Pier Paolo Pasolini Research Articles

A Filmmaker in His Library

Abstract In his 1952 essay “For an Impure Cinema: In Defense of Adaptation,” André Bazin defended cinema’s “impurity” as a necessary element in the medium’s formal evolution and technical development. The Italian writer, filmmaker, and essayist Pier Paolo Pasolini based his own artistic method on the tension among the distinct artistic languages that characterizes Bazin’s “impure cinema,” thereby situating his work in his “library-laboratory,” a space where ideas circulate beyond their disciplinary fields. In keeping with Bazin’s essay, this article illuminates how Pasolini turned his library into a toolbox and blurred the boundaries between mediums of creation and categories of theoretical thought.

‘The Pasolini Translation Problem’: From Una vita violenta to A Violent Life

ABSTRACT This article provides a microhistorical analysis of the English translation of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Una vita violenta, penned by William Weaver and published by British publisher Jonathan Cape in 1968. By evaluating the archival evidence surrounding this ‘translation event’, this study reconstructs the transatlantic alliances that the firm tried to forge with American firms between 1959 and 1968 to spread around the translation costs and ensure greater geographical diffusion. Furthermore, it maps the efforts made to secure the best translator for what was judged to be a linguistically challenging foreign title. The study contextualises the translators’ articulations of how best to interpret in English the mixture of dialect and slang characterising Pasolini’s novel. The analysis of the business and aesthetic discourses surrounding this translation event also takes into account Pier Paolo Pasolini’s evolving discourse on dialect and his position in the national and international cultural fields.

¿Para qué sirve la luz? Antonio Gramsci en la obra de Alfredo Jaar

El artículo propone una lectura de la figura de Antonio Gramsci en la obra de Alfredo Jaar. A partir de la mediación del poema Le ceneri de Gramsci, de Pier Paolo Pasolini, el artista chileno inicia una búsqueda de Gramsci que es a la vez una búsqueda de la imagen, una interrogación y meditación detenida en torno al lugar de la imagen en la sociedad contemporánea. Interrogación que se propone como una indagación en torno a la luz, a la imagen como luz.

Olmi and Pasolini: Industrialisation, the underdog and ‘ecological eschatology’ in Manon finestra 2 (1956) and Grigio (1957)

This article focuses on the collaboration between Ermanno Olmi and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Two key figures of the Italian cinematic tradition, Olmi and Pasolini have joined efforts on two occasions, as the Bergamasque director asked Pasolini to provide a commentary for his short films Manon finestra 2 (1956) and Grigio (1957). Two very different products, the two shorts offer a very compelling take on the process of industrialisation taking place in Italy in the 1950s. While Manon presents a slightly more positive view of the transition that Italy has undergone, Grigio is unequivocal in its condemnation, putting forward an alarming thesis: in order for this new society to exist, differences must be erased, communities are to disappear and the least advantaged will be left behind. However, this proposition also has a more optimistic counterpart; namely, the idea that these very communities remain the roots and the true point of reference of our civilisation.

La rabbia (1963): il film-saggio e la funzione-Benjamin nel cinema di Pasolini

ABSTRACT The article takes into consideration Pier Paolo Pasolini’s La rabbia (1963). After briefly contextualising and matching it to the then-new genre of the found footage essay film, the article identifies precise points of contact between the text in which Pasolini first presented his film to the public and the first Italian translation of Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History. Proceeding from these findings, the article shows how Benjamin’s work influenced Pasolini’s film, in terms of both content and form. This influence is firstly traced in the film’s main component, the contraposition of two voices, that of normalcy and ideology versus that of the author, which reflects Benjamin’s thought on the task of the historical materialist. Secondly, contacts between Pasolini’s film and Benjamin’s Marxist and millenaristic conception of history are identified both in the structure of the film and in its framing and interpretation of the historical events selected.

