, alternately both its cause and effect,
there is a series of archetypal roles or 'vocations' which persistently at-
tach themselves to and embody Pasolini's public figure. Each has its
own history as a filter bet ween self and reality, and between self and
puhlic. A nd each develops, or rather offers a rhetoric of its own develop-
ment, along' broadly similar lines; from an all but mystical, visceral
origin, to a consciously elaborated, self-imposed mask, and then to a
debased, ironic residue of that mask. The three most important roles of
this kind arc: t he self as poet, t he self as teacher, and the self as outsider.
A look at each in t urn provides hoth a summation of Part I and the basis
lin' an approach to every aspect of Pasolini's work.
Pasolini took on t he mantle of poet al every step 01' his career. From
his earliest Bolo~na essays, to his 'cinema di poesia', to the 'poema' of
PI"r()/i(), his every act and statelllent declares explicitly or implicitly that
it is made l'fI/)()(:'I', in the nallle or poetry; and this even bctilre approach-
ing the massive and acutely metapoetic body of his actual poetry, the
heart of his 1l'1I7'rl'. The funct ion of this rhetoric of the poet is to connect
the self, in its core heing, to the cluster of absolutes that organizes
Pasolini's philosophy reality, history, vitality, the body, {ill'm-and
to protect t he self (i'om categ'orizat ion by its slippery elusiveness and
mystery.
For Pasolini, to speak as a poet implies above all else to be driven by
sincerity, authenticity and immediacy, to obey a vocation to lay bare the
inner self As Barberi SLJuarotti notes, the topos of nudity is itself a re-
current motif in Pasolini's work: 'what matters is to be naked LI)udi],
that is, not to keep silent, not to hide anything of oneself (translated
tj'om Barberi SLJuarotti, 1983,209). This Romantic impulse is from the
outset itself the subject and object of ambivalent exploration, since its
very mythology of introspection and inner truth places it under
permanent threat of distortion or annihilation in every act of going
public. The history of the self as poet is thus a history of the constant
displacement of the locus and form of private self-expression at differ-
ent public sites.
From this displacement flow three further defining aspects of
the role, all founded on the assumption that the poet exists in a differ-
ent, unconventional relationship to reality, the reader and language.
First, the role of poet facilitates unfamiliar forms of discursive and
critical writing that renounce the cool, coherently scientific analysis
of normal intellectual exchange. In place of the latter, two very differ-
ent approaches cmerge: on the one hand, contradiction and error
('io sono protetto dalle mie contraddizioni' (I am protected by my
contradictions, I dia/of;hi, 345) ), irrational and incomplete intuition
(Se 1-2), subjective and often sensual sentiment ('Ultimo discorso
sugli intellettuali', Pasolini e 'I1 selaaio', 81), and eclccticism (Officina);
and on the other hand, a synthetic, totalizing form of knowledge,
appealing to a sense of absolute Truth, which in the extreme takes the
poet back to an ancient, mythical role as prophet, 'Vates' or Cassandra
(e.g. Colombo, 1975; I dia/oghi, 783). Second, the rhetoric of the poet
implies an extraordinary relationship with language. The poet creates
language anew by appropriating proteiti)rm idioms for the selt~ as
styles, whilst at the same time retaining thcir primitive anchoring in
reality. Already theorized in 'Dialet, Icnga e stil', the same extra-
ordinary sense oflinguistic creation and renewal subtends the Corsair
polemics and many moments in between. Finally, the poet is posi-
tioned, at least ideally, as ideologically immune to the commerce or
ind ustry of intellectual-artistic discourse. As he explained in '11 caos' (l
dia/oghi, 470-2, 540), poetry is somehow definitively artisanal in its
workings. The poet can express himself and a certain reality prior to the
commodification of his product, and thus aspire to communicate
directly with a reader on some level, bypassing the mediations of 'the
system'. Similarly, poetry is irredeemably 'aristocratic: inconsumable',
as he labelled his cinema after 1969, in an attempt to resuscitate the
poetry of film (Ostia, 213). Like the artisan, the poet 'makes' his work,
and the poetry is in the process of making, and thus to resist reification
and remain poetic is to remain 'in the making, not like a finished object'
('nel suo farsi, non come una cosa fatta', Pasolini quilted in AA. Vv.,
1977,101).
The vicissitudes of the role ofthe poet are often violent and volatile,
as its apparent innocence is ever more starkly confronted with its un-
tenability, its disingenuousness and its ideological dangers:
VOCATIONS 77
Ma quali orrendi peccati comporta tale filosofia? Ho fatto per essa i nomi di
'azione', di 'irrazionalismo', di 'pragmatismo', di 'religione': tutti quelli che io
so essere i dati piu negativi e pericolosi della mia civilta. I dati stessi, per
esempio, di certo fascismo!! Dovro rendere conto, nella valle di Giosafat, della
debolezza della mia coscienza [... ]? (EE 240)
(But what appalling sins does such a philosophy entail? I have uttered in its
name the terms 'action', 'irrationalism', 'pragmatism', 'religion': all the most
negative amI dangerous features of my civilization. The same features, indeed,
of a sort of fascism!! Will I be callcd to give account, in the valley ofJehosophat,
of the weakness of my consciousness/ conscience l· .. J?)
But part ofthe mythology of the role is the poet's driven inability to stop
flaunting such dangerous insights. Perhaps the most extreme and
charged exploration of its collapse is f()Und in the play Bestia da stile,
whose poet-protagonist Jan Palach is reduced to immolated silence,
confirming the failure of poetry, of language and of all public inter-
venl:ion. Silence is anathema to the poet, an~, as Fortini cruelly pointed
out, to Pasolini also: 'Molte cose Pasolini sa fare. Non la pill importante
per lui: che sarebbe di stare un po' ziUo' (Pasolini is capable of many
things. Not the most important for him, however: that is to shut-up on
occasion, Fortini, UN:), 44). The rhetoric of authenticity, however com-
promised and precluded, remains as a shadow over all his work, as long
as the voice of the poet is never fully silenced.
The pedagogical 'vocation' also runs throughout Pasolini's public
career, grandilOlluently evoked in 'Filologia e morale' (Paso/ini e 'It
selaa-io " 1(9), energdically enacted in his leaching and cultural activ-
ism in Friuli, and rcvived tilr different mass audiences in his columns
tilr Vie nlurve, Tempo illuslralo and the 'trattatello pedagogico' of
his Lutheran letters to Gennariello (Golino, 1985; Santato, 1986b;
Zanzotto, 1(77). The parameters of his understanding of pedagogy
were set in the 1947-8 articles for 11 mallitlo del popolo, discussed in
Ch. 2 § 2, where he envisaged teaching as an act oflove for the child and
filr the world, an initiation into ethical and ideological awareness
through a mixture of Platonic and erotic and therefore 'scandalous'
affinity_ Such affinity is an embryonic form of collective consciousness.
These qualities are closely akin to the poetic, of course, and in the same
articles, he also envisages drawing the child towards poetic intuitions of
its own, alongside a degree of instruction, through developing its free
creativity ('inventio'). In his artistic (£uvre, these principles, and their
relation to poetry, are put into practice and explored with striking
intensity in the screenplay It padre selvaggio. This tells the story of an
unnamed European teacher working with boys, and especially the

sensitive Davidson 'Ngibuini, in a recently decolonialized African
state. He tries to make them see the world anew, but when he succeeds
with Davidson, he does so at the terrible price of alienating him from his
native culture, and Davidson undergoes an appalling crisis when he is
thrust back into that culture. His sensibilities heightened, his sense of
isolation acute, Davidson is transformed by his learning about history
and difference, and becomes a poet: 'povero Davidson, povcro POCltl, c
(()sa gli e(os/a/o diventar/o!' (poor Davidsou, pO(lr poct, and ]phut u price he
has paid to hecome (lne!, If padre se/vaggio, 54; in italics in the original). If
padre scivaggio enacts the ambivalent beauty of teaching, which is to
hastcn the cnd of innoccncc but also to rctain its aura in thc harsh real-
ity of history that 1()llows. I
In later manifestations of the pedagogical vocation, Pasolini develops
the early professional ideas of the J()47-S articlcs in several directions.
But whether in his replies to readers of his columns or in his modelling·
of the rapport between writer / dircctor al1<.l reader/spectator, he main-
tains their t(Htnding dynamic of a simultaneously autocratic and loving
t!tan towards others. As he notes in Pe/mlio, quoting· Ezra Pound's (ilT<IY
into pedagogy, Thc AHC (lIRcllding:
'I'autore DE VI:: g;uidare illellore.' I . . . 1 Og;ni autore c un dinatore, si sa. Ma c
un dittatore mite. E' un dillatore pronto sempre a pentirsi I ... 1ehe non penle
oeeasione di prostrarsi davanti all'ultilllo dei slloi presllnti sudditi. (Pc/ratio,
lib)
('the author MUST ~uide the reader' I . . . 1 Every author is a dictator, as is well
known. But he is a gentle di<.:tator. lie is a dictator always ready to repent I .. 1
who never passes lIJl a <.:hance to prostrate liilllSc\(bcf(lre the lowest of his pre-
sumed subjects.)
The balance between authority and suhmission that has its source in
this role ofthe selfas teacher is echoed in many more works than those
explicitly focused on educational ends. The rapports of Toll> and
Ninetto with the irritating, intellectualizing crow and then St Francis in
Uaellaui e uccellini; ofthe Guest with the family in Teorema; ofPasolini
with the 1968 students; of Chiron with Jason in M et/ea; of Pasolini-
Virgil with Pasolini-Dante in I,a divina mimesis and its reprise in
Pel1'olio: all these arc broadly pedagogocial, based on love, 'scandalous'
in their sensuality or ideology, and aimed at mutual transformation,
whether positive or negative. And running as an undercurrent to them
I On Il patl,.cse!Vllr.gio, sce Bertini, 1979,115-105; Bongic, "J91, 21 1-15.
VOCATIONS 79
all is the father-son dyad that gradually comes to dominate Pasolini's
entire late (£uvre (sce Ch. 7). If archetypally, the role of the poet casts the
self as an innocent son (often a mother's son), the role of the teacher
casts the scJf as the father (authority) who wishes also, simultaneously,
to be the son (submission). The teacher of Jf padre se!vaggio is in
counterpoint to Davidson's real father, who draws him back into bar-
baric cannibalism and the conflict between the two 'fathers' is what
makes Davidson a poet. 2 The scandal of this inversion between father
and son leads us directly to the third and broadest vocation, that of the
scJfas outsider.
Both the poet and the teacher arc to some degree already outsiders in
Pasolini's vision. But they arc so, at least initially, through voluntary
self-exclusion, positively projected towards another, deeper knowledge
through difference. The role of the self as outsider, as marginalized,
isolated, scandalously and irredeemahly 'diverso', is also constantly
lived by I'asolini as a corrupt vocation, a dcvastating curse imposed
!i'om the outside. These two poles of difference arc in permanent ten-
sion throughout, as he constantly both remodels a possible ideal of
ot herness, and strug'gks with the agony o/" involuntary otherness. The
t(lI'mer pole can be seen in the heroic solitude oft-he young generation
called l(ll' in Il sclarcio; in the poetic exploration and later practice of
'scandal' to hn:ak taboos and proclaim the presence ofthe other; in the
poetic 'love o/" life' that characterizes the 'segnato' (marked) poet
Massilllo Ferretti, as portrayed in 0llicilltl; and in the subversive energy
o/" t he:unrecognii'.ahility' oft he selfin t he texts and artieles ofPasolini's
linal years. Even amongst these, howevCl", ;l sullcred quality to the role
of the outsider is seen in its rclations with readers, owing to a frequent
reliance on hostility to shore lip his own sensc of subjective cohesion,
and on mere provocation to make his presencc felt. But the extremes of
neg;at ive diftcrenn: arc manifested in t wo particular instances of
marginalization, that arc hoth biographical root-causes of the vocation
t()r diflcrence, and also symbolic roles in their own rig'ht: homosexual-
ity and juridical victimization.
Pasolini's experience of his homosexuality was a deeply traumatic
onc, that defined the stark division between public and private-
emblematically and literally between his days and his nights. Of
particular significance was his long-term public disavowal of his
2 This vacillating nlpport bctwccn fathcr and son aiso charactcrizcs Pasolini's complex
relationships with figurcs or inl1ucncc-Dantc, Rimballl.1, Gramsci, among many othcrs-in

a highly charged instance of the 'anxiety of influence' (Bloom, 1973)-
homosexuality, until it was forcibly thrown into the open by the events
of 1949-50 in Friuli. Following this, he certainly evolved towards a
more defiant valorization of this difference, but he never quite threw off
the deep ambivalence of his early attitude to his sexuality, as expressed
in an extraordinary confessional letter to his friend Silvana Mauri, from
Rome in 1950:
10 ho sofferto il possibilc, non ho mai acccttato il mio peccato, non sono mai
vcnuto a patti con la mia natura c non mi ci sono neanche abituato.
10 ero nato per cssere sercno, equilihrato e naturale: la mia omosessualita era
in piu, era fuori, non c'entrava con me. Mc la sono semprc vista accanto come
un nemico, non me la sono mai sentita dentro. (Lellere i. 391-2)
(1 have suffered all I could, I have never accepted my sin, I have never come to
terms with my nature and I have never even got used to it.
I was born to be calm, balanced and natural: my homosexuality was added
on, was outside, had nothing to do with mc. I have always seen it besidc me like
an enemy, I have never felt it within me.)J
Psychologically, of course, the roots of all his later impulsive, sweeping

identifications with the poor, Jews, Arabs, blacks-'ogni umanid
bandita' (every exiled humanity, 131,639), as hc called them-and of his
scaring inner divisions arc here laid bare. Even in his much later, more
defiant and positive statements about homosexuality, such as in se
197-210, therc is a residue of ambivalence and eccentricity in his sclf-
presentation; for example, in his claim that most homosexuals' desire is
focused on heterosexuals, or that the political significance of homo-
sexuality is in its erotic transcendence of class barriers (Se 208). The
consequences fix the public work of subjectivity of his conception of
himself as irredeemably and g'uiltily other arc immense: the conflict be-
tween 'normality' and 'sin' is played out again and again on social, ideo-
logical and literary levels. Beneath every act or exploration of 'scandal'
lies a more or less sublimated form of the first sin, the 'scandal' of
'unnatural' love. The redemptive, subversive energy of scandal is thus
both cause and effect of the positive turn on his sexual difference.
Redemptive potential is found in an impulse towards awareness
('coseienza') and then knowledge ('conoscenza') of the other, whether
from bourgeois to subproletariat, from literature to the illiterate, or
from the text to the body. Thus the outsider reclaims a form of trans-
versal universality through difference. His appalled reaction to the new
3 Several orthcess~ys in Casi, 1 990a, argue in strong terms that Pasolini was anything but
a positive force for the acceptance or even the understanding of homosexuality (149-87).
VOCATIONS
neo-capitalist, homogeneous universality is so intense precisely be-

cause it corrupts that other universality.
Pasolini's role as a permanent, juridical 'accused', under civil or
criminal prosecution in 1949-52 (corruption of minors), 1955-6
(Ra/{azzi di vita) and then from 1959 until his death (see Betti, 1977),
runs alongside his homosexuality as a cause of institutional marginal-
ization. And like his homosexuality, it is lived by him as externally
imposed, but at times ambivalcntly integrated with his internal self-
perceptions, embraced and valorized. It recalls a similar conjunction in
Jean Genet, or at least in the mythologized Genet created by Sartre's
autobiography-cum-hagiography Saint Genel, who, once castigated 'tu
es un voleur' (you are a thief), resolves to accept this exile: 'J'ai decide
d'ctre ce que le crime a fait de moi' (I decided to be that which crime
made of me, Sartre, 1952,23, (4). The persistent recourse in Pasolini to
a vocabulary of guilt begins in a confessional, Christian vein, especially
in Cusigllolo (see Ch. 6), and recurs later in key texts for the under-
standing of the traumas of subjectivity: 'In questo mondo colpevo\c,
che solo compra e disprezza, / il piu colpevole sono io, inaridito
d'amarezza' (In this guilty world, that only buys and despises, / I am
the guiltiest, parched dry with bitterness, 'A me', Religione, HI, 529).
This "is later assimilated 10 a strain of legalistic or persecutory rhetoric,
from poetry that uses his prosecutions as subject-matter ('Rccit',
CWl'ri, 111,236-42; 'Pietro Il', Rosa, 669-8J), to his terror of putting a
single step wrong, at the risk of lynching or death, in Vie nuove (I
dialllghi, 270), to his crusading call for a Trial of the ruling dite in LL
l ] 4-51. Perh~lps its most resonant deployment comes in a text that
parades key elements of all three roles outlined here, San Pa%. The
saint's progress, his vocation indeed, is measured Ollt in moments of
imprisonment and persecution (e.g. San Pa%, 67--9, 121-3, 149-54).
A whole eluster of such religjous-cum-legalistic imagery--of testi-
mony and martyrdom (etymologically meaning witness)-that persist-
ently fascinates I'asolini reinforces the rhetoric of the outsider in
privileged relation to truth, like the poet.
The conjunction of the three roles of the self-as poet, teacher and
outsider-sets the contours of the work of subjectivity in Pasolini's
public work. Indeed, where they overlap wc can identify the foci of that
work of subjectivity that we will find again and again in every aspect of
his work, well beyond the confines of his journalism. All three roles
share an origin in absolute 'love', typically 'love for the world', which
sets them apart, gives them that privileged relationship with truth. All
three attempt to shatter conventional modes of discourse a priori,

through a form of scandalous difference. All three set out to negoti-
ate a powerfully direct relationship with the reader through variations
on the father-son relationship. A 'good' reader-naIve, subproletarian,
innocent, authentic-will be receptive to a sort of deep affinity that
works through difference and mediation to transcend language and ide-
ology, to unify self to self, and reality. A 'bad' or rather 'ambivalent'
reader, liable to be the actual reader, will not have access to such a semi-
mystical experience, but will instead be cast as a misreader, challenged
and reconditioned by the otherness of the poet/ teacher / outsider.
Finally, all three map their characteristics onto a vision of history and of
ideology, so that their profoundly intimate, subjectivc dynamics arc al-
ways understandable as explorations of much grander discourses and
much grander truths.
As was noted at the outset, these other histories of the determinants
of subjectivity arc to be read as in large part rhetorical pert(lI·nlance.
The probing of subjectivity through them is actually deepened by their
nature as spectacle; what Fortini, UN3, J 87, calls Pasolini's 'sonluoso
spettacolo di chirurgia "a cuore aperto" , (sumptuous spectacle of
'open heart' surg·ery). Each role is very soon problematized and ques-
tioned, and couched in the ambivalence born of acute self-awarencss.
Indeed in the later work, this reflexive quality oli:en provokes an ex-
treme, sarcastic dissolution of their assumptions. Nevertheless, their
residue remains fundamental throug'hout, and this is perhaps best illus-
trated by the survival of the very idea of vocation itself. For Pasolini,
vocation suggests a given public role, visceral and self-inflicted, but
somehow also suffered and Job-like, that pr1lmises a higher truth and
therefore redemption at the price or a (self-)renunciation of some kind:
'la vocazione alle piaghe del martirio che l'autore fa a se stesso' (the
author's vocation fi)r the self-intlicted wounds of martyrdom, 1:'1:' 274).
One need only look at the recurrent enquiry into such a VOCiltion tilr
'santita' (sainthood) that pervades Pasolini's last work, Petmlio (sce Part
IV), to confirm that the notion remained fundamental to Pasolini to the
last. Much earlier, in the 1949 speech 'Un intervento rimandato', we
can trace the essence of the renunciation in a traumatic impulse that
colours every step of his public career, to map the private work of sub-
jectivity onto history:
cia che si richiede all'intellettuale non c una cosa facile ne comoda: si tr<ltta di
una rinuncia. Compia pure anch'egli quell'esame introspcttivo, interiore,
diaristico che e poi la ginnastica vitale dcll'uomo l ... ]; ma cerchi di essere, in
VOCATIONS
questo suo lavoro, piu oggettivo e piu, diciamo pure, cristiano: si collochi nella
stoTia umana. (Cadioli, 1985, 110)
(what wc ask of the intellectual is neither easy nor comfortable: it is a question
of a renunciation. Let him too, by all means, carry out that introspective, inner,
diaristic enquiry that is indeed the vital gymnastics of mankind [ ... J; but let
him strive, in this work of his, to he more ohjective, and more, why not say it,
Christian: let him find his place in human history.)
PART 11
Poetry: A Movement of Forms
And Ihese lend inward to mc, and I lend outward to them,

And such as i I is to he of I hese more or less I am,
And oflhese onc and all I weave the song ofmysclf
(Wah Whilman)
PASOLlNI'S POETRY is dedicated in large part to the exploration of prob-
lems and anxieties of subjectivity. It is driven by the construction of
multiple and simultaneous masquerades of self-inscription. Its subjects
of speech arc constructed, through broadly g-cnre-based rhetoric,
whether of authentic self-exploration and self-expression (lyric), of
narrative ahout experience, poetic evolution, history and ideology
(epic), or of discursive dialogue or contlictual interaction with an Other
(dramatic).1 The eom;trllction-work is, of course, beset by complica-
tions and tensions as suhjectivity in Ianf!,'uag'e is in permanent contlict
with itself~ and as external discourses resist- and challenge its masquer-
ade of agency. llcnee the poetry alternates hetween being a privileged
'private' arena fill' the liTe work ofsuhjeelivity, and a further exlraneous
source of rest riction and subject ion to add to other public fora. The
subject vaeillat es both in its dCl~ree of awareness and its power of resist-
ance. Thus, t he history of Pasolini's poet ry is, as Rinaldi has it, 'the his-
tory of the poetic subject of his texts, with its own advenlures, Elilures,
flights: the history not of Pasolini but of his authorial fi[!;lIl"C, of his rela-
tionto the text, of the subjects of the "cnoncc" and the "cnonciation" ,
(translated from Rinaldi, I!)()O, 24).
The (clllowin[!; analysis of I)asolini's poetry traces (imr of the funda-
Illcntal patterns or tropes of its c1aboration ofsubjectivity that run
throu[!;hout his poetic /t'II1'r/" from 11)41 to uns. 2
First it cxamines the autobiof!,Taphieal subject, as it writes its own
history in (i'af!,'lllcnts or poet ie narrat ives const fuctcd at various tel11-
poral levels. Autobiography is here (iJllnd to be an intermittent and
volatile textual function rather than a categoricllly distinct f!,-cnre.
Poetic memory and perceptioll of time, r~lther than record, distil and
distort experience into a Iyricized narrative, whose very distortions are
the predicates ofsuhjectivity. The traditional lyric nature o('poetry is
thus maintained and modulated into (i>rlllS of subjective narrative.
I (h1 Ilu.: slrllcll1ra( .11u.llliSl()1'ical persi~'encc or, hesc three psclldo-l\ri~tol~lian gcnrc~) sce
(iClll'ltc, fin'), On Pasolini\ poetry and gCllresccJewell, It)()2., 2J-III),
~ Fach ch'lpter concentraLes on Lhe major collections publishe" in P.lsolini's tiICLime-
M<'.~Ii(,. ('"<'II<'I"i, 1:(t_,i}!.lIo!o. I?dij!,iollt, Nox", TI"II-"'lIIl1l1l1ran" NlliWII (all now in BI)---whilsL
drawinl( on plaqucL!e volumes and Lhe mass of uncollected '\I1d unpublished material (much of
whieh is now in 112) where appropriate. Some reference is also made to his verse-dram'l
(lealr(l). Sce llihliop'aphy 1.1 fin' oril(inal publiclL ion demils. Unless oLherwise indicated,
page references throughouL Part II arc Lo III and lh_
88 POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS
Second, it traces a more discursive pattern, centred on the para-

digmatic external apparatus which defines and determines the self and
its position in reality, history. The self is written into a polyvalent idea
of history, alongside a cluster of cognate and satellite notions, including
ideology and myth. This and the autobiographical trope represent two
complementary poles in the field of the work of subjectivity, and the
potential for synthesis between them is a fundamental source of the
poetry's dynamism.
The third pattern consists of the (re)figuration of the speaking sub-
ject in secondary, fictional or indeed mythical subjects that are objects
both of projective desire and of 'misprisions' (Bloom, 1(73) or 'mis-
recognitions' (Althusser, 1971; Bclsey, 1980, 56-63), which work to
produce subjects of speech. These figures of identification tilrmally
rely on a quality of identity as fragmentary 'sameness', more than as
retle;(ive 'sclfhood' (Ric(cur, 1991; I,aplanche and Ponlalis, 1973,
187- (2), and hence f(mnd a dynamic of equivalence, through a rang;e o/"
tropes such as synecdoche, analogy, metonymy and metaphor, which
amplify the epistemolog'ical resonances of subjectivity.
The f()Urth pattern filCuses on a particularly fertile conjunction of
figures, which cuts across each o/" the three previous sections and illus-
trates the intense desire-laden sexuality inherent to the work ofsuhjecl-
ivity in Pasolini's poetry: the dual figuration of the father and of the
hody. Unresolved Oedipal hostility towards the autobiographical father
f()rms gradually a non-specific figure of the Father, whom the suhject
fears emhodying, llcnce the hody of t he subject traces the ahsent hody
of the father by its simple presence~only the Name of the Father is
present~and this distorts the entry of the subject into history alltl
ideology, The body and the father thus combine to dclimit the trau-
matic experience of ideolog'y in poetry, displaced towards a radical
praXIS.
These f<mr tropes, whilst clearly neither exclusive nor exhaustive,
provide a matrix f(lr reading the processes of subjective work in this
poetry. Each produces effects of subjectivity through some sort of
transformation or distortion~of ideology, of reality, of the self; oftexts,
oflanguage. And as the text misreads, and as it increasingly witnesses
and performs its own misreadings, it creates in negative an imprint of
selfhood, more Echo than Narcissus. Franco Fortini's 1963 epig'ram,
'Per Pasolini', captures with acute cruelty the negative fertility of this
masquerade:
POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS 89
Ormai se ti dieo buongiorno ho paura dell'eco
tu, disperato teatro, sontuosa rovina.
(Fortini, 1993,37)
(These days if I greet you I'm afraid of the echo / YOll desperate spectacle,
sumptuous ruin)
4
'Who is Me': The Impulse to
Autobiography
The 1970 paperback selection ofPasolini's Po('sie is prebced by a brief

prose account of the author's life and work, addressed 'AI \cHore
nuovo'. It is filf all intents and purposes an autohiography offered as a
'user's guide' to the poetry which tilllows, and so stresses the funcl"ion
of autobiography as an archaeological substrat um to the poetic voice. I
An earlier version, prohably begun in Aug;ust I 9 ()(l , is in the fClrm or
a poem, entitled 'Poeta delle ceneri', or 'Who is me',2 which provides
an ideal starting point fill' an examinatioll of the eccentric paneJ"lJs or
autohiography at work throughollt his poetry. Whereas traditional
autobiography is dependenl on tilrms of narrative fiction,J 'Poeta del\c
ceneri' rc-moulds emblematic moments orthe poet's past into a tC)I"-
mally subjective account orlime, which is al odds with the demands or
traditional narrative. The expression and perception of experience
intclrms the history of experience to create a hybrid where lyric overlays
narrative. The poem's ~lccount of Pasolini's flight to Rome in IIJ50
~leknowledgcs this indirectly, and justifies it hy ironic recoursc 10
psychopat hology
I Pasolini rC[(lllarly provided crit iral [(nilks 10 his own works. Scc C.[(. 'Poesia diakllak del
tlovcccnto' (I'II.,siolll"l" id"ologia, 5 '.1+ IuS, 'V +1); 'Pastllini rcecnsiscc I'asolini' (I1.~io/"llo, J
June ")71, Ihen 11 porli!"o ddl" 1II0rll", 2S1 5); 'Lliden'lIl' ('I <'IIIPO , IX Nov. 1117.1, then
IJ,'s(ri;:.ioui di dl'saj:::.iolli, 212· I (»).
2 NlI{)vi _'lrgolJll'l1li, NS nn. ()7 Xl July·-I)cc. IqXO, 3- "Z(), with:l note hy I':. Siciliallo; !lUW in
112, :1056,,-X4. The poelll Clllll' oul ofl'asolilli's lirsl s"'y in New York in.!uly l,jI,(,· hellcc refer
cnecs 10 America, thc EIl[(lish subtitle, and Ihe Ctluchillg of the pocm illlcrms of an inlCl"view
(cC 'Una uisperala vitalit'l', Rosa, Ill, 72('+X), anu was only laler adapted lelr the (iarzanli
anthology. But it is worth notillJ>; Ihat as early as April [()66, Pasolini had illmindlile idea flLlIl
allthology alldlhus perhaps also the 'user's ~uide' fUllctionlelr 'l'oela delle celleri' (I.('I/cr(', ii.
6/2). er. 'io non sto che bcendo UIl poema / bio-oiblio[(ralicfI' (I a1ll ollly Wrilill[( a 1>io-
hihliop'aphie poem) (2065) .
.1 Most notahl), asserted hy Fryc, 1957, JOT 'Aulflbifl[(r'l),hy is allolher f'"'1)) which lllerJ(cs
with thc novel hy a series ofillscnsihlc J;rad,niolls.' It is also implicit in r.ejellnc, 1')75, '4, who
char~u.:tcrizcs autohiography as Irct:il'.
THE IMPULSE TO AUTOBIOGRAPHY 91
Ho vissuto < ... > quella pagina di romanzo, l'unica della mia vita:
per il resto, <che volete,>
son visslIto dcntro una lirica, come ogni ossesso. 4 (20(11)
(I lived < ... > that page of a novel, the only onc of my lite: / otherwise, <what
can 1 say,> / I have lived inside a lyrie poem, like every obsessive)
The structure of the poem is governed by implicit or explicit ljues-

tions from a journalist, and by a chronological seljuence of sorts, but
also by a progression along channels of the f(llInding motifs ofPasolini's
work where autohiogTaphy, metaphor and myth combine. It opens with
his birth 'in una eitt.l piena di portici' (in a city full of porticos)-image
replacing inf()J·mation, as Bologna is never named-and moves swiftly
10 descrihe his mother, Ett her, bml her, his first poems ,\I1d I·'riuli which
dilate \0 lill the first section of the poem. Other events arc similarly
dilated fUrlher on: the trial filr armed rohbery in Circeo, onc of the
prosecutions around I,a ri(olla, and his fulllre works, from Tcorcrna to
.1f/itlmli/ :::.io1l1'. There is also a striking conI raction of other events which
produces a lapidary tone, more memorial Ihan memory. J lis 'conver-
sion' 10 Marx ism is a case in poinl. J\ n extended description of the
Friulan peasanls ends 1hus:
Fu cosi che io seppi eh'er:lIlo hraeciallti,

c chc t1ullquc e'erallo padrolli.
Fui dall.1 parte dei hraceianti, e lessi Man. (.w6.!)
(It was thus I fi)lllld out they were lahourers, / and that therciilre there wen:
hosses. / I look thc part orlhc lahourers, and I rcad Marx.)
The incisive preterile verbs, which indicate an almost heroic stahility,

bUI also become markers ofloss and ahsence, arc a recurrent fCature of
Pasolini's selr·cn:ation in poelry.'
The poem is also marked hy a fluid and organic rclalionship hctwecn
the autohiogTaphical pasl, in its Iyricized and provisionallilrm, and the
considerat ion of the presenl and the fut ure, as hoth an extension ofthe
project orseW·dclinition and as ~l generalizing- expansion beyond the life
of the individual:
... P~II"Cnlhcscs in .his qllolalion ;lIT as lIsed in 112: scc Bz, 2oS61(uO an explanation of.heir
implicalioll', and g;ellerally H" 1'. "viii. [11 all subsequCllI ver,e qUIII.llillns, unless olhcrwisl·
~Iatcd, square brackets contain my own pOlnts of OI11isslon Of explanation, i.UHj other P;IrCIl-
thesc, IIr ,u'pcn,ionmarks .IIT a, used hy Paslllini himselfor Ihc edilor, ofB, and Ih_
5 er Pcrmli", '.10: 'I pa"ali rcmoli, cioc i lempi (inili ,i addiconll ag-li emi' (Preterite" thal
is linilc len,es/tinished times arc hecoming III herocs).
in quanto poeta saro pacta di cose.

Lc azioni della vita saranna solo comunicate,
e saranno esse, la poesia. (2083)6
(as a poet I shall be a poet of things. / Life's actions will only be communic-
ated, / and they will be poetry.)
The unfinished patchwork of 'Poeta delle ceneri' is, like much of

Pasolini's poctry after 1964, deliberately diffuse and unpoetic. He re-
peats three times within three pages (2070-2) variations on the refrain
'ho raccontato queste co se / in uno stile non poctico / pcrchc tu non mi
leggesfii come si legge un poeta' (I have told thefie things / in an un-
poctic style / to stop you reading me as a poet is read). But the open
combination of autobiographical effects workfi as a guidc to the often
latent and even involuntary (Bellocchio, 1<)88; Larivaille, 1985, 107)
lyric autobiography in the mainstream of his work, which functions as
an 'architexte' (Genette, 1979), a submerged, but immanent category
upon which the surface discourse t(lrmS itselt~ and through which thc
text contains and even controls its own misinterpretations. At numer-
ous points within poems, within collcctions, and within thc span of his
literary career, Pasolini deploys such patterns of autobiographical self-
representation as those in 'Poeta delle ceneri'. Their trajectory gives a
strong indication ofthe varying contours ohhe subject's concern to de-
rive meaning from its own history, and, in a sort of secondary poetic
autobiography of self-portraiture, (i'om the present perception of self 7
'1 'he remainder of this chapter f(lllows such autobiographical impulses
throughout his poetic (J!llvrc.
The incidence of primary or sccondary autobiography in Mcgho is
minimal, but f<lUm\ations arc laid there t<lr future lISCS. The subjecl of
speech slips with case between first, second and third persons. x The
immersion of the selfin the figures and landscape of an idealized Friuli
allows for little distinction between it and its symbiotic, pIT-linguistic
(, The epithet 'poeta di cose', which slims lip t he final selion of the poelll and its ill1Hf;ery of
action and reality (cr. lilo'passim), is onc tradition'llly applied to Dante (via Berni's description
of Michclangclo). On thc imlllensely fertile ,md t:omplex rehltionship ),ctween I )antc and
Pasolini, sce Ibrhcri S'Iuarotti, «J7H, ,H'-20('; Bertolini, «jXH; Vazzal1a, '(171).
7 Rinaldi, ")1)0, 'DO, secs I'asolini's Clreer alternating between 'f;rand autobiographical
phases [ ... ] ,md yiolent ph"ses of dcpersonaliz,'tion of the poe,ic discourse'. Sce also
Larivaille, HjHS. On the relation between autohiog;rapl1y slriclll sawl and selt~portraiturc, sce
Howarth, '1)80, '04-5; Starobinski, '97', 2H5·
8 Bcnvcniste locates the foundation (If subjectivity in the contingency (If the hrst-person
singular and the status of the interlocutor as 'you', or 'not-I', whereas the third person indi-
cates faulty subjectivity, a non-person (Benveniste, ")06,25'-7, 251)-(lO).
context, let alone the necessary inner split which precedes self-
knowledge of any kind. The first part of the book is non-narrative, and
the figurative'!' is immersed in singing dialect cadences. The second
part turns sharply towards popular-narrative form, but deliberately
aims for a folkloric, archetypal and thus non-subjective register.
Nevertheless feints towards autobiography are not uncommon. 'El
testament Codn' (127-3 I), f()r example, is an autobiographical testa-
ment of an innocent orphan who is captured and executed by the
Germans in H.144. His legacy is his defiance of his cxecutioners and of
death:
I .assi in reditat la me imadin
la la cosientha dai si()rs [ ... 1
Coi todeses no ,Ii vut tim()ur
de lass;lla me dovenetha.
Viva cl coragiu, cl dol('llIr
cIa nOlhentha dei puarcth. (IJO-I)9
(I leave in legacy my image / ill the conscience of Ihe powerl'ullriechi 1[ ... J /
With the Germans I was no .. afraid / to leave my youth. / I .ong live courage,
pain / and t he innocence of the poor.)
I kath is herc a gesture which a/l()rds meaning to life's story and such
a relation bet ween testament and autobiogTaphy will be a constant
undercurrent in Pasolini's poetry. Through it, poetry acquires part of
its ncgativity, hecoming a trace of an ahsent self: who narrates his life in
writing' hecause ofa lack of prcs en cc to himself and in reality. 10 Poetry
necessarily n~collects from beyond, although in Meglio death is not
nq~ative, but integral to a natural cycle o{,being, as the boy's emblem-
atic and vital death in 'El testament Contn' illustrates."
'I I'aslllini always provided Italian translations or his Friulan poetry, which he intended to
he read as part and parcel ort he text (sce t he ',)54 note to Mq/io, Bt, '7' 2). English versions
arc ~ivcn hC"l"~ hUI where apprnprialc, ciclllcnls uf Pasulini's h~li.ln versions arc g-ivcn in
parentheses alier the English. lIel;onli allll I"a~gin, I')H7, '(12-99, offer sOllle alternative, cor-
rective translations into Italian of some or the poems.
'0 This r,lises" cluster orprohlems rclatinv; to autobiography, hut also to the nOllurc of
meaninv;and the suhject's position in lanv;ua~e. Sec Flcishman, J()S], 27-J5; Mchlman, ")74.
Dc Man, "n'), 9JO, provides a characteristically eniv;matie f<lrmulation of this negativity:
'I\utobio~raphy vcils a delOlCcmcllt or the mind or which it is itsdfthe cause'. Kristeva, [<)74,
28, '00 54, f<,llowinv; l.acoll1, wriles eXlensively of the predicoll ion of Ihe suhjecl in language
and nlcanin~ on a nc~alivily, and on a SUhTllissioll or 1)lcasurc or fullness to a perception of
lack, derivinp; {j'oll1 Freud's death drive. Fleishman puts it thus: 'Llch autobiographical ut-
tcranec embalms the aUlhor in his own prose, marking his passage into ,I {(Irm that hoth sur-
renders him to death and yet prcservcs his namc, acts ,md words' (,,)HJ, ]3). er Sanguincti,
J()75, on Pasolini as a ~posthUlnous' writer.
j I cr 'Li Iclanis dui hicl fi Il' (,8-[<)); 'Rom'U1cerillo JI' (]7-9).
94 POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF fORMS
Throughout Meglio the poetry is nostalgic and memorial, an a

posteriuri reflection of the fabric of the Friulan idyll. Indeed, even the
extant unpublished poems written before the publication of ['oesic a
Casarsa share this fundamentally nostalgic, estranged perspective. (Z
In a tellingly entitled July 1941 poem, 'Nostalgia del tempo presente',
the present is experienced in a state of permanent alienation in both
space ('volontario esilio', voluntary exile; 'io sempre e altrove di me
stesso', I always and elsewhere than myself, Lellere, i. ] TT, I JI), and
in time:
(~Iando rievochen\ sos peso il canto,
i lenti !!,"iorni e la mite sola~na
di codcsti compillti, inlaui e Irapassali
~esti d'lIomo che vivc I.. ·1
(I,mere i. 55)
(When I'II recall, OIlCC the son 1:\' has slopped, / the slow days and Ihc !!,"cnllc
Iighl / of Ihese l:oll1pletc, intact anc.1 dead / !!,"eslures oLI Iivin!!," man I. - -D
Premature nostalgia is already a token o(exclusion and so in t his sense,

the illusory Frilllan idyll is always already conditioned by negativity,
only available through memory and ret urn _M eglio nostalgically r;at hers
a series of sublimated self-portraits into a rc-evocation or the remem'
hered idyll. This series !iH'ms a tertiary autobiog-raphy, an illusory his-
tory of the sclfas represented in languag'e and poetic {()rm, as sug-gcstcd
by the epigraphs to 'Suite furlana', 'Mijuvenllld, -utiliI£' aiios cn lil'rra
dl' Caslilla . .. (Antonio Machado)' (My youth, twenty years in the Ialld
of Castille, 51 )---.md to 'Tornant al pais' -'Oil sonl Ics nClj!,'I'S t/'llnlan?
(F Villon), (Where arc the snows oryesteryear? 22). Thus Mtglill offers
an early example of the immanence of subjectivity within the very tex-
ture and textuality of poetic langllag-e that is the precondition of more
suhstantive uses of poetic autohiography. The section Clnit led
'Appendice', written after the move to Rome, takes leave ohhe idyll and
thus touches on several more directly autobiographical notes (particu-
larly in its enlarged form in NlIllva): IJ nostalgia filr a Casarsa heyond
time ('Li ciampanis dal Gloria', 1545; 'Lunis', 101-3), a Proustian
reawakening of the senses of the past ('I veeius sav()urs', I392-3) and
[2 LeIlC"!, i, 52,85, IOH, For these early poems, not included in 112 (scc Ill, xxv), sce 1,"/lNt',
i, 20-[, 29-3', 42-3 (to Franco l'-aml/i); 4S-52, 55-61, 64-7, 73-7, il4--!) I , 106--7, Ill- I],
116---2[, [.10--2, [64-5 (all to Serra,I .coneui and Roversi-thc 1'l"l'Ili group in Bologna); ')4'5,
217 (to others), On these, sec IIrevini, [I)il[", Serra, 19S5-
lJ On the differences hetween the original A1eglill and the version of it included as the first
pan of NI/lll'a, scc Bz, 1050; [ 18,-4,
memory ('Illuzour', 1549-50), a personification oflandscape and song
as past companions ('Cansion', 106--8). Finally, in 'Congedo' the for-
mer self is cancelled out in a melancholic assertion of irrevocable
changc:
A c dut linit, du!

('Llmis', 102)
(Jt is all over, everything)
Adcs si ch'a cis

d i scaturissi
vuanUnt lis,
par di U dai dis,
il di ch 'jo i eri
cs
un i"rlll, ad che chel (i·ut veri
noso) PI)O
('I)e loinh', 104)
(Now there is something / to hcali·aid 01; / staring, / beyond thl: Jays, / the day
that I was / a hoy, now thattrul" boy / is no long·er me)
This division of the self from the ((Inner self is ,\ ((Illllding dynamic of
fully lled!!,Td autohio!!,"raphical discourse that is only adumbrated in
Nlcg/ill. It marks the doublin(!, which is a sine qlla 111111 tilr a cluster of
events, includin!!," entry into lan!!,"ua!!,"e and into the symbolic order,
dcfin in!!," sUhjCl:t hood itscl t~ which are worked throu!!,"h alon(!,side Mcglio
in I, 'USigllll/lI.
/,'IISip,III1/11 movcs onto a mOl·e open stage of autohio!!,"raphical self-
exposure. If Nlq~/ill chronicles the experience of a timeless, lost child-
hood, couched in the poetry of the imaginary, l:usigl1l1/0 records the
concurrent devclopmenttowards the institutional, authoritarian and
symbolic··towards adulthood. The bridge between the two is made by
several internal trans((lrmations within the sequence of poems: of the
Christ ian liturgy (i·olll primitive ritual to hostile source of blasphemy;
of poetic language from a pure, pIT-linguistic litany reminiscent of
dialect to the monumental weight of Italian; of sexuality from the un-
problematic sensuality and fertility of a\l things to a source of trauma
and exclusion. In this context, autobiogTaphy and self-portraiture
become more articulated. Retrospection is now strategically deployed
in an dIort to grasp anc.1 transfc)rm the present. In 'Lingua' (351-3), the
poet attempts to project return into the future as a defence against the
stolid institutionalization of poetry:
Ripercorro a ritroso il mio cammino:

privo di te ['orribile statua'J com'e dolce il paesaggio
padano, senza ombra di miraggi! [... ]
Senza la tua minaceia d'alabastro
rivivro gli slanci per mia madre, [ ... J
Riprovero stupori senza ombra
per I'orologio, il topo, la fionda (352)
(I go back over my path again: / without you Iawful statue J how sweet is the
landscape / of the Po, without the shadow of illusions! [.. .11 Without your ala-
baster threat / I shall rclive the impulses t(lr my mother, [... 1 / I'll feci once
more the shadowless astonishment / felf the clock, the mouse, the sling)
The contracted preterite f(lrmulae, seen later in 'Poeta delle ceneri',
emerge also, not as units of a coherent sequence, hut as fragments em--
hedded in other [imTIs of discourse like fossils in stone:
Non a me ma al mio sesso
era promesso l'Eden.
10 bevvi la sua g:ioia.
Fu promesso: e fll dato.
Non posso pil\ morire
Ji pura privazione
(' Ilarllch', 371)
(Not to me but to my sex / Eden was promised. / I drank of its joy. / It was
promised: and it was given. 11 ean no longer die / ofpllre privation)
Finch6, segrcto al mondo it ClIore e al cuore
il mondo, ardevo di timidi entusiasmi
e di orgogliosi orgasmi,
III un rOll1anzo il mio vivere d'errori ...
('Madrigali a Dio IV', 396)
(As long as, my heart kept secret from the world and the world / ti-ommy heart,
I hurned with shy enthusiasms / and proud orgasms, my life of errors was a
novel. .. )
These non-sequential, l1on-diegetie autobiographical fragments make
metaphorical incisions into past experience under the f(lrmal trace of
autobiography. The primary source of metaphorical vocahulary used to
transform experience in //usign% is the languag·e of Christian litany,
but there arc others: the sequence 'L'ltalia' (379--{) I ), f(lr example, uses
the idiom of landscape poetry which will hecome central to the poetry
of the 1950s. Its second chapter sets the poet's life-story against an
evocation of Bologna, Par ma, the Euganean Hills and Rome: 'dal
Ventidue al Cinquanta, anni pervasi / di sola memoria, tu, Italia
mattutina ... ' (from '22 to '50, years shot through / only with memory,
you, morning Italy... , 384). The language of landscape poetry is de-
ployed as a sublimated narrative of the poet's own memory and experi-
ence. The use of auxiliary idioms, such as landscape and litany, as
vehicles for self-expression facilitates the fluid transpositions between,
and dilations of, different themes within single poems which will
characterize Pasolini's longer poems of the 1950S and early 1960s.
Alongside retrospection, introversion and self-portraiture also come
to the ()re in the poems of J:usign%, particularly after the political
awakening of H)47-<), leading Fortini, [<)93,26, to describe them as
'autoritratti in costume' (dressed-up self portraits). Before 1947,
//usign% is very close to the dialect work. '4 Hence, the nascent tend-
ency fin' self-examination in the section 'JI pianto della rosa' (H)46),
bound up with a loss off~lith in the sanctity of religion and language, re-
mains cast in the Ianguag-c of the myth of Narcissus which suffuses the
first part of Meglio. Even the verse f()I'm is still based on the 'villotta',
the only poetic fi>TIn which originates in Friuli (Greg'or, H)7S, 34).
Nevertheless, evidence ofa present crisis, ofsubjeclivity split through a
doubling selj:·awarelless fraug'ht wit h death, closure and transgression,
is rill::
No, nonli rassq~ni

a saperti per sempre
ndle appartate tendlre
dove non hai ritq,;ni I.. ·1
I.'illeeito ,'e in euore
e solo esso vale,
ridi del naturale
millenario pudore.
('l.'illeeito', .F5--()
(No, you are not resigned / \0 knowing yoursdfalways to he / in the seduueu
darkness / where you have no restraint I ... 1 The illicit is in your heart / and
only that is worl hy, / you laugh at the natural / millennialmodesty.)
110 la calma di un morto

('llimnus 1sic! ad noeturnum', 347)
(l am as ealm as a uead man)
l~ Santato, H)Ho, 46, refers to an 'osmosis hctween two autonomous linguistic /'lfms'.
Rinaldi, "IX2, 6--7, notes the practical difficulty of tracing whether the first versions of the
early poems wc re in dialect or it.lli.tn_
POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS
No, col mio onesto cuorc non mi allco.

E' troppo puro, ha il frcddo della morte, I... .1
avetc la speranza che 10 ascolti
questo ladro di se che io sono.
('Dies irae', 360)
(No, I am not allied to my honest heart. / It is too pure, it has the cold touch of
de,nh, I ... 1/ you 1angels 1hope that I will listen to it / this thiefofmysclfthat
I am.)
'Dies irae' ends with a terrified premonition of death as the ultimate

separation from the previously integrated self and the world:
... 0 Dio, c'c
g;i,l in me il mio Etntasma, il mio auwma,
che mi soppiantenl, nel vecchio aroma
della mia Sl<lnza, del paese, e ahime,
del mondo, quasi illcrealO ancora,
a cui il mono, ormai, 11011 si appassiona. (3601)
( ... 0 God, there is / already in me my ghost, my automaton, / which will re·
place mc, in the old aroma / of my room, ofthe town, and alas, / of the world,
still all hut untin·llled, / / tilr which the dead man, hy now, has no passion.)
Clearly the intimacy and intensity of this and many other poems
of Cusign% is an effect of the hyhridizat ion ort(lrms hetween autohio-
[!,Taphy, self-portraiture and Cat holic liturgy and scripture, which pro-
duces a particular autohiographical register of confession. 15 Pasolini's
ohsession with Christ ianity and the 'sacralita' (sacredness) of t he real
lends a strong confessional aura to many of his self-explorat ions. In
contrast to the stark preterites seen ahove, the confessional register is
characterized by a succession of narrated actions in the present or near-
P,lst, couched in terms of guilt and transgression. 'Lingua' ends with
just such a sequence, where tones of [!,·uilt and innocence are synthes-
ized into a collage of archetypal Oedipal motifs:
No, non ho madre, non ho sesso,
ho m;eiso il padre col silenzio,
amo la mia pazzia di acqua e assenzio,
amo il mio giallo viso di ragazzo,
'5 Fryc, It157, 307, brackets all autohio~raphy under the 'conli;ssion I(.rm'. Flcishman,
H)83, '4-[5, argucs convincingly againsllhis ,}ssimilarion, noring olher distinctive li.rms
such as apologia, self-promotion, (psycho)analysis and self-concealmcnt. On confessional
discourse in gcneral, sce 'rambling, ")90, and in Pasolini in particular, Asor Ros,}, 1969, 349;
Sicilano, 19110.
le innoccnze ehe /lngo e !'isterismo
che eelo nell'cresia 010 seisma
del mio gergo, amo la mia culpa l· .. j (353)
(No, I have no mother, I have no sex, / I have killed the father with silence, / I
love my mauness of water anu absinth, I I love my boyish yellow face, / the
innocences which I lCign and the hysteria / which I hide in the heresy and
schism / of my slang, I love my guilt [... [)
The climax to L'usign%, the ten short lyrics cntitled 'La scoperta di
Marx' (407-q), is a distillation of the secondary autobiographical
narrative underpinning the whole collection. ,(, It moves from birth
(I: 'Fuori del tempo c nato', he is horn outside time) and identification
with the mother (11: '0 ingenua sposa / e infante genitriee', 0 innocent
spouse / and inbnt parent), through childhood to traumatic exile,
entry into the 'mondo ragionato / spietata istitllzione' (rcasoned world
/ pitiless institution) (11), into time and language (VUI), death (I), and
finally collective history (X): hence the discovery of Marx in the title.
The model o/" a self-querying, autohiographical sequence oflyric frag-
ments, dispcrscd across a numbcr o/" auxiliary discourses, is here given
its most conCl:ntratcd realization to date.
M uch of Cl'1Icri, wit h the notable exception of '\{ccit' (2:;()'-42), is in
stark contrast to "'w/:~1/olo. Formally, it represents a radical departure
fi'olll t hc lyric, and even narrativc, towards the discursivc. In parallel to
thc research into thc nineteenth-century tradition undcrtaken by
0llir;lIl1, Pasolini attempted to hypass hoth hermcticism and neo-
realism ill Cl'I/{:r; by rcturning to the I )antesque 'terzina', by way of
Cmlucci and l'ascoli.'7 The reclaiming and reworking of traditional
fiu'm remains the most potent aspect oflhe book from a literary histor-
ical perspective, and it is accompanied by significant changes in the
work of subjectivity within it. Shot throug-h with tensions betwecn the
self and political, social and physical reality, eCl/cri tends to avoid
the directly autohiog-raphical or sclf:-lIescriptive. Other, more extrovert
stralcgies or iigurat ion and projection are employed to distribute the
J() Wrillen in IlI"'1 ,lIld ori~inally entitled 'I Alii ... riccrca lli mia madre' (Boyer, IlIX7,I)H;
Natdini, IIIXI), ,,(.), it w,'s (luhlished in "153 as 'Canzonellc', in {filleJ"l/ri, :l-4,JlItl'-AlI~. 11)53
(/,clIl'n', i. 3l)H; Rinaldi, 111Hz, 6H 70; Satllato, IIIXO, 13X~ 43)- There is SOIllC uebate over the
datin~, li.l1owin~ a claim hy Bandini, "177, .IT- H, that it was wrillen later than 11)41), bur sce
Siti, III X" '55-7.
'7 On these lilfll1al ami metrical aspects ofCmeri, sec Asor Rosa, '1)("1, Jih-h, J<)2-J;
Mannino, ".I7J; Siti, [()72. On l'asolini's 'anti-traditiona!' notion ofthc tradition, sce Santato,
II)X6a; Siciliano, 11)65, 6J-64; and Ch. 2 §§I illl<l J-
subjective across the poetic canvas. However, a major exception to this

rule is the first three sections of '11 pianto della scavatrice' (243-54)'
where a powerful autobiographical and memorial narrative describes
the Ri/dung of the poet, the process of learning and transformation
operated on him by the 'stupendous and wretched city' of Rome. By
emphasizing the duration and the process of learning, and also the
pedagogical agency of the city, the poem acquires a tone of ongoing,
spiritual revelation that links love to knowledge: 'Solo l'amare, solo il
eonoseere / conta' (Only loving, only knowing / counts, 243). The poet
is let in on a series of universal cognitive truths of which he has previ-
ously been deprived:
Stupcnda c miscra cin:'t,
chc m 'hai inscgnaLO ci(', che '1IIq~ri e fcroci
gli uomini imparano hamhini
I.. ·1 come
andarc duri e pronti nella ressa
delle strade, rivolgersi a lIn altro uomo
senza ITemarc I .. ·1
a difendermi, a of/cndere, ad avere
il mondo davanti a!{li occhi c non
sol tanto in Cllore, a capire
che pochi conoscono le passioni
in cui sono vissuto. (244 -5)
(Stupendous and wrelched cilY, / that has taughl me what, happy and licrce, I
men learn as children Ill . .. 1 how 10 go hard and ready into Ihc throll~ 11 or
the streets, to facc another man I wil hout tremhling I ... j 11 to defcnd Il\yselt~
to of/cnd, to have Ithe world hdi,,"e my eyes and not I only in my hear!, to Ull-
derst.uHJ 11 that kw men know the passions I in which I have lived.)
This urban pedagogy is juxtaposed with more immediate impressions
of the 'borgate', and the whole comes to signify a growth beyond isola-
tion towards reality and knowledge, hence towards a plenitude of 1he
subject in harmony with the other:
Un'anima in mc, che non era solo mia l ... .\
cresccva, nutrita daIl'allegria
di chi amava, anche se non riamato·l· .. 1
Ero al centro del mondo (248)
(A soul within me, that was not only mine [... 1/ grew, nourished on the hap-
piness 11 of one who loved, even ifthclovc were not returned.l ... j 11 I was at
the centre of the world)
The result is a surging feeling of vital freedom:
... Ah, giorni di Rcbibbia,
che io credcvo persi in una luce
di necessita, e che ora so cosi liberi! (252-53)
(... Oh, Rebibbia days, / that I thought lost in a light / / of necessity, and that
now I know to have been so free!)
The third section builds via an innocent entry into history and ideology
(,Marx 0 Gohetti, Gramsci 0 Croce, / furono vivi nelle vi vc esperienze',
Marx or Gobetti, Gramsci or Croce, / were alive in living experiences,
25:l), throug'h his transfcll'mation into a 'mite, violento rivoluzionario'
(gentle, violent revolutionary, 254) to a high rhetorical climax: 'un
UOlll0 fioriva' (a man blossomed) (254). The narrative towards pro-
gressive understanding of and immersion in the world has none of the
neg'ativity ofalllohiography as separ'ltion. As he proclaims in 'Picasso',
'Q.uanta gioia in quest a furia di capire!' (1 low much joy in this fury fill-
knowledg'e!, 1 <):l); 'NeI rest arc / dentro I'infcrno, con marmorea //
volont,l di capirio, cda ccrcare /Ia salvezza' (In staying / inside the hell,
with a marble // will to understand it, is to hc sought / salvation, 11)6).
This is autobiography at its most heroic, until pain and anxiety return
in the poem's final three sections, echonl in t he wail of the digger and its
recall to t he destruct ive movement ofhistory.
'11 pianto' was wrinen in 1()56, contemporary to early parts of
/lcft:l!,iol/c, where autobiography and self-portraiture generally come to
the fClIT once more (Rinaldi, 1990, 12<)-:l5). Echoes of the idealized
autobiog-raphy of' 11 pian to" fill" example, can be tiHmd in 'A un figlio
non nato' (511), where the selfis a harmonized combination of intrinsic
and acquired qualitics:
milezza, salulc l" clllusiasll10 ehe ho avuto nascendo I... 1
. - -amore, lin-za e eoscienza ehe ho acquislalo vivendo
(--meekness, health and enthusiasm Ihal J had al birth / I... I-----Iovc, strength
and conscience that I have aequired in Iile)
The two long, semi-narrative poems, 'La ricchezza' (421-75) and
'I ,a religione del mio tempo' (487-520), hoth develop the imagery of the
'borgate' as a correlative to the poet's inner condition. In 'J ,a ricchezza',
material poverty is compared to 'wealth' of knowledge ami thought; the
vitality of the 'rag'azzi' to his excessive passion ('E' l'io che hrucia', It is
the hurning' I, 433). And the final section, describing a screening of
Rossellini's 1945 film Roma {ilta aperla, is a full autobiographical
reassessment ofthe past. It opens with a lapidary 'Chi fui?' (Who was I?)
(469), and struggles to retrieve the experience of the Resistance seen on
screen. But unlike the euphoria of part of'lI pian to della scavatrice', the
emblems of the past are all turned to the negative. Thc language of
poetry was one of the 'inganni / istituiti, [lel dovute illusioni' (instit-
uted / deceptions, [thc] fitting illusions, 471). Dialect showed only the
'indecente / ehiarezza d'una lingua chc evidcnzia / la volonta a non
essere' (indecent / clarity of a language that makes plain / its will not to
be, 471). There follow the familiar elements of idealized autobio-
graphy-the Resistance, thc hcroic death of his brother (cf 'A un
ragazzo', 477-86), and the birth of a new hope for justice which is his
political awakening, all marked by the rcti"ain 'cd era pura luce' (and it
was pure light). But all is then nullified by the present, and by hindsight.
The autobiography ends with a void, and a new intense solitude:
tu tta q uclla luce,
per cui vivemmo, fu soltanto un so[!:J10
ingiusl ilicalo, inogg;c11 ivo, 1(1I11e
ora di solilarie, verg;og;nosc Iacrimc.
(475; cr. '] ,a rclig;iolle dclmio lempo', 5 I (,)
(all that light, / I(lr which wc lived, was only a dream, / unjustified, ullobjec-
tive, a source / now of solitary, shamcfullears.)
All that remains in this void arc the three 'obsessions' running throu[!:h
the poem, tokens of an overdetermination which turns t hc suhject in on
itself and cuts it off from the world: 'testimoniare, am arc, [!:uada[!:nare'
(to hear witness, to love, to earn, 43 J -5).
The negativity and sense of crisis which cap 'La ricchezza' and 'La
religione delmio tempo' arc dramatically augmented in the second and
third scctions ofRcligione, written between 1958 and 1960, which otfer
telling evidence of the general crisis in Pasolini's cultural, polit ical and
aesthetic operation. The epigrams of the second section ('Umilialo e
offeso', 523-37, and 'N uovi epigrammi', 539-56) portray a self unable
to understand reality or to control himsdfor his self-distorting excesses
and neuroses ('Ai critici cattolici', 525; 'A Barberi Squarotti', 532). IIis
sense of loss is morbidly expressed in 'Ai redattori di "Officina" ,
('passo come un morto tra i vivi', I pass like a dead man amongst the
living, 534), and in 'A mc' ('io, inaridito d'amarezza', I, parched with
bitterness, 529).
The third section, 'Poesie incivili' (567-92), evinces even more
violent self-scrutiny. Autobiography returns in its most distorted form
THE IMPULSE TO AUTOBIOGRAPHY IQ3
yet. It either makes a mockery of learning experience by its trite for-

mulae:
Da Cristo a Croce, chc cammino consolante!
E poi la speranza dclla Rivoluzione.
E ora eccomi qui (590)
(From Christ to Croce, what a comforting stroll! / And then hope of
Revolution. / And now here I am)
Or it is pervaded by death, which is now much more than a mere figure

ofloss: 'Vengo da te e torno a te I . . . 1Mi fai ora davvero paura, / perchc
mi sei davvero vicina' (1 come from you and I return to you [... ] Now
you really fi'ighten me, / because you really are nearby, 'Frammento alla
morte', S7H-<)). The link between the confessional mode and death
(Tambling, 1')<)0, 105) is made explicit:
I,a furia di confessione,
prima, poi la furia tlella chiarezza:
era da t.e Ila morte 1che nasceva (5711)
(Thl: fury to confess, / first, then the fury I()]' clarity: it was /i'om you IUl:athl
that it was horn)
'AI sole' (573 6) shares this sense of doom- -'ogni strada c finita, anche
la l11ia. / (:ol11e ogni vecchio, io 10 nego: sola / consolaziolle per chi, se
I rema, muore ' (every road is finished, even minc. / I -ike every old man,
I deny it: sole / consolation fi)r those who, if they tremble, die) (576)-
and conlJates once more the al1tohiogTaphical with the cognitive
through its altema! ing rcli'ain '\ {o saputo, eccollle ho saputo! r... 1Non
so ora, quale sia / il problema' (\ knew, boy, did I know! I ... 1 Now I
don't know what / the problem is).,H The 'io' of the present is crushed
by a terrifying anger: 'A quasi ql1arant'anni, / io mi trovo alla rabbia
I.. ·1 non avn') mai pace' (At almost l()rty, / llim\ myself enraged I... ]
\'11 never be at peace, SH4); 'la mia vita, disperata che abbia / solo fero-
cia i\ 1110n(\0, la mia anima rabbia' (my life, desperate that the world /
I X SlH..:h c(lv;nitivc dissonance , seen also in ~II pianto dclla scavatricc ' , ,,"'as already a Iuarkcr
"i"separatioll in 'l\1elllorie' (!:l/Si~110'O, .l('S··7), through the break with the mother: 'tu di me
conosei / gli ahballdoni I . . . 1 Ne ignori una rasscgnazione' (of me you know / the desertions
I .. ·1 You know not hing; of my resignation). The theme remains important throughout
Rcli~iol1l': '/\ un ragazzo' interrogates the young noy's tragic desire ItJr innocent knowledge of
what can never be innoeel1l; and hoth 'La rieehczza' and 'La religione del mio tempo' reiter-
ate the theme ('supillo / nella sete di sapere, Ilcll'ansia di eapire', supine / in my thirst for
knowledge, my desire to understand, 4(1I; 'mi sforzo a eapire ogni cosa', I struggle to under-
stand everything, .106). And ct 'Una dispcrata vitalitii' (Rosa, 728).
I04 POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS
has only cruelty, my soul only anger, '11 glicine', 592). The climax to this
crisis sees a gulf open between the self and its place in history:
11 confine tra la storia e I'io
si fende torto come un ebbro abisso
('11 glicine', 588)
(The border between history and the self / cracks open twisted like a drunken
abyss)
Onc further clement of the 'Poesie incivili' points forward to Rosa

and beyond: the ironic vocabulary of success, victory and defeat. Ambi-
tion to succeed is repeatedly seen as having' led to a pyrrhic victory:
Intransigenza e dolore
crano sola garanzia di qualehc vittoria
I· . ·1 I'angoscia non cpiLI
scgno di vittoria
('AI sole', 576)
(Intransigence and pain / were the only !',"lIaranlee of some viclory / I ... 1
an!',"uish is no lon!',"er / the si!',"n of vielory)

sono nel rogo, gioco la carla del ruoco,
evincol·· .1
ho huo fiJl·tuna
('Frammenlo alia mol"le', 57 X, 57<)
(I am in the pyre, I play the card orfire, / and I win I ... 11 have madc my /()rlIlIlC)
I.alotta cterminata
con la viUoria.
('I.a rahhia', 5X:l)
(The struggle ended / in viclory)
per ognuno il conquistare
la vita c una tacita SC01l11l1essa che 10 hi
cieco padrone di luUo ci(') che sa
('11 glicine', 5<)O)I'J
(for everyone, conquering / lite is a tacil bcllhat makes them / blind owners or
all that they know)
The confused sense of failure through success here, of a compromised

autonomy brought about by the very process of growth celebrated in '1I
pianto della scavatrice', leads to an increasing·Jy ironic and negative
poetry in which there seems ever less point in moulding' a unitary
19 Cf. 'Un Cristo' (L'llsignoio, 3-'4), 'La pcrsccuzionc' (Rosa, 662-3, 66R), <lnu 'Charta
(sporca)' (TrasulIlllnar, 939).
THE IMPULSE TO AUTOBIOGRAPHY 10 5
image of the self and its meaning, and ever more temptation simply to
parade a series of discordant, discontinuous poses. From this point on,
Pasolini's poetry will gradually disintegrate formally, as will the forms
of autobiography encountered thus far. Masquerades of self-portraiture
will develop as the self is dispersed across an ever-more imping'ing
present, so that autobiography survives only as a parody or pastiche of
itself. However, the poetry of Rosa still tempers that impulse with an-
other variant on the autohiographical ti.Jfm, the diary,20
A great deal of Rosa consists of daily record, 'Poesie mondane'
«(1I1-21) is a slightly expandcd version of the 'Poesie di Mamma Roma'
(in Mamma RI/ma, 15J--{)0); 'Pietro IT' (669-82) is a record of the trial of
I,a riwlltl lill' blasphemy in March H)6J; 'Israele' and 'L'alba merid-
ionale' (757-~)J) arc meditations on Pasolini's ahortive trip to Israel and
Jordan (27 June to 11 July H)6J) to find locations filr Vallgc/o, These
poems contain little retrospcction, and thus make little attempt at co-
hesion or unity --'le contraddizioni venglo Ino rese estreme, mai con-
ciliate, mai slllllssate' (its contradictions arc made extreme, never
resolved, never muffled, (:amon, 1<)(15, 1(l») , Instead they portray a self
at moments or despair, out ortime, barren:
10 sono lIIU (ill'za dcll'assato,
c
Solo nella tradizione il mio amore,l_ , ,I
E io, kto adlllto, mi ap;!!,"iro
pill 1l1Oderno tli o!!,"ni moderno
a cerea re fratelli che non sono pill.
('Poesie lIIondane', ()(I)
(I am a IillTe of the Pasl. / Only ill tradition is my love_I, _ -1/ And 1, an adult
(iletlls, wander arollnd / IllOre J1lOtlcrn than every modern / in search of
hrothers whoare no lon!!,"er.)
( :redendomi inaridito per sempre, I, , _I

continuando a scriverc (qllando
allora il silcnzio sarehhc meg;lio)
riempio l'aridit;\ con una lihidinc,
a slla voIla arhitral"ia, d'azionc I __ ,I
('1 .'alba meridionale', 71111)
I""
20 '1I1ihro I Nostll ha la lill-ma intel"ll;l, anche se non cSlcrna, di un di'lrio' (The hook the
intcrnal, cvcn irnot external fill-m ora diary, "asolini 10 CUllon, [(l>s, I!)S)- As waS noted in
P,\Ct I, Ihe diary fi>rm was rundamcnlal to "asolilli's c;trly poclry_ Sce q~, /)fu,-ff, I pfallli-;t
chronicle or his ~randmothcr's dcath in TI)44- -Oa! /)fllYio (1 'NS I 1Nl ), Roma [(JSo: Dill,-io
and SOl1ell(/ primllveri/,' (112, 126J- 309; 1417-41; 1461-95: ,lnd cL a lar~e lIumher o[un-
collected or unpuhlished diary poem ill 112; ,',g_ J63H-I), 16H6, 2157-6], 2JHI-7 etc.)_ Sce
Santato, Hjllo,35-1 11.
106 POETRY: A MOVF.MENT OF FORMS
(Thinking myself parched out for ever, [ ... ] / carrying on writing (when / in
that case silence would be better) / I till in the aridness witha libido, / in its turn
arbitrary, for action r· ..
1)
The lack of vitality and control provokes an acute self-awareness and

detachment: 'Osservo me stesso massacrato' (I observe my slaughtered
self, 'Poesie mondane', 6zl). The t1iaristic snapshots intensify and re-
cast earlier autohiographical motifs in a present that is ideologically
anathema to the poet. For example, acquisition ofknowledg'e, a key to
subjective plenitude in Ccncri, crumbles in the fever-pitch and /(JrITIal
chaos of ' Poem a per un verso di Shakespeare' (703-[7). Iag'O's dying'
words, 'what you know YOll know: / From this time f(Jrth I never will
speak word' (OJhel/o, v. ii), in Pasolilli's version mark an end to learning:
'Ci() che hai saputo hai saputo: il resto non 10 saprai'.
Non 10 sapn'l? I': allora che senso ha avu\o una vita ehe non c altro elle
passato e con esso nasee ogni giorno, come un rosaio? (705)2'
('What you have known you h'lve known: wh'lI remains you will nor know'.
I won'. know? Well then, whal sense has a !ill: had Ihal is only pasl allll wilh
it every day is horn, like a rose-hush?)
Here and in 'Vinoria' (SI]'Z5), otlH.:r motifs also collapse or are

ironized, such as history ('Scienza della storia, aiutami!', r listorical
Science, help me!, 4ZS), success ('UIl': I.A IUVOI.UZ[ONE DlVENTA AIW)l'rA
/ / S'I~: SENZA MAl VITTOHIA .. .', f(JI' the rl~vollltion is hecoming' aridity / /
we are f()JTver without victory, XZZ)/2 and confession (' Prendo Sll di me
la colpa I... 1', I take the hurden of blamc, SI 5, X2I). There is also a rc-
turn offamiliar narrative (i"ag-ments in references to the W'lr, Frillli, the
Resistance and the death of (iuido. Bul all these tokens ohhe past are
now untenable, as tbe screaming- end o/" 'Poema per un verso di
Shakespeare' blurts out:
'NI·:s.~UNO DE[ PIIOIlIoEMI 1>1-:(;1.[ ANNI ClNQlIANTA
M'IMPORTA Pili! TIIADISCO I LlVIDI MORALIST( cm: IIANNO FATTO
DEI. SOUA[ .ISMO UN CATTOI.ICESIMO
U(illAI.MENTl': NOIOSO! \ ... \
ABIURO DAI. RIDICOLO DECENNIO!' (717)23
21 On this poem see Onofi-i, 19H4; 'lIld et: I"lsolini's use of Olhcl/II as the hasis of 1.11 law
visla da/la "/nil.
22 Sce also the ICllcr-pocm 'Ncnni', AVllnli!, J 1 nee. 'I)il'; Bz, J 717- -20,
2] In Camon, J()IiS, 196, f>asolini qualifies (his much"'1l1otcd statement: 'Ma '1ucsta :lbiura
va lerra come si legge una poesia I.. , .J i: fonuamentalmenle vera I ... 1111:1 il "to no" di ljud-
l'abiura c poetico c non rcalc c mi suggeriscc tcnnini ccccssivamcntc carichi di rancorc c di
THE IMPULSE TO AUTOBIOGRAPHY I07
('none of the problems of the fifties I interests me any more! I I betray the spite-
ful moralists who have made socialism a Catholicism that is I just as boring!
t... J I renounce the ridiculous decadc!')
'1 'he ideological source of this crisis is of course the consumerization of
culture and society:
Ah, non potn) pi Ll resistere ai ricatti
dcll'opcrazione che non ha uguale,
credo, a fare dei miei pensieri, dei miei atti,
alt ro da ci(l che sono: a tras/i)ffllarC
alle radiei la mia Jlovera persona:
c, cam Attilio, il patio industriale.
('I ,a Guinea', (06)
(I\h, I can no longer resisllhe blackmail I oflhe operation without equal, I I
believe, 1hal makes of my thoughts, my deeds 11 something other than what I
am: 1hall rans/ilrms I 101 he eure my poor persona: I it is, dear Attilio, the
induslrial pact.)
What n:mains of I he autohiographical impulse, then, is distorted

into pastiche, otien a pastiche of t he very liu'ms of self-narration. The
poem 'Coccodril1o', written (11' the American journal Avanl Garde in
1<)(IS, lakes its title from the journalistic slang tilr obituary, and is
another allempt OIl a pastiche-account of his own lile.!4 Apart from its
tone of post hU1l10us, ironic despair, it is sig'niticant (lr its recurrent in-
ahility to realize its own beg·inning·. Variations on the refrain 'let's begin
a[!:ain' ('ricomincianlO') interrupt the How of retrospect ion no less than
nine times. Similarly, 'U na dispcrata vit alibI' (726-4S), like 'Poeta delle
cencri', parodies t he interview fi)l'm as precisely a consumerist dis-
tortion of Ihe ;Illlohiographical impulse. The interviewee is asked to
confess and analyse bis past 10 explain his present and future, in an
arena which only admilS caricature ami commodity. And yet, the com-
plicity of Ihe suhject is till'ced by his poet's tear of silence: 'io volon-
lariamente marlirizzato' (I willingly martyed, 72<).25 He provides a
IlllOvesplTanze' (Ihis renuncialion should he read poelically I ... 1 if is fundamentally true
I... I hIli ils 10lle is poelic alld nol real and il sug~esls lcrms excessively burdened with ran-
cour and Ilew hopes). !\ similar g'lo,s c;1Il he tillnHl in 'Poela delle eeneri': 'Vi ho falsamente abi-
uralO dall'ilHpq~no' (I (alsd)' ;Ihjurcd col11miUlJCnltbere, .w(6) .
.'4 First pUhlished in French (I )ullol, H)M I, "40-49), now 112, 2085-93. Thc conceit of in-
lerprel ing onc's lilC from afler death, be{(ull in 'El teSLtment Curan', recurs in Orgia, 505-9,
ami is lheorized in 1:1:241.
25 Belwcen 1<)56 and ")75, Rinaldi, H)~12, 452-60, records over 2]0 single and fuur book-
Icnglh inlervicw,. Fur Pasolini's highly ambivalent attitude [() interviews, see his own preface
tu Dullo!, «)H 1,7-10, and parudies in Te()rcma, 17&-'79, 193-96, and La r;cotla.
half-serious 'synoptic table' to sum up his life in typically formulaic,

preterite terms. As the poem ends, the interviewee becomes ever-more
incoherent (' ... [balbetto, / preso da impeti di morte]', ... [1 stammer,
/ taken with onrushes of death], 735; suspension marks and square
brackets in original), slips into the third person, Benveniste's non-
person (741), and ends with a stammering 'Io? [ ... ] Io?' (Me? I ... ]
Me?, 748). All that remains is the elusive 'desperate vitality'. 26
Other forms of self-narration arc manipulated in both 'Poesia in
forma di rosa' and 'Nuova poesia in f()rma di rosa'. The 'calligrammes'
ofthe latter are described as 'embarrassing' because they fail to disguise
the fact that there is nothing new to say:
il vero dolore ccapire una reald: qllcsto mio esscrc
di nuovo nel '63 ci(\ che fui nel '43
I... .1 ogni L1omo ha lIn'epoca sola
nella vita (752)
(the true pain is in understanding a reality: this being / again in 'C)] what I was
in '43 / [.. ·1 every man has only onc epoch / in life)
'Poesia in f()rma di rosa' uses a highly fractured 'terzina' t()rm/ 7 de-
scribing five petals of a rose ('Uno e Cinquino', One and Five/()Id)
which are schematic emblems of his existence, representing a fivct()ld
confession of error: 'Ho sbagliato tutto' (I have mistaken everything,
(51). The rose had been a recurrent, hig'hly charged figure of harmony
in [;usiJ;n% and MCJ;lio,2H and its tTanst()rmation here into a token of
fragile multiplicity and confused negativity of the self represents a
sig'nificant trauma enacted in the fractured /()rm and schema of the
poem. The petals are torn away in turn to reveal loss and lack, ohsession
and error.
Disintegrating 'terzine', chaotic semi-prose and 'calli grammes' are
all symptomatic of an increasing obsession with poetic f()rm in Rosa,
reflecting the overwhelming crisis in the self's arid relation to reality:
non mi resta
chc lilre oggctto della mia poesia la poesia (7H9)
(all that is left to me / is to make poetry the object of my poetry)
2(, As Gcrard, If)H3, 47, anu Tren1!), If)I)O, XI, hoth note, the term 'disperata vitalil;i' is
taken by Pasolini from Longhi, "n3, 7.13. Critics have seen thc phrase as cmblem;11 ic oflar!(c
parts ofPasolini's work (Fcrretti, [976, BClli, tI)Ro).
27 ef. 'Una dispcrata vitalit;i', 729: 'Vcrsi, versi, scriv!)!, vcrsi l [ ... 1/ Versi NON PIll IN
TERZINI':' (Verses, verscs, I writcl, vcrses! [ ... ] / Verses no longer in terzinas).
28 e.g. Me!!,iio, 43, ')7--{)H; L'usigll%, 304, 3 H) ff., 370; anu later Religionc 490, 5HI-4; Row,
754. On rose imagery, see David, 1970, 556--62; Jcwcll, 198z; Vannueci, 19H5.
THE IMPULSE TO AUTOBIOGRAPHY
A similar preoccupation with the failing role of poetry is found in 'La

mancanza di richiesta di poesia', which again morbidly emphasizes the
poet's anachronistic status: 'Tu con le Ceneri di Gramsci ingiallisci'
(You fade to yellow with the Ashes ofGramsci, 682). And this obsession
will dominate much of Trasumanar.
The most powerful synthesis of the disintegrating threads of Rosa
comes in 'La realta' (631-47), where the crisis in poetry ('quando /
scrivo poesia c per difendermi e lot tare, / compromettendomi, rinunci-
ando / / a ogni mia antica dignid', when / I write poetry it is to defend
myself and to struggle, / compromising myself, renouncing' / / all my
age-old dignity, 63 I) leads to an attempted return to confession
('Eccomi nel chiarore di un vecchio aprile, / a confessarmi', Here I am
in the lig'ht of an old April, / at confession, 632), and to a series of
configurations of his past-again his father, his mother, his homo-
sexuality and m,lrginalization, his bndscapes-which arc worked and
reworked into a rich network of poetic tensions. But the entire record of
the self and its relation to reality is reduced in the tinal terzina to a
mere precondition and ohstacle to the esscnce of what he dcsires to
represen t:
Solo dello questo, 0 \lrhllo, la Illia sorle
si pot r,lliherarc; e eomineiare
ilmio discorso sopra la realt;l «('47)
(Only having said, or screamed this, will my [lie / he set free; and will hegin /
my discourse on n:alilY)
Self-inscription is always only a prelude to a beginning;, as 'Coccodrillo'

insisted: 'ricominciamo'. ~(J
Trasumanar hrings renewed emphasis on the loss of role for the self
and {()r the self as poet, and by now, autobiography is only evoked in
residual fragments.3° Tn 'Richiesla di Iavoro' Pasolini refutes his former
practice of writ ing poetry f()r posterity:
.lIJ (:r Pas()lini~s ~Ioss to 1he title of P"XSiOlll' (' j,/c%gill, .... XX: "Prinl;') p;lssiullC ('fill; iJco)o-
I
gi.l", 0 rncglio "Prim;) p;ls,sioIlC ma l)()' idcolo~ian I CFirst P;lSSIOIl (I lid fhe" iocology\ or rarher
'Ii,.,t pas>ion, b"llhell idcolo!,:y') .
.1 0 I n ~Pasolini n:censiscl' Pas(llini' hl' notes 1h;\l pari
I or 'li'oSII1I1Utlllr is 'UIl diari() privalo, in
cui l'a,olini p,I,.1a ddle sue giornate, per to pii(, nere, mc,mlando allc angosce--ma anehe ai
piaccri, andiamo!----i prohlclni umctalinguistici" c sociali del brc pOCSi,l' (;1 private diary, in
which "asolini talks o("his !nOSily hlack days, mix in!,: in wilh an!,:uish··-buI also pleasures, why
nOI!-the social and 'mctalinguistic' problems oi"making poclry, 1/ "orlito tld/Il!llorit', 2111).
Rinatdi damns thc hook ,IS 'non-poctry', 'Ihal pillorics, onc ahcr anolhcr, all his previous
ercdos, or rathcr lhc possibility of making poetry o[lhem' (I!J!lz, 3+3, .1+7-11).
IIa POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS
Ero rolemaico (essendo un ragazzo)

e contavo I'eternita per I'appunto in secoli.
Consideravo la terra il centro del mondo;
la pocsia il centro delIa terra.
l.. ·1 Ora [... Jla vocazione cvacante. (837)
(I was Ptolemaic (since I was a boy) / and I counted eternity precisely in cen-
turies. / I thought the Earth was the centre of the world; / poetry the centre of"
the Earth. / l.. ·1 Now l· .. J my vocation is vacant.)
This is the cnd point of a parabola which began with the youthful ambi-
tion for literary success of a highly traditional kind, as evinced in his
early letters and journalism, and which developed into the ambivalent
imagery of success and victory after 1 <)6a. Now the whole poetic project
has been displaced away from the Romantic onc of insight and self-
exploration towards 'poesie su ordinazione: ordigni' (poetry to order:
devices), ceded knowingly to the demand and supply laws of an eco-
nomic infrastructure: 'smello di essere poeta originale che costa man-
canza / di libert.l' (I r;ive up being' an original poet, beCluse it costs a
lack / of freedom, 'Comineato all' ANSA (Scelta slilistica)', (00). The
new project also translilrms the diary element o/" earlier work into pub-
lic record ('cronaca') and public per/ilrmance: hencc 'Patmos' «(H5-
54), on thc bombing' of Piazza Fonlana in Milan in 19()(), and a series
of poems on the student movements and the incipient terrorist 'anni
di piombo'; 'Er;li 0 tu' (H:n·_·6) on Ihc death of Bobhy Kennedy;
'Dutschke' (HH(l--7), 'PanaguJis' (H5X .(»; 'Pocma politico' and its
'Riassunto' (9()!)-loo4) about Nixon. Thc subjcct is not absenl tj'om
these pieces-it is proti)lll1dly implicated in thc student movements,
and identifies in turn with Kennedy, who is repeatedly addressed in
hoth second and third person, I )utschke and Panagulis-nor is the per-
sonal diary tilrm ahandoned--l,i.::: the cycle of pocms lilr Maria (:allas.
or
But the subject has lost all that 'antica mia digniti' which came (i'om
a control over the lang'uage 0[" its poetry and its personal history: I he 'io'
now speaks in 'LJuesto mio pal'lar da buffime' (this I(Iol's speech, X35).
It takes on a cacophony of other voices insteaJ of reformulating a
sing'le voice. Death anJ rebirth, in Friuli part of an animistic cycle, are
now reduced to the palingenetic, arbitrary shift from one mask to
another, each one a 'nascita Ji un nuovo tipo Ji buttime' (hirth of a
new type of fool, XXI fT). This has hoth linguistic and formal con-
sequences. J _anguage is devalued and diluted, and ultimately reduced
to noise:
THE IMPULSE TO AUTOBIOGRAPHY III
io wnlJsCII e vIIgll1J l'inutilita di ogni parola

