PASOLINI NARRATOR
Di Franco Romano
Talking about Pasolini's narrative means immediately encounter a difficulty: it is impossible to do, from a certain point in time at least, regardless of his film. Never forget, moreover, that Pasolini was a complete artist, he sought his own style through the boundaries that separate genres, resembling more, in this, a Renaissance artist rather than contemporary.
He debuted as a dialect poet and immediately after speaking at a time still dominated by controversy over realism and obscurity, with many Italian writers and critics, even his friends, he will always remain essentially a poet, even when the choices take away from poetry, to give up almost everything. Yet Pasolini's propensity for different modes of expression took shape very early and was not at all the result of an impromptu decision, would be sufficient to testify, the bulk of his writings on cinema, a veritable handbook of criticism, but also grammar and syntax cinematography. He was convinced (and this in my opinion, wrong), that the language of Italian poetry had irretrievably deteriorated, he said in verse here and there in very distant, almost coinciding with its beginnings (in the 1960 death of realism is ) and then repeated in several interviews.
Italy was becoming an industrial country, the culture was about to become mass thanks to the unified school, the poet, in one of his many paradoxes, came to oppose. Pasolini lived change dramatically, but probably also present as a repeated, in social life, the trauma of innocence violated that had deeply marked his youth. Before the killing of his brother Guido and then the scandal of the trial for homosexuality had moved away from that place that was protected and maternal Casarsa of his first poems in dialect.
His narrative, however, before the controversial verses in the language of Italian poetry and the very decision to abandon the poetic expression.
REALISM ARCHAIC.
What Pasolini tried in fiction and then in the movies? First, a greater adherence to the social reality in transformation. He felt that the narrative device and then the film might work the best poetry to witness the presence of a world that was ending and that he wanted to preserve the memory. After all, Pasolini chasing the style best suited to express realism would call archaic, which aims to find everywhere the traces of civilization largely rural set saw here where we live and which led him farther and farther away from the heart of the Western world, both in space and back over time. The smell of India, a diary of the trip to India that the writer did together with Moravia, the same poem in The Poetry Guinea in the form of pink, are many traces of this process will become more explicit and complete in the film.
said that as a premise we can now directly approach to Pasolini's narrative, in which we can identify two distinct phases. An assessment of him, however, deserve the three posthumous novels: Impure acts, Amado mio, especially oil, a text which I was opening a third phase of Pasolini's narrative, unfortunately cut short by his death. Only the first of these periods has almost complete autonomy from the cinema, although the pictorial quality of the text pasolininao almost naturally lends itself to a film adaptation. In that report
facing the novels of the early years with the Italian tradition of the novel? Our narrative nell''800
born around two dominant figures and other two, but nothing abnormal marginal, one of which, especially, re-read them carefully. The two pillars are of course Manzoni and Verga, the other two are Nievo and Fogazzaro. What makes these different authors, beyond all speech critical of their work, is the linguistic strategy. Manzoni, as we all know, chasing the purity of Italian and turns to Florence, following an established tradition but not founded in Dante's text more devoted to reflection on language: De vulgari eloquent. In that work master, Dante not married at all the Florentine as the national language, but stated, inter alia, that the Italian would be born to a mingling of different dialects, or at least one of the major, choosing an amalgam which aimed to capture the best of each regional variation. The Divine Comedy demonstrates, it was not him, but its high teaching poetry to impose ex post, the Florentine as the national language. You can also see how he liked the choice in the Risorgimento period, when the problem was not only the unification of the Italians and Italy. Even
Verga, when he came to Milan from his native Sicily, he was loyal to a program Manzoni, but thanks to the invaluable lesson of wild, began to doubt it. The argument against Manzoni of Milan, led him to bring the richness of the dialect in contact with the Italian language. Today we know that the dialect of Verga was actually another form of cultivated language and literature, but the important thing was that the lesson not only served him to write novels most important of our 800, but the attempt was a second model. Much later
narrative has followed more or less these great examples and Pasolini belongs to the ranks of those who have nurtured the Italian language of dialect humor. However, he is on this side of our local narrative tradition with two special features. First of all, its language, which he derives from a careful reading of Dante. He reads it as the poet of free indirect discourse, the linguistic contamination between high and low register, in a word, Pasolini reads Dante in his most expressionistic value. Second, he was convinced (and here comes his personal vision of the world) that the language of the Romans so borgatari as their world (but this applies to all regional languages \u200b\u200band cultures farmers around the world) could be preserved as such with all its richness, as a trace of innocence resistant to the spread of modernity: Boys Life A violent life and are born from this belief. We have here a curious contradiction (one of many): he himself, a few years later, was denounced by the indignation and outrage accents the irreparable approval process that would transform the Italian media in a language television, and aseptic anodyne; suitable for removal of life and meaning to all age groups and all regions, while the dialect, or some regional language usage, were recovered as folklore, for the most vulgar, by new comedians and cabaret artists, now rampant on television. In essence it was the myth of innocence to fall apart, but this does not mean that those works, also born quell'equivoco not retain their value, and indeed we can say today that thanks to the work of Camilleri and other authors, to be witnessing an interesting revival of the fruitful interplay between language and dialect, as it was in the past to writers such as Giovanni Testori and Vincenzo Consolo.