EL REDESCUBRIMIENTO DE UNA CIUDAD SECRETA: MATERA (ITALIA), CAPITAL EUROPEA DE LA CULTURA 2019

Matera, antigua ciudad del sur de Italia, se encuentra en la Región de Basilicata. Conocida con los nombres de “Città dei Sassi” y “Città Sotterranea”, es famosa en todo el mundo por los distritos históricos llamados “Sassi”, áreas con un extraordinario acervo histórico y cultural que hacen de Matera una de las ciudades habitadas más antiguas del mundo. Aunque los Sassi fueron reconocidos por la UNESCO como Patrimonio de la Humanidad, primer sitio en el sur de Italia en recibir este reconocimiento, Matera es una ciudad por redescubrir, tal como lo han hecho algunos directores de famosas películas, como El Evangelio según San Mateo de Pier Paolo Pasolini (1964) o la Pasión de Cristo de Mel Gibson (2004). En efecto, la ciudad es un escenario al aire libre con un enorme acervo cultural e histórico que le permitieron que fuese designada, junto con Plovdiv (Bulgaria), Capital Europea de la Cultura para 2019. Es esta la esencia de este artículo, el cual pone inicialmente sobre la mesa las características que se requieren para que una ciudad sea reconocida como Capital Europea de la Cultural. Posteriormente, se concentra en los bienes naturales y construidos de Matera para concluir con una serie de reflexiones sobre las potencialidades del patrimonio histórico y los retos que se deben afrontar para lograr un desarrollo sostenible sin que este se vea cercenado.

Two Poetic Laboratories in Comparison: Dante’s Rime and Pasolini’s Poesie a Casarsa

The intention of this contribution is to investigate the relationship between Dante Alighieri and Pier Paolo Pasolini through a comparative approach. The object of comparison regards the early poetic work of each author, the first rime (ca. 1283-95) and Poesie a Casarsa (1942), which they both then included in later works, an act of repurposing that effectively constitutes the creation of long-term poetic laboratories. Dante reused some of the rime for the Vita Nova (ca. 1295) and for the Convivio (1304-07) and mentioned three of them in the Commedia (1304-21). Pasolini republished Poesie a Casarsa in La meglio gioventù (1954) and later in La nuova gioventù (1975). This study intends to compare Dante’s and Pasolini’s poetic laboratories with the aim of highlighting the strategies employed by the two authors to renew and repurpose their early work. In particular, the intention is to demonstrate that, for both poets, reusing their early poems implied a retrospective re-interpretation of the previous poetic work, which contributed to the construction of the author’s poetic autobiography.

Notatki filmowe Piera Paola Pasoliniego na tle literackiej i filmowej poetyki brulionu

The article is devoted to the form of film ‘notes’, defined by the author as nonfictional films depicting preparations for the production of fictional works. The author describes this particular subgenre of film essay in the context of other forms of self-referential non-fictional cinema, and also comparatively confronts it with self-referential literary notes, in which writers present their creative process. The subject of the analysis are three works realized by Pier Paolo Pasolini: Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il vangelo secondo Matteo (1965), Appunti per un film sull’India (1968), Appunti per un’Orestiade Africana (1970). The author draws attention to the production of these films and describes the process of shaping the ‘notes’ formula in the films of the Italian director. The article then discusses the main features of the form of ‘notes’, such as: heterogeneity, variability, polyphony and the subjectivity. As the author argues, although analogous tendencies can be found in literary notes and film ‘notes’, media contexts significantly change their form and configuration. While in literary notes the tension between the signifier and the signified seems to be the most important, in film ‘notes’ the most important is the relationship between the interpretant and the objects, which cannot be ‘subordinated’ to the concept of the film director.