('Il Gracco', 885)
(1 knlJm and man! the uselessness of every word)
E cosi vado verso il balbettio
-ehe eontiene ogni lingu.l--
ridendo
('Proposito di scrivere una [loesia intitolata "1 primi sei canti del Purgat-
orio"', RRR)
(And so r 1!;0 towards prattle 1-- -t hat contains every language-/laughing)
Vorn:i mimarc I'eeolalia, esse re latieo, tltieo,
e eosi esprimere, 011 grado pill hasso, il tutto_
(,Pmposili di Icggerezza', X9S)
(I'd like to mime the eeolalia, to be phat ie, phat ie, I and so to express, at the low-
esl level, everyl hing.)
r lowever, silencc as an adequate response is once more precluded:

110 pama della lihcrt;t ehc mi verrehhe daltacere
('I ,ihm lihero', !)H7).l1
(I fear the liu'domlhal silenec would hrin!'," IllC)
()n a lim11al level, the cult ure-industrial pastiche in Rom is extended,

as can he seen in the !lve poems ent it led '( :olllunicato all' ANSA',
addressed to the nat ional press a[!;ency.v The precarious status of the
sell' as poet, and orpoctry and Ian[!;ua[!;e, is rdlccted in the provisional
na t ure of so llluch of 1he collection. This had already hegun in 'Progetto
di opere future' and 'Poeta delle eeneri', with their descriptions of work
in pro[!;ress, hut here it is taken to extremes, Poems 'lIT rewritten, in onc
casc three times (,La restaurazione di sinistra', q()5--}0), summarized
('Riassunl"O per un "I )igest" del "1'oema politico" " 1004), left in note
!iJrlll ('Manifestar (appunti)', [OZS-30), added to ('Coda alle co se
successe eCL', I °41-2). Again, this li)rmal chaos primarily contrasts
wit h a traditional view or poetry as a craft, a product of careful, hut hid-
den reworking, By leaving uncovered the raw process or work, the texts
rdlcct the self's desire an-d need to avoid stasis, even at the cost of dis-
intep;rat-ion .
.I' The Il;I,..,doxic.,1 nol ion of'libert,,', alreaJy presenl in Rosa ('1,01 rcolil,\', (,3H), is invcstig--
,ILed 1lI0re flllly in 'Manifestar (appllnli), (I o2H-30)_ Scc also /i/i 2hl)_
V There ,Ire three more in 'I'oesie di Pier Paolo I'asolini scrille Junlllte la lavoraziolle di
Met/ea' (Met/ell, IOIJ "47; 112, I H74-l) I HI IHI) 1--2, I Hl)7il, a film-diary, contemporary to mllch
of 1'raSU1fJlltlar which ShilfCS olany of ils chanlCtcristics.
Nuova, Pasolini's final collection of poetry, is another remake. It re-

turns to the language and poems of Meglio to annihilate them systemat-
ically through a disillusioned updating. Another retrospective
rewriting, this act is in some sense autobiographical: as a cancelling of
the past and of the validity of history, it might also be taken as anti-
autobiographical par excellence. 33 I ts only sustained recourse to autobi-
ography is in the rewritten version of 'Suite furlana', where the poet
struggles in vain to capture elusive past self-images:
1 fai par vuardiimi tal spieli
par jodi se che jo i soj stat,
ma il spieli al si m()uf eoma n'aga
e a si m()ufse eh'i soj dovenr;1t. (1127)
(I go to look at myself in the mirror / to see what 1 have heen, / but the mirror
is moving like water / and what 1 have hn:ome Illoves too.)
He once more casts himsclfbcfore his father in guilt ('illari', the thief),
and his mother in rapt attention; as an exile in Rome, and as a writer who
'al serif i dis da la so vita' (writes the days of his life, I J 2q). But the
writing is undone, as is the life, in the final section: 'e invessi di scrivi al
scanscla / parse ch'a no'l ha 'na storia' (and instead of writing, he rubs
out / because he has no history, I 12<». 1.ike 'Tornant 011 pais «tuinla
variante)' (1083), this is more epitaph than autobiography.
In the more contemporary, political final section, 'Tetro ent usiasll1o'
(1145-82), written in a mixture ofFriulan and Italian, 'Versi sottili
come righe di pioggia' (I 173-5) exploits the chasm between received
opinion and Pasolini's position by an impersonal and sarcastic con-
demnation of all he holds dear. The portrait of society is onc in which
the sclfis 'disperatamente interessato' (desperately implicated), but as
a 'misero e impotente Socrate' (wretched and impotent Socrates), un-
able to impinge upon it:. The book ends on a moving, but as always
ambiguous and ironic note of closure when he abrogates his 'impegno'
to a new interlocutor, a young fascist:
Hie desinit eantlls. Ci,lpiti
tu, su li spa lis, chistu zcit plen.
Jo i no pos, nissun no eapircs
il scanduL l· .. J
Ciapiti su ehistu pcis, hmt,lt eh'i ri mi odiis (t I~lI-2)
.13 Critical opinion on Nu(}vl/. has heen overwhelmingly llcp;ative. Ferretti, l!n6, ,,6, call~ it
'too Qllculating'; Rinaldi, 19Hz, 357, 'a false reflection,;l vacuous exerci~e'. SantalO, t"Ho, 24",
a polemical declaration of'pointlessne~s of poetry'.
(Here endcth the song. You, / take it on your shoulders, this full basket
[fardello 1. / I cannot, no one would understand / the scandal. [... ] / You, take
up this weight, you child who hates me)
The trajectory of self-representation and inscription ends here in

denial-of the self as the appropriate speaking subject of poetry; of the
ideological impetus which, however pessimistically, informed the his-
tory of his poetry since 1947; and thus, finally, of the very possibility of
poetry itself:-'Hic desinit cantus'.
5
'Pura luce ': A Vision ofHistory
The Friulan idyll ofPasolini's early poetry is huilt on a nostalgic return

of the suhject to a prehistorical realm, which evolves in Meg/io and
L'usigl1% towards an entry into history and thus into ideology, lan-
guage and loss. The entry into history is, in other words, a defining;
moment in the subject's history (Ch. 4), and the relation between these
two polar histories gives form and vitality to a gTeat deal of Pasolini's
poetry.
The /irst part ofMeglio all but eschews the historical, in its choice of
dialect and verse form, in its intimate and mythologizing strategies of
self-inscription, and in its descript ive tone. 'I 'his childhood realm exists
in a state of timeless sllspension:
I no jot un Pass;11
Ma doma ;Iins semis
e nos disminliadis
e passi('lIls sol erad is
la UI1 limp sellsa i dis
('I ,a 1101 di maj', ()2)
(1 do 1101 see a Pasl / / BUI only dark years / and I()rg:ollen nig:hls / and buried
passions / in a lime withoul days)
un Frilll eh',,1 vifsolllUSSll1

eu la me zovcnlllt
di \;\ dallimp, la un timp
sdrum;\t dal villi.
(' Lllllis', J 02)
(a Friuli that lives unknown / with my youlh / heyond time, in " lime / up-
turned by the wind)
Entry into history is effected in the second part of the book hy the
shift from lyric to popular narrative forms, particularly in the
'Romancero' section, but history is still more than an objective, narrat-
ive event. As Santato, 1980, 179, notes 'past and present arc in Pasolini,
A VISION OF HISTORY II5
more than two historical times, two forms of being'. '11 vecchio testa-
mento' (163-70), for example, brings together three different mytho-
log'ies to create a hybrid history within which there is no hierarchy
between the subjective and the external. The first level of the poem is
narrative and strong'ly historical, giving an account of the 1943-5 civil
war, shaped hy the tides of the three sections '11 quaranta quatri', '11
quaranta sine' and 'J ,a miej zovcntlIt'. The flrst section describes the
Nazi occupation, the secoml their ueparture, anu the thiru a new begin-
ning' as the 'meglio gioventll' (best of our youth) leaves Friuli for adven-
ture in the world, Even this most documentary level tends towarus the
mythical, however, through the trauit ion.t1 war-song '11 ponte di
Perati', which stands as an epigraph to the entire second part of the
Ml',!',lio:
SlIl pontc di Ilassano handina nna
la mqdio giovcllIl1 va solo In;\ (I I I)'
(011 I he bridgl: al Bassallo black flag hlowing I 1hc bl:st of our YOllth· 'go
lIndergnlllnd)
Ilistory is g'ivell a clear documenlary (i'ame bUI also a Elblc-like tone. A

second level rein 1(IITes I he (irsl I hrough a rall]!:c or topoi connoting
limeless harmony, cxpresscd t hrou]!:h t he poet's inner voice. I kscrip-
tion is slIstained and realistic, bUl conditioned by a Elmiliar lyric tone:
In tai bores 1i ciampanis a hotizcin di fil:sta
par li cors hl:1I nctadis par la ci;\mp;\gna frcs-cia,
1;1 che trops di (i'lItis eh'a ghi sillS la slressa
par ga1criis di vencs a van1cgris a messa (167)
(Inthl: villages Ihe hells alT ringing Olll I he holiday I1 hrollgh I he wcll-kempt
cOllrlyardslhroll!','h Ihl' cool counlry, I when: swarms of girls - Iheir plaits
glcnning Ilhrough IlInnels of wider - go along happy 10 mass)
Similarly 'I Collts' (145(11) combines historical narrative with a per-

sonal hist ory of the ElIllily or t he poct's mother, Susanna (nee Colussi). 2
But 'll vecchio testamento' adds a Ihird level which recalls the Christian
liturgy of I, 'uxignolo. The note at the cnd of the book int()rms us that the
, See Sa"lal", II)XO, 101. There is dead)" a d"se relalio" hel Wemlne second pari or Mt'glill
and Pasulini\ Ctlll:.."".(}ni('rl' ifali((lw, 'rhe inlrnJut.:lion {o that VOllllllC (Pa ...... iollt.! t' idc%Kia,
lJS 25 1)) indudes a scclion on li,lklorie poetry 'IIHI military song:s (z4X-51)), which provides
models lill' hOlh 'I Coli,,' and '1I vccchiotcstamclII"', Scc also '11 canl" popolare' (H2, 1443-
(10, thcn in part in Cl'1I",i, 111, IHS-X), '11 pOllle di l)cr,lIi' is sling: in S"It;,
2 For rhe f'lmily hislory on which 'I Colils' is h'ISCU, scc Naldini, [I)SI), S-6; SchwarlZ,
191)2, ')J-I Otj,

II6 POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS
final verses of'lI quaranta quatri' and '11 quaranta sinc' are free transla-
tions from the Bible (171). This clearly points forward to future work
such as Van~e1o and San Pa%, but here it fashions a trans-historical
synthesis, creating in the contemporary context of the documentary
narrative a myth-history emerging from the poetic myths of the sub-
ject's own pre-history. Such a synthesis, such an emanation of a vision
of history is one of the founding; principles ofPasolini's work.
The parabola of L'usign% follows a parallel course. At its start, the
sense of an absolute, mythical time is expressed through the emblem-
characters ofthe dialogues, as in 'L'usignoto' ('Ah, vedo che sono omhre
i vostri anni!', Ah, I sce that your years arc shadows, 2(8). The vocabu-
laries of the animistic countryside and of religious devotion harmonize
on a level of pure spirituality:
c
Gente del Rosario, passato ma{!,'{!,'io... E{!,'1i solo resta a cmtare le litanie del
povero ra{!,'azzo appogg-iato alia Fonte dell' AClJua Santa. Ormai qllelle rose
sono Ion lane, nuvole d'incenso nella rosa penluta. (.1°4).1
(People ofthe Rosary, May has passed ... I k alone remains to sin{!,' the litanies
of the poor boy leaning- on the Iloly Water !illll. Now those roses arc hI' away,
elouds of incense in the lost rose.)
This early practice of juxtaposing the sacred and the real by trans-
formative analogy will he developed in the 'contaminatio' of t hc Roman
novels and films, and in the anthropological readings of history in the
cycle of myth films of the late I ()hos. But here, the immediate effect is to
create a prehistory f()\' the metanarrative of' /, 'u.I'ignll/o, preparin{!,' f()\' the
suhsequent shift into a history at odds with spontaneous harmony. Even
more so than with Mcglill, /, 'usiKno/1I is f(JI'llled as a controlled narrative,
and hence the entry into history coincides with the parallel entry into
autobiography disellssed above. The sense of rebirth in the section' 1I
non credo' (3.17-48)-'la mia vita I nascendo si ascolta' (my life I listens
to its own hirth, 'I ,a sorgente', 343; cL 34s)-prepares f()r the '] -ingua'
and 'Paoto e Baruch' sections (34()-7H), with their exploration of the
tragic consequences of the dichotomy hetween self and history, be-
tween self and prehistory, and ofthe intimation of death as a condition
of history. Time, language, poetry, Christianity, and sexuality all
3 The "me ahistorical, acstheticizing harmony will he an objeCT of intense nostalgia in laTer
work ('La rcligionc del mio tempo', 4<)3). cr Fcrrclti's 'evangclical-viscer:t1 religion' (t974,
163-HS), onc pole of an ubiquitous duality he discerns in I'asolini's work. For David, I 'no,
5SH, the Church, and fascism, arc both 'faulty sublimations of Eros' . On Pasolini and religion,
sce Conti Calahrese, 1994; Fantuzzi, [(n6; P. and C. Lazagna, 1970.
A VISION OF HISTORY II7
become objcctificd and institutionalized as the imaginary cedes to the
symbolic. The self is subsumed into grander discourses, as is encapsul-
ated in the epigraph to the 'Lingua' section, the last entry in Leopardi's
Zibald(me [4526, 251: 'I'uomo resta attonito di vedere verificata nel cas 0
proprio la regola generale' (man is astonished to find that his own
experience confirms the general rulc).4
'La scoperta di Marx' (4°9-13), finally, retells in nure the rupture be-
tween the prehistory of the sclC and the self-in-history. New ideo-
logically laden terms, such as 'coscienza' (conscience/consciousness),
'ragione' (reason) and 'istituzione' (institution), acquire prominence
here f()J· the first time in Pasolini's poetry. Rut they arc talismans of a
new relationship to the world rather than intellectually or poetically
articulated concepts. Similarly, history remains more an absolute idea
of time, place and heing· than a vessel oftransf(lrmation: 'la nostra storia!
morsa / di puro am ore, t(lrZa / razionale e divina' (our history! hitten /
hy pure love, a lilrce / Iboth I rational and divine, 413). Even a vision of
history as ideology, then, draws on imaginary, subjective topoi oscillat-
ing between idealist and materialist models of history. The resonance of
the oscillat ion, more than its ideological substance, is the vessel of the
work of subjectivity.
If'T.a scoperla di Marx' rehearses the emotive transition from inno-
cence to nascent historical consciousness, the plaquette volume R01lla
I ()so. /)illfill (1477-()S), and a sequence of contemporary uncollected
poems (Bz, r6JI) 41, zoz6-35), record a further transition, hetween
Friuli and the 'bm·gate' of Rome, hetween the discovery of Mar x and the
guilt of expulsion. The trauma threatens the cnd of youth:
J\dulto? Mai-mai, coml: I'esistenza
che non mal ura- -Testa sempre acerha (1479)
(i\duh? Never---never, like existence I which never matures--always stays
unripe)
Non so dare un addio, una eondanna,

un ,Ivvertimenlo: Ullto resta
ugualc, distante at bene e almalc (148])
(l cannot give" farewell, a comlemnation, I a warning: everything stays I the
same, distant from good and evil)
-l l'asolini used the same quotation on several oe<:asions: see the 1945 collection Poesi, (B2,
1261); Alf'ahu/Ilzi(me, 224; Oytia, 572. On l'asolini and Leopardi, sec Banda, 1990a; Mannino,
1973, 13-2 4-
1I8 POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS
Ragazzo mi ridesto, e mi ritrovo

vecehio (14R6)5
(I wake up a boy, and I find myself / old)
Roma 1950. Diario moves towards a possibility of renewal through the

first encounter with the festive Roman landscape:
penso ehe non c tutto, il min passato;
penso ehe la mia esistenza si rinnova,
se mi ritrovo aperto a questo puro
passo che valiea le tenebre (14R7)
(1 think it is not all, my past; / I think my existence is renewed, / in find myself
open to this pure / step that erosses over rhe darkness)
But equally some of the other poems dwell on the baseness of the land-
scape ('escrementi e spianate / nere di fango', excrement and hlack /
plains of mud, 16:\9), on exclusion ('in, escluso / dal mondo, che non so
odiare ne quindi amarc', J, excluded / from the world, who cannot hate
and thus cannot love, 2026; and cC 203 [,2034,1(141) and on the insta-·
bility and insig'nificance of man ('10 stato / dell'Uomo sulla scorza del
mondo I .. 1cdi poca sordida polvere', the state / of Man on the crust of
the world I ... 1is of mere sordid dust, 2035).
Roma 1950. /)i(J,l"io ends with a powerful contrast between his previ-
ous, introverted experience of time ,md space and that of the city:
Q!-ICS[Omuovermi ... in ~iorni llIui fuori
daltcmpo chc parcva dcdieato
a me, scnza ritorni c senza soste,
spazio tutlo colmo del mio stato,
quasi un'estensione della vita
mia, del mio calore, dclmio corpo...
c s'c inrerrotlo... Sono in un altro tempo,
un tcmpo chc dispone i suoi maltini
in qucsta straua ehe io ~uanlo, ignoto,
in questa gente frutto d'altra storia ... ('495)
(My moving ahout ... in days quite outside / of a time that seemed dedicated
/ to mc, with no returns, no pauscs, / a spaee liIleu up with my state, / almost
an extension of my / life, my heat, my bouy... / and it has been cut off .. I am
in another time, / a time that displays its mornings / in this street that I am
watching, unknown, / in this people the fruit of another history... )
5 On the imagery of ripeness and maturity here, sce Oldcorn, 1<)80-1, 1111, ,md Oil
or
l'asolini's general 'rejectioIl maturity', sec Fortini, IC)<)3, 182-91; Santa to, H)80, 17(>-77.
A VISION OF HISTORY 119
The other history, both traumatic and hopeful, in which the self is
now immersed lies at the heart of Ceneri, whose exploration of the role
of the subject in history makes it a high point of what Moravia called
Pasolini's 'poesia civile di sinistra' (civic poetry of the left) (perrarotti,
1977; Moravia, 1980).
Running through Ceneri arc two complementary strands of history,
conjoined by imagery of light, and carried by the parallel depiction of
the subproletariat and the poet in relation to them. The first two poems,
'I} Appennino' and 'IJ canto popolare', each emphasize onc of the
strands. In the fi)fIner, the geographical sweep {(mnd in 'L'ltalia'
(L'usigrlO/o, J7<)-91) is supplemented by architectural and sculptural
emblems-in particular the 'palpebre chi use' (closed eyelids) ofJacopo
delhl (tuercia's funeral monument t(lr I1aria del Carretto in Lucca. 6
The poem equates the elusive yet permanent hmdscape and people of
central Italy with those. on the banks of the Aniene in the 'borgate' .
. rime and space, but als.\I the power of institutionalized history, work to
exclude these zones, as symholized in Rome hy the Church:
Un escreilo aeClIl1palo nell'allesa
di I:trsi crisliano nella cristiana
citl;\, oceupa ulla marcila dislesa
d'crha sozza nell'aceesa campa~na:
scendcre aneh 'e~li dent 1'0 la hor~hese
luce spent (I X1)7
(i\n army camped wail ill~ / 10 hewllw (:hrisl ian in Ihe (:hrisl ian / city, oeell-
pies a roUen expanse / / oflihhy (!;rass in lhe vivid coulllry: / he loo hopes to
descend inlo / Ihe hour~cois Ii~hl)
From early ill ClIsigflO/O, ima~ery of Christianity had been closely tied
to imag'ery onig·ht. The \·wo sClluences 'J .'usignolo' and 'J ,a Chiesa' arc
linked by a continllin~ epigraph adapted from John I: S: '10 non sono la
luce I .. ·1 ma sono per render testimonianza alia luce' (1 am not the light
I .. ·1 hut I am come to bear witness to the light, 298, J04). Imagery of
light recurs frequently in the early devotional pieces (,La passione V'
(294); 'J .'usignolo III' (2<)<»; 'Alba' (J0<); '))avide' (Jl I» where it rep-
resents grace and revelation, but also a magical quality ofthe landscape.
In Cet/cri, the associations arc expanded and corrupted to include the
light of reason, and hence a bourgeois vision of history, as in John J: 19
(, SantalO, J(jlio, IsH, traces a source in the 'chillsc palpcbrc' of Ungarctti's 'Memori,\
d'Ofclia d' Alh,l' (Sentimento de/tempo). On l'asolini and Ungaretti, sec Siciliano, 1981b.
7 On the nOlion of'altesa', sce Ch. 2 §I.
used by Leopardi in 'La ginestra'. Cut off from light like I1aria's eyes,
the army becomes an ironic reincarnation of Italy itself (']acopo con
Ilaria scolpi l'ltalia', ]acopo sculpted Italy with Ilaria, 177), but only by
remaining prehuman, and silent:
[ognuno J chiude nell'ineoscienza
le palpebre, si perde in un popolo
il cui clamore non cche silenzio (184)8
([each onc.! closes in their unconsciousness / their eyelids, is lost in a people /
whose clamour is nothing but silence)
'11 canto popolare' moves the imagery of light and history towards a
more active, but also more idealist notion. Here, popular song is thc
vessel tilr an essential 'race-memory', a history from which the alien-
ated bourgeois poet is excluded:
non abbiamo nozione
vera di ehi cparLccipe alia storia
solo per orale, ma~iea esperiellza;
e vive purn, non oltre la memoria
della generazione in cui presenza
della vila c la sua vim perentoria. (186)
(we have no true notion / oft-hose who participate in history / only throu~h
oral, magic experience; / and livc pure, nol beyond the memory / of t he gell-
eration in whose presence / oflife is their peremptory life.)
The 'ragazzo del po polo che cantl a I' (singing boy of the people) em-
hodies the constant renewal of the world, which transcends dialectical
renewal:
Nella lua ineoseienz,j c la coscienza
che in le la sloria vuole I.. ·1
E ormai, lilrse, altra scelta non ha
che dare alia sua ansia di gi ustizia
la forza dell a tua fclicil,i,
e alia luee di un lempo ehe inizia
la luce di chi cci(J che non sa. (188)
(In your unconsciousness is the consciousness / that within you history wants
[ ... j / And now, perhaps, he has no other choice / but to give to his desire for
H The image of noise a.~ a marker ofpre-linguistie and hence af prehistoric vitality recurs ill
'Recit'-'Meridionali voci, risa di vecchia gente f hanno aHora un clamore <;he la slOria non
sente' (Southern voices, old people's laughs I have then a clamour that history cannot hear,
238)-and in 'Le eeneri di Gramsci'-'quesra I ronzante pausa in cui la vira lace' (this I
buzzing pause in which life falls silent, 233). Ct: 'La ricchezza', 428--9.
justice / the force of your happiness, / and to the light of a time that is begin-
ning / the light of he who is that which does not know.)
Pasolini challenges the Marxian rejection of the subproletariat by sug-

gesting that there is a fc)rce beyond political consciousness, within the
vitality of the 'borgate', which potentially liberates another history.
History as both a force fClr materialist progress and a vehicle of bour-
geois hegemony is a neg'ative and hostile agency which overcomes the
individual agent:
come io possiedo la storia
essa mi possiede; ne sono illllminato:
mol a ehe serve la IlIee?
('I.e eeneri di (iramsei', nH-l))
(as I possess history / it possesses me; I am lit up by it / / but what lIse is the
light?)
'L'umile ltalia' devclops the geographical sweep of'!.'Appennino'

by till\owing lhe perspective of swal\ows in night over Italy. Flight
opens up new mythical perspec1"ivl's Oil time, where history and pre-
hislory arc synthesized:
Ah, non c ilte1l1po ddla slOria I ... 1
non sono questi gli aiti, im:olori
luoghi di una patria divelluta
coscienZ;l oltre la memoria.
Ma dove meglio rieonoseerli
ehe in qllesti antiehissimi ineami
in cui sono pill vil:ini? Fossili
(I'un 'esistenza ehe ai eom1l10ssi
oel:hi, non si svda, si eanta? (zoX)
(Ah, this is not the time of'history I ... 1/ these arc not the high, colourless /
places oLl nation heeome / consl:iollsness heyond memory. / But where better
to rel:ognize them / than in these most aneienr enchantments / in whil:h they
arc most near? Fossils / of an existence whil:h to emotional/eyes, is not un-
veiled, hut is sung?)
Thc link bctween poctry, thc 'canto popolarc' of the boy above, and the
'(in)canto' of the swallows is clear. All arc catalysts for the intuition of a
sublime history.
The swallows-'umilissima voce / dell'umile Italia' (humblest
voice / of humble Italy) (207)-also pick up on the sense of national
identity in 'L' Appennino', which is a significant vessel of subjectivity in
histary.9 Rome stands emblematically for the State, as well as for the
Church:
impotcntc
la Roma del poterc ne sente,
ancora plcbe, I'ansia nazionale (206)
(impotent / the Rome of the powerful feels, / still plehean, its desire of nation)
The self creates a negative other to the (bourgeois, historical) centre of
the state, by positioning the marginalunderclasses amI their language
as a secondary centre for the c1aboration of identity. The declaration in
'11 pianto della scavatrice', 'ero al centro del mondo' (J was at the centre
of the world, 24X), invokes just such an alternative centre, as does the
oblique perspective on the hidden landscapes of haly ('il ventre
campestre d'ltalia', the rustic belly or Italy, RcIiKiorll:, 42]) in several
poems.
The technique creates tension through the simultaneous aHempt to
define the subject by exclusion li·om t·he centre ot"power, and to posit an
authentic essence ofltaly, marginalized by accidents of history. Ilence
in Rosa, wc find both 'vera Italia, t"uori dalle tenebre' (true Italy, 011101'
the dark, (77) and 'Italia vera, nazione / a me COS) lontana' (tTue Italy, a
nation / so far away from mc, 7X5; cL 7()O-]). An idea of Italy--its
centre and margins, its surElCe power and essence----{.Ievelops later into
a more general idea of national, or even racial identity:
Chi non la conoscer'l, lJlIesta sllpcrstile terra,
cOllie ci pold capire?
(Religiollc, 544)
(Who will not" know it, this survivinl{ land, / how will they lIndersland liS')
la blalit" Ji essere l:sislellza
inalienabile, razza (Rosa, 637)
(the Lttalily ofbl:ing inalienahk / existence, race)
And the potential ti)1" collective identillcation will soon be transferred to

a mythologized Africa or Third World. 10 But the phase of Pasolini's
I) The na"ive euphoria of these carly, sdl~projcctiIl~ eIlwlIntcrs with the nation is recalled
in 'Poeta delle ccncri' (2064): 'Mi p,lrcva chc 1'lIalia, la SU,I dcscrizionc e il suo destino, /
dipen<lesse <la quello che io ne scrivevo, / in quei vcrsi intri,i di realt,; immediata, / nOli pill
nostal~ica' (It seemed to me that Italy, ils description and its dcstiny, / <lcpcndcd on what I
wrote ofi!, / inlhose lines moistened with inunc<lialc re'ltily, / no IOIl~er nostal~ic)_
10 There is also ,In elusive strand ofima~ery "fEu rope, which be~ills in the' IClitl1"i~c' oflhe
'Acadcmiuta', hecomes a calegory I,)r i<lcnlilicalion in thc pocm 'Europ'I' (/),,/ Dillr;o
(H)4S-47), 1435-41), ami reapp",lr, in 'La Guinea', 'LI reall,\', 'l,racle' and 'I :alba Illcrid-
ionalc', in Rm'u, as a counterpoint to.1 \'i~ion of Afric:l.
A VISION OF HISTORY 12 3
vision of Italian national identity ends with the damning 'Alla mia
nazione' (Religione, 555), where Italy is stripped of all meaning and
existence:
ecosa sei? 1... 1
Proprio perchc tu sei esistita, ora non esisti,
proprio perchc filsti cosciente, sei incosciente. [... 1
Sprofonda in queslo IUo hel marc, Iihera il mondo.
(and whal are you? I.. .11 JUSI because you have existed, now you don't exist, I
just hecause you were conscious, you are ullconscious. / [ ... 1 Sink into this
your bcaUI·iful sea, free Ihe world.)
To return to Cl'IIl'ri, 'Picasso' (IH()-<)7) and 'Le ceneri di Gramsei'

(222-35) deal more directly with the position of the subject in relation
to lin·ces orhisfory. The ligure or Picasso partakes ofthe 'furia di capire'
(fury 10 undersland) which was so imporlanl filr the autobiographical
project above, and also fulfils the Johannine role of witness to the
'seandalo c ft~sla' (scandal and celebration) of I he world he portrays
( I<}o-- 1), and in these aspecls I he art ist and poel coincide in their search
lilr 'questo esprimersi che remle I alia lllce I... Ila nostr<l confusione'
(this sdl:·expression that gives I to the light I ... 1 our confusion)
(I <)J 4). But Picasso errs from a truly popular art when he substitutes
the time of his own imaginat ion lill· fhe time orthe noise of the 'fesle', of
the city:
esn'
Ira il populo e d;1 inunlelllpo inesistenle:
finlo, coi mczzi slessi della vecchia slessa
sua bnlasia·l· .. 1 i\ssenle
cda qui il popolo: il cui hrusio lace
in quesle tele, in l\uesll, sale, quanto
fuori esplode (dice per le placide
strade fCstive, in Ull eOIllUlle canto
ch'ell1Jlie rioni e cieli, horghi e v;ll1i
lungo I'halia, I .. ·1
(1(15--6; see Asor Rosa, 1()6(), ]I)J; Siti, 11)80,207-1])
(he moves away / from the people and enters into a non-existent time: I false,
with the very means of his same old 11 imagination. l... 1The people / / are
ahsent from here: 1heir murmur falls silent I in these canvases, in these
rooms, as / outside it joyously explodes in the placid 1/ festive streets, in a
common song / that fills quarters and skies, villages and valleys I throughout
Italy, l· .. J)
This passage repeats in brief the visual and aural picture of the city and
its quality of time first sketched in Roma 1950. Diario. 'Le ceneri di
Gramsci' uses similar imagery of light and noise, ending with a tragic
acknowledgement of the self trapped in bourgeois history, despite his
inclination towards 'incoscienza', and despite the absence of myth and
renewal from that history:
io, col cuore cosciente
di chi soltanto nella storia ha vita,
potro mai piu con pura passione operare,
se so ehe la nostra storia cfin ita? (235)
(I, with the conscious heart / / of someone who only has life within history, /
will 1 ever be able to function with pure passion / if! know that our history has
ended?)
The cry of the digger in '11 pian to della scavatrice' provides the
crowning image of the pain and tragedy of history in Ccncri. I I The
triumphant BildunKsroman of the early sections placcd the poct at
the centre of the history of the margins, but the cry of the machine
reawakens the tragic nature of historical changc:
Pian~e cic) chc ha
fine e ricomincia·l· .. 1
Pian~e Cill che muta, anche
per farsi mi~liore. I.a luce
del futuro non cessa un solo istante
di lCrirci (262-3)
(That which comes to an / cnd and bc~ins a~ain wceps. [... 1 / / That which
changes, even / to improve itself; weeps. The li~ht / of the future does not let
ofT for a moment / / from wounding us)
Linear history-the transformation of the past into the fut ure-

undermines the aspiration to a mythical history derived from the vital
I I The 'pianto' is aoother image, parallel to rh.1t of noise already nOled ,.hove, that ()ri~in
ates in L'wigno/(1 and Mcg/io and survives lrans/flrmed in the new civic poetry. Sce c.g.
'Corots' ([ S[8-[9), '1IIujar' (Meg/io, (4), the section '11 pian to della rosa' U.'U.,igllll/O) ,md the
plaqucttc J pianti. In the violence of the 'pianto della scavatrice', echoing the 'Iatrato' (hark-
ing) of'Reeit' (239), there arc already seeds of its next incarnation in the 'urlo della Magn,mi'
(Magnani's cry) in 'La ricchczza' (Rdigifmc, 465), which soon becomes the poet's own: 'Avrci
voluto urlare, eero muro' (I wanted to cry,.md I was silent, 494), and then theshollt ('gridare')
of ' La rabbia' (582), the 'urlo' of ' La reaiti' (Rosa, 647), and the incoherent 'ecolalia' of
Trasumallar (895). Sce also Teoyema, I<J9-200. Another parallel aural sequence can he traced
from the bird-songs and popular songs of Meglio and 11 mnto popo/are to the third-world music
of Rosa and Trasumanar, and the sublime voice of Maria Callas in Tmsumanar.
force and the 'luce poetica' of the underclasses. But linear history con-
tains its own non-nostalgic, prospective force, figured here in the topos
ofhope-'illoro [gli operai] rosso straccio di speranza' ([the workers']
red rag of hope, 263)-as it was in 'Le ceneri': 'Come i poveri povero, mi
attacco / come loro a umilianti speranze' (Poor like the poor, I cling on /
like them to humiliating hopes, 228; Asor Rosa, 1969,372).
The cntry into history, explored as a category between 'coscienza'
and 'incoscicnza' in Cene1"i, is accompanied by on-going treatments of
secondary thcmes already f()Und in L'usiKn%. The Church, and its
idcological cognate, the Party, arc prominent in 'Una polcmica in versi'
and 'Terra di lavoro' (264-78), written during the year of crisis in Soviet
and European Communism, 1956. These poems, together with
'Comizio' and 'Rccit'-judged by many critics to be the weakest in the
collcdion 12-show thc medium of poetry being dcploycd a:s discourse
(Benvcniste, 11)66,242), intcrvening in immediate political issues, and
.tddressing specific interlocutors (Agosti, 11)82; Fortini, 11)93, 154-5).
Poetry becomes critique, not by preduding the subjective, but by ex-
ploit ing its dialogic potential. Thc polemical poems and epigrams of
Rdi.l!:ill1u:, ,lIld the 'poesie-intcrvcnti' orthe 11)60s take thcir start from
here.
In Rcligi()1U:, 'I ,a ricchezza' brings together all the topoi of eivic
poctry in a narrative sequence. Through Iiteml and metaphorical
imagery oC light emblazon cd on another Renaissance icon (Piero della
Francesca's '1 ,egend of the True Cross'), an associative transfer occurs
-from the aest hetic light of thc ti'cscos to thc real light that surrounds
the boys who witness them (441). The near-revelatory quality of the
transfer of\i[!,'ht reinti))'Ces the subseqllent annunciation of a new order
sprung from the 'rifiuti del mondo' (refuse ofthe world):
Ilas!:e
un nuovo mondo: n<ls!:ollo leggi nuove
dove non c'c piu Icgge; nasee un nuovo
(more dove onore cil disonore... (453)
(a new world / is horn: new laws arc born.1 where there is no longer law; a new I
honour is horn where honoUl' is dishonour... )
This figure of paradox is sustained throughout, becoming the basis for

the mythical history in which the subproletariat live, between pre-
history and the new order:
12 ASOT Rosa, 11/)9,4°6-9; FcrTcni, 1974, 287-SS; Sant'lto, 1980, '74, 180. Rinaldi, 1982,
117-23 is more positive,
E come se Roma 0 il mondo avesse inizio

in questa vccchia sera, in questi odori
millenari (461)
(And as if Rome or the world had begun! in this old evening, in these millen-
nial! perfumes)
And again, as in Ceneri, the subject is cast in a dual role, as witness and
agent (Friedrich, 1982,34): 'Testimone e partecipe di questa I bassczza
e miseria' (Witness and player in this I baseness and poverty, 4(1). He
is positioned between a contiguity underscored by separation ('I j
osservo qllesti llomini, educati I ad altra vita che la mia: ti-utti I d'una
stc)J'ia tanto diversa', I observe them, these men, educated I for a life
other than mine: fruit! of a history so very different, 4(3), and a simil-
arity which the subject promotes amI desires:
Al raHinato e al sOt\oprolctario spetta
la s\essa ordinazione gerarehiea
dei senlimenti: enlrambi fuori dalla storia
(464; Asor Rosa, I 9()(), 395-'(jl>, Rinaldi, [()lh, 100--J)
(To the man of rclinement and the suhproletarian is due! the same hierareh
ieal order! of reelings: hot h outsillc history)
The desire ti>r 'wealth' is equivalent in both, as is the quality or obsess-

ive hope-'estetizzante, in me, in essi anarchica' (aestheticizing, in mc,
in them anarchic, 4(4)-which ddies the limits or their realily, allll is
hence transgressive. The Irace of ideology in Ihe imagery of hope,
already seen in Cmeri, draws a link between this present and I he myth-
history of the Resistance, evoked by Rossellini's iconoclastic master-
piece RI/ma (illd aj>erta. Anna Magnani's cry of despair as she is shol
down by the Germans is an emblem not only of an historical moment,
hut of a poetry which precisely reactivates such history in order to
transform the present: it is emblematic of the subjective expression of
history through art:
Q!-Iasi emblema ormai, I'urlo della Magnani,
sotto le ciocche disonlinatamente assolute,
risuona nelle disperale panoramiehe,
e nelle sue ocehial"C vive e mutc
si addensa il senso della tragedia.
E' li ehe si dissolve e si mutila
il prcsente, c assorda il canto degli aedi. (465-6)
(Almost an emblem now, Magnani's cry, ! beneath her messily absolute locks, !
rings out in the desperate panning shots, / and in her living, silent looks / the
sense ofthe tragedy is crystallized. / It is there that the present dissolves and is
mutilated, / and deafens the song of the poets.)
The recollection centres once again on imagery oflight, from the flick-
ering screen ('le immagini assolate', the sun-drenched images) to the
mystical light of innocence ('cd era pura luce', and it was pure light) to
ideolog;ical enlightenment which encompasses consciousness and hope
in a precarious vision of future salvation-cum-revolution:
Q~lclla lucc era speranza di g'iustizia I ... 1
I ,a Iuce csempre ug'uale ad altra luee.
Poi varit'l: da luee divenh) im:erta alba I· .. \
Nclla sloria la gillstizia fll coscienza
d'una umana divisione di rieehezza,
e la sJleranza ehhc nuova luce. (47 2 " J)
(That lig'hl was hope ofjllslice I ... 1/ I ,igohl is always the same as olher light. /
And then il changed: /i-omlight il hecame uncertain dawn I ... 1 / In history
jUsl ice hecame consciousness / or a human divison of wealth, / and hope look
on new light.)
Only at the point or entry into consciousness and history, where the
transit ional, sllspended statlls or heing; in time produces a dynamic of
prospcct ive t rans/(mllation, is resistance possible. Other motifs of this
period arc also developed to suggest an historical dynamic of trans-
j()rmation, rdig'ured in later poetry in the obsessively provisional
nat ure of poctic (()rlll. Survival ('sopravvivenza'), f(u' example, indic-
ates a residue of past plenitudc, but also a separation fi"om full, base
vitality. The past, or prehistory, survives as a neg'at ive, immanent power
that revitalizes, hut also dissolves the present. 13 And in 'A un ragazzo'
knowledge marks a transitional or transvcrsal relation with history. The
boy-the young Bernardo Berlolucci-is precluded from knowledge
and hence history, hllltends with curiosity towards a knowledge of his-
tory which will destroy his innocence, as the t()rce of history had de-
stroyed Pasolini's brother Guido. The poet is caught between his desire
to enlighten the boy and the impossihility of knowledge without death.
The hope and trauma of the encounter with the 'light' of history
hegun in H)50 continues to determine the contours of Religione. Its
second and third sections, however, look /()rward to crucial changes
'.1 Imagery of~;urvival occurs in eweri, 233; Rtligilme, 517, 544; Rosa, 6011, 622; and the
poem-song writlen I',r Marityn MolUoc in the film I,ll rabbill, which is a paean to her 'hcllczza
sopravvi>Sllta dal mondo anlico' (heauty survived ('rom antiquity, 'Voee in pocsia', in Dc
Giusti, 197<), 122; 'l\hrilyn', Bz, 1 77o-z 1 1771 l); sec also VO{gll/"'e!lIqU;II, 31.
in the vision of history in Rosa and in Trasumanar. The epigrams envis-

age a brutal, fascistic new era ('Ai rcdattori di "Officina" " 534; 'A
Bertolucci', 543; 'A Bompiani', 554) and a schism between the self and
his peers ('Ad alcuni radicali', 527; 'Ai letterati contemporanei', 543).
They are biographically prophetic and poetically biunt, parading
poetry's dependence on institutions of power and commodification,
whether State, Church or Party. The ideological problems of writing
under such conditions are explored in further depth in both 'In morte
del realismo' (557-64) and 'La reazione stilistica' (569-72), where the
lost cause of realism is mourned as 'qucllo stile [che] vo\cva darvi la
storia' (that style [whichJ wanted to give you history, 561). The 'Poesie
incivili' develop this historical pessimism in more substantial poetic
form and language. For the first time in Pasolini's poetry, we find the
term 'nuovo capitale' (new capital):
non so se posso tornare I· .. J
all'ombra ui una nuova lotta, e ai soruiui
inviri uel nuovo eapilalc, gi,' paurone
('AI sole', 574-75)
(I uon't know if! can return I... 1/ to the shadow ofa new struggle, and to the
soruid / invitations of new capi!;ll, already in charge)
E Ila massal s'assesta I., dove il Nuovo Capitalc vuole.
('11 glicine', 51)1)
(And 1the mass 1is put in order wherever New Capital wants it.)
Also for the first time, the successor to the 'borgate' as tenor of the im-
manent light of his vision of history, which will permeate Pasolini's
work from the early 1960s until his death, is evoked at the end of
'Frammento alia morte':
E ora ... ah, il deserto assoruato
dal venlO, 10 slllpendo e immonuo
sole dell'Africa che illumina il momlo.
Africa! Unica mia
alternativa .............. .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (580 )'4
(And now... ah, the desert ueafened / by the wind, the wonderful and filthy /
sun of Africa that lights lip the world, / / Africa! My only / alternative)
'4 Passing re/erences to Africa arc to be found earlier (Cenai, 205,241); Rehii(me, 16<).
'FrammeIlto alia morte' is contemporary with Pasolini's preface to the 1961 anthology
Lelteratura negra (De Andrade, 1()61), where he compares black poetry to poetry of the
Resistance. See Salinari, 1967,374-7.
A VISION OF HISTORY I29
Here and in Rosa, Africa betokens a profound alienation from the iden-
tity of nco-capitalist Italy. It is a symbolic space, at various stages filled
by Asia, Israel, Latin America, even Australia (Nu()va, 1084), embody-
ing the increasingly distorted search for the marginal Other upon
which to fix an idea of collective identification. 15
These glimmers of future directions modulate the very idea of his-
tory itself The new era entails a reactionary decay oflanguage, reason
and hope. The future (of history) is turned in on itself:
No, la storia
che sad non e come quella che e stata.
Non consente giuuizi, non eonsente ordini,
e ]'eahu irrealizzata.
('1,01 reazonie stilistica', 571)
(No, thc history / to come is not like (hat already gone. / It does not allows
jud~ement, it does not allow orders, / it is reality maue unreal.)
The schismatic rapport between the self and the new unreal real-
ity bursts to the /(lre in the climax to the book, '11 glicine', where the
materialist vision of history cracks ('I mi sento vittima] d'una storia
apocalittica I non di qllesta storia', II feel a victim Iof an apocalyptic his-
tory I not of this hiSl'ory, SR7), and ncw guides arc needed:
Vico, 0 (:roce, 0 I,'n:ud, mi soccorrono,
Illa con la sola sug~es( ione
delmi(o, dclla scienza, nel!;, mia abulia.
Non Marx. (5HH)
(Vico or Croce 01' Freud help me / hu( only with (heir sll~gestion / of myth, of
science, in my indecision. / No( Marx.)
The daunting ahyss between the self and history precludes the possibil-
ity of positional harmony or synthesis between the two amI instead only
of/ers disharmony as a possible recourse:
(Ta il corpo e la storia, c'e questa
Illllsicalit'l che stona,

stupcmla, in cui cib ch'e finito
e ci() che comincia e uguale, e rcsta
tale nei sccoli: uato dcIl'esistcnza. (58!!)
15 Sce Arhasino, "171,355, where Pasolini explains his lIse of the tcrm Handling ,IS 'un
selllllll ~eo~ratico per comprendervi la tisicitit dei "re~ni di I,nne", il felOre da pecora del
mondo che man~i" i slloi prodoni (il riICrimento al I,mo storico I .. J cmarginale e easualc), (a
~eographical emhlem to take in the physicality of the 'realms of hunger', the sheep's stcnch of
the world that cats its products (the reference to historical events [. .1 is marginal amI
13° POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS
(Between the body and history, there is this / wonderful, jarring musicality, /
in which what is finished / and what is beginning is the same, and stays / the
same down the centuries: a datum of existence.)
The imagery of permanent dissonance as a marker of being ('esistenza')

sets the stage for Pasolini's widespread use of contrastive registers and
pastiche in a range oflater works, IIi by rooting it in an essential, defining
disharmony of thc self in history. 'Progetto di opere future' in Rosa
(797-8°9) deplores the impact ofthis disharmony on the politics of art:
'non ha piu senso / chc un'aristocratica, e ahi, impopolare opposizionc'
(all that now makcs sense / is an aristocratic, and alas, unpopular
opposition, S09; c( IS<)7--{)).
Rosa also develops the future-projected dynamic of 'Poesie incivili'
and transforms it into an obsessive refrain (Rinaldi, u)82, 202), a unify-
ing undercurrent of an increasingly dispersivc poetry. Various tilrmuia-
tions and metaphors arc used to express this vision of the future, but
they arc all filcused on the dynamic cusp bctween the cnd of history and
the beginning of another.
Prophecy, or pseudo-prophecy, of an apocalyptic or personal kind
is onc of the key e1emcnts of the ncw relation to history. In 'Pocma pcr
un verso di Shakespearc', history is paradoxically up-turned into
prophecy-'scienza delt. storia! Mostruosa schematicit~1 / che
prevede, di cill chc fu, ogni forma I ... 1 storia c prolCzia, / dico
tilllemente' (science of history! Monstrolls schematic liJrm / that fill"C-
secs, of that which was, every filrm I . . . 1 history is prophecy, / r say
insanely, 70(" 7 Ij). Conversely, t he events of prophecy have hccollle
history:
E la fine
del Monuo cg-i.l accaduta: I ... 1
Ah, saero Novcccnto, rcg-ionc dcl\'anima
in cui]' Apocalisse c un vecchio cvcnto! ('Poesic mondane', (,.W)
(And the cnd / ort he World has already happened: I... 1/ Ah, holy TwcIltic\h-
Century, reg-ion of the soul/where the Apoe'llypse is already old hat!)
coincidental)). See '11so 'I :uomo di Ilandullp;', 112, 1773- H4. On l"l~olilli's represelllation or
the Third World, sec Bon~ie, I!)\J I, I HH--22H.
16 This is or course only the latest sta~e in an cvolvinf( notion of pastiche, whose earliest
formulation is in the prolap;onisl'~ dream of a new Illusie in Alii impuri: 'Apportcrei delle
nuove nOlt' "slonale" r... 1nel\'altimo pill snervante e tenero della mclodia I... 1. Farei un
pastiche f;lI1tastico' (I would hring new 'jarrinp;' notes I . . . 1 at the most tender amI unnerving
moment in a melody r... 1. J would create a marvellous pastiche, /I",(/.dll mill, IOS); and cr.
I:UH/t,llllilJ,403-6.
Thus, far from heralding a return to the sacred role of the poet-prophet,
the new future brings dissolution and ridicule for the self:
io posso scrivere Temi e Treni
e anche Profezie;
da poeta civile, ah si, sempre!
('Una disperata vitalit.l, 746)
(J can write Exempla and Threnodies I and also Prophecies; I as a civic poet,
oh yes, .t1ways!)'7
Section VU of 'Una disperata vitalid' (741-4) takes the negativity to
extremes in a parable of an unborn child, tragically prescient oflife as a
prehistory of death. J jfc can only be lived in advance.
The new era and shape of history arc given several names. In
'Profczia' «()()J-9), couchcd in the mythical narrative of the invasi<in
from Africa ofhoanles led by the legendary 'Ali dagli occhi azzurri', it
is a 'nuova cristianit.'t' (new Christendom, (94); in 'Vittoria' (811-25) it
is simply 'la storia crlldelmentc nuova' (cruelly new history, 818; cr 'I.a
nllova storia', 6115- 92); in 'Poesie monuane' and 'La nuova storia',
simply modernity; in 'Poema per un verso ui Shakespeare', 'Neo-
Capitalismo' is a new 'Baro4ue Age' to t()llow the 'Classicism' of high
capitalism (710); later ill TrIlSllf/liI1Ulf, wc lind it called 'metahistory'
(1153, IIn) and in the Ml'di'il poems 'I'anesa delb rag'ione' (the wait f(H'
reason, (1)00 2; cr. McdclI itself; Pi/adc, '!i'Il/rII, 3911-40 I and pllssim).
But hy Elr the most insistent f()rmuiat ion, and perhaps t he key image of
NoSil, is 'la nllova Preistoria' (the lIew Prehistory). ,H
The term is first coined OIl t he cnd of'Poesia in f(lI'ma di rosa' ,IS an ex-
pression of the (;tilure of history to effect any real change. New lilC exists
only in potential, time collapses:
Solo chi non cnato, vive!
Vivc pcrche vivd, e (uno s'lI',i suo,
csuo, I'u suo! «()51)
(Only he who has nol hcen horn is alivc! I I Ic lives hccausc hc will livc, and
cvcrythinJ; will Ilc his, I is his, was his!)
This is the 'Nuova 1'reistoria'. It partakes of the imaginary, womb-
like imagery of Pllcsic a C'asanll, and of the primitive 'prehistorical'
countryside of Friuli, but is recast through separation and negativity.
'7 On Ihe translation oflhis pass;'gc, sce Zigaina, ")9), IH~_

IX 'Una uispcrata vitalil;\' (130) sllggcsts that 'Una nUOV;1 prcis!oria' was onc ,,('the work-
ing titles for the Rosa.
13 2 POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS
The formula recurs next in 'Pietro II' (669-82) where the figure of the
poet-Pope-martyr, in his isolation and devotion, is an emblem of a new
cycle of history: since no Pope takes the name of the first, there is no
Pietro II, just as 'la nuova preistoria' is a projection towards an imposs-
ible resolution, a repeated beginning. In 'Una disperata vitaliti' the
image forms part of the synoptic table of section VIII (746), and it is also
to be found in 'Poema per un verso di Shakespeare', 'Alba meridionalc'
and 'Progetto di opere future'. It subtends and subverts the diary form
of the collection, based on record and sequence, casting it into a half-
light of unrealized history or reality, and at the same time opening new
axes of temporal analogies, which also inform films of this period such
as La ricotla and Vangelo.
As history fades in t()rm and meaning, so modcs of historical change
also fade, and following Rosa, Pasolini's poetry increasingly offers a vital
model of poetry as praxis, rather than as discourse, as outlined in 'J jbro
libero' (986--87). Trasutnanar demonstrates as much in its disunity and
strident incoherence, but a poem from .Mu/ea, 'Callas', draws out most
clearly the philosophical nature of the crisis; the cnd of the tl ialectic,
replaced by a model of anthropological and quasi-mystical origin:
J ,e due cose furono (e sono) sempre contemporanee.
I superamenti, le sintesi! sono illllsioni l ... 11.a tesi
e I'antitesi convivono con la sintcsi: ecco
la vera trinitol dell'lIomo ne prelogico ne logico,
ma reale I.. ·1
J.a storia non c'c, dici;lmo, c'c la sostanza: che c apparizione (Il)O])
(The two things were (and are) always contemporaneous. I The overtaking-s,
the syntheses! are illusions I... 1The thesis I and the antithesis live together
with synthesis: that's It he true trinity or man, neither prelogical nor logical I
but real I... j I There is no history, lct's say, there is substance: which is appari-
tion)'9
Extensive immersion in the landscape of the Third World is a
utopian attempt to escape the pressures of the new prehistory and its
alliance with power:
I'idea del potere non ci sarebbe se non ci fosse j'idea del domani;
non solo, ma senza il domani, la coscienza non avrebbe giustilicazioni.
CaroDio,
facci vivere come gli uaelli del (iell! e i gigli dei campi.
('Preghiera su commissionc', 1\1\0)
'9 The rejection of the dialectic became a mainstay of his work: see Gardair, 1971; Arccco,
1972, 175; Bonfiglioli, 1988,9; and Fortini, 1993, I N8, who <:alls it 'his most appalling message'.
(the idea of power would not exist were it not for the idea of tomorrow; / that's
not all, for without tomorrow, consciousness would have no justification. /
Dear God, / make us live like the birds in the sky and lilies in the fields; ef.
Matthew 6: 25-34)
The vocabulary of the Apocalypse, already in some poems in the previ-

ous collection, is amplified in 'Patmos' by extensive reference to
Revelation in its violent, ironic vision of the victims of the Piazza
{'ontana bombing. This vision of another end of history ends with an-
other biblical image:
la porta della storia c una Porta Stretta
infihtrsi dentro costa una spaventosa fatiea
e'c chi rinuneia e da in giro il eulo
e chi non ei rinuneia I.. ·1
e chi vuole entrarci a tutti i costi, a gomitate ma con dignita;
ma son tulli li davanti a quella Porta. «'54)20
(the v;aLe of history is a Strait Gate / to slip inside costs a terrifying expense of
effill·t / t here arc t hose who give up and show it their arse / and those who don't
give up I ... 1 / and those who want to enter at all costs, pushing and shoving,
hut with dignity; / hut thcy arc all there hdill'e the Gate.)
The moment ofentTY into history, a thresholll offounding importance

in Pasolini's poel ic enterprise, is here reduced to anarchy anll farce. It is
no longer a journey towards a light of revelation, but a degrading, cyn-
ical sI rugglc to which al\ arc condemned.
The vocahulary of Christianity is also violently manipulated in Pius
XrI's imagined monologue, 'L'enigma di Pio XII' (~4[-50). The Pope
represents Ihc epitome of institutional religion, which has retained the
dog;mas of Llith and hope, but lost the Pauline capacity to understand
the mystical workings of Charity. Z) In this, he is seen to coincide with
the world ofthe 'nuova preistoria':
Essa c dunque Nuova J .cggc: ICdc c speranza eontano (eontilluano a contare):
la eoneretezza della earit;l c... c... perditempo... sentimentalismo (1143)
(It is thus a New J.aw: faith and hope count (they still count): the concreteness
or
of charity is ... is ... a waste time ... sentimentalism)
20 Echoes of Ihe Bihlc ,md Gide, whom Pasolini had read avidly as ,) young man (Serra,
uJ79; Schwartz, H)'J2, 22), 239), arc evident; and perhaps ofKafka's par"blc 'Before the Law',
wilh J lislory in the place of the Law. Kafka is mentioned in 'Isr"e1c' amI 'Progetto di opere
filtllfe' (Ro,l'a, 763, So6).
21 Ct: 'There arc three Ihings that his! ti)rever, faith, hope and love; and the greatest of these
is love' (r Corinthians 13: [3)·

I34 POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS
Institutions-a recurrent concern of Trasumanar-retain an ambigu-

ous relation to 'carita':
la carita le] il contrario di ogni istituzione!!

