Page 90 - ARTE!Brasileiros #61

ENGLISH VERSION FERTILITY AND KINDNESS

that the first verses published (and still imminent, but still recognized by few of his from the real world, academicism and
not repudiated), verses from the age of 18, generation, who would need the fall of the officialdom are not appreciated by him
are in Friulian demonstrates that my poetic Berlin wall and the neoliberal advance to either. In one of his skirmishes with Italian
operation took place under the sign of a admit that Pasolini’s diagnosis was at least intellectuals, Pasolini recounts: “I was able
strongly critical, intellectual inspiration”, illuminating”, as Amoroso explains. However, to prove that Italian intellectuals have never
he even confirmed. The dialect in question in the Corsair Writings the intellectual considered the problem of popular ‘culture’,
was spoken by his mother, Susanna Colussi seems to continue to converse, at times, and they don’t even know what it is. They
Pasolini, born in Casarsa della Delizia, a with these same contemporaries, when believe that the people have no culture
city located in northern Italy. As Amoroso expressing his indignation at conformism because they have no bourgeois culture;
points out, in addition to the affective aspect (“The thirst for conformism is, therefore, or else, that their culture is that larva of
of the choice, equal to modesty [...] the intoxication of bourgeois culture that they can learn at
Having been born in Bologna, in March serving Power is a gratification”) and a school, in the barracks or, in any case, in
1922, his late contact with the Friuli region form of resistance described as essentially bureaucratic relations with the ruling class.
(where he came to live with his mother and welcome to Power. That the people, therefore, live in a kind of
brother Guido from 1943 onwards, before As time passes, his assault on Power pre-cultural dream, that is, pre-moral and
moving to Rome at the beginning of the does not fade. Amoroso notes that “when pre-ideological.
following decade) is formative because, reading Pasolini today, one realizes that, Like every historical document, the
according to Amoroso, “his interest in the on the one hand, the interpretations given Corsair Writings need to be read within their
language spoken by the region’s peasants to the course taken by Italian society were situational coordinates, but questions such
led him to discover a world full of mysteries becoming increasingly forceful and alarmed, as those brought up above could be placed
and enchantment that was opposed to but that, on the other hand, the poet exuded in the present, as well as their provocation
the city, to his own family tradition. This vitality and vigor” . The energy described about what we today call the culture of
coexistence gave rise to Pasolini’s deep by the teacher does not preclude, however, cancellation: “Whoever felt the primary
respect for the vital, rich, diversified a growing distance from Pasolini. In her need to ‘revoke’ me [...] he would be a priori
peasant culture, and his familiarity with book, she brings up the presentation that prevented from understanding anything
its meanings and symbols”. She adds that the writer makes when he debuts his column else I said, because, as lawyers well know,
“there, for the first time, the writer witnesses The chaos, in the newspaper Tempo. There, it is necessary to discredit, without mercy,
a confrontation between the rural workers he states: “If I am independent, I am so with the person who testifies in order to discredit
of his region and the landowners”. anger, pain and humiliation, not a priori, his testimony”. One of the contradictions of
His experience in Friuli would also with the calm of the strong, but forced. this complex figure (which can be seen in
provide a rich mental counterpoint to the […] My case is not one of indifference or the Corsair Writings and exemplified in this
transformation that took place in Italy – independence: it is one of loneliness”. A topic) is that Pasolini himself, even with his
through the advance of capitalism and its lament also translated into a poem by the free and serious intellectual commitment,
dehumanizing materialism –, often brought same: “And I, adult fetus, wander more is not immune to the condemnation of the
up by Pasolini in his criticisms (which would modern than all moderns in search of witness in the place of testimony, or the
earn him accusations of nostalgia for the brothers who no longer exist”. On the other invocation of castrating Judeo-Christian
peasant universe and the past ). “Whoever hand, Pasolini points out this suffering moral guilt.
manipulated and radically changed the great apartment as something, to a certain Perhaps Pasolini was, as referred to
Italian peasant and working masses is a extent, necessary for the critical exercise: by the French publication Les Cahiers du
new Power, for me very difficult to define, “That is, moreover, what guarantees me a Cinéma, an “arsonist”, but not unreasonable.
but I am sure that it is the most violent and certain (perhaps crazy and contradictory) His provocations go far beyond the
totalitarian that has ever existed: it changes objectivity. I have no one behind me to topics brought throughout this text; they
the nature of people, it achieves the most support me and with whom I have common range from religion to anticlericalism;
depth of consciousness”. Pasolini says he interests to defend”. of sacralization, desacralization and
observes a profoundly neurotic “physical In his reflection on the ideal conduct of the resacralization; from maternal love to
sadness” in the population. “It results from critic, Pasolini emphasizes the importance the conflict of generations; from sex to
a frustration of society. Now that the social of dialogue and a certain abdication of abortion; from the rational to the irrational;
model to be realized is no longer that of the both authority and credibility, a gesture from language, from dialects to behavior;
class itself, but imposed by Power, many to which he links freedom from the fear of from progress to “development”. When
are not capable of realizing it. contradicting oneself and being able to one thinks that one has traversed the
Faced with the consolidation of the values place oneself “in a condition of not having complete circumference around Pasolini,
of capitalism (which Pasolini now refers anything to lose and, therefore, not to be he eversions his own sphere. Professor
to simply as “Power”), the poet warns of faithful to any pact, except the one with a Maria Betânia Amoroso recalls that shortly
the risk of “a form of dehumanization, a reader that I consider worthy of increasingly before being brutally murdered, Pasolini
form of atrocious aphasia, a brutal absence daring research”. wanted, whether through reinvention or
of critical capacity, of a factious passivity. One should not confuse the observations redemption, to rewrite his works.
Against his own prediction, Pasolini wages above about the freedom (even if resulting “Perhaps the reader may think that I say
a limp battle, for which he finds insufficient from solitude) of the intellectual with the banal things. But whoever is scandalized
consolation in his intellectual colleagues, isolation of these figures in themselves, is always banal. And I, unfortunately, am
since “the danger of bourgeois entropy was frowned upon by the author – the divorce scandalized.”

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