What are the salient features of the two novels Pasolini? First of all, its style, language and the structure of the novel. Let's start with the latter.
Be Boys Life is a violent life, have no real plot in the traditional sense. The development of the narrative, in fact, focused in live the life of a group of young people living in the Roman suburbs. These are lives that have no clear reference points; patchy by definition, between a fact and another, a meeting and another, that dot their days, there is often no connection. It is the passing of time always equal to articulate a narrative structure that really falls apart nell'inconsistenza. Tommasino, Shitter, even Accattone, or rags of the memorable film La Ricotta and all the other characters in the novels, they are not the romantic deracinès or angry, as in contemporary comedies and dramas of Osborne, Pinter and Wesker, nor resemble the prototype well represented by James Dean in the film that had as its protagonist the so-called 'Rebel', much less are beatniks Mediterranean. All these I have mentioned are integrated from the big city, which sometimes dream of escaping, but that does not cease to be their natural habitat. The borgatari Pasolini's underclass, whose condemnation is given to social exclusion by definition, such a fate. They are the latest generation Italian underclass; after them will be immigrants or traditional nomadic peoples such as the Roma to represent this part of the company, even if today we a phenomenon of regression and even progressive marginalization of indigenous social groups.
The protagonists of the novels of Pasolini are excluded from the boom, are the excess of a society that still incorporates the majority of entrants to the life and work.
The structure of the novels, adhering to their lives, is open and fragmented and thus very adherent to the canon of twentieth-century European fiction, which had, for other reasons, dealt a decisive blow to the firmness of texture. However, Pasolini does not seem to fit nell'alveo fully aware of this tradition, its not a choice that comes from the reflections on the European novel of 900, but adheres to an inner need.
As for the language it is highly expressionistic, full of break-ins of the dialect as already noted, the dialogues are in direct contact with the spoken language of the poor villages, but also when they fall in the city and reaching institutional (a cinema, home of the MSI or PCI and others), these characters Pasolini maintain their total estrangement with the city than others. As the next metaphor of the Palace, The City is a kind of incomprehensible hieroglyphics, from which they remain far apart.
THE MEETING WITH THE CINEMA.
brings us to the second period and its interaction with the film. Although the two debut novels are works of fiction in every respect, Accattone summarizes the script for them. The relationship is tight, you create an immediate synergy between two modes of expression; Pasolini's narrative seems a lot of thought to the cinema, even if this does not happen at once but in stages and with a very strong mediation made by the painting. Accattone Some scenes have been compared to paintings by Caravaggio: certain sequences of The Gospel According to Matthew, are veritable icons in Russia, where everything is played around the first floor of the faces. Moreover, Pasolini drew the sketches of movie scenes and even the costumes, obeying an idea of \u200b\u200bcinema as craftsmanship, in which the director is really that at all stages of processing.
The turning point in the relationship between fiction and film is represented by Theorem. The year is 1968 (the film), while the novel of the same title will be released a year later. Reading it today confirms the very first lines that theorem is a novel written in a style that is closer to that of the so-called treatment, ie the text in the technical language of film before the script. The first chapters are titled: 1 data, 2 Other data (I), 3 Other data (II), etc.. up to 5 more. Here is the beginning of the first chapter: "The initial data consist of our history, very modestly, in the description of a family life ..." (p. 9) This incipit promptly following the description of the environment, then you move slowly, in later chapters, the description of the characters. With the season of Theorem
Pasolini's cinema, whose beginnings are traced back to 1961 with the already mentioned Accattone, is entering its mature phase. Before that, however, had already produced some of his masterpieces: Mamma Roma, 1962, Ricotta and rallies for the sake of '63, The Gospel according to Matthew of '64. The picture of Angie in
theorem, however, lends itself to wider considerations. At the basic level of reading the character embodies the hopes of transformation that were born with the '68: the visceral beatings of students after the riots of Valle Giulia creates an angelic figure who enters the lives of a middle-class family and light, leading in each of them a process of metamorphosis. Angie embodies the timeless innocence before (as in Casarsa of her childhood) the impact of the history and the toughest aspects of reality, but is also a figure of readjustment of social change and change in subjective entity that placed between the human and the transcendent, trying to bring some 'of the harmony that Pasolini saw disappearing everywhere. This is also renewed hope at the base of the famous and scandalous in those days, Trilogy of Life: The Decameron, (1970-71), The Canterbury Tales (1971-72), Flower of a Thousand and One Nights (1973-74) .
In the film adaptation of three literary masterpieces premodern Pasolini films the time still a young company in which they live, vital, full of eros, which is faced with a future that seems to know no boundaries. The dream s'infrangerà very soon. When the movie industry would see the porn and Pasolini abiurerà three films will react and begin to write Oil and shooting his film more outrageous and terrible, and Salo the 120 Days of Sodom, which was released shortly before his death in 1975.