The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde by Alyce Mahon

Reviewed by: The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde by Alyce Mahon Katharine Conley Alyce Mahon, The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde. Princeton University Press, 2020, 284 pp. The main argument of Alyce Mahon's remarkable new book on The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde is that twentieth-century avant-garde artists and writers drew from the Marquis de Sade's "vision of absolute freedom" to challenge patriarchal norms for desire, social structures, and politics (32). She stresses how those drawn to Sade's libertinage are often drawn to the question of liberty itself. In this deeply researched study, Mahon moves gracefully from a thorough exposition and analysis of Sade's life and work to his many critics, in particular studies of the deployment of Sade's ideas in art and writing throughout twentieth-century France extending to twentyfirst century New York, from the surrealists to the publication of Story of O by Dominique Aury shortly after World War II to leading avant-garde writers, artists, filmmakers, and playwrights from the post-war period, including situationist Guy Debord, post-war surrealists Jean Benoît and Léonor Fini, Peter Weiss and Peter Brook's Marat/Sade, Jean-Jacques Lebel's happenings, the cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini, and the multimedia of Paul Chan. The conclusion she draws is that what she calls the "Sadean imagination" makes "thinkable the unthinkable," confirming in her final sentence the contemporary relevance of her book: "In an age of global terror, it has never been more crucial to preserve and extend its unflinching exploration of man's inhumanity to man" (235). Mahon's work on eroticism and the role of women in the politics of the avant-garde in her landmark volume, Surrealism and the Politics of Eros, 1938-1968 (2005), as well as Eroticism and Art (2005), lends authority to this in-depth study of Sade's impact on twentieth-century European culture. The notion of a "Sadean imagination" subtends Mahon's book as the unifying concept linking her feminist analyses of widely disparate works of literature and art—extending from the publication of Donatien Alphonse François de Sade's books in late eighteenth-century revolutionary France to New York-based artist Chan's Sadean installation Sade for Sade's Sake (2009-10) and book The Essential and Incomplete Sade for Sade's Sake (2010), which juxtaposes a reproduction of an etching from the original 1797 edition of Sade's Juliette with photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003. As she observes in her opening paragraph: "while it is not easy to read Sade's fiction it is impossible to forget it once you have" (1). Mahon reminds us that the Sadean imagination is indelibly rooted in terror and, as a consequence, in the body, because terror [End Page 119] inevitably arouses a physical response. For Mahon, the power of the Sadean imagination lies in the fact that it is radically open, "eliciting rather than prescribing experience" (24). She argues that the Sadean body provides "a form with which to explore not just sexual and political terror, but dominant and countercultural ideology"; it tests both society's moral boundaries and "the boundaries of aesthetics and representation" in an embrace of Sade's challenge to imagine a new space, a new world, that does not yet exist (17). In the book's first chapter, Mahon moves from Sade's life and work, both the writings and illustrations, to a review of the extensive list of his major critics. She extends Gallop's reading of Sade as "thinking and writing 'through the body'" to Sade's casting of "the female as libertine philosopher" (4). She covers the surrealist response to Sade in writing and art with admirable economy and clarity. She reviews the significant role Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Desnos, and André Breton played in bringing Sade to the attention of the avant garde and, through them, to a greater public, and then turns to examples of Sade's influence on surrealist visual art by Man Ray and André Masson. In her chapter on The Story of O (1954), Mahon tells the compelling story of how Jean-Jacques Pauvert was...

