Craft: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) was the major Italian poet of the second half of the 20th century, as well as an important filmmaker and political figure. A public intellectual, Pasolini was an important voice in all sorts of social, cultural, and political issues in postwar Italy. Now that Italy has elected a far-right prime minster whose party has direct links to Italian Fascism and Benito Mussolini, it is vital to look at Pasolini’s poems and imagine how he would respond.

Pasolini, c. 1966 as subversive troubadour

Pasolini was a remarkable figure and the scope of his artistic expression can’t be covered in this format. He was a knot of sometimes oppositional extremes: An anti-Communist of the Left, he was expelled from the Italian Communist Party in 1949 for being homosexual; a religious Catholic, he was against sexual liberation; A champion of the poor, he nonetheless exploited boys in the Roman slums for sex.