Pasolini: Deconstructing the Roman Palimpsest

Abstract

The subjectless gerund which follows the colon in my title outlines a dilemma: from what vantage point can one operate a deconstruction of the past-a past solidified into an architectural or an urbanistic configuration, a past which becomes visible only when top layers are erased? In Rome, even the slightest disturbances may threaten the layers and pockets of void which make up the terrain. Exposed surfaces may vanish into thin air, like the frescoes uncovered by subway workers in Fellini's Roma. If the palimpsest represents a weighty cultural heritage and a visibly long history, it is not, however, the outcome of a simple, linear, or dialectical unfolding of events. Palimpsest also refers to a superimposition of texts and, etymologically, to the newly erased, to subtractions. It evokes, then, a hermeneutical question and leads to inquiries about the nature, motivations, and results of textual representations. In the case of Pier Paolo Pasolini, a suburban, peripheral Rome appears to erase Ancient, Christian, and Baroque Rome; yet his attention to the caf6s and dusty streets of the borgate does not belie the poet's fascination with the subterranean, nor his complex historicist propensities in the field of literary criticism. Pasolini's poems might themselves be thought of as palimpsests, if we may understand the term in a metaphorical sense. In an effort to overcome the lyric prejudice of twentieth-century Italian poetry and, specifically, to redefine realism for poetic expression,' Pasolini rejected mimetic models in favor of a complex literary technique which textualizes reality-especially the historically charged Italian landscape-through a plurality of styles,or contaminatio. In doing so, the poet also rejected forms of avant-gardism which eliminate literary traditions and deny the power of the past, making his incorporations of past poetic styles provocatively