Pero la carita sa che le istituzioni sono anch'esse commoventi I· .. J
anche il Partito Comunista, in quanto Chiesa, ccommovente. (844-5)
(charity [is] the opposite of every institution!! / But charity knows that institu-
tions are moving too l ... ] / even the Communist Party, as a Church, is
moving.)
The Party, as institution and as orthodoxy, lies at the heart of

'Restaurazione di sinistra' and its variants (965-7 I), 'J !ortodossia' and
its 'Rifacimento' (990-2, 1025-7), and 'Trasumanar e org'anizzar'
(904-8), with its revolutionary, but also Pauline ideal of the collective
and institutional as a vehicle for transcendence:
Non a easo ho slIlla schicna la mano sacra c lIntllosa di San I'aolo

chc mi spingc a questo passo.
J.a contcmporaneil;. temporalc del tT<lSlIlllanar non cl'organizzar?
(,TraslImanar c organizzar', <)oX)
(It is not by chance that I feel the holy, oily hand of Saint Paul on my back / that
pushes me on to this step. / Is not the temporal eontemporariness oftransccnd·
ence organization?)
All reiterate the integration of apparently revolutionary and subversive

movements into the structurcs of institutions, and search lil\" possible
compatibility between transcendent and institutionalized history.
These poems form the basis filr the expression in poetry of Pasolini's
deeply ambivalent encounter with the J<)6S student movements, and
the 'autunno caldo' of 1969. The dominant mode o("lhat encoulll"er was
as much subjective and passionate as ideological, silH:e tilr Pasolini it
was played out as a confrontation between himself as 'Either' and the
'sons' who opposed him (sce Ch. 7), hut as such, it was also another liv-
ingout ofthe competing visions ofsclfand history which subtend all his
poetry.
Nuova represents a final and more pragmatic shift in the incidence
of history in Pasolini's poetry. The key historical image and dynamic
is here of return that at once destroys the language and idiom of M egfio
by rewriting it to oblivion, and also facilitates a small-scale, but open
vision of future change following this tabula rasa. In the rewritten
Meg/io, focus is very much on the dynamic rather than the cnd point of
returning:
i no plans parse che chel mond a no'l torna pi,
ma i plans parse che iI so torn a al efinit.
('Ciant dol li ciampanis', 1084)
(I do not cry hccause that world will not return, / but I cry because its return-
ing is at an cnd.)
In ''}'ornant oil pais', the final three variant versions of the third section
arc a catalogue of patterns of return, from the nostalgia for return in the
fifth and final variant ('e a no a ciatat pi nuja / pi dois di chcl torna', and
he has never f(mnd anything / as sweet as that returning, 1083) to the
confession that return is impossible as 'A mi vevin puartat / via prima
di nassi' (They had carried me / away belt)re being born, '(tuarta vari-
ante', IORz) to the twisting paradoxes of the third variant:
Par un ch'al ama il mond
ta la timua chc il limp
al ghi;, dat, cu'l torn;,
scmpri cunp;,in, muri
v(lul Jizi picnlilu.
(:onscrvalu CllSS!,
v('nll d izi savl,j
di podcj sempri torn.!,
tal soziru di mu;lrt. (1011.1)
(For hc who lovcs t he world / in the fin'm that time / has given it, with return-
ing / always accompanying lugua1c a se stesso I, to die / means lusing it. / Tt)
keep it thus, / mcans to know / he can always return / in his death turn.)
Ret urn is predicated on a dynamic of death that is at once innocent and

destructive. It has lost its meaning, and is now associated with a time
which is not in motion:
No hisugna m(')visi
par torn;,.
(:ui ch 'al si minI!; si m('mf par na strada (lreta
e sensa lin. I.. ·1
La seconda fi)rma dal timp a Csensa fin.
('Ciants di un muart', 1114)
(There is nu need to muve / tu return. / I le whu moves, muves along a straight
road / without cnd. / I... .1 / The second tiJrm of time has no cnd.)
Indeed, the refrain which links the third part of ' Torn ant al pais' to its
first and second variant is 'il timp a no'l si mouf' ('time does not move').
Static time, imbued with the possibility of return, is at once consolatory
and hostile: '11 pi gran dolour / al era la pi granda / consolassion' (the

greatest pain / was the greatest / consolation, 1081). But present, act-
ive time, by contrast, is now only the destructive time of modernity
attacked in the 'scritti corsari':
da dcis mil iins ti er is
coma ch'al ,\ da essi un zovin:
altris dcis ains, e ogni misteri al ccambik
(,David (Terza Variante)" 1075)22
(for ten thousand years you were! like a young man should he: ! another ten
years, and every mystery has changed.)
The anthropological chang·e pen:eived hy Pa~olini in his final three

years is also at the heart ofthe final section ofNullva, 'Tetro entusiasmo'.
The poems arc still weapons [or political critique, in polemic with the
PCI and its historic compromise with power, and with consumerist
values-hut: in a more lucid and studiedly simple manner and /()rm
than 'J'rasumanar. lIere return is a political necessity, despite the
dangers of nostalgia: 'I plans un mond mwlrt. / Ma i no soj mU,lrt jo ch'i
lu plans' (l mourn a dead world. / But I who mourn it am not dead,
'Significato del rim pian to' , I J 53):
abbiamo IiItto allL:he un alt ro sha~lio.
Ahhiamo creduto che '-Iuest!) camhiamento
dovesse essere tulta la lluova storia.
lnveee grazie a I )io si pui) tornare
indietTo. Anzi, si dew tornare
indietTo. ("57)
(we made another mistake too. ! We thought that this change! / oughl to he
the whole new hislOry. / Instead, l hank (iod we ean go / baek. Indeed, we must
go! hack.)
Transt()rmation through return is possihle, amI indeed error is itself a

f()[ce t()J· change: 'Storia, Lt che flcciamo / ancora un altro sbaglio... '
(History, make us make / yet another mistake ... , II57).2J The two
prose pieces 'Appunto per una poesia in lappone' (1159-.60) and
'Appunto per una poesia in terrone' (I 1fi4-5) rcpeat the same insight:
'bisogna rijiutare III "sviluppo" , (me must reject 'development); 'hisogned
22 er the denial ofretum and nostalgia in the 'Ahiura dall" "Trilogia della vit,," ',LI,71-()
(73)·
2] Cf. 'E' all'errore / che io vi spingo, al rcligioso / errore' (it is to error / that I urge you,
to religious / error, 'Una polemica in versi', Cener;, 269).
tornare indietro a ricominciare daccapo' (we must turn around and go
hack to begin all ovcr again).
In one sense at least, thcn, thc 'Scconda forma della Meglio giovenlzl'
is not a totally pessimistic annihilation of the poetic origin and history
of the self, as is often claimed. If the poems which remake Meglio
attcmpt and t;til to discover a tenable role for nostalgia and return, and
hence record a fracture hetween history as iueal cycle and history as
material progress, that failure seems nevertheless to provide the pre-
mise t()r another synthesis hetween history and return in 'Tetro entusi-
asmo', through the crllsauing voice of renewed polemical critique. 24
2+ On Nu(}l'II as panllliJ.\"11l.lIic {ill' Lhe whole Irajcclory of Pasolini's work, scc Fricdrich,
II11l2, :17; Schrawy, II)XS·
6
'Un folie identijicarsi ':
Figuring the Self
The founding figure in the gallery of figures of identification in

Pasolini's poetry is Narcissus, who embodies a pure self-con,templation
which fails to break out ofthe limits of reflexivity. I Its prototype is to be
found in a 1941 poem '11 flauto magico' (I,mere, i. 29-3'), in which a
'piper' narrates to himself ('f;mciullo adulto', boy adult,), and to the
train of children whom he leads out of childhood, his nostalgia filr his
own 'violent and sensual' lost childhood, rc-evoked by the enchanting
music of his pipe (Ct: Teorema, (3). In Ml'glio ('Poesie a Casarsa'; 'Suite
furlana') and, perhaps more surprisingly, I,'usignolo ('11 pianto della
rosa' and various othcrs), Narcissus is constantly recast in evolving pat-
terns of associative imagery, starting from the beguiling second poem or
Meglio, 'IJ nini muart':
Sera imh'lriumitia, tal filss'll
a eres I'aga, na fcmina plena
a ciamina pal ciamp,
Jo ti recllanli, Narcis, ti vcvis il col('nlr
da la sera, quamlli ciampanis
a sunin di llIU,lrt. (J 4)
(Shimmering [luminosa[" evening, in the ~'ully / the W,lIer grows, a prq?,"n;lnt
woman / walks through the field. // ] rememher you, Narcissus, you had the
colour / of the evening, whcn the bclls / ring out fi)J" the dead.)
Narcissus is established here as the tilCUS ofa network or archetypal ele-

ments in Pasolini's fo'riulan landscape: the peculiar evening light, water,
the fertile and natural interaction between woman and nature, the
I On Narcissus in literature, sec Vinge, 1<)(,7; and on P,lsolini's use of it Asor Rosa, [()fill,
J65-70; David, [(nO, 556-62; Rinaldi, 19H2, 9, 35-·P; San taW, 19Ho. I J --I], 56. 1l3-43·
2 Pasolini was very taken with th~ word 'imharlumida' and used various Italian won.\s to
capture it: see versions of 'IInini mUilrt' (HI, 14, 1'92), '0 me donzc\' (HI, '7. 1 H}S) ;md
Lellere, i. 88.
FIGURING THE SELF 139
figure of the boy, the mechanisms of memory and the ritual, Christian-
cum-animistic vision of death.
These clements recur obsessively in the rest of the book. Almost
every poem, for example, is populated with a variation on the boy
figure: the proliferating lexicon of terms to denote the boy-Narcissus
includes 'nini' and also 'fantassut' (15), 'donzcl' (17), 'bicl fi' (18), 'frut'
(20), 'zc>vin' (21), 'sorand' (36), and 'zovinut' (1530). Furthermore, the
fluidity and sexual indeterminacy of the landscape allows the figure to
merge and overlap with feminine figures whose archetype, the child-
mother, becomes the poet's most intimate interlocutor (Asor Rosa,
HjCJ(), 361-4). A young girl ('fantassuta') appears in 'Tornant al pais'
(22), and 'A Icluja In' introd lIces the figure ofthe child-mother: 'to mari
tal sorcli / a tornava fruta' (in the sun your mother / turned back into a
girl, 30). 'Romancerillo' (37--<) g·ivcs a voice to the mother. 'J ,a domenia
uliva' (41-50) splits her inlo 'mother' and 'girl-mother', each in dia-
logue with the 'son'. The dialogue between them not only interweaves
the Iwo mother-figures, but also conllates the seasonal cycle of nature,
embodied by Ihe olive·selling girl, with the liturgical cycle marked by
Eastt.:r Sunday. Pret.:isely the same synthesis of nature and peasant cul-
lure with religious ritual is to he t(mnd in 'J ,a messa', 'I,'annunciazione'
and 'I ,itania' U,'usigl/ofo, 301), 313-1 X), where the 'madre-fanciulla'
lig·urt.: slips into the iconogTaphy amI litany of the Virgin Mary.·~ But
such slippage is always anchored in the sell"-projected figure of the son
or hoy: in 'I.a domcnia uliva', his obsessive introversion clearly evokes
the ligUIT of Narcissus:
1<'1' .10 i no SOli di nillls!
Pienllll t;\ la me villls
i sint s('mlla me V()US
i eianti la me V(lllS.
(Son: I know nOlhinr; of crosses! / l.oSI in my voice / I hear only my voice / I
sinr; my voice.)
The dialogue proceeds with the son denying a voice in turn to the sky,
the ycars, hodies and women, fin,llly reiterating 'SOUL LA ME VOUs'
(ONI.Y MY VOICE), setting out the determinant of the narcissistic voice as
.1 Anothu- poinl "roverlap hCI·wcen Ihese two idioms is the recurrent imagery ofbclls or
hell-lowers, which variously rcpresenl calls to worship, to the peasant festivals or the death-
knell ('lInini lI1u,hl'; 'Ciaols di un lIlu,]r!', 5S; 'Tn mcmoriam', L'usigllo/n, 21)6-7). This is an-
other indicator of early Leopardian (and/or I'ascolian) influence. Sec 'Ciant da li ciampanis'
(25), 'Alcluja VI' (30), 'Romanccrillo' (37), 'Li ciampanisdal Gloria' (1545), 'Fiesta' (I '7-11):
allll bter 'Alle camp.ne di Orvieto' (Religi(me, 549).
its appropriation of nature, time and memory, the body, fertility and
desire.
The mother-figure also comes to the fore in two poems near the cnd
of 'Suite furlana', in the version of Meglio in Nuova: 'Sera di estat'
(1534) and 'Suspir di me mari ta na rosa' (97-8). Both draw the mother
as an object of desire, and hence once more recall the shadow of self-
desire in the son:
AI aia bussat doma. . .
so mari? Epllr a disin
i so vuj: bussaimi! (1534)
(I ras he only kissed ... / his mother? And yel his eyes / say: kiss me!)
Dutis dos dismintiadis,

la mari e la rosa!
Zint cui sa duhi
OIl ni ,I dismintiadis. (9/l)
(Both fi)rgonen, / the mOlher and the rose! / Going who knows where / he has
forgotten us.)
The traces of the original myth arc minimal here, relying on an ,lmbigu-
ity of person in the first case, and the absence ofthe son-selfsuhstituted
with his objects of desire-the mother and the rose-in the second. But
as they follow a sustained sequence of openly Narcissistic poems, they
only confirm the t()rmative role played by sexual desire of and identi-
fication with the feminine in the subjective reprojection of the myth.
The next most frequent emblem ofthe fig'ure of Narcissus is imagery
of reflection, which is loaded with associations of insight into the self; of
desire and of representation, whilst remaining rooted in the physical-
mythical landscape, IIinted at in the water of '11 nini muart', it first
opens out in '0 me donzel':
, . ,I nas
tal spicli da la roja
In ehcl spicli Ciasarsa
-----{;oma i pras di rosada-
di timp antic a trima, (17)4
( ... I am born / in the mirror of the canal / / In that mirror Casarsa / -like the
meadows of dew- / tremble with ancient time.)
+ The sound of the word 'rosada' was, in Pasolini's own mythicizing account, thc magic'lt
catalyst to his first intuition of the poctic potential ofFriulan '<.Ii ca da raga' (EE ()2-3),
Reflection embodies the natural mutability of the landscape, trans-

forming the landscape ('a trima') via an analogical inscription of myth
('timp antic'). In the following poem, 'Li letanis dal bicl fi', an actual
mirror performs an analogous transformation:
Ciantant al me spicli
ciantant mi peteni.
AI rit tal me vuli
ill hlul pl.'Cia(hlur.
Sun.lit, mes eiampanis,
padilu indavour! ([(j-20)5
(Sin~in~ 011my mirror I sin~in~ J comb my hair. I The sinnin~ Devil I laughs
in my eye. 11 Rin~ oul, my bells, I push him haek (cacciatclo indietro)!)
The oscilla~ing g'aze goes on to encompass and, again, appropriate sun,

rain, leaves, and crickets, all synthesized in 'il me cwlrp / di quan'ch'i
eri frut' (my hody / of when I was a boy), Reflexivity is amplified to in-
clude metaphorical identification with landscape and song, under the
narcissist ic aegis of the look of the sell:
Mirror and water imagery, as well as strains of other narcissistic
im;lgery--ofllowers, birds, and songs--recur in 'J.a not di maj' (62-4),
'Tal cClllr di un frut' (under the title 'Spiritual', 1373-6), and
'Cansoncta' (()s),!\nd these three poems prepare t()\' the '))anze' sub-
section of 'Suite furlana' (6cy,l{7), the culmination of the myth in
M('glio, whcre a bucolic mixture of self and nature, hound by a uesiring,
reflected gaze, shapes the Elmiliar images. The poem 'Suite furlana'
(71-3), ti)l' example, presents a hoy who searches fill' his own image
behind the mirror-glass, 'par jodi s'a e un ndrp che Forma' ('to see if
that Form is a body'), lie finds only the wall, with its spider's web, and,
later, memories of the 'muarta ciampagna' (dead countrysiue), of the
bells, of his 'mari fj·uta'. Returning to the mirror, only an elusive, in-
suhstantial 'harlun tal veri' (glimmer in the glass) remains, yet another
image ofrcflcction and light. The fi)llowing tiHlr poems-three 'l)anse
di Narcis' and a 'l'astorela di Narcis'-all develop in fi)rm and imagery
that scene ofhucolic innocence. The second and thiru '])anse' work as
variations on the first, picking up again on the images of violets and the
uawn, hut also on the self as oesiring subject:
5 Scc a\so '11 ))i,}ul cu tllllari' (H3-s)and 'Scrmoncdcl diavolo', f,'usig,IfI/O, 323-4: 'Vai ano
spccchio e guardi / mc, it Dia,olo', Go to Ihe mirror ami look ai/mc, the Devil), On the fig-
ure ofthc devil, and its origin in Uaudclairc, Rimbaud and Lautrcamont, scc Santato, 1980,
122.
Jo i soj neri di amour

ne frut ne rosignoul
dut antcir coma un fl<'mr
i brami sensa sen. (74)
(I am black with love / neither boy nor nightingale / perfect entire as a flower /
I desire without impulse [desidero senza desiderio J.)
The 'Pastorcla' has the boy-self gazing on and then becoming a
young girl, who then takes on the identity of the mother. The slippage
between desiring to have and desiring to be, whieh is the key to the role
of the mother in the Narcisslls poetry, as it is in psychoanalytical nar-
cissism (Lacan, 1966; Laplanche and Pontalis, 1973,261-65; Perrella,
1979), is evident here: 'e al so post i soj jo' (and I am in her place, 79).
The rewritten '0 me donzel' in Nuovu, where Narcissus is a distant
echo supplanted by the fig'ure of'St Paul (1105, I 127-:15), acknowledges
the ambiguity in this slippage:
1 volevi essi me mari
ch 'a 111i amava, Illa
i no volcvi am'l me stes. (I O()7)
(I wanted to he my mother / who loved me, hlll / I did no! wan! to love myself)
'Memorie' U;usign%, 365-X) narrates the same split between the self'
and the mother-'ho compillto il viaggio / che tu non hai compiu\o', I
have made the jomney / that you have not made---and hOlh locale the
origin ofhomosexll<ll desire in that trauma.
In the final suhsect ion of' 'Suite flll'lana', 'I ,ieder', Narcissus dis-
appears, but secondary markers oft-he myth st ill dominate_ Birds, even-
ing and dawn, glimmerings oflight and love comhine to create a canvas
infused with sensuality by association with the (self-)desiring- self
In ];usign%, too, the most freyuent narcissisfic imagery is of'rellec-
tion (Rinaldi, J()X2, 55-(2). In 'In memoriam', till' example, the poet
searches t(u' a dead boy in his own image: 'Cerchef(l / nell'acqua I. __ I il
tuo viso di morto' (I shall search / in the water I. __ I tiu' your dead bce,
297). In 'Himnus ad nocturnum', the mirror is a symbol of inertia amI
death:
110 la calma di un morto:
guardo illctto che attcnde
le mic memhra c 10 speechio
che mi rinctte assorto_ (147)
(I am ealm as a dead man: / I look at thc bed that awaits / my limbs and the mir-
ror / that reflects me absorbed in my thoughts_)
And in the final poem of the 'Tragiques' section, 'Ballata del delirio'
(4°3-6), which acts as a closure to the book before its lapidary sum-
mation in 'La scoperta di Marx', the mirror returns as definitively
negative, The self is a prisoner of his reflection, and thus no longer
within reality:
ormai sono vivo ndlo specchio,
sono la mia immagine immersa
nelb vita di luce eieca
nello specchio del giovinetto
prigioniero dellume lerso.
Sono denlTo to spu(hio mulo (404)
(hy now I am alive in t.he mirror, / I am my image immersed / in the life of blind
lighl / inlhe mirror o['lhe young hoy / imprisoned by the dear light. / / I alii
illside Ihe /flule mirror)
As the mirror splinters ('10 specchio in frantllmi', 405), am] words and
lines fra~mcnt, so the 'io' is shattered.
Two poems from '11 pian\'O dclla rosa' invoke NarcisslIs hy name-
'Solitutline' (327,·H) and '11 Narciso c la rosa' Cn2--J)--and they too
trace the disinte~ration orthe myth as a vehiclc till' idcntification and
self-inscription, In the {ill'mer NarcisslIs becomes a token of precluded
otherness rather than a vessel orllllid appropriation of the other, leav-
ing I he selfin onanistic isolal ion, in ,I darkness no lon~er illuminated by
~Iimmers of light:
I )isprezzo e tellerezza
verso di le, Narciso, I .. ·1
imprcndihile
lid luo esislere puro,
- . ..
IIlgelluo, e COIISClO, VIVl:
anche a me sei oscum. (pH)
(Scorn and tenderness / towards you, Narcissus, I . . . 1 / / ungraspahlc / in
your pure being, / ingenuous, amI conscious, you live: / to me loo you arc dark)
'11 Narciso e la rosa' is even more explicit. Narcissus is emblematically

denied three times: 'Non Narciso I, .. 1No, Narciso non c'entra [ ... ]
contempJiamo insieme / I'assenza di Narciso' (Not: Narcisslls [. , .] No,
Narcissus has nothing to do with it I. , ,I let us look on together / the ah-
sence ofNareissus), The mirror is not a token of being. It has been de-
mythicized and darkened, as is apparent in some of the diary poems of
the same period, where the mirror is no longer a dynamic agent, but
rather a source of terror and suffering: 's'incolla in uno specchio abba-

cinato / il mio viso, senza sangue, di tisico. / 10 tremo' (stuck in a
dazzled mirror / is my bloodless, consumptive face. / I tremble,
'Mentre nel silenzio degli orti .. .', 2026). At best it survives as
metaphor for a poetry and a desire of nature which is f@unded on the ex-
elusion of the self:
Moralira 0 poesia
o bellczza, non so,
protendo qucsta rosa
a rispecchiarsi sola.
('11 Nareiso e la rosa', 333)
(Morality or poetry / or beauty, I don't know, / I stretch out this rose / to be
reflectcd in thc mirror all alone.)
The degradation of narcissistic desire here finds a parallel in 'J ,ing'ua'
(351-3) in the entry into the symbolic order of poetry in Italian, mther
than a private dialect, and hence into a state of negativity. There,
Narcissus is for the first time a vehicle of bntasy built on nostalgia ti)r
an untroubled harmony between self, language, nature and desire; the
flower rather than the figure:
San> il Narciso tiore che si speeehia
amante senza amore, (;on I'oreeehia
distratta dalle voei (;hc I'amore
senza parole inventa per il {iore. (352-3)
(I shall be the N;m:issus /lower in the mirrur / a loveless lover, with the ear /
turned away by the voices that love / invents without words f(u' the flower.)
There is onc further aspect of Ihe myth in /, 'uIigll% which is import-
ant for future work: the nexus between Narcissus and Christ. Already an
undercurrent in Meglio (47, 64,125), the figure of Christ and the (:hurch
dominate the section 'J .'usignolo della Chiesa Cattoliea' (Rinaldi, H)S2,
25-29). In 'L'usignolo V' (3°1), the image ofthe boy is reflected not in
any ordinary water, but in holy water. 'La passionc'l> (2!)I--()5) shows
Christ, like Narcissus, as both a boy and a girl, both dying ('oggi muoio',
today I die, 291), associated with drawn, with tlowers,7 with morning
6 The term 'passione' is an important term in Pasolini's lexicon of subjectivity, encom-

passing suffering and martyrdom of a pseudo-religious kind, the passivity of the coerce cl self;
as well as that introspection ancl desire latcr set paradigmatically against iclcology in PII.ui(me
e ide%gia. Sce Lconelli, J(~H6; Viano, HJ,)3, +0--45.
7 Fortini labels the whole of L'usig>w[ol'asolini's 'violet period' (1993, 25). For other
/lower imagery sce 'Le primulc' [primroses, but also slang for primary-school children],
39!H); 'll glicinc', Religione, 583-92; 'Poeta delle ccncri', 2057.
dew and with the poet (,Sereno pocta, / fratello ferito', serene poet, /
wounded brother, 292). And in 'La Chiesa VIII':
La Chiesa ferita si eaperta le piaghe con le Sue mani, e un lago di sangue le e
caduto ai piedi. Ed essa prima di morire ha fatto di qucllago uno specehio, e un
lampo ha illuminato la Sua immagine dentro il sangue. E' solo quell'immagine
riflessa che noi preghiamo! (307)
(The wounded Chureh opened its wounds with His hands, and a lake of blood
fell at its ti:et. And before dying it made a mirror of that lake, and a flash lit up
IIis image in the blood. It is to that reflected image only that we pray.)
The mirror is a violent token of absence here, onc of the earliest signs of
rejection of the Church which the collection narrates. Later, in 'L'ex-
vita' f()r example, narcissistic self-contemplation, predicated on ab-
sence, evolves into contemplation of the houy of Christ as a token of
presence:
In un debole lczzo di maeello
vet\o l'immagine del mio COfpO:
seminlldo, ignorato, quasi mono.
E' COS! che mi volevo crm:i tisso (4°0)
(In a weak slau~'hter--hollse steneh 11 sec the image of my hody: 1 half-naked,
unknown, almost dead _1 This is how I wanted myself crucified)
Imaf!;ery of Christ's body reachcs its apothcosis in 'J ,a crocifissione'
(376-7) (Imberty, H)S I). Exposed to the sun, nude and bloody and
under the humiliating gaze of all ('sguanli che J.o bruciano [ ... ] il sole
e gli sguardi!', loob> that burn Him I ... 1 the sun and the looks!),
Christ's bodily presence teaches a public ethic fundamental to the fu-
ture political-cultural role of the self in Pasolini's work:
Bisogna esporsi (qllesro insegna
il povern Cristo inehiodato?
la chian:zza del CllOfe Cdegna
di ogni schcrno, di ogni pcccato
di ogni pill nuda passione ... [... 1
Noi starcmoofTcrti slIlIaeroce l- --I
per testimoniare 10 seandalo. (376-7)
(Wc mllst expose ourselves (is this what / poor Christ lpoor Wreteh 1nailed up
teaches us?) / the clarity of the heart is worthy / of every derision, every sin /
every barest passion .. .I Wc shall he offered on theeross / [... ] to bear witness
to the scandaL)
The topoi of display, nudity, scandal, humiliation and martyrdom all
emerge here by way of a narcissistic, desire-laden figuration of the self
in Christ that transcends the Christ of the 'Chiesa Cattolica' to create a

new Authority for transgression, sexual and otherwise. ~
Beyond Narcissus, two indirect, but significant techniques of figura-
tion in this period of Pasolini's poetry provide a bridge to Ceneri and
beyond; they might be termed archetypal and mannerist figuration.
Archetypal figuration denotes the network of secondary images, crea-
tures or objects in the Friulan landscape that arc assigned a poetic voice,
as aspects of both self and other. In the dialogues of'L'usignolo'
(298-3°3), for example, we hear voices ofa young hoy, a girl, a strang·er,
a goldfinch, dawn, evening, a dead man and the nightingale itself Sev-
eral are simple personificatiolls of images which drift hetween the real,
the mythical and the subjective-ventriloquist glimpses of a volatile
self: Here and in klcglio, such enigmatic dialogues arc not dramalic, but
rather have a texture or rhythm of sensuality and esscnce which shapes
them as archetypal prcdicates of subjectivity.
Other archetypal figures remain at the level of image and epithet
rather than personification. A particularly important example is
representation of guilt and trangression by an implicil cast ingoflhe self
as criminal, most commonly as a thicf~ as in '11 J)i,tul cula mari I V' (85),
'Laris' (152(); in //usign% in '11 canto degli angeli' (356), 'Dies irae'
(360), 'Memorie' (]66), 'Baruch' (172-73) and 'Madrigali a Dil) Ill'
(396)." The term 'reo', hoth morally evil and juridically guilty, occurs
three times in the 'I ,ingua' section alone. /?OlJllt f()SO. /)illrio and olher
diary poetry of the period evoke Illore directly the actual trial of
[949-50, and arc also marked by recurrent imagery of 'castigo' (pun-
ishment) and 'condanna' (condemnat ion). And it is no coincidence that
these lyrics also represent the first sustained lig·uration of the self as
outsider (sce Ch. J). More generally, the casting of the self in I hese
archetypal roles looks forward to the performative rhetoric of many
later works.
H l'asolini's uiaries at this time descrihe a section ora book entitled 'Un'anima' thus: ''!'ut\o
qucsto c st;u'O scriuo ad ogni 111odo ;,l un solo line: qucllu di ollcncrc un'llllloJ'i:"z(l::.iom', In
chicucvo a Dio ui autoriaarmi ,\ peccarc!' (All this has hcen written anyway I()r onc cnd: to oh-
tain llulhor;Zillion. I was asking Gou to ,\uthorize my sinning!, quoted in I,el/ere, i. xcix c).
Adam, another transgressive figure of Christ, according to a theologicaltt·,,,lition, is used as a
latent figure li)r the self in hoth 'I,'illecito' ('gusti il !i·ullo proihito', you taste the I()rhiddell
fruit, 325) and 'Baruch' ('al mio sesso / era prolllesso l'Eden', to my sex / was Eucn promised,
37 1 ).
Cl Thc figure of the thief remains a powerful presence in the Roman novels and {ilms, re-
taining echoes orthe thieves crucified with Christ: sec e.g. Stracei in I,ll riCOI/Il, and the poem-
sequence describing it ('Pietro Il', ROIa, 66q-XzI675J), and 'Da "L'itaii,tno c iaoro" Ill',
164 8-54.
Mannerise o figuration also grows out of the Friulan landscape, but

rather than giving a voice to aspects of subjectivity, it gives them a look,
a way of seeing that landscape which is itself a secondary figuration of
the subject. J,andscapc is looked at as a tension between perceived
forms. Owing little to mimetic realism, this technique builds sequences
of motif.,; and shafts of light and imagery, to suggest the essence of a re-
ality, hut also to evoke a myth, and develop a figuring' self. The first ex-
tensive instance comes in 'L'Italia' (L'US1;~I/(JI(J, 37()---<)I), the model for
the grand vistas of'L'Appennino' (Ccncri, J75--84) and 'La ricchezza'
(Rclip:iollc, 42[---75), and several modulated descriptive excursions in
later works." 'I :ltalia' sweeps fi"om location to location in Italy via
analogies hetween certain micro-elements of landscape: in the first
chapter, the play of sunlight and shadow, the sounds ofhirds, trains and
speech; in the fifth, the various 'lCste'. Many simply extend the motifs
or the Friulan landscape hy way or hoth autobiographieal association
and t()I'mal mod ulat ions across space and time.
The technique takes on particularly Mannerist connotations when
t he patterns or descript ion arc derived b'om cxisting iconography. The
dense evocat ions of Della Quercia's 'flaria' in '].' Appennino', and of
Piero della Francesca's (j'cscoes in' I .a ricchezza', li)cus mctonymically
on rragmcnts or their object·-lIaria's eyelids, the lines and colours of
t he halt le··sccnc or the True Cross cycle-and use them as metaphori-
cal vessels lill', resJlectively, the history or Italy and the vitality of its
maq!,'ins. '2 'Picasso' and 'Quadri rriulani' bot h experiment with ways of
seeing through artists' models, setting the self against another eye-the
'punt angoscia e pura gioia' (pure anguish and pure joy, H)2) of Picasso,
and the 'solenni, fcstanti colori' (solemn, rejoicing colours, 221) of
Giuseppe Zigaina. '1.01 Guinea' 0Jlens with a sensuous immersion in
landscape, via memories of colour, hrush-stroke and sculpted form.
The synthesis is, precisely, 'il gusto / del doJce e grande manierismo'
(the taste / ofswect, great m~mnerisl11, (03).
10 The lerm, which Pasotini was fillld of' loo, reClIrs freqllcn,ty in eri,ics: Fortini, I<)9J,
'S' 72; Men!,:aldo, "n!!, 7H2; Sili, I<IH'I.

11 lie ironizcs his own pcndunt Ifll" this technique in I.a di"l'illfl. mime.,";.c 'Vccchia
ispiraziollc, i.lhiluata.1 cOJllpibrc mcscolanzc di luo!:dli , inlcri panorami voianti su Italic c

h,rope, e all re cruslc ,Ielmondo [, .. [' (A!(c" inspiration, used to compilin!( mixtures of
places, elllire f1yin!( panoramas over Italics, Europcs, and mhe .. cruSls oflhe worltl[. ' .1,22),
12 Anisls arc evoked regularly, panicularly in Rosa: Correggio anu others in 'I.a Guinea'
(60J), Masaeeio, Cm,vaggio '1I1t1 Pontormo in 'I'oesic montlanc' (612, 6'7, (20), anti Giotto in
'I'oema per un verso tli Shakespeare' (716). Similar use is made of cincmato!(raphic refer-
ences, such as Godartl and Helmon"" in 'Una "ispcrata vitalila I' (726-7)'
There are also instances ofPasolini's own painting practice emerging

in poetry as a source of ways of seeing, and in particular, his almost
fetishistic, synaesthetic fascination with extracting colour from plants: 13
Potrei
anche tornare alia stupenda fase
della pittura ... Sento giii i cinque 0 sei
miei colori amati profumare acuti
(' La ricerca di una casa', 626--7)
(I could I also go back to the marvellous phase 11 of painting... I can already
feci my five or six I beloved colours giving off their sharp perfumes)
Several poems arc similarly structured around sequences of colours,
such as 'C'e un colore antico... ' (dedicated to Rcnato Guttuso; Ilz,
1732), 'A Dc Rocco' (1737), and the NU(Jva version of'Ciants da li ciam-
panis', which contains a paradigmatic statement of colour's metonymic
power:
I no rimpl:ins 'na real tat ma il so val(')ur.
I no rimptans un mond ma il so colilllr. (I o!l4)'4
(I do not lament a reality hut its value. I I do not lament a worM hut its colour.)
Conversely, at moments of crisis, colour tenLls to dissolve (ReliKill111~,
159, 163).
Mannerist, formal patterns of this kinLl crcate a prof()l1l1d, onto-
logical link with the real, without recourse to mimesis, representing
reality always with the imprint of subjectivity. Their full significance
can be gaug'ed by the prof(lUnd crisis that accompanies thcir alienation
from the self:
disamore, mistero, e miseria
dei sensi, mi rendono nemiche
le f()rme dd mondo, che fino a ieri
erano la mia ragione {\'esistere.
('11 pianto della scavatrice', 243)
(estrangement, mystery and poverty I of the senses, make inimical I the t(lrms
ofthe world, that until yesterday I were my raison d'ctre.)
In successive drafts of the Ceneri poems, Pasolini gradually camou-
flaged the self with an eye to creating a more political and 'civic' poetry
(Rinaldi, 1990,92-5, 113; Siti, 1981). Recourse to narrative and to
[J Sec I disegni; the description given in the screenplay of La rico/la (AIi dttgli occhi ttzzurri,
480); and Zigaina, 11)87,43-61.
[4 See Vannucci, 1985, for a compendium of colours in Pasolini's poetry.
descriptive evocation of landscape are both means to this end. But
the mannerist figurations we have described suggest that the attenu-
ation of the subjective in such poetry is only relative. Furthermore,
there are major exceptions, not least the central 'Le ceneri di Gramsci'
itself, preceded by 'Quadri friulani'-a return to Friuli and self-
contemplation-and followed by 'Recit'-with its traumatic suffering
of difference-and the autobiographical sections of 'Il pian to della
scavatrice'. 15 Even beyond these, a knowledge of the prehistory of the
figures of Pasolini's poetry allows us to discern latent workings of the
subjective permeating the collection.
The transposition from the Friulan 'frut' to the 'ragazzo di vita' is
obviously one point of preservation of the figures of earlier poetry. The
urban landscape produces new figures and new archetypes to describe
and inscribe the self For example, the 'scavatrice', the mechanical dig-
ger, whose cry is an emblem of tragic change and of the city, is also a
vehicle of identification between the self and the desolate landscape:
Perch\: dentro in me c10 stesso senso
di giornate per sempre inadempite
che c ncl mono firmamento
in cui sbianca questa scavatrice? (252)
(Why is there in me lhe same feeling / of days for ever unfulfilled / that is in the
dead tirmament / / in which this digger washes white?)
The 'feste' in Friuli are reformulated in images of the self in a crowd in
Ceneri. And again, the reformulation is a turn to the negative. In 'Le
ceneri di Gramsci', the crowd, the sound of the Testaccio district, is a
filtering noise which disrupts the desired consonance between the poet
and Gramsci. Even more explicitly, 'Comizio' describes the journey of
the poet through a meeting of (ne(}-)fascists in Piazza di Spagna, and
disturbingly discovers in the crowd fascism as an aspect of the self:
Ecco chi sono gli esemplari vivi,
vivi, di una parte di noi che, morta,
ci aveva illuso d'esscrc nuovi-privi
d'cssa per sempre (200),6
'5 Following Pasolini's own division of Celleri ('Allcttorc nuovo', 10-- I I), some critics have
taken the structure of the book as inherent to the duality of its content. See Ferretti, 1974,
26!1-7o; Santato, 19!!o, 155-56.
16 Siti, HJ8 I, 163-5, shows how an earlier version, 'Nolte a Piau"~ di Spagna', addresses the
fascists themselves at length, prefiguring 'Saluto e augurio' (NI/ova, 1176-82). Fascism is an
integral part ofTommasino's story in Una v;la violellla, who moves from the MSI to the DC
10 the PCI in a smooth parabola of political martyrdom. See also 'A Bompiani' (Religione, 554);
(Here's who they are the living exemplars, / living, of a part of us that, having
died, / deluded us into thinking ourselves new-stripped / / of that part for
ever)
The young boy and the crowd are now a source of troubled desire, of de-
sire tempered by self-denial and disapproval.
A similar operation transforms the image offlight. In 'L'umile Italia',
the swallows represent all the birds, and by extension the landscape, of
Friuli, or of central Italy. 17 But, in Rome, their voice goes unheard:
Q!li, nella campagna romana,
tra le mozze, allegrc case arabe
e i tuguri, la quotidiana
voce della rondine non cala,
dal cielo alia contrada umana,
a stordirla d'animale festa I... 1
IQui ... 1senza
rondini, di cani uda la sera. (Z04-5)
(Here, in the Roman countryside, / among the cropped, happy Arab houses /
and the hovels, the daily / voice of the swallow does not filII, / from the sky to
the human quarter, / to bewilder it with animal joy I ... 1 / / [Here ... 1 without
/ swallows, the evening cries with dogs.)
The swallows {()Ilow the same trajectory as the poet, and their song is a
correlative for the subject's self-expression. The swallow is another
figuration ofthe self ,11
The most resonant use of figuration in Ceneri, however, comes in the
title poem. The figure ofGramsci is, as several critics have pointed out,
mythicized, 'misread' by Pasolini as an image of himself J(J The proto-
type for identification with Gramsei is clearly still the Christ of 'J.a
crocifissione', where the topos of scandal in 'Le ceneri', developed as
an exaltation of contradiction-'lo scandalo del contraddirmi' (the
'Poesie momlane' (Rllsa, 62 I), 'ho pied per i !(iov,mi fascisti' (I feci sorry ",r ,he yOlln!(
fasesists ).
'7 For swallows in Me/dill, see '11 di,tul ell la mari' (114); 'Or di not' (1535); 'Un rap di mt'
(1546).
rH The figuring of the sclfin flight continues in Rllsa, in 'Poesie mondane' (621), 'La nllon
storia' (685--<)2) and, in degenerate filrm, in 'Poema per un verso di Shakespeare' (7°3-17).
'9 Asor Rosa, J()69, 398, calls him a 'Marxistizcd Silvia', referring to Leopardi's 'A Silvia';
Rinaldi, 1(j82, 129, a 'Gramsci-phantasm'. Pasolini himsclfwrotc to l--aivino 'dcvi prcndere le
"Ceneri di Gramsci" come un mio falto personale, non come 1I11 fatlO paradigmatico' (you
must take the 'Ashes of Gramsci' as personal to mc, not as paradigmatic) (Lettere, ii. 175). On
Pasolini's ideological relationship with Gramsci, sec Buci-Glueksmann, 1980; Macciocchi,
1980b, 26-31; Sillanpoa, 1981.
FIGURING THE SELF
scandal of contradicting myself, 227)-{)figinates. 2o Gramsci is tentat-

ively assimilated into the poet's schema of himself by way of a series of
plaintive questions which structure the poem:
Nonpuoi,
10 vedi?, che riposare in questo sito
estraneo, ancora confinato. (223)
(You cannot, / do you see?, but rest in this place / outlying but still enclosed.)
Mi chicdcrai tu, mOTto disadorno,
d'abbandonare questa disperata
passione di esserc nel mondo? (232)
(Will you ask mc, unadorned dead man, / to abandon this desperate / passion
for being in the world?)
Another question, as he nervously approaches the tombstone hints at

the even more radical misreading, or even betrayal, ofGramsci which is
to f(llIow:
(0 c(\uakosa
di divcrso, f()rsc, di piu cstasiato
c anche ui pillumile, ebbra simbiosi
u'ado\eseente di scsso con morle ... ) (226)
( (Or it is something / uiftcrent, perhaps, more enraptured / / and even more
humhle, a heady adolescent / symhiosis of sex with ueath ... ) )
The trace of Narcissus returns here, as does the bucolic, dionysiac

sexuality of the Friubn idyll ('ebbra simbiosi' prefigures a later 'ebbro
peccare', heady sinning·, 2]0), which deviates the poet's gaze onto a
second figurc in the Protestant Cemetery who all but dislodges Gramsci
as a figure for the self and his 'desperate passion', Shelley.
The aura of the foreignness of the cemetery, and hence the sense of
Gramsci's continuing exile, is created by images of England and
Englishness: 'noia patrizia' (patrician ennui), the 'giardino gramo / e
nobile' (miserable / and noble garden), 'laiche iscrizioni' (lay inscrip-
tions), 'orizzonti dove inglesi sclve coronano / laghi spersi nel cielo'
(horizons where English woods crown / lakes lost in the sky, 223-5).
The crescendo of images, ·amid echoes of English graveyard poetry,
ZO Fortini in 11)59 (then 1993,21-2), followed by many others, defined from here the gov-
erning figure of speech in Pasolini's (XliV," as 'sineciosi', the dependency oftwo contradictory
objects on a single verb. Pasolini himself adopted the term, entitling a poem and an entire sec-
tion of T,a.,"mana, 'Sincciosi dclla diaspora' (993-4; 981-1009). The OED does not have an
English equivalent .
culminates in a quotation in English: ' "And 0 ye Fountains... "-le

pie / invocazioni ... ' ('And 0 ye Fountains .. .'-the pious / invoca-
tions, 225).2[ And after the climactic confrontation with Gramsci and
the split selfin section IV, the poem returns in section V to a high-flown
invocation of the vitality and intensity of Shelley:
Ah,come
capisco [... JI'anima il cui graffito suona
Shelle)! . .. Come capisco il vortice
dei sentimenti, il capriccio [... ]
che 10 inghiotti nd cieco
celeste del Tirreno; la carnale
gioia dell'avventura, estetica
e puerile. (z:W)
(Ah, how / I understand [... ] the soul whose inscription rings out / /
Shelle,)! . .. How I understand the vortex / of feelings, the whim I ... 1/ / that
swallowed him in the blind / blue of the Tyrrenian; 1he carnal/joy of adven-
ture, aesthetic / / ,md boyish.)
There follows another sweep over sites ofItaly, bird-like as in 'L'umile
Italia', only to be sadly interrupted by the second ofthc tentative ques-
tions to Gramsci quoted above. It is, in other words, Shelley-and, no
doubt, a misread Shelley, perhaps confused with Wordsworth-who
occupies the position of self-figuration in 'Le ceneri di Gramsci', and
not so much Gramsci who is all but overwhelmed by the still-narcissis-
tic reflexivity of the speaking' subject.
Religione reverses the attenuation of the self attempted in part by
Ceneri, but there is little substantial return to self-figuration. One could
point to the experience of the self in the urban crowd in 'La ricchezza 11'
(436--9), with its descriptions of city mornings and bus-rides, and with
the scene in Red Square in 'I.a religione del mio tempo' (501-3); or to
the figures of the 'ragazzi' in the inquisitive, idealized innocence of
Bernardo Bertolucci in 'A un ragazzo', and in the pair espied from the
poet's house who run through the long meditations of ' La religione del
mio tempo'. However 'In morte del realismo' (557-64), a sustained
21 As perhaps the lakes suggest, the quot'ltiol1 is from Wordsworth: 'And 0, yc Fountain"
Meadows, Hills, and Groves, / Forehode not any severing of our loves!' ('Ode: Intimatiolls of
Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', [802-4,11. 187-8). Foscolo, the most
important Italian pr'lctitioner of the graveyard genrc, was a profound early influence on
Pasolini (Lettere, i. 83, 96). Shcllcy was quotcu in 'Dialet, Icnga, stil' and named in 'L'ltalia'
(L'usiKn%, 385) and La tiivinll mimesis, 33; II Slroiigut, n. [, Aug. [(J45, 20, included some
Wordsworth translated by B. Bruni.
pastiche of Mark Anthony's funeral oration for Caesar, with realism as
the slain hero and Carlo Cassola as Brutus, is merely a play for polem-
ical effect and attention. And in general other mechanisms of self-
inscription are more important here. Certain of the epigrams are
exceptions to this rulc, when addressees are cast as ambivalent or ironic
figurations of the self. The notorious 'A un Papa' (536), for example,
amplifies the violence of its polemic against Pius XII by deploying a
religious vocabulary of sin and the imagery of vitality ofthe poor, which
both served the poet's own self-projections in the past. And perhaps the
most subtle and sustained self-figuration in Religione is 'Alia Francia'
(528), which returns to the systematic misprisions of Ceneri:
Ho la lieta sorpresa di veder ehe assomiglio
a Sekou Toure, il presidente della Guinea:
il naso schiaeciato e gli oechi vivi.
Anche lui risalito al grigiore della storia
di baratri di puro spirito sclvaggio:
negro proprio come era hiondo Rimhaud.
Forse a chi c nato nella sclva, da pura madre,
a essere solo, a nutrire solo gioia,
tocca rendersi conl0 della vita reale:
rinunciare a ohhedire al sesso per pensare,
finire d'esscre fanciullo per diventare eiltadino,
tradire gli I ki per Iona re con Marx!
(It is a pleasanl surprise 10 sce that I look like I Sekou Toure, the president of
Guinea: I the crushed nose and lhe sparkling eyes. I He too rc-ascended to the
greyness of the history I of chasms ofpme wild spirit: I black just as Rimbaud
was hlond. I Perhaps he who is horn in the wild, from a pure mother, I to be
alone, to nourish only joy, I is destined to he aware of real life: I to renounce
oheisance to sex in order to think, I to give up being a hoy to hecome a citizen, I
to hetray the Gods to struggle with Marx!)
Toure is assigned an ideal biography to parallel that ofthe speaking sub-

ject, amI is then like Gramsci elevated to the status of a mythical figure
who aspires to move from passion to ideology through a renunciation of
desire. The two halves ofthe poem-description and mythicization (11.
1-6), followed by hypothesis and apotheosis (11. 7-12)-present an
ideal paradigm for figuration (Richter, 1977).
'AlIa Francia' represents a model fix the epigram complementary to
'A mc' (529), which lays bare the latent, desperate introversion of all the
others. And the profound loss of autonomy which the genre entails is
confirmed by the repeated recourse, in the 'Nuovi epigrammi'
(539-56), to doubts over existence itself. 'Esistere' or 'l'esistenza' (to

exist, existence) occur eight times.
Also noteworthy in Religione is a move to include cinematic figures,
such as Anna Magnani in Roma ciuri aperta in 'La ricchezza'; also in
'La ricchezza' there is a glimpsed evocation of Chaplin, 'un pur triste
chapliniano riso' (a still sad Chaplinesque laugh, 469), which will recur
often later.22 Figuration in the next two collections will not be built on
sustained images of the self in the other, but on just such glimpses and
on a more ambiguous and ironic 'casting' of the self in a performative
role.
The key to understanding Rosa is its perception of the power of ex-
ternal discourses to determine and distort the processes of subjective
figuration. The speaking subject is diminished and alienated from the
subject of speech:
Ondc non io, ma colui chc comunico,
trae la dispcrata conclusione,
di esscrc il reictto di un rauuno
di altri
('La realra', 6JH--<))2 3
(Whence not myself, but the onc I communicate, / draws the uesperate COI1-
clusion, / that he is the outcast of a gathering / / of others)
Narcissism only occurs now as an ironic token of the consumerist

loss of differentiation, or a pastiche of earlier idioms:
oh come
sa ognuno-nello sbanuamento
che rende tutti uguali I. ... J
-mostrarsi contento
di se. Narcissismo! sola fiJrza
consolatoria, sola salvezza!
(,Poesie mondane', 616-17)
(oh how / cveryone knows-in thc disbanding / that lcvels alii· .. 1/ -how to
look happy / in themselves. Narcissism! our only consoling / force, our only
salvation!)
22 See Rosa, 675, 779, 806; and '11 motivo di Chariot', 2043-4. For Buster Keatnn, see
Medea, '45 (B2, '915); even Harold L10yd appears in Row, 67H. All clearly prefigure the films
with Toto and the increasingly Chaplinesque Ninetto Davoli.
23 See also 'Poesia in forma cli rosa': '[il] soave poeta, qucl mio omonimo / che ancora ha il
mio nome' (the gentle poet, my namesake / who still has my name, 651), and ef. Benvenisle's
already cited definition of the third person as a non-person.
(Verita evanescente della situazione domestica, I'ossessione narcissica [... ] ecc.
ecc.) ('Poema per un verso di Shakespeare', 703)24
( (Evanescent truth of the domestic situation, the obsession with Narcissus
r... ] etc. etc.) )
Even the vocation to be Christ-like is ironized by subordination to the
crowd:
Prenuo tutta SlI ui me le colpa (vecchia
mia vocazione, inconlcssata, facile fatica)
della uisperata nostra uebolczza
per cui milioni ui noi, con una vita
in comune, non furono in grauo
ui anuare lino in limuo. E' linita,
trallal!.., cantiamo I ... 1
('Vi\toria', SIS)
(I take on mysclrall the hurden of guilt (an old / vocation of mine, unconfessed,
an easy labour) / or our desperate weakness / / •hill meant that millions of LIS,
with a life / in common were not ahle / to f(lllow through to the end. It's over,
/ / la-di-da, let's sing I ... 1)
The imagery of Christ in 'Pietro 11', derived from I.a ricolla, spills over
inln imagery of the persecution and demystification of the self: 'il
sangue di Cristo si c LlIto eeralan:a I la ceralacca polvere, la polvere
omissis' (the hlood of Christ has turned into sealing'-wax I the sealing-
wax into dust, thc dust into on/i.uis, 679). The destructive power ofthe
crowd itself figures the controlling other. The self is regularly pictured
lost and alone, in groups, or vast crowds ('La persecuzione', 661-8),
and the imagery of the crowd is now almost macabre: 'La radiosa
Appia I che formicola di migliaia di insetti I-gli uomini d'oggi' (the
radiant Appia I that teems with thousands of insects I -the people of
today, (19).
The crowd is only onc of several old tropes to he revived only in dis-
torted or desperate form: a poem of devotion to his mother, 'Supplica a
mia madre' (622-3), is tinged with an anxiety that is only indirectly re-
vealed as mourning; and the myth of the mother figure is violently
revised in 'Ballata delle madri' (599-601), where she is given a series of
masks, becoming in turn vile, mediocre, servile, fierce, and made
24 Scc also 'La c()uvade' (Met/ell, '38; ll2, [()o,), '11 narcissismn tramortitl>--a cui e staw
dato pill voltc / c()n I'olio san to I'ultimo addin·-rillasce' (narcissism in a faint-who's been
given m()re than once / the last farewell with holy oil-is reborn).
responsible for the neutralizing conformism and ideological integra-

tion of her children (Rinaldi, 1982, 2 11-13). The self is even cut off
from that essential link to reality, the landscape:
i pendii, i colli, I'erba millenaria l ... ] tutto questo
nasconde me (635)
(the slopes, the hills, the millennial grass [ ... ] all this 1 conceals me)
esse [le strade] non sono mio posscsso, mio paesaggio,

mia intimita, ma appartengono ad altri (680)
([the streets] are not my possession, my landscape, 1 my intimacy, instead they
belong to others)
Landscape is no longer a mode of self-inscription and self-expression,

but a token of absence and concealment.
The trial of La ricotta reduces the self to a puppet of the media and
the judiciary. The poet's interlocutors become the 'punters' ('scometti-
tori, puntate sulla condanna', punters, put your money on g'uilty,
678-<)), just as in 'Una disperata vitalita' it will be the culture industry,
in the form of the inane interviewer. These external f()rces arc now the
agents in refiguring the self ('gli osceni sogni della stamp .. borghese
[ ... ] m'hanno ridotto a Diavolo', the ohscene dreams of the hourgeois
press l, , .] have turned me into a Demon, 678). Inevitahly, then, Rosa
sees an increment in the image of the self as different and excluded,
hut all possibility of a revitalizing sense of identity through differ-
ence is overridden hy the negative hranding of ' divers ita'. The second
half of ' La realtii' digresses from its autohiographical impulse to launch
an anguished meditation on exclusion, on homosexuality and dif-
ference:
Nulla epiu terribile
ddla diversit.l. Esposta ogni momento
-gridata senza finc--cccezione
inccssante-follia sfrcnata
come un inccndio--contraddizione
dOl cui ogni giustizia esconsacrata (646)
(Nothing is more terrifying 1 than difference. Exposcd at every moment 1-
endless bawling-incessant 1 exception-unbridled madness 1 like a firc-
contradiction 1 that deconsecrates every justice)
And it also introduces the single most important figurative mask in

Rosa, the self as Jew:
E cerco alleanze che non hanno altra ragione
d'essere [... ]
che diversita, mitezza e impotente violenza:
gli Ebrei ... , i Negri ... ogni umaniti bandita (639)25
(And I look for alliances that have no other raison / d'etre [... ] / than differ-
ence, gentleness and impotent violence: / Jews... , Blacks... every outlawed
humanity)
In 'Una disperata vitaliti', a further working title for the book is given
as' "Monologo sugli Ebrei" , (730). And indeed, a poem ofthat title,
not included in Rosa but containing clear echoes of 'Una disperata
vitalita' and several other poems, was published in L 'Europa letteraria in
H)63 (Bz, 1744-53). The poet meditates on photographs of Jews at
lluchcnwald and the humanity which survives in their ability to smile
and metaphorically to sing to his own song, or monologue: '10 so la deli-
catezza che li fcrisce [ ... J10 so cosa vuol dire essere diversi' (I know the
delicacy that wounds them [ ... 1I know what it means to be different,
175 I). In Rosa, it is in the 'Israele' section that the texture of the figure
is most carefully considered. In the piece beginning' ... Kafka poi avra
supposto' (763-4), the poet identifies with the trauma still alive in Israel
from the I Iolocaust, and also with a sense of exile from and nostalgia for
Europe. The next poem emphasizes still further this rapport:
Tornate, ah torn ate lIella vostra Europa.
Un trans/ert tremendo di me in voi,
mi fa sentire la voSlra nostalgia
che voi non sentite, e a me d;' un dolore
ehe sconvolge ogni rapporto con la reald.
I ;Europa non c pill mia' (767)
(Go back, ah go back to your Europe. / A terrible transference of me in you, /
makes me feci your nostalgia / which you don't feci, and it causes a pain in me /
that upsets my every rapport with reality. / Europe is no longer mine!)
Israel and the Jews, as misread by Pasolini, seem suspended between a

corrupt Europe and a fully differentiated Third World. 'Israelc' moves
from complete identification ('Ha la faecia / uguale a quella di noi
ebrei', He has a face / like that of us Jews, 769) to disillusionment with
the bourgeois presence even there: 'Ma sono Ebrei. Perche si co m-
portano / cosi come figli di borghesi ariani [? .. ] L' ebreo per cultura ed
25 This is the (irst full intuition of an elective affinity with Jews, but cc. 'I1 canto degli au-
gcli' (I,'u5Ign%, 356): 'Come gli Ebrei ho aneh'io il mio vitcllo / d'oro' (Like the Jews I too
have my golden / call).
IS8 POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS
e1ezione, adesso / li guarda deluso' (But they are Jews. Why are they
carrying on / just like sons of bourgeois Aryans [? .. ] The Jew by cul-
ture and choice, now / looks at them, let down, 772-3).
The model of Jews as Europe's exiles, risking an horrific mimesis of
European nco-capitalism because of their exile, and of the self as pro-
foundly Judaic in an antique, perhaps biblical sense, shapes the other-
wise fragmented poem 'Progetto di opere future' (797-809). Even the
impulse for a new creative energy seems to derive from this identity ('io
Ebreo offeso da pied / ritrovo una erudcle freschezza d'apprendista', I
a Jew, offended by piety, / rediscover a eruel apprentice freshness, 798).
And the self finds models in a litany of great (supposedly) Jewish
figures: Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Chaplin and Kafka-'oh popo-
lazione dei miei fratelli' (0 population of my brothers, 806). Nostalgia
for Europe becomes nostalgia t()[ Romance and Occitan Europe (526),
a mythiC<ll Europe, which opens a perspective for a future return:
Ergo, aspettando ehe porti
un nuovo Grallde Ebreo UI1 nuovo TUTTO I~: I ... 1
bisogna deludere, nel nostro piccolo (X07)
(Thus, waiting {(,rthe arrival or! a new Great Jew a new IS ALL I .. .111 we must
disappoint, in our own way)
The figure of the Jew runs on into Trasumanar, despite the hreak
after 11)64 in writing poetry.26 In 'Egli 0 tu', the poet is 'of Israeli
nationality' and aJewish 'buffone' (834, 835). And in the poem-review
of Eisa Morante's 11 7nont/o salvato dai raga:::.:::.ini (8(10-78), Eisa is a
matriarchal Jew 'with the Talmud in her belly' (860). 'L'enigma di Pio
XII' adopts the voice of the Pope 'scandalously', to t()rce him to justify
the Vatican's silence over the Holocaust. Pius, himself a distorted pro-
jection of the tortured contradictions of the self and a symbol of the
institutionalized Church, identifies in turn with Paul, with Paul's be-
trayers, with the Jews and finally with Hitler:
10 so che tradisco la chiesa di Paolo I... 1
J.o so per il semplice fatto .·he sono riilivCl1uto un Ebreo I· .. J
Fede e speranza trionfano di nuovo nel Terzo Reich
26 See also the plays, all begun in H)hh, hetween the puhlication of Rosa and the first poems
of 7'rasu1I1anar. In Caldertin, tilr example, the heroic and enigmatic Sigismondo is Jewish
('que! tuo ignohile Ehreo', that ignohle Jew of yours, Tealrll, ]7). PlIl"l"i/e is centred on the
thinly veiled respectability of two German industrialists who made their names exploiting the
Nazi death camps, and features the archetypal heretieal Jew Spinoza (Tealrv, 482-91). See
also Teorema, 87-<J2.
come nei tempi antichi.
La mancanza di carita non cehe un semplice peccato
(il mio stesso [ ... J) (843, 848)27
(I know 1 am betraying the Church of Paul [ ... ] / I know for the simple reason
that I have hecome a Jew again l ... ] / Faith and hope triumph again in the
Third Reieh / as in ancient times. / The lack of charity is only a simple sin /
(my own I· .. J) )
The Church, a Pauline institution, becomes a symbol of all institutions,

from the bourgeois 'Law', which for Pius is a Jewish invention, to the
shady powers behind the Kennedys' deaths and Vietnam, to the PCI.
The poem ends playing grotesquely between Hitler's Third Reich and
Paul's third Heaven in a phrase which is repeated in several other poems
in Trasumanar:
Potrei parlare di UNO che cstato rapito al Term Ciclo:
invecc pario di un uomo deboic: /<mdatore di Chiese. (850)
(\ could speak of onc who was taken up to the Third Heaven / instead I speak
of a weak m,m: ,1 founder of Churches)
Othcr figures which recur in Trasumanar arc largely jarring and con-
fused. There is a new pattern to the poetry of centrifugal disunity, and
poetic extremism. Idcntification is now with extrcme opposites of the
sclt~ PillS XII and Nixon ('Poema politico', 999-1003), and is carried off
as per/ilrmancc. The scandal-giving youth is present as a trope, but only
as a mediated and dependent image filr Morante's 'Pazzariello' (875);
and scandal as a political strategy is no longer tenable, except as ironic
perfi:Jrmance ('11 Gracco', XXS-7). Communication is hlocked, and so is
communication of the self:
COS)vicnc liquidaLo il mio narcisismo.
Che ne c di esso?
110 perso la compagni'l di un sentimento.
0, meglio, della 'forma di una vita' (la mia)
('La nascita di un nuovo tipo di buf/(lI1e', 883)
(thus my narcissism is liquidated. / What about it? / / I've lost the company of
a ICcling. / Or, better, of the 'form ofa lite' (my own»
The 'buffone' itself is a new pseudo-archetypal role, signifying the loss

of autonomy to create roles for the self
27 The figure ofSt Paul recurs in the poem 'Trasumanar C organizzar' (908), and of course
San Pa%.
However, one familiar pattern is developed to a striking new inten-

sity, via a transformative relation to political reality. In '11 piagnisteo di
cui parlava Marx' (918-19), the poet is again caught in a crowd, this
time in Recife, Brazil:
Essi sono la che agiscono [ ... ]
In una sola mattinata ho trovato una patria piena di innocenti
e non mi muovo, non oso andare tra di loro
(They are there in action [ ... ] / In a single morning I have found a homeland
full of innocents / and I stand still, I dare not go amongst them)
The crowd is here a token of political resistance and action, and the self
is fixed still, inert and thus excluded from action. The same exclusion
from radical collective praxis marks 'La raccolta dei cadaveri', where it
is precisely the 'cell' structure of the revolutionaries which alienates:
un covo di giuvani rivoluzionari;
non lontano da Regina Cocli;
io, frequentatore di eovi l· . ·1
Ora mi trovo a disagio nelle tane; tra i g;ruppi minoritari (<)56)
(a den of young revolutionaries; / not far from Regina Coeli; / mc, a frequenter
of dens l ... J / Now I feel uneasy in lairs; in minority groups)
The apposition of the self to collective groups, divided by the imposs-

ibility of communication, is also the structuring principle of 'Mir-
micolalia' (851-5), which alternates between a nonsense di'llogue
('mirmicoeffare') with prisoners and a 'more reasoned' dialogue with
law students. But the confrontation with the students in Trasumanar
(and other texts of the same period), in which the self once more at-
tempts to appropriate, through active misprision, a figure in history and
ideology, cannot be fully appreciated without insertion into a more
long-standing drama of figuration-the emblematic conflict between
the father and the son, governed equally by a writing of the body and
desire and by ideology.
7
'Mio corpo insepolto ': The Body and
the Father
Whilst the figure of the mother pervades every element of the Friulan
idyll, and representations of the body carry some of its most potent
meanings, the father is apparently conspicuous only by his absence
in the early phases of Pasolini's poetry. In both MeKlio and L 'usiKn%,
the figure of the father appears explicitly only a handful of times, is
still absent fi'om Rot1la [()so. Diario, and in Ceneri, appears only once.
The governing Oedipal strategy of these texts is summed up in
'T ,ingua': 'ho ucciso il padre col silenzio' (I have killed the father with
silence, /, 'usign%, 6<). The father is literally written out ofthe subjcct's
nostalg'ia, whereas, as we have seen, the mother takes lip a central and
fluid position in the canvas of self-exprcssion. I On those occasions
when the bther does appear, however, the seeds of a f;u more imposing
presence, bound up with a traumatic recognition of the poet's sexuality
and his adulthood, can be discerned. 2 In 'Litania', a sequence imbued
with devotion to the mother and to her chastity, the father is simply the
agent of violation and impurity: 'non v'ha violato / mano di padre' (no
hand of a fathcr / has violated you, 3 17). But since the self is already
marked with sin and transgressive desire-'Su ridestiamoci, / che il
nostro cllore vllole peecare' (Come on, up we get, / for our heart wants
to sin, 3 I H)-there is already an affinity between the father and the sub-
ject. The trauma which thc rare references to the father explore is the
I The h(~)k PI/nic a Cam,.,,(/ was in !;lCl dedicated to Pasolini's father (B2, I (87), hut he later
explained that the de<licalion, like the title ofthc hook, was chosen 'OUl ofconfcmnism' ('Poeta
delle ceneri', 2057). 'Poeta delle ceneri' also confirms the Oedipal fCITce of their hostility: 'la
nosl"" inimicizia ';leeV,l parte del deslino, era fuori di noi' (our enmity was part of our destiny,
it was beyond liS, 2058). In 'Coccodrillo', he insists, however, that the conformism itsclfwas
'd'originc csc\USiv,llllcnte materna' (of exclusively maternal origin, 2085; er 'Ballata delle
nMdri', RII''', 5<)1)-(,01). MCKI;II and NUI/va are hoth dedicated to Contini (5, (047).
2 Ferrctti suggests dividing Pasolini's work into 'a great mateTnal period' and an equally
great 'paternal period' (Ferretti, [<)85,85 and passim). Sce also Contini, 1980,344-5; Golino,
19115, 142-8,260-2.
problem of coming to terms with, and becoming, the father. The bell in
'Tornant al pais Ill', sees fathers in their sons, in an analogy which is at
once a token of the prehistorical lack of differentiation in Friulan life,
and also a quiet harbinger of future anxiety:
'Il timp a no'l si mouf:
jot il ridi dai paris,
coma tai ramis la ploja,
tai vuj dai so frutins' (24)
(,Time does not move: / look at the laughter of the fathers, / like rain in the
branches, / in the eyes of the children ')
These fathers represent the weight of unchanging millennial tradition,

manifested elsewhere in a disturbing, at times morbid control over the
young boys, who are the defining figures of the lanuseape, by the phant-
asms of their ancestors:
li l<lur fi paris I periulis daris
a ti vivin tal sen.
A son peraulis muanis
('I.a domcnia uliva', 4(j)
([the fathers'] dear words / live in your Ithe son'sl heart, / / They arc dead
words)
Dove sono volati gli anni che dividono il corpo di qucsti ragazzi da quello dei
loro padri? [... ./ 0 piccolo servo! Corpo di tun padre, labbra cli tuo padre, petto
di tuo padre, che morte rislIona ne! tuo canto, che vita ne! tuo quiete non
esistere?
('Le albe', 289)
(Where have the years that separate the hody of these boys from that of flleir
fathers flown? [ ... ] 0 little serv,mt! Body of your filther, lips o/" your Llther,
chest of your father, what death resounds in your song, what life in your quiet
non-existence?)
And in both these poems, the image of the unseen father in whom the
son lives, or whose death the son embodies, spills over into Christian
imagery. The analogy between fathers and the Father, ami thus trans-
gression, is most explicit in 'Baruch VI':
(I padri e il Padre...
gli uni simili a noi,
I'altro simile al padre.. .
ed il padre ecattolico) [ ... ]
11 figlio si ribella
THE BODY AND THE FATHER
(e nasconde it peccato),
diverra cattolico
nel tempo ideale (373)
( (The fathers and the Father.. .I the former like us, I the latter like our father
.. .I and our father is Catholic) t... JThe son rebels I (and hides his sin), I he
will become Catholic I in an ideal time)
And also explicit here is the pattern whereby the rebellion of the son
against the father is only a hidden mechanism tor the transformation in
turn of the son into the father. 3 The denial of identification with the
father is a subtext of the alternative identification with the mother, or
the boy, and the attempt to dismantle the hierarchies of time and gender
which distinguish father, boy, mother and girl. If the father is always al-
ready within the son, then the trauma of becoming is debarred. In
Ccneri, where the self is deliberately marginalized, the single occur-
rence of the figure of the father is onc of denial of such hierarchy: '[Tu]
in lJuel maggio italiano [ ... 1dei nostri padri-non padre, ma umile I
fratelIo' (/ You 1 in that Italian May I ... ] of our fathers-not father, but
humble I hrother, 'Le ceneri di Gramsci', Cmcri, 223).4
If the father is an object of denial, the body in Mep,lio is a transub-
stantiating vehicle t(lI· the expression of ungendered sexual desire, and
of an ontological desire fill· the real. The body is written across the land-
scape, part human and part elemental. The Narcissus poems of ' Suite
furlana' arc imbued with imagery oflhe body, which, in reflection, is re-
t()J"[l1ed as light or water. And elsewhere it is also seen rd()rmed as the
other elements, fire, air and earth:
II Tilimint, cu'l stratlon tli sfalt,
e li planuris vertlulinis,
cu Ii boschel is i1apis e il zal
dai ciamps di hlava, fra il mar
e la montagna:
dUI ardeva ta la me ciar frutina.
Al era un f(IUC il mal.
('Un rap di ua', 1548)
J cr 'Nuova poesia in I()rma ui rosa' (Rosa, 753), where the sons are ucstineu to 'ripetere a
lino ~ uno gli alti dcl padre, / ~nzi, a riereare il padre in terra' (repeat onc by onc the acts of the
lather, / inueeu to recreate the tather on earth).
<I The brother, often specific'llly with reference to his hrother Guiuo who dieu in the
Resistance, is a constantly recurrent figure throughout Pasolini's work. Its preuictahle polit-
ical connotations arc amplified hy contrast with the hierarchical hostility to the father, as in
this quotation, anu by the tragic association of loss (sce in particular 'Append ice alia
"Rcligione": una luce', Religiolle, 517-20).
(The river Tagliamento, with the asphalt main-road, / and the greenish
plains, / with the small withering [appassite1woods and the yellow / of the
maize fields, between the sea / and the mountain: / it all burned in my boy's
flesh. / Evil was a fire.)
il me cor al edi aria
e tai me vuj a rit la int
('Mi contenti', 120)
(my heart is of air / and in my eyes people laugh)
Rit, tu, zGvin lizcir,
sintint in tal to cuarp
la cicra cialda e scura
e il frcsc, clar scil.
CA Rosari', 60)
(I ,augh, you slight young boy, / feeling in your body / the hot, dark earth / and
the fresh, clear sky.)
These elemental metamorphoses arc often images of dissolution, but

also of release and ecstatic sublimation: 'i soj z()vin, vif, bandunat / cu'l
cmlrp ch'al si cunsuma' (I am young, alive, abandoned / with a body
that is wasting away, 91 ).5 The sublimation is at once erotic and spir-
itual. The body of the boy Sticfin', evoked in 'Ciants Ji un mu art VII',
58, the body of'DaviJe' (L'usign%, 310-12; and er 21), and of the
myriad other young boys, are objects of a particular kind of love which
is desiring but also transformative, through which the self physically
penetrates his surroundings. This love, which is otien equated with the
force of song, and hence poetry, is the prof{)Und meaning of the 'rustic
amour' of ,Dedi ca' (13).6 The spiritual side to this 'am()ur' is an under-
current in Meglio ('jo i soj un spirt di am()ur', 1 am a spirit of\ove, 25),
but comes to the fore in the religious crisis of L'wign%. The body is
here imbued with intimations of mortality, as shown in two poems al-
ready mentioned, 'Le albe' and 'Davide'.7 And along with the reality of
5 The uis~olution of the bodily ,clfinto an clement ofland,cape is also a llIotifofthe poetry
of summer 1941 and '942 found in Pasolini's lctter~. Sce e.g. the title image of"Sciogliersi di
canto al mattino' (To dissolve in morning song), the closing lines of'La tempesta' ('10 mi dis-
peruo [ .. .]', I am dispersed) and the poem 'Divengo la sera' (I become the evening) (I,ellere,
i. 91, 94-5, 86).
(, The importance ofthiHesonant phrase is underlined by Dc Mauro, 1 <)X5, 12, who points
out that 'rustic' was not in the Pirona dictionary ofFriulan until 1967, and was probably
coineu by Pasolini.
7 A similar motif recurs in the plaqucttc collections Poes;e ([225-(, I) anu I pia1lti
(1277-309). See c.g. in the latter, poem XXIV, which ends 'questo mio corpo immortale / toc-
cherd / I'incredibile morte' (this my immortal body / willlouch / incredible death, 1306). Another
(hson Wdlcs plays I hc I )ircclor of I hc (,ospd filon ·wil hin- I hc-tilm , hcrc
]'I .A'n : ,. / .11 r i mllll .
isoial cd in ,norhid f(randclIr. (Brili sh I!illll In slillll'C)
Pun: 2. A cccttlone . Accattone (Franco Citti) is framed in portrait, set against the deep per-
spective and oppressive sunlight of the 'borgata' landscape. Echoes of Masaccio. (British
F ilm Institute)
PI.ATE 3. Oal'lI/I.{"(; /:
II{{C/fin;. '1'01(' ;l11d
N inello (Davoli),
I'asolini's pseudo-couple,
wander Ihroug;h the
urhan 110- 1l1;.lJl'S land .
(Brilish Film Instil lit e)
I'I.A"n: +. 1'~I."l/gc/(). Th e
scene of Ihe Jbplism in
Ihe Ri ver Jordan, lilmed
fi'om ahove ;lIld at a dis-
lance, shancred the
/i'ontal iconog;raphy of
I'asolini 's tilm-style.
(British Film Jnstitlll'c)
~~--, """"",,-~ .---.- ,,~- ---. . . ~- . -- .".- .._ , --"
.~5.~it' ~.j ~
• O"<....
.",jl;;
~;... ~tJ..,. ~O<- (
I •.
,~~~~~
,
•
I
r
-
. ' ~: ,'
PUTI-: 5. AI/I'f/('(f . The ( :elll ;II,r ( :hiroll (I ,allrcn t T e rzieH) ctlu c lI cs Ihe youllg; Jaso n in!'o a
prccivili zcd alIinit y with nalllre and Ih e !(ool s. (Ilrilish him In slitul e. Every elli"',, has heen
m;Hk 10 ohtaill per mi ss ion 10 rcprodll ce Ihi s p rin t. Any oonission s will he recti fi ed in f uture
cdilions.)
P LATE 6. La l'il'olta (in colour in the ori ginal). Pasolini / Orson Welles' Ma nnerist reconstruc-
tion of Rosso Fiorentino's Man nerist Deposition. (British Film Institute)
PI.ATi': 7. Slf.hi. Onc of the dis<'IIscs and th e pianist per/i.rl11 their J.: r<lll:Sl(lIe ca h"rct in "
luxuri ant, if anomalousl y daylit auditorium , wat c hed by their terrili ed audience. (Ilritish
I' ilm In stirut e. I':very crii.rt has heen made to ohtain permission to reprodu ce thi s prinl. Any
omissions will be rectified in future edition s.)
PLATE 8. La. ricolta. The diva (Laura Betti) relaxes, carefully framed by the extras, the props
and the roman landscape. (British Film Institute)
death, these two poems also contain images of fathers or fatherhood.

