Il magistero letterario di Pasolini su Volponi tra 'Officina' e Olivetti e la polemica intorno a Corporale

Abstract

Pasolini’s literary teachings on Volponi between « Officina » and Olivetti and the diatribe about Corporale · This article reconstructs and examines the debate between Paolo Volponi and Pier Paolo Pasolini around the elaboration and publication of Corporale (1965-1974), and it does so by reconsidering Pasolini’s literary teachings (“magistero letterario”) and Adriano Olivetti’s industrial teachings (“magistero industriale”). On the one hand, the article suggests a more restrictive and specific understanding of the durable influence of Pasolini on Volponi’s work – by highlighting the relevance of the role of the journal « Officina » (1955-1959), and by highlighting the importance of the two authors’ positions in the literary field of the Fifties and the Sixties. On the other hand, the article aims at demonstrating that Volponi purports Olivetti’s democratic model of industry, while that model had already started proving more and more problematic (if not unachievable, unrealistic) and that Corporale is the novel in which the crisis of Olivetti’s utopistic industrial paradigm is more explicit and relevant. Furthermore and conclusively, the article reconsiders Pasolini’s review on Corporale in the light of an unpublished note written by Pasolini, in which he reconsiders Corporale, proposes a brief theory of the novel, and admits his closeness to Volponi’s point of view on the power and on the transformations of the Italian society during the Sixties