Author: Liu Ruting (Former senior reporter of Xinhua News Agency)
March 5 marks the centenary of the birth of the famous Italian film director Pierre Paolo Pasolini. In addition to being a film director, he was also an outstanding novelist, playwright, critic, and outstanding poet. For various reasons, his novels, plays, reviews, and poems are rare on the mainland. His poems can better reflect his heart and position, and the translation and study of these poems is undoubtedly of great significance.
Pasolini, whose hometown is the small town of Casalsa in the Friuli region, published his first poem, The Poetry of Casalza, at the age of 20 when he was in college, and five or six more books of poetry. What made him famous was the poetry collections "Gramsci's Ashes" and "Religion of My Time" published in 1957 and 1961, respectively. The poetry collection caused a huge sensation immediately after its publication, and reports at the time said that "it is extremely rare that sales are so good". Critics soon began a heated discussion with rave reviews, the former being called "the first poem of the new generation (intellectuals)", "a challenge to 20th-century Italian literature" and "proclaiming the end of bourgeois civilization"; The latter book takes aim at the church, lashing out at the church, the Italian power system, the mafia, and neo-Nazis, leaving no room for compromise.
The two collections of poems are a collection of 11 poems written between 1951 and 1956 and nearly 40 poems from 1955 to 1960, with the title of one of the most important poems. The poet himself said: "Religion of My Time represents the crisis of the 60s... On the one hand, the alarm bells of the new capitalism have sounded, and on the other hand, the revolution is at a standstill, and there is a vacuum between the two, a terrible vacuum of existence that follows. These poems depict a period of rapid industrial development after the economic recovery of Italy after World War II, when many peasants from the relatively backward South flocked to the north, forming a surging wave of domestic immigration. Although Italy soon developed from a backward industrial-agrarian country to a developed capitalist country, the profound economic and social changes that followed made many serious problems stand out. The poet sensitively discovered and depicted these problems, tried his best to grasp the real suffering of the people at the bottom, carefully considered and analyzed, clearly expressed his indignation and criticism, bravely resisted, and proposed that this new capitalist society should be completely denied, and this society dominated by the vulgar and hypocritical "cold and ruthless heart of the state" that has long declined should be rejected.
After graduating from university, Pasolini went to Rome, rented a house near a prison, and squeezed a bus every day to teach in a suburban town. What he saw on the way provided material for his poems, and also made him see the hardships of the poor and feel the "tired and bitter life is terribly harsh" and harsh. The two poetry collections contain a large collection of "reading painting poems" and "wandering poems". The former is to watch a painting while observing the surroundings, both depicting the painting and writing about the people and things around them and their own feelings about life, like thinking and exploring in front of a mirror; The latter is wandering the streets and squares, sometimes even "wandering", clearly expressing what the eye sees and thinks in the heart, like a passionate inner monologue, and eloquently critical.
The poems in the two collections include a wide range of themes, including the praises of the anti-fascist resistance movement, the exposure and criticism of barbaric industrialization and new capitalism, the depiction of the difficult life of the poor and the unemployed on the fringes of the industrial zone and the debauchery of the young people in these places expressing their struggles, the criticism of social chaos and speculative drilling and deformed consumption, the criticism of the cynicism and abuse of intellectuals, the relentless criticism of the church, and so on. The poet sees, "Nothing has changed in Italy:/ It shudders in a sweet death like air, / The rule of the highest ruling class never mutates." These poems depict kaleidoscopic scenes and details of life, express the poet's unique view of social reality, and while attacking "bourgeois incompetence", some unworthy details and the ignorance and obedience of some people arouse the poet's anger. At the same time, he also saw innocence and hope in the homeless proletarians, and saw that many of the people "drew strong passion and vitality from the cold rocks" and regarded them as the typical and hope for the future who were free and unconstrained by various rules. This ignited his sympathy, indignation, and passion for the people's "unchanging/recurring life cognition/long-lasting in the bottom of my heart, my heart/still full of long-lost crying", "My heart is stormy", "I don't turn my emotions into love / How much is my fault?" Even if I can permeate my life with / ten thousand pure, blind benevolence day after day, / This is still a grave mistake ..." The poet finally says: "Anxiety must be freed, / This prison of poverty and suffering must be freed!" In the collection of poems, the poet's intense passion shines on everything, making these two collections of poems considered to be the most personal masterpieces with clear concepts, "passion and ideological consciousness overlapping".