Furthermore, the sexual aspect of the body is no longer sublime and
ungendered, but guilt-laden and imbued with transgressive desire, in
poems such as 'Lingua' ('amo la mia colpa', I love my guilt, 353) and the
sequence 'La verginita' (321-35), where traces of taboos such as incest
and masturbation are overlaid with a vocabulary of shame and sin.
Where the body becomes a token of suffering and death or guilt, it
becomes an object, and the figure ofthe father displaces the imaginary
(maternal) subject. This is most evident in the two climactic points of
the representation of Christ in L'usiKn% discussed in Chapter 6, 'La
passione' (291-5) and 'La crocifissione' (376-7). In the former, heavy
emphasis is laid on the body of Christ Incarnate, and on the physical
suffering ('passione') of that body. And the latter makes explicit the
barely implicit sensuality of its representation of Christ's suffering in
its summation of the scene of the crucifixion: 'morte, sesso e gogna'
(death, sex and pillory). The central imagery of exposure in the poem
('bisogna esporsi') is itselfan image of the naked body, as is conveyed by
the physical intensity ofthe adjectives, all prominent rhyme-words:
Perch£: Cristo i"u ESPOSTO in Croce?
Oh scossa llel cuore al nudo
corpo del giovinetto... atroce
of/csa al suo pudorc Cfudo... (:'176)
(why was Christ EXPOSED on the Cross? I Oh hlow of the heart to the nude I
hody ofa young hoy... atrociolls I ortcncc to his crude modesty... )
A strong' line of rhetoric surrounding Pasolini's later public persona

has its origins in the imagery of nudity t<mnd here. HAnd the clarion call
of 'I.a crocitissione'-'testimoniare 10 scandalo'----{!stablishes the dir-
ect relationship between the crucial topos of scandal and the body. 'I.a
ricchezza' (Religione, 434) will articulate this even more explicity:
'ardente / legna di questa antica ansia / di testimoniare-la came'
(burning / firewood ofthis ancient urge / to bear witness-flesh).
import,mt parallel is wit h the image of the hody as ,\ token of the pasl, ,mdthe passage of lime,
which is already in Me/',lilJ: sce, for ex,nnplc, 'Li lelanis dal hid fi Ill' (HJ-20) and 'La not di maj
IV' (64). In both, the figure o"the father is also a shadowy presence.
R The imagery and its disturhing strain of violence, also in 'I -ingna' and 'L'ex vita' (400),
resurfaces often in later poetry. Sec e.g. 'Rccit' and '11 pianlo della scavatrice 11' in Cmeri,
where the 'rag<lzzi' and their 'borgo' are both described as being naked (237, 249); 'Pocsie
mondane'-'tcrrificantc come ogni nudit!!' (terrifying like every nudity)-and 'La perse-
cuzione'-'atroccmente nudo' (atrociously naked)-(Rosa, 6[9, 668); Tcorellla, 190--1.
In L'usignolo the body becomes a meeting point for several restrictive

discourses. It is a burden and a limitation, but only in 'Memoric'
(365-8) is the actual source of the complex ambiguity of desires around
the body made explicit:
Mi innamoro dei eorpi
ehe hanno la mia earne
di figlio---col grembo
ehe brueia di pudore-
i eorpi misteriosi
d'una bellezza pura I· .. J,
corpi spenti dai tremi:i
della eame I.. ·1,
i corpi dei tigli
coi calzoni fdici,
col bruno 0 il biondo
delle maclr·i nei passi,
c un troppo grande :lIllOre,
nd cuore, per ilmondo. (36!l)
(l litll in love with bodies / that have my !Iesh / oft he son . wit h t he lap / hurn··
ing with modest.y·- / the mysterious bodies / ofa pure heauty I ... 1, / hodies
extinguished hy the tremors / of t he lIesh I... 1, / bodies or sons / wit h joyous
trousers, / with the auhurn or the blond / of their mothers in their step, / and
too gre;lt a love, / in their heart, (u· the world.)
This is a rare expression of homosexual desire laid open, hut it is a

homosexual desire of a particular killll which ~athers a series of motifs
around the si~nilicance ofthe body. The 'love fill· the world' is an echo
of the 'rustic am()ur' of'])edica'. The appeal to the mother, and to the
purity and spirituality in the sons, is an attempt to sublimate carnal de-
sire into their 'amore per ilmondo', the transti)rmative life-(i)rce of the
ideal world ofFriuli. But it cannot conceal the ,\ctual trauma of guilt and
destructive excess which subtends the presence of the body as a loclls of
homosexual desire here and throughout Pasolini's work.
The near-absence ofthe father and indeed the mother ti·om Ceneri is
echoed by a noticeable diminution of the sensuality of experience.
Where a poetry of desire does emerge in Ceneri, it varies little from the
earlier work. The sense of an 'amore per il mondo', and hence a desire
for the present/ presence of the physical world, survives in the aphor-
istic opening to '11 pianto della scavatrice', 'Solo l'amare [ ... ] conta,
non ('aver amato' (Only loving [... ] counts, not having loved, 243), and
in 'Le ceneri di Gramsci':
se mi aeeade
di amarc il mondo non eehe per violento
e ingenuo amore sensllaie (227)
(If I happen / / to love the world it is only with a violent / and ingenuous sen-
suallove)
Ecstatic dissolution of the body, and hcnce the self, returns in 'Quadri
friulani', which recreates-as memory filtered through art, however-
the dionysian Friulan 'teste' lIsing the same elemental imagery of viol-
ent passion:
Ti ricordi ljuella sera a Ruua?
(bIClnostro darsi, insiellle, a un gioeo
di pura passione I... I?
Era una lolta
hrueiante di se stessa, ma il suo ruoeo
si spallllcva oltr;; noi (2[4-'[5)
(1)0 you rememher t hat evening at Ruda? / . rhat giving ourselves up, together,
to a game / or pure passion I... I? / / It was a stru~'glc / burning with itself~ but
its lire / / spread out heyond us)
And further on in the poem, t he sublimation implicit in 'darsi' is articu-
lated in a description ofZip;aina's painting' of'spettri del caldo sesso /
adoleseente' (spectres of hot adolescent / sex, 21(}--17).
Anot her locus oCholllosexualit,y in Ceneri, ag'a in originating' in earlier
poet ry, relates to the evocation o/"lhe exclusion and solitudc of the city.
The solitary journey throug'h a desolate landscape, often the city at
night, peppered with sporadic sexual encounl'Crs, is a major recurrent
narrativc amI sI rllctllral panern across Pasolini's IJ:lIl'rc, wil h its roots in
his own night Iy {()rays, whether in Rome, New York, Clicutta (sec
C(){/ore dc!l'lndia), or elsewhere. It runs through the night-timc epics of
his narrat ive works, {i'om RlIga,z,zi tli ,)ila and Ali dllgli oc(hi azzurri to
I.a divina mimesis and Pelrolill; and through the narrative content and
shot-construction of many films, such as Accallolle, Mamma Roma,
Villlgc!O, M edea and Teorema. In an essay in the co-written screenplay of
Sergio (:ini's film Ostia, he relates the topos to knowledge of the other:
] }arehel.ipo del roll1anzo ll1oderno c il viaggio; la eonoseenza, vera 0 ideale, di
ljualchc altrove I... 1. Ora si PU(\ dire ehe non esistc pillllltrove (0 sta per seom-
parire uel tutto) I... J Siamo Wtto !fui. (Ostia, 171J-Ho)
(The archetype of the modern novel is the journey; knowledge, real or iueal, of
some elsewhere l ... J. Now we can say that elsewhere no longer exists (or is about
to disappear entirely) l, .. .1 We are all here.)
In its myriad different representations, this topos creates a shadowy

alternative space where the relation of self to reality is somehow felt as
more direct and essential, although no less traumatic, beyond mediated
conventionality. The otherness of the vagrant space created is perhaps
best seen in the enigmatic, alienating world of Uaellacci e uccellini (see
Ch. 11). But such vagrancy can also be seen as a textual, formal pattern
in itselt: which challenges the restrictions on selfhood, as a correlative
of experience or emotion which poetry might recollect in tranquillity.
Indeed, the journey is often recalled as if at a moment of hiatus in
wandering, from a still, small, enclosed space. The emblematic explora-
tion in poetry of this particular space and time is 'Versi del testamento'
(Trasu11lanar, 941-3), but in Cenai, hoth 'Rccit' and '11 pian to dclla
scavatrice' narrate just such a journey through the city fi.)llowing an ex-
hausted return to a closed, cool and dark room. In the dark, the ex-
hausted hody and its sensuality and mortality hecome a crucible of all
the experiences of the outside world, as they had done in the night
poems of'lI non credo' in J/us(~llolo (337-·4H):
Enlro c mi rinchiudo, mllto C spcnto come
un impiccato solo col suo corpo e il suo nome
(,Rccil',2J9)
(I come in and dose myself in, silent and Iitdess like I a han~ed man alone with
his body ami his name)
Perhaps the earliest image of this second, enclosed space is in /)al/)iario
(J(J4S-47), where several bmiliar motifs-history, Narcissus, quality
oflight, the botly and nudily----come together:
E nell'interno della morta c;lsa
di Casarsa, sorridi tu, () Cosciente,
e nel tllO s~uardo fisso, Ji maniaco,
io Ic~go la mia storia. 1':cco qui
la stanza, tomba dei tepori e delle
tetre solitudini del mio corpo;
10 specehio dove guanJo, intenditore,
gli scorci del mio viso; illetto senza
fantasmi, nudo, a cui la nmla luce
da eandori di gesso, e che il tuo riso
sospenJt! nel passato. (1434)
(Within the dead house I in Casarsa, you smile, 0 Conscious One, I anJ in
your staring, maniacal look, I I rt!aJ my history. Here is I the room, tomb of the
warmths anJ of the I dismallonelinesses of my body; I the mirror in whieh I
sec, knowingly, I the glimpses of my face; the hed with no I phantasms, naked,
to which the naked lig'ht I gives chalk whitenesses, and which your laugh I
holds suspended in the past.)
'La religione del mio tempo' is also built upon the locus of the closed
room, from where two boys are espied and desired. But there is little of
the charged immediacy or sensuality of other portraits of objects of de-
sirc: 'il dono / disperato del sesso, candato / tutto in fumo' (The des-
perate / gift of sex has gone / up in smoke, 490). In 'A un ragazzo', the
melancholic tone derives in part from an acknowledgement that the
poet is divided from the boy by his experience of history, and ean only
communicate as a father-figure, not a brother, nor as a desiring subject.
The epigram 'A un figlio non nato', where the self is again cast as father,
extends this detachment. It describes an encounter with a prostitute in
the 'borgate' landscape, culminating in a resigned acceptance of the loss
of his 'primo e llnico figlio non nato' (first and only unborn child): 'non
ho dolore / che tu non possa mai esser qui, in questo mondo' (I feel no
pain / that you cannot ever he here, in this world, 53 I). The division be-
tween knowledge and innocence has become an absolute division
between birth and non-birth.')
The sensual vitality and immediacy of the world of the 'borgate' re-
mains the strongest correlative of the sexual:
un l11ondo chc non ha alt ri varchi
chc vcrso it sesso e il CUOfC,
altra pro/()Jldit:. chc I1ei sensi.
In cui la !!,'ioia (; gioia, iI dolorc dolore. (464)
(a world that has no other way through I except towards sex and the heart I no
other depth except of'the senses. Iln which joy is joy and pain pain.)
But the inclination towards a physical 'amore per il mondo' has already
degenerated into the hysterical: 'Ed c amore-voglia disperata/ dei
sensi, lllcido isterismo' (And it is love---desperate desire/ of the senses,
lucid hysteria, 434). The split self inherent in hysteria manifests itself
dramatically in 'Tl glicine':
11 coniine (ra la sloria e l'io
si !Cnde torto come un ehhro abisso (5811)
Cl The prostitute in this epi~ram acts dually as both an emblematic vital element orthe
'horg;ata' landscape (sce also 'La ricchezza 4', 453-4, 457; 'I'oema pcr un vcrso di
Shakespeare', Rosa, 707; 'I ,a strada delle pUllane', TrtltlSIIII1{/tf{lr, 93J--4), and a mute medium
j"r dialog;ue hetween the sclfand the phantasm orthe 'fi~li() non nato'. [n eithcr case, she exists
only ;\s an 'ahject' non-subject On the hi~hly amhi~uous role of the prostitute in Pasolini's
prose and film narrative work, sce l'hilipps, H)92.
(The border between history and the self / cracks open twisted like a drunken
abyss)
And this heralds the explosion of sexuality and paternity, and poetic
form, in Rosa. (0
All the poetic work around the body, the father and the desiring
subject, up to and including Relir:ione, seems in retrospect a prologue to
their treatment in Rosa amI Trasumanar, as well as in a number of piv-
otal, uncollected and formally diverse compositions, including some of
the verse plays, written during the same period.
The first of those compositions in which the father is used for the
first time as a phant,lsm of terror which inhabits the actual father, is 'E
I' Africa?', written in January H)63 and later included in the screenplay
of the unrealized film If padre se1vaggio (S8---61; B2, d~47-S0). It deals
with the pain of the failure to bring· the fi Itn-project to fruition, and the
poet-'auolescente vcstito / dalla maure' (an adolescent dressed / by
his mother, I H47 )-flnds himself stand ing bctilre the castigating figure
of Alfredo Bini, his film producer. Bini is transtilrmed into the poet's
t~lther 'non nominato I ... 1 dal dicembre del cinquantanove, anno in cui
mori' (not uttered by name \ ... \ since the I kcember of II)S(), the year
he died, J S4H), 11 and is then reincarnated as the bther-'padre ormai
non solo mio, padre nient'altro che paure' (father now not only mine,
father nothing else than father, I H4y)-or a category of thought in
which the real f~lther represents 'olu truths' acquired through suffer-
ing. This vision of Bini as the bther is a momentary one-·-'ma suhito
rifll il mio coetanco goriziano' (hut he immediately turned back into my
Gorizian contemporary, [H4H)---hut it marks a uramatic resurg-cnee of
the figure anu its metaphorical significance, and t·hus a key to the diffu-
sion of the theme in Rosa.
The relation of the self to the father in Rosa is onc of unprecedenteu
volatility anu uncertainty. The pathological, or perhaps hysterical, em-
phasis on defining the self in terms of [lthcrs and sons is only matcheu
by the oscillation between diHerent definitions:
riflette la mia lingua una fantasia
di ti.glio che non sad mai padre
(,La realt:\', 6]1)
(my language reflects an imagination / of a son who will ncver be a fa ("her)
10 On hystcri~. sce Cixolls and (:Icmcnt, ['J7S; J .~planehe ~nd Pont~lis, [973, 177-Ho.
11 Pas(llini's f"ther actu~lly died on the night of H) Decemher [()58 (I,ettere, ii. 404). 'Poeta
delle cencri' (2056) makes the same slip.
THE BODY AND TilE rATHER
i padri-mia eoetanea, nera razza

('La rea Ita' ,633)
(fathers-my contcmporary, black race)
i miei coctanei, i figli
('I ,a realra, 635)
(my contemporaries, the sons)
'i miei padri crearono
una condizione padronale,
e qui comando io'
('lIlihro delle croci', 6(0)
('my I~lthers created / a system ofhosscs, / and here I am in charge')
sono mici figli Isitl,
gli lInici di cui pot rei dirmi padre
('Mcntre ... "i nostri ragazzi sono"', 771)
(they arc my sons, / the only ones or whom J could eallmysdf father)
non so, 'clfct t ivamcntc', esscrc padre, padrolle I ... 1
Padre, che COS'I mi sta slIccedendo'
('Un aeropiano dove si hl"Vl" challll);lgne, Camvdle" 7H2)
(I don't know, 'pract ically', how to he a lilt her, a mastcr 11 . . .11 Father, what is
happening to me?)
The trope of contradiction is here elevated to new intcnsity, and rcsolu-

tion is precludcd more than ever. We see an evolved, darkcned form of
the fluid interchangeability between g;ender and generation in the
I "riulan phase. I [ere, the oscillation is a markcr ofloss and anxiety rather
than free cxpressivity. [[owevcr, the figurc of the (",lther is amplificd,
elevated to the stat us of an ontological category. The subject does not
adopt the mask or role of the father or the son, hut instead inseribes
itself into the autonomous, myt·hieal dyad between Father and Son, or
bthers and sons.
In the final poem ofthc book, 'Vittoria' (RI3-25), the dyad is simply
transposed into political discourse, such that the PCI, or the commun-
ist intellectual, becomes the f.tther, and thc worker thc son. But thc
communists are strangely failed father-figurcs-'ombrc di eompagni
I. .. ·1 voi, padri / senza nome' (shadows of comrades l... ] you, fathers /
without name, 81 5)-and the youngsters ('giovanotti') havc in their
eyes 'qualcos'altro che amorc' (something other than lovc, 817). Thc
mapping of dcsirc and thc patcrnal onto thc political is partial here, but
such a conjunction will becomc a dcfining charactcristic of Trasumanar.
The violent energy of the father-son pair feeds into and is fed by the
equally violent praxis of the body in Rosa, by what 'Come in un velo
giallo' terms 'la pace I che I'Erotomania vuole per il suo Inferno' (the
peace I that Erotomania wants for its Hell, 777). Even the confusion be-
tween roles is related on a number of occasions to a hierarchy of desire,
and once more, to the charged 'amore per il mondo':
In rea ita, io, sono il ragazzo, loro
gli adulti. 10, che per I'eccesso della mia presenza
non ho mai varcato il confine tra l'amore
per la vita e la vita ... l ... ]
Cil mondo
ehe io amo in lui t... J
le generazioni,
il corpo, il sesso
('I.a realt.1', 6]4)
(In reality I am the boy, they / the adults. I, for the excess of my presence / /
have never crossed the border between love / oflife and life ... 1... 1 / / it is the
world / that I love in him l... 1/ / generations, / the body, sex)
But this love which is 'pure sensuality' ('I.e belle bandiere', 722) is evid-
ence of a lack, a desire for the vitality of the object, which the self does
not possess. More than simple love, then, this is the psychopathology of
what Pasolini will later call his fetish for reality, or for life, and it is sig-
nalled both by the inverted hierarchy between father and son, and hy
other parallel inversions and negativities, between life and death, pres-
eOlT and disintegration: 'tutto il monlio c mio corpo insepolto' (the
whole world is my unhuried hody, 72 [). Most important of these signals
is the role of the libido in subjugating the selfto the power of desire, but
also in renewing the impulse to death through the desire for vitality.
The rule of the transgressive libido in all its ambiguity is formulated in
'La realti', via a typical Dantesque calque:
10 sono un uomo libero! Cmdido cibo
della liberta e il pian to: ebbene piangef().
E' il prezzo del min 'libito far licito' (6]6)
(I am a free man! Candid food / ofliberty is in weeping: and so I shall weep. /
It is the price of my 'making lust lawful')
'Poesia mondane' includes a meditation on 'I'idea di fare un film suI
tuo suicidio' (the idea of making a film about your suicide, 615), which
dwells on grotesque details of bodily destruction, and is also accompan-
ied by a disturbing erotic impulse:
THE BODY AND THE FATHER 173
esesso, grandezza
della libidine, sua soavit.L ..
Il protagonista emacellato; [ ... ]
Una spaccatura gli scende dal palato
allo stcrno, e irradia dei tremiti
per tuno il corpo (615)
(it is sex, grandeur / of the libido, its sweetness ... / The protagonist is
butchered; [... 1 / A rupture runs down from his palate / to his breast-bone,
and spreads tremors / throughout this body)
The libido in this condition becomes a channel for a reified sexuality, for
repetition of acts which 'sono divenuti monumenti di pietra / che a
migliaia affollano la mia solitudine' (have become stone monuments /
that aowd by the thousand into my solitude, 723). In Jerusalem the
spiritual is conjoineu with anu overwhelmed by the sexual in its reified
form:
sesso a Gerllsalemme, religione a Gerusalcmme L· .. .1
libidine a Gerusalcmme, pied a Gerusalcmme [... J
non c'era altro eOllllllereio che quello del sesso (777-8).12
(sex in Jenlsa\cm, religion in Jemsa\cm I ... 1 / libido in ./erusalem, piety in
./erusaleml ... 1/ there was no other commerce but sex)
Anu oncc back in the Italian sOllth, the libiuo in its arbitrary repetitive-
ness continues to dominate:
tll\tO ljllest'O ammassandomi come in una lista,
at to di lihidine pilt aUo di libidine,
in un solo ljuartiere, in una sola cinu,
nell'alha meridionale (7811)
(all this piling up of"myselrIike in a list, / an oflihido followed by act oflibido, /
in a sole quarter, in a sole city, / in the southern dawn)
The impulse to repctition partakes of both aspects of the libido

which generates it-the vital impulse and the death impulse. In
'1.01 reald', the encounter between lacking desire and the 'sesso integro'
(whole sex) of the young boys is only vital if repeated: 'E mille volte
questo atto c ua ripetere: / perche, non ripeterlo, significa provare / la
morte' (This act is to be repeated a thousand times: / because, not to
12 The 'commerce' of sex is no jonf(er the innocent exchange as discovered in the 'borgatc',
but rather has become pan of the nco-t~lpitalist 'nuova prcistoria': 'vcro, il Possesso, / prctes-
tllalc, il Scsso' (Possession, true / Sex, pretcxtllal, 'Poesie mondane', 614), prefiguring
Pasolini', 1V1arcusian aUitudcs of the "nos and the elaborate economics of possession in
Pe/mlio.
repeat it means feeling / death) (636). 'Una disperata vitalit:i Ill' builds
to a nostalgic description of masturbation which is cast in similar terms,
and which again is an act of a reified narcissistic libido devoid of a real
object or economy, but also a necessary affirmation of the subject's
vitality:
sono corso l· . ·1011 cimitero vecchio I· . ·1
,. eompicre, e a ripctere, lino ,.1 sangue
I' a th) pi':l dolee della v ita,
io solo (733-4)
(I ran l ... J to the olu cemetery I... 1/ to carry out, and \0 repeat, till I urew
blood / lite's sweetest act, / me alone)
Sexuality and blood are disturbingly related at several other points, as

in the depiction o[ the struggle in 'Poema per un verso tli Shakespeare':
'si potrebbe esse re incerti sc ccoito, sonno 0 dllello all'llltimo sangue'
(you might be uncertain as to whether it is coitus, slecp or a duel to thc
death, 706). A similar conjunction closes the poem 'Come in un vcio
giallo', relating it: directly to the threat ofloss ofliiC and loss ofa mean-
ingful poetry:
non mi resta
che "lfe oggetto ddla mia poesia la poesia,
se tutto il res to Cormai sotto la sICra
di una brutla morte. I.a carne vuole sangue.
(7X<j; er
Orglll, 536)
(all that is left: to me / is to make poet ry the object of my poet ry, / if all t he rest
in now under the sphere / oran ugly death. Flesh wants hlood.)
The rule of the libido produces the synthesis bet ween sex and death
on the level of ideolog·y which is lacking in 'Vittoria'. The original t(lr-
mulation in 'La reald'--;--'Iibito t~lr Iicito'-is f(lllowed by another dra-
matic declaration: 'sesso, morte, passione politico, / I... 1T.a mia vita /
non possiede altro' (sex, death, political passion, / [... j My life / has
nothing else, 637). Similarly, along·side the identification with the Jews
ofIsrael runs just such a conflictual, political, and erotic desire f()r the
'disereditali L... Jfigli' (disinherited I ... ] sons) of the Palestinian-
Jordanians (780). [3 In the trinity of sex, death and ideology, through
whieh the violence and introverted negativity of the libidinal impulse is
sublimated into an ideology ruled by passion and thus equally prone to
13 Sce also 'Coccodrillo' (2089), 'Egli 0 tu' (1,·u,sulllanllr, 833): 'un chrco Ji elczioI1e / (ma
che pur) am are carnc araba, csclusivamentc), (a Jew hy choice / (hut who can love Arab flesh,
only) ).
THE BODY AND THE FATHER I75
violence and reification, the work of subjectivity within the figuration
of the father-son's body reaches an apotheosis.
Two further motif.., in Rosa are worth noting. On the one hand, dis-
courses of the body are not exclusively or directly sexual. There is an
undercurrent of physical violence which is best illustrated by the fear of
lynching looming over thc persecuted figure of thc 'divcrso'. In 'Poesie
mondanc', thc poet opposcs 'mitezza' (gcntleness) to mystification:
Guardo con I'occhio
d'un'immaginc gli addctti allinciaggio.
Osscrvo me stesso massacrato (621)
(1 watch with the eye I of an image, the experts in lynching. I I observe my
slaughtered sell)
Similarly, 'J.a pcrsccuzionc' provokcs a particular 'angoscia dellinciag-

gio' (fear oflynching) (665), and 'La couvade' (I907-9) narrates a tense
encounter with a g;roup of Ctscists where violence is fatalistically risked
and avertcd by chance. Thc death inherent in the body as a corollary to
Eros is not, then, simply an idea or an image of negativity. The sensc of
mutilation is lived as immediate. '4
On thc othcr hand, the ligures of the body seen and dcsired in the
'ragazzi' arc often perceived through a (I.onghian) 'way of sceing' as
sculpted or even ahstract /()rms in movement, embodiments of pattern
alltl energ'y, as much as bodies, irreducihle presences (Trento, I990).
The trans/i)rmation of the real father into symbol, or category of
being is chartcd in anothcr uncollected poem, 'Teoria dei due paradisi'
(B2, J 1) T8-2J), later adapted in Teorema, 74-79. its pscuJo-mathemat-
ical structurc and meaning suggest the deployment of synthetic sys-
tems rather than oforg'anic mimesis in dealing with reality. The 'theory'
is a corrective reading of the ostensibly autobiographical fact of the
self\ obsession with the mother since earliest childhood. The pocm
asserts that there was an even earlicr period, the 'first l'araJise', which
was undcr the sign of the tather. But there is very little room afforded
here to autobiography. Each 'character'-the 'father' and thc 'First
Father', the 'mother' and the 'mothers', thc 'baby' who is split into Cain
and Abel-and each of the loci of this parablc-the 'first' and 'second'
Paradises, both lost, and the 'first' and '~econd' Bells-arc cyphers,
stripped bare of personal association, ornament and description, and
relcntlessly reiterated in a hybrid ofOIJ Testament, tragic and scientific
styles. The masquerade, set in such a clearly allegorical or anagogical
14 On 'Jinciaggio', scc Dadoun, 1980; Rinaldi, 1990, 157; "n" Ch, 2 §7,
rhetoric, is identical to Teorema, whose texts constantly insist that tem-

poral sequence and realistic description are irrelevant, and that the
members of the family are immediately recognizable as archetypes. The
'Guest' mysteriously releases repressed transgressive desire in each of
the characters, and then withdraws, leaving each to compensate for his
absence with secondary objects of desire (Teorema, 95-I07). Desire is
always formulated through the body (Teorema, 42, 67, 81-2), and
through the dual role of the 'ospite' as father and mother in onc
(Teorema, 29-30, 38,46,73). With the exception of Em ilia, all the char-
acters attempt to substitute the compromised father's body, which is
then sublimated into failed art (Pietro), catatonic inertia (Odctta) and
arbitrary sexual encounters (Lucia). However, Paolo, the father-only
named when his authority has dissolved through his bodily desire
(Teorema, 80)-sublimates his desire into a radical ideological re-
sponse, giving his factory to his workers and literally exposing himself
as a statement of scandal (cf. 'La crocifissione').
The transf(mnation ofthe figure of the father through transgressive
desire is also the archetypal moment examined in the play Alla/Ju/a:::.iortl"
where the 'scandalo' is in the reversal of the 'normal' father-son con-
nict. The father gradually becomes the son ('il padre sei lu. / 10 sono il
bambino', you're the father. / I'm the hahy, Alla/Julazione, 223, and er
192, 208, ;n 8), desiring to be killed, not to kill. The eventual murder of
the son is constantly prefigured by the disquietinJ:!,' presence of the body
ofthe son to the father:
E' la presenza stessa dclliglio, inf:llt i,
che mette in scompiglio la socicd.
Il membro fresco, umile, assetato,
scandalizza per se stesso
(Allhhu/uzione, 2(6)
(Indeed, it is the very presence of the son / that upsets the order of society. /
His cool, humble, thirsty member / is a scandal in itself)
Indeed, the play open with a mysterious dream in which the f;lther ex-
periences a shadowy premonition of desire through a glimpse of the
phantasm of the son's body.
AjJabulazione reverses and intensifies the trauma of becoming the
father. Two very different poems, 'Coccodrillo' (2085-93) and '11 PCI ai
giovani!!' (1851-63), retain the unstable dynamic between father and
son, and continue its displacement towards a political praxis. 'Cocco-
drillo' contains an analysis of '1' Autorita eserfitata dal padre-fascista'
(the Authority exercised by the father-a fascist, 2086), which is trans-

ferred to the self as he becomes father-'la prima crisi vera della sua
vita / [ ... ] perche per la prima volta si reseconto d'essere un padre' (the
first true crisis of his life / [ ... ] because for the first time he realized he
was a father, 2087). The students of 1968 arc, again, both sons and
fathers to him. '11 pcr ai giovani!!' develops the polemic, attacking the
students for being 'bourgeois father-sons', caught by their double
potential as bourgeois and Marxist. Authority becomes a more spe-
cifically political power, and the means of radical change is seen in the
appropriation of the revolutionary, oppositional father, the pcr, rather
than in an aping of bourgeois power; in the good father rather than the
bad f~lther.
Trasumanar, the poems from Medea, and the remakes of Nu()va, fol-
low this line of a highly politicized, highly performative poetry, in
which politics is, however, misread through the eccentric categoriza-
tions produced by earlier suhjective mythologies amI desires surround-
ing the Etther and the body.
Despite the hostility of'lI per ai giovani!!' to the students, which in
Cld was only partial in any case, there is a ccrtain political optimism in
'traSllI1Ul1lil1" around the possihility of action, coupled with a pessimism
over the possihility of the self's participation in it. The key image,
Elmiliar ti·om 'Picasso', 'Pocta delle ceneri' and elsewhere, is of immer-
sion in the magma, of bodily, fctishistic commitment to the struggle as
the only route to radical action:
I Kcnnedy I hai gcttato,
come il migliorc degli studenti degli Stati Uniti,
il tuo corpo nella lotta
(,Egli 0 tu', 835)
(I Kennedy I you have hurled, / like the best American students, / your body
into lhc fi·ay)
1 giovani gettano, si, illor/) (Orpo nella loua

(,Charta (sporea)', 93!j)
(The young hurl, yes, their bOl~Y into the/i·ay)
Per natura sono dentm la misl'hia

per etd ne .IOno fuori
('1"01 man chc trema', 9 (3)
(By natul·e I am in Ihe meftJe / kJI aKe I am outside it)
This allows moments of genuine revolutionary fervour:
eio che eonta cil eorpo;

la eui povcrta cgaranzia di ricchezza
[... ] ma il eorpo ceol popolo
il corpo ccol popolo
il corpo ecol popolo
('T :orecehiabile', 917)
(what matters is the body; / whose poverty is a guarantee of wealth / l ... ] hut
the hody is with the people / the hody is with the people / the hody is with the
people)
But the selfis cut offfrom the arena of such vitality, with his 'cor po vano
come un sughcro che fa / che rifa, come se niente f()sse successo' (body
empty as a cork that does / that does again, as if nothing had happened,
'Appunti per un'arringa senza senso', 973). The bodies of the intellec-
tuals arc only vacuums:
[Eisa j ehe ne cdi noi? Dieo delle nostre attuali persone,
che pur son vivcnti, presenti e vive... 1.. ·1
I nostri corpi, EIsa, straeei hagnati, I ... 1seompaiono
('11 mondo salvato dai ragazzini (eontinuazione e line)', R7S)
(IElsa 1 what ahout LIS? I mean our present personae, / that are srillliving, pre-
sent and alive ... I... J / I Our hodies, Eisa, soaked rags, l.. ·1 are disappearing)
A similar air of decay, of a split between self and body, pervades

Medea poems such as 'J .ungo le rive dell'Eufrate' ('il sesso (proprio in
quanto parte del corpo)/ c degradato I... / ed c un po' buff()', the sex
(precisely because part of the body) / has degraded I ... 1and it is a bit
silly, 1880); and hoth 'Osscssione sotcriologica' (1894-6) and
'Dopopranzo nclla regione di Kayseri' (1905), and '(ierarchia'
(Trasumanar, 1031), where the poet is simply 'an old man'. Similarly,
Nu()v{l is also poetry of a tlisemhodied self: In 'Ciant tla li ciampanis'
(1084), the self returns 'sensa cuarp' (without a hody). In 'Li Ictanis dal
hid fi Ill' (1070), the old man contemplates 'il me cuarp / sensa etit ne
pudour' (my body / ageless anti shameless).
Gradually even the elements of continued faith in the essential power
of the body are degraded. Dialogue with young fascists, in 'Saluto e
augurio' (1176--82), and also in 'Introduzione' (1053-5), is justified by
the bodily authenticity of their violence: 'fassis'c ta l'anima e tal cu.drp'
(fascists in their soul and in their body', 1054). The book itself, described
in 'Introduzione' as a 'cuarp drenti un cuarp' (body within a body, 1055)
would seem to partake of this dubious authenticity. And one ofthe most
powerful protest poems, which owes something to the famous 'corsaro'
THE BODY AND THE FATHER 179
article on the disappearance of the fireflies (Se 128-34), is the rewrite
of'Mostru 0 pavea?' (1136-8), where ecological decay and destruction
of the transformative elements of the landscape spill over into the
vitality of the flesh which is now dirty, worm-eaten and corrupt, 'a sa
ama doma che se ch'a costa' (it knows how to love only what it costs,
1138).
In 'Charta (Sporca)', a similar uecay of the bouy and its political
potential degrades even the old trope of crucifixion as a figure of sub-
versIon:
Il cor pO (ogni corpo), coperto di eroste, ed eternamente croeitlsso
(non c'e nientc da Eire!) C preso per scherzo (l)Jl»
(The hody (every hody), covered in scahs, ilnd eternally crucified / (there's
not hing you eall do!) is taken in jest)
All the imagery of the body in these texts is already ideological, and
inevitably once more int(lrms and is in(lrmed by the casting of the roles
of f:lther and son. As in RI/XII, there is never a simple attachment of onc
htbc\ to one body. There are constant paradoxical inversions of roles
('I hll"Schke', 8S(I); and Illulriplc associations so Ihatthe self can be son
and brother at one moment ('I1mondo salvato dai ragazzini', 874), and
on the threshold bet ween Euher and son al another: 'non abhiamo tauo
intiltti ill tempo a essere callivi tigli / che giii siamo cattivi padri' (indeed
we were not in time to he bad sons / and here we are already had lathers,
IJ39). In 'Sui path'i' (Met/ell, 140; B2, 11)10--11), the tlther creates new
(at hers hy default, through error and ignorance amI disreg-ard for the
laws ('insomma, quesli giovani padri, ne hanno bue di tutti i colori',
well, these young f:tthers, they've reall y messed up). However, unlike in
NOXIl, there is a genuine allempt to develop a hierarchy of archetypal
figures and thus an incipient ~malysis of power in a strictly political
sense. The poem '(ierarchia' (1031-S) f()lIows, (i'om the perspective of
the t()reign yet familiar Brazil ('mia terra natalc', my native land), a
Dantesque journey through 'il cerchio piu basso dc\la Gerarchia' (the
lowest circle of the llierarchy) which is yet another search for sexual
gratification in the impure. But here the search is politicized by casual
confessions: 'io sono comunista, e; io sono sovversivo; / faccio il soldato
[ ... ] per lottarc contro i sovversivi e torturarli' (I am a communist, and;
I'm a subversive; / I became a soldier l... 1to fight against subversives
and torture them, 1033). This provokes the insight that powcr tran-
scends simple political allegiance, and inevitably accrues to the catcgory
of the old:
Non si puo sfuggire al destino di possedere il Potere

[... ] Accuso i vecchi di avere accettato la vita
(e non potevano non accettarla, ma non ci sono
vittime innocenti) (1034)15
(There is no escaping the destiny of attaining Power / [... ] I accuse the old of
having accepted life / (and they could not not accept it, but there are no /
innocent victims)
Furthermore, the role of chance-'c COS! per puro caso che un ()ra~ilian()
e fascista e un altro sovversivo' (it is thus by pure chance that onc
Brazilian is a fascist and another a subversive, I034)-fixes an impene-
trable force at the centre of power:
Gosi in cima alia Gerarchia,
lrovlIl'ambiguila, ilnodo inestriwbile. (I03S)
(Thus althe zenilh oFlhe Hierarchy, / Ijind (/./IIbif!,ui/jl, Ihe incxtrjw.b/c knot)
The new quality of this vision of power resides in the impotence of

the individual, who is caught in grand 'political' discourses and deter-
mined by them and by their forms, and the father-son dyad is the filrmal
matrix for expressing these determinants. The sell' remains respons-
ible tilr his/her choices-hence, Sartre-but is ultimately unable to
assign them autonomous political significance. All the poems which
address the student movements reinfilrce this synthesis of the mythical
and the political. 'Trasumanar e organizzar' (1)04-5), 'T ,'ortodossia'
(990-2) and its 'Rifacimento' (r025-7)' and much oflhe section 'I.a
restaurazione di sinistra' (963-79) warn that there is an arhitrary rela-
tion hetween power and protest. The paternal institution or the PCI,
the new orthodoxy or Church, which is the only pseudo-alternative to
the old onc, the 'inquietanti analogic' (disturhing analogies, ()60) be-
tween the 'ragazzi' and their fathers, and the recurrent paradox 'e tu
ohbedisti disobbedendo' (and you obeyed by disobeying, 1)6J, 102 [; er
'Una disperata vitalita', 744): these arc all variations on the theme of
political inexorability, in which only knowledge and consciousness
('coscienza') of the impossihility of meaningful action di~tinguishes
categories from each other. 'Poesia della tradizione' is the most power-
ful expression of the paradoxical rule of 'coscienza' and 'conoscenza'
(knowledge): the students addressed there are unaware of history and of
poetry, and are hence condemned never to exceed banal formulae and
empty gestures (960-2). But Pasolini's performance of the role of
15 Pasolini's own footnote here simply reads 'Sarlre'.

paternalistic castigator here is also studiedly banal and empty, imbued

with ambivalence and signs of dissolution. Indeed the strongest index
of the latent instability of the poem's apparently merciless critique of
the young radicals is its controlled ugliness and incoherence, precisely
as it evokes the values of beauty and truth of the grand tradition of its
title. The first person voice thus implicitly rejects, through irony and
through foregrounding the performative quality of the text, his own
self-imposed voice of power, of the father. 16
The father remains the dominant symbol of power. 'L'orfano Von
Spreti' (983-5),17 describes the death of a father as a liberation: 'non c
cosa dOl tutti i giorni restar orfani, / sentire ncl sesso la liberazione dal
padre' (it is not an everyday occurrence to be orphaned, / to feel in your
sex liberation from the father, (83). But even this personal and sexual
rite of passage is now politicized by the symbolism of the father, and by
the importance of the boy's g'estures at the funeral: 'I'intero sistema dcl
mondo era in g10CO' (the entire system of the world was in play, 984).
In the 'Tetro entusiasmo' section of Nu()va, the attitude to political
reality, and hence the deployment of images of political vision, moves
on somewhat. The importance of the 'figli-ragazzi' (boy-sons) remains
paramount, as in the 'Gennaricllo' section ofI/~ 13-07, but none of the
optimism (even compromised optimism) is left: 'i piu giovani figli /
degli operai avevano ormai sorrisi I borghesi' (the youngest: sons I of
the workers now wore hourgeois I smiles, 'Significato del rimpianto',
1154). The tone alternates between onc of hitter protest and onc of
intimate resignation and failure:
Ma hasla con qucsto film ncorealistico.
Ahhiamo ahiurato da ci() che esso rappresenta.
(' I ,a reccssione', I 1(3)
(Bur that's enough of this nco-realist tilm. / Wc have renounced what it stands
I()f)
'Saluto e augurio' attempts to rc-import the category of the father as

a fertile political instrument, but the urgency and bitterness of the dia-
logue precludes it:
t.. ·lIa mari.

I paris [... ].
16 For a dose reading of'La poesia <.Idla tra<.lizionc', sce Gordon, 1995b.
17Count Karl-Maria von Spreti, German Ambassador to Gualemala, was kidnapped on
31 March '970 and killed on 5 April by left-wing guerrillas.
r82 POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS
ma son dutis robis dal passat.

Vuei: difiendi, conserva, prea. Tas (I 178)
([ ... ] the mother. / The fathers [ ... ] / / but it is all stulY from the past. /
Today: to defend, to preserve, to pray. Shut up)
A more active synthesis between the father, the body and the desiring
subject takes place earlier, in the apparently apolitical context of the
poems for Maria Call as. 18 The key image of these poems is of a lack, a
'vuoto del cosmo' (cosmic void), which divides the subject from Maria,
from the possibility of intimacy, and ultimately from any communica-
tion of desire. And the void is repeatedly identified as an absence of the
father:
Chi c'c, in qucl VUOTO nu. COSMO,
che tu rorti nei tuoi dcsidcri e conosci?
Cc il padre, si, lui!
('Timor di me?', 1013)
(Who is there, in that COSMIC vom, / whom you carry in your desires and whom
you know? / There is the father, yes, him!)
ci<) che conla c lui, il Padre, si, lui:

10 dice uno che non 10 conosce
non ne sa nulla, non 10 ha mai viSlo,
non gli ha mai parlalO, non I'ha mai JScoltalo,
non l'ha mai amato, non sa chi C, non sa se c'c
(,RihicimenlO', 10'7)
(what matters is him, the Father, yes, him: / one who does nol know him says
so / who knows nothing of him, who has never seen him, / has never spoken 10
him, / has never listened 10 him, / has never loved him, knows not who he is,
knows not ifhe is)
CalIas is pictured as nurtured hy the presence of the Father which she

attempts to find in the poet. For him, the lack is a terrifying weak point,
where all the imperfections ofthe self arc concentrated. The ahsence of
the father, in a manner which returns to the very earliest of his poetry,
determines the search for a secondary Other, in himself or God, in the
body or poetry. But the failure of each model Cal POSH) dell' Altro I per
IH Contained in the last four sections of Trasl/mulltlr (and Met/ca), they intermingle "nd
overlap with some of the most highly polilicizcd poems. On I'a.,olini and Callas, sec Clement,
1980; Siciliano, 19H1a, 403--7. On this cycle, sce Cigni, H190; Rinaldi, 19112, 350-7.
TraslI1nanar also contains two intense lyrics ((lr Ninctto (923-{'), recalling the stilllargcly un-
published sequence of 118 sonnets dedicated to Ninctto, L 'h 11 bby
197I-Feb. 1973; in part in B2, 2341-H). See Sicilano, 198Ia, 410-13.
"t!.1'IJ11cttn (20 Aug.
me c'e un vuoto del cosmo', in the place of the Other / for me there is a
cosmic void, 1015) is laid bare by the desire ofMaria, and the result is
terror: 'e 10 sgomento, piu terribile, ben piu terribile / di avere un corpo
separato, nei regni dell'essere' (it is the dismay, more terrifying, much
more terrifying / of having a separated body, in the realms of being,
1015); 'il mio cor po e attratto dal pieno / dove gia cia che regna e la
morte' (my body is drawn to the plenitude / where that which reigns is
death, 1017). Lack is written across the body of the subject who can
only compensate with already compromised secondary plenitudes.
Here, in the dichotomy between the subject and an idealized inter-
locutor, as much as in the chaotic rhetorical pseudo-synthesis of the
political poetry, the desperate search for subjective plenitude finds
its emblematic climax, or at least its most distilled confrontation with
the void.
8
Poetry into Cinema
Pasolini's poetry exhibits a remarkable range of strategic positions and

tropes of poetic subjectivity, and, in its incessant modulation and trans-
formation of these tropes, it constructs its own reception, or better, its
own misreading. Its governing dynamic of polyvalent tensions mapped
onto poetic language and form, poetic figures and discourses of desire,
both produces an imprint of the multiple, intersecting planes of the
work of subjectivity and evolves towards a redefinition of the poetic text
as a permanently provisional form. This is poetry as process-'da
farsi'-which produces an ambivalent subjective vitality through in-
stability. It is a poetry subject to the provisionality of the text, but not
onc dependent on a formalistic, ludic metatextuality, because t()rm is
constantly and desperately anchored to sellhood as lived, hodily heing.
Such a hybrid is profoundly fertile, with the t()rm of the text ceding' to
the subjective, and the subject necessarily reborn and remade at every
new formal turn.
Each of the fi)Ur trajectories described in Part Tl have reflected this
permanent palingenesis. Chapter 4 described the impulse to autobio-
graphy as it produced constant rd()rmulations of the self, governed
not so much by sequential, narrative memory as by a fragmentary re-
fraction of memory through unresolvable questions such as 'Chi fui?'
(Who was I? 469) and 'Who is mc' (2056). In Chapter 5, the vision of
history inherent to the poetry was, precisely, one of fluid analogy be-
tween past, present and future, in which all arc immanent and poten-
tially subversive and subvertible within amI through the others. The
subject takes its place as a similarly fluid phenomenon in poetic time,
with the meaning of external apparatuses or institutions subordinated
to their capacity to be themselves constantly reformulated. And in
chapters 6 and 7, the figuration of the self in others, and of desire and
ideology in both the body and the real or imaginary father, were read as
modes of inscribing the subject only and paradoxicall y in an economy of
projection and transformation. It is here that the repeatedly touted
POETRY INTO CINEMA
Pasolinian trope of contradiction, Fortini's 'sineciosi', acquires its

most profound significance: as a figure which debars monumental and
coherent closure, and demands movement, discontinuity, provisional-
ity or some other form of poetical energy in a sort of quantum physics
of poetic language. The subject is formed and deformed in the shifts of
state and in the discontinuities and the readers' formation and de-
f()rmation of the texts follow a parallel path. Neither is allowed to retain
a unitary or verifiable cohesion. Each is caught up in misreading the
other.
To encapsulate, if it were possible, this layered work of subjectivity in
Pasolini's poetry, we could turn to his enthralled 30-year-old recollec-
tion of the lectures by Roberto J .onghi that he attended as a student in
Bologna in the HJ40S (I)escrizirmi di tiescriziolll, 251-5).' As slide fol-
loweu slide, the sequem:e of visual f()I'ms on screen captured something
almost mystical:
lilmio riconlo di quel corsol ~, in sinlesi, il riconlo di una eonlTapposizione 0

ncllo eOI1/"ronlo di 'fill·me'. Sullo schermo venivano inEmi proiettate delle dia-
posilive. Ilolali e i de\la~li dei lavori, eoevi e ese~uili nello slesso luog:o, di
Masolino e di Masan:io. 11 cinema IlKivtl, sia pure in <.juanlo mera proiezione
di fi'lOg:rafie. E a~iva nel senso che una 'inquadralura' rappresentanle un
campione delmondo masoliniano . ·in quella conlinuil:l ehe c appllnto lipico
del cinema··--si 'opponeva' drammalicamenle a una 'inquadralura' rappreseJH-
anle a sua volta un eampione delmondo Illasaccesco I... 1. 11 fj'ammento di un
Illomlo f(.rmail: si opponeva tJuindi fisicamente, materialmente al frammento
di un altro Illondo fi,rmale: una '(ill'ma' a un'altra 'till·ma'·I· .. 1
I.e Illeravig:liose clp,u:it'l istrioniche di I.on!\,hi, le sue ~ioielil:rie severe, non
son null" in con fi'onto del suo lllCido, ullliil: ascett ismo di osservalorc del moto
di fin·me. (f)csrrizilllli r/i dc.'(I'i;:.illlli, .l52, .l5S)
(I my memory ofth<ll course I is, in sum, the memory ofa contraposition or elear
conlrast of 'fin·ms'. Indeed, on the screen slides were projected. The wholes
allll Ihe details of the contemporary, COnl'iguolls works (If Masolino anJ
Masaccio. This was cinema in M/illu, even if as the mere projection of photo-
r;r'lphs. Anu it was in action in the sense that a 'frame' representing a sample
or Maso\ino's world-in a continuity that is precisely typical of cinema-
was dramaticllly 'opposed' to a 'frame' representing in turn a sample of
Masaceio's worlJ l.. ·1· The fragment of a formal world was thus physically,
materially opposeu to the fragment of another formal world: onc 'form' to an-
other 'form'. I ... J
[ On Longhi ,mu Pasolini, scc Marchesini, 1992; Trento, 1990, 81-H2.

Longhi's marvellous performing abilities, his severe jeweller's art, are as

nothing before his lucid, humble asceticism as an observer of the movement of
forms.)
It is no coincidence that this extract, chosen to embody the expressive

energy of Pasolini's poetry in the compelling 'moto di forme', also cap-
tures the essence of his vision of cinema.
PART III
Cinema: Tracking the Subject
The masks of film are so many emblems of authority

(Thcodor Adorno)
PASOLINI BEGAN shooting Accattone in October 1960. His move into
film was the terminus ad quem ofthe I 958-<) crisis in his work, and in his
public role, discussed in Part I. The attempt to create simulacra of in no-
cence and authenticity within literary language, begun in Friuli and
carried over into his Roman work, had failed, and written language
had become an alienating force, as he explained to Jean Duflot: '[Les]
meditations poi:tiques ou romanesques interposaient entre la vie et moi
une sorte de cloison symbolique, un ecran de mots' ('working in poetry
or prose set up between life and myself a sort of symbolic barrier, a
screen of words', Duflot, 1970, 17). Cinema seemed to afford an imme-
diacy and plenitude, in its contact with real phenomena and its attenu-
ation of symbolic representation, which in turn promised a parallel
plenitude fc)r the subject. The founding internal dynamic ofPasolini's
cinema is this triangulation between cinema as a privileged form of
representation of reality, reality itscl f and subjectivity.
It is clear from a very early stage, however, that such a dynamic is
conditioned and often energized by external constraints. When
Aaauonc almost collapsed after Fellini's refusal to continue backing it,
Pasolini learned the first of many lessons in the compromises imposed
by a collective, commercial and industrial medium such as film.
Suhsequently, he strove to absorb and exploit the characteristics of the
mcdium to set up a field of self-expression through its form. In this, of
course, he was repeating a pattern familiar from his journalism and
poetry; amI indeed, his work in film could usefully be understood as an
attempt to rework and synthesize elements of both his cultural activ-
ism, with its play between expressivity and conditions of place, and his
poetic work, with its spiralling exploration of the contours of self-
expression in an uneasy literary language. In his cinema, we find
versions oft:he tropes of his poetry-autobiography, history, projective
self-figuration, the body-and the equally familiar struggle to take on
his medium, 'never to be afraid of where he is speaking'. The particular
conjunction of the internal and external forces in cinema, however,
makes t()r the development of a highly speeific and often more troubled
language of expression, and a parallel metalanguage in his essays in film
semiology (EE 169-301), which work in multiple, often overdeter-
mined ways to imbricate subjectivity into the image- and the sound-
track of the cinema. It is this 'tracking' of the subject which will be
followed here in Part Ill.
CINEMA: TRACKING THE SUBJECT
Six interlocking aspects of film discourse will be examined as

channels for the work of subjectivity. The most striking initial evidence
ofPasolini's need to confront the tendency ofthe medium to silence the
first-person is found in his repeated assertions of authority, his at-
tempts to subordinate the pro-filmic to that authority, and the parading
within the films themselves of variously underscored markers of reflex-
ivity (Ch. 9). A transposed and sublimated form of such direct self-
reference is then shown in the attempt to appropriate and colour the
technology and techniques of the medium for stylistic, subjective ends.
Style does not mark the presence of the subjective so much as suggest its
immanence across the filmic and the pro-filmic, within the syntagmatic
forms of representation itself, and this conception of style as a subject-
ive signifying practice follows a pattern similar to that evinced in
Pasolini's poetry and indeed his later journalism (Ch. fO). A third axis
follows the active role played by pre-filmic, intertextual genesis,
through forms such as the screenplay, in determining the hermeneutic
status of the film (Ch. 1 I). And this in turn leads to an investigation of
two aspects of meaning in film with profimnd implications fi)r the loca-
tion and impact of filmic sclfhood; metaphor (Ch. 12) and film-time
(Ch. 13). In conclusion, all these axes arc sounded out together in a con-
sideration of their impact on the construction of spectatorial subjectiv-
ity in Pasolini's cinema (Ch. 14).
Cinema brought Pasolini success, even a certain degree of wealth,
and, as we have seen, an ambition to succeed had been part of his make-
up since his earliest work. Furthermore, since the decision 10 move into
film was an openly strategic attempt to break out of an impasse in his
literary and intellectual carecr, it was c1carly in part a 'cynical' move, in
the sense he so carefully used later in describing his collaboration with
Tempo illuslralo. But it was also in part utopian, a reaching out fi)r an
absolute of expression and representation. It should be apparent" from
the outset that these two impulses, whose interaction condition the
nature of all his work, in film and elsewhere, after 1<)60, are fraught with
difficulty, indeed are radically irreconcilable. Irresolution is the domin-
ant register here, and as a result, the movement from individual to sub-
ject to subjectivity in his cinema is at its most emphatic but also its most
insecure yet. To track the subject offilm in Pasolini is to track contours
of anxiety.
9
Authority and Inscription
Pasolini's heliefin his capacity to impose his voice on any medium, de-
spite its constraints, was reaffirmed and indeed intensified by his
experience with film. Hc repeatedly asserted his autonomy and author-
ity as an 'auteur', confidently declaring his control over every aspect of
the film-making process:
I never conccived of making a him which would be the work of a group. I've
always I hought ofa hIm as the work of an author, not only the script and the dir-
ection, but the choice of sets and locations, the characters, even the dothes-I
dw()sc cverything. (Slack, )()69, J2)
Je ne crois pas, jllsqll'aujourd'hui, aI'<cllvre collective I... Iun film est l'ocuvre
d'ulI amcll!". (I )UflOI, 1 <J70, J9)
(I do nol believe, to-dale, in collcctive works I ... 1a film is thc work of a single
'autcur')'
And even in his theoretical eSS:lys, despite their wholesale adoption of a
vocabulary of semiology which tends to privilege textuality over self-
expression, he steadLlstiy anti at times simplistically maintained his
belief in the authorial voice: 'In quanto spettatori "semplici" non
gllardiamo tanto per il sottilc I... 1. Noi ci identifichiamo semplice-
mente con I'autore, viviamo la sua visione' (As 'simple' spectators we do
not go in for anything very clever [ ... 1. We simply identify with the
author, we live his vision, FF 2In).
The principal method Pasolini adopted to f()reground this almost
patholog'ical insistence on the single origin of film discourse was to
disrupt the naturalism of film: 'I hate naturalness. 1 reconstruct every-
thing' (Stack, Jl)6l), 132). His attitude towards actors and acting is
a good example, and his position could not he clearer: 'I am not inter-
ested in actors' (Stack, 1l)6l), 40); 'Chiunque pUG fare I'attore
cinematografico' (Anyone can act in films, Lodato, 1977, 76: see
Bertini, 1 l)7l), 3 r -51). And indeed, he often used non-professional
[ On alllcuri,m, sce for example Lapslcy and Wcstlakc, 1988, 105-28; Wollcn, 1969,
74- 116 .
actors, usually friends and acquaintances, from both the 'borgate' and
from Rome's literary milieux. 2 As with a number of other aspects of his
cinema, this preference has its roots in neo-realism,3 but Pasolini's
reprise of it works to undermine the naturalistic effects of nco-realist
and traditional cinema in general. He disrupts the smooth mimesis and
emotive naturalness of narrative cinema, what he would later call
'cinema di prosa' (prose cinema), and tends towards a raw, unpolished
immediacy. Even in his personal rapports with non-professional actors,
he set himself against the exploitative or professional pattern of tradi-
tional director-actor relations, and looked for an immediacy reminis-
cent in some ways of the pedagogic intimacy and innocence of the
Friulan period.
The exclusion of professional actors was, however, far horn consist-
ent, and his uses and treatment of them reveals interesting insights into
methods of achieving control over the medium. Some of the major
actors he employed were Anna Magnani, who played 'Mamma Roma',
Or son Welles, the director in La ri(()ua, Silvana Mangano and Alida
Valli in Edipo, Tot() in Uuellaui e uccelli1li and the shorts Che (()sa S01l0
le nuvole? and I.a lerra vista dal/a tuna, Terence Stamp in Teorema,
Maria Callas in Medea, and the list could continue to include Ugo
Tognazzi, Pierre Clcmenti, Julien Beck among others. Some of these,
such as Magnani and Stamp, were imposed by produccrs (Bertini,
1979, 37)· And the on-set clash between Magnani and Pasolini reg'ard-
ing their respective roles was difficult and at times traumatic. Pasolini's
taped shooting-diary of Mamma Ronul, published in the screenplay, de-
scribes a wary process of failed coming to terms, with fhe director
insisting on his right to total control over aCfion and intcrpretation in
the face of the actress's disconcerted resistance and instinct ti)r char-
acterization and continuity.4
2 The key players from the 'horgate' were Franco ond Sergio Cilli, Ninet\o Ihvoli,
EUure Garol•• lu and Mario Cipriani. Intellectuals 'lI1d artists he used included I.aura
Betti (several films); Srefano lJ'Arrigo, EIsa Mora11lc (Ar.·(IIlllmc); Paulo Volponi (Mall/lIla
Roma); Enzo Siciliano (La fit-olla, Vallgeio); Eisa Dc <iiorgi (1.11 fhOl/a, S"It;); Giorgiu
Bassani, Renato Guttuso (La ra.""ia); Natalia Ginzburg, Giorgio Agamhcn (/liwge!o); AIf'lIlso
Gatto (Vlmgc/o, li:orema); Francesco Leonetti (Ual/M(i c lI(al/illi, HI/ipo, Ch. wsa .w"o /"
nuvole?); Ccsarc Garholi (Tcorcllla); Giuscppe Zigain'l (J)ewmfrrlll); Uherto Paol" (tuilllaV'llle
(.'lair;) .
.1 Scc Bondanella, HJ90; Liehm, 1<)84; Marcus, 19H6, 22, and passim, l'lf all later rc/erences
to nco-realism.
4 'Le pause di Mam1/la R01/l,,: diario al registratore, 3-4 maggio 1962', Mamma R01/la,
133-52 (140- I, 147--<)). Sce also Bertini, 1979, 45-7. l~ ... an actor's account of working with
Pasolini, sec Quintavalle, 1976, on Salo.
AUTHORITY AND INSCRIPTION 193
In several cases, a strategy similar to his 'misreading' of Gramsci and
Shelley in 'Le ceneri di Gramsci', and any number of other figures dis-
cussed in Chapter 6, can be discerned in his use of actors. They are dis-
placed from their 'professional' capacity as players of fictional roles to
connote some perceived inherent, iconic quality or meaning. Orson
Welles in La ricotttl, for example, is used less as an actor than as a dir-
ector, or rather the Director, and the Director as self (he is clearly an
autobiographical figure) (Plate I). His portrayal bypasses mimesis by
way of direct reproduction, just as thc extras in the film are played by
real extras, and just as in Pasolini's theory, cinema reproduces 'realta
loul ((JurI' (reality in itselt~ EE 205), unmediated. Welles also acts as a
cypher set up in apposition to his role. His very presence and fame as a
cinematic icon inf()I'ms the film with meaning by association. This is
also the case with TOt<l, who again is used as a cypher for his own iconic
value in popular culture, and only very tenuously as a fictional char-
actcr, in an ideologically loaded pastiche of the mock-fictions of his
music-hall and film comedy roles. In both cases, such connotative
symbolism 'Iiberatcs' the actor-characters to become simple vehicles
for aspects of an authorial voice, mediated through the familiarity of
their imag-c. A telling confirmation of this usage is given by Pasolini's
strenuous efforts to find a famous poet to play Christ in Vangelo (he
askeJ Yevgeny Yevtushenko anJ Allen Ginsberg, among others;
Y'itngelo, 300-1), and to persuade Jac4L1es Tati to play the part of
llerdhitze (eventually played by Ugo Tognazzi) in Porcile. 5 Further-
more, those 'borgate' boys, such as Franco Citti (Plate 2) and Ninetto
J hvoli (Plate 3), who became regular players in Pasolini's films (and, in
time, in other directors' work also), came to represent themselves
motifs of his cinema, emblems of his world which cut across the fiction
of any single work to become markers of self-expression: as Naomi
Greene writes, 'the presence of these "mascot-faces" thus becomes a
kind of artistic signature signalling the presence of the author within his
film' (Greene, 1990,42). They are 'interprctes fetiches' (actor-fetishes,
Geranl, H)!h,43).('
The specific connoted meanings of these and other actors, which
enrich the texture of the expressive voice behind them, is a narrow
aspect of a general and highly significant tendency in Pasolini's cinema,
S See [,el/ere, ii. 653-4, where the tone ofPasolini's letter to 'Clti suggests thatthc latter had
objected precisely to his or Hulot's being appropriated by Pasolini as a cypher.
o Onc or other or both appear in thirteen out of his sixteen fictional films. The exceptions
arc La ricotta, Med,'" and Sa/,i.
194 CINEMA: TRACKING THE SUBJECT
which will be discussed further below, to play down diegesis and the
suspension of disbelief, and thereby throw emphasis onto image, dura-
tion and presence.
The destabilization of mimetic acting is reinforced by a deliberate re-
fusal of preparation, emotional or otherwise, in the actors. Like Fellini,
and in another neo-realist calque turned against naturalist ends,
Pasolini would instruct actors only while shooting was in progress, pro-
ducing an unnatural spontaneity out of tune with situational realism.
The first scene of Accattone is a striking example of this method, show-
ing a series of forcedly laughing faces which mock and disturb the
viewer as well as Accattone, complementing the oppressive sunlight
which dominates the landscape, as it will throughout the film. In a 1965
interview, Pasolini explained how in order to achieve a suitable alienat-
ing effect of this kind he would feed a line to an actor ('buongiorno',
'hello'), and later dub it with something quite different Cti odio', 'I hate
you').7 And post-synchronized dialogue itself, yet another feature
associated with nco-realism, is a further important element in his cam-
paign against the interpretative, narrative force of acting. Out of step
with the 'nouvelle vague' and most contemporary cinema, P;lsolini not
only did not regret the necessity for dubbing, but positively valued it as
another guarantor of the unnatural dissonance of the whole, and of the
monovalcncy of the speaking subject: '1 think dubbing enrichcs a char-
acter: it is part of my taste for pastiche; it raises a character out of the
zone of naturalism' (Stack, 1969, 39).H
Dubbing and counterpoint between aClOr ;mt! dialoguc contribute
significantly to }>asolini's most e1ahorate cxploration of his suhjective
anti-naturalism, La ricoua. The sequence of the throw-away comic re-
frain, 'la corona' (the crown), f(lllowing the Director's call t(lr the crown
of thorns, is onc ofthe film's most ironic and potentially blasphemous
moments, one Pasolini had to defend in court against the accusation of
'contempt for the State Religion':
Il grido di 'Corona, corona' cla prima avvisaglia della superlicialitii incrcdula,
scettica, plebea, del mondo che circonda Stracci c sanl testimonc del suo
martirio. 11 tono noncurante, 0 pow inerente, non si riferisce penl, qui, tanto
alia 'corona', quanta all'andamento tipico Jellavoro del set; e, se vuo\c sfouerc
qualcuno, sfotte la spocchia del regista, monosillabico, paratattico e annoiato
[... ]. (Guadagni, 19% 47)
7 'Interview with Pasolini hy J. B1uc', Film Comment, Falll96s, cited in Bcrtini, 1979,40.
8 See also 1 Jia/IIKhi, 6!l5---<n; Bcrtini, 1979,48-50; Dunot, 1970, 119.
(the cry 'the crown, the crown' is the first skirmish with the incredulous, scep-
tical, vulgar superficiality of the world that surrounds Stracci and will witness
his martyrdom. The dismissive, or inattentive tone is not, however, so much
about the 'crown' as about the typical nature of work on set; and if it is trying to
mock anyone, it is mocking the arrogance of the monosyllabic, paratactic and
bored director [ ... 1.)
I,a ricotla is, in part, a satire of relations between the director as art-
ist and the constraints of production and promotion. The figures of
the non-professional actor-extras, the production team and its para-
phernalia, the t()()lish journalist, the archetypal director, and the pro-
ti)Undly authentic and alienated hero Stracci, represent the spectrum of
Pasolini's operations on set. In his defence of the 'Corona' incident, he
goes on to indicate a moment of epiphany in the film, when the crown is
wrested hack from the superficialities of the satirized film world and re-
claimed as sacred by the hand ofthe real director, himself:
10, diret tamente, come autore, intcrvengo quando-spente le irriverenti
grida-Ia corona viene alzata dOl due malli di operaio, contro il bianeheggiante
panorama della cit ... , dominandolo. (Guadagni, 11)<)4,46)
(I intervellc directly as 'alltem' when, OIlCC the cries have died away, the crown
is lined up by two worker's hands, set dominant against the whitening
panorama orthe city.)
This sequence, then, is a paradigm of the agonistic relation between
director and mediulll, shown up by a moment of dissonance, followed
by a retllJ'n to harmony, authenticity and control.!)
Several other aspects of film-making arc subject to similar effects of
controlled dissonance as that produced by the use of actors. For ex-
ample, the choice of music t(lr deliberate effects of counterpoint with
the image or narrative is a striking feature of his most successful
films. 10 Similarly, Pasolini's own conceptions of costume design took
on an increasingly significant role with the pastiche of Renaissance
iconography in I,ll ri(otta and Vanp:e/o, and later the elaborate, but
markedly inauthentic or unt'amiliar creations tor the myth films Edipo
and Medea. From Tellrema on, Pasolini even acted as his own camera-
man (Gcran], 1981, 100). And finally, but crucially, since it binds the
issue of authority most directly to the bedrock of reality represented
~ For several accounts ofl'asolini's relationships with his producers and crew, sec Bcrtini,
uJ7<), 10 7-21 4·
.0 The use of music as ;t limn of commentary on other aspects or the films is particularly
evident in the anthology of sacred music that hacks Vange/o. After 1965, l'asoIini often col-
laborated with Ennio Morriconc. See Bcrtini, 1<)79,51-69.
on/by film, the careful search for locations, validated as an autonomous

discursive practice by the release of several reconnaissance films, is also
constructed as a hermeneutic practice undertaken by the author.
Sopraluoghi in Palestina per 'Il Vange/o secondo Matteo' (1964; cf.
Vange/o, 21-4; Rosa, BI, 757---(3), Appunti per unjilm sull'/ndia (1968),
and Appunti per un 'Orestiade afi'icana (1970) all show the enquiring, cre-
ative author figure as the pivotal co-ordinator of the diffuse elements
which will make up the signifying matrix of the film-in-thc-making.
It is clear that, in general, Pasolini's cinema forcibly tends towards
the non-collaborative, as Bertini pointedly asserts: 'Pasolini's cinema
can therefore be qualified as a work of'manipulation', not of ' coliab ora-
rion' (translated from Bertini, 1979,36). A single vision is all, and other
individuals just as much as production structures are to he neutralized
in some way. He manipulates, disturbs and renews the pro-filmic in the
hope that it will serve him as ,tn idiom t(H' self-expression, much as he
had, for example, created his own intensely cxpressive Friulan dialect,
flexible enough to challenge the worn, picturesque tradition of dialect
poetry and later to adopt the ideological baggage of popular song with-
out sacrificing expressivity and control. Both cinema and Friulan
represent, initially at least, languages in privileged, evcn mystical con-
tact with reality on the one hand, and with the self on the other. Funda-
mental differences divide the two, of course, and not least the evidcnt
tension between the mass audience of cinema and Pasolini's impulse
towards intimate self--expression, as opposed to the symbiosis betwcen
self and addressee in Meglill. Nevertheless, it is no surprise to note a
preponderance of images ami topoi and patterns of self-represcntation
Elmiliar from past aesthetic or alll'obiogTaphical moments such as the
Friulan period. It~ then, the rhetoric of Pasolini's appropriation of the
pro-filmic is a reductio ad unum, or at least: attempts to be so, the single
voice it creates is filled out and reinforced by a range of reflexive
references which needs to be elucidated. In moving from the author-
ity to control the medium of film to the characteristics of the films
themselves, we move from the pro-filmic to the filmic, but we remain
within the bounds of a cohesive attempt at self-expression or self-
representation, fully conscious of the processes and language of that
medium.
Two primary categories of self-reference operate in Pasolini's
films; self-representation and archetypal figuration. The first consists
either of personal appearances on film or veiled autobiographical self-
portraiture. The range and nature of these allusions recall elements of
autobiographical fragmentation and transposition discussed with
reference to poetry in Chapter 4, but they operate with less fluidity and
less specificity. There are straightforward instances of non-diegetic
appearances in documentaries such as Comizi d'amore and Le mura di
Sana, where Pasolini is both street-interviewer and voice-over, fully
identified with the intellectual project of the films, mediating, respect-
ively, between attitudes to sexuality and between cultural histories. 11
More interesting are his spare commentaries and interrogations of
landscapes and people in the location films which instigate a dialogue
between himself and a reality loaded with potential meaning, or poten-
tial filmic articulation of meaning. As is generally the case with docu-
mentaries of this kind, the voice-over, and the corresponding real-time
presence of the author, create a sort of metalanguage which gives a
pseudo-unitary and ahistorical coherence to the self, as it frames and
deciphers fragments of reality (J .apsley and Wcstlake, H)88, I7 1-2).
In the main hody of his work, his most significant personal appear-
ances arc in "·dipo and 11 /)ewmeron. In "·dipo, Pasolini appears as the
IIigh Priest and spokesperson filr the citizens of Thebes. His long
speech is in fact made up of extended quotations from Sophoeles'
Oedipus l)lrltn11 llS, and thus his mediating dramatic role hetween
Oedipus and the people is echoed hy his mediation between the original
text and the film's rc-reading of it. The moment of his appearance
thus hecomes 'highly metacinematic' (Greene, 11)1)0, ISI), as he locates
himself at the centre or a transfilrmative and figural interaction be-
tween past and present which is, as will he seen below, fundamental to
the signifying practice of his cinema.
In 11 f)ccllrm:rorl, Pasolini casts himself explicitly as an author! artist
figure, just as he will play Chaucer in I rauonti di Canterhury. Here he is
Giotto's pupil, whose progTessing work on a fresco cycle in a Neapolitan
church frames the second halfofthe film.'2 The stories and characters
Three other doeumentaries are partly or wholly attrihutable to Pasolini: the first half of
I I
I,ll",""i" (, (il), mnsis' int( of newsreel imat(es aemmpanied oy Pasolini's commentary and
poems read hy Jlassani and GUllUSO (the second half was hy Giov;tnni Guarcsehi); Dtldici
diamhrc, made in HJ72 'fmm an idea "fPier I)aol" I)asolini' hy 'Lotta Continua', and partly
lilmed hy him; and the unedited Lo seiop",o dCKIi spuzzilli (or Appunli per un rOlllanzo
.11I!l'iIllI/lOntlczzll; Boyer, 1987, )47), made in HnO by Pasolini I(H· the 'Comitato cineasti italiani
contro la repressione' (Committee of Italian Cincastcs Against Repression).
'2 The DUlltllenm story (vi. 5) from which this character is taken (Boecaceio, 1966,73&-40)
has Giotto himself as a character, and Pasolini initially offered the part to hoth Paolo Volponi
and Sandro Penna. When he took on the role himself at the suggestion of Sergio Citti, he
changcu the role to that of Giotto's pupil without altering its symbolic impact. Sec Gcrard,
1981,86--87; Naluini, [(JS9, 351.
of the second half are framed by and emerge from the bustling market-
place outside the church, where the artist ventures to find incidents
and models for his 'realist' art. A significant shot shows him observing
people through a frame-viewfinder shaped by his fingers, as if both
painter and cameraman. IJ If the parallel urawn in Edipo is latent and
based on poetic, or at least textual reading, in the Detamerrm Pasolini
instigates a figurative triple analogy between the vivid, realistic aes-
thetic of Giotto, Boccaccio's energctic realism, and the operation of
synthesis represented by the popular and celebratory carnal realism of
his film. He interpreted his presence thus:
Cosa significa la mia prcscnza nel J)aumeroll? Significa avcr idcologizzato
l'opcra aLtraverso la coscienza di cssa: coscienza non puramenlc cSlctica, ma,
attraverso il vcicolo della fisicid, cioc di lutlo il mio modo di esscrci, lotale.
(Naldini, (()R9, 351)
(What does my presence in Ihe '])ecameron' mcan? 11 mcans having ideo-
logized the work through a consciousness of it: Ilot a purely aesthetic con-
sciousness, hut, through the vehide o("physicality, Ihat is ofevcry aspect of my
way of being wholly present.)
In other words, he saw his bodily presence as a strategically deployed

channel between a subjective vision and total immersion-··-'esserci'--
in the modes and ideology of medieval realist art.
It is worth noting, as a caveat, Pasolini's casual altitude lowards his
acting. As already indicated, he only stepped in to play Giolto/(iio\to's
pupil at the last minute. In Carlo J.izzani's lIl"obho (H)60), he half-
jokingly took on a bit-part as ,l gUll-loling gangster 'J ,eandro 'er
Monco'. '4 His lack of interest in acting' in general extends 10 his own
experience, and his appearances arc important more as spurs to and
paradigms for subjective readings of many other aspects of his film work
than as exceptional foci of self-reference. Volponi as Giotto would have
retained strong auto-referential impact, just as in lIaelluai e uaellini,
Franceso Leonetti's voice ofthe crow sounds very much like Pasolini's,
both in timbre and attitude. '5 What hoth J~'diplJ and JI Daumcron (and /
racl"fmli di Canterbury) do underscore is the alliance between subject-
ive inscription and the history of cinematic form, through its orig'in in
texts (Sophocles, Boccaccio) or icons (Giotto), or aesthetic practices
I] The same parallel was famously drawn by lIenjamin, 1973,235-40.
'4 A still from the lilm was later puhlished in 1f1("IIIPO, JO November ,,)61, when \';lsolini
was accused of armed rohhery of a petrol s[;ltion! Sce Siciliano, 19!1Ia, 30211; Naldini, 19HI),
245 ff.
15 Some reviewers assumed the voice was Pasolini's (e.g. Biraghi, 11)66).
(tragedy, realism). In this context, the strain subtending his appear-
ances, produced by their detached, discontinuous or framing relation to
the diegesis of the film, suggests a more problematic and incomplete
process of inscription than that confidently offered in his own explana-
tion of his 'esserci, totale'.
Self-representation is also t()lmd Pasolini's films in less direct forms
of autobiographical self-portraiture, oftcn based on oblique allusion.
Examples would include the casting of his mother, Susanna Colussi-
1'asolini, as the older Virgin Mary in Vange/o, echoing the identification
between self and Christ in his poetry; the entrancing prologue and epi-
logue of EdiplI, loosely based on his birth and early childhood; [6 the dir-
ector played by Orson Welles in I,a riwttll, whose status as an ironic,
collapsing version ofPasolini is made explicit by his ostentatious recital
of part of a poem from the screenplay of Mamma Rllma; the crow in
l/ae!faai e u{ceflini, as already indicated; the unnamed colonial teacher
in the unfilmed screenplay If padre .l"ei-va!'.j.{io who conflates Pasolini's
vision of the '1 'hird World with his f()rmative intellectual experiences as
a teacher and inspirer of young poets and artists in the 1 940s. These in-
stances show fragments of t he self's history, or of its historiography,
synecdochically transposed into film. Such transpositions are of course
often invisible to the uninitiated spectator, but their presence is often
cryptically signalled, as occurs in I,a rirollll, and in Uadfaai e urcellini,
where the crow is identified by an intertitle as 'a left-wing intellectual
Film he/im' the dealh or l'almiro 1fJglitlui'. The signals thus point more
to problems of subjectivity and tilmic autobiography than to the
specific subject and its history. This is confirmed by the persistent use
of counterpoint"s to such signals, which create a strain on the self-
representation not unlike that apparent in Pasolini's personal appear-
ances. For example, the implicit identification in Vangefo between
author and Christ, via the mother-Virgin Mary, is countered and com-
plicated hy suhsidiary analogies with Judas (Baranski, 1985a, 95-8);
the power of I,a riwlla lies in its depiction of the wf/upse of the self; and
the crow of lhceflllui e u(cellini is similarly already a sclf-in-crisis-
literally disembodied and later disembowelled-and is clearly not quite
and not always a simple mouthpiece for a fixed 'auteur'. Patterns of
detachment and self-disavowal within the retlexive tropes of each film
prepare for less rigid and less author-hased readings of the work of
[6 Even wirhin the main myth narrative of Etlipo,J ocasta's c.Iwelling was c.Icsigncc.l as a copy
of Pasolini's mothcr's home, accorc.ling to Dante Ferrerti (set designer, with Luigi
Scaccianoce); !lertini, J()79, [69·
subjectivity in film, opening' up for interrogation a field of other pos-

sible subjectivities (filmic, spectatorial), through a weakened figuring of
the single subject.
The second categ'ory of self-reference, that of archetypal figuration,
takes as its starting-point the contrapuntal, negative figures of subjec-
tivity noted above as qualifiers to the first category. These figures leave
the self latent, as a shadow dispersed across certain archetypal con-
figurations of characters, a spectrum of identity and difference. For ex-
ample, if the prologue and epilogue of Edipo introduce a strong implicit
autobiographical identification, they also configure the main myth of
Oedipus as an interrogation of subjectivity, through the charged, un-
explained suture between the modern and the ancient. The entire cent-
ral narrative is refracted through the lens of subjectivity. It is not only
the autobiographical resonance of the frame that comes to promote the
film as an interrogation of subjectivity, but also and above all the pro-
cess of suture itself. The suture makes possible the twof()ld aim for
Hdipo that Pasolini outlined to Stack: 'to make a kind of completely
metaphoric-and therefore mythicized-autobiography; I . . . 1 to con-
front the problem of psycho-.tnalysis I ... 1 I have re-projected psycho-
analysis on the myth' (Stack, 1969, 120). It is in the configuration of the
child and Oedipus, constantly reawakened by echoes between modern
and ancient settings and stylistic patlerning, that the metaphor or re-
projection occurs. Similarly in Met/ea, the dyad Jason-Medea em-
bodies the conflict between primitive and civilized society, a conflict
whose articulation is at the centre of Pasolini's poetic strategies in and
after eeneri, in his verse-tragedies and the unrealized lilm--cycle
Appunli per un poema sullerzo mOl/do. 17 The contlict in Teornna is a vari-
ation on the same theme, and indeed the theorem itself is a working
through of the config'uration of all five family members amI the guest,
each a vessel of latent subjectivity which resonates through fi'agment-
ary autobiographical associations. In Port'ile, Pasolini invests his sense
of ,divers ita' in the two protagonists, Julian and the cannibal, who both
challenge founding taboos of civilization, and who both die f()f their
difference. Indeed, all the films mentioned so far have in common
myths of founding moments of history, or collapsing back into pre-
history, as narrative vessels t()r the investigation of subjectivity, and this
secondary, but fundamental link will be further elucidated in Chapter
17 A series of prc-production notes in the Fondo Pasolini, written in 196H, se IS out five
episodes of the cycle: Pae.<i arabi, AjYita (probably 11 padre sell'aKKifJ), lilt/ill (sketched in
Appunti per un./ilm SIlI/'lndia), SudAmerica, NfJrdAmeriw_
13. Figures of difference also recur in this regard: in Il Decameron

Pasolini's own appearance in the second half of the film implies a par-
allel affinity with the framing character of the first half of the film, Ser
Ciapelletto, whose homosexuality, mentioned in passing in Boccaccio
(1966,47), is highlighted. And Pasolini's interest in this character is
further demonstrated by a treatment written as early as 1963 or 1964,
entitled 'Sant'Infame' (sce Bibliography IAa), in which an evil scoun-
drcllike Ciapellet\o is f()rcibly shut in a seminary and on becoming a
priest, starts a 'city of boys' to satisfy his lust, but is taken as virtuous for
his vocational dedication to the young, and dies as a saint (sec Chs. 3 and
15). Perhaps the most sustained example of poetic identification
through such configurations is to be found in the project for a film about
St Paul. In its systematic updating of the locations of Paul's biblical
wanderings, San Pa% represents a culmination ofthe process of suture
between past and present embodied in the structure of Edipo, and
adumbrated in different ways in VUllge/O, Porcile, Medea, Appunti per
un 'Orestiade uFriama, /.e mura tli Sar/a and in still more attenuated,
nostalgic fashion, in the trilogy. Pasolini combines elements of the
texluallidelity to the Bible which characterized I/cwge/o with the appro-
priation or Paul as a ligure of the self I H As Greene comments:
The published scenario leaves no doubt thatl'asolini viewed the bther of the
(:hun:h in a deeply "utobio~r"phieal li~ht I... 1. r,ike Pasolini, this unhappy
saint is misunderstood and mocked by the pro~ressive intellectuals who should
best have understood him. (11)1)0, 171\)
But beyond simple self-projection of the kind suggested by Grecne,