Il 'narrautore' dell'ultimo Pier Paolo Pasolini

EnglishStarting from the Divine Mimesis, published posthumously but started in 1963, Pasolini seeks a different approach to literature, rejecting the conventional value of the to seek a more direct contact between author and reader. As also emerges in Teorema but especially in Petrolio, Pasolini's authorship assumes the characteristics of a flesh-and-blood which does not limit itself to proposing a machine that works alone in the reader's imagination but becomes a concrete point of reference for a real dialogue. Given the abundance of Pasolinian materials, on the basis of that knowledge for quotations dear to Benjamin, a great effort is made to let the author be the main voice, with the critical contribution being relegated to the commentary on the passages that are quoted. An analysis of Pasolini's final narrative works reveals a clear desire to renew his narrative style not so much in an aesthetic, but rather in an ethical way: Pasolini does indeed abandon the socio-cultural mimesis of free indirect discourse, which was typical of his previous work, to give greater depth to the figure of the self, who, while posing as a narrator, does not cease to be Pier Paolo Pasolini himself. The path traced by Pasolini, substantially anti-experimental and anti-poetic, does not seem to have had many supporters even if it certainly brought its message to the provocative and communicative vertices of the last years of his life. The Italian writers, if anything, have been appended to the Calvinian style, so elegant and pleasant, and yet abstract and fleeing reality. Perhaps only Saviano has been able to re-propose, at least in Gomorra, the Pasolinian narrator in the flesh. italianoA partire dalla Divina Mimesis, pubblicata postuma ma iniziata nel 1963, Pasolini cerca un diverso approccio alla letteratura, rifiutando il valore convenzionale del narratore per cercare un contatto piu diretto fra autore e lettore. Come emerge anche in Teorema e soprattutto in Petrolio, l’autorialita pasoliniana assume i caratteri di un «narratore in carne ed ossa», che non non si limiti a proporre una «macchina narrativa che funziona da sola nell’immaginazione del lettore», ma diventi un punto di riferimento concreto per un dialogo reale. Data l’abbondanza dei materiali pasoliniani, sulla scorta di quella «conoscenza per citazioni» cara a Benjamin, si e cercato di lasciar parlare soprattutto l’autore, relegando l’apporto critico al commento dei brani citati. Dall’analisi delle ultime opere narrative di Pasolini, emerge la chiara volonta di rinnovare il proprio stile narrativo non tanto in funzione estetica, ma piuttosto etica: Pasolini anzi abbandona la mimesi socioculturale del discorso libero indiretto, tipica della produzione precedente, per dare maggior spessore alla figura del se, che mentre si atteggia a narratore non cessa di essere Pier Paolo Pasolini. La via tracciata da Pasolini, sostanzialmente antisperimentale e antipoetica, se ha certo portato il suo messaggio ai vertici provocatori e comunicativi degli ultimi anni di vita, non sembra aver avuto molti sostenitori. Gli scrittori italiani si sono semmai accodati allo stile calviniano, tanto elegante e piacevole, quanto tendenzialmente astratto e in fuga dalla realta. Forse solo Saviano ha saputo riproporre, almeno in Gomorra, il «narratore in carne ed ossa» pasoliniano.

Othello and the Ambivalences of Italian Blackface

Blackface is a cultural practice that appears ubiquitously in Italian history cutting across the political spectrum; it also lends itself to suprising anti-racist actions. This essay examines the use of blackface from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century by looking at its appearance in popular culture and, contextually and dialectically, at its adoption in selected performances of Othello, a play that holds special meaning in Italy because of its famous operatic adaptations. Africa and blackness were often represented in Italian visual arts in the early modern period, but the early colonial ventures of the new independent Italy create a new exotic imaginary that is particularly manifest in popular culture. Othello is influenced by new African discourses but it allso exists in a parallel dimension that somehow resists facile political interpretations. The colonial ventures of post-unification and Fascist Italy do not reverberate in any predictable manner in the growing popularity of the play. After World War II new forms of exoticism emerge that will be subverted only by a new postcolonial scenario that also coincides with a re-emergence of racism. Against the respective historical backdrops, we examine the idiosyncratic versions of blackface by Tommaso Salvini, Pietro Sharoff, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Carmelo Bene, and Elio De Capitani to suggest continuities and discontinuities in Italian interpretations of Othello.

Faces and Surfaces in the Landscape of Pasolini’s ‘Palestina’

Hardly known that Pier Paolo Pasolini has created a landscape trilogy through the location-hunting documentaries in his oeuvre. The first of these works is also the one that comprises the spine of this essay, Sopraluoghi in Palestina (Locations in Palestine, 1963), the second one is Appunti per un film sull'India (Notes for a Film on India, 1968), and finally, in Per un'orestiade africana (Notes for an African Oresteia, 1969/70). The use of historically and culturally layered landscapes from varying perspectives makes his documentaries a ”territorial assemblage” in which any number of things or pieces of things has gathered. Following the footprints of Pier Paolo Pasolini, this study aims to explore the film, namely Sopraluoghi in Palestina (Locations in Palestine, 1963) and to present different articulation of space, landscape, territory and place. Particularly, the narrative information, pure observation and his self-experience of landscape are spliced together in mythical as well as historical shots which have been incandescently defined by his poetic realism. Film, indeed, not only does enable to mediate some Deleuzoguattarian concepts penetrating from philosophy to cinema, but also does open new paths for ”thinking differently” on the complexity of space. This article, by delving into the real-time shots of the film will problematize the spatial-temporal dimensions are involved in the cartography formed by heterogeneous forces or/and multiplicities defined by ”zones of indiscernibility” in the landscape. In this way, I target to reveal its diagrammatic formation which provide the viewer thinking through words and images, nature and culture, faces and surfaces.

