A city that promotes reading, Lamezia Terme with the Lametino Library System, which among the various initiatives open to all, and especially to young people, 50 years after the tragic death of Pier Paolo Pasolini has organized a review with a rich two-month calendar for an intense journey into Pasolini’s world. Conceived by Carlo Fanelli, associate professor of the Department of Humanistic Studies of the University of Calabria and created by the Lametino Library System, with the patronage of the Department of Humanistic Studies of Unical, the Calabria Film Commission and the Experimental Center of Cinematography of Rome, the exhibition, placing an intellectual figure of reference alongside meetings and testimonies, tells the story of the poet, the director, the novelist, the journalist, the essayist, the sportsman, the friend, the traveller, putting at the center of reflections, the relevance of his thought and his legacy. Among the testimonies, that of an exceptional guest like Dacia Maraini who, in dialogue with Fanelli in the meeting «Pasolini and… Alberto Moravia», spoke of the profound bond of friendship between her, Pasolini and Moravia.
«Pasolini and Moravia were very good friends – he recalled – they loved each other, although very different. Alberto believed in reason as a tool for understanding reality, Pasolini on the contrary believed in the senses, through which he could also understand the culture of a country. But they compensated each other, because every now and then Pasolini needed Moravia’s enlightened judgment, and vice versa Moravia needed Pasolini’s sensual gaze in the dialectical relationship with reality.” Maraini has many memories, especially of those 1950s and 1960s «in which Roman intellectuals met without making an appointment for the pleasure of being together, among cafes and cheap trattorias, because no one was rich at that time». And then the happy days of the house of Sabaudia, the place of choice for her, Pasolini and Moravia, and Pasolini’s great human interest in the figure of Christ, his questioning of the sacred as a layman. «Pier Paolo had a sacred attitude towards life – continued Maraini – in fact he did not want Palestine as the setting for “The Gospel according to Matthew”, but Calabria, Lucania and partly Puglia, the South whose suffering he felt; therefore he had chosen it as a place of archaic innocence for the imagery and visionary nature of many of his films.” And, again, the travels, «the love for poetry and the profound knowledge of the great poets (among the French Rimbaud and Verlaine, and our Pascoli and Leopardi whose verses he recited in Africa in front of a powerful nature) and the close relationship with painting, especially Italian pre-Renaissance painting».
Dacia, in her book «Caro Pier Paolo», from 2022, returns a moving image of Pasolini through imaginary letters, memories and dreams. What is “your” Pasolini?
«The private Pasolini. At this moment there are hundreds of people specializing in literature, politics and philosophy who interpret his thoughts, but I have known his private side and therefore I try to tell what we experienced together, like Sabaudia, where in ten days of intense work I collaborated with him on the screenplay of “The Flower of a Thousand and One Nights”, and our travels together, in Africa, in Afghanistan, in Nepal. In the house in Sabaudia my room was under hers and I could feel the heels of her boots. One night in my house in Rome – he was already dead – I seemed to feel those studs again, and in the dream I spoke to him as if he were alive. From that dream “Caro Pier Paolo” was born.”
With you was Moravia, who today seems like a forgotten author…
«It seems like this because Moravia was a man of reason, an enlightener. At the moment irrationality prevails, so I believe that Moravia will be rediscovered later, when reason will prevail again.”
Today he would probably be a cult author, due to his life choices. Would you like Pasolini today?
«It’s difficult to say whether the general public would like him, but his ideas, for example on consumer culture that commodifies everything, are very current. He was profoundly “anarchist”; when the homosexual movement “Fuori” asked him to join, he refused, even though his homosexuality was exhibited, because he was against any form of organization or demonstration that formed a system or became powerful. Pasolini’s popularity today comes from this freedom.”
In the interview with Enzo Biagi in 1971 he defined himself as a global protester. Would you also like it as a protester?
«When he protested there was another reality. The country has changed, we are in a different moment, I think he would contest artificial intelligence, but it wasn’t there then, everything must be historicized.”
There are many commemorations. But is there an attitude of reparative memory towards it, beyond the celebrations?
«Those who attacked him during his lifetime now appropriate it, considering it their point of reference. I think this happens because his atrocious death showed that he was a victim, not a perpetrator. But I believe that the fact that he was martyred has completely changed the attitude of people who previously saw him as a rapist, an aggressive person. Unfortunately, those who consider him a martyr have often never read his poems, his books, or seen his films.”
What is Pasolini’s legacy beyond the complexity of his worldview?
«I believe he should be considered first and foremost a poet, a great poet. Poetry was his deepest communication tool, even if it was more difficult to communicate with others, but he was not an abstract, theoretical poet, he was a poet very much immersed in reality, attentive to the reasons of his time. And then her poetry brought her to the cinema, her cinema is also poetic.”