San Pa% also illustrates a final, recurrent type in this category, what
might be termed the pseudo-couple: two bound, mu! ually integrating
symbolic characters, who posit and aspire to wholeness, or to subjective
cohesion. Paul is particularly interesting since he embodies the split
within himself Early in a first draft of the screenplay of San Pa%,
written in May Iq6X (sce Bibliography I.4b), there is a passage of
rhetorical crescendo which culminates in a declaration of Paul's funda-
mental uuality:
III I'asolini was known amongsl his 'horg'He' friends as 1',1010 (!Odipo, 22). h might he worth
noting thallhc first-person narrator of Alii impllri is called Paolo (.-Jmadolllio, 102), the priest
nun Paol" is the central eh,nactcr of the first version of 1/.<lJglllll/i IIIIlI (("a (now in ROl/lflIlS),
and ufthc play 1/ Wppelllll10 (in part in Un paese di temporali e di primule, 298-3°5), and both
Pielro and Paulo arc characters in 7'con:mfl (Purdon, 1977,44). Similarly Carlo, the protago-
nist of Petmlio, is named afier Pasolini's "nher (Pc/rolio, 29).
Anchc Paolo fu picno di doppiezza! Ci furono due Paoli! Ci furono due nature
in Paolo! Paolo cbbc due volti. E li vedretc: un volto duro e sicuro, un volto
debole e smarrito; un volto sano, c un volto mano; l· .. J un volto di reazionario
c un volto di rivoluzionario. COS! egli riprodusse la doppiezza di Dio, c diede
scandalo. Anzi, rid scandalo. (P.14)
(Paul too was full of duality! There were two Pauls! There were two natures in
Paul! Paul had two faces. And you will see them: a hard and sure face, a weak
and lost face; a sane face and a mad face l ... J a reactionary face and a revolu-
tionary face. Thus he reprod uced the duality of God, and he provoked scandal.
Rather, he provokes scandal.)
The absolute, irresolvable schizophrenia evoked here inevitably recllls

'10 scandalo del contraddirmi' of 'Le ceneri di Gramsci', and the ulti-
mate sublimation of the self in the divine throu~h a crisis of doubling
suggests that the figuration of duality is, t(lI' Pasolini, an expression of
the deepest shape of sclfhood, precariollsly on the CllSp between over-
determined excess and dissolute, permanent, violent loss. As the sister
in the play Beslia dll stile, declares '10 Sdoppiamento del persona~~io in
due persona~gi / c la pill grande delle invenzioni Iclterarie' (the dou-
bling ora character into two characters / is the gTeatest literary inven-
tion, Tealfll, ()70).
At:tual representations of bound couples, then, take on amplified
significance. Jason and Medea, as Illent ioned above, arc mystically
bound despite their prof(Hll1d symbolic difkrences, and this bindin~ is
the f()I'ce which ovcrpowers them and leads to tragedy. It is emphasized
by the mesmeric rapture which takes hold of Medea on (irst seein~
Jason, and her trance-like theft of the fleece and killing of her brot her
whilst escaping-·actions which break thc fundamental taboos of reli-
gion and family. In Pllrcile, the relation between Julian and the ex-
ecuted cannibal has already been alludell to. Equally, it is possihle to
read the couple of I hvidson, the poet-native, and the teacher in fI
padre seh1aJ!,gio as a variant on the pseudo-couple, since the mythical-
symholic process of trans/()rmation narrated takes place along the axis
oftheir mutually pedagogical interaction.
By far the most sustained example of the pseudo-couple in Pasolini's
cinema, however, is the pairing of' J'ot() and Nine(to Davoli, in (Tccelfllai
e uccellini (Plate 3), I.a lerra visla dalia furta, Che (osa sono le nuvofe?and,
the unrealized project Po/'rto-leo-k%ssal. It)
HI Sec Bihlio[;raphy 1.4{/" 'I'orno-teo-kolossal' tells the story or a mouern-uay Wise Kin[;
and his servant wanuering through the city-states or Souom (Rome), Gomorrah (Milan),
Numanzia (Paris) allll Ur (somewhere in the Thiru World) in search of the Messiah. The
AUTHORITY AND INSCRIPTION 20 3
Their portrayal is always in some way pedagogical (see Ch. 3), either
as father and son (main part of Uaellacci e uaellini, La terra vista dalla
tuna) or as mentor/master and novice/servant (medieval episode of
Uccellacci, Che (()sa sono le nuvole?, Porllo-teo-ko!ossal), and they repres-
ent a humorist, fabulistic variation on the innocent vitality of the
'ragazzi di vita'. They exist in an unreal space, between the fabulous and
the miraculous, and speak in simple dialect, or indeed in mime and
gesture. 20 This magical space moulds the couple into an archetype of
the representation of split consciousness.
The dual centres in these films encourage a search for other more at-
tenuated, but none the less important, dualities elsewhere. In Uccellacci
e ulullilli, a secondary couple can be identified in the interplay between
Ihe crow·--a bird who preaches to men-and St Francis-a man who
preaches to the birds-and the pairing confirms, as so often in Pasolini's
vision, an equivalence between Marxist and Christian ideologies. 21 In
[,it ril:olla, the tragic end reveals a powerful affinity between Or son
Welles and Slracci, which figures exactly the profound empathy
Pasolini himselfldt with the 'sottoproletari' in all their base purity, and
its relation to a prot(HlIld aisis ofselthood. u
The si ratcgies descrihcd in this chapler t(lI' wrenching authority
away fi'om the mechanisms and practices of film production towards
the self-proclaimed 'allleur', and for stamping a slIbjectivizing imprint
on a range of single liV;urcs and clusters of figures, have tended towards
the agonisl ic. They posit a conscious, pre-existing self; isolated from
and acting upon the filmic and pro-filmic aspects of the medium. At
anal,,!,:olls lIpdalin!,:of'pl'I<:e recalls SII/l1'1I0/0. Pasolini hi,d Ihe role inlllind lin' Tot,) when the
lalleT died ill ")('7. lie I'cllIrlled 10 Ihe projccl in "175, now caslin!,: a,wlher cultural icon
hlo,ml" de Filipp" as I he kin!,:, and Ninell" as his serv,nll (Naldini, ,,)R(), ]79). A scries of
projccls involvin~ '('ot('1 werc ClIt short by 'l'otl)'S dC;)lh, including- i.l version ofPillo(Chio
(/.('lll'r£" ii. exii, 6.!4 (), and Ihis was sif.!;nilicilnt in delermining 1he sharp change in Pasolini's
l'incl1I:I :llier "'('7 X.
'0 Sce Ihe lin:ll scene of lft-al/tlffi, where '\(,1<, mimes e:lling the crow 10 Nine\to; and
cOllllnunico.t,io)) vi;, millle wilh Ihe deaf-mUle Assullfa in /,a terra "vis/a dallaluna.
! I [n:l roun<l-Iable discussion on l,ili.lI1a Cavani's !'mtJ(c.I'(o till Assisi (Bolzoni, [(,166)
Pasolini nOled how his inlereSl in St Fr:!ncis derived precisely from thc imagery of the birds,
rather Ihan any Illcssa!,:c ofChri,;li.lll purity. On Ihe ovcrlap between Marxism and a certain
side ofChrisrianily, nOle how !'rancis' linal speech in the lilm was taken by many to he a quote
from Marx ('wc nn'" chill1!,:e Ihe world I... 1'), whereas in tacl it was largely takcn from Pope
Paul VI's speedl to Ihe Uniled N:ltions in New York, 4 October 1965. The crow prefaces the
medieval parable with Ihe warnin!,: thal resemblanccs to living people 'non sono affatto
c""illi' (arc by no meilllS liu·tuitollS).
22 /,1I riCIJlIa was madc ilS Pasolini first began /,a divi,/{j mimesis whose pseudo-couple-
two versions of himself-looks forward to the apotheosis of the topos in his work, Pe/fOlio (sce
Ch. 15).
various moments in the discussion, however, it has been suggested that

these strategies only set conditions for analysis of a more fluid, less an-
chored work of subjectivity, inherent in intermediary patterns of film
language, film representation and viewing. The next chapter will move
towards a consideration of such patterns by focusing on how technique
or film style might be seen as a further vehicle for the figuration of sub-
jectivity on film.
10
Style and Technique
The projection of the self onto charactcrs of a film, although often

ambivalent and discontinuous in its binding, creates a subjective axis
parallel to the diegetic track: it is, at heart, autobiographical. Set across
that parallel axis, however, is an axis of sublimated self-expression in
non-diegctic features, such as imagery, landscape, self-citing narrative
mot ifs and their modes of representation: we can describe this axis as
stylistic. Elements of Pasolini's own theory illuminate here. In the essay
'11 "cinema di poesia'" (Rh· J7J-()I), he analyses cinema using cat-
egories of prose-style, and in particular intcrior monologue and 'style
indirecte lihre'. Both these techniques involve the ~ldoption hy the
author of the psychology and language of a character, hut the nature of
the exercise is necessarily 'prctestuale I ... 1 serve a pariare, indiretta-
mente I.. ·1 in prima persona' (pretextuall· .. 1it allows 1the author] to
speak, indirectly I ... 1 in the first person, H) I). Hence, in practice, the
character I!!an only be of t he same cult ural/()rmation as the (bourgeois)·
author. The apparent projection of the self onto the other is a device
for neutralizing 'otherness': 'la horghesia, insomma, anehe ncl cinema,
ridentifica se stessa con l'intera umanita, in un interdassismo irrazion-
alist ico' (the bourgeoisie, finally, in cinema also, reidentifies itself with
the whole of humanity, in an irrationalistic interdassism, 191). To
comb'lt this smothering of difference-although of eourse the theoret-
ical f(lfI11ulation is a posteriori-Pasolini's Roman novels had attempted
an immersion in the culture of the underdasses via philological, docu-
mentary and therefore non-stylistic research. The canvas of mores
drawn in Raxazzi di 11ita and Ut/a 11ita vio/entll, and much of Ali da.gli
()({:hi azzurri, relics on a direct language denuded of the condescending,
populist assimilation outlined in '11 "cinema di poesia" " based instead
upon a re-evocation of the noise of a certain reality, its presence felt
physically or orally. There are instances of authorial figures (e.g.
'Giubileo', 'Notte sull'ES', Ali dagli occhi azzurri, 53-79), but the sub-
jectivity repressed at the surface reemerges rather in descriptive and
narrative passages, in the literary interstices of the philological recon-

struction, which have led critics to talk of a (ontaminatio of styles in
Pasolini's prose works (Borghello, 1977, 145-82). The principal vehicle
of subjectivity there is the technique of the novelistic idiom or genrc
rather than in the stylelcss noisc of the reality dcpicted.
Thc transposition to cincma is, apparcntly, dircct. Here, too, and
particularly in the early 'horgata' films (Aaatlonc, Mamma Roma, La
riwlla), it is through tcehnique that Pasolini inserts thc suhjcctive
voicc. He himself repeatedly and dising;enuously playcd down the
switch to cinema as merely a renewal oftechniquc:
le passage tic la Iilleriltme all cinema I ... 1 n'esl qll'lIne queslion tic ehange-
men[ de technique. (I hlllol, J()70, 16)
(thc movc /i'omlileral me to cinema I . . . 1 is merely" q uesl ion ofchang'ing tech,
nique)
J :esperienza cinemalogralica e qlldla lelleraria I, . ,I sono fin'me analoghe. 11
uesitlerio di esprimerllli all raverso iI cinema riell1 ra nd mio hisogno d i adottare
una tecniea l1uova, una tecnica che rinnovi. (C'il/l'/I/11 flUII1I(), 150, I (J(lI ,l]uoted
in Figazzolo, Il)l)O, I)
(CincmatogTaphie and lilcr'lry expnicncc I ... 1 arc analogous ((n'llls. The de
sire to express myself via cincma is part oflllY nced 10 adopt "new Icchniquc, a
techniquc that renews,)
Ilowcver, to play down such a change as tcchnique is disingcTluollS,
since on it hinges a key aspcct ol"the role of subjectivity. I Thc 1I0VelS'
dynamic contamination 01" t wo or mort: registers dcpended 011 their
original separability. In cinema, howcver, the aural! oral reconstruction
of thc 'bOl'g-atc' ·thc 'noise' of the novels-and t he literary matrix of
description-the stylistic-subjcctive register of the novcls-are both
containcd within audio-visual techniques of1()oking or rcprcsentation
on film. The separability of levels of audio-visual discourse is fraught
with difliculty, and thus lIif"ferenl" axcs of differentiation sct the para-
metcrs for subjectivity. Far more than in prose, thc first -persoTl subject
in film cocxists with and cuts across the object, the physical landscape
and its inhahitants, via ways of seeing- that synthesize style and tcch-
nique. This synthcsis is at the root ofPasolini's positing in '11 "cinema
di poesia" , ofa cincmatographic 'style indircct Iibre', tellingly lahellell
'soggettiva Iibcra inllirctta' (frce indirect point-of-vicw).2 It also
I In 'Poeta dclla Ceneri" he mnlCsseu the 'insincere' nature of the d'lim, aumitling the
prot(lUnd philosophical amI politi,,;!1 implications of the move into film (Ih, 20(7),
2 Pasolini's uetinition ,mu USL'S of (he term have taxed his most theoretically atert critics:
Dagraua, IIJHS; Greenc, 19<)0, 115-2.1; Turigliatto, 1<)76; WagslJtf, IIJ85, 114-19.
STYLE AND TECHNIQUE 20 7
explains why Accattone and Mamma Roma differ so markedly from the
sub-genre of 'film pasoliniani', based on his stories or screenplays,
made both before and after his own debut as a director. As Carlo Levi
noted in his preface to the screenplay of Aaattone: 'Aaallone non e
pasoliniano' (Accat/one is not Pasolinian).3
In describing Pasolini's strategies tilr controlling the pro-filmic in
Chapter <), several areas of his film technique were already noted in
passing, from his penchant for post-synchronized dialogue to his dis-
ruption of naturalistic mimesis and diegesis. The consequences of these
practices emerge in his most considercd account of his own filming
style, an essay in the screcnplay of Uaellacci e UI;cellini suggestively en-
titled 'Con/Cssioni tecniche' (Technical Confessions, 44-56). There,
he recounts his intuitive lcarning of the craft, from his total ignorance
of lenses and shots whcn he began work on Aaallone, his misunder-
standing of the term panorama, his reliance on iconic sensibilities to
construct at least a partially visual expression of the desired effects,4 to
his use o/"colour and past iche in I.a ri(()tla, and his disappointment with
Ihe 'sincerilY' o/" Vangc/o and discovery of what he calls the 'mechanism
oranalog'Y' (Anlles, l()7(), I Sil-9). The mosl signilicant 'confession' for
our purposes is Ihat of Ihe conllict between sty les in Aaallone and
V!f,1/gl'lo, since in his analysis ofthe 'sacralit;\' (sacredness) ofthe {()filler
and the contrapuntallechnical 'magma' of the latter, he demonstrates
that the indirect suhjectivilY ofsl'YIc outlined above depends on a willed
discrepancy het ween diflerenl vehicles of style. The (in'm in film ana-
logous to the mosaic o/" contamination filUml in prose is located in the
dissonance between various simultaneous tracks ofsignilication.
The sacredness of .'1crllllone, Pasoiini explains, originated' "ncl
modo di vedere il mondo": nclla sacralit;\ tecniea del vederlo' ('in my
way of seeing Ihe world': in the technical sacredness of seeing it, 45). In
praelice, this rclers to Ihe statiC, frontal iconography ofthe film (Plate
2), rein/i)rced by abrupt cuts which do not construct a point of view,
but rather fix images as fragments of a "material reality. There is little
.I The '!'asolinian J;ll11s' (Jilllowed by his rol.;.in each), were /,a nolll' hmVll (M. Bulognini,
]()S'I; Irealmenl and screenplay); /,11 giomalll halrm/II (M. Bolognini, 1960; co-scriptwriter);
/,11 ((/71111 delle mllrllrle (e. Mangini; source and voice-over); La wmmare secc(/ (B. Bertolucci,
]()(,2; treatment ;lIld pari of screenpl.iy); Uti" villlelioif1ll" (I'. lIeusch/B. Rondi, ,,)62; from
the novel); Oslia (S. Citli, 1'170; general collaborator); Slorie swllemle (S. Cini, 1973; general
coilaborator). Sec J ,odalo, 1977. Frustration at others' use ofhis material was a factor in draw-
ing Pasolini towards directing.
4 Mamma Roma is dedicated to Roberto Longhi 'cui sono debitore della mia "fulgurazione
ligurativa" '(to whom I owe my 'figurative illumination').
shot-reverse-shot continuity in Accattone. Where the camera does ex-

press a point of view, as of the policeman following Accattone in the final
scenes of the film, it is to objectify the figure of Accattone through a
panoptical embodiment oflooking, rather than to mark out an internal-
ized perspective. 5 A fluid sequence of shots would tend to reinforce
a unitary narrative and undermine the mystical importance of the
materiality of the filmed object: 'Sacralita: frontalita. E quindi rcligione'
(Sacredness: frontality. And thus religion, 44).
Consistent use of strong front- and back-lighting, not balanced hy
kcy- and fill-light positions which create plastic three-dimensional
depth, as well as strong natural sunlight, (, enhance the two-dimensional
iconographic effect, as does the striking use of Bach's choral music. But
all of these devices depend filr their power on a counterpoint with the
emphatically base, and at times immoral and squalid narrative content.
When the pimp Accattone dives cruciform into the Tiber horn beside
one ofBernini's angels on the Ponte Sant'Angelo, in sight o[St Peter's
and recalling Peter's inverted crucifixion, the scene acquires expressive
impact because Accattone is an archetypal 'ragazzo d i vila" dcn ied
access to the centre and history of'la cristiana cilt;i' (the Christian city,
Ceneri, B I, 181): his failed, parodic martyrdom is fiu· a bet about eating
potatoes. Simple narrative bathos hecomes a more complex token of
ambiguity at the level of technical effect. Just as Pasolini's Elseination
with faces-obsessive in Vtmgc/o, where the peasants arc a correlative
to the landscape, and to the historical and mythical elements of the
Gospel story (and similarly in the location films)-is essential and
material and never psychological, so the juxtapositions in ..1((({llonc arc
never couched in effects of emotional empathy or caring outrage. They
arc aesthetically formal, but ;llso material, always at the service of dis-
placed forms of expression, of subjective inscription into film and into
reality.
For Vange/o, Pasolini goes on to explain in 'Confessioni tecniche', he
began by filming as he had done for /lcmuone. But the sacred nature of
the Gospel text made his own technical 'sacralita' seem rhetorical and
obvious, 'pura enfasi' (pure bombast, 46). By force of circumstance, he
narrates, he had to shoot the baptism of Christ from above, thereby
losing the iconic, frontal effect (Plate 4). This unleashed a flood offree-
5 The finat sequence is also a pastiche ofGodard'sA bOllt dcsOl!f7lc( 1(59). Ct: 'Una dis!'er-
ata vitaliti', Rosa, 131, ]21>-8.
6 'In ((mdo fare cinema c una questione di sole' (At heart creating cincm,) is a question of
sun[light], Mamma Roma, 150). Scc Siti, 1989.
wheeling asymmetry and diversity of camera-angles, lenses and move-

ments, creating a 'nuovo caos stilistico' (new stylistic chaos, 47) which
he found wholly concordant with his dual desire to create a Gospel
laden with two millennia of cultural interpretations, and to adopt
'sincerely' (49) the alien mind-set of a true believer in representing it. In
other words, the new technique inaugurates a genuine free indirect
speech, a 'soggettiva libera indiretta' to (self-)express otherness. The
equivalent of the counterpoint in Aaattone is between that magmatic
dispersal and the pure unity of the text of Matthew's Gospel, especially
the voice of Christ (Enrico Maria Salerno) recited in all its sacred
rhetorical glory, often as a voice-over to disturbingly discontinuous
sequences of shots, frames, locations, movements and lighting effects.
The contrast is, significantly, used to most powerful effect in the cli-
mactic and most politicized moments of the text: the Sermons on the
Mount and to the Pharisees. In the gap opened by that counterpoint,
Pasolini heeomes a reader of the Gospel text, not a simple copyist, and
the tilm becomes onc of sclf-expression.7
The scope f()r analysing film technique, or ways of seeing, as vehicles
f(H· suhjectivity is all hut endless, given the persistent foregrounding of
(tlawed) technique, and its anchoring in subjective looks. Pasolini's own
phrase might be adapted to deserihe its workings: it offers a sort of free,
indirect subjectivity. Two further, related aspects illustrate particularly
well its 'freedom' from a single, unitary voice, and its oblique 'indirect'
channelling through secondary articulations of filmic language: shot-
composition and editing.
I'asolini's cinematic practice is t()llllded on a poetics of the gaze or
look. It drastically reduces dialogue and promotes, often to excess, the
visual and the static. H The tendency of his camera to remain fixed
and/ or distant in diegctical scenes of action or dialogue has already
heen mentioned with reference to Aaattonc. And although Pasolini's
Hexihility with the camera increased with each film, and particularly
after Van/ic!o, later work still assigns an important function to the static
camera-eye. Thus, f()r example, in Pun·ile, during the long dialogue be-
twecnJulian and his girlfriend Ida as they walk along the symmetrical
lakeside framing the monumental Palladian villa in the background, the
7 On Pasolini's not wholly faithful adherence lo the Gospel, sec Baranski, 1985"; Stack,
1969,91; Viano, 1993,33]-3, who lists the film's sequences alongside the relevant chapters of
Matthew.
8 Scc 'La "gag" in Chaplin' (EE 260) and '11 cinema e la lingua orale' (EE 270-2).
camera is fixed at a distanced perspectival centre throughout; and this

is echoed by the contrapuntal lingering over the desolate volcanic land-
scape in the cannibalistic episode of the film. Similar distancing is
found in Teorema, where it has the ironic effect of diluting the speci-
ficity of each sexual conquest by the Guest, and of creating symbolic
topographies, such as the enigmatic receding tramlines outside the
family's house. In Met/ea, we follow at a crawl the progress of Jason
and/ or Medea across the desert, and from the town to the temple in
Medea's homeland. The distanced camera reaches its apotheosis in the
final scene ofPasolini's final film, Said, when two guards spy from the
villa on the horrific torture of the young prisoners below, and embrace
in a dance of perverse indifference. Again, this aspect ofPasolini's style
runs counter to the raw techniques of the nco-realists, who, for <;co-
nomic and aesthetic-ideological reasons, tended to favour the hand-
held camera and the medium-shot. Instead, the stasis and uistance of
the camera creates an architectonic or pictorial aura and uraws atten-
tion to the camera-frame.
The signifying, iconic fi)rce of the gaze or the static camera by no
means implies, however, that Pasolini's camera is atemporal. Shots, or
looks, arc syntagmatically articulated by the uiscontinllolls and dy-
namic process of editing. In his fundamental ess.JY, '1 ,a lingua scritta
della realt:i' (FF 202-30), Pasolini expresses the move from s1a1·ic shot
to dynamic edited sequence linguis1ically, as a move from 'sostanti-
vazione' (a substantive, or noun mode, 213-15) to 'verbalizzazione'
(verbalization, 216- J R). A shot 'rappresenta qualcosa (he C' (rcpresents
something that is). A con catenation of such shots creates a verbal dy-·
namic: in his pedagogical example, 'the teacher ,,,ho teachcs' and 'the
pupils who listen' becomes 'the teacher teaches the pupils' (217). Typic-
ally, Pasolini acknowledges the tentative imprecision of his terminology
(EE 213), but it provides nevertheless an important insight into his
filming practice. An illustration of the relation between shots anu
editing in his own work can be found in his set diary ti)r Mamma Roma,
one of his earliest statements on technique:
10 giro a brevissime inquadrature~inquadraturc chc non durano pill di 2, 3,

c
minuti al massimo f. ... J che poi coordino in un montaggio che esattamcnte
quello che ho in mente prima di girare. (Mamma RI/ma, 140)
(I shoot in the briefest of takes~they last no longer tha t 2, 3 minutes at the most
[... ] and I then put them together in a montage which is exactly what I had in
mind before filming.)
STYLE AND TECHNIQUE 2II
He subverts linear, temporal continuity on the image-track through the

compositional temporality of directed montage. 9 But what is also made
clear here, and is implicit in the move from noun to verb in film lan-
guage, is the role of subjective agency in forming the alliance between
shot and editing (,quello che ho in mente'). The look is not limited to
the look of the camera in a single shot, hut it is given a history, is con-
structed as a narrative sequence and thus made an index of subjective
processes, expressed by Pasolini as necessarily rooted in his own inten-
tion. In a 1971 essay, 'Teoria delle giunte' (!if' 2S9-92), he restated this
view in onc of his most tellingly 'auteuriste' assertions: 'mentre un
poeta si riconosce da un "verso" non c possibile riconoscere un regista
da un'inquadratura 0 da poche inquadrature: occorre almeno un'intera
sequenza' (whilst a poet may be recognized from a 'verse', it is impos-
sible to recog·nize a director from a frame or a few frames: at least one
entire shot-sequence is required, l:'h' 2S9).
The importance of this history of the looking I is further suggested
by the apparently cont radictory impulses in Pasolini's shot-composition
described above: on the olle hand he prefers long·, static architectonic
takes, and on the other, very bricl~ truncated takes. And examples of
both abound in his work. The contradicl"ion is only apparent hecause
both spatial distance and perspective, and fj·onul immediacy and frag-
mentation work as g·enerators of]ookiug: the rhythm of disrupted cou-
tinuity is the echo ofthe work of subjectivity.
In 'I ,a ling·ua scritta della reald', when considering· the verbal mode
of lilm lang·uage, Pasolini suggests that the rhythm of the relative dura-
tion of shots has no equivalent in the (oral) language of reality, and thus
rhythm is the most arbitrary, arrog·ating element in the I1lming process
(21 S). 'Teoria delle giunte' develops this, offering the notion of spatio-
temporal 'ritmemi' (rhythmemes) as an essential integTating semio-
log·ical articulationl()r audio-visual 'cincmi', cinematic phonemes (1,'E
20S). The 'teoria delle giunte' is a theory of suture. Rhythmic variation
and lack of continuity or convention in shot-sequence is paralleled by a
lack of continuity in the macro-editing, a constant characteristic of
Pasolini's films. They arc marked by abrupt beginnings and endings
and unexplained shifts of scene and setting. And as already indicated in
Chapter 9 with reference to Rdipo, overarching structural suture can
rehact and transform the entire subjective status of a film. There and in
Medea, frames serve to define the specificity of the readings of the
9 There is a striking uiffcrcnce here too from nco-realist practice which tcnucd to favour
the long lake, anu was deeply suspicious of montage. On the 'piano-scquenza', see f:E 241-5.
myths. In Medea's prologue, the young Jason is educated by the

Centaur at intervals of years (Plate 5). The scenes are marked by sudden
visual discontinuities set against the centaur's continual pedagogical
voice-over (as in Vangelo). Sharp, unannounced cutting allows for fur-
ther play with time in the double portrayal of the death of the king's
daughter, where none of the conventional dissolves or other markers for
dreams are used.
In both Poreile and Teorema, there are rwo loosely connected intercut
parts. In Teorema, we cut away from the main narrative to a number of
disconcerting scenes of desert wasteland. These scenes destabilize the
schematic coherence and symmetry of the theorem, threatening it with
emptiness and inexplicability. And indeed, the desert is ultimately
revealed as a prophetic glimpse of the Father's final refuge, and there-
fore as the 'QED' to which the Guest has propelled the family. The
apparent scientificity of thc structure contains its own f()undation in
chaos in the cut-aways.
The second part of Ponile was planned as a companion piece to
Bufiucl's Simeoll del desierlo (I C)6s)(Stack, H)6<), 140). It has a complex,
over-determined rapport with the central episode which critics have
elaborated at length. 10 The important point here is that the stark con-
trasts are enhanccd by discontinuous editing which links thc two by
juxtaposition, with minimal indiGttion of their temporal or signifying
relation. As with Fdipo, this has important implications for the poten-
tial metaphoricity of film which will be explored further in Chapter 12.
The usc of both micro- amI macro-editing as a rhythmic, temporal
dimension to the work of subjectivity rcpresents onc of the most
alienating and anti-naturalistic effects in Pasolini's cinema. The over-
sustained shot takes the viewer beyond the naturalist illusion en-
gendered by the instantly decodeable rhythms of shot-reverse-shot,
or 30° and J!~oo rules. Much avant-garde film disturbs this codc, and
thus jolts audience's preconceptions or raises its consciousness. But
Pasolini's practice is more ambiguous, less interested in consciousness
than in subconscious impulses. Long, apparently un motivated con-
centration on scenes of little specific narrative importance or visual
richness, and awkward, reiterative patterns or sudden shifts of scenes
puncture the narrative and the aesthetic form of his films. The effect is
reminiscent of a certain theorization of the female as the object of the
male camera-gaze. Mulvey, 1975, for example, famously characterized
10 See e.g. Arccco, 1972,45-59; Estevc, 1976; Gcrard, 1981,55-8,75-7; Purdon, Ifj77.
women in classic cinema as spectacle, 'to be looked at', and demon-
strated how the paradigm of the narrative function of the female is to
suspend action, to divert the male hero from his Herculean task, before
ultimately submitting to the 'advances' of the plot, and of the hero.
I"ilmic pleasure, in this model, resides in the suspense and deferral-
narrative and erotic---of the climactic phrase 'in the cnd'. The Thousand
and One NiKhlS is the epitome of the narrative, erotic pleasure of de-
ferral, and Pasolini's film of it, Jljiore delle 'Mille e una 1IOue', shows him
at his most ludic and celebratory. However, the 'to-be-looked-at-ness'
of much of Pasolini's cinema is not simply a subversion of the male-
female/history-sexuality paradigm of narrative cinema. He distorts
both the straight politics of the erotic, heterosexual gaze and the ideo-
logical tenor of its avant-garde subversion. His long, lingering looks at
landscapes, faces and bodies are not so much, or not primarily, looks of
erotic desire as of desire t()r essential, ontological plenitude. The erotic,
more often than not, acts as significr rather than signified or sign (see
Klimke, I<)il7, 11-27; and Ch. 14). Thus, the duration of his shots does
not ofler tantalizing hints of narrative resolution and climax, but in-
stead creates an anxiety which dreams oblique forms of the irreducibil-
ity of the real, articulatcd in the odd syntax of his film language.
The oneiric quality of Pasolini's film style, both cause and effect of
this stylist ic rhythm, also suggests how and why, in practice, the ideo-
logical implications of his style arc often attenuated or secondary. It is
not by chance that the long, static or tracking take is most prevalent in
the myth Glms ofthe period H)67-70, in many respects his most ideo-
logically problematic films, which promote a prehistorical, even ahis-
torical solution to the trauma of entry into history. As Pasolini would see
it, his essential, oneiric language challenges and creates a newly radical
language t()r ideology, because it is radically other. And indeed, the con-
structed world of each of his films is studiedly unreal and oneiric in
some respect." None of his films is fully and historically present. The
'borgata' settings of Aaallone and _Mamma Roma arc constructed by
various mcans as prehistorical and pre-Christian. La ricotta combines
r r As in his literary work (e.g. Ca/den;,,) dreams are frequenl and important elements in
I'asolini's cinema, from Accattone's dream of his own funeral to the linalline of Jl Dcrameron:
'perchc realizzare un'opera quando cco si bello sognarla soltanto' (why realize a work when it
is so heautihtl just to dream it). See Brunetta, 19S2; Escobar, ")77. In RE '72, Pasolini notes
'ogni sogno c un seguito di im-segni chc hanno tutte le caratteristiche delle sequcnze cine-
matogratiche' (every dream is a succession o[image-signs which have all the characteristics of
cinematographic sequenccs). Metz's filmic 'vi,;ce' i,; elaborated on a complex comparison of
cinema and dreams akin to Pasolini's (EE 293; Metz, 1982,99-147 [113]).
this with the studied artificiality of the film-set and the film of the
Crucifixion itself. Vangelo is the first elaborate attempt to combine his-
tory and the power of myth which will develop into the myth-scapes of
Edipo, Medea, and also the cannibal part of Porciie. Ulxellacci e uccellini
is partly set in the no-man's-landscape of a universalized 'borgata'
(Plate 3), with its nonsense road-signs and desolate trajectories, and
partly in a fantasy Middle Ages which will recur in the trilogy. Finally,
Teorema, Ponile and to an extent Said arc all cut off from conventional,
realistic narrative setting by their caricatural simplicity, and/or
pseudo-geometrical construction. All these aspects detach the films
from reality. But this quality does not render the filmic vision itself un-
real or immaterial. On the contrary, Pasolini attempts to use the mater-
ial weakness of the oneiric to tc)reground the full ontological presence
of his vision, and his prime vehicle tc)r this is a series of ohsessively
reiterated and modulated synecdochic motifs. I f this tactic works-as is
far from certain-emphasis is thrown onto the essentialist, or totalizing
aspiration of the films and away ti·om the representational or natural-
istic. Each motif is then freed li·om the const raints of its contingent role
in onc particui.lr fiction to connote a range of transcendent meanings
and associations.
The dominant motils in Pasolini's cinema are those images and acts
which come to represent, through overdclermined repetition, arche-
typal human impulses. Unlike those of traditional narrative cinema,
they arc not elements of a system of internal struct mal oppositions
which narrative teleology works lo resolve, since, as wc have seen, nar-
rative progress and resolution is undermined at every turn, through the
fi·agmentation of shot-sequences, the dislJuieting rhyt hms of camera-
time, a denial of character-psychology, emphasis on physical immedi-
acy and abrupt juxtapositions of emotional extremes. 12 Three key
motif.,; can be takcn to illustrate this connotative unfurling: death, eat-
ing and desire. q
Death is undoubtedly the most frequent motif in Pasolini's cinema.
Each of his films ends with a death of some sort, apart from the Tri/op,ia
films; and even there, the Dewmel"llll opens with a mysterious and
never-explained murder, '4 and J rac(()nti di Canterbury ends with a
Bosch-inspired vision of Hell. Only 1(Iiort: delle 'Mille e una nolle' re-
mains a fully life-affirming vision, with the play of its mise en ab)lme
12Scc Nowcll-Smith, 1fJ77; W'lllinglon, ,,)6<).
I)Sce Klimkc, H)87; Malleini ano Perrclla, H)8z Ia stills cllalogucl.
q Brunetta, 198z, 661-2, suggests that the vietim is a figure ofGiouo, or Paso\ini himself.
narrative structure and symmetrical resolution in the happy reunion of

Zumurrud and Nur-ed-Din. However, from the outset, the role of
death is marked as something more than mere narrative closure.
Accattone's dying words-'mo sto bbene' (now I'm OK)-underline
the arbitrary, but fundamental nature of death as accident. This is
closure which conditions the tone of all that precedes it, without being
causally connected to it. 15 A similar pattern recurs in Mamma Roma
and La riwtta, and strikingly in Uaellaui e uCi;ellini, where the crow is
tolerated until his audience, bored and hungry, kills and cats him. The
irony that Tort) and Ninetto finally assimilate something of the crow's
pedagogy by literally consuming it confirms the naturc of death as a
creator of vital meaning, and ultimatcly a shaper of being: 'i professori
vanno mang;iati in salsa piccante [ ... [ Pen) chi li mangia e li digerisce
diventa un po' profcssore anchc lui!' (professors should be eaten in a
spicy sauce I ... 1 but whoever cats them amI digests them becomes
something of a professor himself).·6 In Che ((}sa sono le nuvole? the
puppets of (ago (' rot(») and Othello (Ninetto) are left on the scrap-heap,
only to trans/(II'm the moment of death into an awestruck epiphany of
the real-'che cosa sono le nuvole?' (wlut are clouds?). Emilia, the maid
in lcorema, elects to die, buried alive as a saint, but creating new life in
the /()rm of a bush which grows from her tears, whereas her bourgeois
masters find nothing in response to the Guest but a living stasis ex-
emplified by Odetta's catatonic coma. Medea's violent and primitive
final act is, likewise, a reappropriation of meaning and identity in life by
the power ofdeath. The apparently metahistorical bias ofthis incessant
thanatolatry begins to be corrected in Salri, where death is restored to
its fully I eleological position as the ultimate effect of systematic viola-
tion: it denotes itself and is constructed to connote a political and his-
torical critique of capitalism ('Sail,') and consumerist nco-capitalism
(the present).
Sa/ri's implicit critique of consumption through its portrayal of per-
version and death also points to the second major motif, that of eating.
From Accattone's death-defying bet that he can swim the Tiber after a
meal of potatoes, to Stracci's death-by-ricotta, to the greedy devouring
of the crow already noted above, or ofJulian by the pigs, eating stands as
an index of often-doomed vitality, parallel to death. The trilogy, and in
particular its first two parts, with their unabashed emphasis on bodily
functions, is constantly engaged in hearty feasting, and at every turn,
'5 Violent. arbitrary death is familiar from both Ra~azzi di villi and Una vita vio/mla.
,6 Not in the puhlished screenplay.
2I6 CINEMA: TRACKING THE SUBJECT
eating and drinking arc bound together with a cycle of base values-
food, death, sex, money-which originate in the Roman novels, but are
the founding motifs ofPasolini's cinema well beyond the Roman films.
However, there is a less innocent connotation of eating, which is pre-
cisely born of the analog·y between consumption and consumerism,
that reaches its apotheosis in Salrl in the eating of excrement in the
'girone della mcrda' (circle of shit). Already in La riWlIa, Stracci's
hunger and subsequent death arc in contrived counterpoint to the film-
production industry at work and at lunch on the set, its desecrating
strip-tease, and the Mannerist construct of the film within the film. The
critique of consumption first emerges fully in Por{ilc, where Julian's
death is a figure f()r the machinations of his father and Henlhitze, and
also t()r the destruction oqews in the Final Solution (both Julian in the
pig-sty and the Jews in the crematoria disappear without trace), and
contrast uneasily with the elemental cannihalism of the film's other part.
Finally sexuality and desire clearly carry many of the same multiple
associations as /(lOd in their dieg·etic function. They too are indices of
vitality, caught up with death and corrupted hy hourgeois repression.
But further elements accrue to them as motifs, owing to their impact on
filming practices. The 'poetics or t he gaze' noted earlier is also a tech-
nique which promotes the display and production or desire and the
often homo-erotic play on bodily t()rm which is particularly character-
istic ofthe lilms after H)67. The 'saeralit:t tccnica' of the early lilms be-
comes explicitly hound to qualities or desire-the tragic inexorahility
of desire in Tcorl'ma and Medell; the comic ubiquity and polymorphous
perversity of desire in the trilogy; and the systematic desiccation and
desecration of desire in Salll. As also noted earlier, however, Pasolini
often uses motifs of desire, and we might add of death and t()od, as an
index of another level of relation with reality (and hetween subject and
image), of fetishist-ic, ontological presence.
Pasolini's ohsessive deployment of these fun<'!amentall11otifs creates
a tramformative dynamic which allows them not to ossify as stock
symbols or static prerequisites of meaning, or of an authorial style. The
dynamic is one of combination and counterpoint on the denotative
level, and hence higher analogy and connotative innovation, and in this
it relates closcly to Pasolini's understanding and use of 'pastiche',
which can be read as a stylistic variant on the motif-dynamic, and vice
versa.
Pastiche is perhaps best illustrated by Pasolini's extensive and
complex use of art and art-history as a vocabulary from which to draw
elements of his film lexicon. 17 The well-documented recourse to Piero
della Francesca and Masaccio (Accatlone, Plate 2; Vange!o), Pontormo,
Rosso Fiorentino (La ri(()tta, Plate 6) and Giotto (Il Decameron), among
many others, shows how he made use of the qualities of the original
medium and art-objects-staticity, plasticity, tension between form
and movement, or form and narrative, realism-to transform the
medium offilm and to rc-read the source material itself. Thus the visu-
ally 'already-said' is exploiteJ for its iconic value-for example, a qual-
ity ofform and space in Masaccio, as echoed in the lighting and location
of Aaauonc-and then distilleJ into a metonymic essence of itself in
order to contribute to the multi-faceted meaning of a film. The artificial
virtuoso 'sacralit.l' of Mannerist torms in La ricotta, reintl)fced by the
further multiple tensions between the static icon and the permanent
motion of the filmed image, stands metonymically {(lr the film's ironic
contamination between the conventionally holy, the consumeristic
exploitation of it and the base purity of Stracci. Finally, the icon is
deployed as an index, most often of the essence of essences tllr Pasolini,
the Real. Thus, the work ofrhe painter in /)aamt:ron, depicted in detail
in the preparation of paint, the espying of subject-matcrial, the
speeded-up images of inspired painting·, the scaffolJ and the assistants,
argues f(lr a Jeep link between the art ist and the physical nature of real-
ity, Tagire nella n:alt.1' (hF 210). More than just multiple citation and
self-citation, Pasolini's pastiche and his use of motifs arc characterized
by the metonymic and metaphorical shifting between levels of
signification, as the medium Of f(ll·m of expression changes, and by the
exploitation ofmot\ulalet\ repetition as a modelfilr complex Jialectical
elaboration of meaning.
Whether in the techniques of filming or the texture of the imagery
and objects of the t1lms themselves, the stylistic dynamic of free,
inJirect subjectivity in Pasolini's films vertically fi-agments the film-
track, evoking a 'higher' level of essence. This absent other is access-
ible through a process variously analogous to dream-work, poetry,
metonymy or metaphor, but perhaps its most resonant characterization
comes in the I l}67 essay 'Osservazione sui piano-sequenza' (EP 241-5),
where editing is equated somewhat mystically with death: 'la morte
compie un fulmineo montaggio della nostra vita [ ... ] il montaggio
opera dunque sui materiale del film [ ... ] quello che la morte opera
17 On i'asolini's use of art history in cinema, scc GcranI, 1983; Marehcsini, I<)l)4; Santato,
19S8; Zigaina, 1987,4]-61.
sulla vita' (death performs a montage/editing on our lives [ ... ]

montage/editing' therefore does to the material of the film [ ... ] that
which death does to life, 245). Lives only acquire meaning when over,
films only when edited. The metaphor relates death to meaning, and
life or 'vitalita' to filming, or to the genetic process of becoming or ap-
proaching meaning. Any actual film is a return to Plato's cave: it can
only be a shadow of the essence that filming/life embodies. The same
point is adumbrated in 'La lingua scritta della rcalt;i', where a film (i.e.
the 'parole' of the 'Iangue' of cinema) is defined as 'il momento "scritto"
di una lingua naturale e totale che c I'agire nella rea It.\' (the 'written'
moment of a natural and total language which is action-within-reality,
EL' 210). Editing, creating the final film, denudes the tilm as conceived
in the abstract ofthe totality ofthc languag-c of 'agire nella reald'. It is
no longer in a relation of unmediated interpenctration with reality, hut
it is thrust into history, language and meaning, into deal h.
This is ultimately a tragic vision. Editing, signifying, and thus COIl-
crele expression, is a form of dying that gives out a dim echo ofhcing:
'0 esscre immortali e iIlespressi 0 esprimersi e morire' (Either he im-
mortal and unspoken or speak onesclfand die, h'/:' 251).
11
Genesis and Intertextuality
The uiscussion in the previous two chapters of traces of the self in

Pasolini's pro-filmic anu filmic work began with a dynamic of reduc-
tion-the reductio ad unum of his wrenching of autocratic control-
followed by a lilling out into complex patterns of subjective presence.
The categories o/" that amplification spiralled out from the most literal
sense of self-inscription and appropriation-·Pasolini on s<:reen as
aut hor and author of the film-to pastiche-a projection of the self
across any image or mode of discourse. What facilitates the tracking of
the work o/" subjectivity in so many diverse aspects of Pasolini's film
work and theory is its tendency to promote the very dynamic of spiral-
ling out as a vehicle of subjectivity, allowing us to draw transf<Jrmative
lines or analog"y hetween them. The movement between analogous
/(JI'ms is tellingly exploited in Pasolini's film work not only horizontally,
bet ween jostling' elements or filming practice or of the film-track itself,
but also vertically, in his conception ami practice ofthe textual genesis
of film.
Onc of Pasolini's most bscinating' and stimulating essays on cinema
is 'I,;] sceneggiatura COJlle "struttura che vuolc esse re altra struttura" ,
(The screenplay as a 'structure that wishes to be another structure', EE
J()2-201), in which he considers the relationship between cinema and
literature by recasting the problem in terms of what might now be
called intertextuality (Kristeva, HJ74; Worton and Still, 1990, 1-44).
Hc analyses the structure of a t<Jrm or text which must needs bc provi-
sional anu incomplete-the screenplay--and from the analysis, we can
eluciuate fundamental aspects ofPasolini's attitudes to textuality, liter-
ary and filmic, and to the role of a textual dynamic in the signifying
structures of cinema.
The screenplay, he writes, should be considered as an autonomous
form, beyond an original literary text which mayor may not exist
empirically, and projected in tension towards a film which is as yet
unmade, in the making, 'da farsi'. It has, in other words, 'una volonti di
forma [ ... ] un vuoto, una dinamica che non si concreta' (a will to form
[ ... ] a void, a dynamic which will not crystallize, 193). A signifier in this
form of text splits, to refer on the one hand to a written, actual signified,
and, on the other, to an hypothetical signifier and signified of the film
in the making, and this necessarily induces an image-led and transla-
tional reading. The screenplay's founding stylistic trope is its 'rozzezza
e incompiutezza' (rough-edged and incomplete quality, 193), and it
is only completed by a sort of shadowy presence of a visual sign,
the 'cinema' or cineme, latent within the written sign ('grafCma',
grapheme), as the oral phoneme is latent in the written. However, in the
case of the 'cinema', the screenplay contains within itsclfthe sign of an-
other' lanKue', an entirely separate signifying system or t()fIn (J()4-S):
'coglie "la forma in movimento" r... el una struttura che vuole essere
altra struttura' (it captures 'form in movcment' I... it is I a structure
that wishes to be another structure, H)S). Split between two posited
cnd-points, without departure or arrival, the 'sceno-testo' (screen-text)
is pure, suspended process, 'un processo che Bon proccde' (a process
that does not proceed, 199). Furthermore, its t()rmal status is so
ambiguous as to lack any identifiahle, autonomous norms of its own,
and thus its system is purely a stylistic one, ti)lIowing a concept of sty le
derived from Contini ami Spitzer as a breaking of norms, and as we saw
in Chapter 10, style is the suhjectivc imprint stamped on a language
system ('langue') in its actual usage ('parole'). I The only access we have
to norms is via analogy with the literary norms of the origin (I 1)3-A). 2
This summary of the essay, which ti)llows the jumps and irregular-
ities in Pasolini's sequence of thought, contains several points of inter-
est. Pirst, in his insistence on the autonomy of the screenplay as a genre
or form, set apart paradoxically by its lack of a distinct 'Iangue', he
demonstrates again the primacy of the technical as a criterion tiu· dis-
tinction and analysis. From a hiographical point of view, it is no surprise
to sce such a significant part of his writing activity after H)S4 promoted
to the status of autonomous art-ti)rm.J In itself: this smacks ofthc need
for self-affirmation, but more interesting are the terms in which the
promotion is cast. At first, these seem denigratory, and militate against
I See also Pasolini's essay on his narrative style '11 metodo di lavoro', 210.
l Here Pasolini's betrays his literary bias hy constructing literary norms as prior to cine-
matic norms: on this tendency, sec Wagstan~ 1985.
3 See Ch. I. And cf Tempo i/lwtrllto, 27 Sept. 196<) (J tiil/log"i, 6()7), to AlherLO Moravia: 'E
smettila anche di pensarc che le parole nelle sceneggiature non ahbiano un valore letterario
ossia esterico. Perchc ciD mi offendc pcrsonalmente' (And stop thinking "Iso rhat words in
screenplays have no literary or aesthetic value.l:lccause that offends me personally').
GENESIS AND INTERTEXTUALITY 221
any apparent gcneric stability of the form; 'rozzezza e incompiutezza',

coupled with elusive movement and change, seem to denote an anti-
text, just as so much of his later poetry is destructive and studiedly
anti-poetic, projecting itself as form into oblivion, into another form.
As in that case, however, so here a vocabulary of flux-'movimento'
(movement), 'processo' (process), 'un film da farsi' (a film to be made)
-sets up a dialectic between the dynamic and the static, in which the
former is a privileged tenor of potential energy, but in which the latter
is always already present-'il processo che non proude' (the process that
does not proceed); 'wglie "la forma in movimento" , (it captures 'form
in movement'). The potential supersedes the actual, and the latter
becomes associated with reification ('un vuoto che non si concreta', a
voi<.l which will not uystallize), and ultimately death (emphases added).
This is not to say that Pasolini simply prefers the screenplay to the ac-
tual film as an artistic form. The emphasis on the visual here, and the
au<.lio-visual in other essays, and his actual practice demonstrate the
contrary. + I Jowever, the possibility of extending the notion of textual
dynamism beyond the direct contrast screenplay-film, and into areas
connected to the work of subjectivity, is offered precisely by the
instability of the autonomy of the form, by its uneasy incompleteness.
This is suggested by the description of the dual structural ambiguity of
1he screenplay as a 'v%nlfl <.Ii '()rma' (I/'ill to f()rm), 'una struttura che
vuolc essere ahra s1rutlura' (a struc1ure that Il'ishes to be another struc-
ture) (emphases added). This inscription of will or desire into a tcxt can
he t~l ken as coterminous with the inscription of subjectivity into a text. 5
Furthermore, the f()rmulation strongly implies that textual desire, and
thus subjectivity, are located within ·the process of tr~lI1sition, within
what Pasolini misnames as the 'diacronia' (H)St) between the structures
and languages which makc up the ambiguous screen-text. 'Volonta di
forma' differs from 'f()rma' in that it lacks fullness of form, but also in
that it is inscribed with will, or desire. A structure which <.Ioes not desire
~ See e.~. 1:'1:' 20+. I.aler Ihi, cmph,,,i, i, a<.ljus\ed: 'il cinema I ... cl una lin~ua spaziale-
tempor'lle e non alldio-visiva---se non a una prima c materialc analisi' (cinema [... is1a spatio-
temporal and nor audio-visllallan~ua!(e--{!xecpt on an initial, material analysis, 290). On the
differences in BE between the essays /i·om 1l)6S to Uj67, and a second !(roup from 1969 to
Iln I, sce TlIrigliatto, lln6, 123-4.
5 Bertini actu'llly psychtianalyses the screenplay 'IS ,I metaphor fi)r Pasolini's self: both are
'dimidialo, 0, me~lio, parteeipe di due "stl'uttul'e" , (split in two, or, better, taken up with two
'structures', Bertini, [979,79).
() On l'asolini's misuse of this term to mean dichotomy, and other misnomers, see De
Mauro, 1985,66-7; Segre, 1965,80-1. One could speculate on the implications for subjective
processes of a lapsu.' whereby history (diachrony) is substituted for absence (dichotomy).
to be another structure is a structure which does not desire. This truism

can be mapped onto many other structures or pairs of structures, where
desire is desire of another form, of the other. Pasolini's poetics of pas-
tiche can be reformulated as a variation on, or a reversal of~ this model,
wherein, for example, the filmic reconstruction of Pontormo's and
Rosso Fiorentino's Depositions in I,a rirolla desires to be and cannot be
the actual image or fresco, and that within the tension between the two
images lies the space on which subjective discourse and interpretation
centres (Plate 6). The comedy in j,a rirolhl derives from just such
(Mannerist) tensions: in the actors' unwillingness or inability to com-
ply with the ))irector's demands to remain as still as a picture whilst also
expressing emotion; in their forced laughter, a familiar Pasolinian
trope; in the playing of the wrong music; and in the diva's silent scream
of'basta!' (enough!). An analogous dynamic is to he tiHlI1d in Pasolini's
formulation of Vallgclo as 'the life of Clll'ist plus two thousand years of
story-telling about the life of Christ' (Stack, Hill), R3). There too a
space-between a tixed past and 1he present-···is opened, ;md is fllled by
the plenitude of history: the speciticity of the film's reading of the
Gospel and its subjective impact are located within the filling.
More generally apparent is Pasolini's repeated desire to leave his
films unfinished, or bener, suspended in a Barthesian sense: 'I always
intend Imy tilms I to remain suspended' (Stack, u)61), :i7); 'le message
"politique" circulc:\ travers tous mes films mais I... ill restc toujours
suspendu' (the 'political' message circulates around all my films but
I... it! always remains suspended, Dullot, I <no, 57); the Ily-Icaf of the
novel TcorclIlll describes it as 'questo manualclto lain), a canonc
sospeso' (this small lay handbook, its canon suspended). The oneiric,
unreal quality of the constructed worlds of so many or Pasolini's tilms,
discussed in Chapter 10, derives from this quality of suspensioll. lis
literary source is perhaps sug;gested hy Pasolini's t(mdness t()r a roughly
remembered quotation by Roman Jakohson of Paul Valcry's view of
poetry as 'une hesitation prolongce entre le sens et le son' (sic) (a pro-
longed hesitation between sense and sound, 'Allcttore l1UOVO', Pocsic,
1970; cl'. Jakobson, 1<)60, 367). Indecd, any signifying' system conf()rms
to this pattern, for Pasolini: 'ogni sistema 0 struttura c in realt:\ un
processo' (every system or structure is in reality a process, Tcmpo
illuSlratll, 4 Oct. I969; I dia/oghi, 701).7
7 Sec Kristcva, [(174, 10-,10, .XH, on the notion of a 'sujet en proces'. 'Proces' and
'processo', ti>r hoth Kristeva and Pasolini, retain their IIther, juridical meaning as an under-
CUHcnt to the sense of'perpetual becoming' (Gcrard, H)H [, [ 17).
The most direct manifestation of this trope is in the remarkable vari-

ety of processes of construction in the genesis ofPasolini's films. Before
1964, the relationship between planning and production seems
straightforward, largely dominated by the attempt to realize as faith-
fully as possible the inner vision ofthe former in the latter. The screen-
plays to /1aallone, Mamma Roma and La ricotta, derive from the world
of the Roman novels and of earlier screenplays, and his transformation
of them in filming is a stylistic one, as we have seen, in which he saw
himself 'putting together a montage of exactly what I had in mind be-
fore shooting the film' (Mamma Roma, 140). The film-essay La rabbia,
and the film-inquiry Comizi d'amore, are both somewhat muted at-
tempts to make use of the film medium for directly socio-ideological
purposes, and arc if anything films which 'desire to become' linguistic
discourse (essay or inquiry), rather than the inverse. After 1964, textual
st.ltus is more complex, and the filmic product cedes in different ways
parts of its autonomy to other forms or images. The Sopraluo!{hi ill
Pairslilla arc presented as complementary to Vange/II, and their mere
existence, organization anu release demonstrates an interest in the
prospective, I()rward-project'ed status of such t()otage. Certain tech-
niques in So/mt/uo!{hi derive directly from Comizi d'amore, and will be
reused wit h resounding sllccess in Appunli per un 'Ores/iade africarla,
where the lack of a realized narrative film of the Ores/eia, and the
sophisticatcd comhination of narrative information on the proposed
final product, pure ohservation, speculation on how narrative and land-
scape might be spliced tog;ether, and open discussion of the contempor-
ary political relevance of the myth to Africa, powerfully promote the
transitional ()rm. H The autonomy of this improvised fClrIn challenges
its assumed status as sig;nifier by drawing instability or process into
itself as sig'nified, and, in the case of a completed film such as Medea,
casting; the film as itself a signifier of a latent and unstable cluster of
implicil4uestioning discourses. I,e mum di SUr/a rcpeats the combina-
tion of history, observation and enquiry, and makes explicit and polit-
ical an appeal already implicit in the 'Trilog;ia della vita'. The subtitle
itself ('documentario in f()rma d'un appello all'UNESCO', a docu-
mentary in the form of an appeal to UNESCO) is of a shape constantly
~ Pasolini had, by all accounts rather hastity, translated Aeschylus' Oresleia. for perform-
ance by Vittorio (Jassman and the Tcatro Popolarc in 1960, and the text was published by
Einaudi in that year. See Schwartz, 1992,336,370; Siciliano, 1981a, 292, 513. The language
and interpretative approach of his version reads like a preliminary sketch for all his later work
in theatre, and his myth fitms.
reused and reinvented by Pasolini, from 'Poesia in forma di rosa' (Poetry

in the form of a rose) to 'sceneggiatura in forma di una poema' (screen-
play in the form of a poem) or 'romanzo sotto forma di sceneggiatura'
(novel in the form of a screen play) ,9 which neatly formulates the transi-
tional nature of the text in each case. To return to Vange/o and the
Sopraluoghi, the former is the product of the latter's provisionality,
since it narrates the jailure to discover required locations in Palestine,
the historical biblical site, for the filming· of the Gospel. This failure,
which precedes and foreshadows the technical 'failure' experienced
during the filming of Vange/o described in Chapter IO, can be seen as a
founding trauma of the literal-what is present and identical can no
longer faithfully or literally represent what is past-and leads to the
important discovery of the 'analogous method'-what is present and
different can represent analogously what is past. It is no coincidencc
that this point marks the cnd of the non-prohlematic, or naivc, transi-
tions from treatment to screenplay 1:0 film. 'La scencggiatura come
"struttura che vllole essere altra struttura" , was written in 1<)65, thc
year after Vange/o was made.
Vange/o in itselfreprcsents a special casc with regard to thc relation-
ship hetween text and film, because ofPasolini's dccision to remain en-
tirely faithful to the tcxt of the Gospel: 'non hI) aggiunlO lIna hattuta e
non ne ho tolto nessuna' (I ncither added nor cut a single line, Vangt:/o,
2<)8).10 This decision was undoubtedly the source of the astonishing
approval granted the {ilm by Catholic organizations-·in J()64 it won
the highest prize offered by the 'Office Catholique Internationale du
Cinema' (Schwartz, J()<)2, 453-s)-and perhaps f(lr its perceived filil-
ure to convey what thc director had thought was its strongly divergent
gamut of film styles. But t(ll· Pasolini, tcxtual fidelity was in fact a
vchicle t()r pastiche. Literalness libcratcd the visual and aural as varie-
gated interpretative discourses in their own right; hcnce his assertion
that 'la visualizzazione I... cIla letlura migliore che si possa fare di
un testa' (visualization I ... is] the best possible reading of a text,
Vallgelo, 14).
The cxperiment ofwholcsalc tcxtual fidelity was not repeated, but
the underlying interplay between an original text and a filmic reprcs-
entation of it subtends the film adaptations that dominate Pasolini's
filmography after Vallge/o: Edipo, Medea, It Decamerort, I racconti tli
'! Lettere, ii. 617, 624. A fragment of the screenplay-poem was published as 'Bestcmmia',
Cillema efilm, 2 Spring 1967,224-7. Now in B2, 2zIl7-93.
10 Although sec note Ch. 10, n. 7.
GENESIS AND INTERTEXTUALlTY 225
Canterbury, lI/iore delle 'Mille e una notte' and SalO are all readings of
fundamental mythical texts, as would have been San Paolo and
Un 'Ores/iade africana. 1 1 In a different sense, both Teorema and Porcile
interact with written texts by Pasolini himself: the former is in particu-
larly subtle tension with the 'novel' of the same name (originally con-
ceived as a play), and the latter originates in a play of the same name. It
has already been noted how, in Edipo, the Sophoclean original is de-
ployed strategically as a marker of authorial presence. The textual
vehicle of that presence and source of the universalized, mythical world
depicted there, is marked by the occasional use of intertitles to disturb
the audio-visual and thcrefore narrative fluidity of thc film.
1I IJamnemt/'s textual adaptation operates on several different levels
(Marcus, 1I)80-r). The most notable deviation from the letter of
Boccaccio's text: is the abandonment of the 'lieta brig-ata' in favour of a
narrative frame closcly bound up with the subject-matter of the stories
themselves. Boccaccio's first story, of Ser Ciapelletto, itself becomes a
frame; ami the Giottoesque artist played by Pasolini in the second half
begins as.1 protagonist of his own brief story, and then becomes the ob-
server of the Neapolitan market-place, from which all the subsequent
protagonists emerge. Also, the setting in Naples, and in Neapolitan, of
large parts of the lihn allows Pasolini's interest in dialect as a token of
genuine popularity and reality to resurface.
Sa/dlll.lrks an cnd-point in the exploration of the modes ofvisualiza-
tion of text in film, as it marks an end-point in many other senses. De
Sade's /,e.l" Cenl-villKI jllUYJ de Sodome is taken as a negative mirror-
image of the f(mnding moment of European bourgeois hegemony, the
Englighlenment, and adopted as a cypher. Textual fidelity is all but ir-
relevant, as is narrative reconstruction. What matters is the immanence
of thc secondary symbolic impact of the text's qualities of exhaustive,
repetitive, systcmatic, totalizing perversion, mapped onto the equally
symbolic interpretation of Mussolini's puppet-state of r943-5, the
Republic ofSal<1, and the interaction or synthesis between the two.
A final, but significant level of intermediary textuality between idea
and film is to be found in Pasolini's regular use of story-board pictures
or 'fumetti' as preparatory aids in filming. There is evidence of this as
I I It is also worth noting that much of his work on screenplays betwccn 1954 and 1960 con-
sisted in 'l(lapting novels: I1 prigirmiero ddla. 1II01ztagna. (L. Trcnker, 1955; novel by G. Benek),
J/.w!e ne! ver/,re(H.J55, unproduccd; novel by]. Buugron), I promessisposi (1960, unproduced;
from Manzoni-scc Brunctta, 1985), J/ h,!l'Anlor/io (M. Bolognini, 1960; from Brancati), La.
giofllala balorda (M. Bolognini, 1960; from Moravia) and La lunga nolle del '43 (F. Vancini,
1960; from Bassani).
early as Mamma Roma,lz and, given Pasolini's activity as an artist and

his reliance on the Longhian iconography of art for his early filmic tech-
nique, such a practice is far from surprising. However, a different atti-
tude emerges, again after 1964/5, in the Toto films, where perhaps for
the first time, there is recourse more to cinematographic than literary or
iconographic pastiche: Uccellaai e uccellini, for example, clearly pays
homage to Rossellini's Francesco, giullare di Dio (I C)so) and the Fellini of
La strada (1954). The photos of Pasolini's drawings in the Mamma
Roma screenplay show Pasolini transferring directly from 'soggetto-
sceneggiatura' to a shot-hy-shot story-hoard. In I,a terra vista dalla
tuna, however, the drawings themselves are the screen-text and as such
hecome another variant on the latter's fluid {i)fln:
non possedendo un linguaggio, lino stile per esprimere per isaitto, verhal-
mentc, questo tipo di comicit,t, sono stato cost reil 0 a scrivere la scenegl!,"i.ltllra
1~leendola a fllmeni, eioc disegnando Tot() e Ninelto ne!le varie silllazioni
appllnto come fllmeui. (De Ciiusti, ((jSJ, 54)'·1
(as I had no written, verhallanguage or style at my disposal 10 express this typc
of eomcdy, I was li)rced to write I he screenplay as a cartoon, thal is drawing
Tot() and Ninetto in thc variolls silllations as, precisely, cartoon ch'lraclers.)
The unpuhlished written screenplay, under the provisional title' I1 buro
cIa hura' (Bibliography 1.4h), is preEtced hy advice that 'queste righe
vanno lette pensando alle "comiche" lli Chariot 0 Ridolini 0 ai rumeui
di Paperino' (these lines should be read thinking or Chaplin or
Ridolini's 'comedies' or ofDon .. ld I )uck cartoons).
In the introduction to the catalogue or Pasolini's collected drawings,
Dc Micheli comments on I he cartoons or I,ll lerra 'ViSIIl d"ll" lun" th us:
Pasolini 'secs' his characters, he ti)!Iows them in their [\'estllres, their dialo[\'ue,
their scenes. I lis hand is swifi, lively and representative I... 1. The eye or the
draughtsman coincides with the eye of the director, who visualizes sequences,
dose-ups, rhythms and dissolves. This group or sheets elucidates in the hesl
possible way his creative mechanism which manages to translate into a highly
agile, t1uid succession of images the poetic essence ora story. (Translated rrom
I disegni 1941/15. IS, unpaginated)
De Micheli emphasizes hoth the position of the drawings at the cusp of
two visualizations-the eye of the draughtsman and of the director
meet-and the rapidity of Pasolini's transformations, and he thus
12 Sec the photos of the director and his story-boards in Mamma Roma. 160f1 See also
Bctti and Thovazzi, 1989,25-33.
13 Thirty-four of the comic framcs arc to be found in I disegni )(J4li 7S: plates 89-122.
intuits the search in Pasolini for 'la forma in movimento', for translat-
ability. 14
The fluidity of form allows Pasolini to adapt every aspect of his tech-
nique and choice of medium for the purposes he requires. La terra is
pure fable, constructed around silence and mime and the miraculous
resurrection of an image. A modern-day convenienlia allows him to
adopt the language of'fumetti' as the only possible language to intersect
both that of fairy-talc and film m:lgic.
The theoretical and practical status of the screenplay in Pasolini's
work, and its consequences for his methodology of film-making, at
once confirm and amplify the impact of the model of self-projection
examined in Chapters <) ami 10. The tension in form which opens a
space for suhjectivc insertion is common to both, and in particular to
the vicw of pastiche, which could he taken as a paradigmatic model of
the modes of direct and indirect inscription. Furthermore, that ten-
sion, that dual structure, is yet another, if not the fundamental, figure of
the 'doppiezza' also discusscJ above.
The sequence of the analysis has already prefigured the major areas
that remain to he considered: the interplay between the static and the
dynamic invitcs a discllssion of the axis of time in determining the
suhjective stat us offilm; and the sum eftcct of all Ihe tracking of subject-
ivity in (ilm on processes t hat determine spect.llorial suhjectivity needs
to be addressed to qualify the (()CUS on the 'authorial' origin of the dis-
cussion thus far. But first, the ubiquitous notion of transf()rmation,
from t he moment of discovery of the 'meccanisll1o dell'analogia' during
the filminr; of Vallgdo, mentioned more than once above, calls into
questioll the role and possibility of metaphor (etymologically a 'carry-
ing' over') in lilm, and it is the impact of Ihis issue, together with the in-
scribed 'will to ()I'm' oflhe genesis offilm in Pasolini's creative practice
that tends to sublimate the simple poetics of the gaze into something
more, to transform seeing into a Willgensteinian 'seeing as'.
I.l Compare Dc Michcli's nOlion or translation, already in 'La sceneggiatura come

"strullurot<:he vuoic essere att ra SI rutlura" , (FI! 1114--5; and cl: 207-8, 267"-<)), with Pasolini's
se
("S(:ina,ion with translatahility hom 'J)iaicl, leJ1!(a, sril' ri!(hr th .... ugh until 1-2 (see Ch. 2
§ 2; (,ordon, 1(11)4). Translation and tfilllslalahility arc also closely rcialcJ III metaphor (see
<:h.12),
12
Metaphor
Pasolini saw cinema as a vehicle for linguistic renewal. It offered a him

a technique of expression which overcame the ideological impasse in
which he felt his writing was caught. The basis of the impasse and of the
renewal was both ontological and cognitive, eoncerned with acquiring
and articulating in signifying form a link between the self and the real.
Renewal on this basis suggests that metaphor and metaphorical pat-
terns of thought were to be of fundamental importance in Pasolini's
work in cinema. I
Metaphor, understood in a broad sense as the representation of one
notion or unit in terms of another, allows t(lI·the expression or creation
of concepts which have no firm hold in a given language. It allows, that
is, for the naming of the unknown, and thus extends both language it-
self and cognitive capacity through its opening out towards otherness.
Under this schema of language renewal, the process of extension is
t()lIowed by one of integration, whereby the metaphoricll tends to be
reabsorbed into the literal through repeated association, and the
metaphor becomes a 'dead metaphor'. Thus, to give I wo simple ex-
amples, the 'leaves' of a book or the 'arms' of a chair have acquired lit-
eral validity from clear metaphorical origin. In a certain sense, fhen, the
paradigm of linguistic renewal implies both that the metaphorical pre-
cedes the literal,z and that full knowledge and renewal are a product of
the dying of the former into the lalter. Between the function of poetry,
in particular modern poetry, and the function of metaphor there are
substantial affinities. Poetry also extends language beyond itself and
transforms meaning and perception through oblique association and
substitution. This, as Jakobson pointed out in a seminal essay (I()88,
61), leads to a natural affinity between poetry and metaphor:
I Within the vast liclo of metaphor theory, I have founo the following useful: Jakobson,
1988; Rica:ur, 1978; Stacks, 1979; Whittock, 1990.