“Credo nel progresso non nello sviluppo”. Alcune riflessioni sul rapporto tra pedagogia, economia e comunità a partire da Pier Paolo Pasolini

Il contributo intende approfondire il rapporto tra pedagogia, economia e comunità a partire dalle “inattuali” riflessioni di Pier Paolo Pasolini intorno a due termini: progresso e sviluppo, così come le riporta in un suo articolo del 1973 inserito in Scritti Corsari. Il progresso (economico e sociale) lo vogliono coloro che non hanno interessi immediati da soddisfare, è dunque una nozione sociale e politica all’opposto dello sviluppo che invece è un fatto pragmatico e economico, poiché riguarda la produzione dei beni e dei valori legati al consumo di quei beni. La formazione del soggetto-persona deve contemperare una visione teleologica al “bene comune”, a quel senso di comunità che più espropria, in parte o per intero, gli uomini dalla loro “proprietà” più intima e più li tiene uniti da una “mancanza”, da un limite che assurge a collante etico-politico. La riflessione pedagogica, precipuamente se legata all’economia, ha il compito di veicolare leggi e valori legati all’educazione democratica: equità, uguaglianza di genere, senso del limite, partecipazione contro le logiche di mercato omologanti e neoliberiste.

The theatre of cruelty and the limits of representation: Sade/Salò

When first released in 1975, Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom, directed by the already-notorious Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, aroused instant controversy. As a framework for its plot, Salò took the infamous 500-page novel by the Marquis de Sade, 120 Days of Sodom. In de Sade’s novel, four libertines, President de Curval, the Duc de Blangis, Durcet and the Bishop of X, sign a contract whose main clause is commitment to breaking as many taboos as they can possibly think of. With sixteen youths, eight girls and eight boys, servants, guards and four procurers and ex-prostitutes, the libertines isolate themselves in a remote chateau to re-enact their every fantasy. Filming Salò, Pasolini’s goal was to remain faithful to Sade’s novel. The characters, events and structure of the story remain the same. The more controversial aspect of the film, however, was Pasolini’s idea of relocating Sade’s novel into the actual historical context of the fascist Republic of Salò. For Pasolini, the gesture of moving Sade to Salò was to draw an actual analogy between the fascism and sadism. For some critics, the parallel between fascism and sadism was unfortunate exactly because it presented fascism, a real and palpable phenomenon, as an abstraction (the way that Sade’s world functions).

Pier Paolo Pasolini e as linguagens do real

O nexo estabelecido por Pier Paolo Pasolini entre realidade e linguagem constitui uma tensão que distende as suas obras em distintos meios de expressão. Diante dos vínculos particulares que ele estabelece entre a linguagem pictórica e a poética, nos quais a recepção do aparato crítico de Roberto Longhi se mostra estratégica, propõe-se considerá-los por meio do gesto exemplarmente cristalizado nos versos de Gli affreschi di Piero ad Arezzo, primeira parte do poema La ricchezza (1955-1957), coligido em La religione del mio tempo (1961). Nesses versos, para os quais se apresenta tradução neste artigo, o impacto produzido pela pintura renascentista de Piero della Francesca permite observar o vitalismo estético que fundamenta a práxis poética pasoliniana, assim como a crítica do presente que articula tal prática. Nesse sentido, verifica-se que também a perspectiva de Pasolini acerca das artes visuais se revela uma penetrante tradução histórica e crítica da própria realidade como forma de linguagem.

