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Pier Paolo Pasolini
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Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in Bologna on March 5, 1922. He was an Italian poet, writer, director, screenwriter, actor, and playwright. He is considered one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century in Italy. Culturally versatile, he excelled in numerous fields, leaving contributions as a painter, novelist, linguist, translator, and essayist as well.
Pasolini's father, Carlo Pasolini, was an infantry lieutenant from an ancient family in Ravenna, but his story was marked by the dissipation of the family fortune. His mother, Susanna Colussi, was a teacher originally from Carsara della Delizia in Friuli.
Carlo's military career obliged the family to frequent moves from Bologna to Parma, from Conegliano to Belluno, where Pasolini's brother, Guido Alberto, was born in 1925. Pasolini, in his essay "Empirismo Eretico," recalls a period when he still got along with his father, describing himself as exceptionally capricious, perhaps neurotic, but nevertheless good.
Towards his pregnant mother (although he has no memory of it), he harbored a desperate love that characterized his entire life. However, from childhood, father and mother exerted opposite influences on him, with the father presenting himself as a feared and tyrannical figure.
Pasolini describes his father as "passionate, sensual, violent in character," a lieutenant who ended his military career in Libya without a penny. This path would shape his personality, leading him to total repression until the strictest conformity.
The father had placed all his hopes in Pasolini's literary career, which began when the son was 7 years old and had written his first poems. However, the father had not foreseen the humiliations that would follow the satisfactions, and Pasolini reflects on the situation with understanding for the poor man.
The dominant figure in Pasolini's life was undoubtedly his mother, to whom he dedicated some of his most disturbing verses in maturity. From the few data provided, a great Oedipal conflict clearly emerges, of which Pasolini had a rare and extreme awareness.
Pier Paolo Pasolini as a child.
The mother of Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Guido Alberto, Pier Paolo Pasolini's brother.
Carlo, Pier Paolo Pasolini's father.
The childhood poems came to life in Sacile, where Pasolini attended elementary school.
His school path was marked by several relocations: to Cremona, Reggio Emilia, where he began his secondary education, and finally to Bologna, where he enrolled in the prestigious Galvani high school, before continuing his studies at the University, which he later commented on as "mediocre and fascist."
However, he had to admit the exceptional importance of the figure of Longhi, who in those years in Bologna proved to be of great relevance to him and many of his peers, or even older.
In 1942, during the period when his father was a prisoner in Kenya, the family found refuge in Carsara. That year, at his own expense, young Pasolini published the "Poesie a Carsara" in Friulian dialect, attracting the attention of Gianfranco Contini, who reviewed the work in the Corriere di Lugano. The following year, while stationed in Livorno as a soldier, Pasolini escaped after September 8 and returned to Carsara.
Examples of poetry from "Poesie a Carsara":
Dedication.
Water fountain from my homeland. There
is no water fresher than in my homeland.
Fountain of rustic love.
Rain on the borders.
Young lad, the Sky pours onto the hearths
of your homeland, on your face of rose
and honey, cloudy arises the month.
The sun, dark with smoke, under the
branches of the mulberry tree, burns you
and on the borders, you alone, sing the
dead. Young lad, the Sky laughs on the
balconies of your homeland, on your face
of blood and gall, tranquility dies the
month.
“Poesie a Carsara” original cover, directly written by Pasolini.
Paper notes of Pasolini where he wrote the poems that will compose the collection “Poesie di Carsara”.
In 1945, the tragic death of Pasolini's nineteen-year-old brother, Guido, occurred, who was active in a partisan group affiliated with the "Osoppo" brigade.
Guido, along with his comrades, lost his life at the hands of Yugoslav partisans, an event that ranks among the darkest pages of the Resistance. What makes his end even more heartbreaking is the fact that initially he managed to escape the massacre, but, already wounded, he was pursued, identified, and ultimately killed.
Pasolini addressed the pain, memory, trauma, and mourning associated with this death in several works. This tragic episode is openly commemorated in some of his verses and referenced, at least in its rawest meaning, in the two "Roman" novels. The theme of the "dead youth" emerges as one of the most significant and painful in both "Ragazzi di Vita" and "Una vita violenta."
At the end of the Second World War, crucial moments in Pier Paolo Pasolini's life unfolded: his father's return to Casarsa, accompanied by increasing misunderstandings and discord; his graduation in literature in Bologna, sealed by a thesis on Pascoli; teaching, between 1945 and 1949, at the middle schools of Valvasone, a town near Casarsa.
February 18, 1945, marks the founding of the Academiuta de lenga furlana, a center for philological studies on Friulian language and culture, initiated by Pasolini and young Friulian university students.
A significant contribution to this project can be found in the notebooks of the Academiuta, called "Stroligut de ca’ da l’aga" (The Wizard from This Side of the Water), which collect stories, essays, and poems, often in dialect, by Pasolini and other members of the Academy. This Friulian period, lived in a beloved and studied peasant world with genuine affection, takes on a mythical, archaic, religious, and innocent character for Pasolini, becoming his model to overcome, rediscover, and communicate to others.
During these youthful years, Pasolini developed his civic and literary commitment in Casarsa.
The poems written between 1943 and 1949, later collected in 1958 in "L’usignolo della Chiesa Cattolica" (The Nightingale of the Catholic Church), show the political evolution of the young writer, culminating in the final part of "L’usignolo" titled "La scoperta di Marx" (The Discovery of Marx).
In parallel, after the struggles of the Friulian laborers, he composed the prose of "I giorni del lodo De Gasperi" (The Days of the De Gasperi Lodge), which later became the novel "Il sogno di una cosa" (The Dream of Something) in 1962.
The careful observation of the peasant world in Casarsa is closely linked to Pasolini's analysis of the sub-proletariat of the Roman suburbs, highlighted by Pasolini later on.
In describing the suburbs in an interview with "La Stampa" in 1975, he emphasized the degradation and atrocity of that world but also the preservation of its own code of life and language, stating that today, on the contrary, the boys from the suburbs, despite having access to motorcycles and television, have lost the ability to communicate and express themselves significantly.
Pasolini's years in Casarsa, indelible in his memory, were also marked by a departure defined by the author himself as a flight. The young teacher's life quickly became untenable after a boy confessed to the parish priest of Casarsa that he had had relations with Pasolini, an episode that made his stay impossible on the eve of the 1948 elections.
Cover of “L'usignolo della chiesa cattolica”.
Cover of “Il sogno di una cosa”.
Accompanied by his mother, Pasolini moved to Rome, initially experiencing extremely difficult years characterized by unemployment and despair that came close to the brink of tragic events, as he himself described: "a desperate unemployed person, one of those who end up committing suicide."
Initially, their residence was in Piazza Costaguti, in the heart of the Portico d’Ottavia, before moving to Ponte Mammolo, near the Rebibbia prison. While for many writers these changes of residence may have relative importance, for Pasolini, these places, like Via Fonteiana, where he moved as soon as his economic conditions improved, are familiar to readers because they are imbued with his experiences, visions, and landscapes, which he then partly infused into his verses and prose.
The father soon joined them, bringing with him the conflicts that Pasolini, over time, managed to contemplate almost tenderly, certainly with pity, only after the latter's death.
Meanwhile, Pasolini managed to secure a job as a teacher in Ciampino, with a monthly salary of 27,000 lire. Subsequently, thanks to Bassani's help, he began working on film scripts, allowing him to move with his parents to Monteverde, in Via Fonteiana.
This move, to which his father dedicated himself with satisfaction, rekindled in him the pleasure of command, vanity, and the sense of bourgeois decorum.
In 1954, Pasolini published the collection of Friulian poems titled "La meglio gioventù" (The Best of Youth), while two years earlier he collaborated with Marco Dell’Arco on a significant study on 20th-century dialect poetry. In 1955, together with Roversi, Leonetti, Romanò, and Fortini, he participated in the editing of the magazine "Officina" (Workshop), a significant testimony of Italian intellectuals facing issues perceived as addressed with automatism and conformity. His contributions to "Officina" include "Passione e ideologia" (Passion and Ideology) in 1960 and the lyrics from "La religione del mio tempo" (The Religion of My Time) in 1961, both representing Pasolini's unique contribution to the magazine.
Cover of “Passione e ideologia”.
Cover of "La religione del mio tempo".