2 Scc Metz, 1982, 159-60; Whittock, 1990,7-8.
METAPHOR 229
Since poetry is focused upon the sign, and pragmatical prose primarily upon
the referent, tropes and figures were studied mainly as poetic devices. The
principle of similari ty, underlies poetry. [... ] Thus, for poetry, metaphor [... ]
is the line ofleast resistance.
Similarly, metaphor by its very nature disrupts continuity and therefore
tends to undermine the narrative function in any use of language. It
conceals causality of connection and promotes transversal leaps or ver-
tical deviation from a strong line of horizontal sequence. Thus, within
the context of narrative, it imposes a strong interpretative role on the
reader. Furthermore, metaphor's constant drive for renewal and for
disturbing perspectives implies a tendency towards ideological disrup-
tion and subversion of stability and status quo. As Whittock points out,
there is a tension created by the cognitive leap between the vehicle and
tenor of any metaphor, and 'through its tension a metaphor calls into
question the ordered simplicities our received categories give us' (1990,
S)..1 And it is on similar grounds that Kristeva builds her ethical defence
of textuality, or textual practices, in I,a Revolution du lanKaKe poitique:
'I'cthique ne fi'cnonce pas, elle se pratique i perte: le texte est un des ex-
emplcs les plus accomplis d'une Iclle pratique' (ethics ifi not enounced,
it is practised at a loss: the text is one of the most accomplished ex-
amplefi of slIch a practice, Krifiteva, u)74, 203).
The crifiis in Pasolini's poetic language and cultural role which pre-
cipitated the fihift: into film can be fieen, then, afi a crisis in the metaphor-
ical posfiibilitiefi ofthe poetic function oflanguage. The move is in itself
of a metaphorical nature; it is an attempt at linguistic and cognitive re-
newal throug·h a new and vital technique with which to perceive reality.
It ifi in itself a difiruptive reading ofliterature and the role of the intel-
lectual in a certain historical context, t()Uowing Pasolini's own model of
transgression as an hermeneutic advance (I~"F, 23S-40).
If a fiecond-order 'metaphoricity' of this kind subtends the choice of
the cinematic medium, an immediate problem presents itself in the ac-
tual making oftilm-the apparent impossibility of first-order metaphor
within cinematic discourse: 'l'unica grave difficolti che uno scrittore
deve afti·ontare per esprimersi "girando" cche nel cinema non esiste la
metafora' (the only serious difficulty that a writer must confront in
order to express himself'behind the camera' is that in cinema there is no
such thing as metaphor, in Magrelli, 1977,20). In an essay in the screen-
play of Aaatlone, 'Cinema e lettaratura: appunti dopo "Accattone" ,
3 Tambling, H)S8, 55-7, points to important parallels with Nietzsche's notion of truth as
deception.
23 0 CINEMA: TRACKING THE SUBJECT
(Accattone, 17-20), he expands on the problem. He claims that the only

sort of metaphor tenable in film is one created by suggestion in the
spectator, through a startling and direct juxtaposition of images. 4 The
only stylistic figures which are fully available to film are those derived
from the simplest, most archaic forms of literature, which he terms
'religious-infantile', and from music, such as anaphora and repetition.
Although he later modified this view substantially, Pasolini was far
from being naIve in these early pronouncements. Several theorists of
cinema have seen the necessarily literal, or at least strongly indexical-
iconic and non-symbolic, link between objects and their representation
on film as a block to the figurative. S They tend to emphasize the
speeificity or ontological plenitude of the filmed object to the detriment
of association and abstraction, and hence presencc becomes the domin-
ant factor in cinematic signification. However much Pasolini later
adjusted his view on metaphor, he consistently retained an idea of
cinema as a reproduction or articulation of reality, or at least of the
living perception of reality. Indeed, there is a strong tension in his films
between metaphor'!> increasingly important role as a vehicle ti)r mean-
ing and the absolute value attached to the real, which will be discus!>ed
further below.
Pasolini never articulated at length his view of metaphor in cinema,
but it emerge!> as a latent interest in many of his major theoretical
writings. Most notably, it can be said to lie at thc heart orhis concept or
'un cinema di poesia', since the introduction or rc-introduction of
poetry into a cinema traditionally dominated by 'prose' narrative can,
ti)r all the rea!>ons outlined above, be identified with an attempt to cre-
ate the possibility of metaphor in cinema. In the 11)65 paper '11 "cinema
di poesia'" (HI:' 171-<)1), the disclls!>ion ofthe !>emiotic nature ofliter·-
ature and cinema and of the contra!>t between prose and poetry in-
evitably implies a discussion of metaphor. The writer who chooses from
a lexicon of pre-established signifying units advances in an hisloriwl
sense the cause of signification in choosing and combining these units.
The advance is 'un'aggiunta di storicit,l, ossia (li realt;l alb lingua' (an
addition of historicity, or of reality to language, 1:'/:' 173). Through a
combination of metaphorical and metonymical processes--sclection
and combination-language as a phenomenon i!> expanded in history or
4 In fact, with familiar literary bias, he refers to rhe reader, and lalcr of 'writing·' a film
(Accallone, 19). On juxtaposition as a means to filmic metaphor, sce Whiltock, 11)1)0,57-1).
5 These includcJean Mitry, RudolfArnheim and early Melz: cr Whittock'sdisclIssioll of
these and others (1990, 20-]6).
METAPHOR 23 I
in time. Because of the infinite number of units available to an audio-

visual medium, cinema must first set up a morphological potential by
making a meaningful image ('im-segno', im[age]-sign) from the chaos
of undifferentiated reality, and this must be repeated for each film. In
other words, the process of metaphorization is doubled. Narrative
(prose) cinema, however, has reduced that operation to a single one by
literalizing or 'deadening' the primary metaphorical movement from
chaos to 'im-segno' through adherence to a conventional stylistic
lexicon. To instigate a 'cinema di poesia' is thus to redouble the
'metaphoricity' ofthe filmic process. However, Pasolini points out, the
objects of reality which make up each 'im-segno' abvays retain their in-
tense 'storia pre-grammaticale' (pre-grammatical history), so they can
never be anything other than initially concrete (EE 175).6 Hence, in
order to express concepts, or abstractions, the cinema requires a process
which imbricates thc abstract into the concrete-that is, metaphor:
1il cinema 1PU(', esscre parahola, mai esprcssione concettuale diretta l· .. ]
llIallcando di lessico concettuale e astratto, C potentemente metaforico, anzi
parte suhito, a f()rtio!"i, allivello delJa metal()!",l. (W:' '76, 179)
(I ci Ilemal can he parahle, never direct expression of a concept I... .1 in the
ahsence of a conceptual, abstract lexicon it is powerfully metaphorical, indeed
it sets out from the start, u/iJrliori, at the level of metaphor.)
In essence, little has actually changed since his earlier hlanket denial of
the possibility of film metaphor. Since cinema is always presence, he
now says, to be discursive and not purely reproductive there must needs
be met'lphor.
The equation 'cinema-realta' is outlined in detail in the essay 'La
lingua scrilta della realta' (h'E 202-30), where, as was seen above,
cinema is described as a language of latent pre-articulate presence
within actual reality-'il momcnto "scritto" di una lingua naturale e
totale, che c I'agire nella reaId' (the 'written' moment of a natural and
total language that is action-within-reality, EE 210). In other words,
cinema repeats, at a level more immediately permeable to reality, the re-
lation between the symbolic languages in which we communicate. That
relation was based on the never-realized ur-language or 'langue', artic-
ulated into the oral on the onc hand, which is natural or existential, and,
on the other, into the conventional or written. The written derives from
6 This is clearly a residue of those initial reservations on the possibility of the figurative in
cinema. See Wagstan; 1985, 112, on the term 'pre-grammaticalc'.
both the oral and the 'langue'. The new relation sees the abstract
'langue' of cinema as having a written articulation in actual films, and,
most radically, an 'oral' articulation in life itself, or 'l'intera vita nel
complesso delle sue azioni' (the whole oflife in the sum of its actions,
EE 210). The 'written' language moves beyond the 'oral' and thcreby
delimits it and brings it to consciousness of itself Films similarly raise
our consciousness of reality (cf. EE 236). Thus meaning is cxpressed
through action or 'pragma' (EE 21 1), or the material, and semiology
over spills into phenomenology. This is apparent in Pasolini's use of
the term 'oggettuale' (objectual), as opposed to objcctive, to indicate
a sort of concreteness ('un'imprescendibile concretezza, diciamo,
oggettuale', a nccessary, say, objectual, concreteness, ':"1:" 173) which
allows itself to be a vehicle tClr the oneiric, and thus to imply a subject.
The connotative range and intensity of metaphor is thus strongly
extended, so that fClr example Pasolini's faces-already notcd as a motif
of his films---can powerfully connote thcir specificity, their 'face-ness'.
The analogue between symbolic Ianguag'es and the language of cinema
implies, for Pasolini, that whilst the former arc in a parallel, but never
intersecting, relationship with n:;llity and have their own self-suHicient
syntactical systems, the latter is 'perpendicular' to reality, constantly
achieving ,letual contact, but requiring a double and external synt,lctic
construction to achieve meaning, This helps to explain an apparently
confused sequence of statements in the essay 'Battute sui cinema' (1:'F
231-4°) where he comments on an assertion by Barthes, in line with
Pasolini's own earlier views, that cinema is a metonymic art. J le hrst
agrees with Barthes, bur then rct(H'mulates t'he assertion: 'non c il
cinema un'arte metonimica, ma cIa realta che c mctonimica' (it is not
cinema that is a metonymic art, but it is reality that is metonymic, Fh'
237). Where does this leavc metaphor? Pasolini admits that the fClrmula
does not take into account the metaphorical nature of a 'cinema di
poesia', but there is an important implicit role for metaphor neverthe-
less, as a hermeneutic instrument. It becomes that part of cinema which
transgresses the norm of simple metonymy, and in so doing allows the
nature of cinema and of reality as metonymic to be consciously elucid-
ated, In other words, the statement acts as a corrective to any over-
blown view of the function of metaphor in film, which at most creates
the conditions for a perception of the mechanisms of a language, which
mayor may not be metaphorical, by violating its codes.7
7 Scc Whiltock, 11)1)0,38-40, on Cullers distinction bet ween first- and second-order sys-
tems and violations of both,
METAPHOR 233
In a later essay, Pasolini is keen to play down the total identification
of cinema and reality, preferring to see the codes of cinema and real-
ity as analogous, each with different space-time co-ordinates, and each
incomplete with respect to the other. 8 The idea of analogy is reiter-
ated in another essay, '11 rema' (EE 293-6), where the first of three
modes of 'cinematographic decoding' is a 'coscienza dell'analogia col
codice fisico-psicologico della realti' (awareness of the analogy with the
physical-psychological code of reality). As the term 'cod ice' implies,9
Pasolini is not talking of empirical use of analogy in films, but of struc-
tural analogies to the language of cinema. Although both are of
significance in discussing his use of metaphor, they are not to be con-
fused.
The development of Pasolini's concept of filmic metaphor in his
theory indicates a desire on his part to fill its initially perceived lack as
part of his project to reclaim cinema for poetic discourse. The fact that
its expression is never wholly clear nor central would seem to be signi-
ficant in itself: confirming the role of metaphor as that of the poetic, as
irrational, barharic, oneiric and held at a subconscious level in narrat-
ive cinema (I:F f76). Thc raising of the poetic or mctaphorical to an
open level of 'consciowmess' would seem of itself to undermine its
very essence as always latent and transgressive, never literalized or
'true' in a Nietzschcan sense. The paradox of this position need not,
however, prevent an appreciation of the profound importance of the
delimiting or defining cflCct of such tr;tnsgressiveness on the nature of
l'asolini's cinematic voice, nor undermine his complex empirical uses
oCmetaphor.
Bcf()re examining specific films for evidence of Pasolini's use of
metaphor, a final but crucial area of theory needs to be considered.
Above, it was argued that there is a suhstantial overlap between his con-
ception of poetry as deployed in the phrase 'il cinema di poesia', and
that of metaphor, based on functional parallels between the two. In an-
other direction, amI much more explicitly, the theory of the 'cinema di
poesia' relics on the status of poetry as the medium of self-expression,
of the subjective. As was noted in the discussion of technique above, an
extensive investigation of the role of the 'soggettiva', or point-of-view
shot, and free indirect subjectivity dominates '11 "cinema di poesia" '.
His identification of dreams as a sequence of 'im-segni' (EE 1]2) is
8 'Rc> sun! nomina', RE 261-().

~ Scc also '11 codiec dei codiei' (E1:" 281-8) and 'Tahclla' (EE 297-301).
based on the nature of archetypal 'im-segni' as 'una base diretta di

soggettivita' (a direct base of subjectivity, EE 177). A syllogistic argu-
ment would suggest that metaphor is also intimately related to the
subjective, and this possibility is reinforced by a number of other associ-
ations. The problem of 'style indirecte libre' and inner monologue in
cinema, resolved by recourse to the concept of'soggettiva indiretta
libera' which ushers into existence the notion of 'cinema di poesia', is
stated in the same terms as the problem of abstraction: the inner mono-
logue transcends the immediate and concrete, as does abstraction and,
like the latter, the former can only be possible in cinema via metaphor.
The characterization of the poetic and metaphoric as equivalent to a
repressed subconscious of a prose narrative discourse contains strong
inferences, via its psychoanalytic vocabulary and even the use of the
oneiric, that what is termed subconscious is also a figure of latent
subjectivity. Just as reality is mctonymic, and the metaphoric trans-
gresses and delimits the metonymy, so subjectivity can be said to be that
which interrupts the diegetic or the (posited) simply referential or
objecive, located where syntagm dissolvcs into, or is implied by para-
digm, metonymy into metaphor. 10 Even in Pasolini's first articulation
of the problem of metaphor a hmiliar marker of the work of subjectiv-
ity was prominent-'I'unica grave diffico\d chc uno scrittore deve
affrontare per esprimersi ':~irand()" c che nel cinema non csiste la
metafora' (the only serious difficulty that a writer must confront in order
to express himself" 'behind the wmera ' is that in cinema there is no such
thing as metaphor, MagrelIi, 1977,20; emphasis added).
Pasolini's solutions to the problems of self-expression show him
adjusting his view of metaphor to the demands of the medium, recon-
structing the trope as a dynamic of transition and transgression which
not only allows it a powerful defining role in the filmic discourse, but
also figures the transience and alterity of the subject in crisis.
A large number of his essays on the semiology of cinema duster
around the mid-I96os, products of the semiologically pioneering
Mostra del nuovo cint'ma or Pesaro Film Festival after 1964.11 Even
10 On the dangers of confusing syntagm/paradigm on the level of discourse with

metonymy I metaphor on the level of reference, sce Mctz, I <)H2, 174-{) I. Metz also discusses
the nature of censorship as the appearance of the unconsciolls in consciolls: 'Each is "in" the
other and the other is in it: the olher of the other' (Metz, 19H2, 253-6sl2SH]l. The m6dcs of
censorship-c,)ndensation and displacement-arc thus Ir/l.«).< of an inexpressible uncon-
SCIOUS.
I I De Lauretis, 1<)84,40 notes that the Pesaro festivals of the mid-l<)60s 'practically set off
the semiological analysis of cinema.' Sec Eco, 1968, 148-60; Heath, 1973.
METAPHOR 235
within that period, it is never easy to link theory to practice directly, and
indeed Pasolini railed against it:
mi offendo meMo che tutto quello che faccio e dieo venga rieondotto a spiegare
il mio stile. E' UIl modo di esorcizzarmi, c forse di darmi dello stupido [... la
mia tcoria] non caffatto una proliferazione del mio fare estetico, ossia della mia
'poetica' cinematogratica. Non 10 Caffatto. (EE 232)
(I am deeply olICnded that all I do and say is put down as an explication of my
style. It is a sort of exorcism, evcn perhaps a way of making me look stupid [...
my theory I is not at all a prolitCration of my aesthetic practicc, or of my cine-
matographic 'poetics'. It is not that at all.)
It is no surprise, then, to find a different level of solution to the problem

of metaphor in practice than to that elaborated-and then largely
implicitly-in theory. But even though he objects to a treatment of
t'heory and practice as cause and effect, he constantly conflates the two
as means of expression, and strong affinities remain to be drawn out.
The cumulative workings of the motifs running through Pasolini's
films could bc reread as part o/" the discussion of metaphor. The exten-
sion of their connotative and thus metaphorical potential, as they
multiply their denotative referents through processes of incomplete
repetition, can be traced along a rough parabola of metaphorical density
through his film-work, which peaks around Uadlaai e uael/ini, and
has different kinds of troughs in AallUone and SaId. In Aaattone, there
is little elaborate metaphorical dIcct, although there is much that might
be termed Ilgural, including elements already elaborated upon above,
which is built on interplay between image-track, sound-track and
narrative. As he says in 'Battute suI cinema', 'la scrittura riperde,
dunque, col cinema, la sua "natura segnica" e riacquista I'arcaica
"natura figurale" , (with cinema, then, writing loses once more its
'nature as sign' and reacquires its archaic 'nature as figure', EE 239).
lfaelftlui e uucllini, by contrast, is imbued with metaphor and its cog-
nates symbol and alkgory. The landscape and the characters are caught
between base reality and surreal abstraction built into a discourse of
ideology. Furthermore, the metaphorical texture is directed towards
problems of interpretation and communication in language, those upon
which metaphor itself is founded (Greene, 1990, 140). The myth films,
Edipo, Teorema, Porcile, ami Medea, taken as a group can be read as an
evolving exploration of the structural metaphor created by an over-
arching suture between parallel universes or sites of history: each film
writes a language of immanence to splice together those sites, thus
moving from their simple juxtaposition to a metaphorical simultaneity.

SaId concludes the parabola with its absolute introversion or reification
of metaphor. Barthes is only the most eminent of many advocates for the
view of Sa!r; as irredeemable because of its overwhelming literalness:
'Pasolini's film (this, I think, is his own doing) is devoid of symbolism',
constructed upon one 'obscene' analogy between decadent fascism and
sadism, and immersed in the horrifically literal imaging of violence,
which, within the narrative framc and within the signifying system of
the film, is consistently and only itself (Barthes, HJlh). 12 The connotat-
ive power of metaphor is reduced to a monovalent absolute. Further-
more, the metaphoric impact of the film itself reinti)rces and reiterates
the always tendentiously literal motif-mctaphor of consumption in
rclation to the consumption or consumerism of nco-capitalism. In SaId,
not only is this painfully reiterated in the 'girone della merda', but, as
Greene points out, 'Sa/I)'s "real" message lies, precisely, in its desire to
be unbearable, that is, its refusal to be consumed' (11)1)0, 216··I7).
Whittock (11)1)0, 4l)----61)) draws lip a ten-point schema for the identi-
fication of metaphor in films, which can be reduced to three broad
types: metonymical, compositional and transgressive. The latter in-
cludes all t he technical aspects or editing and (ilming which distort or
challenge conventions and which propel the spectator beyond the
apparent and literal into potentially metaphorical readings. This cat-
egory is thus the enabler of the lirst two, and Pasolini's lilms arc densely
packed with its effects, many of which have already heen mentioned.
The stal"ic plast icity ofiigures in //uallonc is alien to traditional film, as
is the emphasis on disconl"inuity ofimage and sound via editing, and ex-
clusion or steps in a logical or narrative sequence, such as in Valll':c!o. r.I
These echo the central effect of the 'cinema di poesia' which is to 't~u·
sentire la m,lCchina' (to make the prescnce of the camera felt, /:'/;. rXX).
The disturbing stylization of the killing of I ,aius in /;'dipo and of the
laughing characters of /I({:attonc and La ri(olla, and indeed Pasolini's
general, studied aesthetic of unnaturalness, are all transgressive
metaphorical patterns.
The metonymical and compositional types arc more closely bound
up with the detail of image and narrative. Ucccllacci c Ulxcliini will serve
as an illustration.
12 Sec also ilcrsani, [()He., 51-4, I07-11; ilersani allll Dutoit, 19H2; Calvino, IIjH2; Wahl,
IIjHo, HI-2.
1.1 On inclusion and exclusion as a dynamic of film narrative, ~cc Pasolini's essay 'Tetis',
97--1)·
METAPHOR 237
Uccellaai e uccellini is governed by two recurrent metaphorical
images: the road and the moon. Toto and Ninetto are embarked on a
Beckcttian journey which has no end, as the film's epigraph points out,
quoting from an interview with Mao Zedung-' "Dove va l'umaniti?
Boh!" '(Where is the human race going? Dunno!). From the start, then,
the journey is marked as representative of a human condition and of a
mock-ideology. Furthermore, the non-teleological wandering deter-
mines the film's errant structure, and thus promotes other metaphor-
ical resonances. Images of roads dominate the modern section of the
film. The two protagonists progress along strange, massive half-
constructed roau hriuges-literally roads to nowhere. And the entire
landscape tills out the image of the road. Bizarre road signs ('Istanbul
km. 42.53') anu road names of the dispossessed ('Via Lillo
Strappalenzuola-Scappato dOl casa a 12 anni', I .. Sheetripper Street-
Ran away from home at 12), the fragmenteu, ruineu stretches of build-
ings isolated in open countryside, the almost ahstract geometrical
f(lrmations oflines and curves f(lrmed hy the shapes of buildings and of
the road girders (as composed by each shot): these aspects together cre-
ate a fabulous set ling /ilr an 'idcocomic' fablc. The filmic style is caught
hetween the iconicity or /lccaltonl' and VanKe/o '4 and the symmctries of
Tl'orcma, as lhe camera consistently (i'ames to harmonize the protagon-
ists with the /()l"Jl1S and shapes ofthe landscape.
The appearance of the crow only enhances the power of the journey
metaphor. Ilis first words-'l )ove andate?' (Where arc you going?}--
articulate the question which the imagery has been hegging from the
start, witholll" eliciting any answer ('annamo line e poi annamo lane',
we're I!,'oin' here and thell we're goin' there), His offer to join them-
'non mi volcte come compagno di strada?' (don't you want me as a fel-
low traveller?)---opens up the meaning of the metaphor from its general
associations (from the Dantesque 'il cammin di nostra vita >l5) into
politics (the Marxist (dlow-traveller), and also of course, autobio-
graphy, The intertitle which heralds the crow's appearance, and which
is repeated towards the end-'il cammino incomincia / e il viaggio egia
finito' (the road begins / and the journey is already over}--confirms the
pattern of paradoxical strangeness and deceptive movement in the
'4 P"solini cut from the released lilm a sequence showing a Giottoesquc vision of Paradise
seen hy frate Nine((,,: sce U(allaui e lIudlini, '3'-3.
'5 (hall'lui e u((ellilli, a guided journey across the decaying lam]scapc of modernity, bears
more than a little resemblance to Pasolini's reworking of the Commedia, La divina mimesis,
largely composed between ,<)63 and 1965,
journey of the film. Further indications of absurdity, stasis and circu-

larity permeate the film. The crow gives his home address in the idiom
of the road-signs, only to be mocked by his companions: he comes from
'Ideologia', and lives in 'La citta del futuro, via Carlo Marx, n. 70xi
(the City of the Future, Karl Marx St., n. 7ox7). The car of the circus
performers does not work, even after being pushed in a circle. The
circularity of oppression secs Tot() and Ninetto chased otT land, only
to threaten with eviction a poor family-who have to deceive their
children that it is still night to alleviate thcir hunger-and then be
threatened in turn by the host of the 'I )antist dentists'. Similarly, in the
medieval episode, Francesco (,sti santi!', these saints!) orders around
Cicilio who in turn orders around Ninetto. !'rate Cicilio spends two
years rooted to the spot, waiting fill· inspiration, only to be thwarted by
another circular paradox when he does convert the birds: the hawks now
love God, and the sparrows now love God, but the hawks still kill and
eat the sparrows. And the mysterious death scene at the start or t he film
elicits ~l clear statement of the dark, static side of the journey
metaphor-'poveraccio passa da una morl"e alI'a It ra morl"e' (poor sod is
just going b·om one death to another). The association with death is
amplified by N inetto's innocent altempt to imagine death hy holding
his hreath, by the encounter with Togliatti's runeral and its effect-"-
'ormai non vi chiedo pill dove ambte' (I'm not going to ask you any
more where you arc going)-and by the death oflhe crow, which
becomes the aClual cnd of the film.
There is anot her cnd, however, and another image or circularilY in
the metaphor orlhe moon. The film-titles open and dose on an image
of the moon. The first lines of the film arc ahout the tides and t he moon
(To\"(): 'Co' la luna nun se prende', no use getl ing upset al the moon).
And in the tinal scene of the film, the E.tther and son meet a prostitute
called J .una, who has sex with each of I hem in lurn in I he undergrowth,
and who is instinctively and somewhat lllaternalIy attracted to them.
Finally, '('oh) muses at onc point on travel in space, and on Gagarin-
'qucllo che candato sulla luna' (thc onc who wcnt to the moon) (sit)-
concluding 'cammino cammino e ci si arriva' (you keep on going and
you get there in the cnd). Hence the moon is a positive end, whether or
not its attainment is Emtasy. Its half-light echoes the strange, unreal
landscape; but its force of sexual and maternal instinct sets it apart from
the over-rational, ideologizing crow, and links it with the spiritual
power of prophecy in St Francis, which the crow lacks ('si, un profeta!
magari', sure, a prophet! if only).
METAPHOR 239
The road and the moon are metaphors of history and desire, of the
bewildering, receding experience of consciousness of reality, shadowed
by death and the failing voice of Ideology (the funeral procession of
Togliatti), and the subconscious drive for immersion in the quiddity of
reality. The pseudo-couple of Tot() and Ninetto are phantasms of sub-
jectivity's encounter with those self-forming realities. And the studied
patterning which interlaces the journey imagery with the moon and
creates metaphorical resonances for both also extends into recurrent
imag·es of eating, (in)digestion and hunger; and into the extensive play
on the nature of language-from the talking crow, to the languages of
the birds, to the miming to J .una and to each other by Tot() and Ninetto,
to the acting of the circus troupe. ,(, What is more, the manner in which
the film casts itself as an ideal vehicle for metaphor in film, through its
fahulistic alterity, takes us back to Pasolini's dual assertion in his theory
that to express concepls, cinema must work in parables, in metaphors,
and Ihallo express the seH~ it must work in poety, in metaphor, in both
cases "aal/se cinema is irretrievably bound to reality. Hence we might
sa y Ihal this, the least narcissistic of his films, by being built upon an ex-
ploration of Ihe f()rms of metaphor and on metaphors of consciousness,
is also onc of his mosl probing explorations of the work of subjectivity
on film.
,(, ·I·h" circus is 11", sellinv; or" Ihird episode of Ihe film, of whid, only eiv;ht minutes was
shol (known as ,·,,"(, ..1cirw'). h \V;" included in Ihe screenplay (,1.'1101110 hi'IIICU', Uaellacci
(" 1/((dlilli, (,5 ",). Sce Ilonv;ie, "1'1', IIIX '1 '-
13
Being and P£lm- Time
In the dominant motifs and the recurrent metaphorical practices of

Pasolini's films and theoretical writings, two related governing figures
emerge to bind the filmic discourse to that of the subject and its con-
stantly frustrated desire for stability, plenitude and meaning: the Real
and the past. The Real, or in its more distilled manifestation, the hody
(Ch. 7) is both the source of the highly visual nature of Pasolini's hIm,
and an expression of an axiomatic, even mythological beliefsuhtending
all his work: 'che io usi la scrittura 0 che io usi il cinema altro non faccio
che evocare nell .. sua fisicita, traducendola, la T.ingua dclla Rea\t:t'
(whether I use writing or the cinema I never do anything other than
evoke in its physicality, hy translating it, the Language of Reality, 1:"1:'
268). The streng·th of his reliance on the axiomatic value oflhe Real is
demonstrateo by his rcfusalto modify it oespite the threat it repre-
sented to the whole eoi/ice of his semiological theories, as scveral more
'professional' semioticians were wont to point ouL I
Contact with reality is, ti,r Pasolini, charg'ed with sensuality:
Le cinema me permet de maintenir le contact avec la realile, Ull contact
physique, charnel, je dirais mcmc d'onlre sensuel. (I )uflot, 1970, 17)
(Cinema allows me to keep lip comact with reality, a physical, carnal, I would
even say sensual contact.)
I Sce Beltelini, I<)7J,X'<),54-7;Eco, 1l)6X, 150 60; (iarroni, ",f.X, '4 '7,4J~. Much"f
what Pasolini says is not, however, so scmiologic.lly nai've as Ihey su!(!(es1. I >cspile examples
of rhctoric.lly c.tcgorical assertions sllch as 'WI",t is the dil"fere\l(:e het wcen cineIlla •• 11<1 real-
ity? Practic.lly none' (Stack, ")CI<), 21), his "Irmutttiuns invariahly ackl1uwlcdge that reality is
coded and partakes of culturally detcnnined mediatiun. Thus cinema is 'la lingua s(rillll della
rcalti' (the JIIritll''' language uf reality), or 'lall1ea audio-visiva' (alldio-visllallalmiqllc, HI-.'
203; emphases added). Indeed, far (i'om shirking OIdes, he uses nine in his model ofarticula-
lions in 'Tahclla' (I,E 2<)7-Jot). Ami in direct reply to Eco's criticisms, he wrilcs: 'tUlle le mie
caotichc paginc [ .. .", tendono a portare la Scmiologia alia definitiva culturalizzazionc della
natura' (all my chaotic pages [ ... 1tend tu hring Semiology to the definitive LUlturaliz.ltion of
nature, EE 283). For a convincing rehahilitation ofl'asolini's theory, sce Dc Lauretis, 19Ho-1
and 1984,40-52.
BEING AND FILM-TIME
The immediacy aspired to, as in the early dialect poetry, is coterminous

with subjective plenitude and stability, without which the contact frag-
ments or dissolves. The introduction of desire into the ontological and
phenomenological problem of the real defines his trajectory in the
latter:
La mia filosofia, 0 il mio modo di vivere L... J non mi sembra altro, poi, che un
allllcinato, infantile c pragmatico amore per la rea}ra. ReJigioso in quanto si
/iHlda in qU:1lehe modo, per analogia, (';on una sorte di immenso feticismo
sesslIale. (/;'1:: 233)
(my philosophy, or my way oflife [... [ seems to mc, then, nothing more than a
bedazzled, in/;mtile and pragmatic love for reality. Religious in so far as it is
fillll1ded in some sense, hy analogy, on a sort of immense sexual fetishism.)
The fetish describes precisely a concentration on presence, on sheer

(corpo)reality, on the 'objectual', rather than on the eroticism of ab-
sence and deferral. The object of fetishistic desire becomes a comple-
ment to the gazing' subject, and psychoanalytically, that object stands
fill' the parI of the subject which it perceives itself to be lacking. And if
fill' K lein, it would be fhe mother's breasl, and ((lr Laean the phallus, for
Pasolini it seems 10 be being ifself2 By turning reality, and thus the
Objecl as constantly encountered, into the Object of desire, the body
validates and rein/illTes the subject, the agent of desire, and also
achieves the eflect of denaturalization: 'il mio amore feticistico per le
cose delmondo mi impedisce di considerarle naturali' (my fetishistic
love fill' things in the world prevents me from considering them as
natural, /;'/:' 2J I). In \'Urn, the unnatural opens the way filr ideological
subversion and crit ilJue which will resurface below in the consideration
of ('he self's position in time. By endowing the representation of ob-
jects of reality with an allra of ontological irreducibility, Pasolini sug-
gests the possibility of being heyond systems of naturalized norms; and
the vessel of this deEuniliarization is a sort of wonder.
The product ofthe encounter with the real is, at least in aspiration, a
discourse of 'real' presence cut to the measure of the childlike or
fetishistic desire of the subject (Mulvey, 1975, 19). An eros not built on
an arrested dynamic of deferral of pleasure can propel the subject to-
wards a wholesale and somewhat transcendental identification with
reality, as is hinted at in the image of a mirror Pasolini uses to explain
how einema and reality interact:
2 On fetishism, scc Laplanchc and Pontalis, J()73, 1 [5-[7. On desire in Pasolini, see
Nowcll-Smith, 1980.
Mi e successo, insomma, quello che succederebbe a un talc che facesse delle

ricerche sui funzionamento dello specchio. Egli si mette davanti allo spccchio,
e 10 osscrva, 10 esamina, prende appunti: e, infine, cosa vede? Se stesso L· .. 1
Cosi succede a chi studia il cinema: siccome il cinema riproduce la realti! finisce
eol ricondurre allo studio della realt,l. (EE 2]6)
(So, my experience was the same as that of someone researching into how mir-
rors work. He sets up in front of the mirror, and he observes it, examines it,
takes notes: and, in the cnd, what does he sce? I Iimself. .. That's what" happens
to whoever studies cinema: since cinema reproduces reality, st udy of it always
leads back to the stuuy of reality.)
A simple realignment of the axes of the simile indicates a clear desire to

be within the real: the self and the real occupy parallel positions within
the tenor and vehicle. If wc follow precisely the slippage that the simile
is illumin;lting, the sclfbeeomes an emblem ofthe real. Guido Fink puts
is more directly:
The principal aspiration of alll'asolini's work I... is I to identify himself with
Iimmet/csimllrsil the object, to annul himselflllnnullarsil int he character, to 'de
scellli' to rhc level of 11l,ltler in ordcr to sllhlinute it and to slIhlimatc himself
Isublimani I; and it is an aspiration that already het rays an awareness of rupture
Ila ({Isciell;::;" Ji unafi'allural. (translated (i'om "ink, 1I)()6, 41.1.)
Cinema in particular creates a channel between the Real and the suh-
jective through the simultaneous apotheosis and annihilatioll or the
latter in the (H' mer. The most direct evidence (H' this is t he frontal,
iconic body of the early films, and the increasing ohsession with the dis·-
play of the body and its functions and tcxture in later works. 'I 'here the
body becomes both a last loclls of uncompromised reality in the in-
creasingly alienated consumerist system, and a linguist ic system and
loeus of'writing" in its own rig'hl (see the expressivity ofthe body in the
Trilllgia and the hody language of thc I ,'rancisean episode of l hcc/lllui c
uacllini). :l
The second governing figure after the Real is that of the past and its
representation in the present. In Glrcfully paradoxiealmanIler, Pasolini
uses the past as a metaphor f(lr revolution in the present, by drawing out
affinities between the past and metaphor, both objects and effects of
censorship, whether political or psyehoanalytical. All three-revolution,
the past, metaphor-erupt into the present in fragmented or distorted
J In rhe latter respect atieast, Pasolini's recourse 10 the body hears comparison with the po-
sitions oCfeminist theorists such as Cix()us and Irigaray. See c.g. Cixous and Clement, '975;
Freeman, 1988; Moi, 11)87.
BEING AND FILM-TIME 243
form, and all three, for Pasolini, seem to be traces of an original, essen-
tial force for the aspiration towards the Real which Fink describes
above. In several places Pasolini states this view explicitly:
ci rivolp;iamo aU'Unesco in nome della seandalosa forza rivoluzionaria del
Passato VI! mum. di ,r.,'allll)
(we turn to Unesco in the name of the scandalous revolutionary furee of the
Past)
le passe est la seule critique globale du present. (Gerard, J <)1\ I, (n)

(the past is the only global critique of the present)
10 sono una ()I'za del l'assato.
Solo nclla tradiziol1e c il mio am ore.
(Mu/Illlla RO/llII, I (10; ami Rosa, B I, 6H))
(l am a (.rce of the I'as!. / Only in tradition is my love.)
The met aphor is a function or the elaborate rc-evocation ofthe past in

the present which is hased on I'he rc-sacralization or the present, as has
.t1ready heen nOlcd. And in comhination with the fig;ure of the real or
Ihe hotly, lhat of the past is suhsumed into a final area of investigation of
subjectivity in the internal processes orl'asolini's cinema, film-time.
The const rllct ion of Ihe self as a suhject in time is most immediately
apparent in the inlertexl ual dynamic of t he many tilm adaptations after
f/imgc/o. As already noted, l'asolini takes on and redirects texts which
narrate (Htnding; moments or the history of civilization, or of history
itself The specific meaning of each adaptatioll, and the concurrent sub-
jective framework lilt· reading it, n:side in the action of the narrative of
origin on the present perccptions of the subject, and vice versa.
I 'urthermore, in cases such as t'lwp,e/o and h'dipo, the action is mediated
and dispersed by secondary readings of the original-respectively 'two
Ihousand years of storytelling; ahout the life of Christ' and 'psycho-
analysis reprojccted on the myth Iof Oedipus I' (Stack, Il)6l), 8], 120)-
which arc equally active and acted upon as historical objects. And of
course, the 'orig'inal' texts themselves in these cases arc no more than
early readings of extant mythical narratives. The subject is thus con-
structed within a temporal tiekl of reading which is neither linear nor
monovalent, but open to multiple dynamics of action and interaction.
Pasolini reads and interprets the pre-texts on film, projecting himself
and his subjective control over the filmic process, but also necessarily
over the process of reading, which is then in turn repeated in reverse
as the spectator is constructed as the subject undertaking the same
reading process-in other words, as the figure ofPasolini, the author as

subject. In Edipo, for example, Pasolini creates a 'metaphoric autobiog-
raphy' (Stack, 1969, 120) by specifying the look of the camera as the
look of the child in the prologue, which then becomes the look of the
spectator, and the look of Oedipus. Subjectivity is propelled across bar-
riers of history and prehistory, rooted in the sutured analogy between
the latter two, and in the (always temporal) processes of(re)reading.
Adaptation conditions and often determines the film itself as a 'per-
sonal' reading, and in a sense facilitates a poetic cinema, but it does so at
the glossing margins of a series of fUll(hlmental texts in the history of
narrative. Once more the poetic function is thrown into relief by its
marginal or immanent position. Indeed, despite Pasolini's promotion
of poetic cinema, he never argued, cither in theory or praclice, t()r a
wholesale abandonment of narrative. '1 'he 11)65 essay on the cinema of
poetry clearly cordons off narrative as a sort of Crocean structure,
labelling it a 'pseudo-racconto' (pseudo-story, I~'/~' I Xl) or an 'alihi' for
the primary content, the content of the poetic '()rm (I~'J~' 11) I). In later
essays, he seems to he more open to st raightl()fward narrative as a
necessary colour in a film-artist's palate, and wonders if a fully lyric or
poetic 'cinema di poesia' is possihle outside till'malist avant-garde
pseudo-utopias, to which he is radically host ile: 'io cOlltinuo a credere
nel cinema che racconta' (J continue to believe in a cinema that tells
stories, 'I segni viventi e i poeti morti', I:'F 25X-\). Indeed, the '/h/ogia
del/a vi/a promotes the play o('narrativity in its source texts as orfunda-
mental value, powerfully analogous to the vitality and sexual freedom or
the (pseudo)historieal worlds they depict. I Iowever, classic (U'I11S of
film narrative arc of course constantly undermined and decent red, and
in so far as film narrative is a vessel t(U' a series of conventions which
synthesize film-time and real time, this decentering has considerahle
implications.
Narrative time in Pasolini's cinema is irredeemably split. h'dipo, 11
Decameroll and J raccrl1lti di Canlcrbur)! set up frames of apparenl"ly real
or present time to control the mythical-dream time and narrative-
dream time, respectively, of the main body of the films. Uaellaui e
uccellini also splits by way ofthe narrative excursus of the crow who nar-
rates the parable ofthe Franciscan friars; La ricotla intercuts the black-
and-white 'reality' of the film-set with the garish colour and iconicity of
the film within the film, the Gospel story; Che WIll Iono le Iluvole? has
the 'reality' of the puppets' backstage existence (and the further frame
of the puppet-maker and dustmen) set against the 'fiction' of their
on-stage performance of Shakesepare's Othello; and SalO, with its pro-
logue showing the drawing up of rules by the four protagonists and the
rounding up of victims, sets up an horrific other-world where the
rhythm of torture stimulated by the narratives of the diseuses takes over
from real time and annihilates desire, meaning and death (Plate 7). The
victims arc portentously told as their ordeal begins, 'siete fuori dai
confini di ogni Icg,llita I ... 1 per quanto riguarda il mondo, siete gia
morti' (you are beyond the confines of every legality r... ] as far as the
world is concerned, you are already dead). Teorema and Porci/e, as
describcd above, arc even more starkly split in two. Furthermore, in
each case, the real-time segments are always only apparently real and
pres«.:nt: «.:ach sNs up a dream within a dream, and thus I1jiore delle
'Mille e una nolle " which simply l:Xtends the duality of all others into a
smooth«.:r mise en ahyme of dream-narrativ«.:s, without apparent tem-
poral discontinuity, could in fact stand as their epitome.
A second group of films or screenplays, developed out of the dis-
covery of metaphor I hrough analogy in Vange/o and its potential for
hyperdetermined reference to historical and aesthetic intermediaries,
displays morc historically and ideologically based splits which create
strong, explicit links, and even simultaneity between past amI present,
hetween real time and tilm-time. The use in Vatll~e/o of southern Italy as
an analogue ofhiblical Palestine, in the quality of its physical being, ex-
tends into Pasolini's most ambitious, often unrealized projects. The
Appunli pcr un 'Orcsliudc aji-iwna, San Pa% and POYno-leo-k%ssal
were all planned as grand analogies under thc sign of a radical re-
evaluation of the past as an ideological critique ofthe present. Ores/jade
shows precisely Pasolini searching for the characters and locations of
the Ores/eia in the faces and landscapes of present-day Tanzania-
looking for mythical time in historical-political actuality. Even Le ml/ra
tli Sana shows the [rag-ic counterpoint between modern, destructive
capitalism and the surviving residue of the ancient civilisation of
Yemen, contrasting S,ma with Orvieto, where the residue of history is
now engulfed by modernity.
The overwhelming evidence of structural discontinuity in time
moves the function of narrative itself away from sequential cause and
effect towards metaphor and metanarrative. Minor disturbances of
temporal sequence thereby acquire greater relief and potential for
metaphorical effect also. The speeded-up image track, in moments of
La ricolla, II Daameron and I racconti di Canterbury; the dream in
Accattotle; Medea's un signalled prophetic dream of destruction; the
repetitive circular rhythms of Teorema and Porctle: all these and others
create a fragmented, non-linear axis of time and mark the nature of nar-
rative progression as a vehicle for signification. In particular, they point
to the importance of the transition between levels of time, and of their
continuing mutual immanence.
The moments of transition in Pasolini's work tend to emphasize,
both technically and in content, the overlap between 'bcf()re' and
'after'. The modern prolog·ue to J;·dipo is mysteriously infiltrated by the
haunting pipe-music of mythical Thebes, before the image-track cuts
away from the child's swollen feet held by his f:tther to the desert and
the child bound by hands and feet to the shepherd's stick. In II
Decarneroll, both Ciapelletto and Giotl'o sce or hear the cllaracters of the
stories bcf()re the film cuts away to Boccaccio's narratives, amI they are
thereby implicated in the aesthetic and moral valucs of the latter; and
similarly Chaucer in I rt/((Ol1ti tli Canll'r/JuIT is surroundcd by young
men who reappear in the Pardoner's Tale and others, and is haranp;ucd
by a wife who sounds very much like the Wife of Bath. There is a
spilling-over fi·om onc time into another which is at once transgTcssivc
and excessive,4 creating a powerful impulse to tTansfimnation and re
interpretation, amI destahilizing the apparent hierarchics o(seqllcnce.
The technical nat urc of transition and many othcr features of film-
time arc elearly dctermined in largc pari hy the proccsses o/" edit ing, as
discussed ahove. I )iscontinuit ies and lInconventionally cxtendcd shots,
staccato jump-cuts and slow panning shots have been noted as typical o/"
Pasolini's editing· style, and this pract icc or montage was related abovc
to the theorizing of editing as an equivalent o/"death in thc constnu:t ion
of meaning and of lived action. I r we go back to Pasolini's theoretical
writing Oil this topic, the temporal aspects of cditing will he confirmcd
as closely related to the nature of subjectivity in lime. In his attempt to
t()rmulate an answer to Metz's Elmous qllest ion 'cinema: langue oulan-
gap;e?' (Metz, H)7I; j;'j;' 204, 231-2), Pasolini had distinguishcd a hypo-
thetical 'lang·lIe'--'cinema'---·from an actual 'parolc'-'i films' (sic).
The I()rmer is a 'tecnica audiovisiva' which does not exist as an object,
and the latter a concretization of the former, just as it is a written lan-
guage of reality. Hence, 'la realt,! non IcI, infine, che del cincma in
natura' (reality is simply, in the end, cinema in nature, Fj;' 203), 'I'intera
vita, nel complcsso delle sue azioni, cun cinema naturale e vivente' (the
4 cr 'e'cslla ucmcsure de eet :lmour [de Medcel4l1i Ill'" le plus fascine' (il is the excess of
this love rof Medca's I which fascinated me most, Dullol, H)70, I I I).
whole oflife in the sum of its actions is a natural and living cinema, EE
210). Cinema is analogous to living reality, or better, with 'I'agire nella
realti' (action-within-reality), because both are archetypally 'un con-
tinuo e infinito piano-sequenza' (a continuous and infinite plan sequence,
EE 233,244): that is, reality is lived (until death) as a continuous present
without meaning, without selection or combination, and necessarily by
a single sensory agent or subject ofa long' point-of-view shot or 'sogget-
tiva' (EE 241). Actual films, like death, select and combine time and
space throllg'h editing and mise ell scene, and thus create meaning by
multiplying points of view and integrating living reality and lived real-
ity (El;' 242-4,265), The 'alltore' is now the agent of selection and com-
bination, not the subject of 'I'agire nella realti' (which Pasolini calls
'soggettiva esistenziale', existenti,t/ point-of-view shot, EE 244), and
hence the subjectivity of the film is at onc remove horn the simple
'soggettiva'-it is, perhaps, a free, indirect subjectivity (EL' 179--<)1),
The transit ion horn cinema to /llm, however, does not simply multiply
or qualify present point-of-view shots, but also operates on the level of
historical time, as he notes in 'Osservazioni sui piano-sequenza' (ER
24 1 -5):
trasl(u'ma il presente in passato I ... lul1 passato che, per ra~ioni immanenti al
mezzo einelllato~ralico, e nOli per scdta estetica, ha sempre i m()(.li tiel presente
(2 (il!l; un prl'SCnlt' slori((}), (Fh' 244)
(illrans\()rllls the present into the pasll, . ,I a past which, till' reasons imman-
enl to Ihe cinemalo~raphic mediulll, and nol throu~h acsthctic choice, always
has the f(mlls of Ihe pn:selll (il is ill olher /IIortls all historica.l present) ).5
Pasolini's obsessive preoccupation with the splitting of time in his
film work, whether literally or only tig'uratively as a split between past
and present, is therefore, on his own terms, always metacinemato-
graphic He acknowledges and explores the overspilling of past into
present and vi(e versa, in a medium in which time past is always also
time present. The imm;menee 0(" the past in the present in film pre-
figures and conl1gures the immanent structures of cinema as stated
above, Such displaced figuration at onc remove is a model which ex-
plains the untenability for Pasolini of attempts to (re)construct in films
the infinite 'piano-sequenza' of cinema. In an intuition familiar from
both his poetic practice and the Mannerist tensions of pastiche, Pasolini
realizes that to reproduce one element in an unfamiliar context is to
transform both its meaning and its ways of meaning, As he explains in
5 Sce Turigliatto, 1()76, 125, 150-2.
'Battute suI cinema' (EE 234-5), if the 'piano-sequenza' is coterminous

with 'l'agire nella rea ita' in cinema, in films it can only be naturalistic in
a way that 'realta' and 'azione' are not. He can thus substitute the
'piano-sequenza' with its apparent opposite, montage and split time in
his film practice, because the 'linearita ilnillilica' (anll/Vlii" linearity) of
cinema becomes in films necessarily a 'linearita sinle/ira' (.~vn/heti{
linearity), and because both conceptions are governed by different
manifestations of his (subjective) desire, or love for reality (flE 235).
Hence the vehicle of immanence is the subjectivity of the 'author'--
seen as theoretician and director conflated-and is to be located in the
process of suture, between cinema and films (in theory) and between
past and present (in practice), which also acts ro hind the spectator into
the illusion of subjective plenitude offered hy the films as objects (sec
Ch. 14).
Returning to the films themselves, and to the diegetic role played by
images of past and present and their intermingling, a further dimension
to the suhject in time becomes apparent in the light or these theoretical
considerations. There are, broadly, three pasts represented in Pasolini's
films: the prehistorical, mythical period of a range of films fi·om j:·diplI,
Medea and Orestjat/£' (also I,£, mum di Sil/Ut and /lppullti per lllljilm
sul/'India) and rhe cannibal episode of Ponile to, in a differenl sense,
Villlgdo and j,a ricolla; Ihc early modern periods of the Tri!ogia del/a
vi/a ;lJ1d the Franciscan episode or llcrellacri e l/u;cllini; and the epitome
of post-Enlightenment modernity in SIt/r;, prefigured in Ihe modern
section of Po nii£-. I,
The signifying powcr ofthe first group is besl illustrated hy the role
of the centaur Chiron in Medcll. [n the opening section, he is shown as
he educates the growing boy jason into his heritage and into the secrets
of a world governed by gods and the mysteries of nature. The dawn-lit,
watery landscape, which supports a static sequence of discontinuous
poses over the period ofjason's youth, sets the narrative beyond history
and society, where the eentam's dual nature represents a synthesis of
man, nature and myth (Plate s).Jason is induced into a primitive whole-
ness which parallels the harbaric, sacred power of the priestess Medea,
and makes their union tragically inevitahle. However, even hefore jason
leaves Chiron to claim his birthright, the centam is transf()rmed into a
(, Here, and in mllch of this section, .I/(WI/OIIl· and Mamlna Rom" seem to stand apart from
the rest ofPasolini's films as roOled in the present. IIowevcr, even thcre, the 'borgate' have a
prehistorical, pre-Christian aura at times and the v;trious stylistic effects of dissonance look
forward to analogolls temporal tensions in later works.
man asJason reaches adulthood and begins to lose the mystical link with
nature and myth. Chiron and Jason therefore form a pseudo-couple
representing a consciousncss split over time, just as much as Jason and
Medea represent a subjectivity always already radically split by history.
Jason is integrated into society, and ultimately betrays Medea for a
politic marriage, but Chiron reappears to him in a pivotal scene in both
his incarnations as centaur and man, to warn him that he cannot deny
his origin, and his love for Medea that: is its irreducible residue. Pasolini
explained to Dutlot (1981, 96) 'cette presence des deux centaures
signitie que la chose sacrce, une fois dcsacralisce, ne disparait pas pour
autant' (this presence ofthe two centaurs means that the sacred, once it
has been desecrated, nevertheless does not disappear). Medea's final
catastrophe is a figure ofJason's attempted suppression of 'la chose
saCl·cc' and ofthe original synthesis. She reacquires her magical powers,
long lost in the lay-culture of Corinth, only whcn she resolves to chal-
lenge the power of history Qason's royal marriage, his lineage). She is
thus a figure of; on the one hand, the past or the prehistorical as a force
of revolution or critique in the present, and, on the other hand, of a
presence, ddined by action-within-reality in synthesis with the full
t()rce of nature. The myth is transmitted to the mythical quality ofthe
film as a synthesis (not analysis) of history, and hence, implicitly, myth
spills over into ideology, and lay Corinth can represent the bourgeois
present.
The same pattern of synthesis through myth operates in the second
gToup, where the medieval past is 'sacred' in its experience of open sex-
uality and unmediated bodily expression-in other words, again, in its
presence---in contrast to the present: crisis in sexuality analysed by
Pasolini in his essays of the J ()7os, written mostly after the making of the
trilogy: 'in un momento di profimda crisi culturale I... ] mi csembrato
che la sola realt.I j()sse quella del corpo' (in a moment of profound cul-
tural crisis I ... 1 it seemed to me that the only reality was that of the
hody, 'Tctis', 100). The body becomes a site for historical action, and
the film the written lang·uag'c of that action. In the trilogy, and in
l/ucllaai e uaellini, the exploration of the body as an expressive lan-
guage is paramount. The failure of the trilogy is, among othcr things, a
failurc to operate successfully the synthetic metaphorical transfer to
ideology which Mu/ea and Uaellaai e uccellini achievc. The past
remains as a literal, and thus false, construct, and is integrated by the
present into conventional, exploitative narrative by way of its own
overdetermined deployment of narrative patterning.
The final examples of film-imaging of the past, in Porcile and Salo,

produce a different order of synthesis. Both set up a three-way analogy
which is revealed as a figure of pseudo-synthesis between reified order
and physicality. The arehitectonic order and grandeur of the Palladian
Villa Pisani where Porcile is set is parallel to the rational, regulatory
order of the four dignitaries in Said, figures of a Sadean Enlightenment.
The Nazism of Herdhitze is a premise for the industrial power games
with Klotz, set in the sham respectability of the Villa; similarly the dig-
nity of the SaIl'> fascists is annihilated in their extreme perversions,
which in turn, as already noted, become a Iiteralized metaphor fi.)r neo-
capitalist consumption. Both films, and particularly SaIl;, are more
sophisticated and conventional in their editing than is usual for
Pasolini, and both modify the synthetic critique with a more analytical
representation of the /()rms of modernity. The revolutionary power of
the primitive, all but absent in Sail;, is retained in POrcill' by Julian 's
'natural' perversion, and its metaphorical c1ahoration in the cannihal
episode.
The further dimension apparent in these instances, seen in the light
of the consistent split! ing; of film-time and the thcorcfical e1ahoration of
a dual dynamic of metacinematic immanence, is /(HlI1d in the mode of
synthesis (or suture) between past and present, and I hus history and
reality. Analytical, ideological crit ique is a secondary and sporadic, hut
none the less import·ant, product of this synthesis which, Elr li·om hcing
materialist in orig·in, is governed by the work of subjectivity. The ohject
of nostalgia, then, is less the past as such than the uncensored plenitlJ(\c
of'l'agire nella realt,'t', or cincma, which can only ever surface as a trace
of the imaginary, or oneiric, in a mediated, symholic actuality. It is pcr-
ceived and represented as a vessel of'rcvollltion' hecause of its dynamic
of erupting into and disturbing the present formally and, hy a loose
analogy, politically. The living sllhjective desire I(u· inscription into
material reality, for being, thus aspires to be contlatetl with the con-
current lived desire or the subject in timc to be inserted along a syn-
thetic historical axis. The integration of these two orders o/" desire
points to a powerful aspiration to grasp and in some sense to express
what might be termed the subject's full heing in time.
14
Spectatorship
To anyone J";uuiliar with the recent history of IlIm theory, the analysis
undertaken in the previous five chapters might well have seemed some-
what perverse, since it has been more or less obsessed with the origins
of the work of subjectivity in Pasolini himself~ or at the very least with
the impression his work gives of having an expressive and constitutive
origin of some kind. By contrast, subjectivity has become a funda-
men tal and much deba ted area oflilm theory not in reference to an orig-
inal self 'hidden behind' a film---'che si esprime "girando" '-but
rather as an aspect of film spectatorship. There arc, however, good
reasons f()lO having suppressed discussion of spectatorship in Pasolini
until now, and good reasons f(JI' dedicating the final chapter of our
analysis to it.
The first and most compelling rea SOil derives fi'om the nature of the
work o("subjectivity in Pasolini. As in his journalism and poetry, so in
his cinema the history of the work of subjectivity has been read as a his-
tory of the negotiation hefween seIthood and t()I'm; that is, between
conscious or unconscious manifestations of the need to express a self,
and the restraints and filters of the languages, arenas, media, and genres
of that seW-expression. In ot her words, his work has been read not only
as a sympfol1l (Valesio, I !)XO-'l) of universal patterns of subjectivity, but
also as a site JiJr the active confrontation and transf()rmation of those
patterns. And the starting··point (()I' that conJi-ontation in Pasolini is in-
variably a loud, often over-anxious declaration of the presence and the
importance ofthe speaking' subject in every act ofenullciatioll. 'Bisogna
esporsi' (you must display I expose yourself), he wrote in 'La
crocilissione' (B I, 376), and the same image recurs in one of several
deeply personal interludes in l:'F, in the essay 'Il cinema impopolare':
Vorrei accentuare la parola esihizione. J,a vocazione alle piaghe del martirio che
l'autore b a se stesso I ... 1 non ha senso se non c resa csplicita al massimo:
se non c appunto csihiLa I ... 1. Egli nc\l'atto invcntivo, neeessariamente
seandaloso, si cspone-e proprio alia lcttera-agli altri. (EE 274)
(I'd like to stress the word exhibition. The author's vocation for the self-
inflicted wounds of martyrdom t... ] makes no sense unless it is made as ex-
plicit as possible: unless it is, precisely, exhibited t... J. In the act of invention,
which is necessarily scandalous, he exposes himself--literally-to others.)
The figure of the author's self-exposure, of his strident attempts to
wrench the medium to himselt~ is an obstacle which resists and distorts
any attempt to read around it. Pasolini creates tc.)l·ms of discourse which
write themselves as having an origin, precisely in compensation f(lr the
anxious intuition of its lack or fragmentation. The vocation to martyr-
dom in '11 cinema impopolare' acknowledges as much in its imagery of
pain and splitting ('le piaghe del martirio'). In this context, then, it
makes sense to follow the trajectory of th,1t anxiety from aut hor to suh-
jects (speaking or of speech) to subjectivity, and only t hen to consider
the reagent or spoken suhject, the spectator. Having reached that stage,
it soon becomes clear that large parts of the task havc already heen
figured in earlier stages. The attempt to separate out and promote the
'author' is a rhetoric, cven an ideolog'y that. disguises its own f;Jisity. To
turn now to the issue of spectatorship is to transgress the limits of the
pro-filmic, pre-filmic and lilmic manifestatiolls or subjectivity SCCIl
already, in ortil'1' III /1C((l1/U: lIlI'Ilre (!/'them as rhetoric, just as (1)1' Pasolini,
writing or cinema go beyond speech or reality respect ivcly ami create
them as conscious t(lrms.
Besides the organic sympathy needed lill' a reading' of subjectivity in
Pasolini's work, there arc also autonomous t heoret ical reasons why the
spectator as subject is integrating to ot her modes or suhjectivit y. 'I'hcse
revolve around the notion or suture. At several points ahove t his term
was used to descrihe the sti tchi ng together of visions or past and presen t
through narrative structure and macro- and Illicro-editin~. In hct, (illll
theorists have tended to use the term in a narrower sense, derived from
I,acan, to refer to cinema's function as discourse, bindin~, ensnaring or
interpellating the spectator in his/her status as a suhject, defined hy
lack and aspiring to (an illusion) of unity and integrity (J ,apsley and
Westiake, I 9SS, i:l6--t)O; SaCl'l1, 1I)77-S; Silverman, I(jS], H)4-236). As
the concept was first proposed, hy Oudart and others, it referred
specifically to the workings of the conventional shot-reverse-shot se-
quence which established the spectator's point of view and thus his/her
strong identification as speaking subject, only to reint(lrce the sense of a
lack upon perception of the frame. It was then extended by some to en-
compass several, if not every aspect of film form and narrative, both
audio-visual and spatio-temporal, as they intersect the spectator's
SPECTATORSHIP 253
subjectivity, creating momentary bonding (see, for example, Heath,
1976). The suture of filmic elements of past and present described in
Chapter IJ follows a pattern analogous to Oudart's or Heath's suture:
they all entail the binding of fractured elements (past/ present; prehis-
tory/history; author/film/spectator) to create a unit that contains, es-
sential and immanent to it, a residue of the original fracture. The nature
and meaning of that fracture fi)r the spectator ofPasolini's films depend
on the L1urahility and penetration of that residue. As so often, his own
essay~ in theory provide a useful starting-point.
Pasolini only aLldre~sed the issue of spectatorship directly in his later
theoretical essays, written in H)70 and 1971, and even then only briefly.
The essay which contains the impassioned plea fi)r scandalous self-
exposure quoted above, 'Il cinema impopolare' (EE 273-XO), explains
the shift in Pasolini's film style after 1967 from the aspiration to a
Gramscian national-popular cinema to an 'aristocratic' or 'unpopular
cinema', in response to the disappearance of the popular world as
Gramsci had known il. lis main concern is stateLl as 'la liherta dell'-
autore e liherazione dq?;ii spellatori' (the freedom of the author and the
liberation of the spect;lIors, J~'/~' 273), and each of the terms in this
phrase arc f!,"lossed: 'ti-cedom' is, al hearl, always the freedom to choose
death (273); the 'author' is one who stands outside, is hated, knows
transgression and death intimately and thus loves lite (274); the 'spec-
tator' is imagined by the author as another author, as 'altrettanto
scandaloso' (equally scandalous), who cedes an element of freedom
in heeoming an actual spectator, but in return can be freed to 'godere
della liherl;' all rui' (enjoy the freedom of others, 275), either
empathetically-by identifyinf!," with the sado-masochistic freedom of
the author· --or critically--by being scandalized by the author's trans-
gressions (276). Pasolini also makes it clear that the nature of these
transg-ressions is semiological, that is, a breaking' down of codes of rep-
resentation. Thus the spectator's perceptions are determined by their
relation to the author, on the onc hand, and to the audio-visual and
spatio-temporal codes of cinematographic representation on the other
(sce aIso' Il rcma', EE 293-6). Several points arc worth noting: first, the
parallel between author and codes as factors in spectatorial perceptions
confirms and expands the premise behind Chapter 10, that style and
technique are intimately caught up in subjective processes. Also, the
figure of the ideal author and ideal spectator identifying on the level of
scandal links this aspect of Pasolini's work to one of the defining con-
cerns of his poetry and his public interventionism, as well as his cinema
(San Paolo), rooted in his homosexuality (Ch. 3). The scandalous trans-
gression here is made both ideolugical, and explicitly erotic: 'gOt/ere
della libertialtrui' (275, emphasis added); 'io stesso provo [ ... ] l'effetto
quasi sessuale dell'infrazione del codice' (I myself feci [ ... ] the almost
sexual effect of breaking the code, 278). It also extends the impact of the
trope of scandal, here and elsewhere, by placing it in ambivalent tension
with the notion of freedom and liberation: the freeing of the spectator
to transgress and cause scandal with the author is a freedom to be de-
stabilized as subjects, to experience oneself the author's marginality
and intimacy with death, to be thrown into a vertiginous fall from com-
fortable self-recognition. The etymology of scandal-from the Latin
'scandalum', snare, or tripping obstacle-neatly captures its dangers,
and prov ides at least an echo of our starting point, suture, also an ambi-
valent metaphor of both healing and entrapment. Suture hinds, cauter-
izes, but does not heal the 'self-intlicted wounds 0(" martyrdom' of the
author: instead it allows tilr them to be captured in f(lrm ami potentially
to capture the spectator in their /ilrm.
Onc other aspect ofthe ima~ery offrcedom in 'J\ cinema impopolare'
is pertincnt. The potential to 'enjoy the freedom of others' recalls the
filrmula in '11 cinema di poesia' of free, indirect subjectivity as a re-
sponse to the limitations of bourgeois literary filrms such as free, in-
direct discourse and inner monologue, which cannot represent the
authentic voice of the other. The spectator, or at least the ideal spec-
tator, seems to be offered the chance of experiencing otherness, ofliving'
another's vision. The subversive implications of this possibility take us
back to an earlier phase ofPasolini's theory, and to an implicit role there
tin' specl"atorial suhjecl"ivity in definin~ cinema's relation to reality. Dc
LllIret is (11)84, 40-53 148-531), offers a compelling reading between
the lines ofPasolini's major theoretical essays of the mid-H)6os as {()re-
shadowing' the moves of post-semiological theory towards cinema as a
social, discursive practice. I lis emphasis on living reality, on action, on
pragma as that which cinema 'writes' is, lilr Dc Lauretis, an emphasis
on 'cinema as the conscious representation of social practice I ... ]
"signifying practices", wc would say; he said "the written language of
pragma" , (SI). Similarly, his notion of life heing a continuous, un-
articulated cinema-an infinite 'piano sequenza' (EE 210, 234)-and
film being all hut devoid of the continuity of such an ontological 'piano
sequeT'n' (such sequences in actual films are purely naturalistic), sug-
gests that we can only ever know life, as actors and spectators (EE
209-10), and films, but never cinema:
SPECTATORSHlP 255
Cono8ciamo i 'films' (come conosciamo gli uomini 0 le poe8ie), ma non con08-'
ciamo il cinema (come non conosciamo l'umanita 0 la poesia). (,Battute sui
cinema', El.' 23 [: see De Laureris, [984,44,49-50)
(We know 'films' (just as we know men or poems) but wc cannot know cinema
(just as wc cannot know humanity or poetry).)
Life ami films exist, then, as social ami signifying practices and the grail
ofEE, a 'Semiologia del!.. Rea\t;)' (232), would be a codification ofthose
practices. It would also be profilUndly historical and ideological, as
Pasolini's example on ,enin's life as a great 'poem obction' (210) indic-
ates. The axis of film-time discussed in Chapter 13 is immediately
relevant here, since life ami films, like discourse or signifying practices,
exist in time and frame the tilrms of subjectivity for the spectator as a
temporal sequence. Theorists of subjectivity in language such as
Benveniste and Jakobson have often used the notion of 'shifters', ele-
ments of language which can only signify in concrete, diseursive situ-
ations (I, you, here, there, now, then, ctc). These elements distinguish
'parole' from 'langue' by the bindingofsubjectivity into temporal pres-
ence (see Silverman, 1<)1\3,43-53). I f we return to Pasolini's statements
related to editing:, we tind a very similar pattern of reasoning: editing is
that which gives meaning to a film by articulating its link to reality and
giving it history; it is that which distinguishes cinema (Iangue) from
tilms (parole). Splicing, as described in 'Teoria delle giunte' and '11
rema', is similarly particular to actual films. Cinema disavows history by
representing a permanent 'now' and a unitary '1', but an actual living
expression of subjectivity relies on films, with their constantly shifting,
differentiated, contlictualllgures filr 'now' and filr '1'. And thus wc re-
turn to the positioning of subjectivity, in the film and for the spectator,
in a broadly understood and ambivalent notion of suture, that is both
binding and liberating.
In order to describe the ways in which the problems of spectatorial
subjectivity are enacted in Pasolini's 1l1ms, we can adduce other aspects
of subjectivity already elucidated. Since Pasolini's Illm work, like his
theory, constantly posits an authorial figure at its origin, it is not sur-
prising' that the most direct means of absorbing the spectator into the
film-track is to cast him/her as 'another author' ofthe film. This is most
apparent in the adaptations which makes up the dominant part of
Pasolini's work from Vangelo onwards. The author, as the reader ofthe
original text, is immediately written into the film as a subject in time
and in history, and as a figure for the spectator who is always already a
reader of some kind. The most interesting and compelling example of

this pattern is Appunti per un 'Oresfiade a/i-iCllna (and Appunti per un film
sull'/ndia, although it is a less satisfactory film), which combines loca-
tion shooting, discussion with a group of students, music, poetic specu-
lation and voice-over explanation to set up a rich, provisional texture
that the spectator expericnces as a permanent, open questioning of thc
possibility of mythical and historical analogy, and of film, and of the
author's role in that film. A similar point can bc made {()r thosc per-
sonal, framing appearances of Pasolini as Giotto and Chaucer, where
the spcctator relives through the figure of thc artist thc moment of dis-
tillation of the original text or icon fi-om reality, as wcll as implicitly that
of the present film. Several shot sequcnces in 11 Decamerofl and 11"{lc-
amli di Canterbury show a simple construction ofthe spcctator's look as
that ofthe respcctive authorial figures.
To cast thc spcctator as author requires a certain metacinemato-
graphic dimcnsion to the prOl:ess of idcntification: the spectator mllst
experience the film as a film, must acknowledge the Ji-ame, in order to
projcct him/herself as its author. A broader version of this metacine-
matographic suture might rhcret()rc take in the incomplcteness, abrupt
shifts and transvcrsal structures that characterize so many of Pasolini's
films. Such lacunae invite the spectalor to attempt to complete the pic-·
ture, to write over the gaps, to reorganize or re-edit their vision, having
first pereiveo its incompletcness. Filmic metaphor also, in its simplest
form, works by suggestive juxtaposition, which calls on the spectator to
turn contiguity into similarity (Aaaltone, H». But, as I heorisls of
suture such as Oudart realized, to acknowledge the Ilctive Ji-ame of the
camera is to lose the illusion (and the 'jouissance') of full identification
as an author. And it is crucial to Pasolini's work that no fully cohesive,
naturalized final product should cmcrge to flatten the contours of
anxiety which the films project from author to spectator and which
create a bond between thc expcrience offilm and the experience ofliveo
reality.
The key entry in Pasolini's filmography for metacinematographic
questions is La ricotta, and this case is no exception (sce also Che {(Jsa
S(1110 le nuvo/e?). From its first frame, its two biblical epigraphs inter-
pellate the spectator dramatically, setting the conditions for their per-
ceptions of the film. The second records the anger of Christ as he clears
the traders from the Temple, setting the film up as a critique of the film
business he will portray; the first, from Mark 4:9, starkly invites the
audience to interpret the film 'properly'-'se qualcuno ha orecchi per
SPECTATORSHIP 257
intend ere, intenda' (If you have the cars to hear, then hear). The film
itself does not construct a centred point of view or point of identifica-
tion for the spectator. Instead the camera holds off, settling most often
on medium or long shots, allowing the series of interconnecting but iso-
lated worlds amI textures of the film set to be organized by the viewer:
he/she identifies with the system, or meaning of the film. The film has
several centres of gravity: Stracci, off-set, in the rocky landscape, or
roadways, alone or with his family; Orson Welles, sitting magisterially
in his chair, as the camera three times zooms out to show him sur-
rounded by props that look like gravestones; the music, dancing, laugh-
ing, stripping and eating of the actors on set; the 'tableaux vivants' of
the Mannerist colour reproductions (Plate 6); the scenes of the three
crosses, on the g,-round, carried up and down the hill, and finally set up
vertically. At various times the spectator's empathy or sympathy is
brietly t()cused on Welles (his ironic smile at the games he plays with the
asinine journalist) or Stracci (his crestfallen look as he sees the dog eat
his meal), and the two come together in the film's final moment as only
Welles re,llizes the 'meaning' of Stracci's death. I But we are distanced
/i'om both also, by the comic speeding up of Stracci's rushing around,
especially when he is seen st uffing himself in sped-up motion as the
actors gather and throw him morsels at normal speed. Welles, on the
other hand, is alone and t(lrbidding, sarcastic and amhivalent. Both are
more archetypally than psychologically drawn.llcnce rather than iden-
tify with them as characters, the spectator is bound into the film by its
range of ways of seeing and filming: the distance from empathy be-
comes a marker of the experience of mediation in cinema and in reality
in general, and the tensions or anxieties apparent in each of the modes
of representation ollered-'saints' laughing cruelly, or stripping, or
mocking and debunking the sacred 'tahleaux' -connote the danger and
difficulty mediation brings. The key tCatures arc those which interlock
and mediate between the various worlds and ways of seeing, echoing the
spectator who settles in an 'in between', slightly detached and lost state.
One of these features is the shrill voice of the prompter/production
manager and the chain of barked commands he regularly sets off ('la
corona!', the crown; 'illadrone buono!', the good thief), who also tests
I In Lhe original version of the film, Welles' tinallinc was 'Povero Stracci, crcpare estato il
suo solo modo di fare la rivoluzione' (Poor Stracci, dying was the only way he had to revolt).
The final version echoes the screenplay in AI; dagli ()(th; a;:.zurri, 387, mo!'e closely: 'Povero
Stnlcci! erepare, non aveva altru modo di ricordarci che anchc lui era vivo' (Poor Stracei!
Dying was all he could do to remind us he was alive as well). Sce Guadagni, IIj94,92-3.
Stracci on his line on the Cross as thc pack of press and personalitics
arrives to witness the scene. His frantic, comic inability to maintain the
separation betwecn the sct, with its shooting nccds, and reality, with its
base needs for food and scx, makes him a partial figurc of both dircctor
and spectator, as they Iwe try to organizc disparatc elcments beforc
them. Another mediating element arc the mctal framcs burdencd with
fruit or costumes, that open and elosc thc film and mark scvcral of thc
moments oftransition betwccn thc various worlds of the film (thc diva
sits before onc, flankcd by two rcsting, angelic, cxtras (Platc 8); Stracci
takcs onc of thc costumes to gct somc extra food; thc actors carry a
frame with the fruit and chccsc to thc cavc to throw at Stracci; thc jour-
nalist pccps through thc costumes). This paraphcrnalia is thc barricr
betwccn thc artificial and thc rcal, and is dcadcning, indccd /:ltal to
Stracci: it is no coincidcncc that thc t()Od and winc in thc opcning and
closing shots arc still-life compositions, 'natura morta' (dead nature) in
Italian, cchoing; thc Manncrist 'tableaux vivants'. Sct on thc stand, and
thus also relatcd to the artifical, is the mcgaphonc, thc vchiele of the
production managcr's out of framc commands. Thc still-life li)Od is
furthcr cchocd in the obscenely luxuriant sprcad on the long tablc
bcncath the three crosscs that awaits the visiting VI Ps and paparazzi: in
both cascs, and unlike Stracci's dcsperately ingcstcd ricotta, thc /i)ot!
has been stripped of all actual, non-symbolic valuc. Mcdiation---
rcprcscntcd by the static or artifical imposition on rcality of fictional,
commcrcial or iconographic norms---is shown as flawcd through thc
positioning of the spcctator in thc intcrsticcs of a loosely articulatcd,
loosely subjective film. Thc film makes it quite impossible li)r us 10
idcntify with Stracci, as it movcs us away ri·om him, and intcrvcncs with
so much othcr mctacinematographic noise, but is also makes it ab-
solutely neccssary ti)r us to identify with him. Stracci's dcath is thc only
unmcdiated act or cvent of thc film.
Anothcr vchiclc of suturc that is Icss immediately hound to mcta-
cincmatographic perccption, and also less bound to authorial figures, is
the poetics ofthc camera's gazc (see Ch. 10). And like the authorial
form, this too works in Pasolini towards irrcsolution and anxicty rathcr
than towards plcasurc. As notcd morc than once bcfore, this is most
apparent in the workings of thc crotic gazc in Pasolini's films, sincc its
typical dynamic for intcrpellating the spectator's dcsire is twofold:
first, thc bodily 'fisicita' of thc object is intcnsely chargcd crotically,
through close-up, excessively static or disturbingly fragmcntcd prcs-
ence. And the eroticism is oftcn homo-crotic, but othcrwisc studiedly
SPECTATORSHIP 259
undifferentiated by gender..Aaattone, Teorema, Iljiore delle 'Mille e una
notte', and Sa/{; mark the key stages in the evolution of this physicality,
and in a more or less politicized or traumatized manner, they all con-
front the (male) spectator with a vision oftheir own suppressed desires.
But wc find in each also a second characteristic stage, the disruption or
indeed interru ption of the spectator's desire. In Aaattone this is
achieved by the startling use of choral music in scenes such as Accat-
tone's grappling, rolling, erotic struggle with his ex-wife's brother, as a
dissonant commentary on the 'sacredness' of the vision. The sudden
surge of music as the two bodies enlace instils a scnse of the sublime in
the viewer which creates a detachment from the simultaneous homo-
erotic surge. The dissonance is so sudden and stark that it verges on the
metacinematographic. In Teorema, it is the architectonic camera work,
the f(lrmal patterning ofthe theorem and the silence of much of the film
that not only d raw our focus to the Guest, to his body and its gender-
blind seductive power, but also metaphorizes the role of sexuallibera-
tion, presenting it as a catalyst filr radical transfimnation of the self.
The erotic gaze is blocked as a vehicle filr pleasure. Of all Pasolini's
films, perhaps only lljiore delle 'Mille e una nolle' could be seen to celeb-
rate and enact erotic pleasure, alon!,\'side narrative pleasure, with har-
monious, homo- and hdero-sexual coupling fi"Cely displayed. As Viano,
199], zS6, nOles, however, the smiles of the desiring characters which
pepper t he him arc also markers of a detached, unnatural look which
suggests that this film is as stylized as any other. Viano goes on to criti-
cize Pasolini's 'male' vision of female desire in the film, shown by his
construction oft-he latter as desire of the penis (Viano, U){)], 290-1),
and this gives a hint, even here, of the anxious, arrested t(lrms of desire
seen in other films. The spectator's pleasure is in some sense blocked
here loo, even if simply because the male gaze constructs desire as
iterative and thus irresolvable: tbe film is an idyll which connotes its
own atemporality. As if to confirm this, the film that ti)llowed II jiore,
Salil, was the most t1ystopic Pasolini ever made, and it provides us with
the most radical and distorted illustration of the impact of the (pseudo-)
erotic gaze on the spectator in his films.
In Salil, Pasolini takes the unusual step of borrowing images from a
series of narrative genres he usually disdained, but he does so to provide
himself with a lexicon of absolute horror. For example, he frames each
of his 'gironi' or Hellish circles with shots of mirror.s, familiar from
'film noir' but also neo-realism as signs of inauthenticity and duplicity.
He shoots in rich colour, and composes quite beautifully symmetrical,
art deco shots to evoke a certain inter-war decadence. 2 The 'diseuses'

are reminiscent of torch-song cabaret artists from Expressionist and
Hollywood films. And he devotes the first twenty minutes of the film,
the 'Antinferno', to an extended and only slightly distorted genre
sequence of a fascist round-up, familiar from any number of war and
Resistance films. Furthermore, as has already been pointed out, the
continuity editing, the precision of the camera-work and lighting and
the narrative control of Sal'; are the most sophisticated Pasolini ever
achieved. For once, then, formally and technically at least, the spectator
is allowed to get his/her bearings by reference to recognizablc generic
horizons of expectation. But, of course, this is only in order to intensify
the trauma of the reality framed by those horizons.
The spectator is also set up as such much more explicitly than in most
of the other films. The selections of the victims occur in line-ups or
auditions, with the dignitaries and the camera cast as the audience; the
stories of the 'discuses' that animate each 'girone' arc set on the 'stage'
of the drawing room, alongside the piano, with the three walls of the
listening audience creating a theatrical peri(lrmanCe space (Plate 7);
even the scenes in the refectory, the ritual marriages (with their
grotesque costumes or nudity) and the altar scene arc constructed with
this same 'proscenium' space. Thcre arc always perf(lrmanCes, and
looking and listening going on, and the t(lUr creators of this other-world
arc always looking and listening t()\· erotic stimulation, as their rule-
book sets out. Indeed, each of the circles shows the four enacting with
their victims acts of perversion analogous to those narrated by the
women. So the spectator has an excess of audiences figmed on lhe
screen onto which to project themselves: the film is in the first instance
about the relationship between periilflnance or narrative, and the body
of the watcher /Iistener. Nevertheless, the spectator does not tilllow the
sequence of the four dignitaries: he/she is not turned on. Despite the
blatant display of sexuality, eroticism is not only interrupted, but pre-
eluded as soon as it is programmatically proffered in the narrative
schema. This is achieved, as it will be in Pctro/io, by the combination of
excess and repetition that Pasolini characterizes as the essence of the
libertine anti-ethic he is portraying: as the 'Monsignore' opines after
the signing of the rule-book, 'tutto cbuono quando ceccessivo' (every-
thing is good when taken to excess). Signora Vaccari, the first of the
2 The walls of the private chambers of the villa arc strewn with abstract art, from the
Futurist works of Severini, to others by Fcininger and Duchamps.
SPECTATORSHIP 26r
narrators to perform, starts off with what she considers an enticing tale,
only to be reminded by the 'Presidente' that what is required is exhaust-
ive, pedantic, even geometric detail on the sexual acts described. And
when the 'Duea' and the 'Eccellenza' discuss the merits of sodomy over
execution, their criteria are autonomy, death and repeatability. Sodomy,
like execution, is 'il gesto [... ] piu assoluto per quanto contiene di fatale
per la specie umana e il piu ambiguo perchc accetta le norme sociali per
infrangerle' (the most absolute gesture in its fatality for the human
species amI the most ambiguous in its acceptance of social norms in
order to break them): and if sodomy has the advantage of being repeat-
able thousands of times, the Eccellenza notes, with an eye to the film as
a whole, 'si PU() trovare anche il modo di reiterare il gesto del earnefiee'
(there is also a way to repeat the gesture of the executioner). This sys-
tem oflibertinage is a radically closed end in itself, it relies on no outside
source, nor outsi<.le assistance, nor outside meaning. There is no outside
in the villa: the only external sequences after the victims' entry are to
show the <.Ieath of the guard and the mai<.l, an<.l then of the pianist, and
then (in an inner courtyard) of the victims' themselves. There is no his-
tory, either, except in the ignored noises of planes overhead, Hitler's
ranting on the radio, and, most quietly bizarre of all, the daylight that
shines throug-h the windows onto most of the dark cabaret perform-
ances of the '<.Iiseuses'. In :-)al//, ultimately, nothing happens.
It is this series of enclosing, excessive, reiterative aspects which cuts
the spectator oil from the events on the screen, and precludes the eroti-
cism of their look. An<.l as a result, it ideologizes that look. For if we are
not implicate<.l on the level of pleasure, wc arc implicated on the level of
knowledge: we recognize the world depicted, just as the victims adapt
rather loo quickly to their roles, all but onc <.IutifulIy playing as dogs,
and several betraying others to curry favour. As has been noted more
than once above, Salt! synthesizes schematic markers ofthe Enlighten-
ment, of fascism and of nco-capitalism, and subsumes them all in the
literal immediacy of the horror wc conti'ol1t, thus reversing the struc-
tures of reality which subsume horror in the normative structures of an
ideological system. Salt/lays bare and pushes fc)rward in the watching
spectator the visceral, bodily pain that aesthetic and social norms mitig-
ate, and indee<.l charge with pleasure. It says nothing about ideology,
since it is neither 'histoire' nor 'discours', but it 'does' ('fare', 'pragma,
'azione') something about ideology to the spectator.
Sa/a develops to an extreme the dynamic ofthe look of the camera in
general as a vessel of the spectator's look which characterizes Pasolini's
films. The look is by various means seductively proffered and then trau-
matically and creatively blocked (Nowell-Smith, 1977), or arrested at
the level of objectification. And as with the casting of the spectator as
author, all the myriad techniques of disruption that characterize
Pasolini's film style reinforce and reiterate the disruption to the spec-
tator's identification of objects of desire. To use a term dear to Pasolini,
it is given the potential to signify something other than itself by being
fetishized (Ranvaud, 1980; Wahl, 1980).
The other that goes beyond the gaze, and beyond the authorial figure
of identification, in the constitution of the spectator as subject is the
essential source of the anxiety that subtends all the work of subjectivity
in Pasolini's cinema. It casts the spectator as a subject in crisis, as a sub-
ject dislocated and in suspension, looking t(lr an anchor in reality or in a
vision of subjective plenitude. Nowell-Smith, 11)80, points up the prob-
lem, describing the recurrent interruption of Pasolini's films with the
image of a smiling' f~lee:
In the smile there is both seduction and threat. But mho is the object of this
seduction? And lI>izy at this precise moment? I ... 1We do not know. Wc under!?;o
the threat, the seduct ion. Our subjectivity is invested in t he look, t he smile that
reaches us across the screen, But there is no narrative poilll-·oC-view on whieh
this investlm:nl can rest. (Translated ri'om Nowell Smith, I ()SO, (4)
The spectator loses his/her bcaring:.., identification with character:.. i:..

