Pasolini laid bare, at odds with his own time – and ours. Ascanio Celestini takes on Pasolini in a head-
to-head battle with history. The result is a book that is urgent, necessary and uncomfortable.
Unvarnished. Unapologetic.
if you take Pasolini’s entire body of work, from his first childhood poem to the very last frame of
‘Salò’, you get the portrait of Italian history from the end of fascism to the mid-1970s. Vincenzo
Cerami had understood this, but Ascanio Celestini takes it a step further: let’s turn it into a game. A
real game, a dangerous gamble, which forces us to face up to our contradictions.
1964: Italy’s economic boom is already crumbling, a coup d’état is being plotted, and what does
Pasolini do? He makes “The Gospel According to Matthew”. Provocation? Escapism? Or a vision so
lucid it can see two millennia of history all at once?
March 1968, Valle Giulia: students clash with the police, and Pasolini dares to write, ‘I sympathised
with the police’. And a few lines later, ‘We are, of course, in agreement against the institution of the
police’. Betrayal? Madness? Or the only Italian intellectual who had the courage to reject the truisms
of his own time? The challenge, then, is to place Pasolini back in his own time. A time that was brief
yet full of life. And which today we can view in its entirety, from start to finish. Let’s put an end to
pointless questions such as ‘I wonder what Pasolini would say today’ about the destruction of Gaza,
state capitalism in China or the war in Ukraine, the internet and social media! Instead, let’s tell the
story of Pasolini´s many facets: the Friulian poet and the Roman filmmaker, the rogue intellectual
and the fragile man, the prophet of consumer society and the victim of violence in one of the great
Italian mysteries. Ascanio Celestini seeks to rediscover the poet’s gaze. Only in this way does Pasolini
remain a living presence, essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the contradictions of
the present.
to-head battle with history. The result is a book that is urgent, necessary and uncomfortable.
Unvarnished. Unapologetic.
if you take Pasolini’s entire body of work, from his first childhood poem to the very last frame of
‘Salò’, you get the portrait of Italian history from the end of fascism to the mid-1970s. Vincenzo
Cerami had understood this, but Ascanio Celestini takes it a step further: let’s turn it into a game. A
real game, a dangerous gamble, which forces us to face up to our contradictions.
1964: Italy’s economic boom is already crumbling, a coup d’état is being plotted, and what does
Pasolini do? He makes “The Gospel According to Matthew”. Provocation? Escapism? Or a vision so
lucid it can see two millennia of history all at once?
March 1968, Valle Giulia: students clash with the police, and Pasolini dares to write, ‘I sympathised
with the police’. And a few lines later, ‘We are, of course, in agreement against the institution of the
police’. Betrayal? Madness? Or the only Italian intellectual who had the courage to reject the truisms
of his own time? The challenge, then, is to place Pasolini back in his own time. A time that was brief
yet full of life. And which today we can view in its entirety, from start to finish. Let’s put an end to
pointless questions such as ‘I wonder what Pasolini would say today’ about the destruction of Gaza,
state capitalism in China or the war in Ukraine, the internet and social media! Instead, let’s tell the
story of Pasolini´s many facets: the Friulian poet and the Roman filmmaker, the rogue intellectual
and the fragile man, the prophet of consumer society and the victim of violence in one of the great
Italian mysteries. Ascanio Celestini seeks to rediscover the poet’s gaze. Only in this way does Pasolini
remain a living presence, essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the contradictions of
the present.