In 1955, Pier Paolo Pasolini reached a crucial milestone in his literary career with the publication of "Ragazzi di vita" (Boys of Life), a novel whose conception had been maturing since 1950.
The subject matter, characterized by a rawness that was entirely unprecedented in Italian literature at the time, the linguistic experiment of transferring and recreating the language of a sub-proletariat never before explored with such honesty in narrative, along with the compassion and artistry that bind the episodes of the book, attracted the attention of both the public and experts in the field.
Gianfranco Contini described the work as a picaresque-Romanesque epic, emphasizing the singularity that led usually indulgent critics to reflect deeply.
He states: "Isn't it a novel? Indeed, it is an undaunted declaration of love, proceeding through paragraphs; within which, moreover, are sequences perfectly attuned to the most authoritative narrative tradition, that is to say, nineteenth-century."
Twenty years after its publication, "Ragazzi di vita" demonstrates a value far beyond that of a merely heartbreaking document, and the poignant poetry of the lives of adolescents and children in an urban wasteland remains intact. The long nocturnal scenes of rebellious or cruel exploits, often imbued with the presence of death, retain their allure. Death itself is revealed only at the end, when the little Genesio is dragged away by the river in a scene devoid of dramatic clamor, assuming the function of a symbol.
For this work, Pasolini faced a trial for "obscenity," an accusation that today appears unsustainable but which, in those years, carried a precise meaning of persecution.
To understand what the stigmatization of "obscenity" and, above all, the trial meant for the writer, we can draw from his verses:
He awaited me in the sun of the empty little square, my friend, like uncertain... Ah, what blind haste in my steps, how blind my swift race. The morning light was the light of evening: immediately I noticed it. The brown of his eyes was too vivid, falsely cheerful... Anxiously and gently, he told me the news. But more humane was the human injustice if before hurting me, it passed through you, Attilio...
Cover of “Ragazzi di Vita”.
The protagonist of the novel is Riccetto, a street boy who navigates between poverty and delinquency.
The book describes the events of Riccetto and his friends, portraying the reality of difficult living conditions, the struggle for survival, and the lack of prospects.
"Ragazzi di vita" is considered one of Pasolini's most significant novels and represents an important literary document on the social condition of post-war Italy, capturing the disillusionment and desperation of a marginalized generation.
Here are recounted the “boys”of the Monteverde neighborhood, where the stories of the young people, whose tales later became the plot of Pasolini's famous novel, “Ragazzi di Vita”, are narrated.
1957 is also the year of Pasolini's father's death.
His reluctance to seek care, in the name of a rhetorical life, becomes palpable. Pasolini reveals his father's contempt towards him and his mother, refusing to listen to them. The narrator recalls a night when he returned home just in time to witness his father's death, describing the moment as a powerless observation of a man fading away, a man who had rejected any care and communication with his family.
The collection of poems "Le ceneri di Gramsci" in the same year, awarded in Viareggio, consolidates Pasolini's position as a great poet.
In this collection, he outlines the path to a new poetry of civic engagement, without sacrificing the expression of his doubts, anxieties, or irresistible joys. Using an unusual meter, Pasolini adopts an approach that is both a rupture and a citation at the same time.
In the excerpt "Recit" from "Le ceneri di Gramsci," Pasolini boldly demonstrates his artistic prowess. The unabashed use of the false alexandrine by Pier Jacopo Martelli, one of the most commonplace meters in Italian poetry, to express his emotion at the announcement of the trial by his friend Attilio Bertolucci, reveals much about Pasolini's mastery.
The choice of a meter often despised for its association with the flat "civilization" and "reason" of the eighteenth century underscores Pasolini's strength and expertise in transforming such an antiquated and distant literary model.
A Cover of “The Ashes of Gramsci”.
Pier Paolo Pasolini personally recites some poems within the work “The Ashes of Gramsci”.
In 1959, the poet published the novel "Una Vita Violenta," a work distinguished by its raw portrayal of urban reality and life in the outskirts. The novel solidifies him as one of the few Italian writers whose fame transcends national borders. The book received eleven translations and fifteen reprints in Italy, consolidating its presence in the literary landscape.
It represents the more compact and dramatic counterpart to "Ragazzi di Vita," with a well-defined protagonist: the young Tommaso Puzzilli.
Set in Rome, the novel follows the events of Tommaso, a young man from the underclass, in a context marked by poverty, unemployment, and violence.
Tommaso, known as Tommy, navigates through a chaotic and often desperate world, where crime and brutality are integral parts of daily life. Pasolini paints an unfiltered portrait of this marginal existence, exploring its darkest and most disillusioned aspects. Pasolini's prose captures the frenetic and tumultuous energy of a young man struggling to survive in a hostile environment.
The poignant odyssey of the young man gains even greater poetic depth thanks to Pasolini's inclusion of joys, outbursts ("I've been rich, and I didn't even notice it!" Tommaso will declare, observing a group of children), and irrepressible hopes.
With a steady hand, dry eyes, and a unity of inspiration, Pasolini follows Tommaso's figure through his falsely arrogant steps, his heartbeat, his furrowed silences, and his blushes. In the final chapters, seemingly unconnected or random events complete, with the wonderful coherence of the inevitable, the circle of Tommaso's days: the announcement of illness, enrollment in the party, the hurricane. Moving away from the bar chatter, when "those from the party" seek help for a flooded neighborhood, Tommaso finds himself chasing the last and prophetic bond of his former friends: "Saint Thomas, the saint of the flooded."
The novel doesn't follow a conventional plot but unfolds through episodes of Tommy's life, offering a series of vivid and evocative scenes. The author adopts a sharp and straightforward narrative style, using a language rich in Roman expressions and dialects, which lends authenticity and depth to the events narrated.
"Una Vita Violenta" is a kind of urban painting, a fresco that portrays the dark and often overlooked side of society. The novel stands out for its ability to capture the essence of a generation, to give voice to those living on the margins, expressing the disillusionment and anger of those forced to struggle in adverse conditions.
Cover of “Una Vita Violenta”
Through this work, the writer continues his exploration of the human condition, offering a penetrating look at the social and political reality of Italy in his time. "Una Vita Violenta" emerges as a literary testament that, despite its harshness, manages to convey a profound empathy for the characters and a vibrant critique of the injustices of the world.
Despite the years since its publication, "Una Vita Violenta" maintains its desperate and fierce beauty intact, with lines of drama that appear as if etched in stone, a tale of a young man destined for marginalization, despite his every effort, and ultimately torn from existence itself.
In-depht exploration of the novel “Una Vita Violenta” by Professor Luigi Gaucio.
Starting from 1960, Pasolini explores in cinema an expressive medium that proves extraordinarily suited to his stylistic inquiries and his urgent need for immediate visual communication.
The magnificent "Accattone" of 1961 constitutes a work that completes the discourse initiated with the novels on the outskirts, immortalizing in images what was splendid or atrocious that had escaped the written word.
In a few years, he realizes a series of films in which every achievement of neorealism is not only assimilated but also promptly surpassed, placing him among the greatest Italian directors (including "Mamma Roma", 1962; "La ricotta" in "Rogopag", 1962-63; "The Gospel According to St. Matthew", 1964; "Hawks and Sparrows", 1966; "Oedipus Rex", 1967; "Theorem", 1968; "Pigsty", 1969; "Medea", 1970; up to the "trilogy of life" or of eros, comprising "The Decameron", 1971; "The Canterbury Tales", 1972; "Arabian Nights", 1974; "Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom", 1975).
Despite the often heated controversies, these films faithfully reflect the stages of the intellectual and ethical evolution of their author, who skillfully uses every means offered by the human artistic heritage, be it music, painting, or literature, to create a style that lyrically transfigures the narrative.
The writer's inner evolution leads to extraordinary and innovative results in poetry.
In volumes like "The Religion of My Time" (1961), "Poetry and Form of a Rose" (1964), and "Transuming and Organizing" (1971), his intimate diary, the increasingly heated polemics with the increase of his public notoriety, the rejection of pacification, a desperate love for life and his own painful eros take on tones of freedom and courage rarely found in Italy.
These feelings are expressed through a style that has been defined as splendid mannerism, characterized by a funereal and baroque passion.
Compared to his poetic achievements, the more recent narrative works appear of lesser dimensions: the novel "The Dream of a Thing" (1962), the stories of "Ali with Blue Eyes" (1964), and the remarkable "Theorem" (1968), in which the metaphor of religious significance emerges clearly through the intrusion of the divine into a typical well-to-do Milanese family.
In his later years, evaluating his artistic figure, it is important to emphasize Pasolini's versatility and incessant creative activity. He intensified his polemical and essayistic interventions, some of which are collected in "Heretical Empiricism" (1972) and "Corsair Writings" (1975).
Below are some posters of his most famous films.
Poster of “Accattone”.
Poster of “Uccellacci e Uccellini”.
Poster of “Il Decameron”.
Poster of “Il Vangelo secondo Matteo”.
Poster of “Mamma Roma”.
Poster of “Teorema”.
Poster of “Il Porcile”.
Poster of “Salò or th 120 Days of Sodom”.
Pasolini distinguished himself as one of the leading provocateurs of intellectual scandal, a characteristic that he shared even from his days as a relatively unknown poet and philologist, albeit in a less flamboyant manner.
The significant number of lawsuits, sometimes unjustified or entirely fanciful, that he had to face, is indicative of this propensity.
His polemical writings were designed to provoke violent reactions, transparently reflecting his personal tragedies. His way of exposing his vulnerability to the eyes and voices of everyone could appear immodest and a provocation to martyrdom. Regardless of the theme addressed, there always emerged a quest for the absolute and "morality" in the highest sense of the term, which, for many, was disconcerting.
Aware and accepting of his condition as "different", and therefore "excluded" and "pointed out", the poet engaged in the most heated discussions with the strength of the meek in the face of real scandal and the authentic violence of hypocrisy and false tolerance.
The director talks about the cinematic language as a narrative dimension.
His multifaceted persona also embraced painting as one of the many facets of his creative genius. He began his artistic journey in painting during his teenage years and early youth, experimenting with a variety of colors and techniques.
Although his paintings do not enjoy the same widespread renown as other aspects of his artistic career, they bear witness to his aesthetic and intellectual exploration.
Pasolini's paintings range from portraits to landscapes, sometimes showing surrealist influences. The artistic exploration through painting contributed to shaping his worldview and developing his overall artistic style. However, it should be emphasized that his fame and most significant contributions are primarily linked to cinema, poetry, and literary criticism.
Some paintings by Pasolini exhibited in the Modern Art Gallery of Rome.
Lastly, there is his great love for football.
Pasolini's passion for football undoubtedly originates in Bologna.
During his high school years, he spent hours and hours playing football on the grass fields outside the city walls, later defining them as "the most beautiful moments of my life in an absolute sense".
His experience in Bologna coincided fortuitously with Bologna FC winning 4 league titles, reaching the peak of its history in those years. This love for football rooted so deeply in him that it accompanied him even to Rome, as evidenced by the numerous letters he sent to family members and colleagues.
In 1957, the Bolognese writer was a sort of special guest at the Rome derby for the newspaper "l'Unità". Accompanied by Sergio Citti, a friend and "Roman consultant" for his works, Pasolini seemed more interested in the faces, colors, and conversations intercepted between groups of friends than in the match itself. Whether winners or losers, popular or bourgeois, distant or provincial, native or immigrant, Pasolini carefully examines them in an article that represents a small gesture of sociology about stadium-goers fifty years ago.
In the 1960s, Pasolini was a huge fan of the rossoblù team, so much so that he realized his dream of meeting and interviewing the players.
The video interviews, an integral part of the documentary film "Comizi d'amore," constituted an investigation into the relationship between Italians and sexuality.
In the film, the Bologna players appeared quite embarrassed by Pasolini's irreverent questions. Excited by this special encounter, he bombarded them with questions, receiving in return mostly monosyllabic answers.
In Rome, he always kept alive his love for playing football, showing a clear preference for playing the game over simply watching or supporting.
Ninetto Davoli fondly recalls Pasolini's enthusiasm during filming when football was involved: "Often, if we stumbled upon a game of kids on an improvised field, he would ask to kick the ball a couple of times and was happy as a child."
Images depicting Pasolini's in the role of a football player.
On the day of the match with the national actors' team, he would cancel any commitment, from conferences to filming a movie.
The documentary film “Comizi d'amore”.
The matches involved the entire cast, from the lead actors to the crew.