blocked by the weakncss of thc diegcsis and the almost complete dis-
carding of psychological realism, and identification with a detached
narrative centre is malic impossible by hoth the unco-ordinated im-
m,"diacyand the dreamlikc unreality of the texture oft he material world
depicted. The impulse to find f()]'ms ofsuhjeclivilY with which to iden-
tify.is dispersed and displaced across all the axes and dimensions and
echoes of the work of suhjecl'ivity, as they proliferate and crowd into an
overdetermined imagc- and sound-track, leaving the spectator un-
fettered, but confused, raw and exposed.' rhe contours of anxiety shape
for the spectator the self-inflicted wounds of martyrdom.
It should he apparent that an outline of the relationship of speetator-
ship to subjectivity i; also a summation of the film work of subjectivity
in general. Both follow a dynamic that leads in an imaginary sequence
from confident authority and presence to immanence and displace-
ment, and finally to crisis and anxiety. Both demonstrate that cinema
never could become either the utopian apotheosis of self-expression or
the cynical means to a tactical end of which Pasolini dreamed ",-hen he
SPECTATORSHIP
boldly changed the course of his intellectual career and chose cinema as
a terminus a quo for aesthetic and subjective renewal. His films and his
semiology arc unsettled and unsettling, and compelling, precisely
because they offer us illusions of the absolute-Cinema, the Real, the
Self-but find no stable bearings in the field oHorees where the traces
ofthose absolutes overlay one another and collide.
PART IV
Unfinished Endings
The essem:e oflifc is the migration of f(lrms

(Bruno Schulz)
15
Petrolio: Selfand Form
In a letter to Livio Garzanti ofJanuary 1967 that is brimming over with

itleas for new projects, Pasolini makes the vaguest of references to a
'return to narrative' (Lellere, ii. 625). Garzanti's reply picks up on the
hint with alacrity-'what excites me most is [ ... ] your long awaited
return to prose' (I,el/ere, ii. (26)-hut it is not until five years later, in
early 1972 that we find him sketching out the plot of a novel inspired by
a single wortl !:danced at in a newspaper, 'petrolio' (oil). Over the follow-
ing three and a half years, hetween filming Il./iore delle 'Mille e una nOlle'
and .""aill, planning other lilms such as Porno-leo-ko!ossa/, reviewing a
mass orhooks fin· ']'empo if/us/ralf), composing· the poems of Nuova, and
writing his crusading polemics in the national press, he began to fill out
that sketch into the burgeoning ti·agment of a 2,000-page novel. Some
progress is made in 1973, as shown in another letter to Garzanti
(I,l'lIl're, ii. 730), and work seems to have accelerated over the course of
U)74 particularly; until, in early 11.)75, he began to make grandiose but
enigmatic noises about the book in interviews:
110 inizialo unlihro chc mi impcgncr,i pcr anni, lim;c pcr il Tcsto dell a mia vita.
Non voglio parlarne ... ; hasli sapere che cuna specie Ji 'summa' di tutte le mie
eSJlerienze, d i lulle le mie mellloric. (S/ampa sera, \0 J an. 1975, quoted in
Pe/mlio,S(,()
(I have heg;ulJ a hook I hat will occupy me {i)1" years, perhaps f()!· the rest of my
life. I don't want 10 talk ahout it ... ; suflice it to say that it is a sort of 'summa'
of all my experiences, all my memories)
l.. ·1 contiellc tutto qllello chc so, sad la mia ultima opcra; mi diverte molto
avere questo segreto. (/'(/ Stampll, 10 Jan. [()75, quotcd in Petro/io, 570)
([ ... 1it conlains ;lhsolulcly everything I know, it will be my final work; I am
greatly enjoying having this secre\.)
At the time of his death in November 1975, he had completed approxim-
ately 520 pages of hand- and type-written notes, as first described by
Siciliano, 1981a, 431-5, and these 'long awaited' notes were published
268 UNFINISHED ENDINGS
by Einaudi more or less as they stood, under the title Petrolio, in 1992.1
The published work contains an extraordinarily magmatic and dis-
parate spectrum of extracts, at sharply differing stages of composition,
ordered by Pasolini into approximately 200 erratically numbered, titled
'Appunti' (Notes) and other jottings. The two longest Appunti run for
almost thirty pages ('11 pratone dclla Casilina', 201 -29; 'Carmelo: la sua
disponibilita e la sua dissoluzione', 275-30)), whereas the shortest con-
sist of blank pages, with only numbers or titles (172, 1<)6-R, 399, 421,
473-4). There are numerous outright contradictions, and many evid-
ently fundamental aspects yet to be decided. Names change, places
change, times change, characters appear and disappear, the formal
structures of the entire work are constantly being reshaped. And of
course, large swathes of material are simply not there, either set up but
unwritten (e.g. the sections whose full texts were to' have ti)Uowed in
Greek and in Japanese, lJ9-54, 536), merely hinted at (a brief note
promises a full history of the H)6R movements, J R3), or all but unfath-
omable. It is clear, then, that no coherent, unitary text exists, and any
analysis can only be provisional with respect to whatever Pc/mlio might
have become. And yet, a duly cautious reading of Petmlio as we have it,
from the particular perspective oran enquiry into subjectivity, provides
a vertiginous array oftextual and discursive fcat urcs to confirm, qualify
and rC-;lrticulatc what has alrcady been discerned in his journalism, po-
etry and cinema. Indeed, it is an especially rich documcnt in this re-
spcct, to a significant dcgree hculUse of its unfinished state, so that ifthc
shecr weight of unwritten material means that Petrofio cannot be the
'summa' Pasolini's dreamed of; it can be read as notes rowards a synthe-
sis and summary of the work of subjectivity in his !CLIVI'£'.
In so far as a main plot-line emerges with any clarity ti'om this un-
wieldy work, it could be summarized as fi,lIows: towards the cnd of the
H)50S, the time ofItaly's post-war 'economic miracle', the protagonist
Carlo Valletti, a young Turinese bourgeois ti'om a liberal family now liv-
ing in Rome, undergoes a sudden crisis and is split into two identical
fig'ures by two angel-devil figures Polis and Tetis. The first-Carlo I or
Carlo di Polis-dedicates hims~lf to the pursuit of power through his
I It is unclear whether Pasolini had finally settled on '!'etrolio' a, the definitive title; hoth
Siciliano and Naldini refer to it more often under its other workin~ title, I'as (Vase, Vessel, or
Crucible), a hiblical (Act, Q: 15), Dantesque (/njcYllo, ii. 28-30), and, accordinr; to Zigaina,
1993,300-2, Jungian calque. Unles> otherwise indicated all further pa~e references in thi,
chapter arc to Pe/mlio. Serious critical work on Pelro/io is only just beginning: sce Bencdetti
and Grignani, 1995; Fortini, 1l)9J, 2J8-48; Ward, 1995,88--114; Zigaina, 1993,299-336.
PETROL/a: SELF AND FORM 269
work for the petrochemical giant ENI and its shadowy connections
with Christian Democrat and neo-fascist politics. The second CarlO--
Carlo 11, Carlo di Tetis or Karl--dedicates himself entirely to the pur-
suit of sexual pleasure. Carlo 11 travels to Sicily in search of an
unidentified female writer, who refuses to hear out his secret, and then
to Turin, where he indulges in myriad sexual acts and fantasies with
himselt: his mother, his grandmother, his sisters and dozens of young
girls around the city. Meanwhile Carlo I frequents the Roman intel-
lectual salon ofa Signora E where he enters the world of EN I and is sent
to the Middle East in search of oil, in a journey based on Jason and the
Argonauts' search for the Golden Fleecc. Both are followed in their
journeys hy mysterious agents of power. We jump to the end of the
J <)60s: Carlo I, ever morc powerful, makes a second trip to the East.
Carlo II in Rome undergoes an epiphany on seeing young communists
parading near Termini Station. He turns into a woman and performs
fellatio and intercourse with twenty subproletarian boys in a 'borgata'
field. (There is some suggestion that the boys would then have been
killed one by one.) Carlo I returns to notice a prof(>und chang·e in his
surroundings, contirmed by the apparent disappearance of Carlo 11. We
arc now in the years J()72--74. Alter a drunken dinner with Christian
I kmocrat and neo-htscist potentates, (:arlo I searches out Carlo 11, but
to no avail, returning home to experience a vision of various divine
heings, culminating in 'Salvatore ])ulcimascolo', a divine image of the
ideal subproletarian. On awakening Carlo I too has hecome a woman.
lie has a heady sexual encounter with a cloakroom attendant, Carmelo,
an emhodiment of Salvatore, who then disappears (or is killed). We
return to Carlo 11 and the crisis that led to his disappearance: perceiving
a radical change in the world around him, he loses all sense of being,
turns hack into a man, but resolves to have himself castrated. Carlo I
(prohahly) experiences a lengthy vision of the degTadation of popular
society in the neo-capitalist, consumerist '970s. I _ater he attends a
reception at the President's Palace, the Quirinale, and the final scenes
have him returning to Turin, first in another Vision sequence in which
the city has been destroyed and returned to a state of primitive nature
through which Carlo wanders before coming upon the new, soulless
reality. He is then witness to a (rcal) nco-fascist demonstration and at-
tends an anti-fascist reception with Turin's great and good, where the
writer F. reads out his critique of consumerism, 'l\IIerci'. But the re-
sponse of fascists and anti-fascists in the audience is indistinguishable,
and the 'festa' eventually ends in chaos. Carlo I has turned back into a
UNFINISHED ENDINGS
man, and has another moment of epiphany, during which a voice within
him blurts out a devastating, aphoristic tirade against the bourgeois
world around him. He will now make a third journey eastwards, to Edo
in Japan, and become an ascetic 'saint' of the powerful. All the latter
part of the novel is set against the background ofthe events of I96H and
the terrorist campaigns of the following years, and Carlo was clearly to
have been involved in bombings in Turin in some way. The unwritten
ending of the novel was to have been an ill-defined but apocalyptic
'cosmic crisis', connected to the oil industry am] to terrorism.
The main narrative is supplemcnted by secondary sequences of
stories, told by various figures at the receptions Carlo attends (see
especially I2H-:n, I 5H-7H, 3HH, 40H-51), and hy the Visions he experi-
ences (7H-H2, 250-7, 322-H7, 39H, 476-(1), which, as 'Appunto 103a'
(452) explains, all intersect in oblique and symbolic ways with the fi))'ms
and meaning's of Carlo's story and its historical context. And inter-
woven with all these narrative voices and reg'isters, a highly significant
portion of the book reflects, in Pasolini's own voice, IIpon the j(lrm of
the text as it evolves.
As an initial approach to Pe/m/io, instructive comparisoll Illay be
made with aspects of Pasolini's earlier narrat ive work. What is st rik-
ingly familiar from both his Friulan and Roman narrative is the vital,
lyrical evocation oflandscape, whet her rural and primit ive or urhan ami
desolate (e.g,'. 20--7,476--9(1). When Pasolini laments that he feels vis-
cerally unable to depict Parioli, an haut··hour{!,'eois area or Rome, hc
turns in rcliefto nature: 'I kll'erbe e delle piante si che amo parlarl" (Or
herbs and plants I do love to speak, 247). As in the earlier works, de-
scriptive evocations, loaded wit h intense, onen sexual sensuousness
and value, mark the most traditionally literary parts of Pclro!io. But,
whereas in the Roman novels of the 1950S, description of this kind was
set in direct, contaminating apposition 10 the phalie, repetitive dialect
speech of the 'ragazzi', creating an experimental and ideologically
charged 'plurilinguismo', here both dialect and direct speech arc all but:
absent, and stylistic variation muted. When Carlo 1 exchanges some
spoken remarks with his old Turinese friends the author comments:
Queste battute-Ie uniche di qllesto romanzo, se Ilon erro (eecetlllati i raceonti
incorporati in csso) I· .. j (4<)<))
(These spoken remarks-the only ones in this novel, if! am not mistaken (apart
from the stories contained within ill I... j)
And on describing the large head of'lI Merda', he notes:
PETROLIO: SELF AND FORM
(una volta i suoi amici gli avrebbero detto: 'Pe' [acce un giro attorno, un pidoc-
chia ce metterebbe n'anno': ma ora non si usano piu espressioni simili) (324-5)
«once his friends would have told him; 'a louse would take a year to get round
it' [in dialect]: but no one uses such expressions anymore»
The exelusion of direct speech enhances the impact ofthe narrator-
ial voices, and in particular the intrusive voice of the 'omniscient and
even a little pedantic' (534) author-narrator. It also produces a certain
greyness of style (Fortini, 1993,244) which, as is clear from its opening
statement of intent (3-4), was a deliberate and integral effect. The
whole work was to be framed as a critical edition of an unpublished text:
'I'autore dell'edizione critica "riassumera" quindi, sulla base di tali
documenti-in uno slile piano, of!,f!,etlivo, KriKio, ue.-Iunghi brani di
storia genera le' (the author of the critical edition will therefore 'sum-
marize', on the basis of such documents-in a/fat, objeaive, grey (ete.)
style-large tracts of general history, 3, emphases added). The critical
edition would be a compilation from four or five variant extant manu-
scripts, of which two would be apocryphal and eccentric; it would in-
elude letters by the author and friends, reported testimonies, songs,
illustrations and other miscellany, supplemented by historical docu-
ments, interviews, and films. Even ifit had been finished, then, Petrofio
was to have had 'vast lacunae' (3) in its diegesis and its t()rm.
If filr sociological and personal reasons, style has lost its vitality, other
paths to meaning and self-expression arc available, beginning with
direl:t apostrophe of the reader that bypasses language, as he writes to
Moravia:
in lJlIesle pagine io mi sono rivolw allettore diretlamente e non convenzional-
menle I .. ·1 in camc e ossa I... J. 110 reso il romanzo oggelto non solo per illet-
lore mol anche per me: ho messo laic oggetto tra illettore e mc, e ne ho discusso
insieme (544)
(in these pages I have aJJresseJ the reader directly and not though conventions
I· .. J in Ilesh anu blood I... 1. I have turned the novel into an object, not only for
Ihe reader but also for me: I have placeu that object between thc reader and me,
and discussed it with him/her)
The relationship between that object amI the flesh and blood of the au-
thor is founded in the text's radically fragmentary form throughout.
Indeed, it constantly, neurotically casts itself as an immense experiment
in self-conscious narrative and linguistic form:
queste pagine stampatc ma illeggibili vogliono proclamare in modo estremo--
ma che si pone come simbolico anehc per tutto il resto del Iibro-Ia mia
UNFINISHED ENDINGS
decisione: che equella di non scrivere una storia ma di costruire una forma [ ... J
(155; and see also 19,413-30,452)
(these printed but illegible pages wish to proclaim to the extreme-but also
symbolically for the entire book-my decision: which is not to write a
story/history but to construct a form [... D
parlo della mia ambizione a costruire una forma con Ic sue leggi autopro-
muoventisi eautosufficienti, piuttosto che a scriverc una storia chc si spieghi at-
traverso concordanze piu 0 menu "a chiave" con la pericolosissima reald. t· .. 1
Cia che io desideravo fare si attua proprio in questo farsi e spiegarsi deIl'opera
con se stessa, anche letteralmente. (534)
(I'm talking about my ..mbition to construct a form with its own self-promot-
ing amI self-sufficient laws, rather than writing a story that is explained by way
of more or lcss hidden concordances with a highly dangerous realilY· I . . . 1
What I wanted to do is realized precisely in this creation amI explanation of the
work with and through itself, even in a literal sense.)
A fluid and active notion of form, understood in its broadest sense,
runs throughout Pasolini's work. From the interplay between dialect
and 'lingua' of his early poetry and essays; to his uses of popular song,
dialect t(lrmS and 'high' literary forms in the 19Sos; to the 'moto di
forme' of his poetry as a whole; to the 'experimentalism' in Oflil"illll; to
the move into cinema seen as a change of language or filrm of expres-
sion; all these, and many other instances already discussed in Parts
I-Ill, arc interrogations of the nature of fi)fln, as persistently dct"er-
mined by its capacity to connote something essential ahout sellhood
and reality. But the problematic of t(H·m explodes most vitally in the
final, intensely creative period of his life, lasting from around J(lI7-H
until his death. Work of this period is characterized hy an impulse to
destahilize and disperse filrm across an ever more elusive and provi-
sional canvas, to create a strident, agonisticalIy rhetorical irony, and
thus become 'unrecognizable', as he himself described the poetry of
Trasumanar (,Pasolini recensisce Pasolini', JI porliw ddla morle, zHS; cf
Gordon H)9Sh). Petmlio's fascination with tilrm represents the final
manifestation of that impulse, but the pivotal text in the move towards
this conception of form, and in many ways the key prose precursor to
Petro/i.o, is La divina mimesis, hegun in 1963, reformulated in 19661]
and 1975, and published shortly after his death.
La divina mimesis is a barely begun rewriting of Dante's Divina ("om-
media, whose core material consists of versions, or notes towards ver-
sions of Inferno 1-4, and 7 (La divina mimesis, 4-55, 63-S). Several
aspects link it to Petro/io. Of particular significance is a Dantesque con-
ception of narrative form as a schematic, oneiric and obliquely mimetic
allegory used to fashion an ideological critique of modernity: all the
dreams and Visions and many of the secondary narratives in Petmlio
share this conception. 2 Specific features of La divina mimesis also re-
appear, such as the Garden of poets (La divina mimesis, 43-8; cf. the
Medieval Garden of Carlo's Vision, Petro/io, 250-7), and the zones
of Conformism, Vulgarity, Reductivism and Continence (La divina
mimesis, 49-55), which in Petrolio become fully fledged 'gironi' and
'bolge' in Carlo's vision of'lI Merda' (322-88). Furthermore, the ideo-
logical critique in '11 Merda' centres on a sort of corrupted 'divine
mimesis', as the inhabitants of each circle define themselves through a
cultish 'imitation' of a horrific icon or 'Modello' that governs the cirele
and embodies its essence CB2-3). Perhaps most importantly of all,
however, I,a divina mimesis offers the most stark and naive early ex-
ample of what was called in Chapter 9 the Pasolinian pseudo-couple.
The Commedia's Dante and Virgil arc here played by two versions of
Pasolini himself: 'un piccolo poeta civile degli Anni Cinquanta, come
egli diceva: incapace di aiutare se stesso, figurarsi un altro' (a minor civic
poet of the Fifties, as he himself put it: incapable of helping himself, let
alone someone else, I,a divilla mimesis, 16). In Pe/mlio, the splitting of
(:arlo is the f(mnding structural and narrative device-it is the poem of
the pseudo-couple-and as in {,a di'vina mimesis, the split also facilitates
a certain bitter humour in the text, that recalls the rhetorical irony of
Trasumallar noted above, and that is fundamental to Petmlio's form.3
The filrmal innovations in La divina mimesis arc furthered in two
notes /i'om H)64 and 196617 respectively (La divina mimesis, 59, 61-2).
The first proposes to present the text in incomplete form-'un misto di
co se fatte e cose da tarsi' (a mixture of things done and things still to be
done)-including all drafts of each section, dated to resemble a diary. In
this way the /i)nn will contain its own genesis across time, and thus its
own history: it will be 'una stratifieazione cronologica, un processo for-
male vivente' (a chronological stratification, a living formal process, La
divina mimesis, 57). The second develops the idea of a living form with
2 At morc than onc point, the Dream is su~gested as a potentially governing structure of
the texl: e.g. 'll viaggio c tutto inventato cillc sognato' (the journey is cntirely made up, that is
dreamed, J7); 'Carlo sogna I . . . 1 per cui tutto il resto dcll. II parte non cchc un "flashback" ,
(Clr\O is dreaming I ... 1so all the rest of part II is merely a 'flashback', dlo). Cr. Chs. [0 and
13 on the oneiric.
J Scverals works contemporary to La divina mimesis, such as La riwilll and Rosa, also show
thc first substantive use of irony in Pasolini's work. The link bctween humour and the pseudo-
couple is amply demonstrated by the work with Toto and Ninctto.
the conceit that the manuscript be found after the murder of its author
in 1963 in Palermo, the date and place of the founding conference of the
Gruppo '63. 4 The living·, hut fading ('ingiallito/endo' is a recurrent
epithet; La divina mimesis, 14, 62, 67) form of the text is bound up with
the death of the author, in a manner that recalls Pasolini's views on edit-
ing and death. And as his presentation of Pelrolio to Moravia shows, the
notion of the posthumous text is inherent here too:
Questo romanzo non serve piu molto alia mia vita I... 1, non cun proclama, chi,
uomini!, io esisto, ma il preamholo di un testamento (545)
(This novel is no longer of much usc to my Iifc [... 1, it is not a proclamation,
hcy, pcoplC!, I exist, bur rather the preface to a testament)
And in terms ofliterary form, too, Pelrolio is somehow located beyond,

'in quanto rievocazione del romanzo' (as a rc-evocation of the novel,
545)·
Pe/rolio, then, plunders I,a divina mimesis for aspects of its material
and in particular as a means to its complex interrogation of the nature of
form and its movement. 5 When Pasolini writes, as quoted above, of his
wish not to write a novel, but to constTllcl a 'self-promoting and self
sufficient' (534) form with Pt:lrolio, he is taking to an extreme the tend
ency of all narrative to delineate and populate a living dimension other
than that of reality. Constructing a t(lrm entails constructing a system in
which' "qualcosa di scritto" ormai non rimanda ad ahro che a "qual--
cosa di scritto" precedentemente' ('something written' now rclers to
nothing other than 'something written' previously, 4(1I). To achieve
such autonomy the text must disrupt and subvert conventional narrat-
ive links to the space-time parameters of realil y, and Pe/mlio does so in
a variety of ways.
Certain characteristic features of 'classical' or realist nineteenth-
century narrative are programmatically precluded or reconligured,
such as psycholog·y, heroism, and pathos or character:
4 This 'Nota dcll'Editorc' is sufficiently plausihle and uncannily prescient 10 havc scrvcu
as a guide to the eventual editor OfP"I,.o/io, Aurclio Roncaglia (sec his 'Nota filologica', 567.-/\ I
157 8-9J)
5 In HJ75, Pasolini, added to ra divilla mimcsis a 'pholographic pocm', (07-X()), which sug-
gests how hc might havc incorporated historical imagcs, with thcir own chronology, into
Pelrolio; and as a 'Couicil' (91-2), an cxtract from •• book rcview (Descrizilllli di d(strizilllli,
442-5) that notcs thc 'scandal' of Contini's 'tcnder lovc' towards Gramsci, suggesting the
deep, suhjective affinitics betwecn diffcrcnt hcrmcneutic forms: again echocs of Pclrolio arc
clear.
PETROLlO: SELF AND FORM 275
In questo mio racconto [ ... j la psicologia c sostituita di peso dall'ideologia. Il
leaore dunque non si illuda: egli non si imbattera mai in quei personaggi che
misteriosamente si svolgono e si evolvono, rivelandosi agli altri protagonisti, e
allettore l· . ·1 (119)
(In rhis story of mine I ... 1 psychology has been replaced ell bloc by ideology. So
the reader should not be under any illusion: he will never come across those
characters who mysteriously uni(lld and evolve, revealing themselves to the
other protagonists and to the reader I· .. .1)
se Carlo pril110 fosse vissuto un seeolo b, 0 fOl'se anche einquant'anni fa,

sarebbe stato un eroe I ... 1. r,a stessa eosa potrei ripetere per Carlo secondo.
I... Mal egli non eonoseeva gli ahissi dell'inlilmia e della perversione, esatta-
mente come Carlo primo non conoseeva le tentazioni presidenziali 0 dittatori-
ali. (11\4-5)
(if Carlo I had lived a century ago, or maybe even fifry years ago, he would have
heen a hero I .. ·1· I could say .. he same thing lilr Clrlo H. [... Butl he did not
know the depths of inElIllY and perversion, just as Carlo I knew nothing of
presidential or dictatorial temptations.)
11 sistema st ilisrico di questo mio lihro mi impedisce < ... > di inventare un per-
sonagg'io la cui ddinitva partenza 0 la cui morte, possa Elr commuovere [... ]
(457; on the usc of < ... > and ot her editorial marks, sce PcLrolio pp. v-vi)
(The stylistic systelll of t his hook of mine prevents me < ... > from creating a
character whose definirive leaving or whose deat h might· he moving [ ... J)
In I'he lisl ofPasolini's literary and philosophical sources reproduced in

facsimile on p. ii, the only nineteenth-century novelists present are
I )ostoyevsky (particularly The Demons) and Gogol, both of whom are
important models, but deviant fi"om the realist norm in significant ways.
The rest of the lisl ranges fi"om classical (Plato, Aristotle, Apollonius
Rodius) to eighteenth-century (Dc Sade, Steroe, Swift) to modernist
and fi)rmalist (SITindberg, Joyce, Pound; Propp, Shklovsky) texts. In
the body orlhc work, Balzac is reg'ularly adduced as a model of what the
text cannot be (e.g. Iq, I H6). As in his cinema, Pasolini is attempting to
undo the naturalist illusion, and to {()und an essential, 'sacred' form of
representing reality. Eschewing the dominant narrative f()rm, we note
instead a concerted efti)rt to find other forms and genres-the 'non-
literary' lang'uages of essays, journalism, or screenplays (544); the lyric,
in the book's heady exploration of sclthood and sensuality; or the epic
'poema' (HR, I HI, 247), evident in the USe of the Ar/{onautica as the
model f()r Carlo I's journeys and in the 'moderna epicita' (105) of the
Troya ENI empire.
UNFINISHED ENDINGS
The epic quality of Petrolio is also more generally apparent in vital as-
pects of its narrative technique. De Angelis, 1993, sees its prime mani-
festation in the uses of repetition, 'a stylistic device much loved by the
epic', and also a key device for the recasting of the parameters of space
and time in the text. Endless, driven repetition of sexual acts is the
pleasure and neurosis of Carlo 11, and when he disappears, the imposs-
ible mirage of Carlo I's searching. The first epic set-piece of the text is
the 'poema del ritorno' of Carlo 11 (40-84) to Turin (echoed later by
Carlo I's return in the last part of the book, 476-533), during which he
restlessly and indifferently seduces or exposes himselfto his family and
dozens of others in the city. At several points, however, it is hinted that
repetition expresses in essence a desire for a single, solitary, totalizing
act, for a 'sentimento di totalitii' (a tceling of totality, 42) that renders
the pleasures of so many sex acts 'ogni volta unici, sublimi e inesprimi-
bili' (each time unique, sublime and inexpressihle, 55). The shadow ofa
singularity behind all the repetition is also suggested by the analogies
between the two other 'epic scenes' of intercourse in the book: Carlo I1's
pleasuring of twenty boys in '11 pratone della Casilina' (201-2(» and
Carlo I's later vertiginous encounter with onc man, Carmclo, the in-
carnation of Salvato['e Dulcimasc% (26(). Both episodes arc expres-
sions of an epiphany for their protagonists, of'il miracolo' (the miracle,
208, 288), revealing through their degradation, whether with onc or
with many, a cosmic dimension: 'tllltO il cosmo era 11, in qllel pratone'
(the whole cosmos was there, in that field, 202). The miracle at times
seems embodied in the phallus: 'era sotto f()rma di miracolo che si pre-
sentava il cazzo' (it was in the form of a miracle that his prick was
offered, 208). Rut the nature of this cosmic revelation, a prefigurement
of the cosmic crisis that was to have ended the novel, only begins with
the phallus. It is elsewhere related to both dcath and creativity of fl)rm
through the figure of the mother. As Carlo II moves to rape his mother,
the narrative notes 'cominciava la manovra, I'attesa manovra, in cui era
in gioco il cosmo' (this was the start of the move, the long-awaited move,
in which the cosmos was at stake, 55). To return to the mother is to
return to wholeness and also to death, as the narrator of'Storia di mille
e un personaggio' intuits: 'morire, come in effetti si muore, eiaculando
nel ventre materno' (to die, as indeed onc does die, ejaculating into the
maternal womb, 419). To repeat the act of conception or birth and the
act of death, at one and the same time, is to fracture any cohesion of time
and to dissolve any discrete completeness of being, and this profound
unreality can only be dreamed outside of reality, in an autonomous
PETROLlO: SELF AND FORM
created form. 'Storia di mille e un personaggio', the richest and most

elosely self-referential of all the secondary stories, makes this comment
in the context of the projection of the self into otherness in narrative:
Nello stesso tempo in eui progettavo e serivevo il mio romanzo I...1proprio
ncll'atto ereativo ehe tutto ljucsto implicava, io dcsidcravo anche di Iibcrarmi di
me stcsso, eioe di morirc. Morire nclla mia crcazione: morire come in effetti si
mllore, di parto (419)
(At the same time as I was planning and writing my novel I... J precisely in the
creat ive act that all this implied, I was also desiring to free myself from myself,
that is to die. To die in my own creation: to die, as indeed onc does die, in giving
birth)
The real, cosmic miraele-'la vera ripetizione' (true repetition, 188),

not 'mera iterazione' (mere iteration, 50(J)·-is in this originary and
bodily death and birth, that the simple iteration of actions at different
hisforical moments or creation of forms can only ape miserahly.
Another story 'Storia di due padri e di due figli' (42{)-35), addresses
precisely the grotesque inadequacy of male creativity in these terms,
telling of the hirth 10 two men of living excrement (the source of 'Jl
Menla' perhaps). And finally, another Appunto, entitled '11 fascino del
fascismo' (2(J2-4), gives a historical-ideological gloss on the impossihil-
ity oftrlle hodily repetition, in the body and the absolute necessity of
simlllacra for our sense of scltll0od:
Ci(') ehe c stalo visslIto dal eorpo dei padri, non PlHl essere visslIto dal nostro.
Noi eerehiamo di rieostruirio, di immaginarlo e di interpretarlo: eioc ne serivi-
amo la sIOI·ia. Ma la sroria ei appassiona tanto I... 1perchi: ci() ehe c'l'; di piu im-
portanle in essa ei stugge irreparabilmel1te. I ... 1 Se noi non ei illudessimo di
TiClre le stesse csperienze esistenziali dei padri, saremmo presi da un'angoscia
intollerabile, perderelllmo il senso di noi, ride;! di noi; e il Jisorientamento
sarebbe assolul.o. (262--3)
(That which has been lived by the hody of our tathers ca1lnot be lived by OUT
own. We atrempt to reconstruct it, to imagine it and to interpret it: that is we
write its history. But history is so compelling to us I ... 1 becallse what is most
important in it eludes us irreparably. [... J If we did not delude ourselves that
we were repeating the same existential experiences as our fathers, wc would be
overcome with intolerable anxiety, we would lose our sense of self, our idea of
ourselves; and the disorientation would be absolute.)
The rape of the mother was, of course, precisely a doomed attempt to

repeat and create the aet of the father. Another figure for this flawed
repetition of the past in the present is 'Anachronism' (250), recalling
UNFINISHED ENDINGS
Pasolini's own presentation of himself, in La divina mimesis and else-

where (e.g. BI, 655, 752) as a man whose time has passed, as post-
humous.
Repetition of sexual acts is only onc of myriad displays of repeated,
listed, reflected, or schematically patterned actions, events, narratives
or places that run throughout the novel, all interwoven as the autonomy
of the form demands. Two broad and apparently opposing trends
characterize this range of repetitive katures, and their synthesis indic-
ates another fundamental ambition of the project of Pe/rolio. The first
trend is repetition as accumulation or excess-'il Pllro e sempliee
accumularsi della materia' (pure and simple accumulation of material,
39)-and much ofthe sexual repetition f;ll1s into this category, as is self-
evident in 'I1 pratone della Casilina'. But it is also to be found in I"he pro-
likration of redundant Jetails in the history of ENl, in the eclectic list
of books from the intellectual's library (Xli; er p. ii), amI in the prolifer-
ation of secondary stories and Jigressions lhat erupt 'alia Sterile' (I 17)
into the main narrative. AnJ repetition as excess, as with death anJ the
mother above, is linked to sexual and narralive creativity in their tOl"al-
izing aspirations:
I.. ·1 ilpiacere di raecolltarc, che, come si sa, pecca sempre per eceesso (chi
tlecide di raeconlare lIualeosa ha suhito la !lossihilit;\ di raccontare I'intero uni-
vcrso). (1('0)
(J .. ·llhe pleasure of narralive, thaI, as is well known, always cOlllmits the sin
ofcxeess (whoever decides 10 narrate sOlllelhinf!," immediately has Ih(; possibil-
ily ofnarral.inf!," the enlire universe).)
'11 scme deve esse re seminalo con sprcco: csso se non l: troppo nonc ahhasl.anza'
(533)
('The seeu must he sown with ahandon: jf it is nol loo much il is not ellouf!,"h ')
Excess anJ accumulation breed ranJomness, disorder and dispersal,

and can thus be e10sely related to the t(lrmal, fragmentary disorder of
the text. The planned use of Greek anJ Japanese text is excessive, as
'Appunto 13 I' (534) admits; the aping of The Demon.! and the Argo-
nautica and any number of other intertextual echoes are Jeliberately
laboured and hyperdetermined; the prolikration of many stories,
where the text itself acknowledges that onc would d<r--'in tutte queste
storie, esplieita 0 mascherata, si ripete sempre la stessa storia' (in all
these stories, whether open or masked, the same story is being repeated,
444)-is excessive.
Three strains of imagery epitomize the disordered motion of this
unfocused dispersal: imagery of the swarm ('brulichio'), the vortex,
and the plunge from zenith to nadir:
Il mio non c un romanzo 'a sehidionata', ma 'a bruliehio' (97; and again 117,
418)
(The form of my novel is not 'like meat on a spit', hut rather 'like a swarm of
bees')
till bruliehio, 0 vortiec, I ... 1 C l;I Ii~ura struuurale c.Ic1 mio raeeonlarc; e il
let\.ore lleve prenderlo come un c.Iivertimento. (\)S)
(the swarming, or vortex I . . . 1 is the structural figure of my storytelling; and the
reader musl lake it as an amusement.)
Il'openl eoglie le eose I nelloro molo, nella loro evoluzione, nell .. lom storia
I.. ·11 ra vertiei e baratri (I SJ)
(1lhe work captures thingsl in their movement, in their evolution, in their
evolution, in Iheir historv I ... 1 between summits and abysses)
The swarm and the vortex evoke an inner violence and vitality that from
the outside seems continuous and steady, but is in reality without begin-
ning or end, only ever in movement. There is a dear temporal analogue
to this aspect in the uisruption oflinear time effected by the structure of
the text, making time, and as wc shall sec below, history into inner (unc-
tions of the text. Even more than with the archaeological stratification
of I,ll divinll mimesis, here the content of the (lrm has its own temporal
history. The very first Appunto, f(lr example, consists of only lines of
suspension marks, with an unobtrusive ()()tnote that reads 'Questo
romanzo non comincia' (This novel has no beginning, I)). And when the
lext slips into the imperfect to describe the habitual life of the two
Carlos over the course of a decade (I H7-H), the author regrets it,
because, he says, the norms set by the work uemand a permanent pres-
ent or past definite tense to unhinge events and characters from contin-
gent reality, from '10 spessore della storia' (the dense texture of history).
The 'bruliehio' sets in restless Brownian motion the spatial and
temporal parameters of the t(Jrms of the text, whilst maintaining a sort
of suspended unreality in the sense of a whole, single form, were it ever
actually realized. It powerfully promotes the 'illegibility' and autonomy
of the text. The second and equally prevalent aspect of repetition, how-
ever, seems to work for the opposite; for order, clarity and system. The
heart of this aspect is found in the patterns of allegorical symmetry in
the range of dreams, Visions, symbolic journeys and stories already
mentioned above in relation to La divina mimesis. Most prominent

among them is, of course, the main narrative conceit of the splitting of
Carlo into two equal and opposite figures, and the distribution of the
four so-caIIed 'momenti basilari del poem a' (founding moments of the
poem, 194,265, 394, 504-5), when the two Carlos change sex. But the
text is full of other local symmetries: between nco-fascist and anti-
fascist politics (179,452), ENI and Montedison, industry and power
(94-1 IS); between two identical briefcases (46-S); and between the
v,lriow; stories built on numerical patterns, such as 'Storia di mille e un
personaggio' (413-20), 'Storia di un padre e delle due sue liglie' (422-8)
and 'Storia di due padri e due figli' (42<)-35). These represent the
medieval aspect of the work: 'tutto in esso Iquesto scriuo le infatti greve
alIegoria, quasi l11edioevale (appunto illeggihile)' (everything in Ithis
piece of writing·1 is indeed weighty alleg'Ory, almost medieval (precisely
illegible), 4S); 'J.a cuitura di ogni grande scril!ore cmedievale' (the cul-
ture of every great writer is medieval, 87). The medieval structure is
elsewhere envisaged as a series of 'symmetrical architectonic bodies',
like great: cathedrals (535), and t he vast range of echoes and sYlllmctries
that the text offers could indeed be envisaged as part of an intended
architectonic whole, which organizes the chaos and disorder of reality
through harmony and counterpoint into a system of both beauty and
meaning. Ami as was noted above also, this would re/lect t he common
I )antesque foot of I.a divina mimesis and Petratio, since I )ante's h~/i:rt/ll
(and indeed the entire C'ofl//11cdia) ligures in its allegory the order of
Divine.lustice and Purpose that lies behind the human chaos of reality.
But the allegorical side of Pc/mlio is always incomplete in its symmetry,
always oblique ,lOll arch in its meanin]!:s, always in some sense itself ex-
cessive. It is always already in crisis, because its signifying- mode relies
on a bond with reality that the text is in the process of eschewing. Order
and form spill over into disproportion, legibility into ilIegihililY-
'medioevale (appunto illcggibile),-alHl not only hecause the text is
unfinished: 'I ),altronde, Catledrali e Allq("orie, si /())1dano sulla simme-
tria, anche quando poi siano magmatiche, sproporzionate e abnormi'
(Besides, Cathedrals and Allegories arc founded on symmetry, even
when they are also magmatic, disproportionate and deviant, 535). The
order of Allegory must be iIIeg-ible, since it relics on an ineffable
'Mistero' (Mystery, r82), a code of analogy between reality and form.
The Vision of '11 MerJa' (323-89 [3261) illustrates this Mystery in the
relationship between the allegorical 'Scena delia Visione' (Scene of the
Vision) and the 'Scena Reale' (Real Scene): the former reproduces and
PETROLlO: SELF AND FORM 281
thus covers up the latter, but since they are always out of phase-in time
and space, and as the Vision wilI make clear, in ideology-the Real
always 'filters through' ('traspare'), in some unfocused, residual,
immanent form. Thus the Allegory allows for only a confused, provi-
sional reference to reality, despite its orderliness. Fortini's own archi-
tectural analogy compares Petrolio to another unfinished folie de
grandeur, Antonio Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona (Fortini,
J()93, 246), since both arc grand medieval, alIegorizing projects which
declare their own excess and anachronistic unrealizability.
The two types of repetition arc, then, not as starkly distinguishable as
had been apparent. The drive t(lI' order and the drive for disorder in the
content of the form of the text arc bound in a permanent oscillation.
And the rhythm of that oscillation implicates the que~.tion with which
the discussion of the 'construction of a f()rm' began, that is, the
relationship of /()rm to reality and to the self. As an early Appunto, 'La
valip;ia col verbale' (46-8), explains, the text and its representation of
events mllst always be open to the illegihle, since their development is a
physical token of an irreducible presence of the self: 'io vivo la genesi del
mio libro' (I am living Ihe genesis of my book, 48).
The key Appunlo in this respect is 'Preeisazione' (181), which sets
0111 the I wo poles of the text as dissoeation or the splitting of iden-
lily, which is conventional and ordered, and the splintering of identity,
which is disordered ami illegible:
< ... > Qucsto pocma non c un poema sulla dissociazionc, contrariamcnte al-
I'apparellza. I.a dissociazionc altro nOI1 Cchc un motivo convcnzionale.l ... ] AI
cOlllrario, lIucslo poenu c iI poema dcll'osscssionc dell'iucntiti, e insieme,
della sua fralllUl11azionc.
I.a uissociazionc cordinc. I :osscssione uell'idcntit,\ c la sua frantumazione c
disonlinc. IImolivo della dissociazionc altro dunllUC non cehe la rcgola narra-
liva che assicura limitalczza c Iq~gihilit;\ a qucsto pocma; il quale, a causa dcl-
I'altro mOlivo, pill vero, dell'osscssionc dcll'iucntita e del!;1 sua frantumazione,
sarchbc pCI' sua lIal ura illimitato e illeggibilc.
« ... > This poem is not a poem of dissociation, contrary to appearances.
])issociation is simply a conventional motif. I . . . 1 On the contrary, this poem is
a pocm of obsession with identity, and at the samc time, of its shattering.
Dissociation is order. Ohsession with identity and its shattering is disorder.
The motif of dissociation is then nothing other than a narrative rule that en-
surcs limits and legibility to this pocm; which, because ofthc other, truer motif,
of obsession with identity and its shattering, is pwbably by its nature limitless
and illegible.)
Thus far, the Appunto sets out the binary nature of the form of the text
recast in terms of the structures and workings of subjectivity ('iden-
tita'). It then destabilizes that binary structure in a typical deflation of
its own pretence to clarity, so much so that the Note itself collapses into
silence:
Ma c vero .lI1che il contrario: cioc c sui primo motivo (quello della dissoci-
azione) che fondandosi I'ordine del romanzo si canche /imdata I'idea simbol-
ico-allegorica in cui il romanzo consiste; c che t1unque 10 rcnde, in pratiea,
illeggibile. Mentre c t1al secontlo motivo (quello dell'ossessione dell'itlentitil e
della sua frantumazione) ehe nascono lJuelle f()lale t1i vila e lJuella concretezza,
sia pur folic e aberrante I... 1che rendono lcggibile la pedantesca, verticale,
dislImana ........................... .
(Blit the opposite is also true: thal is, that the f()rmer motif (dissociation), as
the b'lsis of the order of the novel, is also the basis of the symbolic-allegorical
idea of which thc novel consists; and which thcrci()re in practicc rcndcrs it
illegible. Whilst it is out of the secontl motif (obsession with identity and its
shattering) Ihal arc horn those gusts of lire and Ihat perhaps crazy and aber-
rani COIH.:reteness I ... 1 t hat makes legible I he pedant ic, veri iell, in-
human .............................. .
The contrasts and el}uivalences set out in this repetitive note-hoth

schema and fragment arc both legible and illegible-demonstrate the
profound ambiguity of the workings Ofl(lI'lll in the texLits oscillation is
an attempt to reconcile the two radically different economics or rep-
resentation that onc mig'ht say have competed and f()J'ged alliances
throughout Pasolini's work: on the onc hand, representation through
unmediated presence, whose paradigm is the hody or the phallus (de-
notation); and on the other hand, representation that mediates helween
reality and meaning through systems of analogy or metaphor (connola-
tion). To have both is to have both the selfor reality ami the other at the
same time. The text walks a tightrope balancing these two models, and
carefully watchcs itself in the attempt. Its milling crowd of f()rmal pos-
sibilities defies the dimensions of space and time of reality, but inter-
sects and rearticulates that reality to arrivc at an ambiguous, dream-like
effect of meaning: 'questo libro ad altro non rimanda che a se stesso,
I... ] magari anche-perchc no?-attraverso la realt.l' (this book refers
to nothing other than itself, l... 1even if-and why not?-by way of
reality, 39).
The ambiguity ofthis balancing act is written into the text in its most
striking and most elusive strain ofmetaliterary imagery, that of the text
as 'Gioco' (Game) or 'Scherzo' (Joke).
PETROL/O: SELF AND FORM
Pasolini's list of sources (ii) is predominantly made up of authors who

are comic in some sense: Dostoyevsky's The Demons, Gogol, Dante,
Swift, De Sade, Joyce, Pound, and Sterne (and Shklovsky on Sterne).
References to these, calques and citations occur at numerous points
within the body of the tcxt, particularly to Sterne (e.g. 47, 87,156),
Pound (e.g. 156, 183, 5I9-20), and Dostoyevsky (e.g. 463-74,5°8-25);
and onc might add Petronius' Salyriwn (3; cf. Zigaina, 1993, 3I3-15).
And significant parts ofthe book arc quite clearly written as satire, par-
ody, or as metaliterary trickery, including a range of apparently post-
modern fCatures (multiple languages, sclf-rcferentiality, fragmentation
of spacc and timc, the ludic). Using the models as a catalyst, the text
works to fashion a different idea of the ludie, in a charactcristically
oblique attempt at appropriation and transformation of an adopted
idiom.
The reader is constantly reminded of the narrators' conception of
tcxts as gamcs:
qllesto scritlo uoveva per (i,rza esse re I... Iun 'nuovo luuo' (41'1)
(I his work haulo he I ... 1a 'new game')
illellore deve prendere lilmio raceonlarel come un divertimenlo. (1)1'1; and er

156 7)
(lhe reader musl lreat my narrating as an amusemenl)
Posso l'lre dunque Hlno queslo solo a patlo di prenderlo come gioco (113; and
cr .N,)
(I can only do all this, therefi,re, on condilion thal I Ireal it as a game)
'110 erello questa slatlla per riderc' I ... quesla iscrizione I si pone addirittura
come epigrafc di lulta intera la presente opera I ... il suo senso I c infatti irri-
uente, cOlTosivo, c..Ielusorio (mol non pef() per questo meno sacro!) (31'15-6)
(' I have huilt 1his statue \0 laugh' I ... I his inscriplion I may even be put as an
epigraph (i,,' this entire work I... ils sense I is indeed mocking, corrosive, delu-
sive (but none the less sacred /i,r Ih,II!)
(In ci() consisle I'assolula originalita (10 scherzo) di questo poema) (506)
«(In that consists the absolute originality (the joke) of this poem) )
The gamc of Pelro/io is a g'ame of concealment and revelation, a sort

of hide-and-seek between the said and the non-said, between the text
and reality and the tcxt and the self. It represents an oblique, flawed and
rhetorical attempt to evoke another Scene by interweaving and over-
mapping form, self and rcality to make them unrecognizable and
UNFINISHED ENDINGS
dissolute. A story from the 'Epoche' sequence gives clues to the work-
ing's of this game: 'Storia di un volo cosmico' (436-43) provides yet an-
other analogue for the patterned ambiguity of the tcxt, in the shape of a
dream of a spaceship, made of two spheres produced by two conflicting
powers, from which first the Earth and then its identical sister planet
'Ta kai ta' arc observed by two double agents. The story abounds with
mise en a/~Jlme, dualisms and near symmetries, and is narrated with
'civetteria' (coquetry, 436) and 'umorismo' (humourlirony, 436). And
the narrator makes the link between these two features through the in-
trinsically comic nature of spying:
r.<1 spi:! C comiea.l ... 11.a eomieid poi cancora piu lilfle e scoperta liuando la
spia vicne alia line smaschcrata. I hamhini ehe non sanno ancora parIare "mno
le prime vere risHe quando lJualcuno si nascol1lle e si seopre. L'a{!;nizione c il
paradigma primo di og-ni ilarid (4J9)
(Spies arc comic. I ... 1 And Ihe comedy hecomes even slronger and more open
when a spy comes 10 he unmasked. Bahies who cUlIlol yel speak l:lug-h properly
((11'1 hc lirsl lime whcn someone hides and then comes out ag·ain. Reco{!;l1il ion is
the 6rs! paradigm oLtlllau{!;hler)
The child's game recllls Freud's 'Iilrt I da' game, described in Beyond
the Pleasure Prillciple, and] .acm's rereading o/" it, in which the child's
sense of lack is visualized and arliculated lilf Ihe (irsl lime by Ihe cre-
ation of a controllable system of presence and absence (Bowie, '99',
7S-S7; Silverman, II)S3, 12(~·93). T.ike the sig'nifyinf!; ordef o/" self and
other into which the '{i)l·tl da' game propels the child, however, the hide
and seck of Pc/mlio is neither innocently playful nor built on pleasur-
able recognition or repetition. 11 is inauguraled with Carlo's initial cri-
sis and collapse, when he suddenly sees his own body f~llllo the gTollnd
heside him, and can 'read' as an observer all its {i)rms and all its charac-
teristics ([0-1 2): he secs himsclfas other. 1I Recognition is turned bitter,
laden with annihilation and wilh the sense of a void in the subject's
observation of his own fi'aetured identity. The game's dark, ag'onistic
undertow is experienced in a similar way to the action of the erotic in the
(, Mediation of the n~rrativc through a look ahounds, particularly in the early cpi",dcs:
'imaginary characters', such as \';lSquale e\7-XI.), spy on ami narrate Carlo I and It 1(" the
shauowy "nu" o[Powcr; Carlo 11 looks upon objects ofhis untCtrered sexw,l I,mtasies, upon
himsclf('Carlo l"flllegato nuuo a quella ruota, C, contcmporaneamentc, visi vedeva', Carlo IPIlS
tied naked to rhat wheel, ;ulll, atlhe sallle time, he ((Juid see himselFlied Ihere, 7B) anu upon his
visions as an emblematic subject ('C~r1o, eolui che vc"e', LlrlO, the onc who secs, 324).
Textual cquiv~lents, such as free indircct speech (201-2) aT,d namnion arc also in 'Ihunuant
evidence.
PETROLlO: SELF AND FORM
cinematic spectator, discussed in Chapter I4. It is an arrested or inter-

rupted game, that implicates in its form disquieting ontological aporia.
The particular role played by narrative in this scenario, and its inter-
pellation of subjective processes, is evoked in the metanarrative mus-
ings that open most of the 'Epochi:' stories: for example, 'il soggetto
narrante, di fronte alia propria frase fondatrice, entra in stato di crisi'
(the narrating subject, confronted with its founding sentence, enters a
state of crisis, 429). But its most extensive treatment comes in 'Storia di
millc e un personaggio' (413-20). The story tells of an Adam-like figure
'Saulo' who, banished from his primal Paradise, conceives a Novel. To
create the conditions for narrative, he takes the only character he has
known, the Father-Creator 'Dio di Saulo', and splits him first in two
(order), then into a crowd of a thousand (disorder), and then repeats the
process ti,r himself But at each stage he realizes that the dismember-
ment is only ever a more or less ordered ti)l"mal projection of the self's
'unicit,\ originaria' (originary singularity, 415) that can never be repro-
duced. The novel is abandoned when the author realizes it is only a
cypher fill· his twin desires for 'possession of reality' (419) and for death,
and he drowns himself in the sea off Calahria. The parallels with
Pc/mlio arc manif()ld, hut most important here is the gloss it puts on the
text\; narrative game. First it pictures the grotesque impossibility of ex-
pressing fully either the self or the other, even whilst any text is quite
evidently a masquerade of characters aspiring to that dual aim. Second,
since the protagonist becomes a narrator when he is banished from his
Edenic Garden, the story suggests that what turns the gamc sour, and
gives it its vital charge, what turns it into narrative and projects it onto
reality, is the subject's entry into history.
Pl'iro/io's dense historical dimension plunges its roots into the sub-
soil of lived, current reality. If it has its own inner history as a form, as
we have already seen, it is also always poised between that autonomy
and a series of deep incisions into the social, cultural, economic and
political history of Italy between the 1950S and linos. Even in the
unfinishcd text, there is a mass of detail or planned coverage of this
history in evidence: a satirical account of the growth of ENI, its
ramifications, its founders and their roots in the Resistance, the 'secret
history' of its relationship with the State and the ruling party; planned
portraits of young communist and nco-fascist activists, a detailed his-
tory of the I968 student movement and subsequent terrorist cam-
paigns; and a satire of the bourgeois intelligentsia, with its literary
salons and receptions, in hock to industry and the State, and the
commodification of its product, art. Carlo's story is closely interwoven

with this material, through Carlo I's work for ENI, but also through the
anthropological class characteristics of both Carlos' sexual exploits:
their pivotal sex changes, for example, always occur as epiphanies fol-
lowing political encounters, and their status as male or female is always
closely bound up to a deeply suspect mythologized economics of pos-
session (male) and being possessed (female), prostitution and slavery
(,Acquisto di uno schiavo', 160--70; cf 217,309,318;-19; ami Fortini,
1993, 242). Similarly, a mythologized, or archetypal vision of history
emerges recurrently from thc Visions and secondary narratives to in-
f(lrm both the subjective processes centred on Carlo and the document-
ary value of the other materiaL Thus, the I(lrmal obsessions of the text
are integrated with a hugely ambitious ideological critique of neo-
capitalist modernity (clearly rooted in the articles or se ami /,/,) and
once again the figure of the 'Gioco' or 'Scherzo' is pivotal to that
process of integration.
Two Appunti arc particularly significant in this historicizing of the
narrative game, 'Prima fiaba suI Potere (dal "Prog;etto")' (r28-.n) and
'I1 gioco' (395--7). The latter is a veiled autobiog;raphical cxplication of
the origin of the gamc and thc loss of scltllOod it implies. It; the author
writes, somconc who has belicfs loscs thosc beliefs, he is confronted
with a void ('il nulla'); not a mctaphysical void that could coalescc into a
new, nihilistic belief and an ascetic withdrawal, but rMher a social void,
in which all that remains is banal and quotidian praclicality. The dis-
covcry of this void brings with it 'la scnsazionc csilaranlc che \"Utlo ci(.
non sia che un gioco' (the hilarious sensation that it is all merely a game,
395), to which a f()()tnote is added: 'E' dOl un'esperienza del gencre che c
venuta all'autore I'ispirazione di questo romanzo' (It is from such an ex-
perience that the author derived the inspiration filr this novcl). I J;lVing
entered this state of mockery (,irrisione', 3(il), this figure becomes pro-
foundly ambiguous, since, like the gesture of the worker that is at once
servile and potentially revolutionary, mockery is both a critique of an
order and fully integrated into that order: 'contiene \'integrazione, ma
la svaluta di ogni senso' (it contains integration, but it strips it of all
meaning, 396). It is both apocalyptic and integrated. Finally, this state
renders especially comic the idea of the future, since hope, change,
protest arc all integrated and dissolved into 'sbandati fantasmi' (dis-
banded phantasms, 397). '11 gioco' is part of the explanation of Carlo I's
disappearance in 1973, and is clearly to he connected with the pro-
found historical rupture that Pasolini locates at that moment, when an
PETROL/a: SELF AND FORM
undifferentiated bourgeois homologization has destroyed precisely all

possibility of real resistance or autonomy. It is one of a range of Appunti
that rehearse all the arguments and lexical patterns of the Corriere
polemics, about the corruption and amorality of power and the annihil-
ation ofthe subprolctarian type (sce especially 266-8, 497,5°1-3), rep-
resented in a grandiose codification in '11 Merda' (323-89), and in the
painful, lyrical journey of'l Godoari' (476--{)7). '11 gioco', then, locates
the narrativc game, and in particular, its arrested lack of pleasure, in the
response to a catastrophic historical transformation.
Thc Faustian 'Prima fiaba suI potere', on the other hand, directs us
towards a somewhat more pro-active potential for subversion in a re-
emergence of the sacred vocation through the 'Scherzo'. A neurotically
ambitious and confilrmist intellectual is visited by the Devil, who asks
him to choose any means to power he desires. In a flash of originality, the
intellectual eschews all normal means and asks to attain power through
saintliness ('Santit;'i'). He rejects money and women and dedicates him-
self"to public pronouncements on Faith and Hope (but not Charity so as
not to scandalize) and he soon acquires an aura of sainthood. But this is
pure perfilrmance until a crisis overwhelms him and he is propelled into
a genuine slate of I )ivine love ('Carita') which consists of a heretical
intuition of values heyond Good and Evil, 'non solo non parlabili, ma
neanche intuihili, se non come Scherzo' (not only unspeakable, but not
even intuitable, except as a Joke, 134). Now God appears to him to tell
him the I }evil had been :Him in disguise, and that the whole operation
was a joke aimed at 'redefining saintliness' (135), hut the experiment
biters when our saint is turned to stone, like Lot's wife, on turning
round lilr onc last look at this God-I }evil. The stone becomes an
enigma to geologists for its amalgamation of infinite contradictory and
inseparable elements.
The fahle's meaning is itself studiedly enigmatic, but what is elear is
that the Joke here is the foundation stone of a new post-moral order,
that does not distinguish between good and evil, and that is therefore
both radically liberating if lived to an absolute of 'Carita', and also a
product of an embodiment of 'Power' (135). The mediocre intellectual
protagonist of this fable is clearly an analogue for Carlo I, who, Pasolini
insists, is himsclfmediocre and repugnant (e.g. 185,469,545), and who
also comes to acquire a strange sacred aura. When Carlo 11 disappears,
destroyed by the anthropological change society has suffered, Carlo I
tries and fails to reabsorb his twin's nocturnal, private, pleasure-driven
impulses (234-8). But he proves physically unable to enter into the
sexual odyssey of Carlo 11, and thus he must reject any shadow of a pri-
vate existence: 'Non gli rcstava che scegliere (?) di essere soltanto "pub-
blico", e quindi "san to" , (All that remained for him was to choose (?) to
be 'public', in other words 'a saint', 238).7 The last part of the tcxt as we
have it, centred around the Turinesc anti-fascist fete (closely modelled
on Oostoyevsky's The Demons, Part Ill, chs. 1-2), is the story ofCar!o's
transformation into a new sort of ascetic, public, mocking saint, per-
haps the new saint the hero of the i:lble was on the verge of becoming
bef()re being turned to stone. The fete ends with his Illumination, con-
sisting of a flood of unstoppable, joyous jokes, puns, tricks, neologisms
and caricatures (532-3), and in the cnd, Carlo's exaltation is such that
he has bccome sublimely sparkling ('brillante') 'not only in his Ianguagc
but also in his body' (533). And the /inal note of all, 'Appunto Q3', en-
titled 'T }irrisione', has Carlo returning from his third journey East, to
Japan, to becomc a priest in the cult of a ' "I )io scherzoso": il I )io che
gioca a nascondersi' ('joking God': God who plays hide-anti-seck, 537).
'Prima fiaba suI Potere' anJ '11 gioco' suggest how possihilities ofdif. .
ferent relationships bctwcen self amI reality, different games in lite and
in narrative, arc necessarily dependent on historical-ideological
change, and in particular on the assumption t hat over the course of t he
perioJ covered by Petrolill, a graJual and finally definitive historical
paradigm shift has occurred: what the text calls 'l'EpochC' (23(), 399 .
453). The Epochi: represents a suspension ofhislory, a further fiu'mu-
lation of what Pasolini had called 'the new prehistory' in his poct ry. All
difference is suspended, so that even the hody now lacks real presence
or meaning' except, as in the dystopia '11 Merda', in grote:-oque imitation
of some homogenizing model. In these conJitions, actions, bodies,
words take on radically new meanings, because their context has starkly
transformed and ahsorbed them:
qudla gente nOli era piu quella di un tempo, qllella genIe /lOll aveva piCI la
purezza (sia pure coatta) dell .. poverd, quella genre 1/011 aveva pill I'anlieo
rispetto, quella gente IIIJIl aveva pill I'antica ansia di riseatto, qllella genIe rum
ereava piu il proprio modello umano, quella gell1e non opponeva pill la sua cul-
tura a quella dei padroni, quella gente nr!n eonoseeva piu la santita della rasseg-
nazione, quella gente non conosceva pill la silenziosa volont.l della rivoluzione.
[... ] Tutto cia era espresso dalla loro presenza tisiea, dalloro modo di essere:
dalloro corpo. (497)
7 The relation between puhlic sainthooJ anJ rraJitional hermetic saimhooJ is explnreJ
further in 'Storia di un padre e delle sue due figlic' (4zz-R).
PETROL/O: SELF AND FORM
(those people were not the same as they once were, those people did not have the
purity (even if imposed) of poverty they once had, those people no longer had
their ancient respect, those people no longer had their ancient desire for re-
demption, those people I/O longer created their own human models, those
people nil lllnger opposed their culture to that of the bosses, those people no
/onlfer knew the sanctity of submission, those people no lllnger knew the silent
wish for revolution [... 1 All this was expressed by their presence, by their way
ofheing: hy their hodies.)
Furthermore, as Pasolini had noted in 'Abiura dalla "Trilogia della

vita" " not even earlier meanings in their bodies survive untainted,
since their present state implies they were always potentially thus (381;
fJ, 7]). Thus the tragedy of personal history seen earlier-the son
heing unahle to recreate the body of the father-recurs on a macrocos-
mic stage.
Micro- and macrocosmic catastrophes arc figured at many moments
throughout the text, in the failed repetition of cultural (the receptions),
geo!,\nphical (the journeys, the Third World), inncr or historical forms.
But several ofthese cycles move from a twof()!d dynamic-before-and-
alier·-··to the adumbration ofa threcf()ld, prophetic dynamic that is not
olle of dialectical progress, hut nevertheless posits some possihility of a
future. This is most apparent in the short fragment 'Storia della ri-
costruzione di lIna storia' (411-12), which sets out a sort of Vi chi an
cycle orhuman history, consisting of three 'ends of the world'. At the
lirst ending, man's harmony with nature is superseded by his ingenious,
technical circumvention of nature's dangers, 'la pericolosira della
natura'. At the second ending, the now of the story and indeed of
the Epochc that is the main f()cus of Pelmlio as a whole, man's power
evolves into a tendency to destroy himself and the world, 'la peri-
eo]osit;i dell'uomo' (thc dangerousncss of man). Of the third, proph-
esicd and definitive, ending of the world-'la finitezza della natura' (the
perlectionl cnd of nature, 4' 1 )-the narrator simply says 'staremo a
vedere' (wc shall have to wait and sce, 412), hut it can certainly be rc-
Iated to that unwritten endingofthe novel, the 'cosmic crisis' that is also
envisaged at times as hoth perfection and destruction. At the end of'II
Merda', Carlo intuits a similar disaster to come as a result of the de-
gradation he has witncssed: 'quei giovani e ragazzi avrebbero pagato la
loro degradazione col sanguc: in un'ecatombe [ .. .J' (those adolescents
and children would pay for their dC!,\'fadation in blood: in a mass slaugh-
ter [... ], 381). And the final scene of thc vision, a statue of a massive,
grotesque fcmale monster holding a large phallus, is intended as both a
culmination of the entire Vision and a prefiguration of the orgiastic and

purificatory' "atto mistico" che accadri alia fine di questo romanzo'
(the 'mystic act' that will occur at the cnd of this novel, 386). This
scene takes us back to the comic, and in particular to liberating obscene
comedy involving genitalia: 'e nota come il "riso" abbia una funzione
risolutrice di crisi cosmiche, se causato da esibizione di "membra" 0
"vulva" , (it is well known that 'laughter' has a resolutory function if
caused by the display of a member or vulva, 386-7). Such laughter re-
calls the laughter of the child in its physicality, lack oflinguistic play and
flouting of social taboos. Thc text seems to envisage no such cathartic
laughter as possible in the flattening cataclysm of the Second Age, bm
at times can imagine its return in somc form in a Third Age. Indeed
Carlo I's extraordinary, garrulous transformation at the end of the text,
at the anti-fascist g·athering in Turin, shares some of these character-
istics: it scandalously breaks all social norms, its flood of language is
'una frenesia quasi afasica' (an almost aphasic frenzy, 532), and, as has
already heen noted, culminates in a fill·m of bodily transubstantiation.
The mirage of thc threcfilld model ,If/(lHls a deep structure to
Petrolio, by way of which the schematic binary oppositions of the text
are projecLnl in more complex, dispersed and unresolved directions.
This applies as much to the historical-ideological matrix of the work as
it does to its concern 10 position self and reality in ambiguous relation
to its own form. J\ll these aspects are brought toget her and worked
through, as one might expect, in the story of( :ar\o. Carlo's hody and his
consciousness are the sites where the subjective, historical and 1(lrmal
concerns of the text jostle and merge with each other. His splilt ing in
two represents bot h an apotheosis of the permanent trauma that COIl-
stitutes subjectivity and the playing out of the fi-acture between histor-
ical cycles. The diffcrenL and parallcl experiences of Carlo I and Carlo
II arc themselves analogues of the diflcrent, often opposite meanings of
identical events repeated in dif1crent historical moments, so that the
pair can be seen as corrupted projections of the first two Epochs of his-
tory. 'Appunto 6' (34-6) explains that Carlo 11 is necessarily subordinate
to Carlo I for reasons of social hierarchy, but Carlo 11 is also prior to
Carlo I as the matriarchal, fluid goddess 'Tetis' (Zigaina, J()93, 318)
precedes the patriarchal institutional order of the 'Polis'. Carlo's story
demonstrates the necessary ehain of evolution that leads inexorably
from an initial incompatibility between these two interwoven t()rces to
the disappearance of Tetis to the collapse and redefinition of Polis as
something radically other. The text is thus precisely suspended at the
PETROL/a: SELF AND FORM
instant, in terms of this macrohistory, of the detachment, disappear-

ance and re-emergence of Tetis through the public persona of Po lis. It
is this dramatic sequence of grand transformation that vitalizes the
repetitiveness and studied greyness of Petro/io. Carlo's persistent and
failed desire to possess or to be possessed by that Pasolinian cluster of
ahistorical absolutes-solitude, poverty, totality, pure sexuality, the
hody, presence, death (e.g. 42, I 89-()3, 201-29, 308--<))-is evidence of
an anxious, impossible dream of stopping history, hy either separating
definitively or returning to a mythical unity. The desire necessarily fails
to be realized, despite desperate conscious and subconscious efforts,
because Carlo I and II embody the ambiguity of their historical con-
dition: they are and remain throughout 'bourgeois', mediocre, unable
to resist the force of history. Even Carlo I, who seems to step outside his
bourgeois origin in his scandalous transgressions, is unable to arrive at
the simple, mythicized, ahistorical unconsciousness of figures such
as Salvatore Dulcimascolo, Carmclo, and the twenty 'ragazzi' of '11
pratone della Casili na'. Carlo II and Carlo I are unrealized figures of the
tirst two cycles of history, jlist as the final incarnation of Carlo I is but a
phantasm of a possible, potentially both apocalyptic and renewing,
third cycle. But on top of this contingent explanation comes the essen-
tial t()nnal intuition of Petm!io, and much of Pasolini's late work, that
beginnings and endings are now precluded, as is exact repetition of the
other or of reality, as is perfected f(>rIll. Thus the quotation from
I.eopardi in 'Appunto 72e' could stand as an epigraph to the entire
hook, the premise ofhoth its formal and historical aspects: ' "je ne fais
pas d'ouvrage, je fais seulement des essais en comptant toujours
prClllllcr... " , (377).
It is all too tempting to read Petfolio as an ending, not only because

Pasolini's death made it his last work but ~llso becaust~ the text envisages
ilself as such, 'il preambolo di un testamento'. But the driving force
behind it, and what makes it perhaps the most fertile of all Pasolini's
experiments in the work of subjectivity, is its resistance to teleology.
Whilst restating and reimagining the material and insights ofSa/tJ and
Nuolla (and much of se and LL), Petrolio draws away from the anni-
hilation and aphasia that the latter enact anu opens up prospects of new
tc)rms, new registers and new histories. That is not to say that Petro/io
rediscovers an optimism of outlook, but rather the grinding elimination
of extant forms and histories is here turned inside out, in an explosive
history of that elimination and a prophetic lunge into the dark of what
UNFINISHED ENDINGS
might follow it. It hardly needs stating, then, that here too, the entire
project can and in part should be read as a sublimely inflated autobiog-
raphy. But there is more to its exploration of subjectivity than that.
Petrolio contains a self-conscious medley-'ogni grande scrittore ama
prima di tutto i Centoni' (every great writer loves centos above all else,
87)---of the mechanisms of the work of subjectivity that characterize
Pasolini's a:uvre. The spectrum goes from the voice of the author, who
talks directly to the reader and ruminates on his text, its meanings and
motivations; to the archetypal figures ofthe self, in Carlo but also every
other minor protagonist and antagonist who populate the book; to the
grand, mythical or epic movements of history that themselves rdlect
and inform different forms of consciousness; to the elusive vessels of
selfhood or subjectivity, imbricated into I.tnguage, {ilnn, its genesis and
its means of representation of reality, all triumphantly and ambiguously
brought together in the notion of 'il gioco'. Its most compelling
achievement, even in the fragment wc have, is to have woven around the
figure of Carlo so many of these lines that from it emcrges a powerfully
subtle and complex portrait of how subjectivity in history intersects
and conditions the history of the subject. Fortini writes of Pasolini's
encyclopedic folly ill his conception of Petrofio, 'he had gradually
persuaded himself that he could encompass everything and anything
['tutto di tutto'I' (translated trOI11 Fortini, IlJlJ], 240-1). But Fortini
takes this vein as an abjuration of his self-obsessed writings of the
twenty preceding years ('to hide himself from himselfl ... 1to cut him-
self off from his first twenty years' work'). Instead, Petro!io's grandest,
Platonic ambition is to collapse the barrier between suhjectivity and
'tutto di tutto', to contain all in a movemcnt of (ilrlns, not so as to dis-
solve the text's presence inl'O a postl11odern panoply of metaliterary
feints, but to dream ,tn impossible alchemy that transforms the material
reality of thc text-that-eontains-All into t he material presence of the
self.
Bibliography
I. WORKS llY PASOLINI
l. r. Poetr)'
Poesie a Ca.l"arsa, Bologna: Libereria Antiquaria Mario Landi, 1942.

Poesie, S. Vito al Tagliamento: Stamperia Primon, 1945.
Diarii, Casarsa in Friuli: Edizioni dell'Academiuta, 1945.
I pian/i, Casarsa in Friuli: Pubblicazioni dell'Acadcmiuta, 1946.
Dov'c la mia patria, with thirteen drawings by G. Zigaina, Casarsa in Friuli:
Edizioni dell' Academiuta, 1949.
1{t! {(JUT di un/rut, Triccsimo: Edizioni di lingua friulana, 1953.
Dal DiaJ-io (19451947), Caltanisetta: Sciascia, 1954.
La mef(lio Kioventu, Florence: Sansoni, 1954.
11 ("{Into popolare, Mibn: Edizioni della Meridiana, 1954.
/.e eeneri tli Gramsci, Milan: Garzanti, 1957.
CUJiKnolo del/a clliesll (lIt/o/im, Milan: J.ongancsi, 1958
.\'onello primaverile ([(63), Milan: Scheiwiller, 1960.
Roma 19.')0. Diario, Milan: Scheiwiller, 1960.
I.a rclif(ione del mio tempo, Milan: Garzanti; 1961.
P/II!sia injilTma di rosa, Milan: Garzanti, 1964.
Ponie, Milan: Garzanti, 1970 [paperback anthology].
TraJuma.nar e orKanizzar, Milan: Garzanti, 1971.
/.c pocsie, Milan: Garzanti, 1975 [collection of Ceneri, ReliKilme, Rosa and
Trasumanar J.
I.a nUOVll Kiovcntu, Turin: Einaudi, 1975.
/Jcslemmia. TUlle le poesie, edited by G. Chiarcossi and W. Siti, 2 vols., Milan:
Garzanti, 11)1)3.
1.2. Narrative
'I parlanti', (1948), in Raf(llZzi di vita, Turin: Einaudi, 1979,215-38.
Rllf(llZzi di vita, Milan: Garzanti, 1955.
Unll villl vio/mtll, Milan: Garzanti, 1959.
Donne tli Roma, Milan: 11 Saggiatore, 1960.
Il sogllo di ulla WSll, Milan: Garzanti, 1962.
AN dagli occhi llzzuni, Milan: Garzanti, 1965.
Teorema, Milan: Garzanti, 1968.
294 BIBLIOGRAPHY
La divina mimesis, Turin: Einaudi, 1975.

!lmad" mio preceduro da At/I impuri, edited by C. I)' AngC\i, Milan: Garzanti,
":l H2 .
Petrolio, edited by A. Roneaglia, M,. Careri and G. Chiarcossi, Turin: Einaudi,
1992.
Romans, edited by N. Naldini, Parrna: c..;uanda, 1994.
1,3. Lssa:),s, Journa./J', JoumalisrI/, and nchale,~
(a) Collections
Passillm' e idenlll/flil, '\lilan: Garzanti, 1960.
L'odore dell 'India , Milan: Longal1l;si, I<)62.
l:;mpm~\'m(} ('retim, Milan: G,[rzanti, U)7;!.
Saittl corsari, IVlilan: Garzanti, HJ75.
Lellere lureranc, Turin: Einaudi, HJ76.
VO//far 'c/oquio, Naples: Athcna, HnC!.
Pow/ini c '11 sl!tac(io', edited by ~V1. Ricci, Bologna: (:'lppdli, 11)77.
Descrjzirmi di desf1'izlVni, edited by G. Chiarcossi, Turin: Einaudi, 1979.
If portico della morte, edited b)· C. Segre, Rome: Associazionc' Fondo Pier P,[olo
Pasolini', 1988.
I dirt/of!,hi, edited by G. Falaschi, Rome: Editori Riuniti, H)()2.
ODifina I T-I 2; ,,,'.S. 12 J. Bologna T9SS'S9 [facsimilL: reprintl, Bologna:
Edizioni Pendragon, 1993.
Un pal'sc rli lcrnporali t: di primu/e, edited by 1\. Naldini, T\lI'Ina: liualHla, 1993.
I, 'A.'fldemiula Fill/ana e le SlIC ri1:isfc Ifacsimile rcprin1 I, editcd by N. Naldini,
Vicenza: Neri Pona, llJ94.
Cb) Miscellaneolls
'Sull" poesia dialcttale" Pocs;a, X, llJ47.
'11 me\odo di bvoro' (19~X), in Rllga::.::.; tli vila, Turin: Einaudi, 1979,209-13.
"Ibis', in Boarini, IIJ74, 95-10].
1-4- Saccnplays
(a) Published
;/(Wl/OllC, Rome: Ediziom: F .'V1., 1961 (first draft in All dll)!./i ouhi azzurri,
249-](2).
Mamma /?oma, :\liian: Rizzoli, IC,l62 (also in A/i daJ{h on'hi a,:zurri, 3634)4).
La ricotta, in Ali dagli ouizi (lz.zurl'i, 467-X7.
Il VlIngl'lo sCf(mclo ;\tfillfeo, cdited by G. Gambelti, lVlilan: Garzanti, J()64.
[/ctellacn e uadhl1i, edited by G. Garnbctti, .\lilan: Garzanti, 11)66.
Eclipo re, edited by G. Gambctti, Milan: Garzanti, 1967.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 295
[Tcorema, sec 1. 2 above I
'Che cosa sono le nuvolc?', Cinema efilm, n. 78 (Winter-Spring J()69), 73-84.
Medal, edited by G. Gambetti, Milan: Garzanti, 1970.
Ostia, co-author S. Citti, Milan: Garzanti, 1970.
I1padreselvaKgio, Turin: Einaudi, 1975.
La Iril()gia del/a vita ill Decamerrm, f racc()nti di Canterhury, II fiore delle 'Mille
e una notle'!, edited by G. Gattei, Bologna: Cappdli, 1975·
San Paolo, Turin: Einaudi, 1977.
'Due incdili di Pasolini' l'Sant'lnfame' and 'Porno-teo-kolossal'], Cinecritim,
NS 11, n. I] (April-June 1989),34-53.
(b) Unpublished
In lhe 'Fondo Pier Paolo Pasolini', Rome:
'UcceJlacci e ucccllini', typesL"Tipt dateu 3 September I(j65, pp. 1-299; 'lista
dialoghi', pp. 1-41.
'L1lmw c la bura' I La terra vista dalla luna], undated unnumbered typescript
(1966), story and screenplay, pp. 1-61.
'Porcilc', typescript dated March-September 1968: I, pp. 1-34; I1, pp. I~O,
with manuscript corrections; pp. 1-7 added on the set.
In the 'Bibliotcca Nazionale', Roma:
'San I'aolo', typescript of various drafts, .'Vlay June IQ6.8,.Rome: Biblioteca
Nazionale, DOl1o Eredi Pasolini 1l)77/80, V. E.. 1563/J1-1I_3.
{·5. Films Directed hy Pllso/i1li
For fuller filmographies, see Bertolina, 1976; Betti and Thovazzi, 1976;
Greene, 1990,225-33.
A((:attonl' (made 1960-1), released 1961.
Mllmma RI/ma, made and released 1962.
/.11 rimua l episode of RoGoPIIG or Lllviamoci it cervetlo], (1962) 1963.
I,a rabhia Ifirst halfl, 1l)63.
Cmni:::i tl'amort' (11)63-.4),1965.
SopmluoKhl in Pales/illll per il film '11 Vangelo sewntio Maftco' (1963-4), 1965.
l/ Vange/o secolldo Mlt/II'o, H)64.
Un·et/aai e IIccellini (11)65), 1966.
l 'Toto al circo', unrdeascd, unfinished episode of Uuelfacci e uccellinij.
La terra -rista dill/aluna !episode of Le slrc!(hrJ, (1966), 19tJ7.
ft/iI'll re, 1967.
ChI' cosa sOllole nu"vile? [episode of Caprimo (lI/'/llIliana] (H)67), 1968.
Apputlti per ulI/llm .lull 'IndIa (1967-8), 1()6fl on R AI-TV.
Te()1"{/lla, 196H.
La sequcnza del jiore dl carta Iepisode of Am ore c rabbill] (1l)68), 1969.
Partite (1968-1)), 1969.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Medea, 1969.
Appunti per un 'Orestjade africanll (1969),1975.
Le mum di Sana (uno), 1974.
'Losciopero degli spazzini' (1970), unrcleascd.
11 Deeameron (197°),1971.
'll dodici diccmbre', [in collaboration with 'Lotta Continua] (1972), no general
release.
I rammti ill Canterhury (1971), 1972.
11 firm delle 'Mille e una nolle' (1973), 1974·
Salri 0 le {enloventi Ifiornate di Sodoma ([ 975), 1976.
1.6. Drama
Aeschylus, Omtjade, translated by Pasolini, Turin: Einaudi, [()60.
Plautus, ["){Intone IMile.lgloriosu.l], version by Pasolini, Milan: Garzanti, 1963.
'Pilade', Nuovi argomenli, NS, nn. 7-8 (July-December 1967), [3-129.
Orgia, Milan: Garzanti, 1968.
'Manifesto per un nuovo tealro', NU(Jvi argommti, NS, n. 9 (January-March
19(8 ),6- 2 3.
'Aff~,bulazione', Nuovi argomenti, NS, n. 15 (July-September 19(9), 14-1 I].
Calderrin, Milan: Garzanti, 1973.
flitres lal Fniti, Udine: Edizioni 'l:orumJulii', 1976.
Poreile. Orgia. Bestia da stile, Milan: Garzanti, 1979.
It'alro l Calderrin, AffdJUlzione, Pi/a de, Por{i/e, Orgia, Bestla da stile I, edited hy
G. Davico Bonino, Milan: 'GIi ch:fanti', Garzanti, 1988.
[. 7. Letler.~
Letterc IC).JO (1).')4, vol. i, edited by N. Naldini, Turin: Einaudi, 11)8(..

[,t'/fere [().')S-J(;75, vo!. ii, edit'ed by N. '\Iuldini, Turin: Eill;{udi, 1988.
'Appendix' to N. Naldini, Pa.wlini. Vlla altraver.w le {ellere, Turin: Einaudi.
1994,3 1 9-65.
I.R. /1nt/w/ogics Edited /J}' Pasolim

Pocsia dialeuale del Novecc7ltfl, co-editor M. Dell'Arco, Parma: Guanda, 1952.
Canzoniere itahano, P,trma: Guanda, 1955: reissued in a shortened version as
Poesia pop(llare il{t/iana, Parma: Guanda, 1960.
SerittoTl del/a rcalla dall'Vlll al XIX sewlf), edited with A. Bertolucci and A.
Moravia, Milan: Garzanti, 1961.
Antologia della hrica pasmlilt7la [Pasolini's degree dissertation 1, edited hy M. A.
Bazzorchi, Turin, Einaudi, [993.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 297
1.9. Dra1l'ing.l
I diseKni 194! /75, edited by G. Zigailla, Milan: Sl:heiwiller, 11)78.
1.10. Song..-
AA. Vv. Giro a 1.luoto. Le mn:::.oni tli 1.lIura Beui, Milan: Scheiwiller, 1f)60.
'Tutto il miu fulIc amore. Grazia De I\\archi eanta Pasolini', compact di,c in-
cluded with Mu, 7 n. ~, (1)9z.
z. SI':COI'DAl{Y SOURCES
AA.VV. «((n6), Paso/ini In Friuli 194.1-1949 (Udine: Arti Gral1che Friulane).

AA. V V. «((,177), Pasohni ne! dibattito culturate eontemporaneo (Pavia,
Alessandria: Amministrazione provinciale di Pavia & Comune di
Alessandria).
AA.VV. (1978), Perehi Pasolini. Ideo!ogia e stile di un inlelfettuale militante
(Florence: GlIuraldi).
AA. Vv. «(()8o), Aesthetics and Politirs (London: Verso).
AA.VV. (J 99Z), Omil"idio ne/la persona di Pier Pao/(I Paso/ini (Milan: Kaos).
ACCROCCA, E. F (I1)6o), Rilmlli .HI misura (Venice: Sodalizio dcllibro).
ADAMs, P. and B. BROWN (1979), 'The Feminine Body and Feminist Politics',
mll3 (Hnt).35-51.
ADAMS SnNEY, P. (H)9S), Vital Crises in Italian Cinema. ICllnllJ!,raphy. Stylisties.
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ADDIS SABA, M. (1973), Gio'oenlu ilaliana dellittorio. La stampa dei giovani nella
Klterra jascista (tvlilan: Fcltrinelli).
A])ORNO, T (1991), The Culture Industry, edited by J. M. Bernstein (London:
Routlcdge).
AGOSTI, S. (19I1z), 'T.<I parola fuori di se', in Cinque analisi (Milan: Feltrinclli),
12 7-54-
AJEJ.LO, N. (H)76), '11 st:ttimanale di attualita', in V. CaslronllOV() and N.
Tranhglia, cds., I.a stampa Italimfa dd neoeapitalisrtlo, vu\. v of S{oria del/a
stampa ita/iana (Uari: Laterza), [73-249.
ALLt::N, B. (1t)llz), cd., Pier Paolo Pasolini. 1'he Poetif.! o/l1eresy (Saratoga,
Calif.: Anma Libri).
A1THl!S5F.R, I.. (1971), 1.(lIill and Philosophy and Other [s'<lI.P, translated by B.
Brcwstcr (London: NLB).
ANZOINO, T (HJ74), Pier Paolo PlI.so/illi, znd cdn. (Florence: La Nuova Jtalia).
ARBASINO, A. (1971), Sessanla posi:::.ioni (Milan: Fcltrinclli).
ARECCO, S. (197Z), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Rome: Edizioni Partisan).
ARMES, R. (1976), 'Pier Paolo Pasolini. Myth and Modernity', III The
-1mbiguous fmaKc (London: Seeker ami Warburg), J 54-64.
I3IDLlOGRAPHY
ASOR ROSA, A. (1969), 'La crisi del populismo. Pasolil~i', in Smlll)TI e pop%. II
populismo nella letteratuI"I.l italiana wntemporanea, 3n.l l:Jn. (Rome::: Samonae
Savdli), 1St cdn. 1905,349-449.
- - (1975), Storia d'/taha. Vo/. IV Da/I'umld 1/ oggi. 2°. La cultura (Turin:
Einaudi).
- - (1990), 'Pasolini il veggcl1te', Rinascilll, NS I, n. 39 (11 November [(90),
60-1.
BANOA, A. (I()()Oa), 'Appunti sullc::op~rdismo di P. P. Pasolini', Studi l1oveCC71-
teSL'hi, (7 n. 39 (June 1<)<)0), [7[-<)5·
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-- .- (HI!)3), PI/SO/illi e ['abiura. (Venice: Marsilio).
Index
absorption, Jynallli~ of 4, I ()-17, • R, 20, 52, art hislory '2], '+7 <), '(,7, 183-;,1<)7-8,
6.t, 18'1,288 21(' "7,225,226
'/\cadclllilll;l lli Icn~;1 ('"rlan,,' 1.1, q,33-4, .'it'(' alsol ~onghi, nlanncrislTI and IOU/I."
.. B. 122 n. ;'Illil';du(f/ (fTt!>/.,

aCTion, .\1'(;' praxis Asor Rosa, /\.. 6, 1'.12 n., ('I) n., <)8 n.,
Adllis Saha, !o,.1. 24 n. 1)911.,12], lZ5 & n., 126, 13811., 131),
Adorno, T. 1',' 1\7 15011 .
:\e~chylu>" aurel!rism, authorship 6,87
Ore,/c;lI 223 & n., 245 in dncma 19]--'204, 21 1,216, 2 I~, 225,
.'Cl· "/.HI Pnsolini. Appllllti per UII 'Ore.<l;ade 243-4, 24H, 251-60; .,,'e aim 'soggcTliva
(~/r;f.-·(lnll inJirerta Iibera'
Afi-i~. 78,122, 12!!-1), 131,200 n., 223 in journalism 6.1,65 n., 72. 82
Ag"mben, G. T<)2 n in Petrolin 271,274,285,286,292
'a~irc nella rc"hi' 217-.11,231,247.-8,250 authcnlidty 2-3,5, J., 75, 77, 82, 87, '71\,
.~f!f! aiw) prolxis 111<), 'l/5
.\l(oSli, S. .25 aUlhorilY 42-3, 48, 50, 54, 60, 63-4, 7 H· g,
A;ello,:-.1. 6, n. '4(, &: 11., 17()-7, I()I 20 .. ,262
Alighicri, D. 22, Z3 n .• 30 n., 4H, 71l n .• autohiogTilphy I,.."! n., i-~, Z 1,49, 54.
l)l n., J7l, 1791 2]7, 2M~ n.) 272- J, 75-/),8',1/0-".1, .1-1+, .8<),19' '204,
2XO, 283 LOS, 237, 2 .. -1, 286, 21.1'-2
,\hhusser, r .. BIl A1'al// Gad, '07
an,}log-y Amn/i.! ,0611.
berween cintm;l anJ rtalilY 246-7
hel "'cen cinema 'lIld literature 1R6, lhell, J. S. 208
I <n-H, 206 Balzac, H. 275
helween li,rms ofsubjeelivilY 21l/ Handa, A. 2<) n., 117".
helween pas(/prc-hislOry ami present Handini, F 34 n., 99 n.
ZOl,224-,244,245,250~.!S6 Baranski, Z. 30 n .• 199
'illnL'L't:.llli~imo dcH~ ;u)alogia' 207, .2'24, D,u'!lcri Sqll'}TOlli, G. 2, /', 7 n., 7';, <)2 n.,
12 7,245 102
in Sail} 216,250,260 llarhicllini "mi(ki, G. 68
,ee 11/.'" melaphor Bardlll, Il. 127
Anc~schi, I .. 40 n. B'lrnabi, Michdi, I. 2\j n.
Andr~ol\i, G. vii, 7 I n. Hanhcs, R. H2, 2.12, 2JIl
Anlonioni, :'v1. .. 6 Hassani, (i. '4, 17, I Xn., +.2 11., 1<)211.,
:\pollonius Rodills 275 225 n.
.-lrKlmall/i"" 278 Ihlldclairc, C. I.p n .
/\.rnasino, A. +211., (,2 n., 12<) 11. RlZin, ,'t,. 57
An-hi/Ta!'c 23-33,38 ))c~k, J "/2
l\.rtcco, S. 13211.,212 11. l!clanli, W. <jJ n.
Aristolle 275 Bcllczza, J). 55
Armes, R. 207 Beli()c~llio, M. 57
Arnhcim, R. 230 n. Hcliocchio, l~ <)2
Arpino, G. 62 n. 13ehllllndn,J-I:'. '-I7n.
INDEX
Belsey, C. 8H Royer, A.-M. IjIJ n., 197 n.

Hemporad, G. 28 n. Draneari, V.:
Benedetti C. and fit. Gr ignani 26!! n. 11 bell'A'lIlmi" 225 n.
Jlenek, G. 225 n. Brevini, F 6, Jii, Il) ':15 n., 94 n.
Benjamin, \\;'. 52 brnthcr Jigure I oS, 145. 169. 179
Jlcnvcni'lc, E. 2,3, '12 n., 108, 125,255 Hrunclta, U. P. 213 n., 2Ii Il., 225 n.
Herni, E 9211. Bruni, B. 152 n.
Dernini 20!! Iluchenwald 157
Bcrsani,1.. 2J6 n. Buci-GILlcksmann, C. 150 n.
Ilcrr.lcchini, R. 24 n. Iluiluc\, L.:
Bertini, A. 78 n .• IIjI, 1l)2 & n., 11)5 n., 196, Simeoll del de,iNto 212
199n.,221 n.
Dcrwlini, I .. 1)211. Cacciari. :\.1. 14 n.
Bcrto\ucci, A. 14,42 n., 55. 58 Cmlioli,l\. 1 S, 21 n., JIj n., 83
Dcrtolucci, H. 127,1,2 Caesar, .\1. 46 n., 69 n., 70 11.
La (ommarl' s!~aa 207 o. C"I\"" M. riO, 12-1"., dl2-J, 11)2
fktlctini, G 240 n. (;,lviIlO,1. +211·,46,71,72n., '5011.,
DCl1i,T... 1711.,20,21,35,55n.,108n., 2J611.
T~)2 n., 226 n. CimlOD, I". lOS, 10(1 n.
Bial1chi, P. 18 Capizzi, A. 46 n.
Bihle 11 5-16, I H) 20, LH & 11., 1,(r7, eaprol1i, (j. +2 n.
1Ii8 n., 201, lOq & n. C:lrava~~io 147 11.
Bini, A. 20 n., 170 L •.-ducti, G. 41 n.,99
Bloolll, 11. 7'J n., 88 Cuor.:.:i, A. 40 n., 5+, 55
Bo.t:. 18 Casi, S. .1, 6, 7 n., Ho 11.
Bucca, (i. 71 n. Cassola, C 1:;3
Boce'Lceio, G. 19711., L98, 201, 225, 246 Caltedra, N. 66
SU 1I1.<Ii r'lsolini, 11 /)ullmaon. Cavani, L.:
hody 2--], Ho Prancesco tla .. Issi.,; 20.111.
incinCffij' 1H9, lQK 91;!.I~,215-I6: (:haplin, (:. 154, ISH, 226
240 '-],25<),260,261 Modall lillles 5'
ill jOllrllit1i~nl 25··6J 71-2~ 75 Chaucer. (i. "17, .'.-1(', 256
in Pc/w/io 27(' 8, 2XO, .82, lil4, 288·· 91 .~('( al'io PasoHni, I rll{(onti di ClulIl'rhllY.V
in pocl.-y 8X, I rX. 12<)-.10, 140, I.p, '4S, Ch.-i,. S, .15, -IH, 10,1, 'H' 6, 'So, '55, 16;,
160, 161 8] "J.I, IC)'), 2011··,), Ut, 24J, 2S(,
Sr!( a/:.;o hOlllOscXU,llity Ch.-isli;tni,y HI, K.'., ll], 1)5'''(', 'Ill, 11<), 131,
Bol/ellillo "dill wcielli/ilologtwji.",III,/(/ 13 1].1, I:~(h 162 3, 10J 11., .loX
Bologna 1:l-13, 2]-4, 7:;,')1. '14 n., ')£', 18 5 Church, 52,62, M! 70,73.116 N., 119, 1Z2,
BollIgllini, :\·1.: 12._, 12X, I34, Ii4 6, 1589, IRo
11 /,dl'.·/1//(/1/;" 225". Ciano, (i. 24 n.
I.II.~i"m{/I{/ !lair""!,, 207 11.,225 n. Cig-l1i, F 182 n.
/.a mJlle ''''(1(1[1 l07 tl. 'cinema ,h poc,ia' I H5"(,' :lOS, to(" 230-4,
Bol~.()I]i,E 20] 11. 2:1(', ..!44, 254
Bompi"ni (puhlisher) III n., 42 (:iUOlIll num. '() 206
Bompiani, V. 47 Cipri"lli, M. 11)2 n.
1I0Il<l:lI1dla,l'. 1<)2 n. Ci!1i, F 11)2 n., 11).1
lIonfiglioli,l'. IV n. Cil1i, S. 57.167,1<)211., "J7 n.
\longie, c:. 22 n., 78 n., 1]0 n., 2]1) n. UtilI/ 20711.
BQntempdli, :\-1. 62 Slnr;" -"el/crllte 207 n.
Horghcl\o, G. 6 n., 44 n., 206 CixoLl',11. 17011., ..!+2 n.
ilollai, U. 24.28 C\cmclH, C. 170 n., IS211., 24211.
IIlIlIer-he IIs{Un: 18 n. Clementi,l'. H)2
Bowie, 1\.1. 4, zfl4 Colomho, F. 76
INDEX
Colussi-Pasolini, S. (mol her) 15, 2R, 115, diakcl:

19'1 Frill!;m 6,~, 12-15,17,33-40, 6R, 69,
sce also mother tigllrc I go, 240, 272; .fCC also Pasolini, Potsie"
confession Ii, 26, 39, 48- <), 5Z-], 51), 81, Cd.<anll. La meglio K;ownl,i and La
I)!! & 11.,103, 106,107, ,oH, 10<),207 nUVt'tl gi01,~l!1llu
COIHi C"I"hrcsc, G. 116 Il. lack of in Pe/m!io 270--1

Contini,G 12-14, 11i,36 7,43, /61 n., others 14,.H 11.,203,225
220, z74 rt. Dollilnllrc,J. 3, Cl
COlTcggio '47". /)"'1 Qui.mlc '.l-4
Cor!"iae ddlll sad 2.\, ho, liz /1.,67-'74, 2R7 DO~If)ycvsky, r (ill
Corri,"{' rid Titil1f1 12 The [)enwm 275,278, 2RJ, ~8!1
(;ro~e, B. 2<),30 n., 5 I,
101, 103, 'Z(), 244 drcants: -
crowd: oneiric quality of cinema 2[3-14,232-4,
,Is image in poetry '49 '50, '.V, 155, /60, 244-6,250
/7.1 in Pe/filii" 273 & n., 276-7, 279, 282, 2<)1,
in Pt/mlio .zSS 29:1-
sulitude
So' al::'/J in poctry 102, 156, 176
Culler,). -'3z 11. urcam-work 4, 217
~yl\icism ClJ, ('7, 74,1.\3,1<)0,26" Duchamps, M. 2()0 n.
Dul1ot, F 107 n., If19, 191,1<)2 n., 206,
IlaLloUIl,R.17S n . 222,240, 246 n.
I )a\-:rada, E. 206 n. ])uroil, U. 236 n.
1)',\ nnul1zin, G. 4, 52 11., 127 J)utschkc, R. 62, I 10
Dallle, .,~,. :\ li~hieri, I).
1)'Arri~o,S. 1'l.!Il. Eco, lJ. 2.2,71 n., 234 11., 240 11.
l)ilVid,M.IO!!II.,116n.,IJ XII . <:ditil1!( 210--12,2.1(,,246, 24H, 250, 252, 255
I )~voli, N. (l\iinctto) .h 711, I S4 11., 111211., amI dealh 2'7"!!' 247, 274
IlJ2 n .. I t)J, l02·'j • .ll 51 237-- 9. 273 n. Editori Rillniti 55
I)C (I kmucr"zi;). ~rislian") vii, 22, 35, Einaudi (puhlisher) 1'),223 n., 2M\
hI!- '70,7], 1.19 n. Einslein, A. SH, ISH
lle !\l1draLle, .\1.: Eisenhower, D. 127
J,t'III,,-t/lura l1egra I.!R 11. Eliude,M. 64n.
I k i\11~clis, F. 27(, Eliol, T S. 39
I k Filil'po, E. 20,20311 Epo<"<l 611
Ddiiurgi, F. I I)..! 11. !-:rb", [ .. 4211.
Dc Giusli, r.. /27 Il., 12(' f:'reJ, 12,40,94 n.
Dc Laurelis, T .1,6, 2:H 11., 240 n., 2.:;4·S Escllbar,R. 213 11.
I kll',"'rco, M. q Il. bitcvC, M. 21211.
Ik:\lall,P. In n. cxpcrin1\,~lllalisnl, cdccri{;ism I, J 2, 14~ l5,
Dc MallTn, T. .15,71 n., 'h4 n., 221 n. .14, JR, ·H-7, 50, 50;, ('1,7 6,270 ,27"--2
1le Michcli, I .. uh, 227 11.
I le Roocrtis, (i. I X Fa~~ill, G 11> n., 9.1 n.
Dc Sauc, :"vbr,!uis 2.30,275, zH3 F"bschi, ( •. 63 Il.
1.f.'i Ct'Ul-l'lIlgIJMlry(!r:.\'ot!m7lt.: 22.1 Fantuzzi, V. 116 n.
sce II/S0 Paso!ini, .';"lii FawJii, F 'l4 Il.
J)c Sanctis, F .p {"ascisl11, allli-t:lscism, neo-f.LScism:
c.Iesirc(erotic) 1,4,7,HH, '40-2, 144&11., in cinema 236, ~;O, 2(,0, Z(lI, 26<)
145-6,149-5 0 ,153,160,17 2-1), in carly j()llrn~llislll 12, 1J, 22, 23 -C),
dh-3, TR4, 212-3, 2I6, 2~1 -J, 23<)~ 2!! n., 2'J-.~I,:l1I
~40-2, 245, 248, 250, 254, 258-1>2, in lalcr journalism ~2 n., 6R, 70, 77
27(}-7, 2R4-S in P,'uII/i" 2('9, z!!o, zi!S, 2H~, 290
.<eC Cl/SO homosex.uality in plletry 112, "un., 12~, '49 '50,175,
Diac3no, M. 42 n. '76-7, '78, ,So
INDEX
father figure 7H---!), H2, 1:\8, 91,98--<), 109, Gagarin, y. 23H

112,134,160, ,61-83,203,277,285, Gambctti, G. 57
28 9 game, joke:
Fcderiz 20 in PelrofilJ 282-9
Feiningcr, I .. 260 n. Garholi, C. 23 n., 42 n., 192 n.
Fcllini, F. 20,62 n., 18,),194 (iardair, J,-!\1. 132 n.
I.a .'Irad" 226 Garofolo, F.. 11)2 n.
Satyriul/I 59 n. (iarrnni, E. 240 n.
Ferrara, M. 71 ll. Garzami (puhli~her) '4 n., 17, 18&n., 19,
Femlrroni, F 71 n. 59
Fcrrelli, J). 1 <)9 n. G,u·l.atlli, L. 17 n., ,Il, 11),55,57,58,90 n.,
Fcrretti, G. C. 6, Ill,)o n., 4011.,43,46, 4H, zl17
55 n., SH n., 61 11.,62,67. (1) 11., JoR n., Gassman, V. 223 n.
112 n., I !Cl n., 125 n., 14-<) n., 161 n. G;nTo, A. 13, 11)2 n.
Ferrcni, M. 42 n., 44-:;, 79 GUUUl, A.:
Fido, r. 35 n. I.a Sarra"" nll"ilill 28 I
Fiera IdUraria '3,23 n. <Tenet,). III
Figazzolo, R. 20ti Genelte. G. H7 n., 1j2
!'ink, Cl. 242 "3 Gemile, G. 30
Firpo, I .. 71 n. Gerard,1o: 6411., loll n" (1)3, 1<)5, 197 n.,
Flcishman, A. 2, '13 n., 9H lI. 2'211.,2]7 n., 222 n' l 243
Folin, A. anu M. <).uaranta 2+ n. Gide, /\., 5, JI), 1]3 n.
I'orcella, E. ()(j viI. 12,2), z!l
riu'gacs, D. 40 11. Ginsbcrg, A. 22 n., 19.1
l()rm' Ginzburg, N, 71 n., HJ2 n.
in eincm'l I 119 .'<)0, 1<)8, 206, 217, 219-2 I, Giordana, M. T vii
223 4,227,251-2,254,262 viotln 147 n., 197 & n., 1<):',214 n., 217,
movement of J, 7,44, 184-6; .Ice also 2Z5, 2.17 n., 246, 256
cXJlcrilllcntali~'m viuliani, A. 40
in Pe/mlio 267,270,2] r--q2 Gladio "ii
in poetry (}9, I o~, 1 10- J], 127, 141, ()obelli,l'. 101
147- X, '59, I(,H, '7 0 , 175 (i(l(bnl,J L. 57,147 n.
Foni,I\1. 01-0 n. :J /lfllI( tI,· .<fllljjle 20H n,
Fortini, F vii, S, (, 11., IS, .lO n" 40 n., 4.1, (iogol, N, 27S, zX3
46,55 & ll., 56 n., 60, 6411.,611,7' n., VOIiIlO, E. Z2 n., 3H n., 77, 6<) n., 161 n,
n, 112, HI!, HC), 1l7. IIH n" 125, IJ2 11., (jordoll, R. ti, 2:l, 35, 74 n., ISl n., z27 n.,
14+11" '47n .• I51 n., Ills,aM!n.,zRI, 27 2
29 2 Gnllllsci, A. \j. 17, 21, 41l, 49, 7t) 11., 101,
Fl,'>colo, U. '52 n. 150-·2. I (l,I, 25:1, 274 n.
hanl.rurt School 71 Greenc,;\I. 1<13, Ill?, 201, 206 n., 236
Frc"crick II oil! Ciregor, Il ()7
Freeman, B. 242 n. Gricrson, J 3 I
Frcud, S. 4,51, C)J n., 12<), ISIl Grim"ldi, /1. zo n.
B,:>'(!/U/lhe /'Ieasllre Principle 2K4 Groppali, E. 7 n.
Frieurich, P. In n. groups (intellectual milieux) 12 "4, IH, 19,
Friuli 6,13-15,16,30,33-40,77,7<)-80, 22,23,26,33-4,40 -.1,54,55- 6 ,59,
<)1, IO(), '17, '47, 150, 167, 1H9, 192 11)2 & n.
se< also dialect Gruppo '(>3 55,274
Frye, N. <)0 11., 9H n. !a'a also nco-;l\,anv;ullrdiil
Guadagni, E. 11)4, 195, z57 n.

Gadda, C. E. 42 n. Guagnini, E, 35
Quer ptlSli(wl<"io hullo tlr via M,ru/m/a Guanda 14
18 GUF 12,23, zR
INDEX
guilt, imagcry of 50,81, 9H-<), 112, 117, 'impcgno' 40,44, 5t & n., 52, 56 n., 67, 73,
'55-6, 16 5-6 106n.,112
sce also trial Infuma, M. 34 n.
Gundle, S. 4H n. intellectual, role of 24,26,28,30,32-3, 39,
GUHUSO, R. 148,192 n. 4 0 ,46-7,5 1,54,63,64,65-6,72-4,7 6,
82-3,17 1,17 8,199,229, 287
Hainsworrh, P. 40 n. Irigaray, L. 242 n.
I \cath, S..1,234 n., 253 Isncnghi, M. 48 n.
I Ieusch, P. and B. Rondi:
Unll 1';1" violC1lI11 207 n. Jacopo della QlIcrcia:
history: llaria del Carrmo 119-20,147
in cincn13 I89, 200~ 208, 2I3, 2[8, 222, Jakobslln, R. U2, 228--<), 255
22),2)0-1, 2J'1, 243-'50, 25),255-6, JeweU, K. g7 n., 108 n.
261 Jews (as figures of identification) 26, 80,
as crisis 52, 54, 66, 73 156-9,173-5,216
critique nf(OI/itina) 40'-7 Joyce,J. 39,275,283
as idea 25,2<)-30,31-2, .15, 38, 75, jUng, C. 64 n., 268 n.
111-3
in PelrlJlilJ 268,271, 285-<)2 Kafka, F 133 n., I 57-H
in plletry !lS, <)9,101,104,106,112, Keaton, D. 154 n.
114-37, Ibo, 1()R-70, 18()-1 Kcnnedy, R. IIO, 159, 177
prc-history 38, 54,66, '31, l62,200, Klein, M. 241
213-'4; see al.", myrh Klimkc, C. 213,214 n.
ofscll; see autobiography KristL'va,J. 4,93 n.,219,222 n.
lIitler, ,\. IS!!,' 5<),261 I.a Ril'o/u(i'ln t/ulangaK<' pllhique 229
homosexuality 2 :],5,6, 14-'5,26, J!!, 70,
79-8 I, 109, 142, '5(', ,66-70,20 I, l,aC:lIl,j. 411.,93 n., 142, ':41, 284
2,6, 253-4,2sH-q l.anaro, S. I I
.f'!" al", bod); uc~in: land~capc 16,37, 270
I IOllgron, j. 225 n. in cinema "n,
205, 20(i, 208, 2'J, 214,
I lowarth, W. <)2 n. 223,237 & 11., 2J8, 245, 2411
inpoclry 96'7,109, I,g-22,138'''4I,
iucnlogy: 147-50, 'Sf>, 162, ,6J-·4, 1(,7, [79
in cinema IlIH, Zl3, 229, 2.17-<),241,245, I.:lplanchc J. an" j.-B. Pumalis 4, 88, [42,
24<1,25 0 ,253-4,255,261 I70 n' l 24f
in journaliml 6, 22,24, )',35, .lX, 4', J ,JPslcy, R. an" :,,,\. Westlakc 1<)1 n., 1<17,
45'-7, SI, 54,712, 76·H, Mo, K2 25 2
ill Pc/mli() 273,275, 2XO" J, 2H6, 2<)0 I ,'lriv:lille, P. <)2
in poelry H7, HH, 10', 107, '0<1 n., ' '4, ta $larllpa fill, 2(n
J 17,126-7,1.1+, '44"., '53, ,(io Laterza 16
'11 GlOS' (magazine column) 61'''7,73,74, I ,autrbmom, Comte "e 14' n.
76 Laza!.'11U, P. ami C. 11(, n.
II «()tIle'mpllrall"() 40 n., 42 J,cga nonl vii,6,)
/I KiOTTlfI 22 n. r .ejcunc, P. n. ,,0
1I111(lIIiftS/1J 7' n. I,enin 4H, 255
Il mal/mu dcl pllp()li, 34, 3H, 77 J ,cone, G. 62 n.
11 mmal,,; 46, 55 Lconclli, G. '44 n.
11 me'<S<lf(f(crl) nile/I) 34- Lcol1cni, f. 12, 4()-1, 42 n., 44, 46 n., 55,
IlmQlldo 68 58,94 n., 192 n., '911 •
Il Setace".' 23-33,34-,76,77,79 I.eopanli, G. 29 n., 41, 120, '39 11., 1.;0 n.,
11 Slroligut 33, 152 n. 2<)1
1/ Verr; 40 n., 55 Zibaldmu 1 '7
illegibility,.lee unrecognizahility L'l:.'.<{lrc.Ho 58 n., 59 11., 69 n., 7' n.
Il':"DIOX
CEuropa /('t/aar;"
J/Huropeo (,X
I ~7 \\arrcllini, I .. "n.
.:\cbI'X, \hrxism 1,32, 35, ~6, +11,50, 'i2, 54,
Levi, C. 207 5bn.,,)I,t)IJ, 101, T17. 12J, 129,143.
/,iberlli 14, .14 ,son., 153, ISX, '77,203,2J7,23H
I.iclllll, \1. 1'l2 n. Mas;]<:cio 147 n., 185,2 I 7
LiFe 6T ~-1asolin" I 8S
Lizzani, c.: mas{)lIcratie, .H'( IlcrforlTIilncc
JI}!.nbbo 19R ~-1Juri, S. !lo
Uo)"d, H. '5411. :\,laus, \1. ('4 n.
j.odato, N. 19',207 n. \lchllll:tn,,J. lU n.
Lombardo Ra"icc, T,. 49 l\·lcnA·aldo,1'. V. 147 Jl.
Longanesi 111 n., 22 n. metaphor:
Lon~hi, R. q, '7, 185, 10X n., 175,207 n., in (iIll'111<l 212,.217,227, 22H-)(), 24.2 4,
22() 245,.!41),25 6 ,25lJ
look, gaze (orennera) 20X, 20'1-13, 216, opposell to reality 2Hz
2-B-·h 2.56, 25X-<), 2100, 2H+ n. in poctil: h~ur~llioH XX, ()I, y6-·71 125,
Look 61 1.10, 1.18. 6o, 170
71 n.
L'oS.I\':r1)llio]"c f()mallu in thenry ot diall''') :1(,'7,38 'lj, (")
love: MCIZ, (:. 57,21.111., HR n., 2.10 n., 23+ 11.,
(:arilas 133 & n., 13+, zH7 .loll,
in/ li)r the world 21)-30,32 34,4+ 5,52, Michclaogdo '12 n .
7 'I, H1, 100, 1.15, 16+-6, 1(,<), 17 2 , 171), .\1itr)",,I. 2.1011.
1.40-1, 2+!i, 25.l ~l()di!iliani, A. 30
Platonic, -,,',' pedagogy ~lui, T 242 n.
see a/w) dc.t;irc :\1ondatlori J H n.
I.ubcs,(i. .p Mo"do IlUIJHI +9
I.Ullcrini, R. ~5 n. \\onroe, \1. l27 n.
LU·l.i, ,\1 ..p n. \-Ionralc, E. .H n.
'J.cttera a ~lalvoljo' (/)iilJ"i" dcl '71 Cdd
~\i1i1cciflcchi,
\1.;\. 4H, 62 n., 150 n. ';2) (,011.
rVlactlon,dd, S. 22 11. ,',IlII/m ho
'Vt\cha<io, i\. 94 \lor'1I11c, E. 1.1, U 11., 5-l, :;H, ISH, 151),178,
M')gnilni,l\. 6211.,126, '54, /1)2 1t}:.!Il.
M.agrdli,l':. 229,23+ , I nwntio _,'/lIra (u till; rclgl~.;:;.:.;im ()J
\1agrini, G. 2] 11. 1\1or;1\'ia):\. 14. z.! & n.,,,,o n., -1211.,5+,55,
;'vialapartc, C. 62, (,7 ~() n.~ ,H. 5l), (I.~ 11.,7'.22011.,225 n.,
\1anacorda, (j. :;,; 2i',274
I'vlancini, \1. and (i. I'crrclb 21.1 n. (//I,,.d,.a d"'f'! "dill ~2 11.
\1angandli, (i. 71 n. I\low, '\. h'l
j\hngano, S. 1)2 n., 1l)2 \\01"1"i"ol1c', I':. H)5 n.
Mangini, C.: 11101 her ligure 2X, 7'), I) I, ')ll, ,)8· 'I, 103 n.,
/,a ({ltIlIi,it'lI" mu!"ltll .. 107 n. lOt). 112, 1]<) ·....0, 1421 15], 155 6") r61,
'Vhngini, S. 55 Ih3, I(,~ '70, '75-(" IHI 2,Il)lj.23~
M::mguni, I.. 24 24 I, Z()lj, ~6(, -7, 27H
manncrisrTI' 14(1-,:\0, 2.d)J 217, 222, 2 ....7, lllolifs(incinCIll:l) 21417
257- 1i Sf(: "lw, metaphor
j\hnninfl, V. 1)1) n., 117 Jl. \1S1 (.\tovimclllO sodale ilaliallo) vii, (1),
\hozoni, A. +I, fIR qCJn.
/ prolnl.'ssi sllO,H' 225 n. ~1ulvcy, I .. 212-1), J41
Mao Zcdung 237 :>!.ussolini, D. 24 n., 225
Marchesini, i\. IH; n., 217 o. myth lilms, .,(,,' Pasolini, I:"rilpo /"l', ,Het/ea,
Marclls, /'\'1. H)2 n., 225 PI)rrih', and 1~ol't'1Ild
\iarcusc, H. (1+ Ill~lh 7,24,50,65,c'{',75-7,HX,91, 115--16,
I~DFX 3H )
121,124-5,140-1,146-7,150-1,153, see also brother figure
158, IStl, 171, 177, lilo, 200, 202, 208, Pasolini, Pier P,lolo:
240,244, ;!4S-<), 256, 2'1 I ···2 Aaattrmc (film and screenplay) 19,20,
.'U aim hislory, pre-history 49,1(,7.189,192 n., 194,206,207--<),
213,215,217,223,229--3o,235,23h,
N:lltlini, N. 6,12, L5, L7, ]8 n,,22 n., 30, 237,245,248 n., 25 6, 25q
.lJ,.'I4 n., IIQ n., liS n., ")7 n., Ilj8, AJfabul.u.;one SR, 91, 118 n., 176
203 n., 26B n. /llidagiiouhia.zzurri 15,21,148 n., 167,
nan.:i~sisn), ~arcisslls 2,5, 15,32, H8"'Ij, 97, 205,257 n.
1:l!!-46, 151, 1<;2, ISol-S, 151),16],168, Amado rnio 15, 130 n., 20! n.
174,23lJ An/ologia del/a lirim past'O/ialla 44 n.
national idenlity (in poelry) 121- 3 Appunti per un}ilm sulrIndill 196,20011.,
nillllrali,m, anli-naturalism I'll .-6,207, 24 8,255
~ll,2I4124H,254,275 Appunti per un 'OreItitldc ajTiama 20 n.,
sa ,d.", \Illl'calilY 11)6,201,223,225,245,248,255
NCl1l1i, p. 62, 106 11. 'Appumi per UI1 poema sul!crzo mondo'
nco· avan~llanli;l 22,4011.,42,46,55,59 200&n.
IIco"clpiulism 22,51,64 n., 66, 70, 80-1, Alii impuri 15,130 n., 20t n.
12!!-9, 131, ISR, 173 n., 215, 236, 250, Bestill da ..tile 77,202
2(11, 26q, 2B6 eaMaotl 19,21,90n., 15A n.,213 n.
lIeo-realism 17-ill, 40,.'11.), 192 & n., '94, Cam:.onie,.e itllliauo 14, 1 I; n.
210,211 n., 259 Che COS" sono le lIu,.'ole.1 20 n., 1<)2, 202'-J,
.H'C als" realism 215,2H,256
Nillctto, Sf" Da\'oli, ~. 'Coccotlrill,,' 107,109, [6, n., 174".,
f\;iXIIIl, R. 159 176-7
NowcllSl11ith, G. .!Iol 11., 2,p. 202 Cm,,;:.;i d'cltnllrl' [97,221
lVum'" argotlu'"J,: 14 n., 1.J, .~o n., S'~'''()I, n,,1 Di"ri" (uNS l'Jp) 13,105 n.,
'Ion. 12211., I oH-I)
I)cstrizilmi tti dt'St.Ti:::'lfmi 67 n., 90 n., 185,
0l/i...irla 3,12, 18, ll), 23, 30 n., 38,40-7, 274 n.
So, 54-5, 61, Jli, 79, 99,102,272 D"l/'li 1:1, .H, 10S n.
Oldcn1'1l, !\. lIS n. Dot· 'r la mill putria 30l
O'Ncill,'\: 35 n. filllpo re 20 & n., 57,1<)2,11,15,197--<),
Onolri, S. 106 11. 200,201,211 -12,21.4.,224-5,235,236,
OUonc, 1'. 61\ 24.l-4,246 ,2olH
Olld,lrt, ]'-1'. 2j2,256 J:'mpiYl!iltW l'''~''-C(J ],19,20, 2T, 22, 2] n.')
51, SI, 74 n., ~i2~ t07 n., J 11 n., q.o n.,
!)(leSt' ,.;('rd6X IX'J, ")f, 1~1, 205, :1.10 '11,21.1 n.,
I',,"",h,.f. (u,77 217.-1 H, :I. ")-,22, '227 n., 229''16,
\';II11)1;1lo11i, ti. 62 n. 2+0-2,24+, 246.-H, 251-5
Pal1aglllis, A. 6:1.,110 J d;al{J.~"; q, 25".,42".,47"-54, :;H 11.,
P;lI1ella, M. nil 11., 7' 11. 5'! n., (H' 7,7(1, HI, 1()4, 220 n.,:I.1.2
Panorama 6H I di.,,'!:/I; qH 11.,22(1
Pa"tlKIJPlt' 17,23 n. 11 (clTl/o jJopo/are T20-L, J..:!+ 11.
('aris, R. SS Ilcapptll""" (or /lid '.j(,.0 .14,201 n.
PIII';s·,\1a1<h (, I JI D"mmallll 20 n., 5\), ")211., 1(J7--<),
Partito d' Azionc 49 n. 201 l 21] n., 214, 21i, ·224-·;, 244-6,
P'lscoli, G. 4 1,41' '4.99, 139 11. 256
Pasolil1i, C. (father) I.;, H), l(n 11., lio, '11 dodi"i diccmbl'c' Itn n.
201 n. lI}wrc delle '·'vIille e I/'h, /lotle' 20 n., 213,
,cc also father lig-me 267
214- 1 5,225,245,25<.),
Pasolini, G. (broTher) 'It, 102, 10(" 127, /I padre sehaggiu 2011.,77-8,79,170,
163 n. I ~~9, 200 11., 202
320 INDEX
Pawlini, Pier Paolo: ((}t/I.) 64 n., (>7-74, 77, Ml, 13(' n., 181,
'11 PC! ai giovani!!' 57,58,65,176--7 186-7, 2B 9,2C)1
1I {>lIrtito della mllrle 23 11.,44 n., 47,48, 'L'hohhydelsol1etlo' 21, ,82
90 n., 109 n., 272 '-'"dllre dell'lndill 22.I(n
/IJ()KnlJ di casu 151 21 ~ 201 n.
lala 'Lo sciopero degli spanilli' /In n.
11 V(ln~e/" .<econd(} Mallell (film and 1/1I"~~7lf1ln del/a dlicsa (ulw!iea 14, Ill, 34,
,crcenplay) 41), lOS, 116, 132, 167, 72,81.11711.,95-9,103.104 n., TOX,
19 2 n., 1<)3, 195, 1<)6, HJ9, 201, 207-9, 114-7, 11<).114 n., 1]0 n., '38,139,
212,214,2[7,222' 4,227,2:\(,,237, I.p n., 142-7, 152 n., 157 11., 161-- (I,
243,245,24 X,255 d'7
/ piallli 13,34,105 n., 12411.,164 n. Mamma Ron", (film and sCTccnpLIY) 20,
I ",<,<w,li di Cant£'Ybllr)' 20 & n., 1<)7 "9, 49,105,1('7, ")2, Iljl), 206, 207, 20H 11.,
2'4,224'5,2H--6,25 h 210,21.\.215,223,226,2.43, 24H n.
I Tun', tal Fri,iI 34 ,tl""e" 20 & n., 7H, 111 n., IJI--'2, IS.J. n.,
La tli7'rna mime.<;-, 20 1,57,78,147 n., 155 n., 167, 177--9, 18211., 192, 1'1:\ n.,
152 (1.1167,203 I1.1 237 n., l72'-~h 27l), 11)5,200,201,202,210,2 14, 21 5,216,
280 223,224,2.\5,245,2+X-t)
[." IlI(gli(J gim!l'lllll 17, J(" H7 11., lj2-'5,1)7, Orgia 107 n., 117 n., 174
10!!, '14' (6,124 n., 134, 137, qB '42, Ost;{/- 76, 167; -'('t' alw S. Cilli
'44,14.6, 150 n., ((JI-4, (1)6 IJassiouc c "Il'alogia r H, -1-4 n., 90 n.,
IAI nutrva giovCllllt 21, ()X, X7 Il., (j·h J()() 11., 115 n., 14+ I1.
I (z"13, 12(), (H-7, '42, (48, '49 n., PClrilli" (or VU". zli8 n) 2, 7. H, 19, 2 I, 57,
1(,1 n., '77--'), 181-2,267,2'11 68,74.75, 7H, H2, <jI n., 111o, dl7, 173 n.,
L<I ra"",a 20 n., 4'1, '27 n., 192 n., ZOl n., 203 11., 2li7' ()2
I'I7 n .,223 Pi/ad, SR, 131
I,a reli.~irln<' del lIIio tnnp" 4J, 47, 8 I, P"ella dia/ellalt· tit! N""/'(c'/I/o 14,44 11.
8711., 10 I-S, lOB 11., 122-30, 144 n., Poe.<ia inji//'IIultb "'sa "),20, 5H, !i(;, XI,
147, '48, 150 11., 152-4, 163 11., 165, H7 n., t)o n., 104--1), Ill, 12~J 124 n.,
I ("J--70 127 n., 128·-p, l.l.l"., '411 n., 1+7" ..
1.1 ri,ol/a (filll1 anu screenplay) 20 & n., 150 n.) I 54--S, lb. n., If)., 11., IfJ5 n.,
91,105,107 n., (J2, '46 n., 148 n., I (H) 11.,170--5,17<), "1(" zoX, '43, 271".
15S ·6,1<)2], "14'--5, Il)Y, 203, 206, I>",,<i,-(I<)4S) H n., IIH 11., 16~ n.
207,2Ij-14,215.216,217,222-3,23(" 1'""ie(I1170) zX 11.,51), ,,0.222
2'14" 5, 25 6 8,273 11. }JOl'sit et Crlsanli r.2., 27 n., 2l} n., ]6, l).b
I,a terra "eis/a dafltl /ul/a 20 n" loft n., Ill, If" n.
19 2 ,202-:1,226. 7 'l'o~t'l ddl CCllcri' Si! 11, <)02, <)6,
La /ril,,}!.'j" della 1'illl (lilll1' ,md SCI'l'CI1- lO() 11., I07, Ill, 122 n., [(u n., J70 n.,
plays) JB, 20 I, 214, 215, 22J, 242, 244, 177, 206 n.
24X, 249; .'"' 111-,,, finder indjvii/llt1l1dm., Poy,-iir (film and play) .l0, 5'J. ISH n .• 19],
/ ..(' cau:ri di Grumsci 1 H, 1~, 30 n., 4 z , 49, zoo, 201, 20.!., 201)-- 10,212, 2 q., 210,
~I, H7, 99-101, 106, 112, lIS n., 225,2.15,245,246 ,248 ,250
Il<) '26, 127 n., 1211 11.,1)6 n., "17, 'l'oTno-leo .. k"lossal' 202 J, 245,2117
148-52,161, 1(,3. 16 5 11 .,1(,(,--.11, "11, NlIgll:o:oid;T'ila 15.16,17, IH,43, 81,
200, 202, 20H l(n,20':;:,J.IS It.,2rt)
1.<, mur" ifi ;)ll/JU 1')7, '201, 22J, 243, 2+5, NOli/a I Cjso. DiMio 15, I '71i!, "4, '46,
24 X 161
i ii 12, (] n., 16, 17 & n., IX n.,
j,ctlere RotIJJlIs r 5,20 I n.
21,22 n., 27 n., 30 11·,39 n., 41) n., ,)'a/rJ" It! (f'Il/Ol'OIli Kiornale di ,\"Jtioma
55"., 5{' n., 57, 5'1, (,0 n., 74 n., 80. 2011·,7)-4, I 15 n., 192 n., 11)3 n., 210,
IjOn·,()4&11.,99n., 13ll, 146n .• 214,215-16,2]5, 245, 2~8, 250,
150n .• 15211., 164n., 17011 ., (93 11., 259-62,2('7,29 1
20311.,224 n., 267 S,m Paol" 2011.,57,81,116, I 51j n.,
Ll'lterf IIIft"rllnr 22,24) 50 n., 60, 62, 201-2,225,245,254
INDEX 321
'Sant'lnfam~' 201 Pctronius:
St"rilli corsari 22,37,50 n., 60, 62, 64 11., Satyriclln 2113
67-74,76, !lo, 178.-<),227 n., 286--7, Pelrucciani, M. 40 n.
2H9,291 I'hilipps, S. [6911.
ScriUori ddla reallt; da 11 'VII I III X IX PiCilsso. P. 123, 147
secn/n q n. Picro della FranccsC3 217
Sonctlll primaurlll' 105 n. Legmd of the True Cross 125, 147
Snpmll/oxhi il1 Pa":.<I;n" pcr iilil", 'II Pino(chio 203 n.
r',my:e!o -,(nit/do Mallco' I Q(', 22.1 Pintor, G. 28
1'clllro ~~ 11.,117 n., 1.1 I; sa "I.\() undcr Piovcne, G. 5H
IlIdlt'idual plays Pirona (Friu!an dictionar}') 164 n.
1)"11(111" (novel) 19,57, 71l, '11,107 n., Piseopo, C. 40 n.
124 n., qH, 1 Si! 11.,165 n., 175-6, Plato 2[8,275,292
222 P/ayho.)' 23 n.
'li:oremll (film) lO & n., 57, 59, 64, 78, 9', poetry 85-[86
167, IC)2, ZOO, 201 n., 210, 21 1··-J2, Pe/rotio as 'poema' 273,275-6,280,
.2 q, 215, 225,235 281-2, 28 3
Trasuma.uar e organiz::.ar [9, 20,21,59, public role of poet 28-{j, 35-7, 40-7, -/9,
65,87 n., 10411., 109-11,124 n., 50-1,5 2,6-1-5,66-7,75-8,8[-2
'.11-4,13(',15111.,1511-60,167, see also 'cinema di pocsia'
169 n., '70, 171, 174 n., 177-83 Pontormo 147 n., 217, 222
tit allaai C/lcallilli (film and screenplay) Pope John XXIII 52
20 n., 49, 55 n., 78, 161l, 192, IQH, ")9, Pope Paul VI 6f1, 203 n.
202-3,207,214,215,226,235,236--<), Pope PillS Xll 47.133-4, IH, 15 8
2-/2, 2-/4, :.qH, 249 Potere opemlo 6S
lin(t 'vila 7.};lJ/eJJ/a 15, HJ,4(), 149 n., 20~, Pound, E. 275, 2H3
2.15 n., 216 T!/(' A BC (If' Rettding 78
/in pacse t/; tcmporllti I·d; pr;mlll,' 13, 14, PR (Parlil<> Toldicalc) (,M n.
.~5-40, 6<) n., 201 n. PrandslOlllcr, Cl. P. 46 n .
l-'o/~ar'I'lol/llio 50 n., 70, 127 n. Prarnlini, V.:
p"st 25,26, 4-l), 52, 66, 73, 7+.105. IIn. 20t, Mctello 17
,122,224, 240-50, 277-1l praxis. pragma. 'il tiue' J, 26, 65' ·6, 67, 6l),
.'0(11: also history 72,77,IIH.!)2&n., 132, 160, 176,
pastiche 35 177 ·H, 1 Ho,:l.J H, 2J 1,2;\2, 24/)....{), 254,
in t:incrn •• It)], HJ-4, H)S, 107, 108 n., 2(>1
216-17, 21(), 222-227, 247 I'rcmio SI rcga (,2
ill Officillll -IJ4. 4(1. 50 I'rimllto 2-/
in poetry 105. 107. I [I, u<) .10, 153, [5-1 I'ropp, V. 275
I)aurass!), S. 40 n. PrOllS!, 'vI. .19, 1511
PCI (partito comunisla italiallo) 1.1. q, pseudo-couple 97, ')S, 201-J. 231), -'48-9,
:H-5, ]1), ~o 11., ~2, -/7, (n, 68,11.1. IJ6. 213
14<) n., 15!), 171, IHo Purdoll,l'\. 201 n., 212 n.
peuagogy 1.1, IS, 31, :U-+, .lH & 11., 47, 4H,
7 2 ,7], is, 77-11. HI'2, 100-[, [03, QUIlllemi /""anlim SS
T06, [45, HJ2, '91),202,-],210,211, Quade",o roman::'1J 34
21S,24 H Cl..uasimodo, S. 62
Penna, S. 42 n. (~inta\'allc, u.P. 142 n.
Pcpc, G. 69
pcriilrmancc 4-;, H, H2. 2(,0-1,285, 2H7 'ragazzi\boy::; rO,7R,9S,4X-9J lOlll03 n.,
in poetry f!7--{j, 105. 110,146,154,15<), 110. [17-18,120,127, 132. 139-~0,
li5-6, 177, rllo'-I '49, [62, 16S n .. 169, 172, 175, [80-1,
Pcrrella, E.. 142 203,208,270,2~4,291
Pesaro Film Festival 57 n., 234 'See a/Jo sons
322 INDEX
RllKionamcTlli 42 St Paul '33-4,142, 'Sll--{j, 201-2

Ranvaud, D. 262 H'C a1,'1) Pasolini, San Puo/"
realism 1211,153,198-9,214,217,274'5 Salerno, E. M. 209
reality, the Real: Salinari, C. 40 n., 46--7, 49, 128 n.
incinema 193,195-6, 197,207,208,2Q, Sanguineti, E. 42,55,<1] n.
216, 217-11l, 228, 229, 2;10-3, 239, Sansoni 17
240-S, 246--S, 254-5, 256,257-R,21i.1 Sa1llato, G. 6,.JX n., 77, 97 n.,'1') n., J 05 n.,
in journalism 3, I 1,2(" 35' -6,39,43,46, 112 n., 114-'115, ITS n., IISn.,II(jn.,
64,75-6 ,82 125 n., IJII n., J.t'l n., ~17 n.
in Pe/m!io 272,274, 275, 2~3, 2117, Saragat, G. 67
29 0 • 2 92 Sartre,J.-P. IHo
ill poetry 88,9211.,9.1, 'lX, 99-100, Saint Gmt'/ !! I
10H-{), '16, 129, '.\2, 147-11,156-7, Sattini, V 57 n.
16.1,168, 172, 175 Sbarharo, C. 42 n.
scc ut", hody, love Se'lcci"noce, I.. 1<)<) n.
RehoTa. C. 42 11. Smlia, (i. 40 n., 41,43,46,6<) n., 74 n.
Resistance :n, 65.102,106, l2(" IzH 11., sCllHlal 5, H, .lX, 67, 7l, 74, 77 X2, 1 12-13,
d,] 11.,260, zllS 12]. 145 '(', 150-- I, I 58-'1, 16~, 176,
rhetoric 1,4- ("~' 11,22,23,24, z(i, 29···.10, 202,243,25 1 -4, 274 n., 2111, ~90-r
32 _I, 54, 60, 62, 72, 75 (',!l I, H2, 87, SchiaHini, A. 18
dl], [{il, 20!!, 2$2, 272-3, 2H2' ·H Schulz,1I. 265
sa ,,{m perlilrnullce Schw.lrlz, RI). h, 12, 14, Il) 11.,20, 1'5 n.,
Richter, 1\·1. 153 113 n., 223 n., 224
Ric(cur,l'. 88, nX 11. Sci:Jscia, L. -F n., (i9, 7' n.
Ridolilli 226 St:rtrn 252
Rimh'llld, A. 28 n., 52 n., 79 n., 141 n. scrL'Cnplay, theory 0[" 2)()'-Z7
Rillaldi, I~. 6,2] n., 32 n., 7.h S7, 92 n., Second Vatican Council 5--'
97n.,(j(j 11.,101,107 n., 112 n., 12<; 11., Scgre, C. 2311.,221 n.
120, qo, qH 11.,142, '44. '4X, '5011., S"hraw)" M. '37 n.
'S(" 175"., 1Hz n. Sercni, E. 40 n.
Ihllllsa/a 2] n., Lt) 11., SI, (,X Screni, V. I H n.
Rod""", I': 7 I Ser,.a, R. 41 n.
Romal ..), i\. 40 n., 4' Scrra, L. 12, ')4 n., '.13 n.
Roman!), M. 46 n., (,'1". Scverini, (i. z(JO n.
Rome 1:\-1(1,22, J+, 42, ~+':15 (1., Ho, (jo. Shakesp<-'arc, W. 130
100· l, ] 1!..117· 'Il), 122, 12h, 150, O/lrd!" 106,245
1(,7, zoz n., 268, 2hl), 27" Shellc)", 1'. I -' I '2, 11)3
ROJ1!:a!(lia, J\, 274 Shklovsky, V. 275,2H.l
Rondi, B. 42 11. shots (composition and sequence) 20!! --12,
Rosselli, A. S~ 21;1 n., 2 q, 245' ·H, l5e!, 2.14, 256, 257
Ro"dlini. E 2011. sa ttlw c(hting-
Rossdlini, R.: Siciliano, E. 6, IJ, ((J, .!2, zH n., 2911., ]0,
Ilotlla C;I/" IIpcrtll 101,126, '54 40 n., 55, 5H, I/O n., '1811., '11) n., 119 n.,
/'1"(l1Iu.,(O, f!,lIIllllrc di /)io 226 d\2 n., 1<)2 n., 22] n., 267, 2611 n.
Rosso Fiorentillo 217,222 Sillanpoa, \\1. 150 n.
Roversi, R. 12,40 1,42 n., (1) 11.,94 n. Silverman, K. 3,4 n., 2;2, 255, 2114
Russi, ". 1J Siti, W. 55 n., 'I') n., 12.1, 147 n., q!!,
149 n., 20~ n.
"acralita, s;](reuness 1l{',1)8. , 16, '95. 'soggctiva in"ircl1:llib"ra' (h'ce indirect
207' ,),2 I 6, 217, 24~, 2"S--<.), 259,275, ]loint-of-view/subjccti,,;ty) 205,206,
Z!!3, 287-1! 207, 201j, 217, 2.U-4, 247, 254
sa als" history, past, reality Soldati, M. 62 11.
ST Franeis 711,20.\ & n., 23H L" d"'lnll drlj;,mu 17
J:-.IDEX 32 3
s(Jlitude 4, 16, 27,29, 31, F, H, 59, 6.1, 7i!, fI ga U()pttrtio 18
79,100, [02, 1+3, 167---<), 17.1,257,29/ Tolo V>ulId. Anloni .. de Curtis) 57,71l,
sons 78-9,112, 157-H, 162-.1, 1(,6, 169, '54 11., 1<)2, [()3, 202-3, 21 5,237---<),
170 - ' , [74-5, 176-7, [79, IHI, 193, 273 n.
20',20.1, 2()(), 277,281) TOllr(" S. 15.l
.<cc 11 Iso Ellher fil(lIrc translation, translatability 33,36--7, iO, 74
Sophoclcs [()8,225 & n., 220, 226-7 & n., 241
O"ItPUJ III Tjlrlll/tlllJ !In P"solini as translator 21,58,93,223 n.
Solto ifsol"," Rmtlll 16 Trcnkcr, L.:
Sp:ll!II(Jlcrri, G. d! n. fI prigionlero de/ill monlagna 225 n.
spcctator 711, I<lO, Illl, 1I)(j,200, 227, 236, Trcmo, D. [08 n., 175, 185 n.
2+3-+, .,+I!, ~5,-63, 28 4' 5 trial, Pasolini on 18,20,34,54,70,9 [, [05,
Spi()o'l.a, B. 1 5~ Il. 146 & n., 156,222 n.
Sl'it1.cr, 1.. +;1, 220 Trilling, J•. [,8
Sl:H,,:k .. (). 22 n., J~) I. r 94, zoo, 222, 24-0 n.) Trombadori, A. 40 n.
''+3 Turigliatro, R. 206 n., 221 n., 247 n.
S'acks, S. 221111.
SI'llIyhras~, 1'. and A. White 4 H. Cngarctli, G. 18,27,21) n., 42 n., 119 n.
Slalllp, '1: "12 unreali!}' (of cinema) 203,213-14,222,238,
Stllmp" sa" 267 262,276,279
Slarohinski.j. 1)2 n. Il11Tccogllizability, illcgibility 4,6,26,74,
Slernc, I .. 275, 27S, 2113 75,79, '43,27J-2, 27'1-Il:.!, 283-4,2l):.!
Slranicro, M. 42 n.
'slralcl!ia dd'" Icnsillnc' 6,) V"ler~', i'. 222
Slrill"hcr~, A. 6H, ~75 V'I\csio, P. 4, 2:; [
Slmll,.!ilr!'/Il .1.111. Valiani, I .. 7 I
.\·lro/i.~111 ", (,/ tlr' i'1I.~1l 33 •.1(' Valli, A. 1<}2
SI,«lcIII III()VC111enls (II)f,1! <)) H, 51-1 11., 62, Van Watsoll, W. 711.
liS, 'la, 'H, ,ilo, '77, diol, zl,X, zX, V.Ulcini, F:
SlIC<':CSS, alnhilion f()1" 12 & n., 14, IH. 2.5 n.~ /,1/ IlIlIga1Jo(J(' "1'1 '43 22.5 n.
.12,42,53. '04, 10(,. "0, ''ID Vallllllcci, S. 101! 11., '+I! n .
survi v;.li, d~:llam le or 15, 3(), ()4 ..~, Hz, J 05. Vazzanil, S. ()l n.
'22. '27, '57,245 Venicc hlnll'csl ival 62, ()3
:-;ulurc 200,tOl .. lll,2]S,250,..!S2.}{ \,i:II'O, 1....1. .l~, '44 n., 2S'l
Swifl.J. l7S.21!:1 Vi(,,:II, (;. J2fJ
1'it' ItII01,'c 2", "P" +7 54-. 5S, 56 n., ()1, 62 n.,
Tamhlinp;,j. ,)I! 11., '03, ~2'}'1. 7 211 ·,77,I!,
~·I·;ulj.;"cntopoW rii, (H) Villoll,l/ 5211.,')+
TaliJ, lIlJ \,il1)!:c.l .. ,.;I! n.
'I'calro S'ahik di T"rino si; Viscnll1i, I., (r2. It.
"i'mpo rl/wolraln 2:3, zS n.) 5H n., 5(), ()I 7, ,\'em'" '7
6S, 77, 2()7
14.)0, z.!() 11., 222., Viun.-in;, I': ..11}.46
'0,.. HIIJI/","d II/lfl On .. ;V'.~;'IS 2 q Vivaldi, C. -l~ 11.
Sf .. "/,.,, i'a,,,lilli, IIl;OF(' ,It'III' 'Mill.. C lI11a ,""'!lilln :I r, .1<1.75- H3, 110, '55,20',
1/oUt' 2~ '-·2. 21{7, zliX
Third \V"rl,1 '(',22, '22, Ill). '.\2, 'S7, Volp"lIi, P. 11),4-' n., (().2 11., ".17 11., H)!!
I()(J, lOO, 202., 2Xq \'on Sprcli, 1-.:.-1\1. IIll
'j'h()v:)zzi, L. 17 11.,2I,2:2.(J n. Villa, I'. 611.
Thiinc,1-:.-I'''1. 55 n.
Tof,mclli, 1\. I", M, Wagsr,Jll; C. 74 n., 206 n., .22() n., 2;11 lI.
TOl!liani, P. 4011., 4H n., 11)'), 23 H I) Wahl, E -,:;6 n., 262
'l"l!nazzi, C. un \V'1I1illgton, \-1. 2211 .• 214 11.
Tomasi di Lampcdus'I, G.: Ward. n.
711.,268 n.
INDF.X
Wellcs,o. 192-3, '99,203,257 Worton, M. andJ, Still 219

Whitman, W. 115
\Vhiltock, T. 228 n., 229, 230 n., 232 n., 236 Yevl ushellku, Y. 1<)3
\Vihlc,o. 5 youth, problem of 23-6,28,31,32,52,62
'\'illemen, P. 6 ~jee a/so 'rag,lZ:lj', stuc..len( movements
Wollen, P. H)I n.
Wordswonh, W. 152 Zanzolto, A. 38 n., 55 n., 6<) n., 77
work ufsubicctivity I-S,]9, 69, llo, 81, 82, Zcti rclli, f 62 n.
H7-S, <}<), 1'7, [74'-5, [84'-5, [90, Zigaina, G. .1311.,34,147, '4811.,167.
199-200,204,211,21Z,219,221)2J4, 192 n., 217 n., 268 n., 2113, 2<)0
231),25 0 ,25 1 ,262,268,2<)1.z ZOl'utti, P. 1{,37

Pasolini - Forms of Subjectivity

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Ox/iml is a tmde mark ~rOl/ilYd University Press

Published in the United St"tes

(\:) Rohert S. C. Gortllm J<)96

All rights re.<{rved. No part of/his puhlimtilm mal' ht' re/mu/uwl,

British j,ibrarjl Cataloguing in l'ub/ic'atiml Oata

I,ibrary (~rC(Jn1!.n·ss C(I./tl/oKiUK ;11 Pu/J/ica.l;on Data

1.i'peset ky Alliance Phot{)(jlpesetlers

I write this preface just days before the twentieth anniversary of

including criticism. Behind this autocratic and ambiguous force, and

Abbreviations and References Xli

Introduction: The Work of Subjectivity

PART I PASOLlNI'S PUBLIC WORK I)

I. The Contours of a Career 12

PART 11 POETRY: A MOVEMENT OF FORMS 85

5. 'Pura luce': A Vision of History 114

6. 'Un folIc idcntificarsi': Figuring the Self

7. 'Mio corpo insepolto': The Body and the Father

8. Poetry into Cinema

PART III CINEMA: TRACKING THE SUBJECT 187

9. Authority and Inscription 19 1

10. Style and Technique 20 5

11. Genesis and Intertextuality 21<)

12. Metaphor 228

13. Being and Film-Time 24 0

PART IV UNFINISJlED ENDINGS 26 5

I he/lIJeen pp. /64 ami J6S /

I. La rimlla. Orson Welles plays the Director of the Gospel film-within-the-

I. Works by Pasolini are referred to by title only, with the following

2.References to Pasolini's works are to first editions, as cited in Part I of

When we attempt to tracc the history of the sell~ we of course

Pasolini was a relentlessly introspective ami rcstlessly experimental

and his constant fascination with mixtures of all of these, perhaps

In the history of twentieth-century poetry, there is no other poet besides

Were it simply a question of quantity, however, were Pasolini's art no

I On transubstatiation as an autobiographical operation, see Flcishman, [983,33.

tellingly, it is coined in analogy to Freud's 'Traumarbeit' or 'dream-

The matrix of imagery on show here-of display and openness, of

Even Barberi Squarotti ends his polemic with an acknowledgement

public self-representation enacted in them (Ch. 2). The analysis

Pasolini's Public Work

Culture is something quite different from encyclopedic know-

The Contours ofa Career

estate; Rovcrsi, Poesie; and Scrra, Can/a tij memorie.

strictures of production. After an initial failure to secure backing for

2. I. nil' ]ollrtla/s II(FIISl'isl YOllth Orglllli:::'llI ions, I (N2 .)

Pasolini's involvement in two Bolof!,"llese st udent periodicals, Architravc

for National Education, Giuseppe Bottai. 2 In practice, it provided

Fascistic imagery of pioneering physical f(>rl.:e and struggle is applied to

collective pain, 50). As was in many ways typical of intellectuals' re-

By allying generational identity to such apparent absolutes as real life

coherently represent a first person plural whilst working in isolation:

The themes and strategies exemplified in '1 giovani, l'attesa' recur in

Imagery of transition and waiting is here again associated poetically

articles. To give one powerful example, 'Ultimo discorso sugli intel-

The more complex semi-political, semi-poetical 'Ragionamento suI

In locating himselfin slIch a desert, where spiritual hrotherhood, rather

Earlier he had quoted Modigliani:

10 On I'a,oli"i alld Croce, sec llaLl1iski, '1)1)0.

The strategy and the rhetoric become necessarily more strained in

2.2. 'I'hl' CI/Ill/ta! rllld Rl'p,i(ma! Politics 4Ptiuli, f(J43 '-9

14 For a fascin,"ing analysis, verging on the nccromantic, of Pasolini's obsession with

private expense, several plaquette volumes, by Pasolini and others,