Pasolini e a forma da cidade

Este artigo busca, primeiramente, analisar o curta-metragem de Pier Paolo Pasolini e Paolo Brunatto, Pasolini e... la forma della città (1974), discutindo os elementos fundamentais da crítica de arquitetura de Pasolini. Em sua fala no documentário, sobressaem: sua argumentação sobre a perfeição estilística da antiga cidade italiana de Orte, e sobre como a “forma da cidade” é aviltada pela especulação imobiliária que constrói edifícios de outra ordem estética em seu entorno; a relação entre arquitetura, natureza e luz; a importância de defender as obras de edificadores anônimos do passado e os centros históricos das cidades antigas; a crítica à sociedade de consumo e a seu poder de destruição das obras do passado. Em um segundo momento, aproximamos as reflexões de Pasolini às do filósofo e arquiteto italiano Roberto Perigalli, elaboradas em seu livro I luoghi e la polvere (2010), no qual verificamos muitas afinidades ideológicas e estéticas com o pensamento do cineasta. Em especial há uma convergência, aqui discutida, na valorização que os autores fazem do passado arquitetônico, cuja força revolucionária pode servir para uma crítica do cenário presente, a apreensão de uma beleza imperfeita e frágil que se nutre dos efeitos do envelhecimento causado pela passagem do tempo e o apreço pelas ruínas como possibilidade de vivência de uma temporalidade diversa, uma experiência de comoção perante a transitoriedade das coisas.

Discurso crítico de Pasolini e Fortini nas páginas de jornais

A partir de um questionamento acerca dos paradigmas de atuação crítica de Pier Paolo Pasolini e Franco Fortini, este artigo apresenta algumas linhas de reflexão sobre como ambos os escritores agiam enquanto figuras de intervenção pública. Para tanto, serão analisados momentos de interlocução estabelecida entre os dois através das páginas de jornais italianos, principalmente a partir do ano de 1968, quando divergências acabam por culminar no rompimento pessoal entre eles. Assim, a principal intenção desta análise é mostrar em que medida as formas de fazer crítica praticadas por Pasolini e Fortini ora se assemelham e ora se distinguem consideravelmente, o que acaba por revelar que, apesar de ambos terem motivações políticas muito próximas enquanto intelectuais marxistas-gramscianos, cada um deles traçou percursos bastante particulares.

Cinzas de Pasolini

Pretendemos aqui desenvolver um percurso investigativo que elucide uma passagem do filme Caro diário, de Nanni Moretti, na qual se faz uma homenagem a Pier Paolo Pasolini, explorando suas implicações históricas, políticas e culturais. A hipótese desta investigação são as semelhanças estruturais e narrativas entre a homenagem de Nanni Moretti e o poema “Cinzas de Gramsci”, de Pasolini.

Pasolini e a imaginação crítica

Diante do pequeno ensaio de Pier Paolo Pasolini, publicado em 1964, Cinema de prosa, cinema de poesia, este artigo propõe uma leitura de certas posições políticas do poeta italiano acerca do que toma como “situação cultural”, primeiro, numa operação com as formas de expressão e, depois, da expansão de seu pensamento crítico a partir dos modos deliberados de imaginação.

Das tragédias à crítica

O presente ensaio pretende abordar certas especificidades do engajamento intelectual diante da vida. Para tanto, organiza-se, de início, a partir da leitura de O espírito da ficção científica, de Roberto Bolaño, para, na sequência, interpelar como essas especificidades se apresentam na leitura cinematográfica que Pier Paolo Pasolini faz da Oresteia de Ésquilo. Traça algumas análises da questão da tragédia tanto a partir de Nietzsche como nos modos com os quais Pasolini desdobra os problemas que lê em Ésquilo em suas maneiras de enxergar seu tempo. Por fim, propõe-se a ler como esse procedimento pasoliniano, além de apontar para um modo de engajar-se intelectualmente, carrega uma potência de questionamento do funcionamento – e da falência – da política representativa contemporânea.