The Ashes of Gramsci, the title of the first book, is also a wandering poem, and the poet's way to teach includes the cemetery where Gramsci's cemetery is located. Gramsci was the main founder of the Italian Communist Party, the most famous Marxist and literary theorist in the West, and was known as a "creative thinker" for proposing the "national road to socialism". He was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the fascists at the age of 33, ate moldy food in prison, was not allowed to keep warm in the rainy and cold winter, did not give due treatment when he was sick, and Mussolini viciously declared that he "wanted to stop his mind from thinking for 20 years" in a vain attempt to achieve the goal of "chronic killing". However, Gramsci still studied the theory of revolution with a strong will under extremely difficult conditions, and wrote more than 30 "Notes in Prison" and a large number of letters (later collected as "Prison Letters") from memory, which became an important work in the history of modern Italian thought. After 11 years in prison, Gramsci died in prison and was buried in a non-Catholic cemetery on the outskirts of Rome, with only "Gramsci's Tomb" and the date of birth and death inscribed on the simple tombstone. The poet wrote with admiration after passing through the cemetery: "You paint ideals with your emaciated hands", "In the time of being tortured and killed, / Write the most brilliant psalm masterpieces." "You fight against sacrifice, / Sincerely and fanatically dedicated, with a passion for freedom in your consciousness", "defending a mesmerizing innocence". The poet passionately appealed: "Must be recognized, must be acted upon", "no concessions are tolerated", expressing the ambition that "something should be done in the world and assume the role of enlightenment".
In addition to the aforementioned content, the second collection of poems, Religion of My Time, an important part of the book is to lash out at the Church, making this poem the most passionate and combating work of his poetry. The poem, which is the title of the book, is also a "wandering poem", but it is not the poet who is wandering, but two young people wandering in Rome, and the poet writes this poem in observation and recollection and reflection on it. He recalled that as a child he had "given all my innocence and blood to Jesus Christ" (the poet actually gave up his religion at the age of 14). But what he sees now is that young people "survive in chaos, no one cares, they/walk with passion". The poet points out that the Catholic faith "is the faith of the bourgeoisie, / and its symbol is all kinds of privileges, all kinds of benefits, / all kinds of slavery".
In the late World War II and post-war reconstruction period, the most popular artistic style in Italy was neorealism, and this style of excellent novels and films emerged in large numbers, which had a great influence on the world literary world. However, there are very few neorealist poems, and the most influential in the poetry world is the hermitage that focuses on portraying the subtle emotions of people's inner world. In this context, it is natural that an anonymous intellectual in his 30s should write a poem that is so clear-minded, so enthusiastic, so eloquent, so powerful in combat effectiveness, and so clear in ideology. The famous writer Moravia said: "Pasolini is a great poet, and there will only be two or three great poets in a century." ”
Naturally, these poems also made the Church and the far right extremely angry. On November 2, 1975, pasolini's body was found on a beach outside Rome, and the 17-year-old male prostitute Pino was convicted, but it is still suspected that he could not have killed the poet alone, that he was merely a scapegoat. The clearing where the poet was attacked to death soon became a "place of pilgrimage", with cars lined up in long lines, oval graves made of stones, crosses made of two wooden sticks and erected behind the graves, painted with "P.P. Pasolini", and others cut off the pictures of the poets in the newspaper and leaned against the cross, surrounded by vases full of flowers.
Guangming Daily (2022-08-18 13th edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily