Le ragioni dell'altro: la formazione intellettuale di Pasolini tra saggistica, letteratura e cinema by Fabio Vighi (review)

Abstract

512 Reviews section 'Ginzburg: the writer,the mother' would perhaps have functioned better as a short, final chapter on its own. The bibliography of secondary sources is surprisingly short (less than a quarter the length of the list produced a decade earlier by Alan Bullock, Human Relationships in a Changing World (Oxford: Berg, 1991)). While undoubtedly helpful for follow? ing through specific themes such as Italian feminism, it is less so if one wishes to look up authors alphabetically. The list of primary sources is disappointing since, although it includes reference to Ginzburg's Opere, it lacks a full list of individual works with dates. What comes over repeatedly in this study is the strong sense of destiny affecting Ginzburg's female characters, especially their fear of becoming like their mothers, or being inept at relationships. At times, however, Picarazzi makes excessive claims; far more acceptable are the occasions where she asserts an alternative viewpoint or reading. Her recurrent attacks on, or attempts to redress, previous (male) criticism are unnecessary: it is clear that choosing this particular focus allows Picarazzi to expand on the maternal aspects not investigated by others. Style and translations, however, are frequently less than satisfactory,and there are a considerable number of errors, omissions, and cases of loss of continuity. (One example of regrettable syntax: 'I would also like to add that a responsible feminist criticism may certainly discuss hysteria without having one's argument be counterproductive to a feminist analysis which may also ask why certain conditions still persist, determine, and structure human relationships', p. 213 n. 2.) The grouping of stories into chapters is appropriate and helpful, as is the provision of running headlines which facilitate cross-referencing between text and notes. I also appreciated having both Italian and English titles for works discussed and for the majority of quotations, although in a few cases no Italian quotation is given. University of Salford Gillian Ania Le ragioni dell'altro: la formazione intellettuale di Pasolini tra saggistica, letteratura e cinema. By Fabio Vighi. Ravenna: Longo Editore. 2001. 286 pp. ?18.08. ISBN 88-8063-3074. Fabio Vighi's book offersa reassessment of Pasolini's intellectual formation between 1940 and 1961. It is divided into six closely argued and lucidly written chapters. Chapter 1 deals with his earliest intellectual activity as a student in Fascist, wartime Bologna. Chapter 2 deals with Pasolini's work in Friuli and in Friulan dialect between 1942 and 1949, looking in turn at poetry,political activism, and prose narrative. Chap? ters 3-5 move forward to the 1950s and to Rome, examining the early narrative and poetry of the period (Chapter 3), literary criticism (Chapter 4), and the two most influential novels of the 1950s, Ragazzi di vita and Una vita violenta (Chapter 5). Fi? nally, the argument is supplemented and stretched forward into Pasolini's later career by Chapter 6's reading of his firstfilm,Accattone (1961), by way of his 1960s essays in film semiology. The principal aim of the book, and its claim as a distinct contribution to the massive field of critical work on Pasolini, is to argue for the existence of a coherent and consistent intellectual project beneath his varied oeuvre. In the past, such a coher? ence has not merely been denied in the critical consensus on Pasolini; rather, its very opposite?contradiction or incoherence (often seen as deriving from a certain magpie-like intellectual eclecticism)?has tended to be exalted as the cornerstone of his intellectual modus operandi. Indeed, Pasolini himself used a rhetoric of contra? diction as part of his archetypal, rather Romantic self-presentation as 'poeta'. Vighi, MLR, 99.2, 2004 513 therefore, is reading Pasolini against himself, to trace the ways in which his work engages subtly and critically with the dominant modes of political and philosophi? cal thought of his day. The argument for coherence also has a 'biographical-critical' strand, in that an important part of Vighi's energies goes into showringthat the muchtouted points of profound fracture in Pasolini's career?first the move from Friuli to Rome, following expulsion from the Communist Party (PCI) and prosecution for molesting minors in 1949-50; and then the move into...