What are the characteristics of the second phase of his fiction? A little 'we have seen in Theorem. The language is once again the star of this metamorphosis. As in the novels borgatari was violent, expressionistic, even baroque at times, in Theorem becomes sparse, basic, made of pure images that seem to many frames. The use of present tense in direct contact with what is observed puts the reader in a position to follow what is happening as if he was on the scene.
Pasolini seems on the verge of abandoning the fiction and poetry, having abandoned the other hand, it will be the reflection on the Trilogy of Life to bring to fiction, or rather to that big project, and unfortunately unfinished and oil.
The posthumous novel.
The publication Petroleum unleashed a tide of controversy, because the work would be too incomplete. In fact if you read the notes (most of which certainly is not definitive), the way to tell is very close to writing theorem, although in this case, a letter of Pasolini in Moravia, removes all doubt about the intentions of the author that it was not a script: "Dear Albert, I send you this manuscript because you give me some advice. It is a novel, but it is not written as novels are written (true): its language is one that will work for the non-fiction, in some newspaper articles, for reviews, to private letters or even poetry. " P. 544-45.
Oil is designed as a grand affair and tragic, a modern Satyricon, populated by the same ghostly figures of his latest cinematic masterpiece - Salo and the 120 Days of Sodom - but reduced to petty bourgeois post-Fascist puppet, to officials of an age of decadence that sinks into a swamp gray. Paper prophetic when you consider the current reality! The borgatari have disappeared and no longer reappear if quell'imbarazzo so characteristic of those who still maintains regular awe of the company. They have learned their lesson and they know how the world works: they too are part of the great system of widespread corruption and give way to it cynically, and with no more innocence!
From a literary point of view Oil is also the testimony of overcoming that Pasolini had come from the conditions of his previous narrative. Contact with the universal language of cinema and even the loss of any hope of restoring a golden age, had liberated the narrative pasolinana by a too literal and direct use of local languages. Mourn the loss of that world he saw disappearing everywhere, Pasolini was opening up new perspectives, brutally cut short by his tragic death.
What remains of his fiction? I believe that the two novels are already borgatari two classics of the second 900, other works should be regarded as a theorem of transition. It is suggested by suggestions on Oil, however, that I would like most. As
unfinished novel contains the narrative hints and addresses issues making it an extraordinary open-air laboratory, a mine that the Italian novelists have overlooked in my opinion. Return to Oil and several years later with the controversy a little drowsy in my opinion would be very useful to everyone.
For as it is conceived and well written at least in part, Oil is part of that great and noble European tradition of the novel assay, where reflection and narrative in the strict sense of competing all the time, encouraging the reader to a continuous change of scene and adjust to a mixture of emotions. The narrative becomes more explicitly allegorical and fantastic at the same time, the choice of characters and names (and in this very lively the lesson of the film) creates, with a few strokes of the pen, situations, human types, which require the reader and not abandon him most: The Shit, the two Carli, The Empire of Troya, the Godoari and others: how realistic view of today's in that far, sulfur and chaotic mixing insights and suggestions! In Oil, Pasolini realizes what is happening in Italy in advance, as sometimes happens to great artists. Yet when it came out in the '80s, the text might seem just another representation of the discomfort Italian expressionist. Read today, many of those figures and characters, resemble very closely with television personalities and even ministers and junior ministers all too well known, what could be a tragic visionary text can be heard today in key realistic. An evaluation
apart and different, at least for me, deserve to two other works that is unclean and Amado mio Acts, which address both the theme of his homosexual initiation. I do not think that they are two great novels, although it is clear that an author like Pasolini finally reads everything and anything that says you can find the inspiration happy, but it was too painful and never completely resolved their homosexual identity. It is not the genre itself, the problem novels of initiation and training of this kind exist in all the '900 and some are real masterpieces. I mention two for all: Maurice Foster and Alexis by Marguerite Yourcenar. Pasolini was too much in contact with living matter and burning of his experience, could not get the distance needed to process it, if not in what you can read some passages of Oil, for example The pratone Casilina. The two novels in question, while imbued with an aura of naive innocence, have not the strength of representation of contemporary or later works. In
it justice after a long time, I believe that this should be said. Pasolini would be very far from the climate tends to unscrupulous, hedonistic and marked by a pervasive Dionysian excess, which characterizes our times. Unlike me that I write, I think he would have even considered the possibility of a blasphemy to define the term marriage to the union between two homosexuals, and the word gay do not think he would have just liked it. Not because he lacked impartiality in turn (in the famous article published in the Corriere della Sera in which he took a stand against abortion even suggesting that the homosexual relationship as a way to escape the suffocating relationship between sexuality and procreation), but because she has always lived Its like a difficult and painful condition beyond the social taboos. In this mixture of guilt and partial self-acceptance, also lurks the shadow zone that surrounds undoubtedly some of his existential choices.