Franco Citti, who starred in "Accattone," described the post-match atmosphere: "After the games, we’d goof around again. It was as if suddenly a veil descended over everything. The excitement was over, the magical moment that made him smile and laugh like a kid again. [..] Drenched in sweat and dirt, we'd slip under the showers, and he'd be alone again, immediately drowning in thoughts and problems he never shared with anyone."
Pasolini was the heart of the entertainment industry team for several years. Alongside personalities like Gianni Morandi, Little Tony, Ninetto Davoli, and Franco Citti himself, he traveled around Italy for charitable purposes or used locations like Grado during the summer to organize matches that became the most anticipated events of the summer season.
But one match, more than any other, will indelibly mark history.
It's one of Pasolini's last games, played on March 16, 1975, at Parma's training ground.
The event is significant: it coincides with Bernardo Bertolucci's birthday, already an established director and "discovered" by Pasolini as an assistant director on "Accattone." While the Bolognese is in the area for filming "Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma," the Parmesan is busy on the set of "Novecento."
Laura Betti decides to organize this unusual birthday for Bertolucci also to defuse the tension caused, in the months before, by Pasolini's criticisms of "Last Tango in Paris."
The match becomes a memorable event known as "Centoventi vs Novecento," with Bertolucci's team victorious, although the director himself prefers to watch. This event is documented in Laura Betti's film "Pier Paolo Pasolini e la ragione di un sogno," released in 2001.
The influence of football as an autobiographical element emerges penetratingly in Pasolini's writings.
In his novels like "Ragazzi di vita" or "Una vita violenta," football is never seen as a mere competition with winners and losers. The matches portrayed by Pasolini are rather fragments of the game, used to highlight duels, challenges, gestures of provocation, without ever slipping into mere sports reporting, as noted by Valerio Piccioni in his "Quando giocava Pasolini."
Trailer of the film Centoventi vs Novecento", based on the famous match between Bertolucci's team and Pasolini's team.
Therefore, this is a football that deviates from stadiums, journalism, but also from matches organized in low-level football fields, where the rules of the game are still dictated by the ball itself. This is the football that Pasolini prefers, made of bodies, physicality, running, and sweat: it matters little whether one plays with a deflated ball or amidst garbage, as it remains football in its most primitive essence. Perhaps these are precisely his favorite football fields, places to "rest" from the hardships of filming, explore and experience the suburbs of Rome, identify faces for the next film.
Once, during an interview, Enzo Biagi asked him, "Without cinema, without writing, what would you have liked to become?" And he replied, "A good footballer. After literature and eros, football is one of the great pleasures for me."
And unfortunately, we have now come to the epilogue of the story, namely that fateful November 2, 1975, the day of Pasolini's death, shrouded in mystery and controversy.
The scene of the crime was located in a place well known to Pasolini, and the discovery of his body took place against a backdrop of shacks and refuse.
Pasolini was brutally murdered, and the circumstances of his death have been the subject of debate and speculation.
The official investigation concluded that Pasolini was a victim of homicide, but the motive and identity of the killers remained controversial. Initially, a young delinquent named Pino Pelosi was arrested and charged with Pasolini's murder. However, many doubts and questions surround this version of events.
Mural tribute to the figure of Pasolini in Trastevere, Rome.
Some believe that Pasolini was murdered because of his political views and his radical criticism of Italian society at the time. Others speculate that the motive may have been personal in nature, related to issues in his private life.
Pasolini's death continues to generate discussions and conspiracy theories, fueled also by inconsistencies and gaps in the official documentation of the case. His passing represents one of the darkest and most controversial tragedies in Italian cultural and political history.
Article Source:
I parchiletterati
https://www.parchiletterari.com/parchi/pasolini/vita.php
Gioco Pulito
https://giocopulito.it/pasolini-e-il-calcio-lintellettuale-che-voleva-essere-unala-sinistra/
Galleria d'Arte di Roma
https://www.galleriaartemodernaroma.it/it/mostra-evento/pasolini-pittore
Canali Youtube
Trastevere App
Prof. Luigi Gaudio
Bruno Esposito
Film&Clips CG Entertainment
© All copyrights of the images depicting paintings by Pier Paolo Pasolini belong to the Art Gallery of Rome.